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​You’ll most definitely make a lot of wrong turns along the way, and I’m guessing unless you’re into hourly meditation, you’re going to lose your mind with frustration.

THAT is what training without a program, thinking you can just make things up as you go, is like.

​And here is why you should NEVER do that:

1.   Clarity - how much time do you waste in the gym when you walk in there without knowing what you’re doing? 2 minutes? 10 minutes? Now, add that up over the course of a year, and you’ve just cost yourself 10 or 20 training sessions. Having a program simplifies this process and gives you a very simple to do list, to tick off every time you set foot in the gym. Get in, get the job done and get on with your life.

2.   Too much variety. Muscles don’t grow by being shocked - ‘I’ve got to shock the muscle’ - no you DON’T. Muscles respond to an increase in training stimulus over time - you literally just have to make them work harder and harder so they continue to get bigger and stronger. How do you expect to do that if you’re always doing different exercises? You literally can’t.

3.   No way to track. You can’t control what you don’t measure. But you also can’t convert the performance from one exercise into another. That means there’s no possible way of knowing if the Incline Bench Press you did this week was a progression on the Flat Bench Press you did last week - because they’re different exercises, and you’re trying to compare apples and oranges.

4.   Skill. Building muscle and strength has a large dependence on your ability to perform a skill and build up the neurological feedback to your body of that given skill. In this instance, the skill is the exercise itself. If your goal is to build muscle, you first have to learn and acquire the ability to best perform an exercise. Each week, you will notice your ability to increase the given load of that exercise. This adaptation is more so the building up of neurological feedback and memory than it is of you building new muscle tissue. Over time with enough overload, you will create a stimulus to merit the need for new muscle tissue (muscle growth). Sticking with an exercise longer can lend to this process happening more efficiently. If you are constantly switching exercises, you will constantly be restarting this process of adaptation to learning a new skill or exercise.

It doesn’t matter how advanced a lifter you are, you do not ‘know’ your body well enough to ‘wing it’ in the gym. You cannot possibly remember everything you did in one session without recording it which means you’ll have no idea what to do next time, and there’s next to no chance of making optimal strength progression if you aren’t performing similar exercise over time.

So, where should you start if you don’t currently have a program to follow

Here’s a four step guide to creating your own program:

1.   Establish the number of training days you can comfortably commit to over time. Try to remove emotion from the equation here - you might be feeling motivated right now, but if you can’t see yourself comfortably maintaining the commitment, it’s too much. You can always add in an extra day later.

2.   Pick the exercises you’re going to use in your program. If you can, try and make sure you’re hitting each muscle group twice per week, even if you can only do so by performing one or two exercises for a muscle on any given day. I’ll run through more on this next week.

3.   Go lift. Follow your program. If you can, try to make sure most of the sets you’re doing are going all the way to or somewhere near muscular failure, ideally in the 6-12 rep range.

4.   Log every set you do on a spreadsheet, so that the next time you do that session, you can look back on your performance from the previous session and use it as a benchmark.

Following this sequence of events will virtually GUARANTEE that you make more progress in the gym than prior to following a program, as well as cutting down on time spent just ‘figuring out what to do’ when you get to the gym.

Alternatively, you can grab a copy of my Strength Training Templates which do all of the above for you.

They give you a clear plan of attack, an opportunity to get better at the exercises you’re performing over time and yes - they will serve as a map for you to get from where you are right now, to making far more impressive gains.

If you want a copy, you can grab one from right inside my Facebook Group.

Alongside a TONNE of other free shit I've put together to make your life super easy & worry-free.

Request access >>> RIGHT HERE <<< & grab it from the recent post once you're in.

Enjoy

- N