What does it mean to train smart? To give an illustration of a typical gym goer, I shall use myself as an example. I started lifting in sec 3 with my close friends, Ananda and Sashti, however my knowledge was limited to 2nd hand information from Ananda who watched YouTube videos on the latest pull-up variations and how to do the bicep curl properly to hit the peak. From then on till university, I pretty much got all my "knowledge" on gym from friends or seniors or other people I meet in the gym. Thing is, many such tips are based on what people hear from people and what these people hear from other people and in many cases, the true meaning might get diluted or distorted. I was passionate and enthusiastic when it comes to gym session, despite that however, I have never made progress that I deemed enough, considering the time and effort put in. So here are some pointers I would like to share with you to help you avoid making the mistakes I made previously.
1. Form Is Everything
Before you say I do not have the perfect form too, please let me agree with you on that point. For the past few years, I have been using brute strength to muscle the bar off my chest or curl the bar up or lift it off the ground. And I must admit that my form is still not perfect until now, however it is getting better. The point I am driving at is that if someone like me who spend so much time in the gym can still brush up his form (or maybe I am just retarded), many others can use some help in guiding their form. With good form, one can prevent injuries and build the muscles which they desire. A simple question I asked some gym goers that tells me they know little or nothing about the exercise they are doing is "What muscle are you hitting with that exercise?". Lots of people will answer back with "I don't know" or point at a different muscle group such as biceps when doing chest flyes. Then I would ask them why are they doing it this way, the reply would be something along the lines of "My coach tells me to do this", "It is in the program" and "I saw this in some magazine". Frankly speaking, magazines tend to sensationalize their articles in order to sell them. I am not saying that they don't work but how many of you have actually get shredded in 6 weeks or have a beach ready body in 5 days? And most importantly, most magazines have illustrations of only two pictures, A and B to show the start and end of the exercise with some dotted lines. Unless you have great visualization skills, I suggest watching videos instead to learn the exercise or better yet, ask someone who actually know what they are doing in the gym. Which leads to my next point.
2. Leave the ego at the door.
To the guys whose bar hover a good solid 5 inches above your chest when you load them up with more weights you can handle and all you can do is bend your elbows and press it with your spotter doing a bent over row/bicep curl while your feet travel all over the floor as you struggle to move the bar, why not simply lower the weights and perform some decent rep? You are not impressing anyone in the gym when you have shitty form. If your spotter needs to train his arms/back, please ask him to do it separately at the free weights section. At the end of the day, if most of the work is done by your spotter, what do you stand to gain? Pick up a weight you can handle well and should you stick to it diligently, you would reach the big blue plates soon.
3. Fail to plan, plan to fail
You walk to the gym with a purpose to train. But what muscles should you work on? Bench? But the rugby guys are there. How about the cable machine? Again occupied by dragonboaters. So what is left to train with? Guess I should just do some bicep curls and jog on the treadmill then. If this is you, then let me point out that you will probably be heading to Planet Nowhere even after two month, should you even last that long seeing that you made no visible progress. There are many decent training programs online for beginners who I strongly suggest that they are to follow a basic strength program such as 5*5. Why? Well, basically strength is the keystone of muscle growth. You need to reach a decent level of strength before you should consider about muscular endurance and power, explosive movements. Day in day out, I see so many people performing circuits that are physically challenging or their 3 sets of 12s as prescribed by magazines which is the standard muscle building repetitions yet these does little to improve their physique. Why? Because they forgot the most basic aspect of muscular development, and that is progressive overloading. With increased resistance, our body adapts by growing more muscular in order to generate greater strength. And power and muscular endurance are all subsets of strength. Simply put, if I can lift 100kg, what is 30kg to me? I can definitely perform many more repetitions as compared to someone who has been training to lift 30kg only because 30kg is so light as compared to 100kg. Yet people fail to grasp this simple concept and say that circuits are better for muscular endurance. Fatigue does not build muscles, only overloading build muscles. So, my advice is choose a good strength program, work on your basics and learn how to crawl before trying to sprint and falling flat on your face.
4. Protein shake is magical muscle enhancer.
Many people I see in the gym treat their protein powder as if it is some miracle muscle building elixir. Fact is, protein is important but if you are weighing less than my legs alone, then I am pretty sure you can get all the protein you need from natural food source. Why I take protein powder is because as a student, there are no decent food outlet nearby that provide affordable protein source hence the powder is fill up the gap. If any of you think that by not taking in whey your biceps will shrink, check out my friend Abel who is weighing at 80 plus kg and does not take a single scoop of whey now and tell me if his biceps are shriveling into raisins. And on this point, I do recommend taking protein if you find it hard to meet your intake through food alone (though Twain would probably say you are sprouting rubbish as he tucks into his blended chicken and tuna shake) and also some quality multi-vitamins for the micro-nutrients unless you are taking in a wide range of food and fish oil capsules.
Although the above points are nothing revolutionary, they are some advice that I hope would help people to avoid some pit holes when training to reach their dream physique and not give up due to a initial lack of progress. Lastly, do your own research and eat smart, train hard and rest well and the results will show in time to come.
"Advice to novice lifters - Take your training and nutrition back to what it was like if you were to train in the 1970's. Train the Deadlift, Squat, Overhead Press, Bench, Chins and Rows and often. Keep your reps typically between 3-10 reps on your main movements, but don't be afraid of some singles and doubles. Eat Whole Eggs, Beef, Chicken, Rice, Potatoes and Oats. Drink Milk. And Chocolate Milk. Gain a good 20-30 pounds of muscle before you even think about the word "cutting". I'm tired of all the "best supplement", "secret exercise", "best machine", "quickest way", "short cut" - Bullshit questions. Do the above for 5 years. Then you'll stop asking those questions, because you'll know the answer. It's not easy or everybody would be jacked and strong."
- Chase Karnes
