Biggest Muscle Building Mistake (FIXED!)

When it comes to building muscle, you have to make sure that you avoid making these muscle gaining mistakes and stop thinking that steroids are the end all be all of your pursuit. Now, many think that nutrition and specific exercises are the key to building new muscle, and of course I’m one of them.

What’s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere athleanx. com. Maybe  you’re not building muscle right now or you’re not building it fast enough. And guys, I can relate. Where I was never the biggest guy in the gym, I will never be the biggest guy in the gym.

I think  I have the answers as to why you’re not right now. And they actually, ironically, can all be dealt  with in captured in one series of clips. Are you ready? Let’s watch them together. Here is just a bench press, I’m going to perform it three different times.

Okay, here’s  the first one here. Just doing a bench press. Okay. Racking it. Putting it back.

Done. The next  set here, I’m doing a bench press. Okay. And I get to the end here a rack it and I’m done. And the  third clip here, I think I’m doing a bench press.

It kind of looks like a bench press. I do get  it to the end of the rep here, and I rack it and I’m done. Okay. Now again, no judgment yet. Let’s  move on to one more exercise, a bicep curl, one of my favorites, okay, I admit.

We’re doing a bicep  curl here. A couple nice reps, finish it out and I’m done. Okay. Next effort here. I lift it up a  little tougher, put it back down and I’m done.

And then the last set again. Something that resembles  kind of like a curl, sort of, you know, look, I’ve done this too, I know I have, I’m done. So now, guys, the thing that’s in common about all of these is effort, I mentioned the word,  it’s effort. Even though one becomes a complete bastardization of what the exercise was  intended to be, it’s all about effort. Everything that you do in terms of getting gains  in the gym, because there’s things that we can do outside the gym.

But in the gym, we’re talking  about hypertrophy, muscle gains here. We’re not talking about strength; we’re talking about just  muscle hypertrophy gains in your training right now can be boiled down to effort. And  that’s what brings me to this video. And this is why I kind of want to have this  personal talk, because a lot of people have been talking about this ad nauseum right now about  what your effort is supposed to look like. There’s a magic effort level, supposedly, that’s going  to deliver gains, and anything less than or above that is not going to.

To the point where you  might even be confused, because you’ve heard it defined so many different ways that you don’t even  know what it means anymore. I can tell you this, there are specific ways we can make this feel easy  to understand. Okay. The first mistake, though, is hiding behind science. And you guys know  that I’m a big advocate for science.

I believe in science. I like to apply it to everything  that we do. However, things like RPE, which is a method of communicating effort in training,  can become something that’s going to hold you back from your own gains because you’re hiding behind  the terminology Rate of Perceived Exertion. Or, as I like to say, really poor excuse. Because  when it’s beginners that like to apply RPE to their training, they’re hiding behind the fact  that they don’t want to go towards their max exertion levels.

So, they push it an RPE six  or an RPE seven, which means they’re leaving three in the tank or four in the tank. Likely  you are not likely you can double that number, right? You’re not leaving three in the tank. You’re probably leaving five in the tank. If you’re a beginner and you’re utilizing RPE, you  don’t have enough experience to understand what it’s supposed to feel like.

You don’t know what  true max exertion is supposed to feel like. Now, I can appreciate the intent of RPE. I  love it as a mechanism for advanced trainees to employ in their training. Because it provides that  subjective variation that we bring to the gym with us on a day in and day out basis. Maybe we can’t  hit 90% of our warm rep max every single time we go in or whenever it’s programed to do so.

But on  a given day, we can give our best effort we can, we can equalize those efforts by having a  language that doesn’t force an RPE eight is an RPE eight. That being said, most of  us aren’t there in our training yet, we’re not at that point where we can benefit from  that. So, don’t hide behind the science as a way for you to hold back in your effort. Because that  first clip here that you’re seeing is really what we would call one of those RPE sevens. And by the way, before I even turn the page on that, there’s a lot of variation in how people  define RPE.

Some people will say that RPE 10 is just your maximum effort grinding through a  repetition. Others will say that your RPE 10 is your maximum effort to get the repetition done,  but can be done however you do it to get it to the top. In other words, you can bastardize that rep  like I showed you before. If this here is a 10, then this is a nine because this is a good  repetition though it’s a grinder. It’s done in good form, but it’s a grinder.

Well, that’s  a nine. Well then, an eight would be just a little bit less than that. All of them are hard. There’s no instance here where the effort isn’t hard. If you want to make changes, you have to  challenge yourself.

And it means that everything you do must be hard to some extent. Not that it  gets to the point where your form breaks down, not to the point where you start to look like  you’re not even doing the exercise anymore. But you still have to be putting in effort. If it  looks like you’re whistling zip-a-dee-doo-dah. [video clip] You’ll be whistling  zip-a-dee-doo-dah out of your assholes.

You’re not training hard enough. Which brings me to these other points, the things that are all encompassed in those  clips that are going to help you to make sure you get this right every single time. Like, do  you go into the gym and every time you train, you’re doing all your favorites. I talked about  this before, you shouldn’t be doing all of your favorites. This is not a greatest hits album that  you’re putting together here, guys.

You should be looking for exercises that challenge you, right? It’s not always about doing — the favorites mean that you’re good at them. Let’s start doing some  of the things that you’re not so comfortable with and get better at those things. Which leads me to the third thing, and that is the absence of nerves. At some point  you should have nerves before you go train.

See, as an athlete, when I used to compete, I was  scared. Before I would step on the field, I was nervous. I wasn’t nervous about getting ready  to actually go play. I wanted to play. I couldn’t wait until the whistle so I could start playing.

But I was nervous. I was nervous about screwing up. I was nervous about missing a tackle, about  costing our team the game. I was nervous about the outcome. What if we lost?

I’m going to have to  deal with that. Well, it happens here in the gym, too. When you’re serious about your training you  should be nervous about the lift you’re about to perform. Not all the time, but in some instances,  because what that means is that there’s you care about it, number one, care about it enough to give  your best effort and actually have nerves. But secondly, you care about missing the lift.

Not  for the next day or two or a week, like it’s going to ruin you, but it should mentally, you know, put  you back a little bit where you’re disappointed that you didn’t get the lift, that you were  prepared, or you thought you were physically prepared to do so. There should be nerves because  it means that you care, and if they’re not there, then you’re not training hard enough. Which brings me to another point. That ugly face. No, no, no, no, not, not this one.

No, no,  that’s just that’s a