I’ve heard it said many times over the years, “What works for you won’t work for me because everybody is different.” It’s almost like people adopt this saying and use it as their defense whenever they are questioned about the way they train.
We are not all as different as you may think. Sure people have different body types with various shapes and metabolisms. People also have different muscle-building potentials but the bottom line is, no matter what genetic blueprint you were born with, the same set of principles will work for everyone because basic physiology and how the body responds to exercise is not that different.
Everyone may not have the potential to be a champion bodybuilder just like everyone doesn’t have the potential to be an NBA superstar but everyone does have the potential to maximize their results and build their own “best body.” In order to maximize your potential you have to train smart and not hide behind the old “everybody is different” mentality just because it justifies the way you feel comfortable training.
You can greatly over-complicate the whole muscle-building equation by falsely thinking that everyone needs their own unique training approach. When you examine it at its basic level you’ll find the recipe for building muscle is not that complicated. It boils down to stimulus, response and adaptation. Stimulus occurs with weight training and your body responds and adapts to that stimulus by building bigger and stronger muscles. It is a continual cycle of stimulus, response and adaptation. So it makes sense the better the stimulus you create in the gym, the better the response and adaptation by your muscles.
Overload
There is one best stimulus for muscle growth and that stimulus is overload. This is true if you are a man, woman, overweight, underweight, genetically gifted or anything in between. Thinking otherwise is going to do you and your potential muscle gains an injustice.
Every time you go into the gym your goal should be to create the best stimulus for muscle growth possible. Weight training for any other reason doesn’t make sense to me. You can try to rationalize it any way you want by saying some of the famous lines heard in gyms around the world like “you need to shock your muscles to grow by doing different set and rep schemes” or “you need to do high reps and feel the burn in order to make muscles grow.” Shocking the muscles (whatever that means) and feeling the burn is all fine and dandy if you have time, workouts and results to spare. I for one do not.
I want to get the most bang for my buck and stimulate as much muscle growth as I can with each workout and I know I will accomplish that training with the Max-OT principles. How do I know? I know because Max-OT is based on the physiological principle that muscle is best stimulated to grow by overload. When you read through the Max-OT course you will see that it is a very common sense and straight forward approach to weight training based on physiology, not based on gym myths.
Giving training advice is part of my job and I correspond with many different people with varying goals and backgrounds. To some degree they all want the same thing and that is to build muscle and lose fat. To achieve their goals, my prescription is undoubtedly Max-OT. Not because I am lazy and don’t want to take into account each individual’s body, age, gender, experience etc, I prescribe Max-OT because the Max-OT principles have been proven to maximize results time and time again.
I have to scratch my head sometimes when people ask me things like, “Don’t you think it would be better if you cycled in periods of training with lighter weights and higher reps?” The truth is if I thought there was a better way to train, I would be training a different way. I have a lot of bodybuilding goals left to accomplish and I sure as hell would not be training Max-OT style if I did not feel it was the best approach.
I know Max-OT is the best not only because of its physiological basis, not only because of my first hand experience with the incredible gains I have made and am still making but also because of the countless success stories I receive from people who have used Max-OT training to take their results to a level they had only dreamed of.
So, I don’t think it is an accurate statement to say “everybody is different” or “you have to find what works for you” because when it comes to the best training approach for maximizing results, Max-OT works for everyone.
