Beyond-Brawn-2nd-Edition

BEYOND BRAWN
positive in all apparent misfortunes—and there nearly always is something
positive if you look hard enough. During “down” times you will prepare
yourself for getting back into training with greater zeal, commitment and
organization than ever before.
1.36 Grasp with the inner core of your being the highest training truth for hard
gainers—progressive poundages in good form using abbreviated routines
dominated by the big basic exercises. en gear everything you do to ensure
that you live this simple truth. And keep delivering the application for year
after year after year.
1.37 You cannot buy or hire the desire and discipline that drives you to do all
this. Others can encourage you, motivate you, and perhaps even bully you
along for a short while. But if you cannot stand alone and deliver goods by
yourself, you are never going to realize your potential for muscle and might.
e desire has got to be so intense that your body and soul are steeped in it
for the long haul.
1.38 It is you who has to struggle in the gym. It is you who has to drive yourself
to do more, and more again, and yet more again and again. It is you who has
to deliver the sustained good diet and five or, even better, six meals each day.
It is you who has to ensure you rest and sleep enough. To do all of this you
need exemplary grit and character.
1.39 Deliver this grit and character and become the best that you can. Do not
compare yourself with others. It is bettering yourself that matters, not
stacking yourself up against others. Focus on bettering yourself—again, and
again, and again.
The thrill of training
1.40 e power to change one’s own physique is one of the biggest appeals of
weight training, if not the biggest. Lifting weights is a solo activity over
which you alone have the power of control. Once you know what to do, you
need rely on no one.
1.41 No matter where you are now—big or small, strong or weak, young or not
so young—you need only compete with yourself. It is you, against you.
Progress is measurable, and concrete. It can be as little as just one more rep
than last week in a given exercise, with the same poundage. Or it could be
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