1 - You can have great results working out from your home
2 - Dedication is the key. Going to a gym and diet is useless if you don’t push yourself until your limits and beyond. And you can do it anywhere
3 - You don’t need too much protein so don’t worry if you can afford a high protein diet. 1.2 grams per kilo is enough
4 - Balance is the key. You can eat whatever you like even daily IF most things you eat are healthy.
5 - You don’t need supplements. But they certainly can help if you can afford them
6 - Unless you’re too skinny or too fat you don’t need to bulk or cut. Just keep the same calories and increase your protein intake. Your body will change because you’re working out and eating more protein. And when it stops changing then you can bulk or cut depending on your goal
7 - You don’t need to buy an online mentorship. There are too many free quality contents on YouTube and the internet
8 - Natural gains don’t go away easily. And come back quickly.
Number 6 is a super underrated comment and something I’ve been doing for the last five years with a lot of success.
Just eating at maintenance (provided you already have a solid foundation both muscle and leanness wise) while focusing on training performance (i.e., progressively overloading) has resulted in considerable strength/endurance increases while also a good amount of recomp due to the progressive overload forcing my muscles and CNS to adapt to increasing volume/intensity.
I feel like too many people think that to unlock certain achievements they need to bulk heavily to build necessary muscle to do so. In many ways, this can work against you as you become heavier and gain fat, which can make bodyweight movements harder. And muscle does not always equal strength. CNS adaptability is super underrated.
Yeah, the whole aggressive bulk and cut mindset is a very ‘gym bro’ bodybuilder mindset. Even there it’s completely unnecessary, and it’s far less maintainable oscillating from 4000 calories to 1500, etc. For calisthenics, it just doesn’t work as gaining fat is going to work against you. Then to lose the fat aggressively, cutting will leave you feeling really low energy and hungry constantly. For most, a lean bulk or cut or maintenance while focusing on upping training performance is key.
@Vanya
I’m 50 and have never bulked or cut just don’t understand the appeal. I just exercise, and any exercise I’m doing at home is to support my outdoor fitness activities. I naturally bulk in the winter because of cross country skiing and cut the rest of the year from running and biking. Why would I care if my abs are extremely visible? It serves no functional purpose for me. That’s just me though.
I only cut when I started out and had a good amount of fat to lose when I was like 16. Since then, I’ve just made sure I’m eating enough to fuel my workouts and aid recovery. I don’t want to cut as I’m already <10% body fat, so cutting further could verge on some side effects of being too lean, and don’t want to bulk as it’ll cause all my performances to get worse. My physique is ultimately the result of my training and not the aim of it. To sustain my performances, neither bulking nor cutting makes sense.
It’s also just a better way of living. Aggressive bulks and cuts are both pretty rough in their respective ways, and completely unnecessary. Huge excess in calories will mostly just go into fat gain anyway, then to lose the fat you have to go on a large cut, which causes loss of a lot of the muscle you gained on the bulk…
Don’t really agree with #2. You don’t have to go to, or past, your limits. At least not all the time, that is a recipe for either injury or burning out.
Nico said:
Don’t really agree with #2. You don’t have to go to, or past, your limits. At least not all the time, that is a recipe for either injury or burning out.
Yeah, I disagree too, and diet is the key to seeing results.
Nico said:
Don’t really agree with #2. You don’t have to go to, or past, your limits. At least not all the time, that is a recipe for either injury or burning out.
I agree with you. We need to respect our limits to avoid getting hurt. But when I said we should push ourselves beyond our limits, I was referring to making progress. Load progression, more reps, more sets, and so on.
Nico said:
Don’t really agree with #2. You don’t have to go to, or past, your limits. At least not all the time, that is a recipe for either injury or burning out.
With age, I have found it’s safer to get good at whatever is within my limit (which itself increases my limit) first before even daring to ‘push my limit’. In fact, I almost never do the latter, and if I do, it’s more of a ‘dipping my toes in the water’ action, grease the groove style, than it is a ‘no pain no gain’ hardcore pushing myself approach.
Mega agreed on point 6. Not only do most people not need to engage with bulk/cut cycles, but it can be dangerous if you have any susceptibility to developing an eating disorder. Slow and steady recomp is much easier to implement and less risky for a whole lot of people.
I had a chronic pain issue for 15 years and couldn’t do any upper body work - and then I found a fantastic PT. Four years into PT and now I can finally do some bodyweight exercise. I am blown away by the results I have gotten by just doing a few things in a systematic way. People are asking me how I did it! I am finally getting some muscle built after 15 years of waiting. This sub has helped a lot! I wish more people realized you don’t need to do massive gym work. I am 60 years old and feel like I am getting younger instead of older.
Solid points, especially about not needing expensive supplements and mentorships. Been working out at home for 2 years now and completely agree about natural gains being stable - took a 3-month break once and got back to where I was within weeks. The protein thing is also spot on - people obsess way too much about hitting super high numbers.
Thank you for this post. We definitely should encourage more self-centric workouts, away from all the commercialized and honestly overly complicated workout culture now. I am inspired, and I thank you for your energy!
is absolutely bang on too. When I was in HS / Uni, I worked my chest a tonne, then went a few years without going to the gym/focusing on isolated exercise. I’m 33 now, back working out consistently, but even in the years I wasn’t exercising frequently, I still had pretty sizable pecs. Natural gains are gains for life.
@Aubrey
I did powerlifting in high school, took a few years off, got back into lifting a couple of times, but never stuck with it. Now I’m back in the saddle and got back to squatting 225 for 5 after a month of training. It genuinely shocked me, but considering I never lost a ton of weight and have an active job, the muscle is still probably there from those years ago.