Setting goals is a great way to motivate your self to make progress, however, as with everything; there is a right way and a WRONG way to go about it.

Say for example, you are one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet (and maybe just maybe your pet elephants big toe was on the scale).

Plus your arms are only eleven inches.

Now, of course, you want to be two hundred and fifty pounds ripped-to-the-bone with twenty-two inch arms.

Plus you wanted it yesterday.

As lofty of a goal as the above is, a better way to go about making progress, is to focus on mini (or short term) goals.

For example in instead of saying I want to gain thirty pounds in six weeks.

Say, I am going to gain a half pound to one pound of bodyweight per week.

I know the later does not sound like much, but if you slowly but surely gain weight (good solid weight) every week or every-other-week, you will over time reach your main goal of putting on thirty pounds.

Same goes for losing weight, if you want to lose thirty pounds by next summer, break it up into mini goals.

For example, tell yourself I am going to walk an extra three miles this week.

When you accomplish that goal set another, like I am going to walk more hills this week.

Little, by little as you achieve your mini goals you will as a result, be achieving your main goal as well.

CONCLUSION

Goal setting is a great way to achieve whatever it is you want, be it a better body, more money, or a better job.

However, looking at a goal that may take you a year or more to achieve can really be hard to handle.

But by breaking your main goal up into a set of easier to reach (say week long mini goals) not only will you have something to strive for every week—you will slowly but surely be getting closer and closer to achieving your main goal.

One last point—

Don’t get so caught up in achieving your goal—that you forget to enjoy the journey.

Until Next Time

STAY FOCUSED

I’ve always trained my abs at first it was the very basic crunches and reverse crunches and it has evolved over the years, but I’ve always added in some ab work at the end of most workouts.

But as with anything, you keep reading and studying and you come to different conclusions than you had before.

I now realize that if you squat and dead lift your abs probably get enough work.

But does that mean I have given up training my abs—no way.

I know that it is probably just me, but I always feel better knowing that I did some ab work.

My favorite is steep incline sit ups done on a slant board.

However if you really haven’t done much ab work I would start with planks and then work up from there.

To do planks, position yourself like you were going to do a standard push-up except put all of your weight on your forearms.

Now you must keep your back flat as you don’t want your but sticking up in the air.

It sounds easy I know—but take this exercises seriously and work up to being able to hold a solid plank for a good two minutes before advancing onto harder exercise.

SOME POINTS

Of course, to be in total shape you need to incorporate some form of weight training and cardio into your routine.

A note on cardio—I don’t care what the expert’s say—the only cardio worth doing is one that you will do on a regular basis.

So if like walking—go for brisk walks—but if you’d much rather play a hard game of tennis go for it—you will only see results if you do it on a regular basis.

Also, I know what people say, but to me doing some form of ab work helps to lean out the waist faster than not doing any.

CONCLUSION

I know my abs are getting worked during my bodybuilding workout but I don’t care I still like the idea of doing some ab work at the end of my workout.

Give this approach a try as well—you may find like I do that it is the ideal way to end a good workout.

Until Next Time

EVERYTHING IN MODERATION

Every once-in-a-while it is fun to think back to the good-old-days—those days when we were young and had not a care-in-the-world.

Summer vacation would roll around and we would spend our days playing football, baseball—just about anything that involved running around.

Of course, a lot of my time was spent flipping through the latest copy of whatever muscle magazine I could get my hands on.

CRAZY TIMES

I remember reading about the one-hundreds system, if memory serves, you picked a weight and I did one hundred reps with it, taking a couple of short pauses along the way.

Well…

I couldn’t just do one-hundred reps, now could I, no I went crazy, for some reason at this point the barbell upright row was my exercise of choice, and did something like three hundred reps, non stop!

I was sore for three days!

I’ve talked about this one before but—it is so crazy that I will repeat it.

I had been reading about negative only work and how effective it was, and like any young man I was obsessed with building big arms.

So one day I decided I was going to do negative only curls, I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Finally, I had the answer—using an old chest expander and chair and one of those doorway chin-up bars, you know the kind you wedged in between the doorway, I managed to rig up a method of doing negative only curls.

I mean it was seriously stupid to be doing them that way, but what a pump I got in my biceps.

It was unreal.

SOME COMMENTS

Whenever I read Dave Draper’s articles that they publish in Ironman Magazine or read the emails he sends I cannot help but think that somewhere along the line, something was lost.

That with all of the fancy equipment and scientific advancements we may have forgotten the simple joys of lifting—I cannot describe it as well as Mr. Draper does—but that maybe we have put too much of an importance on knowing everything—instead of as we did and Mr. Draper did—and I am sure thousands of his contemporaries did—we just lifted and strained and sweated—

Maybe not knowing exactly what we were doing, but we grew and learned and had fun in challenging ourselves to do one rep better than we did yesterday.

Sure we were over trained—but who knew a word like that even existed back then—but it didn’t matter—

All we wanted was the challenge, that one final rep, feeling the pump grow with each passing set—and best of all—

Knowing we were free to do it all again tomorrow.

..The Memories.

Until Next Time

KEEP WORKING

I will admit that I’ve fallen into the trap of believing that training heavy is the only way to grow—when in fact it is only one of many.

However, one technique that I like to breakout especially when I am short on training time is the 10×10 method.

Yes, that is correct, this style of training requires you to do ten sets of a particular exercise for ten reps per set—for a total of one hundred reps—that is if you can make it.

Oh yea, did I forget to mention that you only get thirty seconds of rest between sets?

This method of muscle building has been around for a long time—and for good reason—it works.

And there are a multitude of reasons for WHY it works—but to me there is one that is not talked about much.

The fact that you are doing a ton of work in a very short period of time.

Which will, chances are, result in a nice growth effect.

SOME POINTS

If you have never trained using this technique before you’d do good to stat off using a weight that ends of being too easy—meaning you were able to finish all ten sets getting ten reps per set.

If this happens to you, simply add some weight for the next workout.

Also, if you currently do three exercises per body part do NOT try using this technique for all three exercises—that would be WAY over-the-top.

Simply pick one of the exercises and go at it, and be honest with yourself when you are done—if you feel wiped out—end the workout right there—trust me you will be feeling sore the next day

Another way to use this idea is to do the 10×10 method for a particular body part that is not responding—this technique will almost certainly shock the muscle into new growth.

Lastly—when you see new growth—do not get overly excited and stick with this method for months and months.

You’d do better to use this for a four to six week cycle and then switch back to your normal style of training.

CONCLUSION

When you start of your workout with this technique you might think—this is too easy—but trust me as you work your way through set after set—it will begin to take effect—

By the end, as you try and grind out those last few reps—the pain will be serious—as will the pump—

But it will all be worth it—as you see your muscle respond with new growth.

Until Next Time

DON’T QUIT

I must admit that I find it kind of funny when I read the muscle mags today.

Not because they do not give good info, no, because they do in fact, they give tons of great information.

What I find funny is when the current crop of today’s top professional bodybuilders and top amateur bodybuilders talk about using free weights.

It is almost like it is some kind of revelation or something.

That is why I titled this post what I did, because back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies bodybuilders did not have all of the fancy equipment they have now, but that was O.K. because they all knew what worked.

Hard work on the basics, like bent over rows, squats, and dead lifts.

Then we got distracted by the fancy machines and the high carb diets and got away from what always works—hard work on the basics and plenty of protein.

And now it seems that the new breed of bodybuilder is finding out what so many already knew back then—if you want to improve your back—train it hard and heavy (relatively speaking of course) with the basics like chins/pull-ups, dead lifts, and all forms of rowing and it cannot help but improve.

Of course, the same goes for just about any body part.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against machines because they have their place, however, they should be used as more of a finisher than a main exercise.

I guess it is true what they say—the more things change the more they stay the same.

TRAIN HARD!