 If you've heard my high-intensity training talks before you've heard me talk about the importance of training intensely Training briefly training and frequently. So I'm going to make that part of it real short The biggest mistake that most of these people make is they're not training hard enough They're doing too much exercise and they're doing it too often Most people make the assumption that when they're going into a gym If they just go through the motions, if they make the weight go up and down the number of times Somebody told them to and as many sets as somebody told them to Doing the repetitions a specific way and they do the right exercises with the right frequency That they are going to get bigger and stronger, leaner if they're following whatever diet has been prescribed But regardless of the program, regardless of what exercises you do or your set and rep scheme Regardless of any particular repetition cadence or method If an exercise is not done intensely enough, none of that stuff makes any difference at all When you're exercising, what you are trying to do is send a message to your body That your environment is placing a demand on it that exceeds its current capabilities So that it is a threat to your ability to move If you can't move, you can't obtain food, you can't prevent yourself from becoming something else's food Movement is absolutely essential for survival And as a result, our bodies have adapted, revolved mechanisms for adapting to any kind of stress that threatens our ability to move Starting with the muscles and then with all the supporting systems But adaptations cost energy, adaptations cost resources And your body is not going to expend resources, it's not going to expend energy to produce an adaptive response unless it is threatened Because having that extra tissue is costly Expending the energy could be costly if food is not readily available in the environment Again, all these adaptations are things that we would have evolved during a period of time where energy was very valuable Not like now, you just walk down the street to the supermarket and grab food whenever you want it Your body is not going to produce a costly adaptation unless the long-term benefit of that adaptation is worth more than the expense of producing it If you are trying to send that message to your body, then what you are doing during the exercise has to be demanding enough that it is a threat to your ability to move It has to fatigue your muscles to the point where you are momentarily incapable of further movement Most people don't get close to this point during exercise If you watch most people in the gym, they'll pick up a barbell or they'll get in a machine and they'll start doing the movement And when it begins to burn, when they start breathing heavy, when it starts to get uncomfortable, they stop and they think that's fine They'll move on to the next machine or they'll rest a couple of minutes and do another set If you stop when it starts to get uncomfortable, you're not asking your body to do anything that it can't already do If you stop and then you're able to do it again after a short period of time, then you haven't done it hard enough that you're really threatening your body's ability to move afterwards Now you don't have to go to that point, but the closer you get to it, the better your results are going to be from exercise So when you are doing an exercise, again regardless of the specific exercise, regardless of your reps or anything else One factor that is more important than any other in determining whether or not you send a message to your body to produce the improvements is how hard you're pushing yourself How close you're getting to that point where no matter how hard you're contracting, you cannot continue the exercise in good form It is going to hurt if you're doing it correctly You're going to experience burning If you're doing it right, you should be breathing pretty heavily It is going to be extremely uncomfortable If it isn't, you're not doing it correctly But all of this is temporary It is ultimately harmless if you're doing the exercise correctly, you shouldn't be injuring yourself either And if you really want to improve badly enough, then you will suck it up and push through that And just deal with the momentary pain But that's the biggest thing When you are doing an exercise, you start to feel that discomfort And your muscles and your heart and everything else are screaming at you to quit You keep going anyways And you keep going not until you don't want to do it anymore Not until you think this is enough You do it until you absolutely cannot do another repetition