I began strength training sometime around fifth grade in our basement with the sand weight set and no spotters. Luckily, I quickly learned that if you don’t put the collars on the end of the bar it was much easier to maneuver the weights off of you if you couldn’t finish a repetition. By the time I was 15, I had become fairly serious about training. Making sure all of my meals had protein, saving money to buy the new training magazines, and keeping a log of my workouts to see what was working and what wasn’t. I didn’t know I was setting myself up for a life long thing and I really didn’t care. I wanted to dunk a basketball and impress girls. One of those happened, but luckily I was creating healthy habits that I now realize in my mid 30s are serving me very well. Over 20+ years has gone by since I started taking training serious and there are some things I wish I had realized when starting out. Maybe it would saved me time, injury, and money or maybe I wouldn’t have listened anyway. Training can change your life and I hope this list gives you what you need to take on step forward and make training a healthy sustainable part of your life.
- Always keep a healthy bodyweight. Many guys will pack on tons of body fat to appear bigger and lift more weight. This works as a short cut, but ultimately it will affect your performance at a high enough level and will limit your life. I gained 50lbs in around 6 months to lift bigger weights. I don’t regret it, but see it as a short cut to lift more weight that over time started to have a negative impact on my deadlift and ability to recover. Keep your waistline in check.
- Keep your foundation. Learn to do push ups, pull ups, sit ups, run etc. Once you establish those as solid exercises never lose them. Fancy new exercises will come and go. The ability to always be able to do a pull up will serve you well long term.
- All or Nothing loses. It’s a whole lifestyle. Don’t diet so hard Monday-Friday that you spend Saturday and Sunday visiting every fast food chain. Same is with training. Training should be just hard enough to push you to create a response. Not so much that you can’t recover or don’t want to workout again.
- It’s like investing. The best time to start was years ago, but the second best time is now. It’s never too late and it’s always worth starting. You also can’t make a huge investment with a ton of workouts and extreme diet and expect the same results as someone with a 15 year head start. It’s your journey so enjoy.
- Walk. Walks are the physical and mental miracle drug everyone is looking for. This allows you to think, decompress, and keep your waistline trim. We would have a lot less low back and hip pain in America if people would commit to a daily walk.
- Learn to Cook. One of the best things you can do for your training is learn to cook your own food. It saves you money, you get to make it taste exactly how you want using only the ingredients you want to use to fuel your body.
- Variety is nice, too much leaves you confused. People used to preach all the time that muscles need to be confused. What they’re referring to is the law of accommodation. The problem is, almost everyone can handle the same exercises for a longer period of time without worrying about stalling out. Perform exercises long enough that you can make real progress that is trackable. It’s funny that everyone preaching more variety never wanted to get rid of the bench press.
- Full body workouts over body split workouts. Body split routines are straight from magazine shelves. If your goal is solely hypertrophy, there is definitely some benefit. For everyone else, full body workouts are far better for time, body composition, and strength. Your body doesn’t work in different segments each day and neither should your workouts.
- Time conquers all. I remember the first bodybuilding show I competed in there were a group of guys that had muscles with way more density than I did and I couldn’t figure out how their training was different than mine. I asked them 20 questions throughout the day about diet, machines vs free weights, and everything else. Finally one of them said, keep doing what you’re doing for 20 more years. It’s true. Muscle takes a long time to build. Dense muscle takes even longer. This is why it’s comical when people who have never lifted are hesitant out of fear they’ll add too much muscle too fast. This has been a life long goal of many only to be disappointed.
- If it sounds too good to be true, it is. A few years ago, fitness gurus had people believing that fruit and vegetables were bad but shoving a stick of butter in your coffee and eating a pack of bacon daily was the road to health. Every year there are training techniques that rise from the dead from an influencer and the claims are excellent. The hype lasts for a few months and then it crawls back into its cave. Supplement companies do the same by finding studies that point to a singular ingredient as the answer. Then they create a new product with an under dosed amount of that supplement delivering promises and emptying wallets. Protein, weights, and sleep seem to never go out of style, odd.
Bonus
“Comparison is the thief of Joy” Theodore Roosevelt
Your fitness journey is yours and yours alone. If you ask every single person in the country if they wanted a little more money and a little less body fat the answer would be yes 10/10 times. Be happy of your commitment and progress. The people in magazines and online won’t tell you about their photos being edited, their risky drug use, struggles with healthy eating habits and so on. There might be someone a little better than you at something, but that doesn’t take away what you’ve achieved.
If you want to save yourself time and headaches, let us know how we can help you with your fitness goals. Coaches help you avoid the mistakes they made so you’ll see progress faster.
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