No Excuses... Ever!

By Adam Sinicki

When it comes to weight lifting and the gym I have one very important policy – no excuses (you may have guessed this from the title of the piece). This also happens to be my policy when it comes to working on my projects, doing work for clients or trying to improve myself in other ways – but it's most pronounced when it comes to the gym and it's most easy to implement.

No excuses means that if I have a set routine in place, or a set challenge or task I've given myself, then there is no reason good enough to pass up on it. So for instance let's use right now as an example. Right now I am in Tunisia, relaxing with my mates who are variously reading books (mostly gangster books for some reason), lying in the sun sleeping or looking like a dick (Goof). They're all relaxing but I'm writing this and the reason for that is simple – being on holiday isn't an excuse for me to stop. And at 1pm today I am going to head off to the gym and that means walking 20 minutes to another hotel, sneaking my way in, and then paying the guy who works there 'Sallet' a 10 dinar bribe to let me use it. They say that I'm being unsociable and missing the sun that I've paid to see, and it's true, but sadly those aren't excuses that will wash with my 'no excuses' policy.

Likewise it wasn't an excuse the other week when I'd damaged my shoulder filming a wrestling video – I just trained only the other arm. You can really get a burn when you dedicate an entire workout to just your left bicep. Likewise when I was 15 and I broke my arm in several places that wasn't an excuse – I just bought myself one of those electric devices and shocked my muscles into action instead.

Oooh boohoo my arm got cut off by a ninja! - Example of a shit excuse

Of course some people complain about this and say I'm addicted or obsessed. But the difference between me and them is... that I'm incredibly strong and they're not. And that's why. Because you see there is never a good time to workout. As much as I love it it is never convenient to take an hour and a half out of my day to make myself incredibly tired. I always have some kind of niggling pain, there's always something else I could be doing, there's always someone who would rather I did something else... and if I always listened to them then I would never get started.

I have friends who don't use the no excuses policy and they, unsurprisingly, are not massive and strong. You see they were going to start training last week, but they they had an ache in their back so they let that pass. And then they were going to start this week, but they had a lot of work so they thought they should just focus on that for a week. Then next week they would start but they have visitors. The week after they're going on holiday.... and the ream of excuses stretches into oblivion. You need to have a no excuse approach or there will always be reasons not to train.

Oooh boohoo - Hiroshima landed directly ON me! - Another example of a shit excuse

If you have friends round then workout late at night when they go to bed, or early in the morning. If you have work to do, then make yourself more disciplined and do it earlier – the workout will be a good break that will stimulate your mind. If you have a bad back then train another part of your body – isolation curls for instance won't hurt your back. If you only have 5 minutes available in that day, then train for those five minutes.

It sounds harsh but in reality you'll manage to fit it in and still have plenty of time left over. So start training right now and I don't want to hear you moan. If you have arms and legs then you can bloody well train. And hell if you have no arms or legs then you should be doing fucking crunches!