Fail Short, Succeed Long
The gym is an amazing place for all of us.
The gym is a special place, where a never-ending supply of new physical feats and challenges awaits. I know this because I’ve lived this experience for the past 30 years and look forward to getting in there over and over again. You’d think that after training for so long, working every body part in so many ways, that there would be nothing left that’s shiny and new. Well, that’s just not the case, and it’s awesome.
There have been some movements that I always thought looked super impressive, but just never took the time to care about striving for. For my goals of size, strength, and aesthetics, they weren’t necessary. The moves I’m talking about are the muscle-up, the handstand, and the human flag.
None of these moves require adding weight, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t resistance training. In working towards them, I’ve realized a few things:
Bodyweight training can be extremely physically demanding. In fact, it can be just as hard as weight training.
No matter how long you’ve been training, if you’re willing to try something new, there are always going to be fresh PRs to set, and PRs feel awesome.
That second point is what I want to talk about further. This topic came up because, after not setting any completely new exercise PRs in years, that exact thing happened just the other day.