5 Reasons You Still Don’t Look Like You Lift

November 4, 2021

Training, Build Muscle

Not Committing to One Goal at a Time

You are constantly torn between bulking or cutting. You never choose a goal, and go all in. As soon as you put on some body fat, you worry about your abs fading and start reducing calories and adding more cardio. Or, they’re in a calorie deficit trying to lose body fat and as soon as they start to feel small they add more calories back in and switch to bulking. When you’re constantly back and forth between a surplus and a deficit and not committing to one goal, you don’t give yourself enough time to make any significant progress. You will put on body fat during a bulk, and you will likely feel small during a cut. Each goal has a trade off, and the human body has a very difficult time losing body fat and gaining muscle at the same time.

It’s very common for people to underestimate the amount of time it takes to put on a significant amount of muscle, and how much time it takes to lose body fat. You’re overestimating what can be done in a short period of time. These unrealistic expectations are often what lead to lack of commitment to a goal. Not only that, but it leads to being very focused on short-term, immediate results instead of focusing on what’s best for their goals in the long-term.

Analysis paralysis is another common cause of a lack of commitment to a goal. Analysis paralysis is the inability to make a decision due to over-thinking. You have so much information from other websites, YouTube, social media, and you don’t know what to do with all of it. Some of it may even be conflicting advice, which makes things even more confusing. Many people get too caught up in this, and they start worrying about what the perfect approach is. They’re constantly searching, reading, watching videos, collecting information on building muscle, training programs, supplements, dietary strategies, macros, fat loss, but never take action and experiment with a certain approach. There’s more than one way to get to the same end goal. Not everyone you see with a great physique took identical paths. So don’t get too caught up in finding the very best approach. There’s a very good chance that the difference is small between the very best approach for you and the next best approach. This involves some trial and error, experimenting with yourself. Stop consuming content and overthinking without taking action.

No Plan

You’re in the gym without a plan, going through the motions, random exercises that change each week, accumulating lots of junk volume and fatigue, but very little of your training is actually contributing to muscle growth. Unfortunately, this is your typical person at the gym. Lack of a well-structured and consistent plan usually leads to poor results.

Without a solid plan, it’s far more difficult to apply progressive overload, track your lifts (weight, sets, reps, rest periods), and make progress.

Planning your nutrition can help as well, but I’ve found it’s not as important as planning your training. Some people still see great results without planning their days of eating, and deciding what to eat on the spot at each meal. For many people though, this doesn’t go well. If they don’t have a plan or set times that they eat, they often go too long without eating, become extremely hungry, and overeat and don’t make the best food choices. Or, they are unprepared and eat whatever is quick and conveniently provided to them at work, or they turn to fast food and snack on prepackaged, processed foods. Most of the time, quick and convenient options are also less nutritious options.

Planning your training and nutrition may seem like a pain, but it actually saves you times and frustration in the future by allowing you to work more efficiently and get better results quicker. Instead of thinking what’s convenient, easy, and satisfying in the short-term, think what will be the most rewarding and beneficial for you long-term.

(If you could use a change in plan—training program and approach to nutrition—apply for coaching HERE)

Poor Form and Execution of Exercises

Most of us in the gym are doing a lot of the same exercises. Some sort of press and fly for chest, overhead press and lateral raise for shoulders, rows and pulldowns for back, curls and extensions for arms, and some variation of a squat and hip hinge for legs.

If nearly all of us are doing very similar exercises, why don’t we all look a lot more alike in terms of body composition?

Yes, there are factors such as training experience, nutrition, supplements, recovery, and even genetics to consider. But what you do at the gym matters, and how you do it matters even more.

You can bench press 3 times a week, but if your set up, form, and execution are all poorly done, you’ll have a hard time building muscle and becoming stronger.

You can have two different people do 4 sets of 10 reps on bicep curls, and the stimulus for each person might be very different. The first person might use a lot of momentum, shorten the range of motion, change the elbow and upper arm position to make it easier, and not control the lowering portion of the exercise. The other person might keep their elbows in by their side and just slightly forward, minimize any momentum, have great mind-muscle connection and focus, and have great control by keeping tension on the biceps throughout the large majority of the exercise and resisting gravity on the lowering portion. The same exercise is done, but each person did it very differently. The first persons reps were far less effective than the other persons reps. Therefore, the second person who performed more effective reps provided a greater hypertrophy stimulus, and will most likely see better results. Same exercises, different results.

Not Training Hard Enough

You have to give your body a reason to change. You have to continuously challenge yourself in some way and train close enough to failure. There are two types of failure—technical and absolute. Technical failure refers to doing as many reps as you can until you can’t do another rep with good form. Absolute failure is when you do as many reps as you can until you cannot physically move the weight. In this case, we’re talking about technical failure. In my opinion, taking sets to absolute failure is dangerous and not very effective or worth it since your form isn’t any good anyways.

The large majority of your sets should be taken 1-3 reps short of technical failure. This is a good to know, but the problem is that many people, especially less experienced lifters, tend to overestimate their rating of perceived exertion (RPE). This means they are underestimating how many more repetitions they could have completed to reach failure. So if a beginner finishes his set and believes he could have gotten 3 more reps, he may have actually been able to get another 6 reps. Some believe that beginners don’t need to train as close to failure, and others believe that beginners may need to train closer to failure than more advanced lifters since those who are more advanced are able to reach the point of full motor unit recruitment earlier in a set. Aim for 1-3 reps short of failure on most sets of most exercises. As you gain more training experience and have more practice with gauging rating of perceived exertion, you’ll become better at accurately determining how hard you’re actually training.

Poor Programming and Not Tracking

We previously discussed the importance of having a plan. When it comes to training, your plan is your training program. You’re in the gym to be productive and produce a result with that program. Lots of different ones can work, but there’s also a lot of ineffective ways to structure your training too.

Many people program hop, changing their training way too frequently instead of focusing on consistently and progressively getting better and better at exercises that work well for them.

Others avoid tough exercises like heavy compound movements. Instead, they opt for lighter and easier isolation exercises. To make things worse, they’re probably not doing them correctly either.

Not only do some people take the easy route and avoid much more challenging and intense exercises, but they often put exercises in an order that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

If someone who lacks the experience and knowledge puts together their own training program, you’ll often see them chasing the pump instead of striving for progressive overload. They do tons of supersets and dropsets with isolation exercises. Really short rest periods between exercises and never allowing enough recovery time between sets. Or even worse, doing random and strange exercises that they saw on Instagram that their favorite fitness influencer made up to get more likes, shares, and views.

A lot of people that regularly hit the gym don’t even track their workouts. If you don’t track your workouts, it’s much more difficult to accurately track progress, apply progressive overload, and make adjustments along the way. If you’re not tracking your workouts, you might not even be aware if you’re making progress or not.

As I mentioned previously, lots of training programs can work, but there are even more ways to screw up a training program.