How I got the strongest I've ever been at 36 years old

I've been going to the gym for the past 10 years but I've seen more progress in the past 100 days than in my entire life during this time I increased my deadlift by 72% I nearly doubled my Squat and I increased my bicep by a/ an inch so yeah I've been pretty productive lately I recently uploaded a 28-minute documentary following my first 100 days of powerlifting culminating with my first ever competition and in this video I want to share nine of the biggest lessons I've had and what you can take away from it if you

want to get stronger build more muscle or just pick up a consistent Fitness practice this video is sponsored by my friends over at Squarespace later I'll show you one of the biggest projects that I've ever worked on on their platform okay lesson number one set a biging goal in the beginning I was just going to do powerlifting for 100 days that alone would have been just fine but a few people mentioned to me that I should sign up for a comp and my only thought was what the hell is a comp I didn't really know

much about powerlifting in the beginning I just thought it was a style of lifting at the gym what I came to realize was that it's an actual sport in and of itself that combines your total one rep max for your squat bench press and deadlift and when I looked into what competitions actually look like well it scared the hell out of me so naturally I decided to sign up for one it's really not that hard to find other similar Fitness Milestones or goals tough mutters Spartan races triathlons and marathons all work to motivate people into

action and for a couple reasons first they come come built in with a deadline as soon as you sign up and pay for your spot the clock starts ticking every day you fail to train is one less day you have to prepare I have just over a 100 days now to get myself in shape to prepare to compete in a legitimately sanctioned powerlifting event what the did I just do and I found that it's really hard not to talk about it whether it's with your partner or coworker it's eventually going to come up in conversation

and this really helped me stay able I knew that I couldn't just quietly cancel the competition and ask for a refund also it was non-refundable so there's that The Closer the day of the competition got the more intense my training became there were going to be over a 100 people watching me lift the heaviest weight I possibly could and the risk of failure was incredibly high that was a huge kick in the ass that helped me stay committed to my goal there were some downsides to this that I'll get to later in the video but

this definitely helps to explain why I saw such significant progress in only a few month mons if you want to get stronger you should hire the world's best strength coach okay that might not work for everyone unless you also live in Sydney have a large budget or a YouTube channel with 3.8 million subscribers that you can leverage but honestly hiring any expert in the field you're interested in whether it's powerlifting or professional bed making is one of the smartest ways to progress quickly I was lucky enough to work with one of the best strength coaches

in the world Sebastian bass orb he's held several National records during his time as a professional powerlifter and he he's also the strength coach for this guy Thor Boron you may have heard of him before he's one of the greatest strength athletes of all time and the current world record holder for the deadlift at 51 kg no big deal I have never hired a personal trainer or coach before I've definitely always relied on the DIY approach but in our very first session together I saw the benefit he gave me live feedback on my form critique

my lifts and helped talk me through each set as I was doing them come under the barbell place it on the rear delts elbows back and shoulder blades down all those muscles are nice and engaged take a big breath to brace good one step back to clear the rack side side good let's try and stand very slightly wider yeah I like that okay that's going to allow for more strength potentially okay now looking straight ahead tuck that chin take a massive breath hold it good push the knees out in the same direction as the toes

and stand great uh tuck your chin you're looking up a little bit too much good the result I was able to lift far more than what I was already doing at the gym I wasn't worried about hurting myself or doing the lift wrong I had much more confidence and as a result I was able to lift much more than I thought I could my mind's blown it feels so much easier than the way that I was doing it before B offered to train me for the entire 100 days leading up to my competition and that

really meant that I could stop scrolling Reddit looking for answers from strangers and just throw them at him during our sessions should I get a powerlifting belt how do they work it's giving me a bruise am I wearing it wrong are there any supplements I should be taking creatine cool what kind what happens if I fail a set do I lower my weight what do I do next week where should I get my powerlifting singlet does it make my butt look big okay yeah you're right that's not cool honestly I'm surprised I didn't annoy him

so much that he fired me as a client every week I threw every question I had at him and because he's a pro he had already spent the past 20 years thinking about each one so my advice is to find an expert that you trust and work with them as much as you can whether that's one day per week or one day per month not only will you get a better answer than Google you won't spend months or years going down the wrong path be imperfectly consistent I have to admit this one goes against my

own Basic Instinct when I looked at my program on day one I thought to myself I'm not going to miss a single day I'm going to hit every single workout and check off every lift but then of course life happens I took a long trip out of town I had to cram towards a work deadline I stayed up all night with my newborn probably shouldn't keep a baby up that late now there might have been a time in the past when I was able to power through and live up to my regular perfectionist standards but

since I've become a dad I just don't have the same flexibility that I once did if I took my old All or Nothing approach I'd end up with a lot of nothing as bass told me when he walked me through my program for the first time there's optimal and then there's practical a lot of people you know look at a program and they say I can't do that so therefore I'm not going to do it it's like no that's as optimal now now let's think about what's practical for you we need to always compromise and

make sure one you can do it and two I've spoken to you about this you're going to enjoy it you need to enjoy your training if you don't enjoy it you're not going to stick to it as life happened I made adjustments to stick to the program the best I could that meant sometimes I'd only train 3 days a week instead of the prescribed four while on vacation I had to use my hotel's shitty gym equipment and sometimes I had to cut my workout short if I had an urgent work deadline to hit or if

I was exhausted from being up with my son all night as I moved from one imperfect workout to the next I contined to make imperfect progress toward my goal I didn't let small setbacks deter me and I saw far more growth than I would have if I let perfectionism hold me back on the technical side of things one piece of the lifting puzzle that helped me build strength very quickly is something called Progressive overload Progressive overload is a strength training concept characterized by systematically increasing the load of an exercise over time to continually challenge the

body and stimulate adaptation put a little bit more simp if you want to get stronger you need to lift more weight over time so on week one I started by squatting 80 kg then on week two I increased by 5 kg to squat 85 kg the next week I lifted 90 kg and finally on week four I increased to 95 kg since it would be physically impossible to continue at this rate forever the next week would start the beginning of phase 2 in which I would deload and lower the weight starting the process all over

again over the course of a few months you should be able to see consider considerable strength gains with this method if you're just getting started out it's easier to see progress they call them newbie gains once you're an elite athlete you might have to train for an entire year to get an extra 5 kilos on your bench press so compare this to my typical approach showing up at the gym week after week and lifting what felt comfortable sometimes I push myself other times I just have a casual workout I never focused on Progressive overload before

and once I did the results followed okay here's one that I think is highly underrated stay off social media I rarely have Instagram on my phone these days but early on into powerlifting I did and it didn't take long before the algorithm realized I was interested in seeing more gym content and holy did it show me more gym content overnight I started to see hundreds of Fitness influencers professional powerlifters and Crossfit trainers I saw Natty or not videos Sam solic takedown videos and videos of a janitor doing a one-handed overhead press in front of the

biggest dude in the gym can I clean cu when I got started with powerlifting I felt excited proud eager to learn I felt unique and special but after seeing these videos on repeat every day I felt deflated overwhelmed confused I felt far behind where I thought I should be and then when you look at the comments oh my God the comments they were just filled with so much negativity and jealousy and bitterness it was enough to make me want to throw my phone out the window it's great to have Inspirations to to look up to

and there are a lot of people making great content online but I don't think it's healthy to see hundreds of people every day who are outperforming you in every way imaginable it's hard not to compare your day one to someone's 10year journey and if you're someone who is quick to compare it deflates your confidence and Smothers the excitement in the worst way the only comparison that should ever matter is you today versus you tomorrow and this isn't just limited to powerlifting whether it's baking woodworking cooking or home renovations if you find yourself often getting in

a negative spiral of comparing yourself to others do yourself a favor and log off the apps completely so as many of you know I recently made the switch to become a solo Creator again for the first time in 5 years that change has meant that I've had to rethink everything about my YouTube channel and business and one platform that's played a huge role in this transition has been Squarespace they're my sponsor for this week's video so my biggest project so far this year has been moving my YouTube course page over to Squarespace it's a ridiculously

long and beautifully designed landing page with overlapping elements custom borders Graphics icons buttons and a responsive design now normally I keep my websites incredibly simple this was not that and so I was a little bit nervous about how ambitious this project was but once I jumped into Squarespace I was amazed at what was possible look I can literally drag this image anywhere I can overlap Graphics I can create custom dividers and even add little flourishes this is exactly why I love Squarespace as a platform as a solo Creator I don't want to spend a lot

of time and money on developers and copywriters and designers I want to be able to just jump into my website and make a change if you've been watching my videos for a while you've heard me talk about Squarespace about how they have great templates how it's easy to use and great for people building simple websites and now you know it can also help you build a ridiculously long a beautifully designed course site with overlapping elements custom borders and responsive design visit squarespace.com to start your free trial and then when you're ready to launch go to

squarespace.com slmd to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain getting back to my learnings from 100 days of powerlifting one thing that really made an incremental difference was following a legit program I went to the gym for 10 years and for 10 years I didn't think hey maybe I should follow a legit program created by a professional now instead I piece together information online I got tips from friends at the gym and I took Reddit comments from Anonymous strangers as gospel don't get me wrong personally I found a lot of progress

with this DIY approach I was able to build strength muscle and get really fit with this strategy I felt good had a few healthy habits on rotation and actually enjoyed going to the gym these were all huge wins but there was one small problem at least from a performance perspective after my first few years at the gym I hadn't really seen any sign significant progress I was still lifting around the same weight that I had and I still had pretty much the same build obviously some of this can be explained by slow periods and extended

time away from the gym but now I realize it's largely because I wasn't following a legit program and by legit I mean one that was developed by an expert with a track record to prove it bass set me up with a program on day one that was much more structured than anything I'd followed before although I'm a powerlifter I don't train my powerlifters like typical powerlifters we place equal emphasis on the muscles of the front of the body to the muscles of the back of the body okay so we talk about a push pull ratio

of one to one so when we do our upper body sessions you'll see the first exercise of the day is bench press and we suet that with a Pull exercise which in this instance is a laat pull down before you pick a program for yourself it's important to know what goal you have in mind Do you want to build muscle or strength since I wanted to build strength and specifically strength as a powerlifter that meant I was largely focusing on my squat bench press and deadlift if I was trying to get as big as possible

in 100 days I'd follow a very different program track everything from your calories to your workouts I used an app called My Fitness Pal to track everything I was eating until you actually measure out your meals you'll never know if you're getting enough carbs to fuel your workouts or enough protein to build muscle by the way A good rule of thumb is to get 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight I also tracked all my workouts I pulled each phase of my program into an app called strong you can create create super sets

see what you lifted the last time you did the exercise keep a detailed history of all workouts and the most useful feature for me it has a rest timer built in so once I check off a set in the app the rest timer automatically starts this is one of my new favorite apps that I've been using and I definitely recommend it to anyone who goes to the gym or follows a structured program it's not free but definitely worth it in my opinion I will say that I did stop tracking my calories after a couple months

I found that it got too high maintenance for me to continue scan a barcode or measuring almond milk before each meal was really annoying but a couple months of tracking did help me a lot and gave me a solid grasp of what I was eating and how many calories I was taking in and it was enough to help me be more intuitive with my eating going forward you don't need to train to failure one thing I've been told ever since I started going to the gym is the importance of going to failure I was told

that the last rep is the most important rep and if you don't go to Absolute failure you might as well not even go to the gym at all of course the perfectionist in me absolutely love this idea but in training with bass I learned that it's actually not as important as most people make it out to be and most experts now agree that it's largely hype I think that the research shows that there's not a huge difference in terms of hypertrophy or strength if you go all the way to failure or if you stop a

couple reps shy agreed and I would add that most of the people that are saying that failure is super important are coming from an egotistical perspective in which they need to emotionally drain themselves in the gym and it's more cathartic and psychological and less to do with what gets optimal results the principle that I learned over this time and started applying to my training is to always keep one in the tank meaning you should stop when you feel like you have one more solid rep in the set there was only one time I didn't take

this advice since I was at the end of phase one I Was preparing to Deo for my next session so bass and I decided that I should go for an AM wrap which stands for as many reps as possible or lifting until you fail and this is what happened let's go four and again and again five you go one more one more one more heels down heels down Who's down Who's down not have done that that might not have looked like much but I felt an immediate tear in my PEC and after going to a

physiotherapist the next day it was confirmed so he said it's like a it's probably a first or second degree tear oh my God it'll be okay it's a bummer I'll talk to Sebastian tomorrow and just see kind of what he thinks about programming and stuff and he'll be able to kind of adjust the program it'll be fine this happens to top athletes all the time this kind of stuff yeah I'm a top athlete that's what I meant I'm the strongest Matt devl in the world maybe at least at least the second strongest Le there's a

few there's a few strong Mt out there this is not to say that going to failure often leads to injury lots of athletes incorporate failure into their regular programs it does however increase the likelihood that your form will break down you will get more fatigued and you're making yourself more susceptible to injury in the end I got unlucky but the question you need to ask yourself is if this doesn't give you significantly better results is it worth the risk for me personally I'm just not going to go to failure as much as I did in

the past except of course when it comes to competition day I've got one more takeaway but real quick I wanted to let you know that my YouTube course just opened up for enrollment and it won't be open again for another 6 months in the course I share a road map for creating a successful Channel with Integrity including handing you my own systems for brainstorming ideas editing videos creating compelling thumbnails and titles and so much more go to mtd.com youube to get started and also to check out a pretty amazing website if I do say so

myself effort makes a difference but at a cost if 100 people with similar genetics go to the gym for 1 hour they will probably all see very different results and that's because not all time at the gym is equal what you do and how you focus your energy makes a huge difference some people spend their time at the gym scrolling their phone taking longer rest periods than needed taking selfies in the mirror or simply just not focusing on each set I've been guilty of all of these things in the past except for maybe the bathroom

selfies and there's definitely nothing wrong with being chill at the gym but during my 100 days of powerlifting I did notice a huge difference when I started to be more focused and give more of an effort into each lift I performed every week I was pushing myself far beyond what I thought I could do my intensity was dialed up to 11 and that came with a lot of huffing puffing and cursing under my breath make no mistake this was intense training and it wasn't always enjoyable I was no longer showing up at the gym and

leisurely jumping from one exercise to the next I was methodical about following my program and lifting the weight I set out to because if I didn't hit my lift this week how did I expect to add another 5 kilos onto the bar next week training like a worldclass athlete taught me something else that was really important I don't want to train like a worldclass athlete all the time I had so much fun doing this experiment and I learned so much that I will continue to apply to my time at the gym it's actually amazing to

think about the transformation I made and how much confidence I now have going forward I'll still be using a legit program annoying bass as much as he allow me focusing on my technique first and going to failure much less often implementing Progressive overload tracking my workouts and avoiding gym content like my life depends on it but for now I'm intentionally pulling back on the intensity of my training instead of focusing on getting radical transformation in a short time frame I'm going to be enjoying the Slow Burn of continued progress only now with a few more

Tools in my back pocket