It’s a familiar feeling…
You’ve been working your butt off at the gym. Putting in the hours. Watching your diet. Taking the rught supplements. Seeing incremental gains here and there.
But after a while, you begin to feel like you aren’t progressing fast enough. You are not big enough. You are not strong enough. This discouragement leads to your diet slipping. You start missing the occasional session. Until finally every session you have at the gym is the one where you are “getting back into it finally.” It’s a crappy feeling stumbling over and over again, feeling like you are starting over from step 1 every time.
Let’s take a sneaky peek at 5 common reasons that we stumble and fail on our road to getting jacked, and how to avoid them in the future so that you don’t have to read this list for a second time.
FURTHER READING: Workout Motivation: 17 Instant & Proven Ways to Motivate Yourself to Workout
Overhyped Promises and Results Provide for Unrealistic Expectations.
Getting the body of your dreams in 4-6 weeks probably won’t happen. But I guarantee you that with a solid diet and exercise plan in 6 weeks you will look and feel a hell of a lot better than you do right now. Will you look like Arnold, or the dude on the cover of Mens Health? No.
And why should you?
Although a large percentage of us have been duped from one time or another by the overhyped marketing machine that powers the health & fitness industry, we still tend to fall for the latest and greatest “system” that promises to turn us into Mr Olympia overnight.
Focus less on the end result and instead on the day to day steps required to get you there. By focusing on micro-goals you focus on what is important—what you are doing right now, instead of setting yourself up for failure by staring at the horizon that is littered with unrealistic expectations.
Not Sleeping Enough.
There is a motivational speaker who has become popular on YouTube over the past year or so. On mornings when I am not feeling roaring to go, I will load up a couple of his videos to give myself the kickstart I need. One of the things that he says that I do profoundly disagree with is that “sleep is for suckas.”
Apparently he has never tried to be a high performing athlete. A lack of sleep not only causes diminished mental performance, it makes us tempermental and is also absolutely critical for recovery. Note that I said critical and not optional. Sleep is generally one of the first things to go when we come under stress or we encounter heavy workloads. Exactly how much sleep you need is individual, but 7-8 hours is a safe guideline.
You Succumb to An All-or-Nothing Mentality.
I have fallen victim to this mentality myself on numerous occasions. If I slip even a little bit on a diet or workout regimen than the whole thing gets thrown out the window shortly thereafter. Going into a new workout plan or diet knowing and accepting that you are going to slip up once in a while.
You don’t need to make perfect choices, simply good or great ones. Getting it right 90% of the time is a lot better than getting it right 0% of the time.
It’s Not a Lifestyle Change.
People who are chasing after big muscles get a bit of a rap. We are seen as narcisstic bunch, more impressed with keeping our mirrors clean for post-workout flex-downs than anything else.
While this lazily-made stereotype may ring true for some people, the great majority of muscle builders may have gotten into it to look good, but they have kept those physiques because it is a recognized as a lifestyle. Getting jacked isn’t something that is done for a few months, it is a lifestyle choice.
You are Overthinking It.
In today’s day and age this is almost unavoidable. There is so much information out there, and all the different manners with which it is being sent to us, is a new thing in human history. Never before has so much information (and misinformation) been available to so many. With its obvious benefits comes a peculiar side effect – analysis paralysis.
There is so much information out there that it can be completely and utterly overwhelming. Spending two hours a day at a computer trying to figure out which protein is the absolute best will lose to two hours at the gym every time. It’s not a bad thing to simplify the knowledge we are taking in. After all, the fundamentals behind getting jacked haven’t changed since the dawn of time, and they aren’t going to change anytime soon.
