Jack Mercer

Your training doesn't happen 3 times a week. It happens all week. Three of those days involve a barbell. The other four determine whether those sessions actually work. Sleep, walking, food, stress. The boring stuff is the whole game. jackmercerforged.substack.com/p/the-stuff-be…

This is the exact dynamic in every gym too. The strongest guys I train around are between sets talking, taking real rest, not rushing. The guy on the treadmill for 90 minutes looks like he's serving a sentence. There's something to the idea that the most effective training shouldn't look like punishment.

Back when I used to train at the UCLA track, I’d always see the sprinters laughing, stretching, joking around. Every five or 10 minutes they’d run a sprint and then go back to laughing. The 10,000 meter guys always looked miserable. Plodding around the track, grimacing. Pain.

Recovery is the one that took me the longest to figure out. At 28 I could train six days a week on bad sleep and fast food and still make progress. At 40 I miss one night of sleep and my next session is garbage. The guys who look great into their 50s figured that out earlier than the rest of us. The workout is the easy part. Everything between sessions is where the real work is.

The guys who look great at 45, 50, 55 didn't get lucky. They got obsessive about sleep. They dialed in their hormones. They took recovery as seriously as the workout. Genetics loads the gun. Protocol pulls the trigger.

@whoistife_x Boring eaters and boring trainers. The guy with the best squat in your gym has been running the same program structure for years. The guy with the best physique has been eating the same meals for longer. Novelty is entertainment. Repetition is results.

the people with the best physiques in your gym are the most boring eaters.

This is right and most guys need to hear it. But the key word is "focusing." I see plenty of 30 minute sessions that are really 12 minutes of work and 18 minutes of phone. A focused 45 minutes with compound lifts and short rest periods will beat a distracted two hours every single time.

Your workout doesn't need to be 2 hours long. 30-45 minutes of focusing on compound movements 2-4x per week is enough to build muscle and raise your metabolic rate.

Weighted dips are one of the most underused upper body movements in any gym. I rotate them in every 3-4 months and my pressing numbers always jump when I do. There's something about loading that pattern that a cable pushdown will never replicate. Everybody wants a bigger bench but nobody wants to hang plates from their waist.

I feel like not enough people do weighted dips these days. Such a great movement that targets the chest and triceps so well. When I was a freshmen in college there was this big dude that trained at the rec. He would hang four 45s from his belt and just pump out reps, needless to say his triceps were ridiculous. Ever since seeing that guy do them they have been a movement that I consistently rotate into my routine. Highly recommend them.

20 minutes post-session three days a week completely changed my recovery between lifting and BJJ. Sleep quality alone makes it worth it. But I'd push back on the "without doing a minute on the treadmill" part. You still need to actually train your heart under load. Sauna is the multiplier, not the base.

The best health tool on the planet is a sauna. Improves the cardiovascular system without doing a minute on the treadmill. It also improves recovery and mood, relieves stress & it’s associated with increased lifespan. One of the best gifts you could give yourself is a sauna.

@DearS_o_n Show up.

Pitch me your best advice in 2 words

@DearS_o_n Yep. And the trick is that "in a month" feels worse than "today" because you're actually trying and still missing. That's where most people bail. The ones who don't are the bottom picture.

CONSISTENCY=SUCCESS.

The deprivation piece in bodybuilding is underrated. People think lifting is the hard part. It's not. It's eating 1,800 calories while training twice a day and still showing up to work like a normal person. That kind of suffering doesn't look impressive from the outside, which is exactly why most people quit.

I’ve done multiple bodybuilding competitions, powerlifting meets & ironman triathlons They’re all uniquely challenging Bodybuilding bc of the deprivation of food Powerlifting bc of the daily grind of lifting heavy ass weight Ironman bc of the duration of training.. 15+ hours a week training HARD. Long sessions They all helped me grow immensely

@micheal_ws18 Straight to the rack. Warm-up sets with the bar exist for a reason. The best warm-up for squatting is lighter squats, not a stationary bike.

Gym goers, when you hit the gym, do you head straight to the weights, or do a quick cardio warm-up first?

If you had a brutal week at work and your kid was sick and you slept like garbage, maybe Friday's session is 80% instead of 100%. That's not weakness. That's accounting. You're acknowledging the recovery budget was already spent before you touched a barbell.

Same program, two different weeks. One week I slept seven hours and ate three real meals a day. The other week I slept five and skipped lunch twice. Identical training. Completely different results. The program isn't the variable. The life around it is.

@whoistife_x It’s 40% squats, 30% regretting your life choices, and 30% standing at the top of the next set pretending to check your phone while your legs stop shaking.

leg day is 40% squats. 60% regretting your life choices mid-set.

Hotter take: after 35 nobody cares about either. Your wife cares that you’re not exhausted by 7pm. Your kids care that you can wrestle on the living room floor. Your doctor cares about your bloodwork. How much you lift and how you look are conversations you have with yourself. Which is fine. Just don’t confuse them for the ones that matter.

Hot take: No one cares how much you lift. They care how you look.

@Fitness_G0d “As soon as you feel stressed, have sex” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this list and I guarantee it wasn’t written by someone with a toddler.

As soon as you wake up, hydrate As soon as you feel stressed, have sex As soon as you feel down, get sun As soon as you feel tired, walk As soon as you self doubt, meditate

Agree, but I’d sharpen it. The goal isn’t to maximize your strength potential. The goal is to maximize the strength you can maintain without breaking. Your potential bench might be 365. But if getting there costs you a torn pec at 41, the potential was a trap. Best bench after 35 is the heaviest weight you can hit clean, repeatedly, for years.

Once again, we all have different genetics, training experience, goals, constraints, etc There is no number you “need” to be able to bench, as a man What matters is you maximize your own strength potential Be better than you were yesterday

The gym is one of the last honest places. No politics, no performance reviews, no pretending. You either moved the weight or you didn’t. That’s why it changes people.

The easiest way to improve your training without changing your program: walk 20 minutes in the morning, 20 after dinner. It costs nothing, it requires no recovery, and it does more for body composition over time than a sixth gym session ever will.

@micheal_ws18 It’s because the gym is one of the only places left where you can’t fake the work. You either moved the weight or you didn’t. No email, no meeting, no politics. Just you and the bar. That honesty changes how you carry yourself everywhere else.

Having gym aura is a different kind of aura.

That last line is wrong. That’s not boring. That’s the smartest thing you’ll do all week. The day you stop confusing a good warmup with permission to go to war is the day your training actually starts working long-term. Younger you was exciting. Current you is durable. I know which one I’d rather be at 45.

I'm pretty fatigued from the volume increase. My warm up just now was unbelievably good. Younger me would use this as an excuse to flog myself. 35 year old me is gonna get just enough stimulus and bank some recovery points. God when did I get boring