00:00All right, what is going on everyone? So in this video, I want to share with you guys the top
00:03seven things that I wish I knew when I started lifting because if someone had just told me these
00:08things, I would have either gotten results a lot faster or would have saved a lot of time or wasted
00:12energy. Now for the record, I started lifting when I was 15 years old. I'm 28 now, so that's 13 years
00:17in the gym. So I'm going to overlay some clips from my latest upper body workout as I go through
00:22the tips here. And before we get started, I do want to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this
00:25video and I'll have a little bit more about that at the end. Okay, so the first thing I wish someone
00:30had told me early on is that I shouldn't let others influence my own training so easily. I see this
00:35manifest in a few ways in new lifters, and I'd say it's most common in young lifters. Probably the
00:40most dangerous form of this is lifting to impress your friends or other people in the gym. Usually
00:46this results in loading on more weight than you can handle with good form. And so you end up doing
00:50things like not squatting to full depth, not touching the bar to your chest on the bench press,
00:55or having your spotter curl the weight up for you. And trust me, as an experienced lifter,
01:00I can say that no one really cares how much weight you can move if it's not done with good form. And
01:05personally, when I see a new lifter in the gym, I'm way, way more impressed if they have a really
01:10nice technique than if they're just throwing a bunch of weight around. So even though it can be
01:14very frustrating to see people getting stronger than you, faster than you, I think it's important to
01:19keep in mind that ideally this is going to be a lifelong journey for you. And the downside of
01:24encoding bad lifting habits early on that then need to be unprogrammed down the road is far worse
01:30than just having your buddies getting slightly ahead of you in the beginning. Now I also see this
01:34take form as basically just copying exactly what it is your favorite bodybuilder or influencer is doing.
01:39I actually fell for this one pretty hard early on in my career. Whoever was the biggest and strongest
01:44guy at my gym, I just take everything he said and run with it. And if I wasn't so easily influenced by
01:49others, I might have been able to find out what works better for me through a combination of
01:53self-experimentation and healthy skepticism. Number two is that building muscle and losing fat is
01:58actually pretty simple. I think a lot of YouTubers and influencers sometimes make the process sound much
02:04more complicated than it actually is. And because you have so many different influencers doing so many
02:10different things, it can be difficult to figure out what it is that actually matters. You've got all this
02:15stuff at the very tip of the iceberg being thrown at you all the time. So it's hard to decipher what it is
02:20that's actually driving progress. So I had someone tweet me saying that if you can't explain it in a single
02:25tweet, so in 280 characters, then you probably don't understand it. So here's what I said in response. You want to
02:31lift weights with good form, mostly in the 6 to 12 rep range. Now that doesn't mean only in the 6 to 12 rep range.
02:38Mostly with compound movements. Be consistent. Train hard. Have fun. Eat enough protein. Be in a caloric
02:45surplus to gain size faster and in a caloric deficit to lose fat. Now I would probably add progressive
02:51overload to that, which is kind of captured in the be consistent and train hard part. But it is
02:56important that you're not only consistently showing up to the gym, but also consistently progressing with
03:01what you're doing. I covered this in detail in my fundamental series, which I'll put a link to
03:06down below. But the bottom line is that while it can be fun to try out different workouts and use
03:10fancy training techniques, and in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's important
03:15to keep in mind these main things that are driving the majority of your progress forward, especially
03:20as a beginner. The third thing I wish I realized is just how much genetics matter. And when I say this,
03:25a lot of people get discouraged because they assume maybe they don't have the best genetics for building
03:29muscle. And so there's no real point in even trying. But that isn't the case. It simply means that
03:34like almost anything, we're not all starting on an even playing field, which means you should only compare
03:40current physique to your starting place and not anyone else's current physique. So you can use
03:45other people as motivation, but it's important to recognize that even if you copy exactly what
03:50your favorite bodybuilder or influencer does, it's still possible that you'll never attain their level
03:55of physique development because of differences in genetics and also the fact that these social
03:59media platforms tend to select for the genetically elite anyway, setting an unrealistic standard for most
04:05people. So I want to look at this study from Hubal and colleagues, which had subjects train their
04:09biceps and triceps for 12 weeks. And you can see here from the graph that despite everyone being on
04:14the exact same training program, there was a huge range of muscle growth that the subjects saw. The
04:20best responder gained 59% and a few people actually lost muscle. Maybe that was due to overtraining or
04:25poor nutrition. Another point is that all these subjects ran the exact same program. So maybe that
04:30implies that maybe a subject toward the bottom end just didn't respond well to that style of training,
04:36not that they were a non-responder to any style of training. So this is why it's important to
04:40self-experiment and try different training styles to figure out what best fits your needs. However,
04:45this doesn't also mean that you should always be hopping around from program to program. You need to
04:49give it time to see if it actually works. And in a blog post on genetics, Greg Knuckles argued,
04:54you need to train consistently for at least four months before you can have a reasonable idea of how
04:59well you respond to a particular training program. And if you don't put in at least a year of consistent,
05:03challenging training with a good attitude, you probably aren't justified in confidently claiming
05:09that you have bad genetics for lifting. Also quickly on the topic of genetics, while you can
05:13make a muscle bigger or smaller, and that can kind of change how your body shape looks, you can't really
05:19change the shape of a muscle itself much. So things like ab symmetry and bicep insertion distance from
05:25the elbow can't be modified with training. So don't be fooled by people who claim to have some special
05:31trick for this. Okay, the fourth thing I wish I knew when I started is that your physique is going
05:35to look very different based on lighting, your level of pump, the time of the day, etc. I remember
05:41when I first started lifting, I'd look at my physique in my bathroom, and then I'd go and look at my
05:45physique in my bedroom and notice that they looked very different. In the bathroom, I'd look much more
05:51muscular. In my bedroom, I'd look much less muscular. Now from my perspective today, it's obvious that it was
05:56just a difference in lighting. But I think the lesson here is that you shouldn't judge your progress
06:01on an hour-to-hour basis, or even a day-to-day basis, because you may actually find that discouraging
06:06or destabilizing. I think the key is to gauge your progress over a longer timescale and use more
06:12objective means to track your progress. So you can take progress once or twice a month, use average
06:17bodyweight trends, and most importantly, make sure you're getting progressively stronger in the gym.
06:22And these things are going to be a much better indicator of whether or not you're making progress
06:26than just constantly checking yourself in a mirror. So kind of piggybacking off the last one,
06:31I think being very analytical about your training and nutrition as a beginner is a very good thing
06:36for driving progress. So you should have some kind of workout logbook or app where you track your
06:41weights and reps from week to week. And I also think that tracking macros, or at least tracking your
06:45food intake, is the best way to know exactly what you're putting in your body and how you can regulate
06:50that to best suit your goals. And following a meal plan also can work fine as long as the macros are
06:55well suited to your needs. But I prefer to set up a more flexible approach for beginners so you don't
07:00become a slave to that particular meal plan and you'll be able to be more flexible with your approach
07:05over time as your goals and needs change. And eventually you'll be able to understand your body
07:10and its nutritional needs so that you don't really need to track or follow a set nutritional plan
07:14at all anymore. Now of course this doesn't imply that you need to track every single set that you ever do
07:19or every single bite that you ever eat. But having a log of what you're doing for future reference
07:24and to see if you're making progress is extremely valuable, even if there is some ballpark estimation
07:29to the specific numbers. Okay, so number six is that you don't need steroids to build an impressive
07:34physique. A lot of early lifters get so convinced that in order to build any muscle or have a lean
07:39physique at all, then you need to use steroids. And this simply isn't true. I'm not going to go into
07:44any length or detail here, but I think steroid use, especially when you're still new to the gym,
07:50can set up a slippery slope for serious mental and physical health issues down the road,
07:55especially when you cycle off and lose most of the size you had put on, which can then perpetuate
08:00the problem over time. So anyway, I talked about those issues in detail in a steroid science explained
08:05video, which I'll have linked down below. And also I think there is something to be said for more or less
08:10maxing out your natural genetic potential first before even thinking about turning to steroids,
08:15because this way you're going to be forced to learn how your body really works and how it responds to
08:20different training styles without having the magic of steroids in your corner from the outset.
08:24And the final thing I wish I'd been told when I started lifting is that when you're new to training,
08:29you are by far the most primed for growth. So during this time, you really want to take advantage
08:35by getting serious about your training. It's common for me to see guys only hit chest and arms for
08:39their first year of training and then end up with an unbalanced disproportionate physique that
08:44might then take another couple of years of really hard leg and back training to balance back out. So
08:49while you're still in the newbie stage, you want to be intelligent and thoughtful about how you're
08:54training, because this is the time that you're probably going to make the best gains of your life.
08:58And unfortunately, there isn't ever going to be a time that you can get that newbie period back
09:03unless you completely detrain again. Now that isn't to say there's any real urgency to the journey here.
09:08If you don't get everything perfect during your newbie phase, that's fine. I don't think anyone
09:13ever actually does. And as long as you're consistent and balanced with your training over the coming
09:17years, things will eventually balance out as you near your natural genetic limitation anyway.
09:22So all other information, I want to direct you guys over to my fundamentals video series here on
09:27this channel, which covers all the basics you need to know as a new lifter. And then my technique Tuesday
09:32series covers all the basic exercises you might want to include in a training program. And if you're looking
09:37to make all this stuff more actionable in the gym, I'd recommend checking out my fundamentals
09:41hypertrophy program, which was designed for people in their first couple years of training.
09:46And before we go, I want to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this video. Squarespace is the
09:50all-in-one website platform that I use to run jeffnippert.com. And I actually just finished
09:54redesigning my website layout over there. So I built in a new video loop that plays on the homepage
09:59and revamped all my program pages. So Squarespace has really aesthetic designer custom templates
10:04and 24-hour customer support they'll use anytime that I run into any issues. And they make the
10:09entire process of running your own website really simple. So if you're looking to get started with
10:13building your own website or your own online store, you can go to squarespace.com for a free
10:17trial. And then when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com forward slash nippert. And that's
10:22going to save you 10% off your purchase of a website or a domain. So thanks again, guys, so much for
10:27watching. Don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video. Don't forget to subscribe if you
10:31haven't already. And I'll see you guys all here in the next one.
Comments