10 Things I Learned After Lifting For 8 Years As a Natural

[shakewell]

For the past 8 years, I've been lifting as a natural. I had my difficulties, but I achieved the body I always wanted to have.

Here is my before & after pic (6ft2, 242lbs, 20%bodyfat VS 6ft2, 200lbs, 10-12% bodyfat) -

https://imgur.com/a/fGLXfJj

I learned a lot during these years, so here are my major lessons & insights:

1. Consistency - being consistent at the gym is the biggest factor for your success. Yeah, we've heard that cliche a thousand times, but it's true. The gym part is usually the easiest part for people because it's the most enjoyable part of this journey, but changing your old habits is hard. Therefore, the advice "just be consistent bro" is USELESS. This advice tells you WHAT (be consistent), but not HOW (to be consistent). I believe I found the winning formula, and I call it the "Lifestyle Adaptation"
2. Lifestyle Adaptation - The gym lifestyle should compliment your life, not complicate it. If you haven't been to the gym before, your lifestyle probably consists of really bad habits: lack of physical activity, eating junk food, and so on. You're seeing all of these healthy meals, 5-6 days a week workouts, and you're thinking: "There's no way eating chicken breast with white rice and training 5-6 days a week is sustainable. Well, you are COMPLETELY right. - it's not. Therefore:

• Training Routine - You start your fitness journey with an FBW workout to ensure consistency. Studies show that in order to ensure consistency, you must "reinforce" your motivation to go to the gym. There are two kinds of reinforcements:

- Reinforcements you can control: Make sure actually enjoy working out (Different exercises, Different grips, starting your workout with another muscle, and so on).

FBW is a great option because you're working on your whole body. - Squats, Pullups, Bench Press, etc. I'm not claiming Splits are boring, but if there's even a 1% chance that FBW will increase your consistency, go for FBW.

- Reinforcements you can't control (occur usually within 3 months of training): your friends compliment you, people start asking for your advice, getting more attention from the opposite sex due to your body transformation, and so on.

Therefore: with positive reinforcements, >>> "Motivation" goes up >>> the Likelihood of consistency at the gym goes up.

Relevant fact - 90% of people quit the gym after 3 months.

• Diet - Just like you need to "reinforce" your "going to the gym" behavior by making your workout enjoyable, you should do the same with diet. Therefore, you need to learn how to cook really well. Eating chicken breast with white rice is definitely boring and not sustainable, but have you thought about adding a small portion of BBQ sauce to make it taste better? Yes, it will maybe add 30 calories to your meal, but it will fuel you to keep going on a daily basis. What about adding some dill to your fried eggs? "Oh, I'm sorry, you only boil your eggs because you eat super clean? My apologies". For such a long time I was eating "super clean" - no salt, no spices, nothing. However, I wasn't really enjoying my meals and it was really influencing my mood. "Low bf% comes first, you don't have to enjoy your food", I was thinking to myself. That was really toxic. Find ways to make your healthy food taste really good - there are a lot of tips online about it.

- If one regularly thinks about "cheat meals", his diet is probably not good enough. Cheat meals will not ruin your physique, but on a psychological level, if you are "looking forward to the weekend's cheat meal", you already lost. A lot of the tips online will tell you that "cheat meals will get you to keep going". I disagree. A good and sustainable diet will keep you going. However, if you're on a night out with friends, surely you can enjoy yourself once a week. Your diet shouldn't be at the cost of your social life.

1. You're not giving your whole 100% at the gym - Close your eyes and recall your last workout. Did you really give your whole 100%? Maybe you could have done 2 more reps in the squat rack, but you were like "Nah I don't want to feel that pain". My friend and I always laugh at how hard squats are. It truly feels like your brain is about to explode. The point being, don't give your 99%, give your 100%. Working out should be hard. I always treat it as a war zone, stupid as it sounds. I put some Viking music playlist and I imagine that I'm in a war. God, that truly helps me to give my 100% at the gym.
2. It's getting harder to develop muscle over the years - Especially after 5-6 years. What can I say? Sucks being natural. One thing I found to be really helping is changing exercises, changing grips, and obviously focusing on progressive overload. I do the same with cardio. Giving your absolute 100% works as well. I also started surfing, and it really helped me with developing some good back and shoulders muscles outside of the gym. Since I've never surfed, it activated some body movements I have never done before, and variety is a really good thing.
3. You will never be satisfied - Just as it sounds. My initial goal was to get to a 10-12%bf, but now I want to go lower. Obviously, In a way that I would be able to sustain it without it damaging my social life. Well, I guess that's the fun part of weightlifting - one journey ends, another begins.
4. Steroids are not worth it - I'm not gonna talk about the "Oh, those steroid guys are taking shortcuts, they're cheating". However, steroids are not worth it, unless your "super ultimate passion" is competing on a very high level and you want to be a bodybuilder. I prioritize health, and I don't wanna die at 40 from a heart attack. Sure, in today's age some substances are regular, I assume, but that is a risk not worth taking.
5. You don't have to eat 6 meals a day - There's a myth that 6 meals a day will boost your metabolism, but studies show that there isn't a difference between 3 meals to 6 meals. Remember the point I made above about lifestyle adaptation? Well, not everyone has the time to be on a schedule and eat every 3-4 hours. That is not what will make the difference in your gains. If you're working in construction, you may only have a one 30 minutes break, and eating 6 meals a day will be impossible. If you're traveling, eating 6 meals a day will not be sustainable as well. In conclusion, it really depends on your lifestyle.
6. The only "must" supplements are vitamins - Vitamins are super underrated and protein powder is super overrated. Vitamin D, C, Zinc, Magnesium, and Omega 3 are super important for your body's healthy function. I'm not saying that you will suddenly become an avenger with mind-blowing superpowers, but in terms of general health, they are super important. The fitness industry is first an "industry", and its main motive is money. Before you buy a supplement, learn about it and ask yourself if it will really help you with your fitness journey.
7. You should read studies - reading studies and articles is a great way to challenge your current views and get new perspectives. Don't be close-minded. Also, I find it really interesting when I read a study that challenges some fitness routine I was 100% sure is accurate, and then I test this new belief on my body and see how it. It's really fun.
8. A good gym buddy can change everything - I was always this "lone wolf" in life, and at the gym as well. However, a good gym buddy can motivate you and help you do those last reps. In later stages, he can hold you accountable and accountability is a great thing. Also, being social is always a good thing. A gym buddy can become more than a gym buddy if you two really connect.
9. When you're fit, people will treat you better - It goes along with "if you're attractive, people will smile more, and so on". It's absolutely true. Moreover, people will respect your grind, whether they will admit it or not. Working out can really boost your social life and, obviously, help with your dating. It doesn't matter if you're working out to attract the opposite sex or if you're working out just to be more healthy. As a byproduct of your hard work, people (and the opposite sex) will treat you better.

Bonus point: don't ego lift! Nobody cares about you benching 2 or 4 plates on each side. Really, nobody cares. your health is more important, and injuries are a pain in the ass.

Hope you got some value from this thread!

Have a great day.

 

[mikael85]

@shakewell This is a great list. One quibble and one suggestion:

Quibble: you don’t have to go 100% all the time, it is impossible and will lead to burnout.

Some days you’re simply not feeling it, so don’t stress out about it. Get the workout in to the best of your ability that day and move forward. Play the long game.

A veteran natty needs to understands the concept of auto-regulation, and needs to develop the art of listening to the body and knowing when to back off much better than an assisted lifter, and this becomes increasingly more important as you get older and need more recovery time between workouts.

Suggestion/Addition: Master the art of building positive momentum. Make one change at a time to your routine, wait for it to “stick” (usually takes about 2-3 weeks) then add a new variable.

For ex. Noobs want to start lifting, and get the diet dialed in, and x and y and z, all at once. That is overwhelming all at once and will incrementally increase the odds of getting frustrated and quitting all together.

So just get the lifting down, and once that is grooved in, start cleaning up the diet a bit, etc.

 

[benjaminthewolf]

@mikael85 I'm an older lifter now - jeez, time does fly, lol... and listening to my body and recognizing when I need extra recovery or a deload has been the hardest lesson I've had to learn. This pandemic really let that sink in for me. I had to pare down my workouts to just an hour - my gym went to appointment only one hour blocks. So, I removed all isolation work and just did a version of my workout with just compounds. It really felt like I wasn't doing enough at first but I quickly broke all kinds of PR's and stubborn plateaus. Less is more sometimes, and it took a near zombie apocalypse for me to finally understand that concept.

 

[shakewell]

@mikael85 Interesting point about the positive momentum. I agree!

 

[angelanaethon]

@mikael85 Ya, I think it should be something like give your 100%, 90% or the time. Basically you’ll have some days that you barely make it to the gym (work, energy levels, etc). On those days, get to the gym and do your routine but maybe just drop your RPE from like 7/8 to 5/6. You’ll keep your routine and the reduction won’t make a difference long run.

I think the sentiment really is that beginners need to learn how to dial in their RPE and push themselves to near failure once they’re a bit more seasoned.

 

[chevreuil]

@mikael85 Just a small addition, giving 100% doesn't mean it has to be the best performance of your life.
Giving 100% of your daily best, some days pushing myself to 5 squat reps is way harder than 8 on another day.

 

[samlovesjesus]

@mikael85 This. This is great post but this was the one thing I wanted to add. One of my favorite sayings is "The only bad workout is the one that didn't happen" I absolutely love the gym and it's really my life outside of my career. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have days where I didn't want to train let alone train hard but I feel it's always better to go and give 50% than nothing at all.