Of all the areas of improvement a young man can venture into, fitness and dating are the ones that are the most saturated. There's so much advice that it can get overwhelming. For me, it took a long time before I found the fitness advice that helped me the most.

Fitness is simple, but optimizing it can get complicated. All these different scientific studies being cited by these fitness YouTubers really send you for a loop.

Through trial and error, I found which pieces of advice work best and which ones don't. Although some may work better or worse for you, these are general tips that will apply to everybody.

Without further ado, here are the fitness tips that helped me the most.

1. You probably aren't training hard enough

How many people do you know that say they go to the gym but don't look like it even though they've been going consistently for years? Sure, it may come down to genetics, but 99% of the time they're just not training hard enough. 

I remember the first plateau I hit. I had gained a sizeable amount of muscle compared to my starting point, and then for months, it stalled.

I spent hours scouring YouTube trying to find an answer, but it was always scrambled with whatever scientific study they were citing. Then I stumbled upon Coach Greg and one of his catchphrases, "Train harder than last time!"

I knew enough about fitness that not allowing your muscles a chance to adapt isn't good for your body, but the point still has merit. 

I started training harder on all my exercises. I increased the weight, slowed down the reps, increased the reps, added more exercises, and that actually got me more progress.

However, the one thing that catapulted my progress forward was swapping to a bro split. In just a few months, I gained so much size that I felt like I hit upon some sort of naturally occurring steroid. 

No matter what kind of workout split you're using, always make sure you're training hard enough.

2. Prioritize your form

This is the one piece of fitness advice that helped me the most that I got from my second year of high school. Using proper form not only helps to prevent injury, but it also helps to make sure you're activating the right part of your muscles.

I've never really struggled with using proper form. Or at least, I thought I didn't.

I didn't realize how unoptimal my form was until I did some digging into how to speed up my progress even more. I found out very quickly that I was sacrificing precious gains for the sake of a faster workout.

The first exercise where I learned this was the bicep curl. For the longest time, I was only using one variation and had no idea why I hit so many plateaus with my biceps.

That's when I learned about the different heads of the bicep. I had no idea that just by adjusting the angle of my wrist I could hit a different head.

I also learned about the brachialis, which I've come to understand as the push-up bra of the bicep. After discovering all of this, I changed my biceps workout from one exercise to three; one exercise for the inner head, one for the outer head, and one for the brachialis.

I applied this same principle to the rest of my muscles and combined with my bro split routine, I saw my massive size gains as mentioned earlier.

By training hard enough and training properly, you make gains so much faster.

3. Build Muscle before you lose Fat

Modern-day fitness advice is majority focused on burning fat. They, "Just want to be toned!", but they don't realize that they need muscle to look toned.

When I first started my fitness journey, I was obsessed with losing body fat. The first thing I tried doing the lose it was intermittent fasting.

My daily calories dropped to below 1000. I was still getting my protein shake in, but I was eating less than 1000 calories per day.

Did I lose fat? Yes. Did I lose much? Nope.

I lost very little fat during that period of my life and to make it worse, I was slowing down my own muscle-building.

It wasn't until about a year later that I learned building muscle increases your metabolism. That combined with the fact that having more muscle makes you look good even with body fat convinced me to switch gears.

Over the next few years, I gained weight: fat and muscle, but the majority in muscle. When I started, my waistline was about 103cm. By the end of it, it grew to 111cm. 

This would be concerning if I didn't gain the massive amounts of muscle I had gotten. Even with more fat on my body, it was still clear that I had gained muscle.

This one fact filled me with the confidence that I could not only shrink my waistline down to what it was before but that I could go even further.

Building muscle before you lose fat helps you to maintain confidence in yourself, which will help you to stay focused and motivated.

Fitness advice doesn't help if you're not consistent

Staying consistent enough to reach your goal requires good enough mental health that you can stay motivated and focused. 

Although not exactly fitness advice, having rock-solid mental health makes things like fitness that much easier to get results out of.

The biggest hurdle of any fitness journey is not the physical part, it's the mental part. Doing the exercises is easy, but showing up is not.

In order to get the results you want, you need to show up every time.

If there are any topics you'd like to see me cover

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• send me an email at [email protected] with the subject line "Blog post topic"

 - Karl