Let’s face it; intense weight training is no easy task.
It’s no secret that if you want to see dramatic results in both muscle size and strength, you must be willing to push yourself to the limit every time you enter the gym.
This is one of the biggest reasons why most people don’t see the muscle-building results they desire; they just plain don’t train hard enough. And why don’t they? Here’s why…
It’s painful. It’s uncomfortable. It’s downright gut wrenching.
Too bad, so sad, my friend, because if you want real muscle gains then you’ll have to rise above and conquer the natural feeling of pain that is associated with intense sessions in the gym.
Luckily there are a few special techniques you can use to “mentally numb” these feelings and to blast through the pain barriers that separate you from the gains you deserve. Give some of the following methods a try and I think you’ll be pleased with the results...
1) Life-Threatening Situations
In the middle of your set, transport yourself to a life-or-death situation where your life or someone else's life depends on your ability to move the weight. For example, when performing chin-ups you could pretend that you are hanging from a cliff, or while deadlifting you could imagine that you are rescuing someone who is trapped underneath a car.
2) Magnetic Force
Pretend that the weights you are using are powerful magnets that are being attracted in the opposite direction. If you're performing a bench press, imagine that the bar is a magnet being attracted to the ceiling.
3) Envision Your Muscles
Remember that your purpose in the gym is to break down your muscle fibers in order to trigger an adaptive response from your body. While performing your sets, visualize what is happening inside of your muscle tissue. Imagine the fibers tearing and being engorged with blood and nutrients and realize that these processes will equate to muscular growth.
4) Have Someone Watch You
I'm not talking about using a spotter here, I'm simply talking about having a friend or training partner watch you perform your set. We usually tend to push ourselves harder when we know that someone is watching.
5) Positive/Negative Force
For pushing exercises, imagine that you are moving something negative away from yourself. You can associate anything with this: someone you don't like, a negative emotion or something material. For pulling exercises, imagine that you are bringing something positive towards yourself. It could be money, someone you love or a positive feeling.
6) Set Ridiculous Goals
If you need to perform 7 reps on a given set, imagine that your goal is to perform 100. Don't just tell yourself this; believe it. As you begin to perform your set, truly convince yourself that you will perform 100 reps.
7) Close Your Eyes
This should only be applied on certain exercises that are very simple to perform. You definitely wouldn't want to employ this technique when squatting or deadlifting. On other, simpler exercises, try closing your eyes. This will block out all of your visual stimuli and will allow you to focus 100% on performing the exercise.
8) Pretend It's Someone Else's Pain
Training to failure is physically discomforting. While you are approaching muscular failure, pretend that the pain you are experiencing is also being felt by someone that you dislike. The harder you push, the more pain you will transfer to them. It may seem like a cold-blooded technique, but it works.
If you're ready to put these techniques to use in the gym, I'll teach you several more of these psychological strategies and will provide you with a step-by-step workout plan that you can follow.
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While some individuals are strictly interested in obtaining muscle for aesthetics, for most people, this isn’t an interest. Instead, you’re more interested in knowing what health benefits weight lifting will have for you…
Far too many people overlook the many health and fitness benefits that weight training has to offer, and because of this, experience problems down the road with their body such as decreased bone density, a slowed metabolic rate, increased stress levels and other negative consequences that are associated with constant stress.
Increased Bone Density
Weight lifting, being one of the best weight bearing exercises you can do, will increase your bone density and help ward off osteoporosis or stress fractures in the future.
Many people think running is the best exercise for increasing bone density, but this isn’t necessarily true. If the truth is told, running actually promotes muscle breakdown in the body, while weight lifting, being an anabolic process, helps to promote the building of tissues.
Therefore, weight lifting is going to be much better at preserving your bone mass, not to mention it’s far less impact than going for an hour run.
Decreased Frequency of Injuries
When you strength train, not only are your muscles going to get stronger, but you’ll also work the ligaments and tendons that are connecting bones, muscles, and other tissues, thus reducing the chance they become injured when participating in other physical activities.
If you’ve ever been injured, you know just how frustrating this can be. In about 80% of all injury cases, the injury is a direct result of a tendon, ligament, or muscle not being strong enough when a stressful force is applied.
Since weight training will really hit all those deep tendons and ligaments, it’s the best injury prevention out there.
Reduction of Health Related Risks
Numerous studies have demonstrated that regular weight training can have a positive effect on health by showing reductions in the rate of insulin resistance, blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
The more you weight lift, the higher your metabolism will be, thus the more food you can eat while maintaining your weight. If that isn’t good news for your future and the fight against body fat, I’m not sure what is.
Now, with all of this said, one big problem many people run into is the thinking pattern that using a muscle building program will make you big and bulky.
This is most certainly not the case.
Let’s look at an analogy to gain an understanding of this.
Pretend you have two teams and each are going to try and build a house using the exact same building technique.
One team is given 10,000 bricks to construct this house, and the second team is given only 1,000 bricks.
Who’s going to build the bigger house?
The choice should be obvious – team one since they have more bricks to build it with.
Now, think of those bricks as being the calories you put into your body. Unless you’re supplying enough calories, you aren’t going to build really big muscles. This is precisely what makes bodybuilders look like bodybuilders.
It’s not just about the way they train, but more about the way they eat (if you’ve ever had a teenage son in the growing process in your house, you likely know just how much food must be consumed when growing at rapid rates).
Whether it’s growing in height during puberty or trying to build bigger muscles later on, calories must be supplied for this growth process to take place.
You can’t build a house out of nothing. Likewise, you can workout all you want, but if those building blocks – in the form of amino acids, carbohydrates, and dietary fats are not there, you aren’t going to see too much muscle growth.
So, don’t get caught thinking that just because you add weight lifting to your workouts, you’re going to develop large bulky muscles. If you control your diet, this simply will not happen.
So, hopefully it is clear now that just because you’re weight lifting, it does not mean you will end up with bulky muscles as a result. Many people make this incorrect assumption – but it really is the diet that makes all the difference in how this weight lifting will shape your body.
When you make the decision to work with me using my 6-Pack Ab Quest program, I’ll take you through the weight lifting and ab techniques that will provide maximum results with minimal effort on your part (why spend more time in the gym than you have to?), as well as provide you with meal plans that are custom designed to ensure you get the best results from your training without the muscle bulk – in fact, the plans are formulated to help you shed the fat so you look leaner and more defined.
Not choosing to include weight training as part of your current workout program is without-a-doubt the biggest mistake you could make as far as your long-term health and fitness level is concerned. Don’t let this exercise pass you by any longer.
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One of the most costly mistakes that I see in the gym week in and week out is that the majority of lifters fail to recognize the importance of a proper warmup.
Some lifters perform a wimpy, worthless warmup that consists of 1 set of 20 reps using the weight of the bar, and others neglect the warmup process altogether.
There are two main reasons why a proper warmup will serve you well both in the short and long term...
1) A proper warmup will increase the amount of weight that you are able to lift during your actual workout, thereby maximizing muscle stimulation and growth.
2) A proper warmup will greatly decrease your chances of injury.
Now I don't know about you, but to me that looks like two perfectly good reasons to spend a simple 15-20 minutes before each workout properly warming up.
Don't you agree?
Good, now let me explain what a proper warm-up should consist of...
The first component of a proper warmup consists of 5 minutes of light cardiovascular activity. You can choose any basic piece of cardio equipment to perform this such as a recumbent bike, rowing machine or treadmill.
This basic cardio warmup will increase your body's core temperature, stimulate your heart and lungs and will also lubricate your joints by increasing the secretion of synovial fluid.
As you perform this 5 minute cardio warmup, envision the workout that you will soon be performing. Focus on mentally preparing yourself for the battle that lies ahead and accept that you will soon be putting forth a maximal effort.
It's crucial that you prepare both your mind and body for your workouts, since your mental attitude plays such a vital role in your success.
Once your 5 minutes is up, you can move into the next and final component of the warmup process. In this section you will be performing 5 warmup sets using the first major compound exercise of your workout.
For example, if you were training legs and squats were your main exercise, then you would perform 5 warmup sets for squats. The goal here is to start by using a very light weight with high repetitions and gradually increase the resistance while lowering the repetitions.
However, the most crucial aspect of these 5 warmup sets is this:
YOU MUST NOT FATIGUE YOUR MUSCLES WHATSOEVER DURING THESE 5 SETS!
Remember, this is merely a warmup that is designed to increase blood flow to the muscles and surrounding connective tissue. Its purpose is also to increase the amount of weight you will be able to lift on your muscle-building sets by preparing your mind and body for the heavy weights to come.
If you fatigue your muscles during these sets then you are completely destroying their entire purpose. Here is a basic formula you can follow when calculating how much weight to use and how many reps to perform on your warmups.
The percentage given is in relation to the weight that you will use for your muscle-building set. If you were planning on squatting 200 pounds, then the first set should be performed with 100 pounds for 10 reps as you can see below.
Set 1: 50% x 10 reps
Set 2: 60% x 6 reps
Set 3: 70% x 4 reps
Set 4: 80% x 3 reps
Set 5: 90% x 1 rep
Once you've completed these 5 basic sets you can move right into your actual workout.
Do not underestimate the importance of this warmup process!
It will go a long way in keeping you injury free and in preparing your body for those grueling workouts. It only takes about 15-20 minutes to perform and the benefits will far outweigh the costs.
If you're looking for more insight into the proper methods for structuring an effective muscle-building workout, You can gain instant access to a full step-by-step 26-week workout plan that has been used successfully by thousands of people from all over the world.
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Smart trainees know that progression is the name of the game in fitness and strength training. However, as you continually test your limits of accomplishment, whether that’s reaching a new level of leanness, increasing your muscle mass or obtaining a new strength maximum, you often fall prey to the belief that you must push yourself to the point of complete “failure.” This is the point where you reach a level of fatigue and exhaustion that causes your muscles to literally give out (“fail”) and you can’t complete another rep.
Training with progression and intensity is important, but unless you’d like to trade a nice set of abs for a bad lower back, I’d strongly urge you to re-evaluate the concept of training to failure, especially when it comes to core and abdominal workouts and especially if you’re not a bodybuilder.
Why do so many people believe in failure training?
Training to “failure” became popular in part, because of bodybuilding culture and bodybuilding gurus such as Mike Mentzer and Arthur Jones, and then the information filtered into the mainstream fitness world. Athletes, who tend to be as competitive with themselves as they are with their opponents, also sometimes push themselves as far as they possibly can in their quest for sporting excellence.
This approach may be misguided and possibly even dangerous.
There may be a small place for taking some sets to the point of failure in low volume bodybuilding programs. But even bodybuilders who train to failure too often may be gaining less benefit than they think, while increasing their chances of overtraining or even injury.
I believe strongly that the added stress of training to failure or total fatigue can cause more problems than it’s worth and the potential benefit is not worth the risk. I have rehabilitated many back pain patients because of their stubborn beliefs in “pushing it to the limit.”
Stimulate, Don’t Annihilate
Exercise places a stress on muscles, joint structures and the entire body. Exercising to failure places extreme stress on the muscles, body and the nervous system. There is positive training stress and negative training stress. Properly applied, training stress is “stimulation” which prompts an adaptation in the muscle – strength, stamina, size, or power. Improperly applied, training stress is damage beyond the point of necessarily stimulation. Even some of the top bodybuilders understood this, as former Mr. Olympia Lee Haney used to say, “Stimulate, don’t annihilate.”
Out of all the muscles and movements in particular, it is very important to stimulate your core and abdominals and not “annihilate” them. Be very careful not to over-train or over-stress your abs and core and this means, do not train your abs to failure.
One of the biggest problems with training the core and abs to failure is that the more fatigued you become, the more your form begins to break down. When your form breaks down, that is when injuries are most likely to occur. This is true for any exercise, but it may be truer for abs and core than any other type of exercise due to the susceptibility of the lower back.
Research by Dr. Laurence Morehouse of University of California at Los Angles found that when doing abdominal exercises, especially sit-ups, you over-work your hip flexor muscles - the psoas and the iliacus. When the exercises are performed quickly (form breaks) or all the way to failure (form breaks), the hip flexor’s pull on the lower back is increased.
When performing your core exercises, always be conscious about form, especially as you begin to get tired toward the end of a set. You should terminate your set at or before the point where you notice that your form breaks in the slightest, and that is usually a couple of repetitions before reaching muscular failure.
Progression Can Occur Without Failure
If you believe that stopping short of failure will hold back your progress, think again. Progress is a function of progression and progression can take place without failure. You can continue to improve your workouts and thereby your physique and performance by increasing repetitions and or resistance or even density… without ever training to failure.
Don’t Teach Your Nervous System “Bad Habits”
One point about proper form that few people realize is that if you train to the point of failure, which leads to a breakdown in form, this can lead to the development of poor motor engrams. Your nervous system can develop “bad habits” so to speak, as your body tends to automatically revert to what you practice the most. If the last repetitions of every set are usually done with poor form, then repeating that motor pattern is much more likely to occur in the future, leading to additional muscle and joint damage.
I design core conditioning programs in a specific way so you train smarter and avoid temptations that lead to poor form and potential injury. And that leads us to…
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The 3 Keys To Smarter Ab Training
First, I recommend that exercises are performed in a certain order
By placing the more neurologically demanding and form intensive exercises first in a carefully planned sequence, I help my clients avoid a situation where fatigue and form breakdown would be as damaging. If you attempt the opposite, you increase the chance of over fatiguing the segmental stabilizers of the spine and you produce poor motor engrams.
More details on exercise sequencing are beyond the scope of this article, but you can learn more in my Firm and Flatten Your Abs program and in my Six Weeks to Six Pack abs report
Second, I constantly emphasize form and control
Nowhere is strict form more important for your safety and results than in core and abdominal training. The simple advice of slowing down the tempo and focusing on form will increase results and help keep you out of the doctor’s office.
There are times when you may want to perform core exercises at a higher rate of speed with more velocity or explosiveness. This is often the case with athletic, sports-specific training. But speed and form are not mutually exclusive and the same rules about fatigue and failure still apply to explosive training.
I train elite boxers and when they first show up at my studio, they are often set in their old ways of failure, fatigue and overtraining. I’ve seen it over and over again: A new client’s routine consists of “workout till you drop” and then 1000 flat board sit-ups. I simply ask: “How is your lower back”? The answer usually is, “It’s sore” at best, or “It’s injured” at worst. Even if they’re simply experiencing unnecessary soreness, that gets in the way of sport-specific training and their progress is slowed all around or grinds to a halt.
Third, you must get clear about the desired outcome of your training
Many strength trainers and bodybuilders are convinced that the outcome of a workout should be “burn,” fatigue and failure. If you think that aching muscles is the desired outcome, then why even go to the gym? Come over to my garage and I’ll whack you a few times with my sledgehammer then sit you up on my barbecue grill. You’ll “ache” and “burn” alright!
Joking aside, you must get clarity about your real training objectives – they’re NOT pain, fatigue and failure. If you begin with the right end in mind, you’ll set about reaching that end more intelligently.
Your training objective is to strengthen your core region for support, stabilization and protection of your spine and body organs, and your ultimate outcomes are to be healthier, perform better and look better (perhaps in that order of priority!)
These objectives are best accomplished by performing your exercises with strict, controlled form, and by using movement patterns such as flexion, extension and rotation. However, any one of those movement patterns taken to extremes can eventually cause damage to joint structures, which can put you on the sidelines and only take you further away from your true objectives.
Train hard, but also train smart
Progression and intensity are often confused with the need to train to failure. From this day forward, I suggest you re-evaluate the scientific facts as well as your mindset towards your training. Get clear about your true objective and train to succeed, not to “fail.”
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