MATT, I’M LEAVING YOU!

Unfortunately, these words were all too familiar to me as youngster when I was playing the dating game; and luckily these words were not uttered to me by my good lady wife. But, unfortunately these words did come from a client of mine.

I’d been training this guy for just over a year and he’d made impressive improvements. Really impressive (see how I’m repeating a word from the end of the previous sentence in a very Trump-esque manner? Heck it worked for him it might work for me). This guy had lost considerable amounts of body fat, gained lots of strength and looked significantly more muscular. He’d also improved his cardiovascular fitness and flexibility to boot.

He decided it was time to leave because his progressed had slowed. Not stopped or even stagnated just merely slowed. He was insistent that his progress should continue unabated at the same rate as when he first began training. 

I tried in vain to explain to him that this was not possible but he was having none of it. So just like your average Angelina Jolie marriage we went our separate ways!

Now, if you’ll allow me a moment of indulgence, I’d like to share with you what I attempted to explain to him before we split.

NEWBIE GAINS...
When you begin a training for the first time, you make phenomenal improvements. Every session you lift heavier and heavier weights. You feel like Superman. Enthused with your progress you get the old calculator out and work out that if you continue along this path you’ll be on world’s strongest man come Christmas.

In preparation, you go out and buy a load of ‘Gold’s Gym’ vests, and even consider shaving your hair and getting a couple of tattoos. You’re cruising along in the fast lane of the hypertrophy highway packing on the muscle quicker than a Jamaican sprinter fails a drugs test, and then what happens?

Suddenly your progress slows and continues to slow. Soon your desires to be a strong man are quashed until eventually you settle on the more realistic and attainable goal of being the most muscular guy in the office!

OH, WHAT’S OCCURING… (as ‘Nessa would say)
You’ve been experiencing newbie gains, which are more pronounced if you truly are, as the Yanks would say, a rookie. (Sometimes, experienced weight lifters can get a similar, but not as conspicuous  an effect if they switch to a new training regime. This is known as ‘novelty effect’).

Whether you’re riding the larger ‘newbie gains’ wave or the slightly less impressive ‘novelty effect’ wave, one thing is for sure: no one can tell you, with certainty, how long it’ll last. Some people will continue improving at great rates for months on end, for others it may be just weeks.

One thing, however, is for certain, your progress will slow with time as you approach your genetic ceiling!

GENETIC CEILING...
You’re genetic ceiling is the point at which genetically you can’t make any further improvements. The closer you get to this, the slower your progress is. Think of it as being on one of those inflatable bungee run thingamajigs. At the start, as you begin running you make great progress but as you get closer to the end your progress slows considerably or even comes to a halt as the resistance on the bungee cord increases!

Take elite, Olympic weight lifters for example who are hovering around their genetic ceiling. Year on year, some of them would be ecstatic with a 1-2% improvement in performance as this could well lead to winning gold. For us mere mortals, nowhere near our genetic ceilings, investing a years’ worth of training to improve by 1-2% would seem very futile!

TAKE HOME MESSAGE…

In this unpredictable life we lead, we can seek solace from a few certainties. One is death, everyone will die (excluding ‘the immortal Hulk Hogan’ of course). Another is that your drunken uncle will make a tit of himself at your next family wedding.  And the final one is that when training for any length of time, your rate of progress will slow. If it didn’t there’d be loads of people strolling around looking ridiculously more muscular than your average steroid abuser already does!

It’s just one of those things we must accept. It’s a bit like watching Good Morning Britain. Most of us only tune-in to get a glimpse of the rather attractive Susannah Reid or the dashingly handsome Ben Sheppard, or even the other lady who was crap on ‘Strictly’, but we must accept that in the process we’ll probably have to put up with getting a glimpse of Piers Morgan too, it’s just one of those things!

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TO BOOK YOUR FREE TRIAL PERSONAL TRAINING SESSION, OR TO BOOK A PLACE AT MY BOOT CAMP CLASS, PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH.

 matt@mlrpt.co.uk                 www.mlrpt.co.uk                          07939316401 www.twitter.com/mlrpt      www.facebook.com/mlrpt        www.twitter.com/mlrpt

P.S. If you enjoyed reading this please click on the icons below and share with your friends!