Watching Lily take her first steps the other day got me to thinking about the parallels with training.
She steps. She falls. She gets up. She steps. She falls. She gets up.
Over and over and over again. Failure after failure, yet every time her skill and… critically… confidence improves, ever so slightly.
And that right there really is the “secret” to this getting strong and in shape lark.
It’s ultimately an endless process of trial and error. You make gains. You screw up. You try again. You make gains. You screw up. You try again.
And so on.
Honestly, I think anyone who says they’ve got it all figured out and “optimised” to the point they never make a mistake is bare-faced lying at this point. Either that or they live a boring, joyless life devoid of anything other than “training”, “preparing to train”, and “recovering from training”.
Damn good marketing though. Making you think regaining a bit of weight or losing some muscle and strength here and there is abnormal.
Obviously, I am not talking about wholesale quitting the gym and downing pints of ice cream until you resemble the lovechild of Mr Blobby and a ripe sow here. There is never any excuse for that.
But getting it wrong, dropping sessions here and there, losing motivation, and stuff like that?
Totally par for the course when you have been training long enough.
Doubly so when you have a job, a family, and a life.
This also means that there is no “fix” per se.
It’s gonna happen.
However.
You CAN both reduce the frequency of it occurring AND the impact on your hard-won results… with the right attitude and approach.
The “approach” part is pretty well covered in my short, coverless book, “Barbell”.
The system is:
1. Flexible (you build your sessions to taste using the loose guidelines I give you),
2. Convenient (workouts are short and can be done from home provided you possess a few pieces of equipment that are pretty cheap to acquire if you don’t have them).
3. Novel (nothing works quite like a bit of novelty to keep you mentally engaged).
The “attitude” part is down to you, of course.
Anyway.
If’n you want to learn more about “Barbell”, here’s where you can do that:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/barbell/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman