Let’s say your goal is to gain 15 pounds of pure muscle in 15 weeks. But when the deadline comes, you only manage to gain 10 pounds. Clearly, that is a failure to reach your goal. However, the important question is: “After you have failed to reach your goal, what do think?”

Did you ask yourself whether you have tried your best? How would you even know if you have tried your best?

I think the best question you should ask yourself is: “Did I do whatever it takes to reach the goal?”

The problem is, most of the time, you don’t even know what exactly it takes to reach your goals. And that is totally fine. Things arise along the journey and make the experience unique to each individual. There is simply no way you can predict exactly how the journey will pan out even before taking the first step. Maybe you set your goal a bit too high because of a lack of understanding of your current capacities. Or maybe you hurt your wrist and could not work out properly for a few weeks. Whatever the reason maybe, it’s important that you can say to yourself at the end: “I have tried my best.”

When you fail to reach your goal of gaining 15 pounds of muscle, you don’t have to answer to anyone else but YOU. There is no excuse for being dishonest to yourself. Looking back on the whole journey, you must be able to pinpoint exactly what you did wrong or inadequately. But more importantly, if you had tried your best, what would you have been able to prevent from happening?

If you are to ever get big, you have to hold yourself accountable. There is no boss and no penalty to push you forward. You are your own boss. You assign your own penalty for failing to reach your goal. You have to be strict to yourself. You must feel guilty for not reaching your goal. Your conscience must scream if you don’t get big. Only by examining whether you have tried your best can you determine if you should feel guilty or not.

However, it is not enough to wait till the end to ask yourself that all-important question.  What is even more important than the fact that you have tried your best is the fact that you have REACHED your goal. Don’t wait until you fail, ask yourself these questions every day to make sure you are heading in the right direction:

• Am I doing whatever it takes to reach my goal?
• Is this the best way to do this? Can I improve on it?
• Am I trying my best?
• If I keep doing everything as I am now and fail to reach the goal, will I be regretful? What specifically will I regret not doing?

RECAP: Are you doing whatever it takes to reach your goal? Ask yourself that question everyday. It is okay to fail to reach your goal only if you have done your best. Did you?

Sources:

1. First photo: abfitt.blogspot.com
2. Second photo: skateboardpark.com
3. Third photo: www.sofeminine.co.uk
4. Fourth photo: feigenson.us/blog

• You have to sleep at least 8 hours in order to gain muscles
• You must incorporate Squat, Deadlift, and Press into your program
• You have to eat humongous amount of food to get big, and you cannot skip meals either
• Etc.

Every time hearing something like that, immediately you say to yourself: I know I know, of course I know. And yet you still think that something is missing, that there must be some “secret” principle that you must follow in order to gain massive muscles. You think there exists a quick and easy way to get there, all you have to do is to look for it… instead of working hard in the gym and recovering properly.

Nobody wants to listen to a cliché teaching. We have already heard it a hundred times before. But just because you have heard a saying a thousand times does not necessarily mean that you don’t have to listen to it anymore. Until you have done what the cliché preaches you’re supposed to do, you will still have to listen to the cliché and try to follow it. So for training, what are some of the clichés? Good form, progressive weights, sleep a lot, eat a lot, lift heavy weights, never skip meals, never skip even an hour of sleep, and most importantly, never skip a workout session.

Of course it goes deeper after that. For example, for good form, you will need at least 2 to 3 sessions to learn the proper technique of exercises like Squat and Deadlift before you can perform them without supervision. Or for progressive weights, you gain different amount of weights for different exercises (e.g. you can gain more weights for deadlift than for bench press from one session to the next). However, all these things will become simple after a few sessions. The most important thing is that you keep all these clichés in mind and follow them instead of ignoring them every time they are mentioned.

RECAP: Set your ego aside, sit down, and really examine every single cliché teaching you know. Have you done EXACTLY what you are supposed to do to get big? If not, don’t bother looking for any secret principle for gaining muscles. There’s NONE.

1. First photo: www.ethelthefrog.net
2. Second photo (self-mixed from here and here): stupidgirlyshit.com and www.stormfront.org
3. Third photo (self-mixed): crossfithel.blogspot.com
4. Fourth photo (self-mixed): zuguide.com

A quitter never wins. A winner never quits.

Think about it.

Are you going to be a quitter (aka loser)? Or are you going to be a winner? Once the goal is set, there is no excuse. So make up your mind now. You’ll find that it is a lot harder to stick to your goals, but reaching your goals is also worth a lot more than you thought.

• You may have been eating 500-1000 calories less than you’re supposed to.
• You may have been sleeping only 5 to 6 hours every night and work out two to three days in a row (maybe even the same exercises every time).
• Less obvious mistakes maybe making no progress on an exercise for several sessions, bad forms, or working different exercises on the same muscle group without knowing it.

In short, it really is painful to realize what you did wrong.

The knowledge that you used to have on training came to you from friends, from some magazines, or from your own twisted mind. But it was all wrong! It takes extensive research and serious thinking to have the right knowledge about training.There are only a few certain principles you need to know in order to train properly, but to know which principles are the right principles is the real challenge.

Information on training can be found from anywhere, anyone. Magazines and websites have all kinds of information to make more money–the more confused you are, the more you depend on them. People give you wrong information because most people get their knowledge from the wrong sources, or because what apply to them do not apply to you. All in all, you have to spend some time doing some serious research to have the right knowledge on training.

And now that you have known it all, everything becomes so much easier. Before, you were training just as hard as anyone else, yet you never see any result. I’m not saying that it has become so much easier to train now. But you’ll see that now everything falls into place. It’s like all the pieces of puzzle finally fit together perfectly. You love training now because it makes sense to you. You are making progress everyday. Every little thing you do matters!

RECAP: Just think about it, if you have been training wrong for so long, what else are you doing wrong? Re-examine everything that you are doing. Pick out what is more important to you now and try to see if you are doing it properly. Remember: some serious research now will save a lot more time and energy later.

“You do not know anything UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE IT.” People confuse ‘knowing’ with ‘doing.’ You DO NOT LEARN ANYTHING BY TALKING ABOUT IT. You don’t know anything about ‘BULKING UP’ until you have actually ‘bulked up.’ You do not know anything about lifting heavy weights until you have actually lifted heavy and seen the benefits. I think you get the point.”

I know a lot. In the past few years, I have learnt a lot about how to achieve anything both through life experience and through reading. Since I am only 21, I don’t have much to show for it yet. Not that I have not achieved anything though, but I don’t want to talk about myself. Let me give you this analogy to help make my point (it’s a map analogy, but it is NOT that normal map analogy that you know, so bear with me):

I want to go from A to B. Let’s say it’s a long journey, with many twists and turns. The weather is erratic, sometimes nice, sometimes horrible. And all I have is my bare feet… and a map. From reading the map, I know exactly where to go. But take away the map, and I will not be able to get to B, because I haven’t remembered the route yet.

Now let’s say I learn everything by heart, so that even without the map, I know exactly where to turn along the journey. Still this does not guaranteer I will make it to B. Map and real life is not the same. There are not always clear street signs to look for direction. There are always distractions on the way, people constantly calling for you to stay back with them, you know, to chill (life is short, why wasting time going to B, why not just stay and enjoy life?). There are hot girls every once in a while going in different direction (should I follow her and totally forget about B)? The weather sucks too, snow storm then rain storm then sand storm… and all I have is my bare feet.

I have read maps. I have travelled from A to B before, successfully. My journeys vary, from length to levels of difficulty. I know what it takes to go from A to B, no matter how far B is from A. I have the right mind set. I want to help you to know the map, to know what it takes to go from A to B, to determine where your B is.

Like Vince DelMonte said, “You do not know anything about lifting heavy weights until you have actually lifted heavy and seen the benefits.” I can show you the map because it is easy. The journey is where the battle really begins.

RECAP: You don’t know anything about ‘BULKING UP’ until you have actually ‘bulked up.’

I am an ectomorph. Die-hard ectomorph. I was born skinny. I was all stick and bones. Not anymore though. I am getting closer and closer to a beautiful sexy body. Muscular and six pack and what not. I go to Colby college full-time. Every week, I work 10 hours for my campus job and 15 hours for my internship. I sleep at least 7 hours everyday. I eat a good healthy meal every 90 minutes.

This blog is my attempt to help everyone to get into the best shape of their life while living a busy but well-balanced life. There will be posts about training, resting and nutrition, but most of my posts will help you get into the right mindset to not only get into the best shape of your life, but also to achieve any goal.

Now I am now a senior student. I don’t yet have a wonderful record to show you. Why should you listen to me? Read my post “The difference between knowing and doing.”