I was reading a fitness blog this morning about an individual who competes in Tough Mudders. For those not in the know a Tough Mudder is a challenging army obstacle style course which fitness enthusiasts are turning to in droves. This particular blogger was on a ‘caveman’ or low carb, high protein Paleo diet competing in several mudders per year. His training program included lifting heavy weights once per week, alongside several weekly mudder style training sessions of crawling, climbs and long endurance runs.- He included videos of himself and I can vouch this individual trained very hard.- Yet, this isn’t what stood out- Instead what made his blog stand out was the images he included and obviously admired. Most of these images were of ripped muscular men with lean torso’s, muscular backs, and extremely well developed posterior chains. Underneath the pictures he wrote slogans such as ‘almost there’, ‘wow, can’t believe how hard he must train to look like this’, ‘look at this physique’ ‘inspiring’, ‘must get in my workout today.’ etc, etc.

This man obviously had a consistent training ethic but the ironic thing was his goals did not match his ideal. He was training one way to look another and was oblivious to the fact. As I read his workout program I realized he could train for the next twenty years and would never ever achieve the ‘inspiring’ bodies he so coveted.

What he didn’t seem to know the pictures he included were a combination of nutrition, (manipulating carbs & calories) lifting heavy & medium percentage weights consistently, sequenced anaerobic or aerobic conditioning, “off recovery days”, complimented with quality rest for muscle growth. The only thing this man was doing similar was the heavy lifting day and even at that, his volume was too low for any significant changes.

Which brings me to the rule 4 of Narnia. Make sure your goals are in line with your efforts otherwise it ain’t never gonna happen.