Many people in the gym fail to train hard enough. Way too often we lifters underestimate the true effort and capacity to grow. Rather than working harder with less, we simply add more sets to our workouts. But the only way you're really going to grow is with effort.
For years I struggled to get this right. I still struggle. Effort is not something that comes easily to older lifters who are always worrying about injuring themselves. But the fact remains that if you want to see greater muscle growth from your workouts, you are going to have to push harder. I can say for myself that it's my desire not just to get as big as possible or to have a generally "aesthetic" look, but to keep striving for improvement in my overall health and fitness to the glory of God. I realize it's human nature to never be fully satisfied with your progress, but the way to balance that out is to give yourself credit for the progress you're making along the way and to recognize the simple fact that if you train hard and consistently, keep your calories under control, and maintain a healthy body fat level, you're already ahead of 95 percent of the population as far as health and fitness is concerned.
The question I keep asking myself is, "Am I training hard enough to build muscle at my full God-given potential?" For years I hugely overlooked the importance of training intensity. The bottom line is that muscle growth is an adaptive response to stress, so if you're not performing your sets close enough to failure your body doesn't have any real incentive to put on new muscle mass. So with this in mind, going forward I will be committing myself to a single training program with the same exercises in the same basic order on the same days while practicing to get really good at those specific lifts in terms of form and technique. I will also focus on taking the majority of my sets to about 1-2 reps short of absolute muscular failure. That level of intensity should be high enough to trigger a significant muscle building response but also low enough to prevent injuries and overtraining.
Muscle growth doesn't happen overnight. Neither does, say, learning to read New Testament Greek. If you're going to fully commit to your bodybuilding goals (or your academic goals for that matter), you really have to harness your self-discipline, which, thankfully, is a fruit of the Spirit.
Thank you for stopping by!