Pushing yourself
My clients who achieve the biggest physical transformations, gain the most strength and perform exercises they thought they’d never be able to do are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Some of them have children, some have grandchildren and some don’t have any kids. Some of them have spent decades in the gym, some haven’t been in a gym for a long time.
What they all have in common is that they ‘push themselves’ when they exercise. Whether they are coming back from an injury/condition and looking to increase their mobility, wanting to increase their muscle mass or easily lift their grandchildren, these clients perform every last repetition until their muscles give up.
Achieving training goals isn’t rocket science; it requires you to push yourself. Here’s what “pushing yourself” means in practice:
Being 100% honest - if you can complete an exercise with ease then it’s too easy. Example 1: If you’re aiming to perform an exercise 8-12 times and you can do it for 15+ times then you need to increase the weight/resistance to make it more challenging (so you can only do it 8-12 times). Example 2: If you’re aiming to perform an exercise 8-12 times and struggle to perform the exercise with proper form (i.e. without cheating) for 4-6 reps then the weight is too heavy
Fighting for every rep (and more) - the clients who improve are the ones who fight to achieve every rep of an exercise. You might want to give up after 5 or 6 reps, but the real work is done when every single muscle and bit of energy is used to achieve 10 reps
Being accountable - a lot of my clients do their own ‘DIY’ sessions outside of seeing me. The clients who progress share their results and training with me - they know I’m looking at their programmes and how they’ve done. I use this with my own training - I share my own training with some of my close mates (who are also clients)
Being open (to new things) - progress plateaus quickly so to challenge the body and force change, the clients who have progressed have incorporated new exercises, training techniques and equipment whether it’s using suspension trainers (like the TRX), adopting German Volume Training or high intensity training Tabata programmes
Turning up - like all of us, my clients have good days and not-so-good days. The clients who have achieved the most are the people who train regardless - if they have 3 sessions a week then they will do their 3 sessions. Some sessions will be amazing, some will be a battle and completely unenjoyable but turning up and doing the session is all that counts.
Final thoughts:
It doesn’t matter what stage of training you’re at - whether you’re completely new to training or have been training for years, doing everything you can in your workouts is the way to progress.
The last few repetitions of an exercise should be a battle.