Motivation is very popular on the internet, especially on social media. Supplement companies and wanna-be fitness celebrities will use motivational quotes and motivation pictures to get their followers and potential followers to Facebook “like” and “share” them with their friends & to get more Instagram “likes”. They think that if they show you and their audiences pictures of people or themselves with ripped, muscular, round asses, big boobs, and lean bodies you’ll envy them and want to look like them, ie motivate you. This in turn is really just beneficial to them, not you, as this will help generate more awareness and ultimately more sales of their products, themselves, and their workout programs.
Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.
First, I never felt inspired by any of these quotes nor did I ever get inspired by any of these images of juiced up bodybuilders with motivation quotes on top of them like the picture above. I never looked at some guy in the gym and thought, “Wow, I wanna be as big as that guy!” Reason was most of the time I figured the guy was using steroids & quite frankly I find it very easy to tell if someone is using steroids or not. On the female side of the coin, most of the time if a woman is muscular and has a six pack WITH large breasts, MOST of the time those round, perky, DD’s are fake.
The other reason I was never inspired by pictures of juiced up bodybuilders was I knew that[clickToTweet tweet=”Genetics plays a huge part in the amount of muscle you can build, and how quickly you can build it.” quote=”Genetics plays a huge part in the amount of muscle you can build, and how quickly you can build it.”] EVERYONE has a genetic amount of muscle they can grow. One cannot just keep growing, and growing and growing muscle naturally. Eventually it stops no matter how much or how hard you train. This is the one thing supplement companies, professional bodybuilders, trainers, and sellers of workout programs do not want you to know: you have your limits on the amount of muscle you can grow. Thus looking at a picture of an anabolic steroid using individual and using that as motivation to workout and train with the goal to look like that person will give one an unrealistic expectation and ultimately set that person up for disappointment.
Dan Duchaine, whom I consider the greatest mind in relation to how to build muscle with supplements, had terrible genetics for muscle. Maybe that is what made him seek after muscle building supplements? I know that is why I got into this business. I have terrible genetics and I need any edge I can get to build a 1/4 pound of muscle…
Secondly here’s the other thing…
Lifting weights are not hard, going to the gym every day or 4 or 5 days a week is not hard. It’s EASY!!
It’s not like professional bodybuilders workout 8, 9, 10 hours a day. They don’t, they go to the gym once, maybe twice a day and workout for an hour or so. I could see if there was a direct correlation between the hours spent in the gym and and muscle growth because there’s not. If you worked out 8 hours a day you’d still only get so big. Shit, I was going to the gym twice a day when I was in college. It is not hard, it’s fun in fact. And quite frankly I was busting my ass in the gym. I think most people bust their asses in the gym. When I go to the gym, I hear and see people going balls to the walls. I see guys screaming and yelling and motivating their partners. I don’ think that if I asked you if you try hard in the gym you’d say, “Well not really I only go 50%”. No you’d say, “Hell yea Alex, I bust my ass!”. Going to the gym is NOT hard, it’s fucking easy. When I see these pro’s talking about dedication, and all this other bullshit to make it sound like working out is hard I laugh. No dude, picking up weights is easy, I’m sorry, so quit pretending that it is difficult. Look at the picture above with the girl saying, “She cried for this”. Really? You cried? Give me a break. And OMG, you went to the gym late one time, wow, what dedication! (LOL) Most people enjoy going to the gym, it is fun, and relaxing. Hell right after I write this article I’m going to the gym and going to get my pump on.
Here’s the other thing. Eating healthy is not hard. Posing for photo’s, sorry, that’s not hard either. Going to the gym late at night, not hard. These fitness people on Instagram with millions of followers, I just laugh to myself, when they say how hard it was to go to the gym today, because they we’re slightly under the weather, awwwww I feel so bad (cough cough). What a joke!
I’m sorry, but to me, this picture below, this is not motivational. Wow you’re in the gym working out….so freakin difficult. (can you hear my sarcasm!) This is a picture from this wanna-be fitness celebrity’s Facebook page. It is a marketing technique to gain more Facebook followers by asking people to “tag” people you want to motivate.
Trying to build muscle or lose weight is NOT something that should require motivation from looking at someone else’ phyique. It should not require pictures of genetically gifted males (steroid users) or females (breast implants, cosmetic surgery, HCG, and steroids) to motivate you to workout to look like them. As a society we’ve gone from simply air brushing the cover girls of the magazines to this freakin mess pictured below…. (seriously waist trainers, God help the future and the naive!)
Look, if you’re using the images above as motivation you’re setting yourself up for failure. Building muscle take years, not 30 days. Losing weight the healthy way, and maintaining it is a complete life style change, not sold in a diet tea or bottle of pills. This shit ain’t realistic. The motivation should come from within. You should motivate YOURSELF. That is what I personally do, I motivate myself. The way I do it is to relate myself to the underdog.
The underdog story is what motivates me. Someone that struggles from the bottom and/or has come from impossible odds to accomplish something extraordinary.
One way I do this is to read about the stories of Medal of Honor recipients. I like to read the citations about our veterans that went up against impossible odds to save the life of fellow soldiers and to secure the future of our freedom are truly motivational.
Now this is motivational….
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sgt-walter-ehlers-wwii-medal-honor-recipient-dies-92-n34836
Think about how if you we’re in those same situations as these Medal of Honer recipients were, would you be able to do the same thing? I think about that and that is motivational. Not deciding if you should go to the gym because it is too late at night or because you’re too tired.
Secondly, I like this guy, Eric Thomas. Here he is with what is probably my all time favorite motivational speech about an underdog. If this does not give you chills up your spine then clearly you are not competitive, never have been the underdog, or always had your life handed to you on a silver spoon. If you we’re alive and remember when Mike Tyson was in his prime you’ll feel the true power of this speech. I mean Mike Tyson, was a beast back then. He would DESTROY other fighters in a matter of seconds or minutes. If you did’nt catch the 1st or 2nd round his fight you’d miss it. He was that scary!
click on the video to listen to Eric Thomas‘ speech.
This is a great motivational speech by a guy by the name of Eric Thomas. And why it is great to me is because I can relate it to myself. And when you can relate something to yourself it becomes that much more powerful and motivating. My favorite part is “stay on course!”. In life, for some, things will go bad but its important to stay on course. Here in a nutshell is what happened to me.
Everything in my life was going great. I had successfully built up Proteinfactory.com into a multi-million dollar business. I started Proteinfactory.com with $700 out of my garage and zero experience in supplements. I got married, had 3 kids, and lived in a big house with a bad ass in ground pool, and a beach house as well. Around 2005 my mom got breast cancer. Then in 2010 my wife had an affair and she filed for divorce. A week or two right after that, the police showed up to my house and told me that someone said that I said I wanted to kill my wife. The cop said you got 15 minutes to pack your stuff and get out per judges order. It was like Nazi Germany, simply get the fuck out of your house. I called my lawyer and he said, “Alex, listen to the guy with the gun”. So I packed my shit and the dog and left (all under 15 minutes, thank you!). That was the last time I would spend a night in my house. Right before my divorce was final my mom died of cancer, she was 65. I moved into a rental house. Shortly after that Hurricane Sandy completely wiped out my entire neighbor. I swear it looked like a freakin war zone. The night of the hurricane I spent the night at my sisters house. When I returned to my neighbor hood the next morning my stomach was in my throat because I did not know the condition of my house. I remember the police were outside of my neighborhood entrance to prevent looting, they let me through. I got to my house steering around furniture and whatever else was in the road and pulled up to my house. My neighbors we’re just walking around like zombie’s picking up their cherished things. I can’t remember much because at this point I think I started to have a panic attack. But all I remember was seeing my backyard deck in the front of my house. Everything was just wiped out, clothes, T.V.s, chairs, just a disaster area. My house and all my personal belongings we’re somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
Here are some pictures of my neighborhood a few days after Hurricane Sandy.
I remember the cable company called me up saying that they were billing me for the lost cable box. They wanted to know where it was. I told the person on the phone it was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and it was kinda hard to retrieve it. Thanks Comcast for being so understanding!
Then my dog of 20 years, Chainsaw, died. That really hurt me a lot. He was my best friend.
BTW that patio that he’s enjoying took me over 1 year to build. I had no experience in building patio’s, but taught myself. It had two levels because of the grade of my backyard. I planted green lace leaf maples into the patio. It was really nice, all taken away from me by my ex-wife and a stroke of a pen.
Then finally the FDA. They pretty much shut down my business. A business that I created and invented almost 20 years ago. For those of you that do not know, I invented protein customization in 1997. You could call my company up and we would blend up different proteins for you. I based it on percentages, 50% whey, 50% Egg for example. Or you could request 25% whey, 25% creatine, 50% Carbs. I did this because I wanted to let my customers know exactly what they we’re getting. Sorry JYM, I created protein percentages almost 20 years ago. Essentially the FDA, with their new CFR 111’s in 2010, made it impossible to legally do business. So I had to close it down.
I’m not sure how I did not go through depression and jump off a bridge, but I was able to pull through. I was able to stay on course and over time things got better for me.
You might be in the same situation as I was, maybe you’re going through a divorce. Maybe a loved one has cancer. Maybe your finances are in trouble. Maybe your out of work. My word to you is…
STAY ON COURSE!
Listen to Eric Thomas’s speech about Buster Douglas gain. That is motivation! If you want more check out his site, which I really like a lot.
P.S. On a side note, if anyone is going through tough times and needs some advice, call or email me anytime and I’ll see if I can lay upon you some wisdom or simply just cheer you up. 800-343-1803 or [email protected] However, if it is about you’re too tired to go to gym and you need motivation to get there or can’t figure out a way to keep sugar out of your mouth, I’ll just hang up on you and tell you to go to Paige Hathaway’s Facebook profile…lol.
P.S.S. Get this
Alex Rogers is a supplement manufacturing expert. He has been formulating, consulting, & manufacturing dietary supplements since 1998. Alex invented protein customization in 1998 & was the first company to allow consumers to create their own protein blends. He helped create the first supplement to contain natural follistatin, invented whey protein with egg lecithin, & recently imported the world’s first 100% hydrolyzed whey.
