A rookie mistake: Believing that you have to be 100%, full-throttle, every day, all the time, or you fail. This attitude is the equal and opposite of the lazy couch-slug who won’t do nothing if it involves the slightest uncomfortable expense of energy. You’re all in, or you’re out. Few beliefs are more harmful when it comes to skill-building and learning, which includes body-transforming. Give yourself a little grace. There’s a whole lot of healthy, happy, productive space in between those two extremes. Extremism by its nature is false to the facts and rarely hits the target. Small changes, layered in with time, create big changes. If you’re a total beginner, a step so simple as writing down what you ate in a day is a victory. Could be that you showed up at the gym three days this week. It doesn’t matter what you did. It matters that you showed up. No big deal? For a guy who is 42 and never exercised in his life or paid attention to his diet, that may be the biggest win he’s made yet for his health and appearance. The simplest steps should not be ignored because they are simple or even trivial. They’re the foundations and basic building blocks of bigger moves. Easy to forget that, when you’re on the other side of a few decades. In my world everything comes back to simplicity and small moves. Yes, even squatting daily. What is simpler than training often to lift a foundational movement with heavy weights? You work up to that, sure. But there’s nothing to it but basics plus the will to do it. Once you’re at it awhile, then you can start talking about how small moves add up to big shifts of energy and tiredness and so forth. Blasting and cruising are the key ideas beyond the beginner’s stage. But there isn’t much point talking about long-game strategy if you’re still getting the key pieces in place — or if you never stop being a beginner. Some people can “train” for 5, 10, 20 years and never get past “beginner”. Heck, even I benefit from turning attention back to the essential moves. Am I getting my protein? Am I inside my calorie ceiling? Am I showing up for the damn workouts?

Got a question or a problem with training, diet and nutrition, or the existential angst of your own existence? Drop it here and let's see if I can help.

I've been going back through a long-lost book that I wrote way back in 2009 called "Maximum Muscle". That book collected a ho' lot of research into muscle hypertrophy and what causes it. Bad news: the book itself is an over-written monstrosity that should never see the light of day. Good news: the ideas in it are rock-solid, and they've inspired me to create some new trainings in audio and video format. But the people I'm talking to now seem bored and uninterested, so I'm not going to waste the time making one blessed thing... ...not unless you let me know you would actually WANT and BUY such game-changing ideas. So I need you to let me know. 👉 Would you pay even $1 fresh insights on what makes muscles grow and how to PUT THAT KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION in your own workouts? If so, drop "$1" in the comments 👇