Progression and Consistency

You can find a quick fix for anything these days, especially fitness and health. Ads talking about the best muscle building routine or supplement guaranteed to get you ripped in 2 weeks, or late night info-mercials selling weird contraptions that you only need to use for 7 minutes a day. Of course they sound great, but these weird tools are only marketing gimmicks that are used to make the owner a quick buck.
It amazes me that people get sucked into purchasing some of these tools. I feel as though it would be similar to somebody coming on tv and saying, “learn advanced bio-engineering in 30 days!!! GUARANTEED!!!”. I don’t think anybody would fall for that one, so why do we in the fitness world?
Very few things happen like they do in the fitness world. Pro athletes train for years to become pro athletes. Doctors are in school for years before they are actually doctors. Most people work at a job for around 40 years before they retire!!!
The same principles apply for building the body that you want. It doesn’t happen overnight. However, every single day you can behave in a manner that can help you get to your ultimate goal.
For those of us who want to build a strong, athletic looking physique, progression and consistency are key. I believe anybody that wants to build muscle and look like a beast when they are at the beach (or lake) over the summer must make deadlifts, squats, pull ups, bench press, military press and dips at the forefront of any program. But, there is a progression one needs to go through before getting to these major exercises. I’m not going to start somebody off with bench press if they have never lifted a day in their life. So one must progress to these, by starting with push ups, adding weight to those push ups, elevating the feet, performing 1-arm medicine ball push ups and explosive push ups.
With the amount of information on the internet, progressing to all of these exercises would be a daunting task, so every week or so I will give a progression for another great exercise that should be in everybody’s training.
Along with progression, is consistency. Like I said before, building the body that you want does not take weeks or months, but many times, years. The more you train your body, the more you learn about your body and the way it reacts. Don’t hate the process of becoming healthy and more fit, but learn to enjoy the journey, because everyone should be on the lifelong journey of being healthy, no matter how you personally define physical health.
So below is the progression I use with my athletes for the bench press. I usually start with 3-4 sets of 10-15 perfect reps. If the rep is not perfect, it doesn’t count. I normally wait until an athlete can do 10 push ups with a 45lb plate on their back, they are more than ready to bench press.
Push up progression
1. Push up
2. Feet elevated push up
3. Medicine ball alternating push ups
4. Weighted push up – vest, plate or bands
5. Feet elevated weighted push up
6. Dumbbell Bench press
7. Bench press

If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to leave a comment.

Next week I will start off with some simple, everyday fat loss tips.