Drill This Into Your Head
Listen y’all, there’s something that you gotta drill into your head if you’re serious about building strength and muscle: strength does not equal size. Many guys are smaller than me and are stronger. And similarly, there are way bigger guys that can’t handle my weight.
I’ve spoken about this before. There are show muscles, and there are play muscles. You gotta know what you’re going to the gym for. If you wanna get really big with aesthetics as your main focus, that’s totally fine. But perhaps this is not the best place for you.
On the other hand, if you want to build high-quality, dense muscle that stays with you even if you can’t work out for a couple weeks, and you also want to look good, then do as I say.
I guarantee you that you’ll be thrilled with what you can accomplish in a relatively short amount of time (if you put in consistent work, of course—no magic around anything here).
Today I was joined my man @SimeonPanda, and before we got started, we were messing around with the scale. He says he can still get leaner, but I’m telling him he’ll die with less fat—I can already see his heart pumping when he’s shirtless.
Anyhow, the point is that Simeon is very strong. He trains for strength like I do. And, he’s been getting stronger. Sure, he might look huge to you, but let me tell you that if he wanted, he could be way bigger. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he would be stronger.
How To Spot The Right Way
Regardless of how strong you are, if you’re pushing yourself to your top weight during a progression, there will come a time when you will need someone to spot you (if you don’t, it means you’re not pushing yourself to your real limits). So, what’s the right way to do this? Good question.
Listen, whoever is spotting you needs to understand a couple of things to not affect your ability to get stronger. In a nutshell, you should only help your partner when you see that he is taking an extra second or two to lift the weight.
Now, once you see this happening, you should only provide enough strength for your partner to be able to lock it out. Otherwise, you’d be using too much of your power, and it won’t help any of you.
Whoever is lifting the weight needs to still feel the same challenge. All the spotter is doing is giving him that little push he needs to complete the movement. That’s it—nothing less, nothing more.
Squat Every Day: Day 8
During Squat Every Day Day 5, I decided to squat before I benched. Today I did the opposite. Naturally, my body had already taken a hit. But, y’all know me. That wasn’t gonna stop me.
I still went through the entire progression. Remember, Squat Every Day is not the same as leg day every day. If I were doing leg day every day, I’d probably have gotten to day 4, and then I’d be dead.
But here, in case you’re looking to take me up on the challenge, all we want is to do a progression on the way up to touch our heavy set, and that’s it—nothing less, nothing more. Just pick a weight you wanna touch every day and commit to this for as many days as possible.
What have you been working on lately? Let me know in the comments, y’all!