August 21, 2025 | Ademola Adeyemi

I’ll never forget the day Jia destroyed my ego in AP Bio class.

I’d been grinding Korean for months. Pimsleur lessons for hours every night. Talk To Me In Korean videos memorized. SRS flashcards until my eyes bled. I felt like a f*cking king.

So when I saw Jia—the only Korean girl I knew—I decided to surprise everyone. Time to show off.

I walked up and started spitting Korean. Perfect pronunciation. Flawless grammar. Everything Pimsleur had taught me.

The classroom went silent. Everyone stared like I’d just performed magic.

Then Jia responded.

And I didn’t understand a single word that left her mouth.

Not. One. Word.

The sounds she made didn’t match anything I’d studied. It was like she was speaking a completely different language. I stood there, scrambling, pretending I understood, hoping no one would notice I was completely lost.

That crushing moment when you realize you’re not intermediate—you’re just a beginner with expensive fake weights.

You know what’s f*cked up?

There are people right now who think they’re intermediate Korean learners. They’ve been studying for three years. They can read their textbooks perfectly. They’re the star student in their language exchange group.

And they have absolutely no idea they’re living in a fantasy.

I’m talking about the kind of fantasy where you think you’re benching 200 pounds, but you’re actually curling 20-pound dumbbells with fake labels slapped on them. Where you feel strong as sh*t in your comfortable little gym, until someone hands you a real barbell and you can’t even lift it off the ground.

That’s what happened to me. That’s what’s happening to 95% of language learners right now.

The Fake Weight Manufacturing Industry

Let me paint you a picture of the biggest scam in language education.

The textbook industry knows what real Korean sounds like. They know what natives actually say to each other. But they can’t teach you with that material—it would be too hard, too messy, too real.

So they manufacture fake weights.

They take authentic conversations and water them down. Remove the slang. Slow down the speech. Add unnatural pauses. Replace cultural references with universal concepts. Basically, they create this parallel universe version of your target language that doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world.

Then—and this is the evil genius part—they slap labels on it.

“Intermediate Korean.” “Advanced Grammar.” “Conversation Practice.”

You’re curling what you think are 50-pound dumbbells, but you’re actually lifting 10 pounds with a fake label. And because everyone else at your gym (classroom) is using the same fake weights, you have no idea you’re being lied to.

Here’s why the fake weight system exists: Extended membership fees.

If textbook companies gave you real weights from day one, you’d get strong in six months and cancel your subscription. But if they keep you on fake weights, convinced you’re making progress but never quite ready for the real world, you’ll stay subscribed for years.

The language learning industry profits from your permanent weakness. Real strength threatens their business model.

Think about it. How many Korean textbooks have you bought? How many apps have you subscribed to? How many courses have you started and restarted?

They don’t want you to succeed quickly. They want you to succeed just enough to keep paying, but not enough to actually graduate from their system.

My Real Weight Discovery

After the Jia incident, I went back to the fake weight gym. More textbooks. More apps. More grammar drills. I told myself I just needed more foundation.

But I always had this nagging feeling that grammar study wasn’t actually solving my problem. It was like the medical industry—managing the disease, not curing it.

Then I found something that changed everything.

I stumbled across this JYP show on YouTube—half Korean, half Japanese, no subtitles available. These Japanese girls competing to become a K-pop group. I had no business understanding any of it.

But I was hooked.

I found myself watching episode after episode, picking up little things through context, getting genuinely excited for the next episode. I wasn’t studying—I was just consuming content I actually enjoyed.

This was comprehensible input before I even knew what comprehensible input was.

Later, I discovered Matt vs Japan and the Mass Immersion Approach. The principle that changed my life:

Content created by natives, for natives. Unwatered down. Not simplified. Not leveled.

This wasn’t some revolutionary discovery. This is how every English speaker actually learned English—by consuming English content they enjoyed, not by memorizing grammar rules about English.

The Real Weight Training Protocol

“Bodybuilders don’t learn form by studying diagrams—they learn form by lifting real weights under real resistance.”

The moment you pick up real weight, everything changes. Your body has to adapt. Your muscles have to respond to actual resistance. Your brain has to solve real problems in real time.

Real weights in language learning aren’t intermediate textbook dialogues or beginner podcasts made for learners. Real weights are:

• Netflix shows natives actually watch
• Podcasts natives actually listen to
• Books natives actually read
• Twitter threads natives actually write

Content created by natives, for natives. Unwatered down. Not simplified. Not leveled.

Here’s your Real Weight Training protocol:

1) Ego Death Day: Your First Real Weight Session

Your first day with real weights is going to crush your ego, and that’s exactly what needs to happen.

Pick a Korean drama everyone’s talking about. Don’t research if it’s “learner-friendly.” Don’t look for “intermediate-level” shows. Just pick something that looks interesting to actual Korean people.

Watch Episode 1 without subtitles.

You’re going to understand maybe 20-30% if you’re lucky. You’re going to feel stupid. You’re going to want to quit and go back to your comfortable textbook dialogues where you understood 90%.

Don’t you dare.

This is the moment your real journey begins. Every bodybuilder remembers their first day lifting real weight—the humility, the struggle, the realization of how much work lay ahead. That struggle isn’t a sign you’re not ready. That struggle IS the workout.

The fake weight gym taught you to avoid struggle. The real weight gym teaches you to embrace it as feedback.

When you can’t understand a sentence, that’s not failure—that’s your brain identifying exactly what it needs to work on. When you miss a cultural reference, that’s not ignorance—that’s a specific gap you can now fill.

2) Find Your True Starting Weight (The 70% Rule)

Don’t grab the heaviest real weight first. Find native content that gives you around 70% comprehension.

Some shows will feel lighter than expected—maybe you understand 80-85% because the topic is familiar or the characters speak clearly. Some will absolutely crush you—15% comprehension because it’s full of slang, cultural references, or technical vocabulary.

Test different content until you find your true starting weight. 70% means you’re getting the general story but missing enough details to keep your brain actively working.

This isn’t about your ego anymore. This isn’t about proving you’re advanced. This is about finding the optimal resistance for growth.

3) Progressive Overload: From 10 Minutes to Binge-Watching

Start with short sessions. Maybe you can only handle 10 minutes of real content before your brain taps out. That’s fine—that’s your current “rep max.”

Next session, try for 12 minutes. Then 15. Then 20.

Don’t jump from 10 minutes straight to an hour-long episode. Your brain needs time to adapt to the new resistance, just like your muscles need time to adapt to heavier weight.

I remember when I could barely handle 5 minutes of real Korean content. My brain would literally get tired from the effort of trying to understand. Six months later, I was binge-watching entire series.

That progression didn’t happen because I got smarter. It happened because I consistently applied progressive overload principles to real content.

4) The Warm-Up Protocol: SRS as Your Prep

Every good workout starts with a warm-up. In real weight language training, your SRS (spaced repetition system) is your warm-up.

But here’s the difference: Your flashcards aren’t filled with textbook sentences anymore. They’re filled with words and phrases you pulled directly from real content.

When you watch that Korean drama and encounter a word you don’t know, that becomes a flashcard. When you hear a phrase that sounds useful, that becomes a flashcard. When you notice a grammar pattern in context, that becomes a flashcard.

This is active vocabulary building, not passive memorization. You’re reviewing language that you’ve already seen being used naturally by natives for natives.

The Proof: My Transformation

After 25 months of real weight training, I was studying abroad at Yonsei University in Seoul.

On my first day in Korea, my luggage went missing at Incheon Airport. While other foreigners struggled to communicate their problems, I walked up to the desk and handled the entire situation in Korean. My mom was shocked.

That wasn’t luck. That was the result of 25 months of lifting real weights.

By the end of my time there, I was:

• Taking advanced politics courses alongside Korean students
• Conducting interviews on civil rights movements in Korean
• Having deep conversations about regional dialects with friends from Jeju Island and Busan
• Explaining the American civil rights movement to Korean friends who had never learned about it

None of this would have been possible if I’d stayed in the fake weight gym, no matter how many years I spent there.

This Isn’t Just About Language Learning

Here’s what I really want you to understand: This fake weight phenomenon exists everywhere.

• Fitness: Planet Fitness vs. a real strength training gym
• Business education: College courses vs. starting an actual business
• Skill development: Tutorial hell vs. building real projects

Every industry has discovered they can keep you weak by giving you fake weights with impressive labels. They profit from your permanent beginner status.

The pattern is always the same:

1. Give you something that feels like progress
2. Make sure it’s not challenging enough to create real strength
3. Keep you coming back for “more advanced” fake weights
4. Profit from your subscription while you stay weak

Breaking free from systems designed to keep you dependent, building genuine competence vs. fake confidence, and having the courage to face real challenges instead of hiding in comfort zones.

This is the real project. Language learning just happened to be where I learned the lesson.

Choose Your Gym

You have a choice to make right now.

You can stay in the fake weight gym. Keep buying those intermediate courses. Keep feeling good about your Duolingo streaks. Keep telling yourself you need “more foundation” before you’re ready for real content.

Or you can walk out of that gym today and pick up something real.

That K-drama you’ve been avoiding because it’s “too advanced”? That’s your barbell. It’s loaded up and waiting for you.

Your first workout is going to humble you. You’re going to struggle. You might understand 20% and feel stupid.

Good. That feeling of struggle is your muscles growing. That confusion is your brain building new neural pathways. That humility is your ego dying so your Korean can finally live.

Most people will choose the fake weight gym. They’ll stay comfortable, stay subscribed, and stay weak.

But if you want real strength—the kind that works when you step off the plane in Seoul, the kind that lets you connect with people in their language, the kind that actually makes you fluent—there’s only one choice.

Stop lifting fake weights today.

Real strength is built one rep at a time.

Ready to start lifting real weights? I’ve created a guide that breaks down exactly how I went from fake weight dependence to studying at a Korean university in 25 months. It includes my specific content recommendations, the exact SRS setup I used, and the mindset shifts that made all the difference.

Get the Real Weight Language Training Guide here

The fake weight gym will still be there if you want to go back. But once you experience real strength, you’ll never want to.

Your Korean is waiting. Go lift something real.