Consistency!
If there is one lesson people training need to internalize as part of their being this is it.
Whatever programming you do, if you have perfect consistency you’re going to get good results at some point.
Who cares about ideal!
Fuck ideal!
If it was to have been ideal my father would’ve gotten into bodybuilding out in SoCal before I was born, there would have been a squat rack on our concrete patio…in SoCal! We’d have never left!
Reality is that my father never lifted weights, he’s been hostile to the idea of my doing so, and we’re not in Cali!
I put to words a lot of my training philosophy speaking with my uncle.
The reason I made myself so obsessive with pushups is that they’ll never be taken away.
Pushups will never be taken away.
I’ll always have them.
Doing them is always under my control. No one can stop me. My doing them daily is a daily act of self ownership.
Since I started lifting I’ve had weights banned from the house, been locked out of the school weightroom often, been kicked out of a commercial gym, had a gym I frequented for years close down, been so broke I couldn’t go to one, moved coast to coast a couple times, so it’s really only rational that I stick to PT.
And now with this lockdown, you can never take this away from me!
I’m starting to make gains again. My appearance is at a threshold.
And I’m not doing much past 10 minutes of daily PT, a couple bike rides weekly, and the occasional lifting of an empty barbell outside.
(The empty barbell 50s could be the perfect program much searched for.)
How?
Consistency. The other day I hit 4 years of daily pushups. 4 years without a miss.
Do you have that consistency? Do you train everyday?
You go high frequency for long enough, you’ll effectively have the best genetics.
No equipment lack will ever hold you back.
I’m used to losing gym access. When that happens, I always move forward.
People want the fast gains, they search for the perfect diet. As far as I can tell you’ve just gotta struggle for years. Those who got it easily eventually quit.
Just be physical on a daily basis for some years. Everyone else has NFL Sunday fandom, video games, and shit. You become through action essentially superhuman.
A buddy wants to train with me when pf reopens. I told him to start burpees right when he got home.
You. Train. Everyday.
I started at 14. Younger is always better to start than now, but now is now, and to start tommorow is bad.
Now is the perfect time!
Lockdown : pushups in the kitchen, and some various additions, presently enjoying the quad pump from long bike rides.
When you’re used to some stimulus you can do a lot more when you set your mind to it, and check this out ;
Repeated exposure to a simple, easy stimuli, over years will make that same simple, easy stimuli far more effective than what common knowledge claims, and how it was at the gate.
I’ve done pushups for so long that doing them feels like I’m cheating at life. It’s just too easy, and I haven’t even milked them for their worth yet, not even close.
Whatever I was at 14, I’m an easy gainer now.
It took about a decade, and the last couple years have just been silly.
I’ll find something that works and just go do a bunch of it for awhile and my body starts to change right quick.
And now, possibly for the first time in my life, I just have a sense of strength, something I feel, just living.
10 years. Train for 10 years. Have a minimal fallback that you do religiously. Don’t quit. Give it a decade.
Persistence & Tenacity