Hard F’n Work
Posted on June 15, 2010 by Gaz - 
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This article doesn’t contain any science, workout ideas, nutrition or supplement info, exercises, interesting pieces of equipment, or the secrets “they” don’t want you to know. It might also be the most important thing you’ll ever read. It might make your gains, health, and fitness skyrocket. It might also be old news, but i’m gonna say it anyway.
THE REASON YOU AREN’T REACHING YOUR GOALS PROBABLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR TRAINING PROGRAM OR DIET.
Interesting, huh?
While a lot of improvement can usually be made to the terrible training and diet plans people come up with, I’m a firm believer in the power of – you guessed it – hard work. Hard F’N Work at that! Now I’m not saying I’m the hardest worker out there, not even close, but the people who work harder than me are as proportionately stronger, fitter, and bigger than me as i am to people who don’t work as hard as i do. Coincidence?
And thats what this article is about. No fancy periodization, no complicated carb-cycling or ketogenic diets, just gut-busting, train-’til-you-puke-up-a-kidney hard work. Whatever program you’re on, if you train every workout like it’s your last; if you squat until you can’t stand up anymore; if you run so hard your lungs feel like they’re going to burst any second, and then you come back and do it all over again a day later – you WILL get results.
This all seems obvious, but for some reason a lot of common sense traditional wisdom has been replaced with a deluded sense of entitlement in most exercisers these days. Thankfully, nothing you can get out of going to the gym will happen by accident – it has to be earned through blood, sweat….and more blood and sweat. Crying is unacceptable.
My first ever hint of real hard work came in a random workout at a friend’s house many years ago. I was doing dumbell bench press, and because i was yapping away like a damn poodle (and i had about as much muscle, at the time) i loaded each dumbell with about 10kg too much. Thats a lot of extra weight. Neither of us seemed to notice, and i got them up onto my knees, laid on the bench, and started my set.
“Holy sh*t these are heavy!!!” I grunted as i passed rep three. This was supposedly a set of six reps but already it was taking me a good five seconds to get the weight up. Rep four was just as confusing, but through gritted teeth i managed to push through it. Rep five took about an hour, my friend left and made a sandwich.
Screaming my skinny little head off, rep six came and went with the tides and i grew a full beard. Every muscle fiber in my body was straining to get that weight up, the sweat was pouring out of me like i was in a sauna, and i was pushing so hard my brain was trying to escape through my nose. Finally, i got the rep and slammed the dumbells into the floor of the garage and glared at them in silent accusation…
“Oooh…those plates are tens!”
From that day on, and this sounds a little melodramatic, my training was never the same. I managed to do the same number of reps with a vastly increased weight and up to that point i always assumed i was training to my limits. Perhaps unsurprisingly i started to pack on muscle and strength almost immediately and have never looked back.
Never be afraid of pushing your limits every once in a while. Don’t be one of those trainees who stops just because thats what it says on their workout sheet, or because it starts to hurt. If you’ve had a tough day and don’t feel like going to the gym use that to your advantage! Get angry with yourself for wanting to skip a session and get to work! Do SOMETHING. You don’t have to be in the gym for three hours – working seriously hard on one exercise is better than coasting through six of them.
Neither your body or mind likes to be stressed and they’ll do everything they can to stop you from hurting them, in fact thats how you get bigger, stronger, and fitter! Even if you don’t realize it, your body will try and stop you mid-set when things start to get tough – use your conscious mind and push through it! IGNORE IT! You can do more than you think.
It’s hard work that makes programs like the 20 Rep Squat Program, HIT, Westside, and 5×5 so damn successful – they’re difficult! So ungodly difficult in fact that at some point you have to step up the intensity or you simply won’t survive. All the people behind these programs know the meaning and power of true hard work, and the results of their trainees speak for themselves.
With that said I’m gonna end this article by saying that no matter how hard you work there is no excuse for sloppy form. There’s hard work and there’s killing yourself. Don’t risk injury for another mark on the page because you can’t work hard if you’re lying on a physio table or popping painkillers all day.
Now go and puke on your gym floor. You’ll love it.
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