I Wish I Knew This Before Lifting Weights (Pt 2)

I've been lifting weights for over 12 years, and I've coached over 25,000 people with their weightlifting. And if I had to go back in time knowing the lessons that I know now, here's what I would do differently. Lesson number 1, feeling a muscle work is BS. When I first started lifting, I thought the goal was to feel my muscle burn. If my biceps were on fire, I thought it was a good workout. And so that's all I chased in my workout, feeling the pump or making sure I felt the muscle work. I wasn't getting stronger. I was just chasing a feeling. And the worst part, on some workouts I was getting stronger and lifting heavier weight or doing more reps, but I thought that it wasn't a good workout and I wasn't going to see progress because I wasn't feeling my muscle work. And I had a client one time, her name is Sophie. When she was doing Romanian deadlifts, she could never feel her glutes working. So she thought she was doing the exercise wrong. She would keep lifting lighter weight and keep trying to rework her form, all to try and feel her glutes. And that's when I taught her, you don't have to feel a muscle working for the muscle to work. When you're doing a Romanian deadlift, your glutes have to work to get you to the bottom and help you stand back up, whether you feel them or not. And once she understood that, she was able to add more weight, Over the course of the weeks, and she was able to grow her glutes even if she didn't feel them working. Feeling a muscle work isn't the main driver of building muscle. What actually builds muscle is you going close to failure in your exercises. So you really need to push yourself in the sets that you're doing, and you need to try to either lift more weight week over week or do more reps week over week. From you doing that, you might feel a burn in your muscle, But that would be a byproduct of you lifting close to failure and getting stronger. It's not something that you need to shoot for and have a goal to make sure it happens every exercise. Take this backpack as an example. Muscle growth comes from measurable increases. So if you put one book in this backpack and the next week you put another book in the backpack, there is a measurable increase and you will know this is heavier. Whether you feel your shoulders burning when you wear it or not, you know the backpack is heavier, and that's what matters for muscle growth. And by the way, if you want a workout program to follow, click the link in the description of this video. And here's the next big mistake I made. I thought, well, if I should be pushing close to failure, then pushing to failure every set is going to get me more progress. But that actually backfired. Lesson 2: Training to failure every set Backfires. I used to push myself in my workouts until I couldn't do another rep on every set that I did because I thought, well, if I pushed harder, my body had to respond more. But what actually ended up happening was injuries started to pile up. I felt exhausted, run down, and I wasn't getting stronger or building muscle. And one of my clients, Victor, was the same way. Every workout, every exercise he did, this guy pushed himself to absolute failure. And after the first set, He felt okay, but going into the second set and the third set he would do, he wasn't able to keep up the intensity over the course of an entire workout. And not to mention after the workouts, later in the week and over the course of the upcoming weeks, he wasn't able to progressively overload and lift heavier or do more reps because his body wasn't recovering from the amount of stress that he was placing on it. And so what we did was Instead of going to failure every set, we went 1 to 3 reps shy of failure in every set. So get done your set of 10 reps and say you maybe could have done 1 or 2 or 3 more reps max, because this way you will still put enough stress on your body to build muscle. You'll be able to recover from that, and you'll be able to lift heavier weight week over week. Think of it like your phone battery. If you run it all the way down to 0% every single time, the battery wears out faster. But if you plug it in when it's at 20%, the battery lasts longer and it's able to charge quicker. Your muscles are the same way. Don't run them to 0 every single set. Stop with a little bit left in the tank. You'll have more power for the next set, more power for the rest of your workout, and you'll still get the same stimulus without the negative recovery side effects and injury side effects. And if that surprises you, the next lesson will surprise you even more. Lesson number 3, cardio actually helps build muscle. When I first started lifting, I thought cardio was the enemy. I believe if I did too much or I ran or I walked too much, that my muscles would shrink. So I skipped it and I told myself I'd save the energy and calorie burn for lifting. Big mistake because all that made me did was feel tired, out of breath, and I missed out on potential muscle gains. And let me explain why. Once I started to add in a little bit of cardio, which I'll talk about in a second, I noticed that I actually had more endurance in my workout. So let's say I was doing 5 exercises on leg day. By the second or third exercise, I used to get gassed. I used to, Be out of breath, not have energy or fuel for the rest of the workout. And my last 2 exercises would suffer. From adding in cardio, I was able to work on my endurance and my aerobic capacity. That allowed me to then get to the 4th or 5th exercise at the end of my workout. And I was tired, but I could still push myself and have as high of a performance as I needed to. And this helped me see more gains. Because cardio makes your heart and your lungs stronger and can have a bigger capacity to push yourself, so you don't get as fatigued during your weightlifting session. It also improves blood flow, which helps your muscles recover faster. And when you can recover faster, you can lift heavier and build more muscle. And if you do the right cardio, it also helps with your mitochondria. And not to get all sciency on you in this video, but the mitochondria in your cells Mitochondria is the energy in your cells. So it basically allows you to expand how much energy your cells can create. And if you have more energy, that will translate into lifting heavier, pushing yourself harder, and being able to build more muscle. So what kind of cardio should you do? First is your daily steps. Try to shoot for a goal of 8,000 per day. If you work up to 10,000, that's incredible. And the second form of cardio is what we call zone 2 cardio. This is the type of cardio where you can still maintain a conversation and your heart rate doesn't get jacked all the way up and you're out of breath, barely being able to breathe. You want to be able to hold a conversation and maybe you have to breathe a little bit differently, but this is how your cardio should look like. And this could be on the bike, on the treadmill, on the stair stepper, the elliptical, Whatever, but you do it 2 to 4 times a week for 15 to 30 minutes, either after your weightlifting or on rest days. In a visual for you, think of cardio as like a fan in your house. When the fan is on and clean and working well, air flows better throughout the room into every room. Cardio is the same way. It keeps blood moving into your muscles so they can perform better. But if you never run the fan or clean the fan, everything's going to feel stale and gross. The same thing happens to your body without cardio. And speaking of things that make a bigger difference than most people think, the next one is going to hurt some feelings because no powder, no supplement, not even creatine can beat this. Lesson 4, more sleep, deep sleep, is better than creatine or any supplement. When I first started lifting weights, I spent way too much money on supplements. Pre-workout, BCAAs, fat burners, creatine, everything. And I'm not saying that those things can't be helpful, but supplements should be supplementing an already good diet, workout, and lifestyle routine. I was getting 5 or 6 hours of sleep and I thought taking creatine was going to help me build muscle. I was a fool because with the lack of sleep, I was going into my workouts not able to push myself as hard. I had a lot of mental brain fog and fatigue. I always felt sore after my workouts and not recovered, and I thought creatine or BCAAs would fix that. It wasn't until I started to take my sleep ruthlessly serious, not only with the amount that I was sleeping, but more so my pre-bedtime routine, that once I got both those 2 things fixed, I had so much more motivation in my workouts. I lifted so much heavier weight and saw so much more progress. And here's why sleep beats any supplement. Deep sleep is when your body releases growth hormone, and that's when muscle repair happens. It doesn't happen any other time during the day. So the more deep sleep and the better quality deep sleep you can get, the more your muscles repair and grow. Sleep also balances your hunger hormones, which makes it easier to stick to your diet, especially decreasing cravings for junk food, and more sleep equals better energy, better mood, better motivation, and better recovery. So supplements might help 1 to 2%, but sleep helps 50 to 100%. It's not even close. So if you want some easy tips to fix your sleep and skyrocket your gains, stop eating 2 to 3 hours before you go to bed. Not because you're going to get fat if you don't, but because eating close to bedtime disrupts your sleep and decreases your sleep quality, especially your deep sleep, because that's when deep sleep happens the most, is in the beginning of your night of sleep. Make sure the room is blacked out. Get a sleep mask if you have to. Make sure the room is cool, at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit for all of you people who are outside of the US. And with those 3 things, it'll improve your sleep more than I can tell you. Oh, and get the fuck off your phone. Your workouts will skyrocket from there. And if you want to skyrocket your workouts and muscle building progress with a personalized plan built for you and an expert coach to hold you accountable to it, click the link in the description of this video to learn more about our online coaching program. And here's another myth I fell for when starting out. People kept saying, you got to confuse your muscles. Muscles don't get confused. Only people do. Lesson 5, you don't need to confuse your muscles. When I first joined the gym, I thought I had to do a brand new workout every time I went in. Every workout was a new routine. There was no structure because I thought I had to confuse my muscles so that they could continue to grow. But in reality, I was just spinning my wheels, not getting stronger, and not seeing my body transform. We have a client, Meredith, who loved variety. She used to do HIIT bootcamp classes and she would do a different workout every single time. Every workout looked different, but the problem was she wasn't seeing a difference in her body. She felt like she was working super hard in the workouts, but just wasn't seeing any change. This is when we simplified her workout program and had her do the same workouts for 4 to 8 weeks in a row. At first, she thought she was going to be bored, But because she was doing the same exercises, she could actually look back and say, I did 100 pounds on squats in week 1. I want to beat that in week 2. So she would lift 5 more pounds and then the next week 5 more pounds. And she got motivated by seeing she was getting stronger. So not only was she seeing her weight go up and the amount of weight she lifted, but then over the course of the next couple of months, she started to see her body change. She lost fat in her stomach, she built muscles in her arms and legs, and she was finally seeing the progress that she wanted to see. So remember, muscles grow from something called progressive overload, and the simplest way to think about that is you're either doing more weight than the week before or more reps than the week before. Now, some people might say, well, Eric, you can't do that every single week. As you get more advanced, that will be more difficult. But remember, even if you did an extra 2.5 pounds on the bar for one set than what you did last week, that's still an improvement. Even if you did one more rep than what you did last week on just one set, that is still an improvement, and that's progressive overload. If you keep changing moves all the time, you can't track your progress. So keep the same workouts for 4 to 8 weeks in a row, and then you can switch them up. You don't need to confuse your muscles. You need to teach them and put the proper stress on them So they know they're forced to grow. And while we're talking about not needing to confuse your muscles, here's something else most people need to hear. Building a transformation in your body isn't going to take weeks, and it's not even going to take months because lesson number 6, progress takes years, not months, especially for advanced lifters. When I first started, I thought I'd look like the people on magazine covers or now Social media. Within a couple of months, as long as I worked hard, as long as I ate my diet correctly, I thought the muscles would just start to appear. And that was a mistake— expecting fast results. Now, for beginners, you will see changes quicker, but as you get more advanced, the slower that progress happens because your body is more used to what you are doing and it becomes harder to make more progress. I know, it kind of sucks. But that is normal. One of my clients, Ryan, had been lifting weight for years before he started working with me. He was kind of frustrated though because he wasn't seeing his body change much anymore, and it was harder for him to add more weight or do more reps in his workouts. And that's where I had to explain to him, the more advanced you get, the more these small wins are actually huge wins. That will add up to the changes that we want to see. And over the next year working with me, he added about 50 pounds to his bench press, lost fat, and was able to build more muscle definition, which may not seem like a ton, but for somebody who's already been lifting for a while, that is incredible progress. So if you're a beginner, just be thankful that you're going to see progress quicker in the beginning, and you can expect that. But you also need to As you get to the more intermediate level, the gains start to slow down. They'll still be consistent, but not like what they were before. And as you get to the advanced stage, gains are measured in years, not weeks. But the lesson is, don't quit when things slow down. That's why you're doing this for the long game. And while we're talking about long-term progress, here's a myth that never seems to die. You've probably heard people just say they just want to tone up, but the truth is toning doesn't even exist. Lesson 7, toning is a myth. When I first started coaching people, they would tell me, Eric, I don't want to get big and bulky. I just want to tone my muscles. And I understood what they are saying, but most people think it's like, I'm going to get the pink dumbbells or the lightweight and just do 20 reps of an exercise and tone my muscle. And they would avoid heavy weight, pushing themselves close to failure, progressive overload, which is a huge mistake because there's no such thing as toning a muscle. You just build a muscle. And from you building that muscle and losing some body fat, your muscles will start to show. One of my clients, Emily, told me that she never wanted to bulk up. She only wanted to tone her arms. And so for the longest time she avoided lifting heavy weights, with bicep curls or side lateral raises or chest press or lat pulldowns. And she would do low weight for high reps. But after a couple of months of her doing that, she didn't see her body change. And so when she joined and trusted our coaching process, we started her on a proper strength training program, telling her exactly what exercises to do, how much weight she should lift, how many reps to do, everything. And now she was lifting heavier, pushing herself closer to failure and started to see the definition in her arms. And people started to be like, Emily, oh my God, you look so toned. The reality, she just actually started to build muscle. Muscles don't change in shape. They either grow or shrink. That toned look comes from more muscle mass and less body fat. Lifting weights for a burn, like we talked about earlier, won't magically shape or tone your muscles. Heavy progressive overload lifting will build your muscle and your nutrition will take care of your fat loss. And if you need a free calorie calculator to show you exactly how many calories you should be eating per day, click the link in the description of this video. So now you know that toning is actually building muscle and losing fat. Here's the part nobody wants to hear. The way you grow isn't by just adding more weight or adding more workouts. It's actually by taking days off. Lesson 8, rest days are necessary, not optional. When I first started lifting, I'll be honest, I thought rest days were for lazy people. I worked out 7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. And if I did take a day off, I felt guilty. I felt like I was losing all my progress and I felt smaller that day, like my muscles had shrunk. But eventually what ended up happening was I was burnt out. I was exhausted all the time and I wasn't making progress in my workouts either from a strength perspective. And I wasn't seeing my body transform. And that was the mistake. I thought more workouts automatically meant more muscle. They don't. One of our clients, Alyssa, thought this as well. She came to us when she was working out 6, 7 days a week, Orangetheory, Bootcamp, Beachbody, working incredibly hard but not seeing her body change. And when she joined, we told her she was going to be working out 3 days a week as opposed to 6 to 7 days a week. And I'll be honest, she was hesitant at first. She thought, Eric, how am I going to see my body change if I'm working 6 days a week and not seeing progress? How is doing less going to get me more progress? She thought that we were crazy. But a couple of months later, she trusted us and trusted the process, and now she's lost a ton of weight. She's built a ton of muscle and she just feels better, more energy, more motivation in her day-to-day life because rest days didn't hold her back. It actually pushed her forward. If you don't know this, muscles don't grow in the gym. When you work out, you actually tear your muscles down and tear your muscles apart. They repair outside of the gym. Remember we talked about deep sleep is where muscle repair actually happens. So if you have too much training, What's going to happen is you will put a stress on your body. Your body won't recover from that stress and you won't adapt to build stronger muscles. So if you think of this like a circle, you stress your body, you recover from the stress, and then you adapt to the stress. If you don't recover, you will never adapt. And so all you do is just the first part— stress, stress, stress— and you wonder why you feel so run down, exhausted, and why you're not seeing a change in your physique. The sweet spot, in my opinion, is working out 3 to 5 days a week with weights, doing some of the cardio that we talked about earlier with zone 2 and steps, and then on your rest days, just rest. You can get your daily steps and still be active, but you don't need to push yourself heavy, hard, intense 7 days a week. So now that you know rest days are actually what make you stronger, here's another mistake I made for years. I used to save lifting my heaviest weight for the last set, and that held me back. Lesson 9, start with your heaviest weight first, not last. When I was new, I thought I had to build up to the heavy weight in my sets. I would do 3 or 4 lightweight sets first to kind of not really push myself, but they also weren't easy. I was kind of just going medium intensity. And then I thought on the last set, okay, that's when I pushed myself as hard as I could. But by the time I got to my last set, I wasn't fully fatigued because I really hadn't pushed myself as hard as I could in the previous sets, but I also wasn't fully fresh. And so I was trying to go into that last set lifting the heaviest weight that I could, but I was already fatigued. It was not setting myself up for success. So here's what I did to change it that has worked really well. If my workout program calls for 3 sets. I think of that, and I teach all of my clients that 3 sets are 3 hard-working sets. All 3 of those sets should be pushed close to failure, within the 1 to 3 reps to failure like we mentioned earlier. And so what I started to do was I still did warm-up sets, but I did 1 to 3 warm-up sets max where I lifted for 3 to 5 reps at a very, very light weight just so I can get the movement down, make sure nothing felt weird or nothing hurt, and I didn't put any stress. I didn't fatigue myself from those warm-up sets so that on my first working set, I was the most fresh and I was warmed up from my warm-up sets. So it made the most sense to lift the heaviest weight on the first set, not the last set. Because if you try to wait until your last set to lift the heaviest, your body is the most fatigued then. And by the way, it's okay that if you lift 100 pounds on your first set, if you're like, there's no way I could lift 100 pounds again, I have to lift 90 pounds. That's okay because that means you pushed as hard as you could on your first set, which will build more muscle and strength over time. If you want a visual analogy for this, think of your strength like a pizza. The first slice, when you open the box, it's hot, it's fresh, it tastes amazing. But if you leave the box out, the last slice that you pick up, it's going to be cold and soggy. And some people like it, but I like hot pizza better. If you want the best, most fresh bite, you grab it first. It's the same thing with your lifting. And here's something else I wish I learned way earlier, because this one clears up all the confusion. You'll hear people fight about the perfect workout split or the perfect rep range, the perfect exercise. But the truth? The plan doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to follow the right rules. Lesson 10, principles over preferences. When I first started, I just basically followed every workout that I saw. One week it was a bodybuilding split. The next week it was a powerlifting split. The next week it was a push-pull-legs split. Then it was a CrossFit. And I thought there was some magical plan out there. And I think the mistake I made was I was chasing preferences versus principles. I wasted years hopping around instead of just figuring out the basics and then building my plan within that. One of our clients, Stephanie, was stuck in the same trap. She would try a new program every 1 or 2 weeks, always asking, well, I don't know what's going to work best. The truth is almost any plan can work if it follows the right principles. And so when she joined us, we built her workout program around 3 main rules: lift heavy with good form, work out each muscle group twice a week, and lift heavier weight or do more reps over time. We were able to work in exercises that she liked, and we were able to work in the workouts around what fit for her schedule because she couldn't do 90-minute workouts, so we did 30-minute workouts instead. And within months of staying consistent with that plan, she was getting leaner, she was building muscle, and she was getting stronger. She stopped trying to fit into a perfect plan, and instead she just built the plan around her lifestyle. And so for you, remember, it's not about the perfect plan because that's going to look a little bit different for everybody, but there are principles you want to follow, like Progressive overload, like lifting close to failure, like sleep and recovery, like all the things we talked about in this video. And the preferences can be tweaked a bit. If you want to work out 3 days a week versus 4 days a week, do it. If you want to stick to mainly machines versus mainly free weights, do it. Because not only will that get you the best results from a science and optimization standpoint, but it's also going to allow you to look forward to it, not be overwhelmed by it, and stay consistent with it, which is really where results come. And if you want a workout plan and a diet plan that's fully personalized to you with an expert coach on my team to hold you accountable every step of the way, just click the link in the description to learn more about our online coaching program. And watch this video next if you're somebody who's trying to lose fat and build muscle at the same time.