All the Secrets I've Learned About Working Out for the Last 13 Years |
Posted: November 14, 2018 |
I wanted to share my experiences with working out. I'm sure that this will help people who are trying to gain weight, lose weight, or get in better shape regardless of where you are right now in your life.
When I was 18 I was in the weight room doing my own thing. I was working out in a way that I thought was right. We all start out with certain workout prejudices and false beliefs. One of the biggest false beliefs of someone who doesn't know what they're doing is that lifting weights for several hours a day, several days a week is a good idea and that it is actually going to work.
That was me. I would go to the weight room for hours on end, lifting weights, doing exercises I thought I should be doing, sets and reps I thought would help me get strong and big, and doing all that for a duration of time that I invented and thought to be productive.
And I was wrong. I had the enthusiasm and commitment. Those 2 are very important, don't get me wrong, but I was working off the wrong blueprint. Using the wrong blueprint to working out can cost you time and time wasted not doing it the right way, to begin with. I had false beliefs about working out that I needed to deal with first before I was going to make any real progress.
Fortunately, because I had the will, just like we all do, to succeed and actually gain some muscle and put some weight on my long, skinny frame, I eventually decided it was time to work out at a better gym (I was sneaking into my old high school weight room at the time) and I also reasoned that it would be a good idea to get some outside feedback of what I was doing, or doing wrong.
Funny thing was, I didn't know I was doing something wrong, I just knew I wasn't gaining that much weight or mass. So when I had a session with a personal Houston trainer who was a bodybuilder himself, and when it was over just one hour and 6 exercises later, I asked: "that's it?". He said, "that's it, that's all you have to do." I was floored.
If working out for one hour a day, 3 days a week was going to help me gain weight, size, mass, and muscle, then what the hell bro? That didn't seem right to me.
There's no way anyone should be allowed to have that kind of success with so little time commitment. That was workout prejudice #1, and that was just one misconception holding me back from getting what I wanted.
Workout prejudice #2. I can eat whatever I want, as much as I want, and I should gain weight and muscle. A common preconceived notion of skinny guys is "I can eat anything and everything and as much as I want, and I'll never gain weight." It's true, you probably can eat anything and everything you want when you're skinny, but if you want to gain muscle, and if eating everything beforehand wasn't working, then you're going to have to eat- differently.
I soon learned that all the microwaved hot dogs in the world probably wouldn't help me put on quality muscle mass. I needed to start eating lean protein, having a protein shake immediately after working out, and eating more often throughout the day to get a better body. I started to choose more solid foods and less fast food or food with very little nutritional value.
I changed my workouts, working out for an hour a day, 3 days a week. I did chest and triceps one day, back and biceps another day, and legs on the middle day of the week. I changed how I ate, creating a more protein-centric diet to include post-workout recovery protein shakes.
A few months after this important life change, I left Houston TX and joined the Navy.
10 weeks in boot camp taught me a few things about Navy boot camp. In Navy boot camp, you're not going to gain much muscle mass. Also, you're still going to exercise and be active all day long, which means burning calories, but you're only going to get 3 meals, and you're going to be hungry quite often.
After boot camp, I learned that if I wanted to gain muscle mass, I'd need to lift weights, and also eat 5 or 6 times a day, and this turned out to be a good thing for me.
4 months of "A" school, the trade school for your job in the Navy, gave me some time, but not much, for lifting weights.
I'd go to school from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm with one hour for lunch and spend quite a few hours studying after that, leaving me a few hours at night to lift weights.
So I lifted weights 4 days a week, doing chest and triceps, legs, back and biceps, and shoulders on separate days. I made some good gains, gaining about 10 pounds of solid muscle in 4 months.
When I went home on leave to Houston, it had been less than a whole year since I'd seen my Houston personal trainer who gave me the 2 sessions that set me straight.
It was a very satisfying accomplishment. It felt good to succeed with working out and get on the right track in such a short amount of time. It really paid off a lot investing even just a little in some effective workout information and training from an expert in the field of diet and exercise, and it pays dividends to this day.
Now getting attention and positive feedback is great on your body when you're gaining muscle and succeeding, but it shouldn't become the end-all-be-all of your happiness or self-esteem. Imagine becoming obsessed with and addicted to working out... this is a very common thing for guys succeeding in the weight room, believe it or not.
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