Today I'm going to try to help you answer the most important question that you can ask

yourself when it comes to seeing results from your workouts. Only you can answer it. That

is, are you training hard enough? Before I even go into this, there's two things I want

you to do.

Number one, you've got to get the ear muffs and put them on the kids because this is a

Jeff rant video. You may not like everything you hear, or how it comes out of my mouth,

but I promise you this: it will be the truth. Secondly, you have to start by watching a

couple clips so we can set this whole thing up.

You see, I'm doing some barbell curls here and I want you to see if you could tell me

in which one of these am I training hard enough. They're all barbell curls. Some seem to be

harder than others, for me at least. But can you spot it? Now don’t tell me what I'm

doing, or which one you think it is at this point.

We're going to save that for a little later. The idea is this: I could tell you it has

nothing to do with whether I'm screaming in one, or not in the other. It has nothing to

do with whether I was listening to some really bad ass tunes to fire me up in one, but I

wasn't in the other.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I was sweating and leaving a pool behind me

to nauseate the next person that tries to curl in the same spot as me. It has nothing

to do with any of that. The only thing that matters is only one thing. That is effort.

Which one was my best effort?

Which one was I pushing harder than ever before to do one thing? To accomplish one goal. That

is to get more from my body than it was willing to give me. Think about that. Your body is

comfortable giving you a certain level. Beyond it, it doesn't like it, but your challenge

is to take it.

It's to find out how you can get more from what your body is willing to give you. That

is what training hard is. That is intensity. That is what produces results. This is where

a lot of us trip up. Guess what? I'm included. Where do you think the idea for this video

came from?

I caught myself halfway through, half-assing a workout one night. Just this week, actually.

I'm experienced enough to be able to recognize that when it's there, but the fact of the

matter is it trips all of us up. Are you somebody that writes down all your workouts in the

journal?

And your journal said for you to do 10 reps of something, but when you got to 10 you probably

could have done 12. What did you do? You stopped because your journal told you to. That's not

training hard enough. Maybe you're the type who picks their favorite exercises more often

than not.

I can tell you this, if they're your favorite, they're likely not the ones you should be

doing. You only go to the ones that you find comfortable. That ain't going to give you

the results that you want. That's not going to get you training as hard as you should

be to get results.

Maybe, for some, the accomplishment is getting to the gym. That is bullshit! That can't be

the standard for excellence. We are there at the gym. That is where it all starts. That

is where you need to start doing something and not just something when you're there,

but something you ain't ever done before.

That is when you know you're training hard enough. You see, you can go back to those

exercises I did in the beginning there and you could try to guess all you want at which

one I'm doing my best effort on. But I will tell you this: you'll never know. The only

person that knows what the best effort was, was me.

Only I know whether I was actually giving it my all in any of those sets. Only you will

know when you're giving your all in the things that you do. But I will tell you this – this

is a great equalizer when it comes to effort and intensity.

While we may not be able to tell what it looks like, I can guaran-damn-tee you what it's

supposed to feel like and it's going to be really fucking uncomfortable. If you're doing

this right, it's going to be uncomfortable. It ain't going to be easy. As I say, nothing

in life worth having is going to come easy.

If it was easy do you know how many of us would be walking around looking like descendants

of Frank Zane? We all have the perfect body. It's not easy. It's difficult. It requires

effort. It separates the men from the boys. It's not the easiest thing for us to just

all of a sudden adopt as a lifestyle, but you need to if you want to see the results

that you're looking for.

The bottom line is – I've said it before – if you want to get results then you'd

better start getting comfortable being uncomfortable. The bottom line. However, there is another

side of this equation that people tend to leave out. And I won't because it's probably

equally important to this entire aspect of your training.

That is, you'd better start doing it intelligently. When you're going to be manipulating high

effort and high intensity effort, consistently in your training, through all different types

of goals – whether you're training for power, speed, or endurance, or size, or strength

– then you'd better know that you have a plan in place to allow you to realize the

best aspects of those goals without breaking your body down to the point that you are either

getting injured, or you just simply can't recover.

So it's not just about training hard. It's about how smart you can train hard. That is

where shit gets done. That is talking about blending purpose with intensity. That's the

Holy Grail. They're not independent of each other. They have to be trained and thought

about together because you could train like an animal – and maybe a lot of us do this

when we're younger – you train like an animal, you push shit around the gym like you've never

done before.

Ultimately, if you have no plan you're going to break down. I've seen it happen so many

times. Your body will betray you. On the other side of the coin, I don’t care how smart

you are. I don’t care if you know about the Golgi tendon organ, or if you know about

sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and everything in between.

If you can't put effort behind your knowledge and put it in practice it ain't worth a damn

and you're not going to get the results just by knowing those fancy terms. It's about blending

them together. Look, here's the only thing I want you to do: the next time you train,

whether it be with ATHLEANX, or some other inferior program; the fact of the matter is

this, guys, do me one favor, please.

Don’t just exist in your workout. Train. Push. Improve. Push for something that you

– like I said earlier – do something you've never done before. Do something you have never

been able to accomplish before today and then tomorrow, do something again that you never

did up until today. Always push to improve.

For those 30, 45, 60 minutes that you're in the gym, don’t think about the fight you

had with your girlfriend, or where you guys are going for dinner, trying to make up, or

what movie you're going to go see, or fixing your broken down car, or picking up the batteries

and the milk from CVS.

Whatever the hell it is that you've got to do, think about none of that. Take all that

shit and get it out of your mind and think about just one thing. That is taking – actively

taking – what your body is not willing to give you. You win that fight and I promise

your training hard enough.

All right, guys. Rant over, ear muffs off. I hope you've found this video helpful. Yes,

it's got me fired up, but it is such an important part in training and the results that you're

going to see because if you get this part wrong – like I said before – it doesn’t

matter what you know.

It doesn’t matter anything. It all comes down to your effort. Effort is everything

and it matters. If you're looking for a training program to help you with the part – the

smart part – and try to teach you what you have to do and when you have to do it; I'm

happy to do that for you.

It's over at ATHLEANX.com. Our ATHLEANX training system will spell everything out for you,

step by step. But you've got to give me the effort. I will do my best to grab it out of

you every single day. I try to coach you through every workout and I'll do my best, but you've

got to give it to me.

Give me everything you've got. All right, guys. I hope you've found this video helpful.

I'll be back here in just a couple days with some more content here. You tell me what you

want to see and I'll do my best to bring that to you.

All right, guys. I'll see you again soon. See you.