Strength coach and Athlean-X founder Jeff Cavaliere C.S.C.S. regularly provides helpful explainers on how to build muscle safely and sustainably. But in his most recent video, he’s confessing to some of the cardinal sins he committed when he very first started going to the gym, and how he was holding back his own progress before learning to do better.
Firstly, Cavaliere admits that he followed the workout plans of famous bodybuilders thinking he would be able to achieve their physiques just through training, when in reality he was accruing all kinds of “junk volume” in his sessions even when it was causing pain and discomfort in his knees. “I kept doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing,” he says. “I didn’t know any better, and I don’t know whether or not I should blame myself more for not respecting my own body’s limitations.”
One of his biggest mistakes, however, was simply lifting weights up and down without necessarily focusing on achieving a high quality of contraction—meaning a lot of wasted reps along the way—because he was shying away from discomfort. “You should be seeking out a contraction discomfort, almost a cramping type feel, because it helps build mind-muscle connection,” he explains. “You have to get that muscle to a point of discomfort and not shy away from it, but revel in it, even if it limits the number of repetitions you can perform.”
Similarly, to begin with Cavaliere was forgetting the benefit of eccentric motion on pulling exercises. Because the weight tends to fall away from your body on the negative half of the rep, it can be tempting to just let it—but slowing down that movement increases the time your muscles spend under tension.
Cavalier also warns agains undervaluing corrective exercises in terms of what they do to help muscle growth. “They seem like the little exercises, the ones you don’t really want to do,” he says. “They plug those leaks, they fill in the gaps that allow those bigger muscles, the ones that get more attention, to actually do their job better. So you can improve your strength if you do correctives. You can improve your aesthetics.”
When it came to his diet, Cavaliere also made some rookie errors early on, like not realizing that “not all oats are created equal.” He recalls buying the kind of oatmeal that was extremely high in sugar. “We know that when we’re trying to build muscle, what we eat is going to dictate the results that we get, and loading up your body with sugar, even at an early age, is a big mistake,” he says.
At the extreme other end, Cavaliere says he regrets being so restrictive in his diet that he would at times only permit himself to eat egg whites for breakfast every day for fear of losing his gains, before eventually opening his horizons to different kinds of foods and seeing that they actually had a positive effect on his fat loss and muscle growth.
“Even in my healthier approach to eating, I have ways to placate that sweet tooth that’s still there,” he says. “The idea is, without having some of these outlets to keep me satisfied, I wouldn’t have been able to stay consistent with what I eat, and for me that’s the key.”
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
