Good News! – The strength and muscle building strategies you’ll discover in the coming months are all based on simple foundations. Quite frankly, gaining strength and muscle while losing fat is piece of cake once you know how to do it effectively, and involves a lot of good old fashioned common sense.
After training for more than 15 years, I’ve concluded that effective strength and muscle building has 3 key ingredients, no one more or less important than the other 2. To keep everything organized, I’ve put them together in my TRIANGLE OF STRENGTH AND MUSCLE BUILDING. Here’s The Triangle…
- Right MINDSET
- Right DIET
- Right TRAINING
Most guys start with TRAINING, often influenced by muscle magazines and their “workout of the month”. This results in a lot of time and effort wasted with bad training methods, and a lot of money wasted on bogus supplements.
So I’ll approach this differently and start with how to think about training and diet before worrying about how you’ll do both. Let’s start with MINDSET.
Train Smart + Eat Right + ??? = Gains!
You’ve probably heard the shocking statistic that 80% of the guys who lose fat, regain it all within a few years or even months. That’s right, only 2 out of 10 men can lose fat permanently. Some guys get even fatter than before.
And although losing muscle and strength is harder than regaining fat, most guys will also lose muscle and strength within years because they quit training, quit eating right, and resume their old habits that got them skinny, fat and weak.
So the challenge is NOT how to build muscle, gain strength and lose fat. Some strategies do work better, but everybody knows it boils down to training and diet. The REAL challenge is keeping your gains – permanently. This is why I say…
The Best Training and Diet Is The One You Stick to
After having done pretty much every single training program and diet you can think of during the past 15 years, I’ve concluded that the method you choose isn’t that important. Frankly, you will gain strength and muscle with the worst training program and the worst diet ever IF you actually stick to them.
The REAL secret is therefore consistency – you have to quit doing what got you fat, skinny and weak, and build the habit of training and eating right. Inside the StrongLifts Inner Circle, my thousands of StrongLifts Members will tell you…
“It’s a Lifestyle!”
The most important question you should ask yourself is this: how can you make training and diet part of your lifestyle? Here’s my answer: choose a method that meets the next 3 crucial criteria for permanent gains and success:
- Realistic. Guys with jobs don’t have time to train 6 days a week, twice a day. Nor can anyone stick to diets that leaves you hungry and deprived from your favorite foods for months. Willpower NEVER works long-term.
- Fun. Here’s THE secret to motivation: success breeds success. Switching workouts more than underwear doesn’t make things fun, getting results does. Once you got the body and strength you want, you’ll be hooked.
- Effective. Pump, soreness or the mirror are way too subjective and no guarantee at all that you’re actually making progress. You must have ACCURATE ways to measure your progress, every single workout.
How do you find out what’s effective when there’s so much information? By using a secret technique that I learned from the “Dean of Personal Development”, bestselling author Earl Nightingale. Here is the Technique:
Do The EXACT Opposite of What The Majority Does
Earl Nightingale said that when you’re overwhelmed, confused and don’t know what to do, you just find out what the majority does and then do the exact opposite. Why? Because most people do things completely WRONG.
Just observe the dumb and dumber things most guys do in the gym: curling in the Squat Rack, ab crunches until it burns, “it’s all you bro!”, Squatting Quarters, and similar ineffective nonsense they got from muscle magazines, steroid-using gym rats or idiot personal trainers who don’t even know how to Squat.
The result? They’re THE 80% of guys who will regain the fat they’ve lost… who will lose the muscle and strength they’ve built… who will fail to keep their body and strength… who will never even look as if they ever trained. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that they’re doing things completely wrong.
Then why would you expect different results by doing the same thing that didn’t work for them? The genius Albert Einstein called that insanity – expecting different results from doing the same thing over and over. If you’re sane, you’ll eventually realize that you need different strategies. Which brings us to DIET.
Three Choices: No Diet, Wrong Diet, Right Diet!
A lot of nutrition strategies are really No Diets at all. They’re just “Fad Diets”. Yesterday fats were evil, today grains are bad, tomorrow fructose will be the devil. It’s always some new bad food on top of the low calorie “let’s get skinny, fat and weak” diets from out-of-date nutritionists. I say this is NO DIET, because it lacks STICKABILITY and SUPPORT FOR STRENGTH AND MUSCLE BUILDING.
Then there are Wrong Diets. These are myths and bioscience spread by muscle magazines – protein every 3 hours, fast protein post workout, slow protein pre bed, waking up in the middle of the night to drink a shake and similar protein-supplement-selling-advice that will turn you crazy and broke. They also lack STICKABILITY and SUPPORT FOR STRENGTH AND MUSCLE BUILDING.
The worst diets blame one single food for all the world’s health problems while leaving you hungry, weak, skinny-fat and deprived from your favorite foods. The RIGHT DIET is flexible, varied, healthy, tasty, satiating, affordable, natural, stickable, and supports your strength and muscle building goals.
I can move you towards this kind of RIGHT DIET by posing you a simple, but important question. One that supplement companies will never dare asking you as it would reveal that they are indeed true snake oils. Here’s the Question:
“How do those prison guys get so strong and muscular?”
And genetics are NOT the answer. Sure they could have access to supplements, but these would be expensive and many guys drink several protein shakes per day without ever gaining muscle and strength. Steroids? Possible, but without foundation they’re useless – I’ve seen plenty of drug-using lifters build muscle with AAS but who couldn’t keep their gains once their cycle was over.
Here’s what you can be sure of: prison guys do NOT have protein every 3 hours. Nor do they have slow protein pre-bed, fast one post workout or any other of that crap muscle magazines (usually owned by supplement companies!) claim is absolutely necessary to gain strength and muscle while losing fat. In prison, you get 3 meals per day. 3 low quality, low protein meals. That’s it.
Muscle magazines will claim you need high amounts of protein to build muscle and strength because it sells supplements. And frankly, when you’re not getting results from their bullshit workouts of the month, you might start to believe you actually need supplements. But that doesn’t make it true.
There’s only one rule you need to keep in mind when it comes down to nutrition, and that’s the FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS…
- Eat More Calories Than Your Body Burns => Weight Gain.
- Eat Less Calories Than Your Body Burns => Weight Loss.
No food is inherently bad. Of course whole foods are healthier than junk food. But you will NOT gain weight if you don’t eat more than you burn, no matter how hard you train or how much junk food you eat. Just like you won’t lose weight if you don’t eat less than you burn, no matter how healthy you eat.
Everybody knows a skinny guy who can eat junk food all day without gaining weight. Just like everybody knows an obese guy who eats healthy all day but can’t lose weight. They’ll tell you it’s their metabolism or genetics, but it’s not. The skinny guy is simply not eating enough and the overweight guy is eating too much. Whatever they tell you, tracking their caloric intake will confirm what I say. This is the fundamental law of thermodynamics at work and it applies to EVERYONE, whatever your genetics, metabolism, body type or age.
This is why prison guys can build muscle and strength despite their crappy diet. Supplement companies don’t want you to know this, but the number one thing that builds muscle is NOT protein, but training. Guess what? Prison guys don’t drag themselves to the gym or quit after one week, they’re VERY consistent with their training because it’s the highlight of the day. So let’s talk TRAINING.
What Arnold Schwarzenegger Never Told You
Most guys who decide to gain muscle and strength, end up doing isolation split routines… training 5x/week… one muscle group per day… hitting each muscle from every angle possible using a gazillion of exercises… until pumped. They do that, because that’s how muscles magazines claim top bodybuilders train.
Few guys know that those articles are ghostwritten. Few guys know that the best bodybuilders that ever existed NEVER built their physiques with those split routines. Consequently, few guys have any kind of results to show for.
Here’s proof: the most influential and legendary bodybuilder that ever existed, Arnold Schwarzenegger, focused on building strength for years before doing the body part split routines that almost all gym goers do today. Quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, “The Education of a Bodybuilder”…
I was doing heavy squats, heavy bench, presses, and this provided some of the foundation work of my body, which has always made me appear strong. Certain bodybuilders lack that look. They have good bodies but they don’t appear powerful. The reason is inadequate foundation training. Good early training shows up in the muscles around the spine. There is really no exercise for those muscles; their development is just an indication that you have put in some heavy ground work, heavy squats and heavy deadlifts, a lot of lifting and rowing. I had done these exercises from the start. I developed strong basic muscles which gave me the powerful look people wanted to see.
-Arnold Schwarzennegger, The Education of a Bodybuilder, page 60.
The truth is that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a competitive Olympic Lifter, Powerlifter and Strongman BEFORE he became a bodybuilder. His strength feats: Squat 473lbs, Bench Press 440lbs, Deadlift 710lbs, Press 264lb, Snatch 243lb, Clean & Jerk 298lb, and a 590lb stone lift between his legs.
Arnold knew that muscle size is directly related to strength gains because that’s what he had learned from his life-long mentor, the legendary Reg Park – 3x Mr Universe, 600lb Squatter, and 2nd guy to Bench Press 500lb. So did his training partner Franco Columbo (2x Mr Olympia, 750lb Deadlift, 650lb Squat and 520lb Bench) and Ronnie Coleman (800lb Deadlift, 500lb Bench, 8x Mr Olympia).
Do you see the trend? These guys were all frigging strong. And they did NOT get there using body part split routines, high reps “pump” training, isolation exercises and all that crap muscle magazines claim they did. These guys used free weight compound exercises and years of STRENGTH TRAINING.
The Lost Art of Strength Training
Strength training is one of the oldest disciplines in the world. Legend has it that in Ancient Greece, Milo of Croton trained for the Olympics by carrying a newborn calf daily. As the calf grew, so did Milo’s strength and muscle mass. Milo became the strongest man of his time, winning the Olympics 6x in a row.
Fact of fiction? Who knows. The moral of the story is that you build strength by starting light and increasing the resistance slowly but gradually. This technique is called Progressive Loading and it still applies today. Although you obviously won’t use a calf anymore, but compound, FREE WEIGHT, barbell exercises.
And I don’t care if you’ve been lifting for years, or are just starting out. I’m going to show you the secret of gaining more muscle and strength in the next 12 weeks than most gym goers achieve in 12 years of hard work. In fact, you’ll see faster and better results in only 3 workouts a week (at just 45 minutes each!) than everyone else who is slaving away twice a day, 6 days a week! That’s right – you’ll get stronger, without frustration, with less time spent in the gym.
So, those are the “puzzle pieces” we’ll put together: Mindset, Diet, Training.
“But MY Body Is Different!”
I don’t like telling you this, but it’s true that everybody is different. Some guys gain muscle and strength faster because they’re blessed with superior genetics and bodytypes (NOT me unfortunately – I have an ecto, “hardgainer” built with skinny ankles and 6.7″ wrists, so not born to be big and strong).
The important question is: what are you going to do about it? I won’t tell you that it’s all a bunch of excuses that won’t get you anywhere, but everybody knows that at the end of the day you have to work with what you got.
Frankly, many of my StrongLifts Members have the worst genetics, body types and metabolism ever. And yet they have dramatically transformed their body and increased their strength. Here’s why: when you CONSISTENTLY train smart and eat right, the rest no longer matters – you’ll get results and you’ll get them fast.
And talking about fast, one of my Stronglifts Members, Jake, increased his Squat from 135lb to 600lb in just over 2 years. Another Member, Norman, also boosted his Squat from 45lb to 600lb in just 18 months. The important difference: Jake was only 15y and 140lb when he joined us (today he’s 17y and 240lb after gaining 100lb drug-free) while Norman was 43y and just survived a heart attack after ballooning to 350lb. Both Members have radically different ages, backgrounds and bodytypes, yet they’ve both achieved the 600lb Squat 2 years after starting StrongLifts 5×5. This proves our strategies work for everyone.
My job is to show you the very best, most amazing, most powerful strength and muscle building strategies that I’ve discovered. Your job is to let go of limiting beliefs, take responsibility and apply my techniques exactly as laid out.
Quite bluntly, any fat weak idiot can be given my StrongLifts 5×5 Program and make a list of at least 100 reasons why it won’t work for him. It’s the smart guy deserving of maximum results that can examine the StrongLifts Success Stories and find the exact same strategies repeated to use for his own body.
YOUR BIGGEST HURDLE in profiting to the max as a StrongLifts Member will be getting over the “my body is different thinking.” YOUR BIGGEST GAIN can be in acquiring the “no-excuse mindset.” And you can develop this very valuable, personal asset with time by hanging around us!
How to Get Started
If you’re serious about gaining strength and muscle while losing fat, then download my free 5×5 report by clicking here now.
