Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 92: Be ambitious
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to the cameron's conversations. podcast. So in today's episode, I want to talk all about something very, very simple, which is progression in the gym. So one of the things that comes up a lot is that people will hold themselves back too much in the gym. One of the things I stress to people is that when you can do, let's say, eight to ten reps, I'm just gonna give you an example. Let's say I can do 10 reps in a leg press at a certain weight. A lot of the time people will hold themselves back because they think to themselves, well that feels really heavy. And instead of saying to themselves every so often, I wonder if I could go a little bit heavier, I'm gonna try that, they get into this kind of mindset of like, well, that feels really challenging for 10 reps. And and I can't go up yet because it's challenging. But it's really important to remember that actually when it comes to training in the gym, one of the best things we can do is be a little bit experimental and to try things. So if I'm on a hundred kilos on a leg press and my leg press is like a matrix one, so the standard one you get in a pure gym, a the gym, you could say to yourself, right. Well I've managed ten reps on this for two sets and one set of eight for the last few sessions. Maybe I could try even just one set for six to eight reps and go up in weight. And that's a really useful mentality. It sounds like such a basic thing, but people misinterpret how big the jump is. And what I mean by that is if you can do ten reps at a hundred, it is highly unlikely that you cannot do five reps or six reps at the next increment up. And I think that Slows a lot of people down with their progress because they hold themselves back from going up an increment because it feels quote unquote hard. Now that it's good that it's hard, it's good that it's challenging, but it's very important to remember that you probably have more scope to push up and progress than you think you do. There's often as not a lot more scope to progress. So one of the things I very much encourage like my one-to-one clients to do is to be a little bit ambitious, and if we've kind of got a good amount of reps and they think they're kind of teetering on That maybe I could try it. Try it. Your worst case scenario, especially on something like a leg press, for example, where it's a machine where if you can't press it forward, nothing happens, right? There's no consequence from that, other than you don't move it and then you move the pin back down and carry on with a slightly lighter weight, or you do do it, but you maybe can only get four or five reps, and you think maybe not quite there yet, not into the rep ranges I want to be working in, so I need to just give it another week or two. But what we want to do is we want to try and we want to give it a go. And something that I think is a really Really simple but useful little tip around this is the idea of trying to go up on even just one set. This is another thing that catches people out, is they'll be doing 10 reps, let's say, of a leg press. They're doing that for three sets and they're just getting to 10 reps on all three sets. So they think to themselves, well, okay, cool, that's a good challenge. I can just hang about there. But they do that for two, three weeks, and then maybe could have kicked themselves on a little bit more by just simply having one heavier set. And that might look like doing one set a hundred and then doing another set at 107 and giving it a go and then coming back down again. Then the next time you go in, you think, actually, it wasn't as bad as I thought. So I could probably do two sets. at 107 then three sets at 107. You do not have to be uniform with the weight that you do or the reps that you do. It is absolutely fine to do 10 reps at 100 and then think actually I could go up but I might have to drop some reps, go to six at 107 and think, whoa that six was that was super tough. That was right at the top end. I'm gonna drop back to 100 for the next set and do eight to ten again. There is nothing wrong with that. You do not have to be uniform in terms of your reps or even your weight. There is Is nothing wrong with going up on one set, then going up on a second set, then going up on a third set. I use that all the time. A lot of the time when I've increased things, especially like my dumbbell bench press, I can think of, I've maybe been pressing whatever weight. So let's take an example, I was maybe press pressing 36s on that one, and I maybe was feeling like, ⁓ maybe I could go up, maybe could push up a little bit more, but I know full well I I can't go up to 40 kilos or 38 kilos, even that would be the next increment up. ⁓ I wouldn't be able to go up to 38 kilos for all three sets. And manage a lot of reps. So, what I'll do is I'll go up on my first set. So, I'll do a heavier first set, then two sets that are little bit lighter. That's a really nice approach to it, too. But the kind of idea that I want you to take from this particular podcast is that you probably have A more in the tank than you think you do, and B, you do not need to be uniform across all your reps, all your sets, and moving away from that mentality will be super helpful because you will find it easier to progress your training. A lot of people really do get caught in that, like, ⁓ but I can't. Do three sets of ten at 107, so I shall stick at 100 kilos for forevermore. Like there's no need to do that. It's okay to test. And the great thing I say to people as well is if I test that 107 kilo leg press and I get four reps, well, I know I'm not quite there yet, but I'm also not far off. If I want to work between, let's say, six and ten reps, maybe no less than six, and I know I'm only two reps short, well, it probably encourages me to Well, I've got four, so let's try it again in three or four sessions. So you do three more sessions on the leg press. And then you think to yourself, I'm gonna give it another go. And now you can manage seven because you've added a few more reps, you're a bit stronger than you were. Okay, well I can probably stick at that 107 now. That's the mentality you want to have is be ambitious and give yourself the chance to do it. Don't hold yourself back when it comes to your training. If that was helpful and you are interested in one-to-one coaching, then you can jump into the show notes and there is a link there for my WhatsApp. You can pop me any questions you have about coaching, or just pop the message coaching, and I'll send you a little bit of info over on how it all works, how we run through the training side of it, the nutrition side of it to get you in the best shape of your life, whilst not being absolutely miserable and on poverty calories eating salad every single day to do it. So if you are interested in that, pop into the show notes. Otherwise, have a great Yeah.