You know more than you think!

Training programs and systems are all either based on science or the unrepeatable, voodoo result of one unusual person. Clearly science is the better way to go. But virtually every scientifically based program gets bogged down justifying itself on the supposed physiological processes occurring inside your body; processes that you will never, ever see, measure, prove or affect; processes that take care of themselves!!!

Understanding how your body works is all very well and good; but its mostly irrelevant to how you should train. Because whatever does or doesnt apparently occur within your body, everybody already knows what outcomes matter and, mostly, how to achieve them. Let me illustrate:
- if you can't lift any more weight by the end of a year of weight training then your training failed outright. You KNOW this! It doesnt matter how many amino-acids, pre and post workout shakes, nitric oxide boosters or testosterone boosters you took; it doesnt matter how good your form was; how big you pumped, how sore you got or how much you sweated. You will look exactly the same because you are exactly the same. If you'd changed you would be able to lift more!
- if you can bench press, squat and deadlift 100kg more at the end of a year of training then you KNOW you will look substantially more muscular than you are now.
- if you were taught bad exercise technique, never take a supplement, train only 1 day per fortnight, don't sweat and don't get a pump and yet somehow you still increase your bench, squat and deadlift by 100kg (in the same bad form) you will still look substantially more muscular than you are now.

So you KNOW that the ONLY thing that actually matters when it comes to weight training is the outcome of lifting more weight! Any counter-argument to that point is only saying that NOT lifting more is a valid alternative and you KNOW that is FALSE!!!

You even KNOW that slow, strict 'form' isnt THAT important; especially because you KNOW you can never make any strength gains lifting super slow and super strict. And you know that your supplements arent going to make you grow. You KNOW its about lifting weight!

So, lets say you find yourself in an East-Asian prison, given a gym and an infinite supply of food and told you would be released as soon as you could bench, squat and deadlift 100kg more than you can now, WOULD YOU TRAIN THE WAY YOU DO NOW?

Nobody I've posed this question to has answered 'yes'. Because everybody knows that their training isnt directed towards what matters: LIFTING HEAVIER WEIGHTS!!!!

So you KNOW what you need to achieve in the gym and you KNOW what you're doing wont achieve that. So what ARE you doing?

If you want to know the solution, just start with what else you KNOW. Ask questions to yourself and work with the answers you KNOW.
- If you want to lift as much as possible, why would you ever do 10 reps and stop if you were capable of more?
- If you want to lift as much as possible, why would you bother with exercises that nobody can lift any weight on? (eg pec deck, leg extensions)
- If you want to be as strong as possible, why aren't you doing heavy deadlifts and squats?
- If you want to be the best you can be, why do you have your mates helping you lift all your weights?
- If you want to look like a healthy, strong, muscle-man or figure-woman, why are you eating like a sparrow and running like a distance runner?
etc etc etc

The point is: trust yourself. You KNOW more than you give yourself credit for and you probably know more about what you need to know than the instructors and scientists that you KNOW are wrong!