Why Can't You Get Muscular? I Explain at Startups
It may seem strange to discuss this. It seems like there are more pressing issues.
Yes, there is. Only here. “Everything passes, and this too shall pass.”
But the muscles will remain. And they will continue to guard a quality and healthy life.
And before you get angry at the title “Why bother with lifting at all if you’re not a professional athlete and if there’s physical education?”let's notice the elephant in the room. There is definitely a demand for muscle building and it is constantly growing. And calling this demand unreasonable and asymptomatic is also not possible.
Muscles themselves and the tools for building them are damn useful. There are so many benefits that I even have a separate article on this topic. This is the basics, but it is precisely this that does not lead to regular training, as I would like.
But social status is a more attractive achievement. Good appearance is in demand not only among people in relation to themselves, but also in demand among others in relation to others. People like to be surrounded or in the company of fit people.
You can argue with this, or you can look at reality and see that an athletic person has a higher chance of finding a job or keeping their current one, all other things being equal.
This definitely arouses interest in the opposite sex. The reasons why a muscular body seems more attractive may signal good genetics, good offspring, possibly protection in the case of men, and so on.
This is respect. The body is one of the few things that cannot be bought. Only earned with your own labor.
All this together is called a better quality of life. If you haven't won the lottery of life, then with the help of physics you can fix something.
Of course, great physique is not everyone's dream. I hope everyone here is educated enough so that I don't have to write a disclaimer about that. “It is clear that everyone has their own tastes and not everyone prefers a muscular body, and not every pumped-up person is a good father or protector, and not everyone wants to live happily ever after, and someone found a great offer while not being in the best physical shape.”
But even if you are one of those who are not convinced by the life bonuses of strength training, most of you, walking in the park, find a piece of “good shape”they definitely wouldn’t pass by and would try it on themselves.
But good form doesn't lie under the bushes. It's work, which is also done after work, between family matters and to the detriment of passive pastime. And to start training, you need very serious reasons and internal motivation.
So once again, but this time on startups, I’ll try to explain what you’re doing wrong and why you can’t get pumped up.
Why startups?
Because they have a lot in common. An athletic body is a project that requires you to go through the same path a startup takes to become a unicorn. It is a risky endeavor that requires financial investment and time, and the amount of money and time invested does not always correlate with the result you get.
You're walking in the dark, doing something that's not guaranteed to work. In some cases, you're wasting your energy and money for nothing, and then you get burned out and “nothing works out again.”
Like an athletic body, a good startup begins with finding a problem to solve. Some people are unhappy with the accelerated loss of youth, tone, energy and strength. Some want to bring something new into their lives and try something they have never done, or maybe even wanted to do at one time, but it didn’t work out. Some want to escape the gray everyday life or pump up their lower back, strengthen their knees. It’s worth starting with the question “what problem will fitness solve for me?”
As with a startup, an athletic body has several beneficiaries: for you, well-being and health, for your wife/husband – an exhibit and pride, for children – an example, for a fitness club – a regular. By analogy with a startup, which closed the pain of a large number of people with its product, and the net profit goes to itself, investors and to improving the product.
In general, to start, you need to be hot. Ambitions, meeting basic needs, a yacht, a desire to change the world. Many options for kicks and blows from light to medium, but something has to be there to start. Because everyone understands that this is a lot of work, even if they hope to reach the goal like a walk in the park. Actually, this is what determines the lion's share of the success of a startup – is it solving the right and necessary problem? If there is no answer or it is not sure, it will be difficult to pump up.
You're dragging your feet with MVP
The important thing here is not to overthink it, but just start. Don't choose training slippers for yourself and don't endlessly go through training programs. Don't think about whether it's possible to combine bench press and triceps and whether pull-ups are considered a biceps workout, among other things, but just start doing it and check it out in practice.
It's like when founders are sawing away at features, trying to roll out the perfect product. They saw, saw, saw, and it would seem, “well, launch it already, you don't even know how it works and does anyone even need your thing?”, and he's like, “no, well, now we'll launch one more feature.”
There will never be a better time to start training.
Not focusing on quality growth
The problem that our project solves has been found. Motivation has been laid under it. For further growth, we need to ask the question: How optimally do you use the resources you have?
A beginner athlete who combines his life and work with training (just like startuppers initially combine their startup with work) cannot afford ass-hours in the gym, cannot afford sterile crash diets and learning from his mistakes. On the contrary, the path of a beginner values the efficiency and accuracy of decisions.
Each of us is in an individual situation. Each of us has a set of pros and cons. And it is very important to find a way to grow with what you have, and not to use everything in a row, hoping that something will work. This way you will only waste resources. Doing what is convenient for you and how it works for you is sometimes more important than what others say.
People talk about “No Pain No Gain,” but there’s no point in doing a lot of volume if you can’t provide it with enough recovery. It won’t make your muscles grow any faster.
There are cool exercises being shared around, but they are just exercises and there is no need to constantly go through the coolest ones. The set of exercises should reflect the system and individual biomechanics, etc.
If the best leg exercise by all indications injures you too often, then in your case it is the worst leg exercise. Continuing to do it because it is the best is idiocy.
If the effective training volume starts with 10 approaches per muscle group, but you can physically handle 8, and a large one makes you stagnate and skip workouts, then in your case, 8 approaches are an effective training volume.
You don't test hypotheses quickly and cheaply
The most important hypothesis in bodybuilding that needs to be tested quickly. It is very cheap considering how much effort, time and health it will save you. The hypothesis about how many approaches per muscle group per week you can comfortably withstand.
The scientific guideline says that 10-20 sets per muscle group is an effective training volume. But this is very generalized data that does not take into account individual lifestyle and recovery characteristics.
If you are a beginner athlete, you can start testing this hypothesis with 6 approaches per week.
And in general, the sooner you understand what a set per muscle group is, how it is calculated, what exercises do what, the better. This will be the most important metric through which you will manage the amount of load throughout your training career.
You don't keep metrics
You need to determine whether you are developing or not, and since in sports, as in business, even the right decisions and actions have a delayed result, you need to develop a set of metrics, by analyzing which you can predict your future profit.
NSM
Training has its own North Star, and unlike business or the development stage, it does not change. The quality of a single approach is the most important component of your progress. It is in the approach, getting close to failure, that you create a stimulus for muscle growth. By controlling the correctness of the technique, you load the target muscles and do not get injured.
Progressive Overload
Progressive overload. Sooner or later (earlier for beginners, later for experienced ones) the weight that brought you to failure will become insufficient, the muscles will adapt to it. If you bench pressed 50 kg for 10-8-7 reps, but for a month now you have been doing 12-12-12 comfortably, then it is time to add.
If the working weights increase, the technique is maintained, and the muscles grow. Even if they are not visible yet, just know it.
Training volume
We've already touched on it. Beginners need 6-9 (well, maybe 12) approaches to the main MG. The more experienced you become, the more approaches you need to do to MG.
ROI for restoration
Are you buying into everything you do? Can you maintain a healthy mind and clarity of thought with so much training? Do you nod off in meetings or does your wife start complaining that you've stopped looking at her?
If so, maybe forget about everything they say in the guidelines and do what doesn’t excite the soul and stifles the desire to go to the gym?
If you overdo it with the load, then there is a risk of simply losing interest in training. And if you do not train, even the ideal super-anabolic training program will not save you.
ROI by result
Or, more simply put, “what about the muscles?” The longest and latest metric.
If it so happens that months have passed and there is no result, do not slap on the load. If you are still progressing, do not fix what is already working. Just continue to do what you did before and wait.
You can't stand the valley of death
An important stage and the most difficult. Money spent, efforts invested, no result.
Your startup should bring profit – muscles. But the time gap between the effort and the desired results in training is huge. Even the right actions and decisions will not predict the size of the income until you get close to it.
And this fog of results kills many. It is strange to waste time and energy on something that does not seem to bring profit or results. Many people get stuck here because they cannot estimate in advance how slow the process of muscle growth is. Especially in the conditions of everyday (non-professional) athletics.
But you need to learn to trust your metrics. If all the numbers in your training diary are creeping up, your training volume is not decreasing, you are recovering normally, then you can be sure that there is muscle growth behind it and over time it will definitely be reflected in the mirror.
Be a successful startup. The body is an important life project and it needs to be approached rationally. Collecting all the metrics, optimally distributing resources, listen to the experienced, but sometimes do as your individual conditions dictate. And most importantly – go through the valley of death. Then you will definitely not regret it.
And if you decide to act, I'm waiting for you yourself in the TG channelwhere I share tools on how to live a healthy lifestyle in the most rational way, how to form a healthy and reasonable approach to strength training, making it effective.
