My Swedish brother from another mother, Dr. Bojan recently said on facebook “what you feel is a lie”. He was referring to the fact that although he felt like pure shit, when the managed to finally hit up the gym, he crushed his workout. In fact, he hit PR’s (Personal Records) on two out of his 3 lifts.

Now mind you, being a doctor who lifts heavy, he is one crazy f*cker and was doing a self experiment where he ate around 650 calories per day. And yet, somehow the workout was a success. How? Well as you’ll soon see, pushing past limitations has nothing to do with your caloric intake. Nor does it have anything to do with your general strength levels.

Let’s take another example – the rocket launch. Rockets expend about 80% of their energy just to get off the ground. The remaining 20 is all that’s needed to keep it going till it enters space. So, what can we gather from all of this?

The Start Of Anything Is Never Much Fun

When you really think about it, every task you can possibly think of, which requires you to get off your ass and initiate, is a cruel mistress for the first 60 seconds or so. Then, it’s a bit of a grind for another 2-5 minutes after which you reach “cursing altitude”. When you’re at that cruising altitude, very little motivation, energy and drive is needed to continue forwards.

It’s like Newton’s first law of motion: An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. So once you get started, things get easier. It’s the starting that’s the hard part. So what do you do, if you’re sitting around, vegetating in front of the idiot box, while in the back of your head you know you’ve got to hit up the gym? Common sense says you need to get the hell up, and drag your ass outside the house.

But there is a part of your brain (known as the reptilian brain) which is rather stubborn and likes to do things its own way. In fact, this part of your brain is so powerful it often trumps logical decisions – which is why common sense advice doesn’t always work. And explains why a chunk of the population does some seriously dumb shit form time to time. Google “triune brain theory” to get a better understanding of what I’m talking about. Here’s a direct quote about the reptilian brain:

The overriding characteristics of R-complex (reptilian brain) behaviors are that they are automatic, have a ritualistic quality, and are highly resistant to change.

You may think you’re fully in control of yourself at all times, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. The solution is to get the inner reptilian on your side. Trust me, you can’t fight it – not forever. And you can’t tame it… juggling knives while wire walking across two towers would be easier than that. So as the old saying goes, when you can’t beat em’ you join em’.

How do you do this? You make things fun. Find out what equipment/classes/toys your gym has that are an absolute blast, for you. As in, you could be a sloppy hung over mess, but you’d still consider doing such an activity because it makes you feel good. That is the key. See, the reptilian brain is concerned with survival – as in, conserving energy. So when you’re alive and well, it sees no reason to hit up the gym and expend energy on a tedious workout plan.

While the reptilian brain is reliable, it’s also quite retarded. It cannot understand the implications your actions will have on extending your life, for instance. It’s concerned with the NOW. However, there is something about “joyous activities” which can get even the laziest fat kid off their ass, and motivate them enough to move.

So load up that workout plan on your smart phone (or write it on a piece of paper if you’re old school) and slip it in your back pocket. Go to the gym with the intent of just having fun for a while and leaving. I personally love hitting up the heavy bag. It has taken so much beating over the years, I’m surprised it’s still hanging. Either way, I go to the gym with the intention to do harm. I punch, kick, elbow and beat the ever loving shit outta it. It’s fun, and it puts a smile on my face. Don’t ask why.

Fifteen minutes into the beat down, I’ll whip out my workout plan, hit up the water fountain and continue on. It’s a seamless transition because my “fun” activity acts as a great warm up – heart rate is up, joints are well lubricated, there’s a bit of a sweat build up and I feel a potent mix of inner accomplishment and rage from kicking something as hard as possible. This general feeling of awesomeness spills over into my workout and I leave the room of iron accomplished, ready to take on the world.

This little trick is simple, but that’s exactly what makes it powerful. Ever seen a mother trying to feed a child? It looks impossible until she makes it fun. Hence the whole “here comes the air-plane” nonsense everyone knows about. The turning-fun-stuff-into-productive-work trick. In its simplicity, lies its strength. Try it out.

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© 2012, By FitJerk. FitJerk.com is a division of Flawless Fitness Media – All Rights Reserved – No part of this post is to be republished without author consent under any forms of media (including print, internet, video or audio transcription). Doing so is a violation against copyright law and should be punishable by a punch to the face. All images are copyright of their respective owners.

Tired Of Looking Ordinary? Click Here And Get FJ To Design A Fitness Plan Just For You! FREE Initial Consultation.

What I’m going to talk about today is a fool-proof 4 step system that will undoubtedly help you put some muscle on your frame, or put more muscle on a frame that has hit a plateau. In fact, these steps can almost be considered “laws” because its the ONLY real way I know of stimulating growth. Every person that I’ve ever known who managed to pack on some muscle has followed these 4 steps whether they were consciously aware of it or not.

[Before we dive in, today is the give away day! Since there were 12 comments on the give away post, I used a random number generator and it spit out the #10. So checking back, it looks like “Suggy” is the lucky individual that holds that position. Apparently he wanted the grips to help with his self pleasuring experience, so congrats dude… may the handgrips help you make sweet sweet love to yourself. Check for my email for further instructions.]

Alright, let’s get on with the steps.

Step 1: Stimulate

Muscles need a reason to grow, plain and simple. So what is the reason? Adaptation to stress. If your biceps are capable of handling 30lbs and you decide to workout with 25lbs dumbbells, then there is no reason for your body to stimulate bicep growth since the stimuli presented is something it can easily handle. Also, you’re wasting your fucking time. The only benefit to that type of workout is that you’ll be burning calories… but why would you insult your strength and undercut your training like that? To me, it makes no sense.

Everything about humans is revolved around the “path of least resistance”. If you can get an certain result with X amount of effort, then why would you bother increasing the amount of effort to 2X? It’s inefficient. This philosophy has kept our species alive for hundreds of thousands of years, so it’s not something we want to change outright.

The paradox here is that the path of least resistance to muscular growth requires a level of resistance that is greater than what you’re accustomed to (that statement is quite the brain fuck eh?). But this doesn’t mean you need to destroy yourself. A lot of people will read what I wrote and think I’m talking about going to failure… I’m not. Well I am, but only sorta.

See, going to failure is a aspect of training you can use, no bout. But it’s a tool, it should NOT be used all the time. A hammer won’t help you if you’re working with screws. ANY training technique will become useless over a period of time because your body, smart as it is, will adapt to it. That’s its job. Ronnie Coleman, the 8 time Mr.Olympia winner made the following statement when it came to training for muscular growth: “Stimulate, don’t annihilate”. Very true.

Step 2: Feed

Stimulating your muscles to grow is one thing, but if they have no resources to repair and rebuild then you’ve done more harm than good. It’s like bulldozing a house then telling the contractor to build a new house that’s bigger, better and stronger with the same demolished materials that lie on the floor. Sounds pretty fucking ridiculous, yet a shit load of people are victim to this metaphor when it comes to building lean and quality muscle. Such loonballs.

If you’re increasing the intensity of your workout every time you hit the gym (if not, you SHOULD be) then you need to increase your clean caloric intake as well. I mean, it only makes sense right? For men, 1g of protein per lbs of bodyweight is still a good baseline of what you should be eating, some of you should be eating even more. For women, you guys can eat about 0.65g per lbs without a problem.

The bad type of weight gain (fat) occurs when the amount and type of carbohydrates you eat trump your daily protein amount. You need to realize that protein is like the “last resort” fuel for your body, it’s only used when the body doesn’t have sufficient amount of fats and carbohydrates.

Typically, I believe that no one needs more than 50-70g of CLEAN carbohydrates per day. Rest should be all protein and good heart-healthy fats. But on days you workout… any type of high glycemic supplementation after an intense workout does NOT contribute to your daily 50-70g limit. This is because your glycogen stores are so depleted that taking in high glycemic foods along with protein is actually beneficial since the insulin spike will help shuttle all the protein right into your muscles. This is a very generalized statement but true nonetheless.

Step 3: Recover

We aren’t talking about muscle recovery, that comes later, we are talking about the recovery of your Central Nervous System (CNS). Before your beaten up muscles are allowed to repair themselves and grow bigger and stronger, your CNS needs to fully recover so it can help trigger that process. Again I’m not going into great detail here because it’s beyond the scope of this article to explain exactly how this happens. Just know that after a punishing workout, it takes about 24 hours (sometimes 36) for your CNS to recover, and it’s only AFTER this step that the true magic happens…

Step 4: Grow

Now were talking! All of your hard work and proper eating habits have come down to this final phase. Many people use the term “recovery” as a means of muscular growth. Well it’s not! Once your CNS recovers, your muscles will recover, but what does muscle recovery really lead to? Growth! So that’s why I’ve ordered my steps in this way. The really weird thing is that you don’t have to do jack-shit once you reach step 4. Just keep your eating habits up, take it easy and let your body do it’s thing. Read a book, watch some TV, go talk to people and viola! You’ll grow.

The only downside is that step4 is HEAVILY reliant on the first 3. You CANNOT and WILL NOT grow unless you stimulate your muscles, feed yourself and allow your CNS to recover. By now, this better be common sense to you.

The Start Of Something “big”

So now you know the exact steps to follow and should have some kind of game plan ready to implement. Just know that these steps are never-ending… it’s like a cycle that repeats itself over and over again, helping your grow bigger and/or stronger each time. Depending on your body’s ability and training experience, this 4 step process can take 1-2 weeks to complete. Now, OBVIOUSLY there is a point where you will reach your human genetic limitation and stop growing because one of these steps will likely end up being your weakest link.

But the fact is that 99% of you will not hit this limitation for a LOOONG time, if ever. So don’t stop pushing yourself and don’t stop beating the SHIT out of your previous workouts. You are working out to IMPROVE yourself, not keep yourself in the same fucking state, so make sure you don’t waste your time. As my favorite saying goes, “if you aren’t growing, you’re dying”.

- FitJerk

FlawlessFitnessBook

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© 2009 – 2012, By FitJerk. FitJerk.com is a division of Flawless Fitness Media – All Rights Reserved – No part of this post is to be republished without author consent under any forms of media (including print, internet, video or audio transcription). Doing so is a violation against copyright law and should be punishable by a punch to the face. All images are copyright of their respective owners.

Tired Of Looking Ordinary? Click Here And Get FJ To Design A Fitness Plan Just For You! FREE Initial Consultation.

The general term for this is “overtraining” and a lot of people suffer from it… but because I’m awesome, I’ll be shedding some light on a concept that will make your workouts (and your freakin’ life) more efficient, focused and more god damn productive. No more dilly-dallying around like a clueless chump bucket.

Read this statement out loud three times: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

This statement was made by the British historian Cyril Parkinson after years of observation while working in the British Civil Service, and this statement sums up Parkinson’s law. There is a book on this law which goes pretty in-depth while being a hilarious read to boot, so I recommend that you check it out. The version I had lying around was old, very old (printed in 1964) but I’m sure if you hunt around Amazon, you can find something more up to date. (Like THIS BOOK
for example).

But I’m going to break it all down for you, then show you how to use it practically. You see, every task is in some way shape or form dependent on TIME. If humans were immortal (vampires?) then every task would have the potential of being allotted an unlimited amount of time and thus the progress of our species wouldn’t be half of what it is because there is no sense of urgency. But we aren’t immortal, and therefore we have to assign a certain amount of time to a given task, which creates urgency and literally forces progress.

Now, here’s where all of this gets interesting. If you allot too much time for a given task, then that task will find a way to fill the extra gap in time by increasing it’s complexity. The task itself isn’t doing this, but its you. It’s a psychological effect which were naturally bound to. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at an example.

While you’re sitting there on your computer, I decide to walk in with a Universal Self loading Pistol (USP). I then put the gun to your face and say “You have 5 minutes to write me a 500 word press release that showcases why I’m so awesome or you’re fucking dead!”. How likely are you to finish that press release in WELL under 5 minutes? VERY likely.

On the other hand, what if I come in and blurt out “I need you to write me a 500 word press release that showcases why I’m so awesome. Have it on my desk first thing in the morning.” How much do you want to bet that it’s going to take more than 5 minutes to write this press release? Hmm… I thought so.

The task was the same, yet the time allotted in each scenario was totally different… and lo behold, you magically found a way to expand the work to fill the available time. This shit happens ALL the time. Now that you know of this weird psychological effect, it’s time to take advantage of it and use it to make sure that when you hit the gym, you do what needs to be done and then get the hell out before it consumes your life.

FJ’s Law Of Fitness Workout Timing For Effective Training Using Parkinson’s (wtf?)

Don’t ask about the subtitle… Just know that yes, this is a law that I made up, and yes, it does work ridiculously well. The law can be summed up in 2 words: sixty minutes. That’s right, one hour! One hour is ALL you get to do whatever the hell it is you need to do for your daily fitness activities, and once you’ve hit that hour, you gota pick your ass up and leave. Move on with your life. Even if you haven’t done what you needed to do, just leave… Because over time and with practice, you’ll just end up finding a way to shave off the useless seconds or minutes that are robbing you of a productive workout.

It will come naturally, trust me.

You should know that the opposite is also true. For example, what if you only do 30 minute workouts? Well then still give yourself one hour, because magically… You’ll find a way to fill that extra 30 minute gap, and it could do your body some “extra” goodness. Maybe you’ll go and stretch all your muscles, maybe you’ll hit up the steam room and de-stress, maybe you’ll go and try that ab exercise you saw on TV, or maybe you’ll grow some balls and attempt my plyometrics routine. Whatever it is that you end up doing, it will expand to fill the time gap. Count on it!

-FitJerk
Flawless Fitness Book

Discuss: How many times have you fallen victim to Parkinson’s Law? And now that I’ve enlightened you, what are some other ways that you’re going to apply it to your life? Stop being the quiet kid in class and express ideas below…

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© 2009 – 2012, By FitJerk. FitJerk.com is a division of Flawless Fitness Media – All Rights Reserved – No part of this post is to be republished without author consent under any forms of media (including print, internet, video or audio transcription). Doing so is a violation against copyright law and should be punishable by a punch to the face. All images are copyright of their respective owners.

Tired Of Looking Ordinary? Click Here And Get FJ To Design A Fitness Plan Just For You! FREE Initial Consultation.