There’s a hell of a lot of good advice, freely available from people who know what they’re talking about, on any given gym floor.
The majority are happy to share, and love seeing their advice implemented.
7/4/20 ~430pm
“Hey man, I’ve been meaning to say this ; thank you, your advice worked.”
“Advice? Oh, on diet.”
“Yeah man, I’ve been doing what you said, and I’m now 195. This is the biggest I’ve been in my life.”
We talked a little more, he’d taken to eating ground beef and eggs fried with rice, tried drinking cream, and was liking the results of implementing what I’d said which was roughly :
Egg shakes, more calorically dense nutrition like beef in place of chicken, dairy if you can handle it, and simple meal prep like stew.
He’d implemented my advice during the lockdown, and ran with the guidelines.
I’m thankful that my advise was put to good use. Some people implement, some don’t, but spreading gym knowledge is a way I put positivity into the universe. I do it regardless.
I spent a good deal of the day hanging out and training with a buddy.
Back at the gym he asks me how to get his legs bigger :
So I answer the question “how to build big quads at planet fitness”.
With the equipment available I tend to stear people towards the leg press.
In this case the selector sled style one.
“I’d do this for a set of 100+, starting a little under bodyweight. When you get 100-125 reps, then the next time go up a selector pin or two, and keep doing that when you hit that 100+ set.”
First time trying it he got about 82 reps with 130 weighing 160 or so.
He rested maybe 30 seconds, went a second time and did reps in the low 40s. I laughed telling him about the “50% method” (one set, rest ≤90 seconds, and aim for half the rep count or better).
“I just did that instinctively!”
High rep abilities when honestly done for awhile get so far out of the standard gym frame of “3×10 and not doing too much” that most truly don’t imagine the possibility.
So you push, a voice who knows this can enlighten the ability.
It’s not looking at it like “what you can’t do”, but approaching it as “what am I able to do” walking into the thing without preconceived limitations, basically playfully gaining your way to superior ability.
Train everyday.
Don’t even think “is this too much”. Just go and do, and without that preconceived limitation you’ve got a lot in you.
I think in terms of the body in push/pull/legs. Each as a category. I want 2 of 3 categories trained daily at a minimum. All three is preferable, but it’s allowable to back one off if you did a crazy amount the day before.
Blood flow is healing. The pump is healing and euphoric. Each day even if it’s very little, do something to make it full body each day.
My buddy got lively, hyped up, super energetic after his leg pressing. He literally was running around and jumping.
“I feel great!”
“You’ve never got a pump like that before, you’ve never known to go that far.”
“No I hadn’t. This is great!”
He’d always seemed scared to get past 4×10 or so, I got him to hit an 80+ rep set, with something he’d maybe do for sets of 20 before, just completely obliterating that gym barrier.
Jon Anderson – Deep Water’s “agreement” principle, I taught that today.
Not counting can get you far further than counting reps. A training partner keeping track, and doing the thinking for you can obliterate your preconceived limits.
I didn’t tell him his rep count til he stopped, and he only racked the weight having gotten distracted, and back into his head.
Obviously if you get that sense to stop a set because your body has a red alert going off, stop the set, injury only happens in the gym due to stupidity.
But most of the limits are self inflicted, not real, able to be ignored.
Still hyped he was telling me how he loves my training philosophy “man, you’re like ignore that, stop thinking, don’t even consider it, just send, and send some more, don’t hurt yourself, you can do more, just send, send some more, and send some more”.
The conversation would’ve been very good on camera.
A big part of the gym is just doing, learning what works for you personally, and then you have the ability to teach what you’ve learned.
Persistence & Tenacity