Mid Life Fitness

There is a large segment of the personal development community who think that you get what you believe. Some take it to the extremes of suggesting that you can get anything so long as you believe it enough. But even if you don’t accept that it is hard to avoid the realisation that how you look at the world fundamentally changes what you get out of it and the results that you gain.

If you have doubts about what you are doing it will reduce the degree of effort you put into it. Just this morning I had put the weight on the bar ready to do some squats and I felt weak. For a moment I doubted that I’d be able to complete the set. Failure loomed large in my mind until I realised what I was doing. I took a moment and refocused. When I lifted the bar off the rack it seemed really heavy and again the doubts crept in, but I kept to my resolve and my belief that I could do it and I did. Once I’d completed the set and put the bar back in the rack, I realised that I’d put too much weight on the bar! I’d glanced at my training log but accidentally run along the line above which was the shrug weight and nine kilos more than my planned weight for the squat set. So instead of failure I set a new personal record.

You get what you expect

Too many people focus on their problems, on the failures and they allow those thoughts to dishearten them. The one and only defining trait of a successful person is a strong belief in themselves. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be realistic but no one who consistently expects to fail will ever succeed in the long run. There are some strategies you can use where you can expect failure in order to reduce the stress or worry of failure, but on the whole even then, deep down you need to have the resolve to keep trying. Failure is certain. Giving up will ensure that failure is the final result. Successful people use the failures as a learning experience and analyse them so that they avoid that mistake when they try again, and again, and again. But those new attempts are calculated; not just smashing your head against the wall of failure – instead climb it, find a way under it or around it.

Your mind can be what you want it to be. It is the only thing that is really under your control. You may by nature be a pessimist, but you can use that pessimism to minimise the risks. Optimists can fail because they fail to think about the risks. Pessimists fail because they assume the risks are too great and so never try. Learn from both of these, use the middle ground and leverage it for success.

To reach your goals, be they to add muscle, lose fat or improve performance, you must create a great capacity in yourself for belief. The starting point is to believe in yourself. To know that you were born with the ability to succeed and that only your own doubts and lack of focus have ever sabotaged that success.

Create the mind set for success

Know what you want and how you intend to get it.
Repeat every day, several times a day your appreciation of getting it. This helps to retrain the mind into believing that success is assured and so reduces the doubts.
Keep an open mind and take action. If you don’t take action you will not succeed.
Remember that defeat when it happens, and it will, is merely the world letting you know that something is wrong in your approach and that you need to correct it. Defeat is a challenge not a reason to stop trying.
Keep a strong and burning desire to succeed. Remember that you will reap what you sow and if you have doubts then failure is the inevitable reward.

Trying too hard can cause failure as much as not trying enough. Too hard can cause injuries, too soft will have no result. Train hard, but train smart and believe in yourself.

So this week I switched to the Hardgainer Project X. It’s time to put it through its paces and see what it’s really made of.

Now, normally you should never stop a program half way through – you’ll never make progress unless you stick with what you are doing. Flipping programs is one of the biggest reasons people don’t see gains. But as it happened, my previous program was an extension of an older one and the trap tear injury meant that I’d had two weeks out so it was perfect timing to try something new.

On that note, here is a training tip I picked up from a friend of mine who you may have heard of – Vince Delmonte (you can read more about Vince here). If you’ve been doing a workout for a while then your gains are going to start slowing down. One reason for this is that while you’ve grown the muscles you are targeting, the other muscles which you use have not grown as much. Take as an example shrugs which target the traps. It’s not unusual to reach a point where your grip strength isn’t up to the loads that you need to keep improving on the traps. So, take a break in your program, target the forearms for a month, then go back. This time you’ll be able to hold onto the bar or dumbbells long enough to start working those traps. You can do this with almost any exercise.

Back to the Hardgainer program. When you start a new program always drop back on the weight. The first time through is always a case of feeling your way to find the right balances. It might take two or three weeks to work up to the right weight, but that’s OK. Now for me, this program has a lot more volume than I’ve been working with, and it’s very intense. So I’ve dropped back on the weight and not really pushed myself.

I started out with too much weight on the squat, I’ve trimmed it back now and today was much better. Other exercises such as the shrug I was too light, but as a result I know a better weight for next time.

The first day is a long workout, and it took me more than an hour. The others I completed in comfortably less than that. Now I know what I’m doing, I can shave time off and certainly I expect to bring the others down to about forty minutes. That first one I’ll get under the hour, beyond that I’ll have to see.

Got any training tips you’d like to share? Add a comment below, I’d appreciate your thoughts.