New Lifter Tip #5: Patience Pays Dividends

*For New Lifter Tip #4 & links to all previous tips, click here.

Most beginning lifters make the mistake of starting out too fast and furious, jumping into high volume, high intensity programming, only to eventually find themselves injured, burned out, or achieving lackluster results.  

As a beginner, it’s important to understand that, while the human body is incredibly adaptable and resilient, it does have its limits.  It wasn’t meant - and doesn’t like - to go through abnormally rapid change.  When it does, it has the tendency to slow things down for you (through injury or over-training symptoms), whether you like it or not.  

When it comes to progress and results, remember the principle of Progressive Overload.  Under normal training circumstances (no, eh-hem, chemical enhancement), the body will respond best to gradual, progressive overload.  A little extra weight on the bar through each week of a program can go a long way towards producing great gains over time, all while allowing the body to adapt at a rate it can physically handle.

As a beginning lifter, you’ll still likely experience much quicker progress and results through intelligent training than you will as a more advanced lifter.  You’ll find that your body will adapt and respond to the basics of training without the need for high volume and with relatively moderate intensity.  It’s still important to understand, however, that there are NO SHORTCUTS to achieving amazing results.  Even elite level lifters and physique competitors spent years mastering the basic lifts before moving on to advanced programming and training techniques.  They slowly but surely became stronger and stronger, year after year, and that’s what you should focus on as well.

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  1. questformuscleandfitness reblogged this from warrior-fitness
  2. knifehands said: Great post! I definitely still have problems with patience in my training.
  3. blissmanifesto said: Thank you for this tip especially. I think I needed to hear it.
  4. warrior-fitness posted this

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