Just lifting weights in what we call "straight sets" is great as the backbone of your training. Straight sets are simply lifting a weight for a prescribed amount of reps, resting, repeating, and so on.
However, over time you'll want to do some different stuff to push your muscles to grow, break the staleness in your program, and to target your sets a little more for certain results.
In this podcast I get into five of our favorite types of "specialty sets" at Relentless and how we use those to push our clients to better results. You'll learn:
-Techniques you can use to put more weight on the bar and target your sets for more muscle in certain areas.
-How to build and improve that important "first rep" technique.
-How to make simple changes to work around injuries.
-How to increase the metabolic distress and time under tension, two of the primary factors of muscle growth.
-How to lift more in less time, more safely.
What you say to yourself matters!
Look, we all have self-talk.
Learning to control my own self-talk to keep my mood from crashing and to keep myself from getting into a reactive and negative state from life's events was one of the biggest keys to changing my life.
Is life going to always be sunshine and roses? Of course not.
Are you going to make everything ok just by being positive and telling yourself that? Nope.
However, often things aren't nearly as bad as you can convince yourself that they are by listening to the voice in your head.
In this Quick Hit I'm going to give you my number one tip to quieting that demon down and putting your self-talk into perspective.
Programming an exercise training plan is a bit science and a bit art.
There are a lot more variables to look into than just plugging in a bunch of exercises.
Do the exercises balance?
How long should the athlete go without a deload?
What is a deload?
Should it be a full or partial?
What are the outside considerations for the athlete?
I go into these and several other programming variable considerations in this episode of the Be Relentless Podcast. Give it a listen and up your programming game!
Have you ever tried to improve yourself somehow, either in the gym, the classroom, studying some personal development, learning a new trade, only to have people (many of them friends, families, or partners) knock you down and hate on you?
This is one of those things that makes my blood boil. Unfortunately I see it all the time as a trainer. I often have clients come in who are doing their best to change their lives, get healthy, lose fat, gain muscle, and they've got someone at home belittling them and sabotaging them.
And you know what?
A lot of them end up apologizing for DARING to try to make themselves better.
That makes me furious. I don't throw the word "right" around very often, but you have a right in this world to try to be better and to make yourself better, if you so choose. Don't you dare apologize to anyone who makes you feel like you don't.
Whenever someone is successful at something people love to talk crap about how they were lucky, got given a good hand, or happened to be in the right place at the right time.
That does happen.
It doesn't happen very often, though.
The one attribute I see people who are successful when it comes to losing weight, getting stronger, gaining muscle, building a business, being successful parents is that they are consistent. They do the small things every day that add up to big things down the road.
Success takes hard work, but it doesn't take as hard a work if you're consistently doing the right things.
"The unexamined life is not worth living"
-Socrates
That's one of my favorite quotes.
Honestly, I think it should be taught at the beginning of every school year and it should be carved in stone on every public building.
The issue is that the vast majority of people you see out there do not examine their life. They go from one TV show to the next, refusing to be about anything.
I simply can't get behind that type of existence because that's all it is: Existence.
Life is awesome.
Sometimes it's really hard. But just the fact that you get to have it and experience versus not is a very cool thing.
So why would you want to go through it not even paying attention to what it's all about?
That's not the Relentless way, for sure.
When you examine your life you start to come up with some things that you believe. I'm going to share some of my ideas and beliefs and would love to hear yours.
Find out what I think is the most valuable thing in your possession.
What is the most important thing you can do to control your health?
What is so precious and so easily cast aside by most of our society?
What do I think that, if everything else is equal, is always better to have more of?
Give it a listen and find out!