Intro:

Lifting is an important aspect of the red pill, maximising your SMV and realising your masculinity. You can’t be an alpha, or a masculine dude without having the physique of one.

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength for which his body is capable. - Socrates.

Body:

Here are a couple of lifting tips, which should be common sense, but since common sense isn’t very common these days, I’ll go over them.

Get on a programme

This should be the most common sense thing of this post.

If you aren’t on a structured programme, you are just fucking around in the gym. You are no different than the 12 year old whose hopping on different machines on his first day there.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be the guy you see hopping from the leg press to the preacher curl to the seated row and calls it a day or the guy who just does whatever he feels like.

You need a structured programme. I don’t care which one, fierce 5 , alpha destinys programme, nSuns, starting strength, 5/3/1, PPL etc.

If you can’t tell me what exercises, sets, reps you are doing before you even walk in the gym, then you are just fucking around in the gym.

So when someone asks you on asktrp, do you lift...they aren’t asking do you go to the gym....they are asking are you on a structured programme? Are you going to the gym in a serious manner?

When I go to the gym, before I even enter it, I can tell you every exercise I’ll be doing, in order, their respective sets and reps and most of the time the exact weight plus or minus a few pounds sometimes.

Which brings me on the next bit:

Log your workouts.

What do I mean?

The best bodybuilders I see at my gym literally bring a A5 pad and a shitty biro to log their training. Maybe there’s a lesson in there, I don’t know.

Now, I’m not saying you need to be such a luddite. Just use your notes app on your phone. It’s quicker and you won’t run out of anything.

Write down your sets reps and weight of every exercise.

So on international chest day (aka Monday), let’s say you benched 225lbs or 100kg for 5 reps and 3 sets. You would write 225lbsx5x3 or 100kgx5x3.

Now here’s how we separate the wheat from the chaff.

How were you on the last few reps on the 3rd set? Were you struggling with the weight? Compromised form? Took a mini break in between to reset? Needed some sort of spot for the last two reps? Or were these clean reps/clean as they could be?

Write this bit down too.

What’s the importance of logging your workout you may ask.

Progressive overload.

You don’t build muscle just by lifting. You build it by lifting more than last time. This is mainly done by increasing reps, sets, or weight. Most beginner to intermediate programmes will use one or more these variables to create overload.

(There are other minor ways like decreasing rest time, pausing at the bottom of a squat or bench but we won’t get into that).

We log so we know how to overload for the next workout.

When you log your weights, reps and sets, you’ll know when you are progressively overloading and by how much.

So, in our example, with a 225 bench 5x3. If you wrote down the last few reps you were really struggling/needed a spot, next workout you should try 225 5x3 again but this time without a spot and you’ll get those reps clean.

But let’s say your reps were clean, what would you do then?

Add 2.5lb plate on each side (or 1.25kg plates on each side) and do 230lb 5x3 or 102.5kg 5 reps, 3 sets. If this is very hard, that’s fine. Just aim for 5 reps, 4 reps, 4 reps. Or 4 reps 3 sets. Because when you write this down, you’ll know next time you train chest, you need to get 5 reps, 5 reps, 5 reps.

Another way to overload would be to increase the reps. So when you did 225 (100kg) 5x3, next time try 225 6x3 (6 reps 3 sets). Then after that go to 230 (102.5kg) 5x3.

Every exercise in your programme should be increasing by weight, reps or set every workout or every other workout at the worst.

No workout should ever be exactly the same as the other one in terms of reps, sets and weight. That’s a wasted workout.

It’s fine if your bench went up by a bit but your row didn’t and vice versa. It means you made some progress and that this workout was harder and not the same as the last. Last time you benched 225 5 x3 and rowed 235 5x3, this time you benched 230 4 x3 and rowed 235 5x3.

For the main lifts: bench, squat, deadlift. You can increase by 2.5lb/1.25kg plates on each side every or every other workout. For some, the deadlift could be 5lb/2.5kg plates on each side.

Shoulder barbell press keep it at 2.5lb/1.25kg plates. This is one of the tougher ones to build strength. I’ve seen some guys be able to put 5-10kg on their bench/squat every time they train, but I haven’t seen anything like this with the shoulder press.

This rule breaks down for accessory movements. You can’t increase your bicep curl by 5lbs/2.5kg every time you train biceps.

Here’s what I do. Play within the 8-12 rep ranges.

So, let’s say you can curl 30lb (14kg) dumbbells for 10 reps. Work up until you can do 12 reps 3 sets then increase the weight to 35lbs (16kg).

Now go for 8 reps with this new weight, this is a big increase for the biceps, so don’t be surprised if you don’t get 8 reps with every set. It’s fine. Next time you will get 8 reps for every set or maybe more .Then, work your way to 12 reps with this weight before increasing.

This is what I recommend for bicep, tricep push down (close grip bench, treat like normal bench), facepulls, lateral raises etc.

Conclusion

Don’t train like a moron at the gym. Train in a structured manner constantly monitoring your progress. Your muscles only grow if you give them a new unseen stress.