Visit any gym, anywhere on the planet, and you will quickly notice that most everyone inside looks miserable.
Yes, there will probably be the odd person here or there who doesn’t look like they’ve just suffered a traumatic bereavement, but let’s not kid ourselves into pretending the overwhelming majority are shuffling about like zombies with looks of utter dejection upon their faces.
Why is this?
Plenty of reasons, but the one I am going to talk about today is that they are lifting too often.
Consider:
Most lift weights anywhere from four to six times per week, usually because they are following either a bodypart split (where one or two muscle groups are trained at a time) or a movement-based split (where workouts feature one big lift like a barbell back squat plus a handful of supplementary exercises).
There is nothing necessarily wrong with either approach. Both produce good fruit when set up and executed correctly, and I happily teach them to clients (for example, my book “Lift” which is exclusive to my real paper newsletter subscribers features a movement-based lifting programme).
However.
Rare is the person who can sustain the effort and, critically, enthusiasm needed to enjoy steady gains in strength and aesthetic appeal for more than a short while using these methods. Not through any fault of their own, but rather due to the unrelenting demands of that little thing called “real life”.
So what happens is, the trainee ends up going through the motions while probably dropping vital stuff like cardio training, ab work, and proper warmups and cooldowns. Thereby they forment the regrettable situation wherein they are training for many hours per week while getting weaker, fatter, and in ever increasing pain.
The fix?
Low frequency lifting.
Two, or at most, three sessions per week done in the full body style that was popular prior to steroids exploding onto the scene in the 1960s.
My contention is that all but the most TikTok brained will struggle to get bored if they are only lifting a couple of times per week for under an hour (potentially under 50 minutes if they’ve a strong heart and pair of lungs).
Doubly so given that every exercise must count when training in this style, meaning there is no redundant “junk work” that bedevils most lifters’ schedules.
And there is plenty of time and energy spare for the warmups and cooldowns you must include to mitigate the risk of a training-terminating and, possibly, life-altering injury, the modest amounts of cardio needed to keep the belly at bay, and, of course, live a full life outside of training.
One way to learn the above approach is to subscribe to my real paper newsletter called “The Phil Tyreman Letter”.
Subscribers get:
* A copy of a book containing a comprehensive strategy for getting strong and in shape, plus all the tactics needed to put it into action (the book is only available to my newsletter subscribers),
* Accountability in the form of my (in)famous “Monday Message”,
* Access to my large and shapely brain for assistance with anything I am qualified to offer assistance with (form critiques, programme tweaks/overhauls, and so on).
To learn more, go here:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/information/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman