I’m 51 Now. Here’s My Biggest Muscle Building Mistakes I’ve Made!
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If I could go back 30 years and show this kid the video I’m about to show you here today, I would. The point is I’ve made some muscle-building mistakes along the way both in the kitchen and in the gym. And what I want to do here is share with you my 16 biggest to prevent you from making them as well. And so we kick this off with maybe one of the more embarrassing admissions, but that’s what this video is about. I actually opened up my magazines as a kid and I thought that I’d look like this, like Shawn Ray, just by simply doing what he was doing.
And I kind of wasted a whole hell of a lot of time in the process. And if I only knew that it wasn’t just the routine of 36 to 40 sets of chest that was creating this physique, I probably could have been doing something a lot more productive with my time, like a lot less junk volume that would have led to a lot better results. And not just that, a lot less of the body breakdown that would come along with trying to copy these routines. That led to some of the other mistakes going to reveal to you next. Mistake number two is not realizing soon enough that not all oats were created equally.
You see, cuz as a kid, I ate a lot of these, thinking I was doing something healthy. Except the problem with that is along with my two servings, cuz one was never enough, came 28 g of sugar. And if I look at the sugar in this, there’s zero. And we know that when we’re trying to build muscle, what we eat is going to dictate the results that we get. And loading your body up with sugar, again, even at an early age, is a big mistake.
Know the difference. This here is about 10 g shy of a can of soda. Not likely what you’re looking for when you’re trying to build muscle. So the next regret of mine was actually one that became fully apparent to me once I became a physical therapist. And that is undervaluing correctives in terms of their ability to help us build muscle.
Because they seem like the little exercises. You know, the ones that you don’t really want to do. But the real power of corrective exercises, especially when you do them consistently, is that they plug those leaks, right? They fill in the gaps that allow the bigger muscles, the ones that get more of the attention, to actually do their job better. So you can improve your strength if you do correctives.
You can improve your aesthetics if you do correctives. Even just doing external rotation can actually improve the appearance of the chest by putting your shoulders back in a better posture. There’s so many benefits that come from corrective exercises that elevates them to equal importance in your workouts. And again, I wish I paid more attention to it a lot earlier age cuz I don’t think I would have been broken down at the age I was either. These things will work and they’ll work really well.
Regret number four has to do with not knowing the value of the unshrug when it comes to building a bigger chest. Now, let’s face it. I never had the greatest chest and still don’t to this day, but I think a lot of it goes back to the fact that every single chest exercise I performed was dominated by a shrug during it. What I’m telling you is it’s very easy to consciously get rid of that by simply unshrugging your shoulders and being aware of that on every chest exercise. On a bench press, if you take your shoulders and you forcefully bring them down before you initiate the exercise, it does something very important.
It puts the shoulders back and it puts the chest at the first line of defense. In other words, the chest will be the muscle that gets preferably recruited at the bottom of every single bench press making it more productive for its gains. I could do this on a crossover and I could do this on a dip. Literally on every single chest exercise and the gains that you see because of the better recruitment that you get is noticeable and it’s definitely something you want to make sure that you’re not doing as well because if you are, it could be the very reason why you don’t see the chest gains that you’re after. By the way, when it comes to building big biceps, I think I’ve learned a few things along the way.
As a matter of fact, I put together all of my greatest bicep training tips into something I call my bicep training black book and I want you to have it. Head over to athleanx. com/blackbook, you can grab your copy completely for free. Again, my thank you to you. Now, let’s get back to this video.
Mistake number five was actually being much too rigid with how I ate and I paid the price for it. And it wasn’t until actually even as late as my New York Mets days that I became more flexible or slightly thereafter. We used to board the plane for let’s say a 12-game road trip out west and be handed an envelope just like this with nothing but $100 bills and cash in it, which was part of our daily stipend as our meal money. Well, a lot of the guys actually just keep that money and add it to their salary at the end of the year. I would have pretty much nothing left over because I was spending mine on making sure I could eat a very particular way.
So, I’d go out to LA and I actually sit down in the restaurant. They would sell eggs for about 18 bucks or so for two eggs. I said, “Can I just get some egg whites? ” And they want to know, “Well, how many do you like? ” I’m like, “I I usually eat six egg whites.
” They’d come back and bill me 48 for the six egg whites. And I would actually pay it because I was so obsessed with the idea that maybe not eating my egg whites in the morning would cost me either in terms of a a percentage or two of body fat or not being able to look a certain way. So, I became a lot less rigid and more flexible after when I actually started living at home and my wife opened up my horizons to other foods. And what happened? I actually got more muscle mass.
I actually stayed just as lean and I think I’m much better off for it. So, this next one is another one that’s a little bit embarrassing because it reveals maybe how much I disliked the gym early on in my training, right? And it’s certainly how I disliked the discomfort of training. Because I shied away from the discomfort of contraction when I probably should have been reveling in its ability to actually create muscle growth. So, let me explain a little bit.
What I talk about all the time, moving a weight through space. I talk about not just lifting it up and down, but actually contracting it through space. And with that is going to come likely a lot of discomfort, maybe even a feeling of cramping. I discussed this on the Andrew Huberman podcast a few months back. That’s actually a great thing.
You should be seeking out a contraction discomfort, almost a cramping type feel because it helps to build my muscle connection. You can almost tell whether or not you’ve got a good ability to grow a muscle if you have that discomfort capability when you contract it. You have to be able to get that muscle to a point of discomfort and not shy away from it, but revel in it even if it limits the number of repetitions that you can perform. The contraction is key in realizing this more quickly than I did is going to serve you well. I’ve shared some pretty big regrets so far, but this may be one of my biggest of all time.
And that is not realizing that the most important supplement that I could actually put in my body is right here. Just regular water. And for so many years, I literally just used thirst as the determinant factor of whether or not I should be taking a drink. So, what I do now, and I’ve learned my lesson big time, is I start my day every single day. I’ve covered this tip with you before, with two bottles of water sitting right next to my sink in the morning.
I have to chug them down first thing when I wake up. And the good news is it kind of ki