Obviously, the biggest reason is because we share many things in common with our friends. And thus, we can feel comfortable being around and talking with them. Our lifestyles and theirs convert more often than not. There are plenty of activities that we can do together. After all, for the majority of the times, we need friends because we want to do fun activities with someone, not because we want to hear them complaining about something (that is just a responsibility that comes along with friendship).

So, imagine you change your lifestyle significantly—you have to train for a better body:

• You can no longer stay up late into the night with your friends.
• You cannot play computer games with them anymore either because you are too busy with schoolwork and eating and sleeping properly.
• You cannot play basketball with them so often anymore because it will mess your training and progress.
• Other lifestyle changes here

In short, you are no longer the same person your friends decided to hang out with back when you all first met.

Now, all of a sudden, there are so few common features between you and your friends while quite a few more discrepancies. The number of shared activities clearly goes down significantly.

Obviously this is not going to go down easy with your friends. They want the old “you” back. They’ll try to persuade you not to train hard, not to sleep a lot, and not to eat too much. In other words, you training and living a different lifestyle is taking away from your friends a long-lasting source of fun. And guess what? People hate changes.

People resist changes.

Environment plays one of the most crucial roles in shaping you as a person and determining your success. Especially when you make a radical decision, the environment around you (friends, family, co-workers, boss, etc.) is the most sensitive factor and thus must be dealt with carefully.

I am here to tell you that this journey you’re traveling on/about to embark on is more than just about gaining muscle, getting big, and looking good. Those are only the end results. Along the journey, you will learn and acquire skills that are vital and transferable to any other area of your life.

So without further ado, here are the 5 benefits of training for a great physique you may not know about yet:

• Consistency/Persistency/Patience:

Nothing worth having comes easy. Especially for ectomorphs, we are destined to stay skinny. If you want to get big, prepare to put in a lot of hard work at a constant rate for quite some time before you can expect to reap the benefits. That is, you must be consistent in your effort, stay persistent even when the goings gets tough, and patiently wait for the results to come.

• Determination/Discipline:

Don’t expect every one to support you. Instead, expect some people to even discourage you from ever reaching your goal. When the whole world seems to go against you, do you have the determination to push on through? When there are plenty of distractions taking your mind away from training, friends trying to get you to party and stay up late, do you have the discipline to say NO?

• Desire/Concentration:

It’s one thing to want something; it’s a totally different matter to desire something enough to take action toward achieving it. It’s one thing to get pumped up about working out for a few days; it’s a totally different matter to keep your desire burning until the day you get the physique you want. You will need to concentrate your mind on fulfilling your desire for a great physique. Having three or four other desires will only guarantee you getting nowhere.

• Going beyond your limitations:

You were born small and weak. But if you train hard and train smart, you’ll get big. Even bigger than many mesomorphs who wasted their naturally gifted physique. Many people were born smarter than us. It does not mean that we cannot work hard and work smart to get anything we want in life. Training will teach you that the only limitation is the one you set up in your mind—physically and mentally.

• Goal/Plan:

So you have a strong, burning desire to get into the best shape of your life. But that alone gets you nowhere. You must transform that desire into a clear goal (how many pounds of muscle to gain, how long it should take, what you are willing to sacrifice in order to reach that goal, etc.) and you must follow it up with a good plan (what training program to follow, what meal plan, how much sleep/rest is needed, how to fit training into your schedule, etc.).

The journey toward a better physique for us ectomorphs is one of constant hard work and sacrifices. But it is also among the few most rewarding experiences of your life. You will learn and benefit from it far more than you can imagine now–far more than I can ever explain to you.

So start the journey and see it for yourself!

You will naturally think more and more about that girl. That lack of concentration means longer time needed to finish your tasks, and that in turn means you will have less time for training (working out, eating, sleeping, and resting).

As I said, at first training must be one of your top two priorities in life. Only after it has become a part of your life can you consider having another one or at most two other priorities. Too serious? Well, if you want to transform that skinny frame of yours into a great physique in less than 2 years and save time for other awesome stuffs that come after, then that’s what you have to do. Training to get big is your goal, and you have a strict plan to reaching that goal. Don’t decide to pick up a goal if you are going to sabotage its attainment by taking up something else along the way.

Having a crush on a girl would greatly reduce the amount of time and concentration you can afford on thinking about training.

The same applies for playing a new game or watching a new tv shows (but to a lesser extent).

The point is: Things that seem totally unrelated to training actually affect the result of your training a great deal. Be careful of anything that take your focus away from training.

Remember:

“The first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right or to the left.” Napoleon Hill.

The fact is, no matter how old you are now—16, 21, 24, or 30 (or even older)—there are always things that you are supposed to do. Your parents, your friends, your environment already set rigid expectations of what you CAN and MUST achieve in life.

And that is all totally and perfectly natural. We all hang out with people that do not push us out of our comfort zones (most similar to us). We go to school and work at companies with people that are within our intellectual levels.

The point is: everything is fine as long as you share the goals and viewpoints with the people you hang out with.

Problem is, you are always special in some way. As an ectomorph, you have a very unique set of problems to deal with everyday. And a unique set of problems calls for a unique set of solutions.

Specifically, you have a very important decision to make:

Choosing between:

• A low-risk, low-fun choice of enjoying all the little things just as everyone else around you (not as fun to you as to other people because you are an ectmorph; they are not)!
• A riskier but higher-return choice of training properly for an awesome physique and sacrificing the many little fun activities you can enjoy with your normal friends.

Just because you are not doing all the fun things everyone is enjoying does not mean that you don’t know how to enjoy life. On the contrary, it means you want to enjoy life at a higher level than other people and you have the right long-term view.

Sometimes, in order to enjoy something great in life, you have to sacrifice all of the little things. That’s just a choice.

RECAP: Our friends, our parents, and our environments dictate what we are supposed to do. As ectomorphs, we have a very unique set of problems. And the solutions require that we give up enjoying many of the little things and work for the big pay-off: a great awesome physique.

“All this lifting heavy weights is slowing me down. I want to get big but I want to be functional, too.”

In other words, in addition to gaining muscles, you also want to be quick, have great endurance and stamina.

First, about being quick: performing squats and deadlifts (and power clean in the strength training phase) makes you super explosive. Look at sprinters, they all have very strong and muscular legs, which help shoot them out of inertia and speed up the acceleration process. In fact, they are muscular overall, not just in their lower body.

Second, to have great endurance and stamina, you must have a super strong mentality. In case you don’t know this already, lifting weights trains your mental strength just as much as running a marathon (imagine squatting 20 reps!). In order to gain muscle, you must endure pain every time you go to the gym. By pushing yourself beyond your limit, you give your body a reason to grow some muscle.

Of course, just sheer mental strength is not enough to help you finish a half-marathon. Nor will big muscular legs alone help you finish a 100-meter race in 11 seconds. Specific training is required. However, my point is, all in good time.

As an ectomorph, gaining muscle is in a by itself a very challenging task already. Having another activities that takes away time and energy is a luxury that you definitely cannot afford. Especially when training to get big is neither your top priority in life nor the only priority, you should keep it as manageable as possible.

So:

Focus on lifting heavy to gain muscles. Along the way, you will prepare your body and mind for great endurance, stamina, and explosiveness. After you have gained enough muscles in the bulk-up phase, you can start cutting fat. This is when you can incorporate running and some other activities into your training program. And that’s why I said: all in good time.

RECAP: Lifting heavy weights trains your body and mind for great endurance, stamina, and explosiveness. Focus on lifting in the bulk-up phase. When you start cutting fat, other activities can be incorporated.

Sources:

1. First photo: www.thebetterweigh.com

2. Second photo: physbam.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/

3. Third photo (self-mixed): www.tmuscle.com

To be truly educated is to get whatever you want in life without harming other people. Four years in a Liberal Arts College is supposed to give you such an education. So that out in the real world, you can be thrown into any situation and still manage to get the better of it. And it’s the exact same thing with training. For training: the goal is to get bigger and stronger, especially for skinny ectomorphs. That’s what you really want.

If you are truly educated, you should be able to achieve that goal. In other words, you should have what it takes to train for a bigger and stronger physique. And what are those requirements I am talking about? No, it is not just mere knowledge and know-how. It also takes determination, discipline, commitment, and consistency to transform your skinny frame into an awesome physique. And a true education is all of that.

Was that what you get from your colleges: knowledge, determination, discipline, commitment, consistency, and a burning to desire to achieve your goals? If not, then maybe training can be the best education you will get in your life.

Thinking about your goal is like a habit. It takes a while to get into the routine. But that’s the only way you can achieve anything worth wide in life. It’s the only way you can train to get bigger. Obsession has such a negative connotation. But as long as you don’t harm yourself or someone else with your obsession, then rest assure it has not reached that dangerous level yet.

-       Do you feel bad at the end of the day if you have not made any progress toward reaching your goals?

If you’ve just skipped 2 meals and a few hours of sleep because of a wild night of partying, do you feel horrible about it? If you missed even just one single rep of your squats, does it upset until you have found out the reason why you missed that rep? If you only gained 1 pound instead of 1.5 pound this week, do you feel good about gaining 1 pound or do you feel bad about not gaining 1.5 pounds? Your goal set the benchmarks for your performance. You cannot be happy if you are not making these benchmarks.

-       How unhappy do you feel if you have not made any progress?

Again, if you gain 1 pound instead of 1.5 pounds, do you feel bad for a few hours and then totally forget about it? Or does it keep bothering you all the way until you have figured out the reason why and also the solution to that problem? It is not enough to be upset for just one or two hours. You have to take positive actions once something like that happens.

-       Do you constantly think about where you are on your journey toward reaching your goal? Do you constantly think about where your journey is taking you?

Let’s say your goal is to gain 15 pounds in 10 weeks. That means 1.5 pounds for a week. It also means that if after 5 weeks you have only gained 5 pounds, you are not on the right track. Or maybe you have gained 7.5 pounds after 5 weeks, but can you rest assure that you can gain another 7.5 pounds just by doing exactly what you are doing now? Constantly checking where you are standing  and where you are heading is vital to the attainment of your goals.

-       Do you constantly look for ways to improve your performance, to help you reach your goals faster?

Let’s say you are gaining 1 pound of muscle per week. For an ectomorph, that’s wonderful. But you can gain not just 1 but maybe 2 pounds of muscle a week. Have you done any research on that yet? Is it even possible? Or let’s say you have been able to gain good muscle every week now, but training is taking up too much of your time. Have you tried to improve your performance so that you can still afford to hang out with friends and do homework while reaching your training goal?

You just witnessed some guy playing awesome guitar and impressing a bunch of ladies? Thinking about picking up the guitar? Your friend just told you that he can read 1500 words per minute? Wanna practice speed reading now? All your friends are rocking expert level on guitar hero everyday, and you are tempted to get some more practice to get to that level?

All these skills are not too hard to acquire (I am not talking about being able to play guitar like a pro), but it doesn’t mean they  will not take a big bulk of your time either. Just like for training, before picking up any new activity, you have to set your expectation clear, and set up a careful plan for achieving your goal. Then you have to follow it no matter what. That’s the attitude for doing anything in life.

You cannot be impulsive and just pick up some hobby randomly. That’s a waste of time and energy even when you don’t have to train to get big. Remember you have to go to the gym 3-4 times a week, eat enormously, and sleep lavishly, and you also have life and work to worry about too. So set aside these new activities for a while, at least until after you have got all the nuts and bolts of training (it takes about 3 months to reach that state). Even then, think twice.

Read this: How many goals should you have beside your training goal and What I like about training

RECAP: Any new hobby, skill, activity takes up more time and energy than you may think. Especially when you have to train. So think twice before picking up any.

If you keep training properly, never skip a meal, never skip a training session, never miss even an hour of your 8-hour night sleep, then you have nothing to worry about. You think it is ridiculous to be able to keep that up for an extended amount of time? Nah, impossible is nothing. I have done it for a year now. And I know many other people who have done it too. Look at Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Taylor Lautner, Christian Bale and many other celebrities. You think you are busier than them? They all transformed their body from scrawny to brawny in almost no time.

It is actually better to transform your body that way–in less than a year. Set a single goal of gaining 15 or 50 pounds of pure muscle (of course it takes different amount of time), and get to work. If you stick to your rigid training program for 12 weeks, you should be able to gain at least 15 pounds. It is much better to give 100% of your energy and focus to training than 80%. That 20% difference determines whether you will reach your goal in 12 weeks or never reach it (e.g. daily intake of 3000 calories is your maintenance level, while 3500 calories means an increase of at least one pound of muscle after one week. That 500 calories is one meal different, i.e. about 20% different, but it dictates whether or not you will gain muscle. (Many other factors go into your training, but this is just one simple example).

So every day must matter. Do you get closer to your goal today than yesterday, or are you standing still or even falling backward? Focus on your goal. Give a 100 percent attention to it. That will save you more time and energy than you can imagine now. Remember, it maybe only a 10% or 20% difference in your effort, but it makes all the difference. Stay focus till you reach your goal.

This is a quote that I really like: “The first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right or to the left.”

RECAP: Every day matters! You must give a 100% of your effort and focus on your goal. Even a 10% lower effort makes all the difference between reaching your goal in time or NEVER reaching it.

When you have to figure out the solution to a tough math/econ/physics question, suddenly popped into your head is the thought of this weekend’s crazy party, of playing some rock band with your friends later tonight, or of some cute girl you just met. You cannot concentrate on just thinking about the problem and get done with it. Why?

Because all these thoughts that just popped into your head are much more fun and much less difficult to do.

If you have only one goal to achieve: gain 15 pounds of muscle in the next 12 weeks, everything is a lot different. You think about it all the time. You don’t think about crazy party because drinking will mess up your training (i.e. you will be unhappy). You don’t think about playing rock band because training, school work/job, and friends/family take up most of your free time already. If playing rock band means you will have to miss homework or skip a meal, you will not be happy at all. You have one and only one goal, and you will not let anything mess up with it.

Having one goal for a short period of time (e.g. 12-16 weeks) help you focus your life around it. Nothing else in the world can make you excited or happy unless you reach your goal. It redefines all the other activities in your life. You will no longer be excited about partying, computer games, or girls because for these 12 weeks, achieving your goal is the only thing that makes you happy and gives you peace of mind. Moreover, when you have only one goal, your goal will become your true passion. And when it has become your passion, you think about it a lot more often than anything else. It just naturally happens that way. Nothing is gonna pop into your mind when you think about what you are passionate about. When you’ve reached that state, you will have a lot of creative thoughts for your passion. And that’s great! When you are passionate about getting something, sooner or later, you will achieve it.

Note: you should also read these articles: How many goals should you have beside your training goal? and The cost of a great looking physique-there’s no such thing as something for nothing.

RECAP: Having one goal focus your mind and activities on just achieving that goal.

But it is more complicated than that:

How many times have you set a big goal and actually achieved it? People set goals after goals because they think one goal is too easy, but they never really reach any of these goals. A great general thousands of years ago ordered to burn all of the ships that took him and his troops to a distant land. They had no other option but to fight and win the battle. And they did win! Having too many goals makes it impossible to focus your mind. It also gives you the excuse to fail in some goals for the sake of some other goals (usually you’d end up reaching no goal).

Set a big goal, and you can focus all your life on it. Set two goals, and each goal is only 1 tenth the magnitude of having only 1 goal. Setting three goals? It is even worse.

Once you have sat down and done some serious thinking, you’ll realize that there are only 2 to 3 things in life that you really want. Everything else is trivial. Then you can set your goals.

Training to get big for a skinny guy like you is serious work. It deserves a lot of attention and energy. But I know, it is not your (nor is it my) only goal in life. So what now?

My solution: set a goal of gaining 15 pounds of muscle in 12 weeks. Make it your only goal for these 12 weeks. You will spend all your free time working on this goal. You will think about it constantly. It will be your last thought before falling asleep and your motivation for waking up in the morning. In other words, you are obsessed with it. It is all you talk about. That will be your life for the next 12 weeks.

Everything, no matter how trivial, matters in your training (here). You will need these 12 weeks to make sure you understand everything, to make training your habit, to get into the life style of a serious trainer. Once you have gained these 15 pounds of muscle:

• You look a lot better
• You know everything about how to train to gain muscle and look awesome
• You understand your action
• You live right, eat right, train right and sleep right

After that, you set another training goal: maybe gaining another 15 pounds. However, now you can add one or two more goals (one is best). Why? Because now you don’t have to think so much about training anymore (you still can if you want though). Your life style is now the life style of a serious trainer: you can still get amazing results without having to think about it as much as before. In other words, you are like a satellite that has escaped Earth’s gravity-the hardest part is now over. Just keep your mind in the right direction and you will get there.

RECAP: Set a training goal for 12 weeks and make it your only goal for these 12 weeks.

I used to be sick all the time as a kid. I was so pathetically skinny and weak that I even thought I would die before turning 40. That was dumb, I know. But I was just a kid, and after so many bouts of high-temperature fevers, it seemed to be a reasonable estimate for me.

Now, I despise the fact that people aged 50 or even just 40 act and talk so old. My expectation for myself is to be able to squat and deadlift at least 300 pounds (1 rep max) when I am 50. That is not even a big goal, but I don’t plan to spend all my life for training; 300 pounds for a normal 50 year-old guy is really impressive already.

I rarely get sick now. I am too strong to be sick. There is only one way I can get sick now: skip meals, sleep only a tiny bit for a few days, go to the gym beating myself down with Squats and Deadlifts, then go back and let someone with a flu sneeze in my face 10 times. Even then, all I have to do is have a good night sleep (horrible night it would be though), and wake up the next morning almost done with the cold. Two more days of good rest and nutrition and I am good again. Note: I am never that stupid to do that many dumb things at the same time to myself.

You see, the first 3 months of properly training helps boost your immunity and recovery system like crazy. You will be going to the gym squatting 150 pounds (3 sets of 5 reps each) one Monday and easily squat 155 pounds (3×5) on Wednesday and 160 pounds (3×5) on Friday. At the end of these 3 months, you will squat at least 100 pounds heavier than before, and your immunity and recovery is 10 times better too. Note: don’t think that you are no longer a beginner. You can work out for years and still stay at the beginner level. Read this.

How long have you been training? How much stronger do you get? How often do you get sick now? How long does it take for you to get back to normal completely? Train properly and you see the difference immediately.

RECAP: Training properly helps boost your immunity and recovery system so much that you will never get sick again.

I would be a big fat liar if I say that I don’t have to sacrifice anything for training. No, on the other hand, to a normal person, the cost of my training is OUTRAGEOUS. Did I consider all these costs when I decided to train? Yes I did, but not for all of them. But did I know back then how much I would enjoy training? Not completely either. The thing is, these expenses don’t appear as costly to me as to my friends. To me, they are outweighed by all the benefits of training.

I believe that once you have been able to achieve something worth wide in your life, there is NO REASON why you cannot achieve something else. Did you ever say to yourself: It is impossible for me to gain muscle and get huge? Yet you CAN get huge, massively huge if you want. Imagine how confident you will be of yourself once you have achieved this goal, not only of your awesome awesome physique, but also of your ability to attain any dream in life.

But this is what I like most about training: every little thing you do matters! Skip just one meal? At the end of the week, that one meal makes all the difference between gaining 1.5 pounds or just 1 pound. Get only 6-hour sleep last night? The 2 hours that you lost is the reason you can only squat 18 reps instead of 20 reps 240 pounds of Squat today. That in turn means you did not give your body enough stress to overcompensate (gain muscle). Miss one work out? That’s even worse than missing 2 reps of Squat. And just think about all the little things that can cause you to miss anything. That’s why I say: EVERYTHING MATTERS!

This is not only applicable to training. Everything matters for any goal that you may have in life. But in no other areas in life can you see the consequences of your action as clearly and as quickly as in training. Put it another way, train properly for one week and you can see the difference immediately. What better source of motivation can you find than your own hard-earned results?

You still think it sucks to have to miss out on all the fun activities with your friends? Well, that depends. I am not missing out on anything. If I go on the trip with them, I will miss out on training for my goals. I will not be able to enjoy myself anyway. What’s more, it’s not like I will miss out on all of that for the rest of my life! No, just 1-2 years of hard training, and once you have got THERE, it will not be as demanding. To me, getting huge is more urgent. All those fun things can wait.

Recap: Train properly for a week, and you will see the PHYSICAL difference immediately. Just remember, EVERYTHING MATTERS.

It ultimately goes back to your core values in life. Forget about staying big, even getting big takes one to two years (depending on your current physique, your current situation, and your level of determination, discipline, etc). A long journey like that requires long term planning. And long term planning entails having a clear vision of your life in the next 5 to even 10 years. Training may be your only passion in life, or it can be only a part of your life, but one thing is clear: it is a BIG part of your life that will demand as much time, energy and money as you would spend on your loved ones or your career. So the question is: how does training fit into your schedule in the next few years. Can you commit yourself wholeheartedly to training for at least 1 to 2 years (till you get into the best shape of your life) no matter what may happen in the future?

There are always distractions in life that takes your attention away from your goal of training and a happy, successful life. Your core values are there to help you set up goals in the long as well as short term future. These goals are there to keep you from losing your way, wandering around for years without a clear sense of purpose. And since these goals are based on your core values, it takes extraordinary events to disturb your goals. In other words, you only have doubts and change your goals when you are SHAKEN to the CORE. Therefore, unless you take 2 minutes to find your core values, hardly anything will ever happen that can shake your core values.

Why do you have to go through all these soul searching even though all you want is to lift some weights? Because by now you should know that getting big for ectomorphs is serious business, that glossy magazines and fancy new weight machines and programs are only there to make money, not to help you (MORE HERE). And yet you are not going to spend all your life on training. We all have other big fancy goals. This is not just about training. It is about working for high paid jobs, living a happy life with a wonderful family, enjoying all kinds of fun activities while still maintaining a great physique.

Everyone can get big if that is all they spend their time on. No, that is too easy. We want to get big, and many things else too. That is why we need to do work on many more areas than just training, eating and sleeping. And that is the whole purpose of this blog.

So should you train or not? I personally think that you have more than enough capacities to train for an awesome physique. And I think it is a rewarding experience that you will learn a lot from. However, before you can answer this question, you have to examine your core values (e.g. how much satisfaction will you get out of a great physique), your long-term as well as short-term plan (will you have time to commit to training). There will be many posts by me to help you will this process, but nothing you can find on the web or from me can be as valuable as these two books:

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (My review)

2. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (My review)

RECAP: Know your core values. It keeps you focused once you have decided to train.

• Gaining serious mass and looking big is a serious job for ectomorphs (skinny people). If you can gain muscle and get buffed, you are training smarter than the majority of people you see at any gym that you go to (except for those especially for professionals). Most of the big guys in the gym are big because they were born big (mesomorph body type). In other words, they grow big even when they sneeze. 80% of those guys don’t know squat about proper training, eating and sleeping, and 99% of them don’t know as much as you will. To sum up, if you can get big, you have achieved something that MOST people only dream about.
• How many people you know can say they will do something and actually do it? Even when it is something simple, those people still can’t stick to it for more than a week. For ectomorphs, getting big is easily among the 4 or 5 hardest tasks they will ever have to do in their life. Imagine the level of self confidence, the sense of purpose, and the wonderful feeling of achievement you will experience once you have gotten BIG. There is nothing you can’t do once you have been able to get big.
• Besides some specific knowledge required for getting big and gaining muscle, you need the same determination, desire, discipline, faith just as you do for achieving anything else. So not only will you be confident that you can achieve anything you set your mind on, you will also know HOW to achieve these goals.
• Do you know this? You are truly educated only when you can get whatever you want without harming other people. Schools are a waste of money because most people go through the motion without learning this fact, let alone mastering it. Some people do know it though, and they are all successful. Don’t agree with me? Read “Think and Grow Rich”; it is essential reading that should be taught at all schools. Or leave me a comment, and I will have a post explaining why. This is a crucial point, because you must understand that getting big is not simply mindless work. Far from it, you will learn important life lessons that can be applied to anything else. Following are some examples:
• Getting big is time consuming (you will know the full extent when you read my post on the costs of training). You will learn to spend your time wisely, keep yourself disciplined (not to watch some stupid youtube clips when you have some homework due the next day because you have to sleep 8 hours).
• You will learn to keep yourself motivated and your desire for a great physique always fresh and strong. It is one thing to be super excited about training right NOW, but it is another story to stay that motivated ALL THE TIME.
• For a scrawny ectomorph to get big, it requires radical actions and radical thinking, and radical actions and thinking beg ridicules and doubts. You will learn to believe in yourself and to ignore what everyone else think. It’s your life; you can’t always live it the way other people want. It will take gut to say NO to your friends and family. It will take discipline and determination to get rid of all your bad habits and lead a new healthy life style.

Of course you can find other benefits for training from other blogs and websites. But I believe these benefits listed above are the most important because they prove that you are not just training to get big, you are training to be a better person, to be truly educated.

RECAP: The benefits of training far exceed the costs of training.

It is great if you can always come up with an answer, but it will be even better if you don’t have to face that question so often. By fully understanding the costs of training for a great physique, you can get into the right mindset and prevent yourself from ever asking that terrible question. (Why is it a terrible question? Because you only ask it when you are in doubt).

Before diving in, I would like to encourage you to first check out my post on all the wonderful benefits of training for a great body. Just as you may know only 20-50% of the heavy costs of this journey, you may also know only little of how rewarding this experience can be. I don’t want you to give up training after reading this post before giving some consideration to all the rewards  of training. Also, keep in mind that this blog is all about helping you to balance life and training, so I will help you have a great life even with all these costs.

Costs of getting into the best shape of your life:

Time consuming:

• You have to train REGULARLY 3 to 4 times a week. There is no excuse for missing a work out.
• Since you are an ectomorph, you will turn back to your skinny pathetic body if you stop training. Meaning: you have to train your whole life.
• Training is only 10% of getting a great physique. Sleep and nutrition is the other 90%. Meaning: you have to get at least 7-8 hours of undisturbed sleep every night; you have to eat at least 7-8 meals every day.
• Same as for training, you stop eating and sleeping properly, you will become skinny again. Meaning: you have to eat and sleep that much your whole training life.
• You CANNOT miss a meal, a work out, or an hour of sleep. But there are other stuff to do too (homework, business, etc). Meaning: you have to plan days or weeks ahead before you can do anything. Planning is time consuming too.
• You only know very little about training, or if anything at all. The only reason you’re not getting big is because you are not training properly (including sleeping and eating). Meaning: forget your ego and take some time to learn the right techniques and the proper nutrition.

High opportunity cost:

• You are spending most of your day for training, eating and sleeping (TES), and you are going to be doing that forever. Meaning: you will miss out on many of the normal/fun activities that your friends and family enjoy.
• Example: you cannot drink because it messes up everything. You cannot just impulsively go to a night club because you will miss meals and hours of sleep.

Swimming against the tide:

• Not everyone is an ectomorph, and not every ectomorph wants to get big. Meaning: people will NEVER understand why you are spending so much time, money and energy on TES.
• You will have to say NO to a lot of activities with friends and family. They will not just let you be. It will take gut and lots of hard work to balance life and work and everything.
• Example: your friends will chill and take their time with everything because they can stay up till 3 or 4am. You have to go to bed at 12am. That’s crazy… but true.
• We always want to do something that is socially proven. But you will NEVER do anything great by following the crowd all the time. Now it’s your opportunity to really challenge yourself.

For an ectomorph, your life is doomed to being skinny and weak. That is how nature intends it to be. If you want to go against nature, expect to work hard persistently and continuously.

I know that these costs may seem a bit crazy to you. You may say, I don’t want to be enormous; all I want is to gain 10 to 15 pounds and cut some fat from my beer belly. But believe me, even that requires hard work for quite some time. Also, once you have learnt and been able to gain 5 pounds of muscle, it gets easier. So why not dream big?

The costs may seem overwhelming, but the rewards are totally worth all the money, time and energy you put into this. What’s more, this whole blog is here to help you achieve your big goal of getting BIG while living a well balanced life. Remember, I go to school full time, work 12 hours campus job every week, and I also have another serious job on the side. And I am still training hard, eating properly and sleeping enough. I even have time to blog. Think about Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Those guys are ectomorphs too. They are movie-stars; they must be busy as hell. Yet look at Brad Pitt now. Awesome hah? Look at Edward Norton in American History X too.

You need to understand and be aware of the costs in order to prepare yourself for everything ahead. You will not have to ask yourself: ‘Why am I doing this?’ because you know what’s coming. People give up because the initial excitement is soon replaced by the hardships. You will not because once you have accepted these costs, nothing can surprise you.

You can get BIG. Just dream BIG and stay determined and disciplined. These costs are here to help you prepare yourself. Getting big is serious business. It WILL take a part of your life. Accept the fact and move on. Don’t be ignorant and waste your time going nowhere. That is even more costly.

Think these costs are expensive? Try ignorance.

RECAP: Understand and Accept the cost of training first.