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If you ever spend time talking to people in the gym, at work, or on message boards, you will often hear them bragging about the level of intensity with which they train. Sometimes you would think you were actually chatting with a bunch of world-class Olympians, bragging about breaking their comfort level, pushing their bodies to new and insane levels. Every time they talk, they just broke some new personal best, and they did it with an obscure drop-set secret lifting philosophy that you just wouldn’t understand, right?

The truth is that this kind of all-out intensity really isn’t necessary in order to complete your simple goals of looking and feeling better, losing some body fat, and getting stronger. Rather, a more consistent approach to training intensity is desired. Sure, you will train hard, but you won’t kill yourself in the gym every day. You will show up and put in your hours. You will strive for continued improvement and progress. You will eat right and get stronger. You’ll improve. But you don’t need to train to failure every single time in the gym in order to achieve this.

Track your progress to see that the weight is coming up. Continually limit those foods which aren’t ideal for your bodybuilding goals – but don’t remove them entirely. Extremes don’t work for much when it comes to the human body. We need variety and breaks. We aren’t machines. Rather, we are organic life forms that do have limitations.

When we return to the gym after long layoffs, we should come back slow. Trying to re-attain the form it took you years to reach will only leave you beaten down and tired. Start by walking. Then walk a little faster. Add the elliptical machine. Start the weights with the Hammer Strength or nautilus machines. Don’t try to max out – just work to stimulate every muscle group of your body in a balanced manner. You’ll know when the weights are ready to return to your old poundages, but it’ll be a few weeks before that can happen.

The secret to continued gym gains is to train hard consistently, but not too hard! Can you handle that? Unless you are a competitive bodybuilder, you never need to train to failure. Rather, you should always train until you did better than your last time in the gym, and you’ll always see progress and results!