The other day, Jess and I got to talking about the importance of accepting your limitations.
Example:
If you start training in your 30s, 40s, or beyond or if you return to training having taken the balance of your most productive years (i.e. your teens and twenties) off, there is going to be a hard and low ceiling on what you can achieve performance-wise.
Meaning, no matter how hard you work, you will most likely not ever hit, say, a 140kg or potentially even a 100kg bench press, run a sub-20 minute 5k, or walk around with a bodyfat percentage in the low teens most of the year, and so on, and so on.
A bitter pill to swallow, for sure.
But the sooner you swallow it the better, in my opinion.
Why?
Many of the things older trainees do to try and achieve the unachieveable actually further limit what they COULD achieve because they divert precious time, attention, and energy away from productive activities.
The weird movements and labryinthine programming favoured by PTs who knowingly make things more complicated than they need to be are two examples of that. Batshyte insane hArDcOrE workouts are another.
You’re far better off sticking with the basics which have been shown to work time and time again in trainees of all ages and experience levels (yes, even advanced trainees – go and look at the workouts bodybuilders and athletes from before the advent of steroids used if you don’t believe me).
So that is what you ought to be doing, if you are not yet doing so.
And if you are but you’re dissatisfied with your progress?
Then yours will be one or a combination of the following three problems:
1. You’ve not been at it long enough to get the results you want (when measuring your achievements, you need to think in terms of years and decades rather than weeks and months).
2. Your expectations do not align with reality.
3. There are issues with the programme(s) you are running and/or how you are running them (too much “junk work”, form issues, too little or too much cardio, gaping holes where certain movement patterns need to be, etc).
Relatedly:
If you are interested in learning a straightforward method of training you can use to make steady, compounding progress for many years to come, my biased opinion is that you join me for Silver Era Secrets.
It’s a three month private (i.e. one to one) personal training programme for people who are serious about putting the framework in place to continue getting results for many years (perhaps even decades) to come.
Here are the details:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/programme
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman