I Wasted a Lot of Time

Relax. I’m mostly irritated with myself. So much wasted time-of-life. I’ve had a lot of successes in it…life, that is…but at 63 now, it just irks that I didn’t latch onto something so simple.

So simple, but so damn hard. And it’s relentless. That’s the thing, really. Anyone…everyone…does tough and hard, sometimes. But doing it over and over and over? Doing it because it’s hard? Rejecting the easy and quick? Embracing the suck?

But there’s an elegance to it. That too, is simple.

Few others do it. Each day you persist is another day that others drop off. They quit. They make an excuse. They make one little allowance, and it’s the crack in the dam, and it begins the start of that story they tell after another bunch of wasted years—once they do whatever to get back to doing what they ought never have quit doing in the first place.

And such is life for so many. It was mine, and it should not have been.

So what do you do?

You start now. Right now. You don’t stop. You never stop. You never ever stop.

… So that’s the backdrop for a report on my 8 months of continuous busting ass in the gym, 5 times per week. Very little time off since July 1. The results are apparent but now, having reached a rather advanced stage, past newbie gains, there are some things to pass along about how to stay in the game because these last two weeks have kicked my ass as I pushed, and pushed some more.

The story continues… Plus, a few closing remarks about a new little experiment on the social front. This is all really good, practical, actionable stuff. I aim to improve your life value far beyond the cost of a membership. Other members always testify to that, and my retention rates are sky high.

… There’s no imperative for anyone to attempt to build muscle and bulk up as I’ve done; that just happened to be my particular goal. I think it’s a good goal for an older man, just on the practical level. More lean mass is good the more you age, so if you have the capability to build it, then bust your ass and build it. And for women, you can at least tone it and especially forestall the natural depletion of muscle tissue. You know, especially as you get over 60, mass is very, very important. So that’s just my goal, whatever yours are so be them.

The prevailing idea underlying this principle is that it’s really fucking hard, so you derive benefit from whatever it is that you seek to achieve through relentless, no-compromise action daily. And by daily, I mean that when you’re not involved, you’re not slacking off; it’s a legit time off, or it’s something else that you need to get done, or whatever. Because what has made this a success for me, going on eight months, is that I absolutely will not break protocol unless it’s totally legitimate.

So, I can tell you how much time off I’ve had from my regular routine at the gym. Just to review, July was every single day in the gym, well, except one day; it’s 30 days, so I had one day off in July, because July has 31 days. Then I took a legitimate week off to just rest and recover before I started a new program. And I did that for eight weeks, consecutive four days per week, without missing a beat. Then I took a week off and did another eight weeks, took a week off, and then I began the Achilles program that I’m just now finishing. That is a 12-week program with a four-week bonus if you want, which I have. I’m just two weeks from completing that, so 16 weeks altogether. In that time, I had to take a week off because of dental issues, but what I did was I threw in an extra week to make up for it. Then I had two weeks off, 17 days actually, for my trip to the USA. I thought about working out in the gym, but it was just going to be too difficult with the schedule I had for family time, so I just took the time off. But when I came back, I did an extra week in the program to make up for it.

So that’s what I’m getting at. You really have to have a no-compromises attitude. And when you do slip up, or something happens that’s not even in your control and you have to take time off from what it is you’re doing—my thing is the gym, your thing could be building a business, or remodeling your home, or doing some community work, or whatever it is—whatever your goals are. I’m not telling you what to do here; I’m telling you how to do whatever it is you want to do.

… Now, I’m going to talk a little about a longtime friend of mine, someone I’ve known for maybe 13 years or so, through the whole health, blogging, diet, and fitness world. Many folks know him, but I’m not at liberty to reveal his identity just yet. That will come once he goes public with it. He’s now a resident of Thailand, under a retirement visa, just as I am. A few years back, during COVID, he contacted me, inquiring about some of the details concerning living here. He was looking into it, but ultimately, the COVID bullshit prevented him from making the move right then.

But now, as of just about a month ago, he has arrived. He ended up renting a condo unit in my same complex. We’ve just gone out and spent some time together nearly every day. The most significant thing is that he’s an experienced personal trainer. So, we go to the gym together pretty much five days a week. At first, it was on the motorbike, and then either he or I suggested—we’d just walk it. It’s a 2.3 km walk there and 2.7 km back, since we added scaling about a half-km incline, maybe 150 m gain, on the way during the hike back. So just a smidgen over 5 km total, with an ascent.

He’s also been extremely helpful to me in the gym.

His help came at just the right time because, as I have advanced in this fitness journey and in Phase III of Achilles, it was really… it was lower volume and about setting records. That sort of direction has derailed me just a little bit—nothing you could call a serious injury, but just really taxing, especially on the shoulders. My friend really helped me out by getting me to do a warm-up routine, a general, whole-body warm-up before starting. I’ve never been into that sort of thing. I’ve always kind of considered the exercise itself to be sufficient—you know, when you’re in the gym, you have the experience where your second, third set is your best, not your first, which kind of serves as a warm-up. But when you get advanced, that can get you injured, right?

I’ve really come to be a believer in this warm-up routine. For the simple reason that my shoulders are kind of fucked a little bit. When I start that warm-up routine, they’re very stiff. You begin by holding your arms out, just doing slow little circles with your arms, then going wider and more rapid, moving them around. You really see how it loosens things up. So, I’m very grateful to my friend for that and for all the stuff he’s helping me with. I’ll be anxious to reveal who this is once he goes public with it.

It gets worse. This Phase IV is a real bitch. Lots of sets, lots of reps.

So, in terms of what we’re talking about, the range of the workouts, the toughest one for me would be right out of the gate on Monday morning, which is day one, and that’s leg day as well. The very first exercise is goblet squats, where you hold a dumbbell—or you can use a kettlebell—against your chest and then you squat for reps. For this particular exercise, it’s 10 sets of 10 reps each, and I’m doing that with a 24 kg kettlebell, which is roughly 53 pounds. So you add to that my weight, probably about 70 kg above the knees, or 155 pounds, so it’s over 200 pounds total that I’m lifting. And you’re doing that for 10 sets of 10 reps—it’s fucking hard. But I get through all 10 sets without reducing the weight.

On the lower end, the incline bench set and rep count would be seven sets of five reps each, and I’m doing those at 60 kg, which is about 132 pounds, I believe. I was very skeptical the first time that I could do all seven sets of five at that weight, but I just barely got through it the first time. Then, last week, I attempted to add 5 kg, so a total of 65 kg on the bar, and I just barely didn’t make it, but almost.

There’s other stuff, too, you know, like shoulder and chest work, and the back—it’s all around seven or eight sets of 10 to 15 reps. So it’s just a lot. I’ve pushed myself to try and do it very close to the weight I was doing it when I was doing fewer sets and even fewer reps. And I’ve even had some gains. Overall, it’s been hugely amazing and rewarding, but it’s come at a cost. And adding that hike to the gym and back…man, am I dragging ass some afternoons.

I’ve incorporated a cool down in the pool afterwards, but still, the soreness and just the general pain persist for a lot longer. Recovery isn’t the same as when doing fewer sets and reps.

So to wrap this up, what I did the last two workouts, which was a chest and shoulder on day four and then arms on day five, I went in and I reduced the weight by roughly 30%. Sometimes on some exercises a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more, and focused on doing all the sets and all the reps, which were reasonably easy to get through. But just to do them with real purpose of form, precise, and also incorporating something that Jason, the Englishman here at the gym who’s also a bodybuilder, told me. He said, “Richard, you don’t always have to increase the weight. You just make the weight you’re already pushing or pulling or lifting heavier. How do you do that? You slow it down, hold it for a while, slow it down, hold it, make it ‘heavier.'”

So that’s kind of what I’ve done there with the weight reduction, and it’s already benefiting me because here I am on day number one of rest after the five days, and it’s morning time. I had a good sleep, and I’m feeling a lot better. I’m just not feeling beaten down like I was before.

So I guess the take-home message here is that when you start, you’re going to have your period of what they call ‘newbie gains’. You’re going to have gains and you’re going to be really impressed and happy with yourself, and that’s good, that’s motivational. But there’s going to be a time when you’re not making those kinds of rapid gains, and some days in the gym are going to suck. You’re going to find yourself not even able to do what you did in your last workout, the same set of exercises. It happens.

So that may be a good time to dial down your weight—10%, 20%, 30%, whatever you need—and then focus on your form and going a little bit slower, and seeing how that works for you. You can kind of regulate that by judging how it’s going. It should get progressively a bit harder, but not too much. And if it’s not getting harder, slow it down even more, so that when you hit that last set and the last few reps, it’s pretty taxing. So that it’s pretty hard to get those last few reps in.

So there you go.

… Okay, for this finale, a bit of a bonus add-on here. I’m trying out a different kind of social experiment. I’m not completely unfamiliar with it; I first encountered it when living in France in the early ’90s. I noticed the difference with French people when you propose something to them. You might say, “What do you think about doing this?” or “Let’s do that,” and you’ll often get a surprising answer, one that takes you aback a bit. They might just say something like, “No, that doesn’t speak to me,” without any explanation, without making any excuse—like the classic, “Sorry, I have to wash my hair tonight.” You know, not coming up with some bullshit excuse or even a legitimate one.

So, it kind of goes to this idea that maybe it’s because people are a bit more guarded about their personal privacy. It’s like, “I don’t need to explain. I don’t need to reveal what else in my life is more important, or whatever my motivations are for saying no. I just say no,” politely, but without all of the blah blah blah.

I’m trying this out here in Thailand, especially with the girls, because I get proposed stuff all the damn time—every day, like meetups, or to help them a little with this or that. And so, it’s just kind of a pain to come up with polite excuses for why I don’t want to or why I’m not going to do whatever. So, the theory is this: you just say no. Don’t explain yourself. Don’t apologize. Nothing of that sort. And see who sticks around, thin the herd.

Okay, try it out. Let me know what you think.