Marketing is at it’s peak, especially within the fitness field. All we see are crazy before and after pics, super ripped motivational fitness models, or amazing feat of strength videos…. And you’ll eventually think,
“Why not me? I train hard and I eat clean. Soooo why am I not getting these types of results?”
Be Honest
Every once and while I’ll receive questions like this, where someone will say “why am I not cut up like X fitness model? I eat clean and I train hard!”Or “Why am I not as strong as X person?”
We’ll go through the basic questions:
- What have you been eating?
- What’s your training like?
- Are you sleeping well?
- Have you been consistently training?
and so on…
Of course all the answers are yes, yes, and YES! So we dig in a little deeper…and we’ll get the full answer:
- Eating: Go out to dinner 3-4 times a week, drink a few pints, and order full course meal (appetizer, main, dessert)…eating clean?
- Training: When we look at heart rate data, the client burned 150kcals, averaged a HR of 120 throughout the workout, and total time is 30minutes… trained hard?
- Sleep: Go out 3-4 nights well past 1:00-2:00am..”plenty of sleep” huh?
- Consistent training: I’ll see that they skipped over the “non-fancy” exercises or switch around the days…
While this may seem like an exaggeration, each one of these points are from actually situations. My point is that you need to be truthful about what you’re doing, skimming over this and that, doesn’t cut. Stop making excuses, what you put into your workout, diet, rest etc.. is what you’ll get out of it.
Give Up The Junk To Gain The Rewards
I can tell you that to get ready for any type of physique show, fitness modeling, or even just to be strong is not an easy task. Fitness models have to give up some “luxuries” to look shredded for the shoot. Strength athletes need to stay consistent with their workouts and more than likely need to add in more recovery days then you may like. This may mean that they’re foam rolling before they goto bed, stretching out every few hours, going to the chiropractor x2-3 a week, etc… It may seem like a nuisance, but to train at a high level your body needs to recover and that’s the reality of it, otherwise you’re going to be feeling pretty beat up.
If your goal is to get to this point, you have to accept that it’s not going to be rainbows and sunshines. Heck to get anything worthwhile you have to make sacrifices, otherwise it’s just a simple task. How much you are willing to work and dedicate yourself is how much you’ll get out of it. I’m not saying that everyone should stay at home on the weekends and go on a strict carb cycling diet. What I am saying is that you need to be realistic, if you’re not willing to do what it takes to get to a high level, then you need to stop comparing yourself to these people that do. It’s not easy to get strong, ripped, or whatever your goals are.
Patience and Consistency
After you’ve accepted that you have to train hard, eat well, and make some sacrifices to be strong and/or ripped. The next process is to accept that it’ll take time. Everyone develops at different rates and start at different physical stages. Meaning, if I take a former powerlifter and get the athlete to train again, they’ll most likely progress much faster into competition form than a person that just started off. The powerlifter has years of strength and muscular development, therefore their adaptability will be much quicker.
For physique changes, I believe Michelle Davis has done a great job of showing what actually happens and that to get results it’s about consistency and hard work.
Photo from Michelle Davis’ IG: http://instagram.com/mshelllll
Above is a 8.5 week progress pic of Michelle Davis, a fitness model/body builder. At this point most people thrown up there hands and complain about their progress, while Michelle looks great she’s definitely not in competition form. This is why I’ve become a big fan of hers because she tells the truth about her process and that she doesn’t always look super lean. She also doesn’t sugar coat it and explains that it is a struggle to balance life, working out, and dieting.
Michelle Davis’ IG: http://instagram.com/mshelllll
While Michelle’s progress is great, it does take TIME. Keep in mind that during this process she’s eating very clean and some times working out twice a day, to top that she also added in a “50 pull up a day challenge”:
*video from Michelle Davis’ IG: http://instagram.com/mshelllll
Final Thoughts
The point of this post is to highlight that there is a lot of hard work put behind these type of results, despite what any fitness marketing scheme may show you. Taking a pill and doing a 10 minute workout isn’t going to get these type of results… What you put into your training, diet, and recovery and how consistent you are will determine the type of results you get.
Stay strong,