Beginner Gym Tips (And What Mistakes to Avoid)

Beginning gym tips and what mistakes to avoid. Are you getting into the gym for the first time? Are you just beginning your gym journey? Or maybe there are things that you'll learn in this video, you've been going to the gym for a while and you can still learn something. So this is all my information, tips, tricks that I would recommend to the beginner, someone just starting out, in order to get the most out of their workouts and in order to gain the most muscle and also make it the most enjoyable, healthy process. So here we go. Firstly, mental tips. Trust the process. Your gym journey and the experience of gaining muscle and strength and fitness is a decades-long ordeal. It's a lifetime ordeal. So you have to just Uh, get into the mentality that it's not going to happen overnight. You can make some very quick and good muscle gains, strength gains, speed gains if you're training that, but don't be frustrated if it doesn't come within a few days or straight away. When we're first beginning something, it can feel a little bit frustrating, but just understand this process happens over years. I've been training for probably about 12 years now, since I was 17, around then, and during school, the end of high school is when I first started. So I've been at it a long time, and you learn a lot over this, this time frame. You don't want to make sure— you don't want to give yourself like a limit as to, oh, I can only get big in X amount of years. Don't limit yourself that way, but understand this is a long process, and it's a great journey. The more you put in, the more focus you have, the more you're gonna get out. This principle is the same for anything you do, really. But for the gym, if you're going in— before you're even in the gym, you're thinking about your workout, you're thinking about how it's gonna feel, you're visualizing things. And then when you're in the gym, you're focused on the rep, you're focused on your muscles, you focus on the exercises, and you're putting all of your focus and energy towards it. In the moment, in the present, you're going to get more out of it. If you're scrolling on your phone, you're not really thinking, you're talking to other people, you will not get the same results. So keep that in mind. Whatever you want to dedicate, the more you put in, the more you're going to get out. Don't worry about what you look like, or don't, don't worry about feeling like a beginner, or everyone's laughing at you. One, it's not happening. No one really cares. Take confidence that you're in the gym making a difference for yourself whilst most people, the vast majority of people, don't even go at all, ever. Okay, so take confidence in that. No one in the gym has anything but respect for someone that's trying to improve themselves. Everyone had a first day. I've had a first day. I've loaded up the squat rack with far more weight than I had any business doing, doing a quarter rep and then putting it back and thinking I was a big dog. No, that's not how it works. But yeah, don't worry about other people. You're on your own journey and everyone has to start somewhere. So everyone had a first day. The more that you practice this thing, the better you're going to get. You're not going to be an expert. You're not going to understand how to do these exercises flawlessly from day one. Again, don't limit yourself, but just understand that it's okay to make mistakes. We're all— we've all been beginners and it doesn't necessarily matter. What matters is that you stick with it, you keep learning, and you keep improving. That's what's going to bring you results over the long term. So the training itself— here are some tips when you're actually working out and things to think about in general with training philosophy. The most important thing I would get into your head is each time you go into the gym or each time that you exercise, you want to do better than the last time that you did those exercises, that workout, last time you're in the gym. And this can happen in a number of ways to push your body beyond what it has experienced previously. That is the single most important part in order to gain muscle strength, speed, resilience, cardio fitness. You have to go beyond what you have done before in order to improve. You have to push the envelope outside the comfort zone. So how can we do that? It can happen in a number of ways. Intensity. If you simply push yourself to have more intensity in the rep, to launch more explosively, still with good form. If you've increased the intensity, you've increased the output that your muscles have needed to do. So you're going to gain that way. Tempo. If you're doing things quicker, if you are increasing the number of reps in the set, you have the same weight, same intensity and tempo, but you're doing more reps than you did last week or whenever you hit that workout before, then you're pushing the envelope. You're improving the body and you're gonna see gains in some way. Weight is another way that we can manipulate this thing. Starting light, of course, warming up, of course, getting used to the movement but then you're increasing the weight. And if you did 5 kilograms more than you did the previous week, then you know you're progressing. Same reps, same intensity, but a little bit heavier. That's another way that we can push our body and make sure that we're doing better than last time. If you are always doing better than last time over a period of years, you're going to improve. Okay, the issue that people run into is when They do the same workouts, the same weights, the same not focusing, and then they don't make progress. That's why they're never pushing their body to do something new. Another way that we can do something the body hasn't done before, new angles within an exercise. So if you're doing a curl, but then you do a curl out like this, it's different parts of the arm. That principle applies for all exercises. Shoulder press in front of you, shoulder press kind of more behind. It's all different parts of the body, and if that is an angle that you haven't hit before, then it's a muscle that you're training you haven't hit before. So you're going to improve and your physique is going to improve. The same goes for different exercises. If you've done a standard barbell squat for months and you've, you've progressed well, switch it up. Do a dumbbell squat or a different kind of squat with the barbell, a single leg squat. If you do a new exercise that you haven't done before, then you're going to make some improvement because your body is reacting to a new stimulus. So you can see how through all of those different things, intensity, tempo, rep number, the weights, different exercises, there's all of these different angles that you can push your body to do something that it hasn't, hasn't done before. That is the main thing that we want from our training. It can take many different forms. Don't change every workout. So I've said you got to try different things, new exercises. You don't want to be doing different exercises every time you go into the gym, because that way it's harder to kind of think about and track your progress. How are you going to know if you're stronger than last week if you don't attempt the same exercise kind of with the same program. There is a general rule of thumb that a program, if you're sticking to one structured thing, is something that you should follow for 6 to 8 weeks. At that point, your body usually needs some form of new stimulus. Switch out a couple of the exercises, uh, change the order, full body to a split, or whatever else. Track your progress. So in alignment with not changing workout every single time, stick to the workout, record the weights that you're doing each week so that next time you come into the workout you can see, oh, did I actually lift heavier than last week? Or you can analyze things. I haven't progressed in weight for 2 weeks now, 3 weeks now. What's happening? Maybe I'm under-recovering. If you didn't have that progress book to— at least you don't have to be super detailed, just make a note, you know, how easy was it. Um, pen and paper is good, like a little notebook so you're not on your phone tapping and whatever else. So record your workouts. Writing is nice, and then it also becomes a nice little diary that you can look back and see the progression that you've made. A bit of a memory trip down memory lane when you have those training logbooks. If you can, work out outdoors. I know some of us are lucky to have weights, proper weightlifting equipment outside at some gyms. I would look in your area to see what gyms even with an outdoor area so that you can do part of your workout outdoors is far superior to working indoors under blue light fluorescent light. I've talked about that before, but you get a better pump when you're outside. It's better air quality when you're outside. It's better oxygen in the air that you're breathing. You sweat more. Air conditioning is not necessarily good for blood flow and things like that. So if you can get to a gym that has an outdoor area, or even some beach areas will have free-to-use equipment out there. If you don't have access to that, Make sure that you're still getting outside for a workout on occasion, and you can do bodyweight stuff. You can take a weight vest, you can take your own little weights. Uh, that is very critical, I think, for optimal health in general, outside of just the muscle gain related to the gym. So outdoor workouts, really important. Avoid phone use. If you're going to take your phone in the gym— I do sometimes— it's on do not disturb mode, it's on airplane mode, and you're just using it for music or to look at your exercises or track things, whatever. Ideally it's an MP3 player and headphones. Some of them have a notes capability, uh, under $100. Some of these things you can just do your little notes for the gym and put in a few couple tracks like the Solwave mix if you want to listen to that in the gym. And that's what you take into the gym. You don't have all these other distractions. You're not tempted to just go into the automatic, like, scrolling of opening up an app, and then you've, you've, you know, you've kind of wasted a couple minutes while you're sitting at this machine. If you see other people in the gym, some Zoomers and old people as well, they'll be like this, looking down at their phone in the gym, and it's ridiculous. They're not— and obviously they're the people that don't have the impressive physiques. I'm not, you know, I'm not judging them or anything. I'm just observing the people that are on their phones kind of just like this while they're sitting on a machine or a bench. They're not the people that are excelling in this physical, uh, in their physical exercise, and it's reflected in their physique. So my advice would be to not go on your phone when you're working out because it just distracts you. Warm up before your training. All this, all is needed is 5 to 10 minutes of light cardio, get a sweat on, get the blood flowing. I like to also kind of superset in some ab exercises, some active dynamic stuff. You know, I'm jumping up on the pull-ups, doing a few kind of loose jumping pull-ups, uh, ab training, as I said, weighted crunches or planks or whatever. And it just, it kind of taps you in. You're getting ready for the full weightlifting experience, and you're not getting in the gym, instantly going to the bench and doing your heaviest sets straight away, because you want to get into the mentality, like, really think about what you're doing, and then also prepare the body with a warm-up. Get things loose, get things going before you get into the heavy lifting, and that's going to serve you really well. If you have the ability to cycle or walk to the gym, this kind of serves that purpose. So then you're not getting to the gym and then needing to do a warm-up If you just do a light jog or a 20-minute walk to the gym, or a cycle is what I used to do as well when the gym was a bit closer to me. Cycle to the gym, that's your warm-up and your cardio kind of done, and then you cycle home as well. Really good way to do that. Because you're just beginning, you want to make sure that you're taking rest days. You will need to recover. As a beginner, something like 3 times a week of a full body lift is what I would recommend. So it would be lifting, day off, lifting, day off, lifting, day off, day off. And you really don't need much more than that. Obviously in the other days and on the days that you lift, hopefully you're doing some level of active cardio out there, walking as well. That's not to say your rest day you don't do anything, but your rest day, because you're, you're so new to this stimulus of lifting heavy weights, You need to give your body time to recover, and you're actually going to see better physique enhancement by giving yourself time to recover. You're going to be stronger when you do go back into the gym, and you're not going to completely drain yourself. If you've been— if you think you need to lift 6 days a week and then you get in and you're just drained all day, you can't concentrate, and your muscles and joints are just sore, you're going to be put off doing that. So I would err on the side of taking more rest than you think, just so that you're more refreshed and prepared and recovered for that period where your body is acclimating to these new stresses and intensities. For breathing, in general, the technique is to inhale before you brace yourself for the most intense part of the list— the lift. So we're breathing in, we're tensed, and then we— and we're exhaling on the full force part. So if we're pushing under a squat, it helps to kind of exacerbate. We're tense at the bottom, we're lowered, and then on a chest press, and you kind of get that natural rhythm where it's So that's the, that's the way we want to do it. Make sure that you continue breathing. I've trained a lot of people and also done it myself where because you're focused on the intensity of the lift, you're tensed up, you're bracing. You'll do 2 to 3 reps and I'll be like, breathe, hey, breathe, remember to breathe. Their face is going red. You need to remember to breathe still when you're doing a set because it's not going to be good holding your breath for that long and then— you know, it's better and you need to learn to not completely freeze up while you're taking a lift. When you're lifting, the muscles are working and you're exerting a lot of force, but ideally when you get into this more like intermediate-advanced stages, you should be able to control your muscles and exert full force while simultaneously breathing as a kind of separate system to that. But that's, that's kind of further down the line. It's a different topic. Make sure that you continue breathing while you're working out. Mind-muscle connection. What is the mind-muscle connection? As it sounds, it is the feeling that you have of the connection from your mentality to what your brain is experiencing to the feeling of the muscle and your control over the muscle and that part of your body. And what you'll experience when you first start to lift is that mind-muscle connection will increase. You'll use muscles that you didn't really tap into before, and that generates a new mind-muscle connection. There's also an aspect of intensity and focus that goes into a lift or an exercise where if you're actually concentrating on the mind-muscle connection rather than concentrating on just lifting the weight, right? This is a very important point to understand. Your body does not know the number that is on the weight. Okay, think about that for a second. Your body is not conscious of that weight being 30 or 40 pounds. What your body feels is the effect of gravity on that weight on your muscles. Okay. You can exert a larger force on more of your muscles with a lighter weight if you focus and you concentrate and you slow things down and concentrate on that mind-muscle connection. Okay, mind-muscle connection is very, very important if we want to develop the muscles, because you can be doing a tricep pushdown, right? You've got the cables and you're pushing it down like that. If you're kind of rolled forward, your shoulders are doing the pushing, or you're kind of leaning into it, and you're like, yeah, I'm doing 60 kilograms on the tricep pushdown. But it's actually because you're rolled forward and you're hunched down and you're leaning into it because you don't have the mind-muscle connection to your triceps. When actually what you should be doing is halving the weight, making sure the tricep is actually doing the pushing down, and then you feel it, and then you see the pump is bigger. And even just slowly getting used to doing these movements with no weight is very, very important and is a technique to understand that concept of mind-muscle connection? Can you actually tap in and, you know, feel the inner chest fibers coming together when you're doing a fly? All these different variations of exercise, but mind-muscle connection is very, very important. Start with a buddy if you can. If you have a schoolmate, mate from college, a neighbor, ideally brother, sister, to keep each other accountable and to help each other in the gym and spot each other when you're going a little bit heavy and just having another pair of eyes and, you know, supporting each other and, uh, helping each other out and motivating each other. It's, it's really, really powerful if you have— oh, butterfly— if you have a friend like that, which is awesome. I've, I've had friends that have come with me I've also spent the vast, vast majority of my lifting by myself. So be prepared to do it alone. Be prepared. Don't expect other people to bail. Don't expect them to not show up or whatever, but just understand that you can't only rely on other people to join you to work out, if that makes sense. But ideally you've got a friend to start with to help you to just have a bit more confidence together when you're first starting out in the gym. It's really can help a lot. So that's a lot of training tips. These following ones are more lifestyle. So we'll talk about sleep a little bit, we'll talk about food, hydration, supplements, and clothing as well. So sleep— sleeping more or sleeping higher quality than you probably were before is very important because sleep is when the muscles grow. That is when they repair. If you're not sleeping enough, then your body doesn't have time to repair and grow. It's very simple. If you don't rest, your growth is limited to some degree. Take naps if you can. There's a lot of pictures of body— great bodybuilders out there taking their afternoon nap after training and depleting themselves. Again, when is muscle grown and repaired? When you're sleeping. So taking a nap just increases the ability for your body to repair. Prioritize your sleep. I'm not going to teach— I'm not going to talk much about sleep because I have a full video that I've just released on my channel if you want to go check that out. How to sleep properly, it's in there. Eating more. Obviously, if we're just getting into the gym, then we're going to want to eat more. We want to fuel our body. We we're expending more energy, and we're also creating more muscle, which increases your base metabolic rate. And your base metabolic rate is the amount of fuel and energy that your body consumes just at rest. The amount of muscle that I have in my body after training for a long time means that I can burn up 3,000, 3,500 calories just chilling, really. And I get really hungry if I don't. So I'm at the point where it's very, very hard for me to get fat because I've built this amount of muscle over time. That's what the base metabolic rate will do. So keep that in mind. You will not be able to eat what you previously ate and expect to kind of run and repair at the same rate. So we need to eat more. It seems simple and everyone knows it, right? But a lot of people will be like, I ate so much today, I had I have 3 eggs and I, I just can't gain weight. And then you actually look at what they're eating and they're not eating enough. That can be another thing that you track and get used to. Write down everything that you're eating because sometimes we kind of trick ourselves that we're eating more than we think, and it can be helpful to just actually have a record. And that way, if you're not gaining weight over a couple months, you'd be like, man, what's happening? And then maybe you talk to a coach, or you drop in my comments and you ask me, this is what I'm eating, is this enough? And I can tell you because we have a record and be like, hey mate, you need to eat more than that. Um, you know, if in doubt and you're not gaining weight, eat more. You know, it's quite simple. You want to eat more nutritious foods. You don't want to just eat more garbage just for the sake of calories. I don't believe in that. I don't believe in heavy disgusting fake food processed bulking. I also have just released a recent video about natural holistic weight gain that you can check on the YouTube channel as well, uh, for my personal kind of raw foods, holistic, natural, esoteric, anabolic ways to gain weight. So go check that out if you're interested. In that way, I don't need to speak too much more here about eating more, but Quickly, I would say smoothies are really good. Raw eggs, honey, raw cream, and raw milk. Blend that up a couple times a day, you're laughing. You'll be, you know, that's an extra 1,200 calories if you do 2 shakes, something like that. And that's more than enough usually for most people to put on some really quality weight. And because it's a smoothie, it's a liquid, it's very easily digested, which is another point to talk about with food is that You can put something into your digestive system. Does it mean that you're absorbing 100% of it? No. Maybe you're not chewing enough. Maybe you're overcooking your food. Maybe whatever the reason is, you have low enzymes, poor bacteria in the stomach. You're not always absorbing 100% of the food that you eat. So try to improve or help your digestive system along by by liquefying some of the food that you have in a smoothie. And when we're trying to gain weight and eat a lot of food, that can be really helpful. Same with if you're eating a lot of meat. What I do is use a food processor and blend up steak so that it's a nice smooth tartare mince kind of thing. And that's a lot easier to digest and you can eat more and absorb more because of it. I understand if you don't want to eat fully raw meat like me, I will give you my honest advice, having eaten cooked food and having eaten raw food and transitioning to this through the information and experience that I've had over years and years of looking into this stuff. If you want to grow the most, you'll eat raw meat and raw eggs, raw egg yolks particularly. But if you really don't want to, otherwise just eat higher protein and more saturated fats. The fats you really have to try to eat raw so that you can synthesize hormones like testosterone. And with your proteins, try to eat them at least mostly raw, you know, very rare steaks, uh, just so that the protein isn't completely destroyed by cooking. But like I said, I'm just gonna honestly tell you, raw meat, raw foods, better absorbed, better digestion, better protein. Uh, fats like butter, egg yolks, as I said, Have those raw and uncooked, and you're gonna be able to, you know, utilize everything within them much better. Link to the weight gain video will be in the description as well. Hydration. What is actually hydrating us? Water by itself is a solvent. What does that mean? Things dissolve into it. It dissolves things. That's why it can dissolve rocks over time. It's not particularly a hydrating substance by itself, especially in most municipal tap waters that people have access to in their homes. What we want is high-quality, mineral-rich, ideally structured spring water from a natural source. And even then, I would say that fresh fruit juices and things like raw milk and fresh coconut water are gonna be better than plain water itself. And, you know, teas, even things like hibiscus that I have here. Water by itself, you see like people in the gym with a big gallon plastic jug of tap water, that's not healthy and it's not necessary for the gym. And it's not what I would recommend for optimal hydration. Like I said, you get a good mineral supplement to add to your water, uh, you have fresh juice if you can just squeeze like fresh oranges. Pretty simple, uh, you don't need to— you just get one of those hand squeezers if you're at home and still living with your family and they don't have a juicer or something. Get a $15 hand juicer some organic oranges, juice that up and get like maybe half a liter or so in a glass bottle, and you take that into the gym. That's going to be— because you have carbohydrates as well in there, sugars, which is going to prolong your endurance in the gym and fuel yourself to go a bit further. I would take that 10 out of 10 times over just plain water. Same with raw milk. A lot of the times I'll go into the gym with my liter bottle, or yeah, 2 liters of raw milk, and add a lot of honey, and then I'll sip on that during my whole training session. Now obviously I'm at the tail end, let's say relatively advanced with my lifting and how long I'm in there and what weight I'm lifting, but the principle remains that it is the perfect fuel source for recovering, for hydrating. So if you can get yourself, uh, get your hands on a high-quality milk, then that's going to be great to fuel your workout sessions before, if you need to have a quick meal, and after as a post-workout meal as well. Fresh coconut water, awesome. So that's hydration. That's what I would choose for hydration. Synthetic supplements. So Getting into the gym for the first time, it's very tempting to go to the GNC store and you see all the flashy, well-marketed extreme muscle explosion drinks and powders and pre-workouts and protein mixes and everything like that. I tried them. They're not necessary. And then a lot of the times they're a waste of money, and a lot of the time they have a lot of synthetic ingredients and flavorings and other substances and chemical byproducts. Even if the ingredients will say 100% so-and-so, how do they get that 100% so-and-so? What is the process that goes into creating that substance? Well, usually it's a synthetic derivative. A lot of the time is petrochemicals being used in that process. Even with things like creatine— I don't take creatine, and I know that's, oh my God, you went against creatine! I've tweeted about it before. Go look at how creatine is actually made, even the really high quality ones. What is that made from? Would you want that substance in your body? Well, just because they've mixed it with a few acids and, you know, other synthetic stuff, like it's literally petrochemicals and your body doesn't know what that is. If you want more creatine, have more raw red meat. Sardines, raw sardines are the highest. So synthetic supplements— real food is always going to be better for you. You're going to develop better musculature and you're going to have a healthier system. And when we have a healthier system, we can put on more muscle. I'm sure you've seen a lot of bodybuilders talk about their digestive issues or, you know, lack of energy or whatever. It's like strictly bodybuilding— I'll tell you this now— strictly bodybuilding itself at the cost of everything else is not purely healthy, especially when it's done in the way that a lot of the bodybuilding industry does today. What I try to do is bodybuilding and testing yourself with weights but keeping it holistic. And I believe that this is the best way to have a more well-rounded life while also still being muscular and being healthy for the long term of our lives. And that's what I promote. So that is what all the recommendations in my videos are going to promote. I'm not going to promote having this protein powder with zero calories because it's all synthetic, weird slop. It doesn't make sense to me, it's not necessary, and you will have a better looking natural physique with more resonant energy and a better experience of life being yourself in that natural holistic way having real foods instead of these chemical cocktails of nonsense. So that's my point. You may have taken synthetic supplements in the past, and the placebo effect of taking something that's meant to do X may have given you a result. I'm not denying that. However, Can you get that result from taking a natural thing that helps with this and then believing that and then training and visualizing that and creating that in your life? Was it necessarily the substance? We know the placebo effect is a real thing. It is a documented, verifiable, uh, effect where believing something is helping you can often be more powerful than just the substance medication itself that they say helps with this thing. So that's something to think about with these synthetic supplements. Now, if a supplement is a natural product that is unrefined, it's simply concentrated from nature, or otherwise unprocessed, it's just been taken from nature, these can be valuable. There, there are things that I take that are supplements, but they're not chemically synthesized petrochemicals. And they're not added all these natural, uh, unnatural flavorings and other products that improve shelf life or stability or whatever in order to make more money. So I'm not against supplements as such. You can supplement your diet with natural products, but I'm not taking synthetic supplements, and I haven't for a long time, and I feel my best, look my best. You're going to be better off and have better recovery spending your money on high-quality foods rather than 98% of supplements on the market today. I will tell you that. Clothing. What you wear in the gym does have an effect on your training. It has an effect on the way that you sweat. It has an effect on your blood flow. It has an effect on many, many things. So if you're wearing these popular tight compression synthetic plastic polyester clothes that are like shaping you up or making your butt look bigger. You're compressing yourself, you're denying lymphatic flow, you're not allowing the sweat glands in your skin to open up as much, and the substances themselves, the synthetic polyester materials, are also— I've mentioned this before— They're covered in these chemicals which affect our biology. It's as simple as that. So if I'm given the option between wearing something that's going to affect my biology negatively, it's going to impact my hormones negatively, and it's going to reduce my capacity to build muscle because of that, or the choice of wearing something that's a natural material, 100% cotton linen— I'll wear this in the gym sometimes, sometimes, and it Feels great wearing linen. You, you know, button-up shirt in the gym, you get a nice pump. It's, it's cool. You're sweating. You want to sweat in the gym. Wearing 100% cotton clothes that are a little bit baggy so your body has room to move, you're going to be sweating more because you're a little bit hotter. That's good. You want to be sweating. You want to be blood flowing in the gym. That's going to prevent injuries. You don't want to be cold. You don't want to be wearing like these tiny little plastic things and then like 'Oh, my polyester schnoochnoochnamon.' Like, no, no, we're in the gym to train. We're in the gym to get healthier, and promoting blood flow and encouraging sweating is a very important part of that. Wearing it like a pump cover— okay, you want to wear a smaller cotton t-shirt, cotton singlet, tank top in the gym once you're pumped up. Yeah, I get it, you want to look at yourself in the mirror. I do as well. But wearing a hoodie, wearing a large thick t-shirt over the top to keep yourself warm while you're getting into that first 20% of the workout, that is a really— that's a good move in my opinion. So a hoodie, you know, this is why big bodybuilders, they'll wear full-length sweatpants for their whole leg workout, is because your legs stay warmer and you sweat more and you get a better pump. And then you can check your pump and take them off later. And once you're all you know, pumped up and sweaty and everything. So avoid these polyester gym clothes. Avoid these trendy brands that will, you know, sell these things. They don't necessarily work the best for your biology. That's my opinion. Get some barefoot shoes. So what is a barefoot shoe? It's a shoe that has a wide toe box so your toes can come out like this. They're not smushed in like this, like most gym shoes and running shoes that you, that you see, and there's not much padding between the bottom of the shoe where your foot is and the ground. So it's called zero drop. So you want to be pretty much as flat, as close to barefoot as you can. I like to wear the five-toed, kind of slightly autistic shoes, as people say, but they feel the best. And they give you the best results in the gym because your feet are connected to your entire body, right? If our hands were wrapped in gloves that made them like this, what would we be able to do with them? Not as much. Like, okay, I can kind of do some things, but it's not the same. It's not the same as having them like this. And the same goes for your feet when your toes can splay out. You can grip the ground when you're going to squats. You can activate your entire fascial network from the floor, planting your feet like a tree plants its roots up and creating that strength up through the core. It's all related. So having tight running shoes like this with a big heel, and then you're trying to do deadlifts and your ankles are shaking because you're literally— it's like you're wearing heels in the gym. Don't be doing that. You don't need to. It's actually detrimental to your ankle strength, to your foot muscles strength, and everything else. You're going to get better leg muscle engagement with a barefoot shoe, and you're going to prevent that unstable movement if you're doing any jumping exercises where you— it's higher chance of rolling your ankle, uh, with these high-heeled kind of shoes with padding. And you're going to strengthen your feet, which is of course one of the best things that you can do. And and the outcomes for the gym that we want in terms of longevity and athleticism. Okay, so that should set you up for a fantastic, productive first gym sessions, and I hope that you learned something to incorporate into your training, even if you aren't a beginner. Best of luck in the gym and farewell.