Adam Schafer

It's great to be able to curl more weight.

That's great.

But if you add weight to your squat...

If you add weight to your overhead press or a barbell row or a deadlift or a bench press, the weight you add to those lifts has much more far-reaching effects when it comes to muscle.

I could add 70 pounds to my leg extension.

I'm not going to see major gains in my quads.

I add 70 pounds to my squat, my legs are definitely… It's going to translate to pretty much every other lift.

I'm going to see my legs get a lot bigger.

Next up, you want to get…

Really good sleep consistently.

What's interesting about some people tend to skip over this one, but what's interesting when you look at the data on sleep, this is true for both being at a deficit or a surplus.

Poor sleep skews everything towards fat gain and it skews things away from muscle gain.

So in studies on calorie deficits, you'll see people lose a similar amount of weight, people who don't sleep well versus people who sleep well.

But the people who don't sleep well will lose twice as much muscle, half as much body fat.

When you see people who gain weight through a dedicated and structured bulk with strength training,

When they gain weight, more of his muscle, less of it is body fat if they sleep well.

Sleep really does move the needle on what kind of weight you gain on the scale.

So get good sleep, and you got to do it consistently.

I say consistently because we tend to try to sleep well Monday through Thursday, but

Friday night, Saturday night, we all like to stay up late, try to sleep in the next day.