Boost Muscle Growth – Legislate Contrast

“Stagnation, like fog, creeps in on little cat paws.”

The only constant in transformative fitness is stagnation. The human body continually, ceaselessly, seeks homeostasis, physiological normalcy. The body can be shocked into growing (i.e., constructing new muscle tissue) by subjecting it (the body) to limit-exceeding progressive-resistance training on a consistent and continual basis. Once the trainee finds a system that shocks the body into growth, the body, in its innate wisdom, seeks to normalize this muscle-stimulating system.  If the shocks occur regularly, eventually that which was once shocking and growth-producing become blasé, commonplace, familiar, normal.

Virgin Resistance Trainer Phenomena

A “virgin” resistance trainer, someone brand new to weight training (and assuming they are consistent and diligent) invariably make rapid progress – for a month or so. This is not attributable to the wonderfulness of the protocol selected, rather the one-time body shock of going from no resistance training to consistent resistance training. A human body suddenly subjected to resistance training for the first time is shocked into growing. In resistance training, loyalty (to a protocol) is a vice, not a virtue. For the resistance training virgin, the bar is set so low that the lamest system will generate results - for a short while.

In resistance training, loyalty is avoided:  All the wrong conclusions are drawn from the “virgin resistance trainer phenomenon.” This is best exemplified by the predictable retort of those in love with that beloved initial way of training, one that long ago stopped delivering results. Folks become attached to familiar ways. They become offended if you suggest their system sucks. “Don’t tell me that system doesn’t work – I obtained incredible gains from it!” Yes, you did but that was for ten weeks three years ago.

The One Dimensional, Superficial Personal Trainer

A lean, good looking, verbally adept, humorous, suave personal trainer, an individual championing a flawed system and having only one way to train, can develop quite a reputation as someone who obtains consistent results. Many personal trainers make a wonderful living using their lone ineffectual system. Dig down a little deeper and discover the suave PT factually obtains results only for those brand new to resistance training and the gains peter out after a few months. Still, amazing results can and do happen in that magical 60 day period.

They depend on lifting virgins getting spectacular (initial) results using the one (and only) resistance training system the PT knows. They depend on “the churn,” a continual influx of new business to replace those that inevitably and invariably quit on account of zero gains past those miraculous first few months. The suave PT needs front-end churn, new business, to replace older clients that eventually get tired of forking out $100 per session for zero results.

Doomed to fail: The strong-willed last longer, fanatics might pound away using the same flawed system for years without results, urged on by the fitness clichés. The Boss PT with a dazzling smile, charming way, is a wonderful paid friend and rep counter, the suave PT doesn’t have any progress-stimulating tactics to offer clients when the initial party is over, and the reality of eternal stagnation sets in. This is when the classic cliché surfaces, “You haven’t lost any weight on the scale because you are exchanging muscle for fat." (But why do I still have a 38 inch waist?)

Legislating Contrast

Those that would transform others should first transform themselves. A transformational master is a shapeshifter. Why would we seek the transformative advice from someone that has never engineered their own radical physical transformation? What could that person know? Reflected, not direct knowledge is superficial knowledge. A man or woman that has successfully renovated their own body, someone that has radically transformed, creating an outstanding physique compounded by outstanding athletic credentials, they walk the walk. Transformational masters transform all types and kinds of humans on a consistent and ongoing basis.

To create momentum, to overcome physical stagnation, institute a contrasting methodology. Whatever you are doing, do the opposite. If the personal trainer knows only one way to train, stagnation grows deep roots quickly. The expansion of a personal trainer’s knowledge base is necessary but can be a nightmarish minefield: the mind-boggling number of potential methods makes finding a new and effective training approach difficult if not impossible, the curse of too many choices has it own appropriately cliche, i.e., finding a productive method is akin to finding the golden needle buried deep in a massive haystack.  

The successful personal trainer is relentlessly inquisitive, curious, and determined. They actively seek new modes and methods, new tools and tactics; new strategies are continually test driven and either added to the arrow quiver of effective methods or discarded. This takes time: it is one thing to read a clever article full of footnotes and references, while it is quite another to give the method in question a six-week test run obeying every tenant and protocol: direct knowledge is deep knowledge; reflected knowledge is speculation dressed up with science. 

Within the resistance training world, a big quiver of proven-effective methods allows for the widest possible contrast – contrast is King because training contrast is the past, present, and future antidote for resistance training stagnation. Once you discover a progress-inducing resistance training program, the instant you put it into motion, once progress commences, no matter how diligent or determined you are, when the gold in the progress vein runs out, progress ceases. This is the natural order of things. When resistance training progress ceases you need institute a dramatically contrasting modality.

Resistance Training Neuroplasticity

Most trainees make the mistake of sticking to a familiar, comfortable, enjoyable, way of resistance training, a method that once-upon-a-time obtained tangible, irrefutable results – on a virgin body. When familiar and beloved methods take root and stay too long, progress comes to a screeching halt. Optimally, when the progress vein plays out, the athlete has a new training regimen of sufficient contrast ready in the wings: dramatically contrasting training strategies jerks the athlete out of the stagnation-torpor they are mired in.  

Slight changes are no change at all: when the uninformed become informed and decide to change worn-out resistance training strategies, when they make a commitment to change tactics, the predictable error is to institute “changes” that are insignificant, infinitesimal, barely noticeable. Changing the repetitions from 8 to 10, switching out side-lateral raises for front dumbbell raises, minor rearranging or current methods, are insufficient to jolt the body out of its hemostatic complacency.

What is needed is something far more radical and dramatic. When seeking contrast any training session consider these five variables. 

Check out the posts below for more information on how to boost your progress coming into the new year.

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