Do you lift to satisfy your ego…or do you lift to stimulate growth?
Because they are not the same thing.
This article comes with a personal promise from me…
I promise you’ll get the BESTÂ gains of your life if you train the way I’m about to recommend. Even after 1 week, you’ll notice the difference.
And Kai Greene is very much on board here. He knows with 100% certainty that muscle growth does NOT come from throwing around the heaviest weights, but from focusing on making the muscle do the work…and doing it with full intensity to ensure the necessary stimulation.
Watch what he has to say here…it’s very enlightening!
KAI GREENE SCHOOLS “EGO LIFTERS”
Listen from 1min onwards as he explains brilliantly the difference between a “weight lifter” and a “bodybuilder” – they’re not the same. And from about 1:45 he says, “I’m going to be in control of it [the weight] throught the entire range of motion”. Perfectly stated.
To ensure that you are making the best gains with the best exercises, the right number of reps, sets, training frequency, etc. download my free training program below…
Before we get into the instructions, make sure that if you want to make serious muscle gains, you have downloaded my free THT training package right now. THT is life-changing!
Now, you might be tempted to think that I’m beating this issue to death because I mention it so often – BUT ARE YOU REALLY DOING IT?
You’ll get the best gains of your life – no joke.
HOW TO START LIFTING FOR NEW GAINS
If you’ve been ego lifting, here’s what to do this week to correct it:
- Knock 10-15% off ALL YOUR LIFTS. Do it.
- This will allow you to RESET all your lifts for proper exercise execution. Now you can really stimule growth – no more ego lifting.
- Use “contstant tension” on the intended muscle throughtout the whole set
- Do your negatives/lowering slower than your positives (increases muscle fiber recruitment)
- Great a great contraction at the top
- lower all the way to the bottom (full range of motion)
- Take each set to positive failure
- Boom! You stimulated growth and left your ego at the door.
I’ve put guys through this with just 1 set of barbell curls and they’re in agony afterwards. “My bicep is aching!” is the usual response – all those years of training and they’ve never executed a single set of barbell curls correctly.
I tell them, “Congratulations – you just stimulated growth”.
Now. Stop theorizing about all of this and go do it. Today! You’ll thank me for it 🙂
Train With Intensity!
Mark McManus
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Well said!
I admit to struggling with this. It’s not easy to reset as you say. It feels like losing progress.
This will I’ll do it. I’m excited about it as I haven’t made size gains in a long time.
Absolutely correct. This is how I train now, after many years of sub-optimal technique and growth. The only thing I would also emphasise is that you use the intended muscle only to move the weight eg. the bicep for curls, not the shoulder or neck, and maybe the forearm but to a much lesser extent. I hope I’m correct in saying this. If not, I’m sure Mark will correct!
Awesome video. Kai Greene is a bear.
I feel like I always start a THT cycle lifting immaculately, but by the end of the 10 weeks my form is probably slipping. At the start I am setting the benchmark, and as the weeks go on I am trying to beat it every week, possibly with the sacrifice of form.
Mark, do you think it’s better to maintain perfect form, week in, week out, even if your weights/reps aren’t increasing every week, or vice versa?
I think I already know the answer to this, which leads to: what am I doing wrong that’s preventing me from moving up every week whilst retaining perfect form? Or is it unreasonable to expect to be flying up the weights this quickly?
Hi Mark,
When you say constant tension do you mean no stopping (like a rest pause)?
If that is so, I do find that with certain excersises if I don’t stop at the start position of each rep, it “burns” more. As an example I find with the tricep pushdown (cable) if I don’t allow my arms to return to the complete start position (as in hardley any resistance pulling the cable back) it feels as though the tension is never off, and I assume that’s what we want?
Also, if this is the case how do we implement that with somthing like a squat or lunge where the standing start position doesn’t feel like there is much if any tension until the main part of the movement is preformed?
I’m not criticizing by the way, I’m just highly interested in that constant tension concept as I’ve never come across it in that sense.
Thanks,
Luke
Kai Greene gives good advice, but nobody gets muscle size like that without a little “extra help”. It’s interesting that the video and his sweatshirt seem to be sponsored by “Muscle Meds”.
@Paul. Yes, good point.
@CM89. Yes, you’re probably being a little unreasonable in your expectations. Lift with the type of form I am advocating to failure – every set. Of secondary importance is the increases – but you still should be going up a rep on say half of all your sets on every workout.
@Luke. Yes, ensuring the tension never leaves the muscle. As an advanced technique, you can stop and rest, but only AFTER positive failure is already reached – then hammer out an extra rep or 2. Give it a try.