Make the Most out of your Training: Focus on Weight Training

I've said it before, and I'll keep on saying it: Few people really make the most of their training. Consequently, too few trainees experience the training high. While learning about the techniques others use-and about supposed advances-can sometimes be very helpful, what matters most to you is the practical application of that knowledge. You should find an interpretation that works well for you and that involves experimentation and then do it and do it and do it.

Don't worry if you're not training exactly like someone else does. Don't agonize if your training is somewhat imperfect. Don't intellectualize things excessively. Never drop a productive program just because you're tempted to try something else. Change only the things that don't work. Be wary of anything that's touted as the "perfect routine.' Once on that slippery slope you'll almost certainly join the great mass of trainees who are buried in all the peripheral, marginal, downright irrelevant and often destructive routines that are often no more than financial rip-offs. Knuckle down long-term and pay the necessary dues on a proven program.

Had food supplements never been invented, had there never been any elite to ogle, had there never been any bodybuilding drugs or innovations in equipment beyond the basics of what a home gym needs, simple hard work would still yield results.

Don't waste chunks of your life before finally learning this truth. So few people learn it, and nearly all who do must first waste years, if not decades, before grasping it. What usually happens, though, is people assume that resistance training cannot work for them and give up. Determined, dedicated, abbreviated, focused, basics- first training doesn't just deliver muscle and strength, which are in themselves enormously satisfying.

It also brings you joy because it brings workout-by-workout satisfaction from realizing small amounts of progress. Effective training makes you feel better. You revel in and thus apply even more zeal. Then you make greater gains. The confidence you develop may carry over to other areas of your life. The enormous value of focus and organization in the gym shows you the way to go when you're outside the gym. Training is a self-centered activity, hut when your training works, it's much, much more than that.

While you may have to cut corners often to accommodate the circumstances of life, it's a good idea to schedule one of your workouts on the weekend, when you probably have fewer demands on your time. When you make time for your training and then train well, shower and eat, you experience the training high you wouldn't exchange for anything. Make the most of your training.