Category: Lifting Mindset

“How To Turn On Your Muscle Building Gene”

If you train in any manner consistently for 10+ years you’re gonna be the best at it, have the best genetics, and win at the muscle building game.

And don’t think it’s not a game.

Seriously

The longer you are consistent with x the more you get out of x.

My x has been pushups, pushups every night. It’s comical how much I get out of them. I don’t expect anyone to believe just how much.

I’ll always be strong, even if I revert to zero physical training aside from my pushups.

I’ve done so many that I get so much.

Consistent pushups for years activated a “muscle building gene”.
I can’t grok it any other way.

I turned on an otherwise inactive in the modern world muscle building gene. You can too! It’s there.
Apply stimuli – consistently.

My most developed bodypart?
Chest.

Why?
1,000,000+ pushups.

You do something that consistently, it’s gonna work for you.

Would it have been better to train full body nightly PT?
Sure, but pushups starting at 14 years old is what I got. It’s a tremendous base.

Many beginners would be well served knowing these principles at the gate, from the start.

Don’t look for a perfect program!
You design one, any, then give it perfect consistency.

It’ll work – 10+ years.
Somewhere in there your body goes “muscle building gene activate!”

Pushups work for me.
Zero excuses. My gym is always with me, just hit the deck. I need that aspect.

I can control the consistency.
Always & Forever

Persistence & Tenacity

Just before my 21st birthday I went to a job interview for a gym.

I showed up to a big ass crowd, unbeknownst to me it was a group interview.

Probably 25 seats in the waiting area, I’d say at this point 15 people were there.

Probably 15 minutes before the start she walked in.

5’10”, freckled blue eyed brunette, a tinge of red to her hair, but not enough to call her a redhead.

Wearing heels, tight jeans that hugged fantastic hips, and an attractive yet professional enough blouse for a top, you could see she was extremely fit, yet had good curves, her chest not lost to fitness.

She was pretty enough you thought “model”, but build wise she’d be described better as a womanly curved volleyball player. As I said she had fantastic hips, and a moderate/medium bust.
Medium-large frame, and tall.

I felt that lump of nerves form in my throat, this girl being in every guys eyes a 9, and I was especially self conscious by being clean shaven as per this gym’s employment regulations.

She looked around the room surprised at the crowd, smiled at me and the old timer two seats to my left, asked me the time, “oh good I’m not late”, then politely asked the two of us if she could sit between us.

Very polite, she made conversation to both myself and the old timer, who was kinda grumpy other than talking to her (a 19 yo smoke show), but then she and I – we had an interesting conversation.

Just about a year younger than me (just shy of 20 to my just shy of 21), she told me that she had graduated high school weighing 240, and in about a year had lost 80lbs.

I had found this baffling as she was a smoke show.

It also impressed me how open she was about this. Unashamed to say she had weighed 240, to my surprise open about weighing 160.

Obviously we talked more in depth about it.

She told me that as an air force brat they moved very frequently,
she’d gotten depressed, became something of a shut in, and had gotten fat.

The circumstances for this made sense. Zero friends there, not making any, and getting picked on having landed in the wrong school district. She had been emotional eating.

A little after graduation, she decided to start jogging.

15 to 20lbs down, she decided she could do better, and started going to the gym.

We talked training some, and she basically was doing the high frequency ass, abs, and cardio thing that chicks are wont to do.

By her own admission she loved squatting, and running a hard mile for time.

Taking her at her word, her training effort was very high. That’s a key here, from 240lbs to a 160lb smoke show in a year requires intensity.

Squats and hard mile runs were done regularly and with considerable effort.

I don’t remember numbers now, but remember being impressed with her numbers on both lifts and run times.

Talking she viewed becoming a trainer as “a dream”, I still recall that she had a very pleasant girly personality. And that we were both applying for front desk jobs.

She was really hoping for this to come through as she was working as a seamstress, essentially in a sweat shop, and as requirement to stay living at home her military dad insisted she always have full time employment.

At one point I asked if there were stretch marks from the weight change. She said no, but it’s not like I can confirm or deny this.

After the interview I did call her back over to me, and took the shot. She said she had a boyfriend, but you know ; I’d taken the shot for/with a 5’10” model pretty athletic freckled blue eyed brunette.

I still remember her name. I tend to think of it as a latina name, not commonly as a white woman’s.

You can always train harder. Somewhere out there a teenage girl is out working you.

Persistence & Tenacity

7/21/20

The rock was in the river bed, probably 65-75lbs.

(Due to shape feeling heavier, more analogous to 100-120lb dumbbell.)

I got it near the shore, and started attempting to press it one handed standing in water at rib cage almost chest level.

With wrist bent back all the way, and facing sidewards away from my body I got a couple reps left hand and up to 7 reps right handed the rock being flatter, and longer than a dumbbell forcing my sides to fire hard.

There’s no doubt in my mind that big red haired kilt wearing highlanders weren’t ox strong.

Look at what the highland games is. You know those good ole boys were lifting rocks in every which way in competition with each other.

There is more to physicality than the inside of a gym.

I train because getting down on the kitchen floor for a set of situps is something they’ll never do.

It sets me apart.

You may make more money than me, own a nice car, and a nice home, or maybe not. Society can say you’re worth more than me, that I’m nobody, and yet I’m your physical superior.

You can put me anywhere, and I’m still going to workout that day.

Equipment, no equipment, doesn’t matter. I’ll do my daily PT.

I’ve done calisthenics in more places than you’d imagine.

Between weight workouts and my daily PT I’ve trained every day for the entirety of my legal adulthood. No days off. I’m not built soft like that.

Often I’ll have people say that given
the circumstances where everyone else quits, that I’ll slip, sit on a couch and turn on a television instead of hitting the floor be it at the gym or at home, and then fall into that negative habit like how all the surrender monkeys live.

That’s not me.

I’d rather die than miss my daily pushups. For it to happen I’d have to be physically incapacitated.

A couple years back (April 2018) I did a set of three while ridiculously feverish to keep the streak alive.

The television has nothing for me, and it’s obvious that it never did anything good for you.

Still you watch.
And I PT.

You’re you.
I’m me.

Persistence & Tenacity

The coaches of my high school’s football team had a policy :

“No hitting for ten practices”.

Since two a days were around 10 days long, most kids would be eligible at or nearly after the first week.

As a very losing program desperate for bodies, it was quite lax.

You could skip some practices without excuse really, you didn’t even have to join before/during two a days, they had a cut off date around 3 weeks into the school year.

After I had quit as a freshman, this one lineman, a stork if ever there was one, who benched 365 that year at around 240 with twig legs, had persuaded me to join before that cutoff.

“I know you plan to wrestle, this’ll prepare you for that. What was it you were playing last year?”

“Right end”

“You’ll end up starting d end on one side or the other once you’ve shown to practice for ten days.”

The defensive coordinator saw me walking in to join that afternoon wearing a marine corps pt shirt from the surplus store. He got all hyped, I believe he was a prior service cop that I met in the gym years later, and had me practicing before the 10 days.

The first game, not yet eligible to play I was paired with the starter at right end for hitting drills during warmups and the coach walked by saying “damn insert eastern european last name, damn (looks at clipboards to put name to number) insert my last name, you’re not warming up, you’re going for real, he must want that spot, I think I see both my starting ends in 2 weeks”.

A kid moved from the next town over and joined, but remember the 10 day eligibility, and on him they were enforcing it.

He was pissed, kept saying how he was already hitting at the other school, that it’s not his fault his parent had to move.

Half way through that first practice he stormed out, actually breaking into the locker room to get his shit (allegedly not too hard to do, I’d heard with enough force push/pull they’d pop), and biked off.

I was getting into practice before they’d enforced the whole ten days, but still there was a lot of standing around.

This thought hit me :

You could make that inactivity still active.

“Fuck this, I’m going to go sprint.”

What’s the coach gonna do? Up/down you?

You could be there on the sidelines and start doing so on your own accord.

“Fuck standing around, I’m gonna condition.”

You could (at least attempt to) get someone in the sideline to drill with you, again all the coach has is gassers and up/downs. And that’s still you getting your way.

You could be ballsy and just walk into formation taking the spot you want.

Again gasser? Up/down? Actually playing? Results in fist fight which = no hazing?

There’s no lose.

If any coach wanted to kick you off the team for this stuff he would’ve been overridden by the psycho redhead former army ranger (that’s what the whispers said about him) and the ≤125lb 80+yo man who threw skittles at lollygagging fat body linemen, calling em “fat man snacks”, the practice of which he picked up from something he had witnessed in boot camp in a time pre vietnam era as he was old enough for korea if not barely ww2.

There’s always something you can be doing when you “have to” stand around.

And you can always go harder.

You want the struggle, hardship hardens.

Persistence & Tenacity

A lot of questions in the gym, needn’t be asked.

It’s entirely ok to, and I advise doing this ; just try it out for yourself.

If you wonder if something could work, instead of asking, just test it on yourself.

Go in without expectations, and put some honest effort into it.

When you ask if something is possible, instead of just doing a trial run, the large majority of the time whoever you’re asking is going to say “no it’s not”.

That right there is the bulk of online forums.

Crabs in a bucket mostly, and often very clique like, thinking only their chosen method could possibly work.

(Even when it’s not working for them.)

Not only do I want you to try your ideas out, as trying your own ideas out often ends up being how you find the methods that let you love what you do the most, I’m also against a few things :

I don’t want you considering limitations. This means that I don’t want you considering injury or overtraining as possibilities. They’re not on the table! Don’t even think about such garbage.

I don’t want you on, or to consider who is on steroids. There’s a lot of power in a hardline, even blissfully ignorant belief that everyone clearly is “natty”.

I don’t want you more focused on recovery than on the training. However “hard” you go, there’s a million examples throughout history of people working harder, in worse conditions, with worse food, water, sleep, and in real dangers.
You can train, be the hardest going person in your gym, and still have it soft. You’re in america, 99% chance you’re coddled, have it easy, and your self imposed workout ain’t that hard. Don’t be so soft on yourself, you can do a hell of a lot more. And whatever you’re doing, don’t even view it as a hardship. It’s work you want to be doing, so don’t even think into it so much, just go!

Inside the gym, and even worse in the gym’s corner of the internet, is a lot of focus on limitation instead of on possibility.

A natural who cares about “natty” status, and is obsessing about not doing too much is never going to make the progress he could’ve if he instead was focused on “how far can I go” with an open mind.

There’s all sorts of dudes you can find online who have that “natty or not” argument going on about them.

Eric Bugenhagen and Wes Watson both come to mind as youtubers like that.

When I contrast the mirror between 16 and 26…a good deal of what I see is just natural possibility.

All I did was always train, not sweat the minors, and not buy into the natural limitations I had read online.

If I was starving, just living on carbs, hopeless/depressed, and without a gym membership, every night I still did my pushups. That’s consistency.

Consistency plays a huge role.

Consistent effort, where you are, with what you have right now is big picture.

Most are self harming by instead sweating small stuff.

Equipment and dietary perfection don’t matter much in the decade+ of time involved in getting jacked.

Take a kid with heart, zero equipment, living on naught but top ramen and 2 squares of school food that cost him 35¢ each, and within a year he can go from fat body or skinny fat to playing school sports, and decently.

When a natural is willing to carry some fat mass on top of significant muscle his lean body mass will be higher than the bodyweight naturals tend to step on a bodybuilding stage at, and higher than the military weight regs for their height.

At 19 or 20 a bodybuilder told me if I was to cut from my then 230, I’d be having a six pack at a very big looking 205.

Now I’m 265 or so, sometimes seeing low 270s on the scale, and way stronger/more thickly muscled than in the prior example. I’d bet that six pack would be there at 220 at a minimum if not 230, 235. More muscle in the peak stage of bulked will equal more muscle when back down to lean.

That path of reasoning leads me to say there’s no reason that Eric Bugenhagen and Wes Watson both couldn’t be “natty”.

I believe I’ve seen Eric state he’s 6’1″, and know I read Wes say that he’s 6′. Both are around 230 with abs, and my frame of reference gets me to around that weight at 6′ if I was to cut.

So obviously a 6 footer can be natural and have abs at 230 in spite of what the internet says.

Don’t do yourself the disservice of sweating “can’ts” or conceding to the imposition of someone else’s idea of limitation upon you.

Focus on taking action.
Just go. It doesn’t need to be the idealized “perfect” path, it just needs to be moving forward.

What can you do? Nah, it’s what can’t you do.

There’s abundant positive possibility.

Persistence & Tenacity

“I’ve come to the conclusion the gyms are never gonna reopen.”

“That’s a really dark thing to say. They’ll be open sooner than later.”

“Well, it’s been three months, long enough that that’s the way I choose to operate from now on.”

Thank you corona!

You’re forcing me to refind my roots, and run with them.

If you notice me just stopping to bother using any equipment at all, and just murdering pushups you know why.

The gyms are never gonna reopen, that’s where my brain is at.

That’s how I’m choosing to train.

Hell, I’m doing situps/6″/flutter kicks consistently, I don’t think I’ve ever done direct ab work as a consistent regular thing inside the gym, that’s straight up PT shit.

While so many are making it like the lockdown (now lifting) is the end and loss of all gains, like improvising with what you’ve got is a scarcity, not an abundance, I’m choosing to just straight up look at lifes possibility here from the dark side.

The gym is never gonna reopen!
I have no equipment to train with.
(Even though I do.)

All I’ve got is calisthenics, floor exercises, dynamics, the isometrics I can improvise around the house.

Cardio?

Full lockdown mode. Jumping jacks, burpees, walk/run/sprint.
No bicycle!

(Though it’s likely to end up being pushups and bicycle. I’m content with this.)

I’m getting the lifting of weights out of mind as something I get to do.
(Unless I own a gym.)

Self limitation to calisthenics and equipment free.

Choose to embrace this shit, use it all out. Fuck hoping the gyms gonna reopen soon. It’s never gonna reopen!

/Living life accordingly/

Persistence & Tenacity

In no particular order, just the order they came to me 21 reasons why you are small.

1. You’re small because you ask for advice on getting bigger, then come up with the exact mean of 8.4 excuses as to why you can’t eat more.

(Amazingly, they always come up with exactly 8.4 excuses.)

2. You’re falsely claiming lactose intolerance. By using this excuse you deny yourself milk, ice cream, heavy cream…but wait, you’ll eat ice cream…and isn’t lactose a protein meaning you COULD drink heavy cream.

3. You’re scared of high saturated fat and/or cholesterol intake.

4. You think raw eggs will harm you. If only you knew how many some drink.

5. You’re a picky eater.

6. You think diet must be perfectly clean, meanwhile a tasty frozen pizza is all sad & alone. You’re neglecting it.

7. You’re not drinking nutritious calories : milk, heavy cream, olive oil, raw eggs, shakes made with all of the above and more.

8. You tend to eat 90s low fat instead of manly meat sources.
Are you my grandma circa 2000?

9. Budget!

10. You train like a small, weak human or relatedly don’t train but do live on xbox and mountain dew like the most injury prone dude I ever knew.

11. Your calorie intake seems low…to a starving african child. Big people eat 5000 calories a day. Sumo, football, bodybuilders – 5000 calories.

12. You think you can’t crush 5k calories.

13. You think the budget required to reach 5000 calories a day is impossibly high. What are you, a college educated girl shopping only organic at whole foods? Milk. Top Ramen. Chicken thigh.

14. You’ve hypnotized yourself into having “bad” genetics instead of the best genetics.

15. Your posture is sad like puny girly built male.

16. You think you don’t have the right equipment. Truth is you don’t even need equipment.

17. You spend too much time online reading about training, much more time than you do actually training.

18. You obsess over taking a preworkout.

19. You buy supplements and partake in them in some manner (snorting?) instead of spending the same money on food and actually eating food. Tuna is similar in cost and calorie to cheap whey, but your body will actually digest it.

20. You haven’t given it enough time.

21. You obviously don’t want to be bigger.