Today, Greg Robins has a little fun with our quick and easy tips. You see, this is the April Fool’s Day edition. Try not to take yourselves too seriously, people!

1. Consider supplementing with Mediocrity +/-.

It seems a lot of people have the same goals in mind: they want to be strong, but not too strong. They want to be lean, but not too lean. If this sounds like you, you may be selling yourself short if you aren’t supplementing with Mediocrity +/-. This product blends together some of the most powerful ingredients to help you get to your goal. Let’s have a look at a few!

• Inconsistent effort: Inconsistent effort is the precursor to inconsistency in general and has been shown to have a positive correlation with average, to below average, results.
• Excuses: Let’s face it; nobody actually wants to confront the things that are holding back their progress. Excuses are a top ingredient for those looking to get around the truth. Research shows they can have a short-term effect on boosting self-validation. This is a perfect complement to your efforts in avoiding what it takes to be extraordinary.
• Conflicting Goals: The guys in the lab threw in a bunch of conflicting goals, which is great news. With all these competing demands in the mix, you are sure to never really achieve anything notable in one category. Instead, you will be able to maintain slight decency in multiple areas.
• Comfortable Situations: This is really cutting-edge. Using the most recent advances in science, they were able to include high doses of comfortable situations, guaranteeing that you will be able to avoid any kind of physical or mentally challenges. Research showed that a test group (subjects were given an effective dose of comfortable situations) was able to maintain or lower their current fitness levels 100% better than a control group that was given varying amounts of uncomfortable situations. In fact, each person in the control group all showed an amount of progress. As you can see, getting outside of comfortable could totally thwart your efforts, so every little bit helps!

Sounds pretty incredible, but not too incredible, right? Make sure to check this out and head to your local retailer as soon as it’s convenient!

2. Ask more people questions so you can share your opinions and or talk about yourself.

If there’s one sure-fire way to get by in this world, it’s by going out of your way to make sure people know what you think, and what you’ve done. Furthermore, it’s ten times more effective when you voice your opinion after asking someone for his or her expertise. While I am sure this is a sure fire way to build an excellent reputation in any field, it really goes a long way in the fitness industry.

Want to make a lasting impact on someone? Try it out:

The first step is to completely close your mind to any options outside of what you have deemed correct. While not imperative, it is helpful to make sure you have as little hands-on experience as possible using your decided approach. In fact, if you can keep the sample size to you alone, it would be ideal.

Next, seek out someone who has established themselves in the field, or that you respect for the results they have produced with clients or themselves.

Once you have taken the initiative to seek them out for guidance, hop on the first opportunity to get the conversation moving in a direction that allows you to bring up your thoughts. The easiest way to do this is to ask them for their opinion on the subject. When they give you an answer, comment quickly with something like “That makes sense, but how about…” From there, you can give a detailed synopsis of your findings. Carry a tone that makes it clear you aren’t considering your findings in relation to theirs, but rather that yours are superior.

Lastly, don’t make the mistake of applying your strategies, learning through trial and error, and continually evaluating and adopting new concepts to better your approach through time. If you do, in time you might actually garner the attention you seek in a more positive light.

3. Continually seek perfection.

Not enough people are seeking perfection in their lives. When you seek perfection, the world becomes infinitely better. Why? The answer is simple: because you will never achieve it. After all, what could be more fulfilling than seeking out something that doesn’t exist? It gives us a wonderful sense of security that there is reason for not doing the things that ARE possible, albeit somewhat short of our currently decided ideals.

If we continually focus on ideal scenarios, we will never have to learn about resolving problems with solutions, we certainly won’t have to evaluate and learn from misfortune, and we will never have to face a scenario where we managed to make the absolute most of what we had.

I’m telling you, guys, if you’re patient the perfect program may just appear. You’ll surely discover the perfect diet for you, the perfect time, the perfect body, and the perfect partner.

Are you so ignorant that you don’t think perfect form exists? What about perfect movement qualities, and perfect symmetry? Keep restraining yourself from anything shy of absolutely perfect. This way, you can be sure to never realize your potential or help others in a similar situation work productively with what they have now.

4. Set a new personal record EVERY training session.

I was hesitant to share this, because it’s pretty amazing stuff. I have actually figured out how to set a new personal best for myself every time I train. Sounds pretty awesome, right? Want to know the best part? It’s easy!

In fact, if you just do new exercises every time you train, you will always set new personal records. It’s great!

Gone are the days where you bust your tail month after month to make little improvements in the basic foundational exercises. With this approach, you can spare yourself the countless hours of honing in technique as well as the many lessons learned about patience and discipline. Furthermore, you will no longer need to concern yourself with understanding how to manage variables, transfer of training means, or how to read your body to make progress. Every training session is a guaranteed success, and a new PR waits just 24–48 hours away.

If you’ve been slowly compiling an “impressive” training history, where you can look back and celebrate small amounts of progress over the course of months, years, and even decades…STOP! The key to personal ego inflation and false measures of progress await you. So get started!

5. Cut back, because you’re probably overtraining.

Lately there’s been a lot of banter about the “myth” of overtraining. Don’t believe the hype. In fact, you probably are working way too hard.

Let’s be honest, these days it’s common practice for people to work relentlessly for what they want. In fact, laziness is a small act of Congress away from being banished from our vocabulary altogether.

I know, you’ve probably heard something like “overtraining is an easy cop out to give people a reason to do less.” That’s just not the case. Really, if you want more, when has it ever been true that working harder made it happen? We all know that the better approach would be to scale back our efforts and push ourselves less often.

Examine what you’re doing. All that sweat, and exertion is not the key to pushing forward. All that effort to prepare good food, get to bed on time, and resist activities that negatively impact recovery? That’s hard to do. In fact, it’s too hard. So starting today, remember that the answer is almost never to look at what else you could put forth; it’s about what you could scale back.

Happy April Fool’s Day!