What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athlenex.com. Jesse Laico, Athleanx.com. So today we have
our Ask Jeff videos, right? But this time, Jeff does the asking. I'm going to ask you a question
that I can't wait to hear the answer to. I actually did this on Instagram, and tons and
tons of people gave some answers that were really, really incredible. I think it can be very helpful
to everyone that gets a chance to read these and participate. So, here's my question for you
a very important question. I'm actually going to follow up with this with my answers. Okay?
You meet yourself walking into the gym for the very first time. You can say just
three words to yourself. What are they? I know what you're going to start with.
What? Hire Jesse Laico.
No, actually probably if you ask me today, I would say fire Jesse Laico.
Well, that's not very nice of you to say. Okay. For real, though, probably
face pulls are forever. That's actually pretty good. So, you get
the gist here, guys. Three words What are they? Let me share with you, because that one actually
brings up my first point. And that is address your weaknesses. And what that means is don't always
migrate towards the things that you're either good at or like to do. You see, the best gains are
going to come from finding the things that you're not so good at in the gym or that need the most
work and then finding a way to be consistent when incorporating them into your plan.
Oh, so like me working on my posture. Your posture, again Face Pulls are very beneficial
to most people, but they oftentimes get relegated to the end of the workout, or they never are done
at all. Hopefully, I've done a lot to maybe change those patterns. But think about it like a golfer,
if you're always spending your time with the driving range but you suck at putting,
you're not really going to ever score much better than if you go and you
have to actually work on your putting. So, that's why I'm really bad at golf?
That's one of the very many reasons why you're bad golf.
But that's the point, guys remember. Don't overlook your weaknesses when your goal is
to ultimately be the best you can be. And speaking of being the best you can be,
that actually leads me to my second three-word phrase. I guess I'm using 15 in this. But look,
it's going to spark some conversation here. And that is you versus you. You see, if I were to
show you a picture of yourself with a group of your friends who are you looking at first?
Yourself. You re going to look at
yourself in a picture first? Always.
Everyone does that. Because ultimately, guys at the end of the day, we all care about ourselves
first and foremost, I'm not saying we don't care about other people, but we care about
what's happening with ourselves when we're judging what's going on around us. That actually happens
in the gym, too. I think we go into the gym thinking that everyone's looking at us.
Oh, yeah absolutely. That s how I started at least.
I did, too. I've mentioned here before, in college, I actually was a fairly skinny
guy working out in an area where there's a bunch of guys that were a lot bigger than me
and always sort of working around like this, looking around thinking people--they didn't care.
They didn't care. As a matter of fact, they were sort of cheering me on and rooting for me.
But the fact is, you think that you're always the one under the microscope when you're not. The best
part about changing your mindset to always just wanting to be a better version of you,
is that you'll always win that game. If you're viewing life as a competition and you are just
making sure that you're doing one thing to get better each and every day, you're going to win
that competition every single day. And that brings me to my third little
nugget of wisdom that I would give young Jeff on his first time into the gym.
Oh, I know what that one is. Rehire Jesse. You know that rehire is one word, right?
Rehi--Oh shit, that s right. Can I continue, please? So, the next phrase
that I would say is, effort is everything. And it actually ties into the first two things we talked
about. If you know what your weaknesses are and you know that your competition is yourself, then
the only thing that's going to determine whether or not you see the results that you want to get
for years and years down the road is the level of effort that you expend in your workouts.
And you know if you're shortchanging yourself there.
Yeah, absolutely. Right? You know whether
or not you're showing up and giving it your best. I say all the time you could train long,
or you can train hard, but you can't do both. I opt for training hard, so I make sure that every
single time I go to the gym, I'm doing something that I know I push myself further than I was
really willing to go. Right? And if you can get yourself into that space there, that is where
the best results lie. But again, if you don't ever really put in the effort just showing up,
which might be one of the things that someone might say in three words, is not enough. You
have to put in the effort in addition to showing up, and that's where the real results lie.
And so, the next three words are three that oftentimes get used far too often here,
in my opinion, on YouTube. But nevertheless, it's a decision point that every young lifter
sort of is presented with in terms of at least in their own head. And that is, Natty or not.
How do you choose to sort of pursue your path, your lifelong pursuit of fitness? Right?
Mm-hmm. Now, I think what happens every young
male at some point sort of looks at someone like The Rock, or they look at a guy who's much bigger
than them at the gym and they fantasize about what their life might be like if they had those
gains already. Maybe they're an athlete in high school. I'll share my story in a second here. We
fantasize, well, what would it be like? I'd be so much better if I was bigger to play the sport for
me, football. So, this Natty or not question, though, sort of leads to a moral question of
cheat code or not, in my opinion. Can I make a confession?
Oh, do you have something to share here, Jesse?
I do. On Natty or not.
It's very embarrassing. Is this what we're going to talk about
Juicy Laico in terms of your new gains? No, I never beat Contra on its own. I had
to use a Contra code. Okay. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left right. B,
A start. I haven't blazed in the back of my head, and I'm embarrassed of it.
Do you need a moment here to share or are you good?
I'm good. All right, you got
it off your chest. I never beat Contra either. So, when I grew up, I said I'd share my story,
for those who've already heard it, I'll share it again when I grew up my father was a physician.
He still is actually a practicing physician these days. I grew up in a divorced household.
And my father threatened me that if he ever caught me with anything, any drugs, even alcohol, he'd
throw me out of the house. So, he said steroids, recreational drugs, alcohol out of the house. So
what did I do? I actually never got drunk a day in my life, and that's a true story.
You need to loosen up. I was so scared of losing the
foundation of my home that I decided I'm not doing any of that. But what happened is what played
out ultimately for me was a sense of reward of achievement and accomplishment that I got because
every single thing I did was the result of my own achievements and my own hard work. Going
back to sort of the you versus you concept that we talked about. So, I think that when you're
pursuing--when you have this this path presented in front of you, I'm not putting anyone down
that goes down, again, the cheat code path in my opinion. But I do think that you have to
consider the long-term repercussions of this. And please don't tell me about well, it's just
TRT because I've made a video about this in the past. And again, I will explain this in a second
here. But I made a video where I came down rather harshly on the guy who said, You can't build
muscle over 35 without TRT. Yeah, that's bullshit.
It's just complete bullshit. And again, or the other guy that wrote in recently that said,
you can't be ripped over 40 without TRT, again, complete and utter bullshit that will cover
in my next phrase on nutrition. Guys don't sell yourself short that way, and please don't use
your TRT as a smokescreen for the other stuff that you're doing or a cover up for it's just TRT. Guy
all of these things are enhancements to getting you to a place that others maybe can't get to--
Naturally. --naturally.
I believe that with the right dedication and consistency of effort, you're going to be able
to get amazing results if you put in the hard work, Okay? You don't need to get there as fast
as you think you might need to get there. Jesse himself took some criticism for what taking four
or five years to get to where you are now. Yeah, and you know what? I'm kind of honestly,
I'm kind of happy with where I'm at now, given how long I've been training. And I'm
excited to see where I go from here. I don't care how slow it goes, it's as long as I get there.
So, I'm not trying to take my father's hardline stance on this, guys. I recognize the medical
necessity for some people to get to a point where they're at a healthy level of testosterone. But
why does it seem that most of the guys that quickly decide I'm low T and I need to go do
something or I need to jump on some gear? Why is it that they're mostly gym going, guys? That's
a good question, isn't it? Because they tend to want to jump to that conclusion a lot faster
because they want to get the end result of that instead, put in the hard work rely on the effort
is everything approach and look at that you versus you and I promise you, better results
await you long term, at least healthier. And that brings us to that next three-word
nugget that I alluded to already here on nutrition. And that is--
Oh, I know this one, I know this one. I have it written down. Feed the dogs.
Feed the dogs? What does that mean? Oh, that's the message from your wife. She just
wants a reminder for you to feed the dogs. Can I lose this book please? All right. So,
we're talking about nutrition, guys. I said that nutrition is where you need to focus your efforts.
I think it's as a young guy, when I first started out in a time when I was supposed to be getting a
lot of newbie gains, my nutrition was so bad, epically bad I never ate well at all. Maybe I
would have a family dinner that had good food in it, but the whole rest of the day I was waking up,
eating nothing but Dunkin Donuts and Hostess cupcakes for lunch and everything I could possibly
put my body that was bad. And I wasn't supporting those early gains with better nutrition. I regret
that entirely. I think I could have made a lot more progress early on. Ahem, Ahem,
reminds me of somebody, ahem, that I think was eating, ahem, not so well--
Been there, done that, I know Jeff. But you know, listen, you can make a lot
of progress when you do focus on your nutrition. You can overcome a lot of maybe shortcomings if
you focus on your nutrition. Right? And I've been one on here to talk about the fact that I don't do
as much conditioning as I would like, knowing the benefits that I would get for my heart. However,
if you're willing to have a real dedication to your nutrition and I mean consistency every single
day. Most people probably can't follow the type of nutrition plan that I follow. In other words,
you've seen what I eat, in my What Jeff Cavaliere Full Day of Eating video, and I'll link that at
the end of the video. But like, I can remain eating that consistently day in, day out, day
in and day out. If you remain consistent with the nutrition guys and you focus on good, high-quality
nutrition, not only will you look your best, but you'll feel your best as well. And I really think
that's where you need to focus the majority of your efforts. Even if there's just three words
that I could give myself, that would be it right there. And so, with that, guys, I'm actually can I
actually increase this from 15 words to 18? Yeah, why not?
I mean, I'm already way over the limit. I'm giving people good suggestions here. Remember,
guys, I want you to leave your three words what you would tell the version of you walking into the
gym for the first time, what are you going to say? Make sure you leave it in the comments below.
I would also like to add. Consistency is key. And I've seen a lot of people say trust the process,
walk, don't run, they're all saying the same thing. Consistency is key, I just talked about
it with nutrition, but it really applies to all of these things here. Consistently address those
weaknesses consistently make sure that you're the target of your own criticism and don't let
other people judge you and what you have to do. Remember to bring the effort every single time.
Stay on that path that you decide in terms of remaining natural and committing to it and feeling
the rewards of doing that. Focus on nutrition. Everything is based around consistency, and I
want to make sure that you guys can do that. If you're looking for a consistent plan guys,
we have all of them available for you over at Athleanx.com. In the meantime, if you found the
video helpful, I can't wait to hear what your comments are, make sure you leave them below.
Also, if you haven't done so, make sure you click Subscribe and turn on your notifications, so you
never miss a new video when we put one out. All right.
I'll see you soon. Oh, Jeff, can I increase this to 21 words?
Sadly, I'm going to think I don't want to hear this.
It's give Jesse raise. I didn't want to hear this.
Oh, come on.