How To Go Hard, Even When You Don’t Want To - Sam Sulek - #1157

Chris Williamson (0:00)

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I'm interested in how you think about training mentally. How that comes into your development goals.

Sam Sulek (0:33)

Who for? For me? Because I feel like I end up splitting how I'm thinking about training between myself, of course, because I care about my own training. But with all the videos I make, I'm talking to everybody because I want to be able to give reasonable tips, at least from my own experience. So I'm half thinking, okay, what kind of bar do I want? But also what's semi-reasonable for someone else? Because for me, I'm going to say, you want to go to a steak dinner like last night.

Okay, this Wellington's probably 50 grams of carbs, probably 20 grams of fat. I can tell it's a little greasy and however like super specific about all sorts of stuff. But I'm not going to say like that is the bar for somebody who just started working out. Because you got to creep your way up to it. So it's like, I always make this sort of analogy where it's not necessarily where you are specifically. I mean, we're about to see the Olympia this week. There's going to be dudes who would fill the frame right here.

They'd have to adjust the camera.

Chris Williamson (1:36)

Quite a lot, yeah.

Sam Sulek (1:38)

I don't look at that and think, oh my God, I'm so small. All I'm really proud of is like, man, every time I see a picture of younger me, I'm like, I don't even know if you'd believe it where I'm at now. But it's just gradually raising the bar for yourself, meeting it. But now you got to raise it again because now you've met it. It's like normal. So that's probably the biggest thing to think about. It's like even now, I've been working out for eight years pretty much. I'm still thinking like, okay, I want to raise my own bar.

There's no end to it either. There's no endpoint where I'm like, okay, now I'm totally perfect and I know everything. Everything I do is awesome. It's like I'm always just trying to creep up, what can I do a little better? What can I do a little bit harder? The more you do that, going harder becomes more normal.

Now, I feel like I'm spoiled, because the dude who's at your gym, who's the most jacked, just looks insane. He looks like he's going the hardest. He actually has it the easiest because now he's adapted himself-

Chris Williamson (2:39)

His baseline.

Sam Sulek (2:40)

To doing that. For him, this is a normal day.

If you think he's going crazy hard, it's because you're not used to that level. But it's almost like I've got two approaches. I want to bring it super hard, but I also want to be able to tell myself, I could do this set as hard as possible just like that, like nothing. I want it to be seamless, but still actually really bring it extra hard.

Chris Williamson (3:08)

Effortless effort in that way.

Sam Sulek (3:10)

Yeah. I don't remember where I heard it. Someone commented on one of my videos after I said it, but I really like this analogy. It's called practice without striving.

You're going as hard as you can, but you want that going as hard as you can to just be seamless. It's just what you do. With the gym, I mean what? How long until you look like you've done something? How long until you look like you lost a bunch of weight? It's like years. Guys will come up to me at a fitness expo, and it's like, look at this picture. 200-pound guy, 500-pound picture. I've been making these videos for so long that he says, your video has got me to start doing this.

It just feels totally crazy for me to even hear that. Because every time someone is like, I've been tracking my calories, I've been doing my cardio. I know they actually are thinking about things differently than regular people, which I blame just regular American upbringing. Everybody just thinks bread makes you fat and just eat your vegetables. That's the extent of what a healthy diet is.