From Suffering Ariseth Glory

Yeah. What did you think?

This should be common sense to all of us, and yet I feel that more and more people, every passing day, choose to delude themselves into thinking they can do nothing and expect everything.

So I thought that explaining what Ex Duris Gloria means, and represents, would be a nice point to start off with. For all of you who know as much Latin as I know about nothing, it could be roughly translated as "From Suffering Ariseth Glory". The snobbier version of no pain, no gain. Now, did you ever really sit down for a while and think of its meaning?

Nowadays, we are bombed on a daily basis with beauty standards we have to fit in. Some will choose to play, and some will rather pass. We'll cover our causes some other day. But for all of you who chose to fit in, and strive for that physique, are you really on the right path?

We have two main currents within the field. First, the meathead dominated one, whose champions preach arranging your life around fitness, even though they don't even live off it. They could be the hardcore branch, and that also applies to training. They sometimes babble real utter bullshit, like "If it ain't hurt you ain't growing".

    She probably got used to pain because her parents beat her as a child with a pink rubber dick.

Now, I guess for all of us humans with 46 chromosomes, it's needless to say you should stop if it hurts. Feeling discomfort due to lactic acid buildup is a different thing.

But what I really wanted to address today is the opposite branch, the softcore posse. "3 minutes abs sculpting routines for busy businessmen" and "60 second to Rocky Glutes" templates are everywhere. Pictures with body changes which supposedly happened in a matter of 1-2 months. These are scams. That goes without saying.

Regardless, lots of people do little and expect a lot, as aforementioned. I'm not even speaking of people on the "3 minutes beergut bulking diet", but people who train consistently. One of the questions I'm asked most frequently is "will I overtrain?" Just like we do in MFQH, I've always recommended high frequency fullbody routines. The one I've traditionally used in fact has a template similar to ChAoS and PAIN  (another great blog you totally got to check out, by the way.  There you go).

The problem with such routines is they need to be based on compounds to be most effective, and people don't want to squat heavy, or pull heavy. As great Ronnie put it, "everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but nobody wanna lift heavy ass weights".

I've always defended working balls to the wall in the gym. You don't progress? Up the frequency. Nothing yet? More volume. Odds are you're undertraining more often than you're overtraining. Yes, you can squat more than once per week. Yes, it will benefit you, probably.

As I said, it doesn't need to involve pain, but it definitely requires putting your work in, and people usually do little in that regard, whether out of laziness or to avoid the feared overtraining. Most usually, they're simply underestimating the capacity their bodies have to adapt to the stress and grow stronger.

So, are you experiencing the suffering glory shall arise from?

If you're not, you're always on time to opt out and choose one of those 3 min transformations. It's called make-up.

I swear you can change that much in 3 minutes. Lay off the dumbbell.

See ya around,

J