Hard Work

One of the things I like about Youtube is that there are a lot of knowledgeable people giving honest advice based on experience.  These are the ones who are not trying to sell you something and therefore have nothing to hide or sugar-coat.  For example, bodybuilders who talk about their best steroid cycles.  I have no interest in bodybuilding (except to the extent that it gives me ideas that I can apply to body-weight calisthenics) or steroids but the honesty is refreshing.

In the fitness arena you have to be careful because many of them are trying to sell you something, like training programs or consulting.  One thing I see over and over from the honest purveyors of knowledge who aren't trying to sell you something is that it really boils down to hard work.  I decided to really contemplate what that means.

It's easy to get distracted by reps and sets and exercises and people and to forget that you really have to work hard.  Each set has to be difficult and uncomfortable before it really does you that much good.  If I can easily get a set of 25 push-ups is there any real point in doing that over and over?

To this end I decided I need to push my sets harder, closer to failure, and not worry so much about the volume any more.  Whereas before I probably took each set to within 10 to 40% of failure (so if I could do 100 push-ups to failure (I can't), I'd stop at 60.)  Now I took it much closer.  To the point that I probably only had a rep or two left in me.  Felt good.  Tough, shaky, painful, but good.  Here's today's effort:

Pull-Up:  15
Neutral Grip Pull-Up:  15
Chin-Up:  15
Dips:  20, 18, 18
Rows:  25, 25, 25
Slow Squats:  20, 15, 15
Russian push-ups:  45
Diamond push-ups:  18
Regular push-ups:  37
Split squat:  7
Assist pistol squat:  8
Slow rep squat:  2 minutes or so?  Man, my legs are spent.

Tomorrow I may try one set of each exercise to total failure.

I believe a similar concept applies to diet and is something along the lines of paleo, low carb, low fat, whatever it is, you still have to eat fewer calories than you did before and it's not going to be very fun.  More on this later.