Shout Out to Christian. Great Article/Comments

How Hard Do You Really Need To Train? -

I am feeling somewhat prestigious and frankly I have no idea why. Maybe its cause I didn’t get a chance to cook that juicy steak during my epic cheat day. Or maybe its because I have so much damn respect for Christian that the mere thought of even training with this guy (hint hint) makes my dick go hard. Not really of course but I couldn’t think of another way to say it. Excited just wasn’t strong enough of a word. I hope I don’t get metastasized for saying that. =) (No Homo)

Anyway hope its k with you Christian for creating this thread cause I felt you deserve some praise and its hard to do that when viewer comments are disabled - why did they remove that btw?

Anyway…

Absolutely one of my favorite articles written on TNation! Its something I was just mulling over actually these past months. Great minds think alike =) Or more than one mind may come upon the same thought (Recently reading Tim Ferriss book and one thing stuck out is “If you are insecure, guess what? rest of the world is too. don’t overestimate competition and don’t underestimate yourself.”) Cause it really is a double edged sword. And you said exactly everything I thought. (nice to know I can have similar thoughts to someone like yo self!) All ass kissing aside. Again as saying it really is double edged sword. You train your ass off and you may find that ass not as impressive as maybe the first time you noticed gains. You reach point of diminishing returns very quick.

Quote of yours that really started singing to me was “After a while were so used to our state of fatigue that we see it as our normal state. And even though we might be functioning at 70% of our capacities, we don’t even notice it.” So damn true. I have small story of how I pushed so hard that my friends and roomates thought I had been raped up the ass because I literally could not fully extend both legs. Even with stretching, sauna, all that jazz. (they said this discreetly and my upbringing I had no idea what they meant - they finally had to come out and say it #naive?)

So I walked a little funny for 4 days. Big deal, to me it was worth it. No pain no gain right? Yea thats what I think contributed alot for me at least in to why you need to push till you feel like you can’t walk or get the dry heaves. Its hard to find that balance - at least for me it has, because I love to push it to the extreme. Who doesn’t? Like you said makes you feel like a warrior. Like you belong underneath that bar.

So Christian rather than go on and on about how amazing this piece of literature is. I wanted to have more than just discussion. Kind of hit on ideas of how to avoid this hole. You hit some good points already about natural vs drug assisted and so on.

One I thought be good to hit on is this “no pain no gain” which I think started it all. And bodybuilders like Arnold really cemented it. Pumping iron “Having the guts to go in…have no fear of fainting in the gym, threw up many times…” Again as you said we need to realize that these were drug assisted. So not as taxing for them - so what they say may not apply to us. I can’t tell you how many times a trainer had after frequent visits got in my head that the workout wasn’t successful unless I couldn’t lift my toothbrush the next day.

Another is something I have come up on my own. Wanna know your thoughts and suggestions. (I came up with this after emailing back and forth with really well known online coach - John Romaniello for those interested and JC Dean. I never told either but I think they just knew I was pushing harder than needed every workout) After following this advice of essentially dropping the weight and kind of dialing back a little bit.

It was like you said. I had hard time after a month trying to remember a) what it felt like to push that hard and b) I really didn’t want to work that hard - and normally I would be loving every rep instead I was having hard time focusing being not used to that mitigation. I don’t know why it makes perfect sense - you party too hard at night/over-exert yourself then you definitely gonna feel some repercussion - always catches up with you - Life all about balance.

So I said okay I each lift I will rate it on three numbers.
1 being really easy
2 being challenging and close to failure but still withing that sweet spot and a
3 where over exerted myself where pushed to failure on set where I didn’t want to go to failure on that set

So Christian what do you think? Is this good method to counter falling in that hole of either not doing enough or just doing too much possibly hindering progress? Its very hard for people like us that push to extreme to find that balance and have the self control and discipline to dial it back (I actually think it take more discipline than having guts as Arnold puts it to go in there balls to the wall)

Finally how do you avoid this chasm? I mean you pointed out training and such but lets say you don’t have intention to go to failure that you want to leave one rep in the whole or maybe even two. How do you control this urge to push harder and what are some methods that have helped you? You may have to think back cause obviously your a vet when it comes to this, you can prolly at this point think about a muscle and it will gain size. ha ha but in all seriousness really like to know how you dealt with this demon.

This article by you also opens my eyes about how you have in your very fine gym explained - Chase performance, never chase fatigue. Never have truer words been given more meaning I think.

Wait… So you’re trainig with ct now?

[quote]-Sigil- wrote:
Wait… So you’re trainig with ct now?[/quote]

Not that I know of