Millions of people the world over are trapped in bodies they are desperately trying to change, without success. Learn how to continually make gains!
Have you ever wondered why many bodybuilders and fitness athletes fail to make the gains they desire? Why is it that, despite information being available to many at a key stroke, people are not obtaining the results that they want? Have people forgotten, or failed to understand, some things over the course of their bodybuilding and fitness careers?

Ponder, for a moment, the nature of our post-modern Western society. Never at any other time in the history of humanity has more information been available to the masses. The economic and informational wealth possessed by Western civilization is staggering. The depth and breadth of this knowledge may be seen by the vast number of books and video and audio recordings available for sale on the open consumer market.

Yet, despite the proliferation of knowledge on every scientific and intellectual frontier, there is an ever-present cloud of confusion hanging over the heads of the untold millions of consumers of the bodybuilding and fitness industries. Millions of people the world over are trapped in bodies they are desperately trying to change, without success. Worldwide scores of bodybuilders and fitness athletes are not making any gains for their hard, dedicated work. WHY IS THIS SO?

Recognition Of Things As They Are

The first step to understanding or solving any problem or difficulty is recognizing that it exists. In fact, the direction of your bodybuilding / fitness career will be determined primarily by three factors:

What you decide to focus your attention on in your bodybuilding/fitness career
The meaning that you assign to the things that surround you in your life
The actions / decisions that you take /make to manufacture your reality as you desire.

Many people wander aimlessly in life, REACTING to the events of the world as they happen. Because of this many fail to understand WHY events happen as they do. Very few people MAKE events happen as a result of consciously directed action. Being in a constant state of reaction relegates you to always having to be the victim of "circumstance." In fact, as stated in the article Bodybuilding: Its TRUE Nature!, most people live their life according to the "law of accident." Put another way, they expect "luck" or "providence" to give them what they desire. Examples of this include people who gamble on the lottery or the horse races.

Typically these people try to offset the psychological dissonance associated with uncertainty by uttering phrases of the "well, you never know" and "anything is possible" type. While they may use these phrases to convince themselves that the outcome they desire is possible [or even probable], what they fail to realize is that yes, anything IS possible, including the opposite of what they want! By reasoning that "anything is possible" they [50% of the time] subject themselves to the possibility of "never knowing" the realization of their desires. When you live according to the law of accident you live in a place where "fortune" and "bad luck" are separated by 1% [51% on one end or 49% on the other]. When you live according to the law of accident you live according to the statistical average.

Sadly, many bodybuilders and athletes live according to this law also. They often believe that if they "work harder" or "give it all they have got" improvements in their physiques will follow automatically. When, as a result of having no clear goals or objectives, results do not materialize, athletes often ask questions of the "do I have what it takes?" type. In both situations the common approach mystical in nature.

It is crucial to understand that "problems" exist only as THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOUR EXPECTATION OR DESIRE and REALITY. Said another way, "problems" are the result of a difference between how you WISH things were, and how those things ACTUALLY ARE. When your desires or expectations contrast with, or deviate from, reality, you believe that a problem exists. When reality does not live up to your expectation, the result is mental friction.

This truth should illustrate that things [persons, objects, situations] in your life have only the meaning you assign to them, and that your life is primarily a mental affair. After all, if you had no expectations or desires, you would accept reality as it is and no "problems" would exist. Existence would simply exist. Robots, for example, do not have "problems" because they expect nothing and simply operate within the physical reality that faces them from one minute to the next.

Because your life is guided primarily by the mental negotiations that occur in your mind, and because problems exists as the result of a difference between expectation and reality, you are in an excellent spot to not only recognize the true identity of a problem [errant thoughts], but also to see how solving the "problem" is possible, once it has been identified.

How is this accomplished? Simply by recognizing that problems are teachers, and are the symptoms of a conflict between physical reality and the thoughts of your mind. Problems are a signal - an indicator - that what you are doing is NOT WORKING, and in order to achieve the results you want, SOMETHING MUST CHANGE. Put another way, problems indicate that you can no longer do the same thing and expect to get what you want.

Human beings, by nature, are mental beings existing in a physical world. Our thoughts do not have form, but our bodies do. Thus at any given moment we reside in two worlds: the inner and outer worlds. Often, misunderstanding the nature, function and consequence of each mode of existence [mental and physical] can cause problems.

The physical world operates according to the laws of the physical universe. One of the most important and easily seen laws is "for every action there is a reaction." For everything we do in the physical world there is a reaction or consequence. When we take calcium [Ca] and introduce it into water [H20] we may observe a violent reaction. The physical world is one that operates on reaction and result.

The mental world works in a similar way, but with key differences. In your mind THOUGHTS and IDEAS are the mental existent's that come together to react and form a resulting product [emotion]. In the physical world physical existent's react, a result is produced, and when enough combustible material has been used, no further reaction is possible. But in the mind, a mental reaction occurs, which produces an emotion, which then produces the motivation necessary to manifest a physical action in the observable world.

So how is this understanding of any use in the recognition of a problem? It demonstrates clearly that to change a physical result you must first recognize the difference between what you mentally desire and what you physically observe, and change the mental antecedent. Consider the following scenario.

A man is standing on a mountain, and there is an eruption. Ash, soot and molten rock are flying forth from the mountain. The man has two choices: run away and survive, or try to use his mind to stop the flowing molten rock. What should this man do? He can not do both.

The obvious answer of what this man should do is clear. In either case the mental element will determine his action in the physical world. On the one hand if he tries to use his mind and EXPECTS that the molten rock will stop, he will end up being disappointed, and dead. But, if he were to align his thoughts with reality and close the gap between EXPECTATION and REALITY, he would realize that running away was the better choice and he would run. Although extreme, the above is an example that illustrates the principle very clearly. As Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked "The ancestor to every action is a thought."

The realization of his goal [in this case survival] is achieved ONLY when his thoughts are aligned with the physical reality before his eyes. As his thoughts become increasingly removed from the reality of physical existence, so too does the possibility of the preservation of his life. When "problems" arise in your life, and in your bodybuilding career more specifically, it is important to examine your own thoughts and expectations, and then ask what needs to be changed in your thinking, to alleviate your suffering. By changing the way that you perceive the world [your world view] you can align your expectations with the physical world, thus effectively neutralizing any "problems" in your life, and facilitating the accomplishment and realization of your goals. But how does one determine reality? How does one determine truth as it exists for bodybuilding?

What Is Truth?

One of the most challenging tasks facing people from all walks of life is discovering the truth. Pontius Pilate, the fifth prefect of Judea, asked Jesus Christ "what is truth?" (John 18:38). When it came to matters of spirituality and existence, it was clear that Pilate was confused. While it is true that "facts come from heaven, opinions from Earth", the truth that we seek has nothing to do with spirituality or existentialism. The truth we seek is the truth that exists for bodybuilding.

Often times, as bodybuilders and fitness athletes, we read contemporary bodybuilding literature. Upon doing so we may find a myriad of advertisements, each touting the benefits of the latest "magic pill" or "wonder powder." To compound this problem, we also have every self-appointed guru and exercise "expert" touting his or her personal version of the "best" workout and dietary regimen. With all of the advertisements and claims before us, what is the method by which we are able to determine which claims are true and which are fraudulent? Commenting on the confusion faced by athletes today, the late Mike Mentzer (2001) remarked:

"Today many academicians lack even a nominal grasp of the rudiments of rationality. Confusion is the intellectual hallmark of our time. Bodybuilders are powerless against the ceaseless tide of false ideas, fraudulent claims and outright lies made by many in the bodybuilding / fitness media. As a result, many bodybuilders are wasting hundreds of hours a year, year in and year out, in the attempt to build a physique they could have built in one year!"

In the article Bodybuilding: Its TRUE Nature! bodybuilding was shown to be a scientific endeavor. In that publication, the scientific method was outlined and it was detailed how the principals of science may be applied to maximize the successful development of your physique.

Some contend that the application of the scientific method to bodybuilding endeavors is "common sense." Yet, if this is true, it is obvious that many do not operate by the rules of so-called "common sense." Consider, for a moment, the "wisdom" of common sense when it comes to something like so-called "long distance relationships." Read the following two statements:

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Out of sight, out of mind

Obviously both of these statements cannot be correct at the same time, yet so-called "common sense" teaches that they are. This illustrates quite clearly the perilous situation that bodybuilders put themselves into when they believe that "common sense" knows best.

If many operate according to any known principles or phenomenon at all, it is most likely the "I knew it all along" [hindsight bias] phenomenon [as in the, "even though I am not making gains, I knew bodybuilding was scientific, all along]. After all, hindsight is perfect, and if bodybuilding truly were a "common sense" endeavor, should not everyone appear as the Greek gods?

In the publication The Myths Of Obesity Explained And Debunked! I outlined and proved that obesity was, in part, contributed to by cognitive conflict. This conflict involves the class between the antithetical philosophical systems of mysticism and Aristotelian philosophy. Resulting from this clash, obese persons often feel trapped in bodies they cannot escape, and helpless to manifest needed change in their lives.

As shocking as it may first appear, athletes and obese persons have much in common when it comes to emotional frustration resulting from failed attempts at physical modification. When not making gains in the gym many bodybuilders and fitness athletes look inward, for some super-natural explanation. "perhaps I am not TRYING hard enough" they reason, or even worse, "maybe I don't have what it takes." Resulting from this type of questioning, the athlete can often fall into an emotional black hole, where confusion, anxiety, frustration and self-defeat rule. Many times athletes simply give up training all together, and become disillusioned, and eventually jaded, about all bodybuilding related matters.

So, what is the one method that can prevent this situation from happening, and allow the athlete to make continuous gains, year in, year out? What is the METHOD by which the athlete may know "what is truth?" THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD!

Using the scientific method will allow you to obtain an OBJECTIVE picture about your lifestyle. Using it you will be able to assess your physical and mental resources, and determine what you have been doing up until now that has NOT WORKED for you. The scientific method will impersonalize the bodybuilding process and will allow you to escape from the feelings of self-defeat and failure that come from not realizing your goals. The scientific method will allow to escape from the black hole in which you are currently trapped, and from which you are trying to escape, using any and all available perceivable means.