FT Questions....

[Altamir]

hello there!
i was wondering guys and maybe dr Scott and Altamir can give their opinion t
also on this subject..
-how can we make sure we gave our "body and soul" on the loading sets -MRs-pump sets ? what sighns we must looking for and be sure we "earned" those sets and accomplished our purpose off stimulating our muscles to grow?
Very often many people in the industry ( dorian nyates ,jordan peters,dr Scott stevenson ) talking about training hard and with a purpose and we should make sure we "milk"every sesion and EVERY set to the max in order to give our body no other way but GROW...( you dr Scott talk about advanced bodybuilders using tier 1 and be able to make tremendous gains and often they are unable to go to tier 2 due to their max effort.... )
I guess im asking how i can make sure im in that zone too?

This is probably better answered by Scott as he's most likely better able to articulate this. But I'll give a wack at it. My apologies if it's not the best answer.

For reference I don't have any other way to draw experience from that myself, so this may be a bit more personal than you hoped. I'll do my best to try and draw some parallels or lessons learned that maybe might be helpful.

I've always more or less trained in the gym with a "do or die" mentality and I have always pushed myself as hard as I possibly could. For myself it's always been a mental / emotional thing. Very early in my training, I had a HUGE chip on my shoulder. I was skinny and small, I was picked on and bullied through out middle and high school, I had doctors tell me growing muscle and getting big and lean was not in my future. And basically every single training session, set, rep, was a huge fuck you to everyone. I am sure some found it hysterical seeing a guy weighting 145lbs, squatting 135lbs with all the fury of someone squatting 5 plates, but I cared only about my goal. And not one damn thing was going to stop me.

That sort of rage and anger only lasts so long and eventually after hitting some milestones, I began to seek other avenues of motivation, drive, and focus. Which I found it with in myself. That over the years of grinding and trying to give every damn thing I had into my training sessions, I really loved it, purely for what it was. And it became much more internal. And while making improvements on my physique is a very very external thing, I would train exactly the same way if I never made one single physical improvement and I would be (mostly) ok with it. It satisfies something inside me, it's an outlet for a lot of things, but also feeds who I am. It's only my nature but try and push my self, grind every damn rep I can, and push myself into pump sets that I know will be extremely painful and beyond. Basically there is a point where the safety switch gets flipped off. The overarching theme of this is that I was passionate and determined. I wanted to set PRs every damn set, every damn week.

So that was a lot of words. Probably a little superfluous, but hopefully gives you an idea of the point. Which finally is, as far as I know, the only way to give your body and soul to anything, not just lifting, but a hobby, work, life partner, etc, is to GIVE it, truly. If you are being truly honest with yourself, you should know if you are doing this or not. (If you are unsure, then do some deep thinking and soul searching) On pump sets are you stopping because of a burn, or because your legs literally will not move. Do you push for every single rep, every single time, (while being safe), if you think it you can get it or not? Does your thigh loading sets fill you with equal amounts of dread and excitement? If you are great, keep grinding and feeding the passion. If you are not, but you want to. You have to become engaged, fully invested in it.

If you are not, how do you? That's really damn tricky. It's really easy to change outside parts of your personality, but much more difficult to change who you are are your core. (which is why gyms make money off of New Years people) I personally think this is something that has to come from the "core". Something that you personally identify with as "who you are". There are probably a million self help books out there on how to be more engaged / invested in life/work/etc. My best suggestion would be find something personal and internal about what you are passionate about at the gym. Even if it's a small thing, find ways to make it grow, nurture it. Become obsessed with beating your log book, try and eliminate your preconceived limitations, and push yourself beyond what you think is possible, because it is. Celebrate every PR and learn from every failure.

I hope there is something there that answers your question. It's a lot of words, but I think this is a difficult (but good) question to answer. I'm interested to see what Scott chimes in with.