Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SCIENCE: THE
MIND OF A LIFTER
Greg Nuckols
GREGNUCKOLS.COM
Read This First:
More than anything, I want this collection to give you a glimpse into
my mind – how I approach training, how I approach programming,
and how I approach heavy weight. There aren’t many books out
there that allow you to really get into the head of an elite lifter in a
comprehensive manner.
I’m not saying my way is the only way to go about doing things, but
it’s what has allowed me to break records and enjoy the process
1
without having to resort to drugs. If nothing else, I think you’ll find
it to be a different voice and approach than most out there. I don’t
expect you to accept everything I say in this book, but I do think
you’ll benefit from reading it, and from really taking the time to
reflect.
If you like it, I’d appreciate it if you’d share it with 5-10 of your
friends who are also into lifting.
2
Contents
Read This First: ....................................................................................... 1
Applying Science to the Training Process ............................................. 5
Science, bro-science, and real-world application ..................................... 5
Acute vs. Chronic effects – understanding what you read ..................... 16
Mindset of a lifter: ................................................................................ 20
Efficiency and excellence are contradictory goals .................................. 20
My Philosophy of Strength...................................................................... 25
An observation about priorities .............................................................. 32
Key to confidence – Knowing your worst ............................................... 34
Assessing motivation .............................................................................. 37
Some thoughts about fear ...................................................................... 39
The size of your pond .............................................................................. 42
Steroids ................................................................................................... 48
The dangers of orthodoxy ....................................................................... 53
Remove your filter .................................................................................. 56
False bravado, marketing, and masculinity ............................................ 58
Lessons Learned Through Experience ................................................ 63
What I learned on the way to benching 350 pounds.............................. 63
Peaking – AKA how to hit PRs in meets .................................................. 67
What I learned to squat 500 ................................................................... 75
What I learned on the way to deadlifting 500 pounds ........................... 80
Muscular endurance ............................................................................... 87
Implementing paused squats .................................................................. 89
Getting stronger: the evolution .............................................................. 92
A Case Study in Programming Insanity ................................................. 100
3
Be Honest with Yourself. Training for Health vs. Performance ............ 104
Gaining ground: a simple method to ensure long-term progress ........ 108
My bench program................................................................................ 110
Nutrition:............................................................................................... 111
The Three Laws of Protein ................................................................. 112
Carbs at night make you lean! So does a big breakfast? ...................... 116
Healthy pumpkin apple cheesecake recipe .......................................... 125
Science-backed training tips .............................................................. 127
Increasing work capacity ....................................................................... 127
Being strong is not an excuse to be fat (and being fat is probably holding
you back) ............................................................................................... 135
Cardio and Lifting – Cardio won’t hugely impact your gains in the short
run, and may be beneficial for strength and size in the long run ......... 143
High frequency training for a bigger total – research on highly trained
Norwegian powerlifters ........................................................................ 151
Genetics – How much do they limit you, and what can you do about it?
.............................................................................................................. 163
Fixing the good-morning squat ............................................................. 172
Hamstrings – The most overrated muscle group for the squat ............ 176
Should you wear a belt or not? Study write-up .................................... 181
How hydration affects performance AND muscle ................................ 186
Do women need to train differently than men? ................................... 189
Losing weight and getting stronger ...................................................... 194
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer ......................................... 196
Some thoughts about retaining muscle as you diet ............................. 202
4
Applying Science to the Training Process
Such is often still the case, but within the last several years there has
been a strong movement toward evidenced-based training and
nutrition. I think that, on the whole, the change has been a very
positive one. However, I think that it is a reactionary movement by
its very nature, and that the pendulum may have swung too far. The
old guard used to mock the “pencil-necked nerds in lab coats” who
didn’t have “in the trenches” experience – but now the same disdain
is often seen from the other side, with evidence-based coaches
mocking any claim that can’t be directly substantiated in the
scientific literature.
This is an important place to start. Most people have the wrong idea
when it comes to science. Science, especially in the field of exercise
physiology (and most biological sciences, for that matter), is NOT
people in a lab poring over data before exclaiming “Eureka! This is
precisely how this works!”
6
So much more is involved in science than what is often portrayed by
the stereotypes floating around out there.
When you see a p-value in a scientific study, that tells you how
likely it is that the effect seen could be attributed solely to
chance. In most exercise science studies, it’s p<0.05. That means
that you’re more than 95% sure the experimental intervention
ACTUALLY caused an effect, so conversely, there’s less than a 5%
chance that the study said something actually changed when, in fact,
it didn’t. Again, it’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best system
humanity has devised so far to be able to make claims with that high
of a degree of confidence.
3. Science is self-correcting
People may have their pet ideas that they cling to in the face of all
contrary evidence. However, science does not “believe”
anything. Consensus is formed when quality studies support a
specific position, but it’s able to change when better evidence
becomes available. That doesn’t mean, as some have charged, that
science is just another opinion, or that it “flip-flops.” The scientific
method isn’t used to find truth – it’s used in the attempt to move
closer and closer to the actual truth. Inflexibility in the face of the
8
continuous stream of new evidence would be a weakness, not a
strength
I won’t name names, but I can think of quite a few prominent fitness
people who will cite 40 research articles at the end of anything they
write, with the assumption that people will conclude the piece is
valid since it has so much scientific support. So, in the minds of the
readers, it’s supported by science in spite of the fact that none of
them take the time to actually chase the citations to see if those
studies do, in fact, support the claims in the piece.
For example, lots of diet articles making huge claims will cite
research on diabetic or obese subjects. If you’re a healthy person,
any claims supported by those citations probably don’t apply to you
(and the author certainly shouldn’t claim scientific support). Ditto
for rodent studies.
Then, even if you chase the citations, if you don’t have full-text
access, you’re still not sure whether the citation supports the
author’s point, because important parts of the study (subject
9
characteristics, research protocol, means of data collection and
analysis, etc) often aren’t included in the abstract.
There’s more and more research on trained athletes every day, but
most of the studies in the scientific literature are still done on
untrained subjects. We all know that there are “noob gains” that
happen when you start training. It’s hard to say for sure whether the
findings from a study on the general population will translate to an
athletic setting (more often than not, they don’t).
10
protein synthesis with a particular dietary or training regimen – you
can’t extrapolate one session and infer progress on the scale of
weeks, month, or years.
4. Many longer term studies use protocols that are only marginally
relevant to normal training programs
Let’s say you have a high volume program and a low volume
program. The high volume program produced, on average, 30%
better results, but one individual did horrible on the high volume
program, and one individual on the low volume program saw better
progress than anyone in the high volume group. Those values were
subsumed by the overall results of their respective groups, and the
finding of the study was that the higher volume program was
significantly better.
What, then, should you say to those two outliers? Would the former
have done even worse on the low volume program, and the latter
have done even better on the high volume program? You don’t
know. To state a high degree of confidence in any concept,
12
scientifically, you have to deal with averages, not individuals. The
best study in the world can’t negate the possibility of individual
differences.
If you had groups of 1000 people and put them on two different
weight loss protocols, and one group lost 30 pounds on
average while the other lost 31, that may very well meet the criteria
for a “significant” finding. But that doesn’t mean that it makes any
real-world difference.
13
So, when the rubber meets the road…
Since there won’t be studies telling you exactly how to train or coach
athletes, it’s up to you to gather, record, and analyze data on yourself
and your athletes to know whether your programs are working. You
may never write up your results and get them published, but you can
apply the same process to your day-to-day practice - remember, you
won’t find the “truth,” but you’ll find things that don’t work and
things that work a little better, and using that data you can constantly
evolve and improve. But remember, to know what’s having an
effect, only adjust one variable at a time. Completely starting over
from scratch all the time doesn’t give you much of a base to work
off of.
14
Where bro-science fits in
Science doesn’t have all the answers yet. There’s still a gulf
between common practices in the gym and what’s been studied on
highly trained subjects in the lab. Often, bro-science is running
ahead of science figuring out via trial and error WHAT works,
before science figures out WHY it works and offers evidence
suggesting how it could be further improved. I think that, when it’s
at its best, bro-science is sort of like an R&D department.
15
Wrapping it all up
So, when you read an article, ask yourself, “is this person describing
an acute effect or a chronic effect, and do I actually care about an
acute or chronic effect in this scenario?”
For example, studies show you lift heavy and you get a short term
spike in testosterone production. Or that if you train with short rest
periods, you get a spike in growth hormone output. So what do we
do? Do we have unbridled excitement because we just unlocked the
secret to gainz, or are we skeptical of the usefulness of these
results? If you picked “skeptical,” you’re correct! Those studies are
reporting acute changes. The chronic changes we’re interested in
are increases in muscle mass or strength. You might assume that
higher levels of testosterone or growth hormone post-workout
would mean more muscle and strength, but you can’t say that for
sure without evidence from studies looking at chronic effect taking
place over the course of weeks or months.
17
Another good example is pre- and post-workout protein
consumption. Plenty of studies show that getting protein around
your workout increases protein synthesis and decreases protein
breakdown acutely, but evidence from a massive new meta-analysis
shows that protein timing doesn’t affect chronic muscle growth in
response to training very much at all – simply getting enough protein
throughout the day is sufficient for the same anabolic response.
18
TOO excited (myself included, honestly) about really compelling
studies showing acute mechanisms, by which we might surmise
some long-term outcome, because unfortunately, we may never see
the longer term study due to logistical and funding issues in the
scientific process.
Now, don’t think I’m saying acute effects are useless by any
means. Sometimes we’re not interested in the effects on adaptations
weeks or months in the future. Sometimes we’re concerned about
what will improve my performance for a competition I have
tomorrow, or even in a couple hours. This is when acute effects are
hugely important. For example, we know that glycogen re-synthesis
occurs most rapidly after exercise, and takes place relatively
quickly. So if you’re competing in a sport with multiple games in
one day, or doing something like a CrossFit competition with
multiple WODs in one day, consuming carbs directly after your first
game/event will have a substantial impact on your performance in
endeavors taking place without a matter of hours.
The takeaway is simply that you need to ask yourself what you’re
interested in when you’re reading information about the effects of
some training program or some dietary intervention or supplement
– are you interested in getting better long-term, or are you interested
in optimizing your performance here and now? And, based on your
answer, is what you’re reading addressing the proper time frame,
19
whether it be acute or chronic, that you’re interested in? By asking
those two questions, you’ll avoid a lot of false starts and frustration
by putting information and studies in their proper context.
Mindset of a lifter:
20
difference between the two – one of Gladwell’s basic theses is that
to be truly elite at something, you need to be willing to invest about
10,000 hours in your craft. Ferris, on the other hand, basically
argues that you can achieve great results with a very small
investment of effort and resources.
Ultimately, both are right. You CAN achieve great results without
a ton of effort. Stick to a diet of whole foods, lift 2-3 times a week,
jog, ride a bike, swim, or play sports a few times a week, and you’ll
be able to get pretty lean, pretty strong (relative to the general
population), and quite healthy.
If you’re training for strength, that means more time in the gym,
more time working on mobility, more time smoothing out
imbalances that hinder performance, more time devoted to recovery
modalities, more time carved out of your schedule for sleep, more
time devoted to preparing the food you need to fuel the machine,
etc. If you’re training for a bodybuilding or physique stage, that
means more time working on the little muscles that will make your
21
physique “flow,” a LOT more time prepping food and dialing in
your diet (because 12% bodyfat is pretty easy to achieve. 5% not so
much), more time devoted to boring pre-contest cardio, time to
practice posing, etc. If you’re an athlete, it means more time spent
honing specific skills, more time watching game film, more time
devoted to ensuring a proper mental state for competition, etc.
But, at the end of the day, if you want to be great, you need to come
to peace with the fact that it’s all necessary. I think, ultimately, what
can separate the best from the second-tier competitors in any
endeavor is that the best are the people who can find that peace and
accept the cost, and who learn to love the process, not just the
outcomes.
22
By definition, when innovationg, you either don’t know for sure
where you’re going, or you don’t know for sure how to get
there. It’s finding your way from point A to point B without a road
map, or simply striking out to see if some theoretical point B even
exists. There’s no efficient way to do that.
Keep in mind, I’m not advocating against hard work or even bouts
of extreme efficiency. On the contrary: you should do MORE work
in LESS time than everyone else (super efficient) so you can afford
to spend more time NOT being efficient. For more reading on the
subject, check out Where Good Ideas Come From by Stephen
Johnson. It’s fantastic.
If all you are is efficient, your end result is merely whatever the
structure and amount of your work can bring you. If you take the
time to innovate and improve, it may take longer to reach your
23
terminal position, but the structure in which you do work should
improve, leading to better long-term results.
So how can someone apply this? I’ll tackle lifting because I’m most
comfortable with it. You have your own set of weaknesses based
on the peculiarities of your bone structure. There are a million
different exercises that “work” to fix weaknesses, so take some time
to research the training great lifters with the same disadvantages as
you, and take a few weeks to experiment with what works best to
improve your specific weakness. Let’s say you have a weakness
that will not be a limiting factor for another 3 months of progress,
but at that point it will severely limit future progress. You could
either take a week or two of inefficient training to innovate and them
implement a plan to continue progressing while addressing the
weakness, or keep trucking along even though you know you have
a limiting factor that’ll eventually catch up to you.
24
same 6.5 months, most of which were unproductive the last 3 of
which were very frustrating.
My Philosophy of Strength
I don’t care if you are stronger than 90% of people in the world and
neither should you. That’s an apples to oranges
comparison. Assuming 10% train for some sort of strength sport
(obviously it’s lower than that, but just to make the numbers
prettier), being stronger than 90% of the world means you’re one of
the worst at your sport. Any sort of descriptor such as “strong” is
context specific, and if you train, then apply the term in the
appropriate context. The definition of “strong” used by John-Q-
Everyman should not be your definition of “strong” unless you’re
training more for your fragile ego and less for any sort of goal.
Well then, why not draw that 90% line to be context-specific and go
from there? Why not draw it at the top 10% of people in your
sport? I dislike this notion on the basis of camaraderie. If you’re
putting in work and striving for a goal, you are my brother or
26
sister. We may have more or less experience, more or less academic
background, differing philosophies, and differing training histories,
but our comradeship is defined by our mutual journey.
When you draw lines and say “this is the standard for ‘strong’” and
set the standard at a fairly attainable level, you create
division. Some of us are strong and some aren’t. We’re defining
ourselves by our current location, not the road we’re on. I’m in this
town and you’re in that one, rather than primarily recognizing all of
us as travelers on the same road. This is the biggest reasons I detest
“standards” that anyone tries to set. So what if I’ve set a couple
records, and someone else is prepping for their very first meet? We
can both learn from each other. I’m not above him or her in some
way. I can share my experiences, and he or she can share
perceptions and ideas that haven’t been colored by a decade of
reading and developing a particular conceptual schema and set of
assumptions. Never underestimate the insight you can get from
newbies who aren’t afraid to speak their mind. They come to lifting
with somewhat of a blank slate, which you probably don’t have at
this point. Consequently, they’ll see things you’ll miss.
27
met while you were journeying together. I’d despise accepting any
label that says “I’ve done THIS and you’ve merely done THAT” as
if it actually matters. I’m me, you’re you, and we are not “strong”
or “weak.” We are lifters. My biggest accomplishments at my last
meet weren’t the records I took or the awards I won. They were
teaching a 10 year old how to mentally approach heavy weight and
learn from failure rather than running for it, and showing a 30+ year
veteran some foam and lacrosse ball rolling techniques to help him
with some hip problems that had been bothering him for several
months. If you think you matter in some special way because you
are stronger than most, you need to reassess your priorities.
28
Assuming you care about getting strong, your definition of “strong”
plays a significant role is setting a (perhaps artificial) ceiling on your
potential. Worst case scenario: you define strong as something
fairly unimpressive, and become satisfied upon attaining your
classification. At this point, you’re effectively at your destination;
no longer on the journey. Your motivations are no longer my
motivations, nor are they the motivations of most people involved
in this sport. More likely scenario: you embrace the same definition
of strong that celebrates mediocrity and reach it. You still want to
get stronger, but you’re swimming in uncharted waters, and fail to
progress due to your own low expectations. This one scares me
more because it’s a common phenomenon, and helps explain why
strong people tend to flock together, and as top guys get stronger,
entire gyms get stronger. People define “strong” based on what they
see on a daily basis, and as the standard moves, everyone else can
move along with it.
If your definition is low, you could very well be ensuring you don’t
reach your full potential. I’m not saying that high expectations and
standards somehow make you stronger (this message has been
misinterpreted in the past), I’m saying that you’re placing an
artificial psychological barrier in the way of pursuing your
physiological potential. Once you’re “strong” in your own eyes,
getting significantly stronger means venturing further and further
from what you view and reasonably attainable, and you thwart
29
yourself mentally. Rather than an argument for the power of
positive thinking, this is a warning against the detrimental influence
of negative thinking. (As an aside, this is the main reason why Ed
Coan is and will be the greatest ever. I’m sure people will break his
records eventually. However, he rolled the ball a long way. He
showed what was possible, and people will nudge the ball down the
road 5 or 10 pounds at a time as long as people are lifting. However,
I doubt anyone will ever cover as much uncharted territory as Coan
did or be as dominant against both their own competition and the
record books as Coan was. By any definition, Coan was strong).
These are the basic reasons why I define “strong” as the ability to
do something truly awe-inspiring. To pin down something
bordering on objectivity, I’d say you’re strong if you’re setting all-
time records or are at least within 5% of them. This means the
untested all-time records. If you take exception with my
unwillingness to grant drug-free lifters some sort of immunity or
break, then I’ll address that in another post at some point.
Here’s what this definition does for you: odds are there will never
be any barriers between you and your comrades, and you’ll be much
less likely to hit mental blocks as you progress. Sure, some people
will have more to bring to the table and others, and you may hit a
mental barrier when you see a new plate on the bar, but those things
are just inherent in the nature of human interaction or pushing
30
personal frontiers. The only way you separate yourself is by
attaining TRULY exceptional results. This is a necessary
consequence of pinning down any sort of objective definition, but
the people set aside, in my eyes, SHOULD receive an additional
measure of respect because odds are they arrived in that position by
training harder, being smarter, and generally being on a different
level than most lifters.
Here’s what this definition does NOT do for you: it does not
massage your ego, nor does it tell you you’re a special snowflake
for being the strongest person in your commercial gym. It does not
give you any reason to think you’re better than someone because
you hold a state record in your with class in some no-name fed. If
you think this definition is elitist, I don’t particularly care. As I see
it, it’s as egalitarian as they come. It is the realization that I’m no
better than you in any meaningful way, nor are you better than
anyone else in any meaningful way. It resists assigning superlatives
to merely above-average performances. I’m not strong and neither
are you. A few people are strong. A few people are weak. The vast
majority of people are neither. We can still use “strong” to describe
something’s relationship to something else (i.e. a 500 pound squatter
is stronger than a 300 pound squatter), but using the word itself to
be the primary descriptor of something or someone should be
reserved for rare occasions that truly deserve praise.
31
People in the general population can use whatever definition they
want, as can you. However, strength is our pursuit so I think we
need to have an idea of “strong” this is more in line with that pursuit,
more likely to unify than bifurcate or stratify, and more likely to
nurture greatness than permit mediocrity.
Fact 2: the most common pains people deal with in the gym are
shoulder pain, knee pain, and back pain.
32
drop the weight somewhat, or train my bench press somewhat less
frequently.” The deterrent, for most people, isn’t pain. It’s lack of
desire.
It’s somewhat inspiring how creative people can get when their pet
lift is threatened.
It’s also dismaying how quickly people will flee from something
they don’t want to do (even if it would be beneficial to them) when
they get an opportunity.
Once I got to thinking about it, I realized that this same thing
happens in life all the time. Once any adversity strikes, you learn a
lot about someone’s priorities. Regardless of the scenario, when the
poop hits the fan, the people who are self-motivated will stick
around, but the people who have some sort of external motivation
will shrivel up and slink away. If you take a job because of money
rather than passion, when you try to lose weight or get healthy
because your friends or spouse say you should rather than because
of your own motivations, etc.
However, you see the other side as well. You see it in someone like
Jerome Bettis suiting up with the Steelers year after year, knowing
the day would come that he’d be a middle-aged man who could
hardly walk, but doing it anyway because he loved the game. You
see it with a lot of foreign aid workers, knowing that they’re risking
33
their lives when they try to help a hostile culture, but doing it
anyway because of the good they expect it to bring.
Take-home 1: I’m not going to be cliche and say “ask yourself what
you would die for, etc.” However, think about this dilemma for a
moment. What do you do that you would continue to find a way to
do even if it was no longer fun and easy? What would you be willing
to pour more into than you could hope to get back from it?
Take-home 2: What do you know is good for you, that you would
still abandon at the first chance you had an excuse? Armed with that
knowledge, what will you do to ensure that you continue doing it
even when you don’t want to? Take this one seriously.
Take-home 3: Squat.
If you want to set yourself up for success, you need to know your
limits – both upper and lower limits. You need to know how good
you can be at your best, but you also need to know how bad you can
be at your worst. In my opinion, the latter is more important.
People ask me all the time how I can be so relaxed all the time,
especially when it comes to lifting heavy stuff. It’s simple. I know
34
exactly how bad I can be. I know what I can do on my worst
day. Best days are fickle. We’ve all had days where it feels like the
stars are aligned and you’re capable of things you didn’t think were
even possibilities. Then, the next day you wake up and it’s back to
the grind. I don’t see any point in basing you progress and success
on those mountain top moments that come out of the blue and then
may elude you for quite some time.
Bad days happen all the time. You don’t have to worry about
whether one of them will find you in the coming weeks or months. It
will. You can bet on it. And that’s what makes it a perfect
baseline. And you know what? When your worst-case-scenario
numbers are moving up, you’re getting better. Lots of weightlifters
refer to this as a daily minimum, and it was crucial for me when I
was on a Bulgarian-inspired program. Not every day will be a PR
day, but when you’re grinding away for months at a time, show up
and the gym and your legs feel dead, your hips hurt, the bar feels
like it’s cutting into you more than normal, and you walk away
grinding out a weight that’s 50 pound under your best, only to realize
that it was your PR a matter of months ago…that’s what builds
confidence. That’s what tells you that you can bring it no matter
what. You don’t have to wait for a mountain top moment to attack
the bar, to attack life. You can do it right now, because you know
the worst case scenario, and it’s not that bad. It’s not your best, but
it’s enough.
35
This tip isn’t just for lifting. It’s for everything you do in life. Why
would you be apprehensive about something unless you were afraid
it would go poorly? Before making decisions and taking action,
always be cognizant of the realistic worst case scenario. If it’s not
too bad, you can take action confidently. If it’s an unacceptable risk,
don’t take it. Then, no matter what you do and what situations
you’re in, you can act with confidence because you know nothing
unrealistically bad can come of it.
This also helps you plan for a rainy day. By knowing what you can
still do when you’re at your worst, you can become much more
productive. For example, when I have everything together and my
thoughts are clear, I write the programs for my programming clients,
I write article I plan to submit to other websites, or I tackle an in-
depth blog post I’ve been putting off for a good day – basically I
address the things I need to be at the top of my game for. On a so-
so day, I usually tackle homework, my reading list (at any given
point in time, I’ll have at least a half dozen articles pulled up I plan
on reading, and at least 2 books I’m working my way through), and
other stuff that I need to focus on, but that don’t necessarily require
intense higher-order thinking. On my worst days, I can still knock
out training posts, make lists of articles I want to write, videos I need
to make, and work on general networking. There’s always
something I can do. I don’t need to bang my head against a wall on
a bad day working on something I put a lot of detail and attention
36
into like writing article-quality stuff or personalizing programs. I
know how I am at my worst, and I know I can still press forward in
a positive direction.
Anyways, I’ll wrap this up. It’s been much more ramble-y than I
intended, but I hope the concept has made it through. When you
plan based on your best, you’re always nervous because you’re
afraid you may not perform at the highest level you’re capable, and
when things don’t go your way, it throws you off. When you’re
always aware of your worst and the realistic worst case scenario,
you can attack life with confidence because you know that any
losses will be small and success is likely even with a huge margin
for error.
Assessing motivation
One quick tip for assessing someone’s motivations: Before you ask
them questions, listen to the questions they ask. Someone will only
37
ask questions based on the thoughts their mind is generating on a
given subject; from listening to their questions, you can get a pretty
good idea of what their expectations and priorities are.
The asker of question two has their sights set much higher than the
asker of question one (assuming this is in the context of goal-
setting).
In both of these scenarios (I realize they’re pretty lame, but you see
the point I’m making I hope), if you initiated things by asking giving
them the information or asking your own question, you probably
would have missed the subtle insight that a question can give
you. What prompted this rambling was a questions I was asked
today (by the new member of our crew), “how long will it take me
38
to squat 500. Wait, no. 700?” If I just approached the situation as
merely answering his question based on my experience and
observations, instead of pausing and reflecting on what the question
revealed, I would have missed out on something important, I
think. I’m sure there are better examples of this, but the take home
is this: when trying to get a read on someone, don’t just take into
account what they do and what they tell you, but pay close attention
to the questions they ask too. They’re often the most revealing part.
Basically, they had read an article about the risks of intense exercise,
and one of the risks on that list was developing rhabdo. They didn’t
know anything about it, so they asked me. However, I’m concerned
about what happens when someone reads that article without
someone to assure them that it’s mostly poppycock. Fear is,
unfortunately, a fantastic motivator, especially when coupled with a
lack of antagonistic motivation. One fearful idea can persuade more
than a multitude of contrary, positive ideas. Take deadlifting: there
are countless numbers of people who attest to the effectiveness and
safety of deadlifts, but it just takes that one voice warning about the
risk of back injuries, coupled with an aversion to hard work to keep
most people from ripping weights off the ground.
I guess what I’m trying to say is to examine your fears. Some are
legitimate. If you put on a blindfold and then enter a motorcycle
race, you should have a fear of potential extreme bodily harm, for
example. However, not many of our day-to-day fears fall into that
category, in my experience. So here’s the strategy I use and
recommend:
40
1. Identify your fears by noting the activities you’re averse to
partaking it.
41
I think a great tragedy is how so many people squander their limited
time by avoiding things due to irrational fears. Make an effort to rid
yourself of fear that keeps you from doing things that you love. I
think, at the end of the day, you’ll be glad that you did.
A friend of mine at the gym at school got sponsored not too long
ago. He’s a sponsored physique athlete, so we come to a discussion
with totally different paradigms. He’s helped me a lot with “feeling”
muscles that are inhibited and don’t want to fire properly, and I help
him with approaching strength-based programming. It’s a
surprisingly productive relationship for a commercial gym.
42
confidence under weight, and paused squats can make you feel
much more comfortable in the hole when you squat heavy), and then
also explained the truly important change that needed to be made.
Bench 315 in most gyms, and people will “oo” and “ah.” Squat 5
plates and people will be astounded. That’s one of the worst things
that can possibly happen. You see, you’ve cast your gaze pretty
narrowly. You’ve become the top dog. If you’re the strongest
person in the whole gym, there must be a reason everyone else isn’t
as strong as you. You must be pretty darn strong. How much
stronger can you get? It’s hard to say exactly, but probably not
much. You’re the strongest person at your gym, after all. You’re
43
even stronger than that one guy who uses prohormones (or, *gasp*
a low dose of test from time to time). It’s going to be difficult
moving forward, to further cement your place as king of the hill.
Cast your gaze wider than that. Let’s say you weigh about 180 – an
average sized dude. Men your size have squatted 710, bench 556,
and pulled 791. So much for your amazing *cough*
lifts. Congratulations. You’ve cast yourself from a tiny fish bowl
into an ocean. You’ve gone from being the biggest fish to being a
painfully average-sized fish – which is fantastic (no sarcasm).
I honestly think noob gains are 50% physical and 50% mental. Sure,
they have a lot of untapped potential for growth, but they’re also
mentally playing “catch up” with everyone around them. Here’s an
experiment I wish they’d do: take two groups of new lifters, and put
them both on the same popular beginner’s program (SS, SL, GSLP,
or any of the others). One group trains in a commercial gym. The
other trains in a collegiate football weight room – when the team is
actually lifting – but receive no extra coaching, etc. I PROMISE
you the second group gets significantly stronger on the exact same
program. All over the internet you see people talk about finally
squatting 315 or benching 225. It happens at the gym I train at when
I’m in school. As a serious strength gym, doing either of those
things means “Congratulations. You’re a non-midget who just hit
puberty. Pretty productive for your first 2 months of training. Now
44
let’s work towards something that’s ACTUALLY worth bragging
about.”
When you broaden your gaze – throw yourself into the ocean – it
sets you up to get stronger again, very quickly. Odds are, if you’re
taking the time to read this, you probably have been training for a
while and you think of yourself as pretty strong. You’re the
strongest (or at least one of the strongest) of your friends. You can
show up most of the people up in your gym. You’d probably beat
most of the people at a state powerlifting meet. Forget it all. How
would you do head-to-head against Ed Coan in his prime? Or Lamar
Gant? Or Donnie Thompson? Or Larry Pacifico? Until you can
honestly tell yourself that you’d be competitive – maybe not win,
but at least be mentioned in the same sentence – you’re not
strong. The sooner you can get that through your head the better.
45
each of those, I’m not strong in that particular lift. Once that
happens, Coan’s records are my next target, my next standard. After
that, the all-time SHW records (but doing them at 242).
46
What if he told you his dream of becoming Mr. Olympia? You’d
laugh at him. And you’d have looked like a fool for doing so in
hindsight:
47
People who follow my blog will recognize this as a variation on a
theme I like to bring up fairly frequently: you limit yourself by
having low expectations. To bring this full circle and to tie it back
into the metaphor of the evening: throw yourself into the biggest
ocean there is. You may never become the biggest fish, but only by
venturing there do you find out just how large of a fish you can
become.
Steroids
I can’t bring myself to care too much about whether or not people
use steroids or any other type of performance enhancing
substance. I really can’t. I didn’t understand the outrage about
Lance Armstrong. I don’t understand why people were aghast that
baseball players used. Most of all, I don’t understand how other
athletes are so smug and self-righteous in their
condemnation. Why? Let me illustrate with a (true) statement:
48
1. Believe me without evidence
For those of you who think I’m using, how would you know? Drug
test me when I compete? Not a chance. There are plenty of drugs
with short half-lives I could take up to two week out from a meet
and pee clean. What about out-of-contest testing? You’re getting
closer. I wouldn’t be able to take as high of a dose, but as long as
my test ratio is in check, I’ll still be fine. Year-round testing catches
people who get too aggressive about their offseason drug use, but
plenty of people fly under the radar.
Don’t believe me? Look at Lance Armstrong. He’s getting his titles
stripped, not for failing drug tests, but because so many people
testified against him. He peed clean hundreds of times under
stringent testing policies while continually using steroids and EPO
(another banned substance that increases your red blood cell count)
for over a decade. Testing doesn’t mean you can’t use. It just means
you have to lower you dose and not take anything that leaves
specific metabolites (for example, you’d be less likely to pop a
positive with testosterone, EPO, and hGH than something like
Deca).
Steroids help you add mass. Strength is just as much about neural
efficiency as it is about mass. When you add that mass, does it cause
you to move up a weight class? If so, do you increase in strength
enough that it makes you more competitive in a higher class than
you were previously in a lower one? In a weight-class based sport,
adding mass isn’t necessarily a good thing. It may help your squat
and bench, but throw off your deadlift set-up, while also moving you
into a class with higher records and stronger competition. I’m not
50
saying they don’t help at all, but I think it’s easy to over-emphasize
the advantage.
If you’re just lifting to improve on your last total and to hit PRs, then
someone else’s choice of drug use shouldn’t matter to you at all. If
it does, maybe you’re being dishonest with yourself about your real
reasons for competing as a defense mechanism.
The next most common objection is that it sets a bad example for
kids. I think that if you’re cheating (i.e. using while in a tested fed),
you have moral issues which certainly set a bad example. I’d lump
using illegal drugs along with that. If the bad example is just the
fact that someone’s doing something which can potentially be
harmful to one’s health, then I’d like to see smoking, drinking, being
sedentary, eating sugar and trans fat, and being sleep deprived
becomes equally stigmatized.
The final common objection is that it’s not “natural.” This one
makes me laugh. Is having a concentrated protein source with
51
essentially no carbs or fat natural (other than slurping egg
whites)? Is having a concentrated source of creatine? How about
lifting belts, or shoes? Do you take vitamins that cover nutritional
deficiencies? Well, they’re probably improving your
performance. You should stop taking them ASAP. This is where
all the self-righteous people come in and object that so-and-so may
be strong, but they used unnatural means to get there. It’s a
ridiculous and false dichotomy. We all do things that aren’t
“natural.” Some people just draw the line of what they’ll do for
performance enhancement before steroids, and others draw it
after. It’s a difference of degree, not substance. You’re simply
doing things to get an advantage, and they’re simply doing more
things. It’s not like you’re being handicapped while they’re taking
a magic pill that instantly makes them 50% stronger.
52
to be self-righteous. Lift heavy things, try to get stronger, and leave
it at that.
So, what should I do? Pack it up and find my way back into the
main steam of the fitness industry, in spite of the fact that there are
no scientific studies or really any evidence-based arguments against
what I do? I find myself getting stronger, my joints feel good, my
motivation to train remains high – but I hear that I’m doing it wrong,
and that on one who isn’t “chemically enhanced” could handle that
style of training.
But still I can’t deny my own experience, and I keep coming across
studies that validate what I’m doing. So what should I do? Deny
my experience and the evidence I’ve found and go with the
“experts,” or trust my own capacity for reason and go against the
grain?
53
I would like to submit that skepticism is one of the greatest virtues
that anyone could possess, simply because of how insidious
orthodoxies can be.
Skepticism DOES mean being wary of anyone who tries to sell you
on an idea without providing sufficient evidence. Ultimately, no
single person has a monopoly on truth. Orthodoxies start when
people stop being watchdogs and questioning the peddlers of shoddy
information.
55
or especially, your own) to discover if they should be kept, modified,
or discarded.
You’ll find some dead ends. Many things are commonly accepted
as true because they are the best approximation of the truth that
we’ve found so far based on the evidence. However, you’ll also find
some incongruencies, some slights of hand, some hardy but
unsupported traditions, and some outright lies. Then you can
develop a better understanding, and come closer to understanding
your own body and the world we live in. That, in my opinion, is
what makes skepticism worthwhile.
This filter serves the purpose of calming out inner voices. We don’t
like cognitive dissonance – that unsettling feeling of believing
things we know to be contradictory. Once we find a belief that can
56
nestle itself in comfortably with our other beliefs, it’s uncomfortable
to question it. We don’t mind altering or discarding provisional
ideas that kind of dangle off in their own little corner of our mind,
but once things get intertwined with other notions (which is almost
unavoidable), they’re hard to dislodge.
With this knowledge about yourself, you have two options: remain
comfortable in your beliefs and ways of doing things, or
continuously reevaluate things based on new information and
evidence. I’m of the opinion that only the latter affords the
opportunity for creativity and personal growth.
It’s easy to keep ideas in your head that don’t quite add up, as long
as they fit in nicely with your other beliefs, simply by not asking
yourself too many internal questions. However, when you write
down your ideas, along with your lines of reasoning and
argumentation as support for them, while knowing that other people
will read what you write and notice every gap in reasoning and every
oversight of contradictory information, it keeps your subconscious
honest.
57
If I feel like I know a fair amount about something, but also feel
uncomfortable writing about it, it tells me one of two things:
These were the basic reasons why the Western tradition appreciates
the skills of a good debater. Almost anyone can sound good in a
void or an echo chamber, but a clash of ideas exposes any chinks in
one’s armor that would not have been apparent otherwise. That’s
why it’s exceedingly rare for me back down from a discussion with
anyone who disagrees with me. If I lose, so what? My pride is not
threatened by potentially being wrong about something. However,
it would be threatened by realizing that my intellectual comfort has
trumped my quest for knowledge.
Yeah, I used to be that guy. And if you never were, I’m sure you
know someone who is or was.
Now, that makes you wonder, where does this all come from? When
we enter the gym, are some of us perma-15 year olds with the need
to prove to everyone we’re so “hardcore?” Does something deep
down in our psyche tell us that this is the proper way to behave, and
the optimal way to get stronger and reach our goals? I, for one, am
hoping that such is not the case.
I think the main problem is the many e-gurus who build up cults of
personality around themselves and “sell” a certain lifestyle to sell a
product/program. Unless you’re hardcore like them, you’re not
doing it “right” and you’re selling yourself short. You’re submitting
to the shackles of modern society that try to emasculate you. You
59
need to liberate yourself, embrace the manliness inside yourself, and
unleash all your pent up rage on the weights.
Bull.
They keep you locked into the pubescent me vs. everyone mindset
by playing to the insecurities most guys have have. We need to feel
like we’ve truly become “manly men,” we need to feel a sense of
adequacy in your physical abilities, and we need to feel the approval
of our abilities from our peers (and the opposite sex). By
insinuating that you’re “soft” and feminized by modern society, they
threaten your identity, but then they assure you that you can be a
“real man” if you buy into their “hardcore” lifestyle (which you can
learn about in their book, delve deeper into by buying their
programming and supplements, and show your newfound
masculinity by purchasing their apparel, of course).
60
Now, as if anyone cares, here’s my personal view of masculinity. If
you want to take it with a grain of salt because I’m young, so be
it. However, I think it’s a better alternative than the popular view
that often pervades the fitness industry.
3. A man is not a jerk to people and does not feel the need to belittle
them because he realizes his value as an individual is not enhanced
by the attempt to denigrate someone else.
61
This post would not be complete without a picture of Ron Swanson.
62
Lessons Learned Through Experience
Just to recap what this whole thing is about – since a lot of you
weren’t following my blog the last time I did an installment (in
January) – I’m giving an overview of the things I had to learn to hit
milestones in each lift (50 pound increments for the bench, 100
pound increments for the squat and pull), and as the series
progresses I’ll talk about how my training has evolved over time to
avoid/break plateaus and keep making progress.
I was a pretty good bencher the first time I tried. The main reason
was that I had always done a TON of pushups. When I started
playing football in 3rd grade, I asked my coach how I could get
stronger. He told me to do pushups. So I did. Every day for the
next 3 years. I’d do as many as I could in the morning, after school,
63
and at night. When my parents got me a weight set for my birthday
in 6th grade, the first thing I did was max on bench press (I was a
bro from the start ). I got 150, which was somewhere in the
neighborhood of bodyweight. I didn’t lift weights very often at first
because I was playing sports essentially year-round (and was told
never to lift weights in season), so fast forward another 3 years of
essentially only doing pushups, and by my freshman year in high
school I was benching 275 with very little time spent under the bar.
When I first started training, I used bands and chains all the time
(because I cut my teeth on westside). I’m less sold now on bands
and chains being superior to straight weight for raw lifters, but I do
think they have one big advantage: they let you feel heavier weight
in your hands and move it through a full ROM.
I had a bad mental block with 315. I’d hit 310 in either a meet or in
training probably a dozen times, but when I got 3 wheels on the bar
I would literally be unable to budge it off my chest. All my other
bench press variations were going up (remember, I was training
Westside style, so I was rotating through several different bench
variations), but my plain old competition-style bench press was
staying put. My training partner at the time, Lavan, fixed this one
day by telling me I couldn’t look at the bar during my
workout. Between sets I had to sit up and face away from the bar,
and he’d load the weight for me. He made sure to use an odd
assortment of 10s and 5s so that after 2 or 3 sets, I honestly had no
idea how much weight was on the bar. I ended up benching 330 that
day before I finally missed 335. When I finally missed and was
allowed to look at the bar, I was both relieved I’d crossed that
barrier, and pissed at myself because I had obviously been capable
of doing so for quite some time.If a number is screwing with you,
66
having a training partner do something like that for you might just
be the ticket to a new PR and fresh gains once you get past the
mental barrier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PuRHNpxUfU
67
How many times have you heard someone say something like this,
“Well, I squatted 500 in the gym a few weeks ago, but 450 felt heavy
at the meet and I missed 475.”
That’s because they peaked wrong. I’m even convinced that If you
ONLY hit your gym PRs in meets, you peaked poorly. If you’re
good at programming, meets should be PR city. And, if you’re
unfamiliar with this blog, let me assure you I’m not just a pencil-
necked nerd who reads research but hasn’t ever applied these
principles in practice. Here is a breakdown of my last two meets:
August 2012
Gym PRs (under the same circumstances)* – 625 squat, 415 bench,
625 deadlift
May 2013
Gym PRs (under the same circumstances) – 725 squat, 420 bench,
675 deadlift
68
*I had hit a couple bigger benches in the gym before my meets, and
before my 2013 meet I had pulled more with straps. However, I’m
a low bar squatter and squatting low bar before benching makes a
little biceps tendonitis flare up, so I listed my gym PRs after low bar
squatting to mimic meet conditions, and I listed my strapless DL
PRs.
69
Matthias Steiner after a 12kg (26.5 pound) clean and jerk PR to win
Olympic gold in 2008.
So, now let’s examine the factors that influence how well your peak
goes:
70
1. Training volume leading up to the meet
If you train a lift only once per week, and in that session you get in
less than 25 or so heavy working reps, and then you pack it up
without hammering accessory work hard, you simply haven’t been
doing enough work to warrant a taper, and if you try, there’s no
overreaching to warrant a supercompensatory response from your
body. Higher frequency helps fix this problem (because you can get
in a lot more volume over two or three sessions without having to
kill yourself in any given one of them), and if you prefer lower
frequency, make sure you focus on constantly increasing your
71
training volume leading up to a meet, so when you DO pull back,
you actually benefit from the taper.
Overdoing: You either see people who read old Westside articles
about the “delayed transformation” method and trying to taper
volume over 3 or 4 weeks, only to peak a week or two before the
meet (because, keep in mind, you only peak for a short period of
time, and then optimal performance quickly becomes
detraining). When you’re aiming to squat 1100 and you’re cranking
out 12 training sessions a week, you may need that long to
taper. When you’re the other 99% of lifters (especially raw lifters),
one week of lowered volume followed be one week of deload is
plenty. That approach works great even for me personally. I may
take one more week to not push quite as close to failure (same
general training plan, but shave a rep or two off of everything), but
I only purposefully taper for one week before my deload. In my
experience, very few people are strong enough to warrant a taper
longer than two weeks before meet week. During this period,
maximize your schedule for sleep. Shoot for 10 hours a night, or at
least an extra hour compared to your norm.
72
On the other hand, other people think “peaking” means just taking a
session or two off before a meet. They may hit their openers
Monday, skip training the rest of the week, and compete
Saturday. That’s simply not enough time off. (Warning, it’s about
to get bro-sciency, but this is a reflection of my experience and
conversations with a LOT of lifters) It’s enough time for your body
to get shifted into recovery mode and for you to lose your “edge,”
but not long enough for you to start really getting the itch to tear into
some weights. Your physical strength and your psychological
aggression simply don’t have enough time to manifest
themselves. It’s like preparing for battle the next day, but then being
caught off-guard by your enemy during the night. Be willing to take
some time off. If you trained for several months to get ready for a
meet, one easy week and one off week isn’t going to make you
weak. You think strength that took that long to build is going to
leave you so quickly? Trust the work you put in, and give your body
a chance to reward you for your efforts.
3. Nutritional factors
For people cutting water weight: get the weight off as fast as
possible, and put it back on as fast as possible. Don’t spend hours
jogging in a trash bag the day before a meet. Get in a hot tub or run
a hot bath. Water has a much higher thermal conductivity constant
than air, which means more heat is imparted into your body, so you
73
sweat WAY more. Get that weight off fast, then have a couple
gallons of 1/2 gatorade 1/2 water waiting for you. Then hit a
buffet. You should be heavier than you were prior to the water cut
within an hour or two of stepping off the scales. Don’t let a botched
weight cut ruin your meet.
The night before and the entire day of the meet, eat as much salt and
as many starchy foods as possible, and drink as much water as
possible. You want a huge bloat. Mass moves mass.
So, there you go. I’m sure I glossed over some details, but contained
in this post are the basics of consistently PRing in meets. Get your
74
volume in in your pre-meet training cycle, take a week or two to
taper volume and a week of deloading, make your water cut as fast
as possible (if you cut), consume massive amounts of carbs, salt, and
water, and use caffeine to your advantage. If you don’t feel
comfortable setting up your training plan, hire a competent coach
(perhaps the author – shameless plug) or take the time to study
training logs of lifters who consistently do well in meets.
1. Lucky ones
2. Injured ones
3. Smart ones
75
You would be hard pressed to find an 800 pound raw squatter or
deadlifter who get that strong by accident. Knowledge precedes
strength. When you apply all the knowledge you have and finally
hit a wall, it takes more knowledge to know HOW to get
around/over/under/through that wall before you can direct your
efforts towards doing so. You may clear a few barriers by accident
and luck, but that’s not the best strategy to stake your long-term
results on.
Two different studies have linked having two working copies of the
allele to elite anaerobic performance. One showed that elite
sprinters and power athletes are much less likely to have the
nonsense allele, and another showed that elite bodybuilders and
strength athletes are much less likely to have the nonsense
allele. None of this should be surprising as fast twitch fibers are the
ones with the most growth potential and are primarily responsible
for very high levels for force production. However, don’t let another
pair of statistics slip by you: about 7% of ELITE
bodybuilders/strength athletes, and about 6% of ELITE sprinters
have two copies of the nonsense gene. Approximately 1 out of every
15 elite athletes lacks true fast twitch muscle fibers in sports where
force output and/or hypertrophy are ESSENTIAL. Let that sink in
for a moment.
77
While I was working towards a 500 squat, I learned to work
hard. i.e. puked-the-first-4-workouts-straight hard. I’ve since
learned to pick my battles (somewhat) and give my body a rest when
it needs it, but strength is only earned through hard work, pure and
simple.
You can lift light weights with bad form. If you lift heavy weights
with bad form, you will break yourself eventually. Killer tendonitis
in both knees and constant erector spinae strains taught me that
lesson the hard way. It wasn’t until I made serious strides in
technique that I reached 500. Tip of the day: fail to stand up with a
lift and let the bar roll off your back rather than losing it
forward. Never lose it forward.
a) Have some meat in front of you every time you sit down at the
table
Lesson 4: Atmosphere
This is a lesson that I didn’t realize I was learning at the time, but it
became painfully obvious soon after my first 500. The gym I trained
at when I first started lifting was the home of Travis Mash. He was
at his peak at the time, and I saw him deadlift and back squat in the
700s and front squat in the 600s fairly often. Additionally, Lavan,
the guy I trained with most of the time, was (and still is) slightly
wider than most doorways with a 500 pound bench and a pretty
decent squat. Also, Joey Smith and a lot of geared benchers would
come on Friday nights and all handle 700-800 on a pretty regular
basis. Throw all this together, and I’m the weakest person in the
picture BY FAR. Oh, except for Seth who was only about 150
pounds at the time and constantly just 10-20 pounds behind me in
every lift (plus he could do a 64 inch box jump, and a 48 inch body
79
jump off one leg. He’s a freak). I think I got stronger just because
I saw so much room for improvement in myself. They were my
“normal,” so there was no good reason to not get a lot stronger in
short order.
I’ll be honest, this is one I’ve gotten away from (to my own
detriment). No matter what, I always ended training sessions in my
early days with absurd amounts of abdominal work. First I worked
up to situps (on a hyperextension machine) with a 165 pound
dumbbell on my chest for sets of 10. Then it was with a heavy band
around my neck for 10s. Then it was with 90 pounds behind my
head for 10s. Never will you regret getting brutally strong abs.
80
This is installment 2 in a (currently) 8 part series. The first was
“What I learned to squat 500 pounds”. I’m planning on doing one
installment for each 100 pound increment for squat and deadlift
starting at 500, and each 50 pound increment on bench starting at
350. Just as a refresher from the first installment:
1. Lucky ones
2. Injured ones
3. Smart ones
Deadlift was a very natural movement for me the first time I tried
it. Why? Prior to deadlifting, I spent my whole childhood figuring
out the heaviest things I could pick up: rocks, logs, people, etc. On
top of that, my family burned a wood fire all winter, so I’d spend a
fair amount of time hauling logs, picking 18″ segments of trees up
to load them in a trailer, and pushing a loaded wheelbarrow. When
I first got a weight set, bending over and ripping something off the
ground was pretty second nature to me. What’s more, I found that
having the weight on a bar that I could wrap my hands around made
the whole process significantly easier. As such, when I got my first
little weight set (I was 11 or so. It was a Christmas present in 6th
grade), I could load 200 pounds on the bar (as much as it came
with. As a note, the largest plates were 25s, so it was a 2-3 inch
deficit) and pull it that Christmas morning. In about 3 months I
could do 5×10 with 200, and would do that 2-3 times per week on
top of all of the other various things I did that required picking stuff
up.
The first time I actually pulled a max deadlift with a real bar and and
45 pound plates I was 14, and got 405 clean and 425 with some
hitching. For most people, when they hear that they assume I’m just
a freak. They ignore the fact that I’d been effectively training for
deadlifts since I was 5 years old. During childhood, neural
82
development is hugely important. You’re not going to get jacked,
but you can improve muscle activation in patterns you practice. You
see youtube videos of 9 year olds in China clean and jerking 135 and
wonder how they’re so strong. Actually they probably aren’t much
stronger than your typical 9 year old. They’ve just had enough
practice to get their tiny little muscles incredibly efficient at
Olympic lifting. That’s basically what I did for deadlifts.
If you didn’t have the same type of childhood I did, you can still
benefit from greasing the groove; it’ll just take longer for your brain
to adapt. However, neural plasticity is a wonderful thing, and if you
put in the reps, really substantial neural improvements will
occur. This means using less weight for fewer reps, but picking
heavy stuff up every single day (if possible), or even multiple times
per day. The more often your nervous system is exposed to a
stimulus, the faster it will adapt to it.
When you’re a brand new lifter, you’re not gaining strength because
you’re getting so much hyoojer. You’re gaining strength primarily
because of neural adaptations, with hypertrophy coming in a distant
second in terms of importance. Hypertrophy is important on down
the road, obviously, but isn’t of primary importance early on. Doing
more reps, more often steepens the learning curve. It’ll feel boring
and counter-productive, but you’ll thank me for it in the long
run. You’ll be stronger, and since you’ll get more perfect reps in
83
(remember, lighter weight), you’ll have a lower long-term chance of
injury and you won’t have to unlearn and relearn form (which can
be quite frustrating, and is a product of not taking the time to learn
it correctly the first time)
This stands in stark contrast to a few sets of 5, once a week that most
beginner programs recommend. I’d say you’re better off with 15
singles, 3-4 times per week at minimum until you can deadlift at
least 1.5x your bodyweight for all the singles with perfect form and
relative ease. The amount of reps your need decreases as you
increase in training age, but at first you need to grease the groove.
This is crucial no matter who you are or how long you’ve been
lifting. Deadlifts are hard freaking work. No two ways about it. On
top of that, you don’t actually get to feel the weight before you’re
expected to do something with it. You don’t walk it out like a squat,
or press it out of the pins like a bench press. It’s just sitting there
lifeless on the ground, taunting you. This is especially true for a
new 1rm attempt. You may have pulled that weight for a partial, but
you have no idea what it feels like when it breaks the ground.
I’m a pretty chill guy, but if there’s a lift I’m going to yell, put on
loud music, and generally make a fool of myself for, it’s the
deadlift. Most people say a generally slow burning rage is the most
helpful. That’s the approach I like to take. Once the bar’s loaded,
I’ll stare at it like it’s prey that’s about to get it’s throat ripped
out. I’ll find a deep, dark place to go to (people who know me may
find that one hard to believe), put on either “Lose Yourself” by
Eminem or “Calm like a bomb” by Rage Against the Machine, take
85
about 30 seconds to develop a brief but intense hatred for pretty
much all of existence, and then pull. Find something that works best
for you, but more than anything, whether you make yourself angry,
cocky, or zen, just be ready to pull.
If your lockout is weak because you can’t get your shoulders back,
your lats and traps are weak.
If your lockout is weak because you can’t get your hips through,
your glutes are weak
86
If you miss around knee height, either your hamstrings are weak or
your hips are too far from the bar
If you just can’t break the weight off the ground, you are just too
weak in general
Muscular endurance
A concrete (and typical) example is the 225 bench for reps at the
NFL combine. Lets compare two theoretical people who do the
bench for reps test.
Person A has a max bench press of 500 pounds and does 30 reps
with 225.
87
Person B has a max bench of 350 pounds and does 28 reps with 225.
1. Diagnostic tool.
Do you want to know what’s limiting your drive out of the bottom
of a squat? Put a light weight on the bar (135-225 works well for
most). Squat all the way down. Then bounce up and down between
full depth and your sticking point (just above parallel). Do so about
50 times. What’s the first thing that really starts
burning/fatiguing? Congratulations, you’ve discovered what needs
work.
91
to suffer. If you use them as a supplemental exercise, I’d
recommend avoiding failure. Your hips will get PLENTY of time
under tension before you even have to think about missing a rep.
Well, this certainly won’t be an exhaustive list, but here are some of
the things that have changed about my training (both from the
perspective of nuts-and-bolts and my overall approach) to get me to
where I am today. Don’t interpret this to mean I think I’m one of
the best out there (or even anywhere close to it, for that matter), but
at this point I’ve opened up about a 100-200 pound gap per lift
between myself and most upper-end intermediate lifters, so
92
hopefully these insights will prove useful for people who’ve hit a
wall with their current approach.
Just for another quick example, if you miss deadlifts at your knees,
you probably have weak hamstrings. Rather that hammer partial
deadlifts from knee height after you already tire yourself out pulling
from the floor, do some lighter, full-ROM RDLs or GMs to focus
specifically on the limiting factor in the movement. You’re
increasing work capacity without sacrificing movement quality.
Don’t skip over this one. It seems self-explanatory, but it’s more
important than most realize. When I was weaker, I could train
excessively, beat my body up, stay achy and creaky, and still
consistently put more weight on the bar. Not so anymore. I still
believe that overtraining is just under-recovering, but the scope of
what counts as “recovery” changes. You’re not just looking for
recovery of your prime movers, but of generally how good your
body feels. If your quads feel fine but your knee or hip feels a little
wonky, then push squats back another day, and take some time
94
troubleshooting the problem. If your chest and triceps are
recovered, but a little ache in your shoulder tells you not to bench,
then push your bench day back.
95
This point is somewhat in conjunction with the last one. I still need
to improve this, but I’ve already improved vastly relative to where I
started. The key to getting stronger is still adding weight or doing
more reps with the same weight. However, you have to accept that
progress is no longer linear. Instead, you have to look for a generally
positive trend. If you haven’t PRed this week, that’s not a big
deal. If you haven’t PRed on anything this month, then maybe you
need to evaluate things. If you get frustrated and try to force every
day to be the best day ever in the gym, you’ll get nowhere. Do you
have a noticeable limiting factor for a movement (you can usually
figure this out based on where you miss)? Put in the work to
improve it, and the gains will come. Otherwise, do more work, eat
more, sleep more, and take care of the boring stuff. Travis is fond
of saying that champions become champions by first becoming
masters of the mundane. <– truer words have never been spoken.
I rarely do a true max anymore. When I was first starting out, I grew
like a weed on a Westside template. As I’ve progressed, however,
I’ve learned to rarely push past an RPE of 9. That extra 20 pounds
on the bar, or that extra rep or two will only add a day to your
recovery without providing any meaningful additional training
effect. Most experienced lifters know what I mean by this. You
were fighting for a rep PR on the squat, and when you tied your old
PR, you were pretty sure you could eek out one more. You go down
again, cut it a wee bit high, fight it for 8 seconds, and finally get
96
it. The next day you feel awful, and you KNOW that if you cut the
set one rep short (and “only” tied your PR) you’d feel fine and be
able to train productively. Always leave a rep in the tank = words
to live by.
4. Redefine strong
I’ve written an entire post about this topic, so I won’t dwell on this
point. In short, however, if you aspire to greatness then make
greatness the standard by which you measure everything else
(including yourself in the present). Mentally, you’ll discover that
doing so gives you a lot more “growing room” that you didn’t realize
you had.
5. Chill out
Paradoxical, I realize. However, when you’re not under the bar, get
over yourself. This goes hand in hand with redefining strong
(deliberately to NOT include yourself). You’ve come a long way,
but you still have a long way to go. In spite of more knowledge and
experience, you should become more coachable, more willing to
accept advice and criticism, and less enamoured of your own
abilities. Gaining strength tends to go hand in hand with gaining
knowledge, and the moment you think you know more than
everyone else and that your poop doesn’t stink, you should start
expecting reality to come and take a big dump on your doorstep in
the near future. When you’re starting out and you’re making really
fast newb gains, I can understand if you feel 10 feet tall and
bulletproof. Eventually you need to move past that, and when you
fail to do so for whatever reason (primarily insecurity) it’s both
pathetic and self-destructive.
On the other hand, as soon as you touch the bar, there should be no
doubts in your mind. “You’re the best lifter ever to draw breath, and
98
time is the only thing separating you from immortalized
greatness. As long as you keep your form dialed in, you own the
weight on the bar.” Obviously you can’t let this attitude take control
when you’re loading weights, and drop it as soon as you rack the bar
or sit it back down. The moment you complete a set, you turn back
into mild-mannered Clark Kent. Along with this: never be afraid
of a weight. I like using partials or supermaximal holds to address
this problem, but whatever you do, don’t let a weight scare you. It’s
cold and lifeless, and you’re alive with conscious control. You have
the upper hand in the relationship. You may end up missing a
weight, but don’t let it be because you were afraid of it.
Admission: when I was first starting out, I would read every training
article I could find, and ignore almost anything written by guys like
Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Robertson. Big mistake. Sure, rehab
articles aren’t scintillating excitement, but it always helps to have
more tools in your toolbox in case of a rainy day. Same goes for
reading about every training methodology, including ones you
haven’t used, aren’t using, or doubt you’ll ever use. There’s a logic
to successful programs, and you can apply principles even if you
don’t jump into the entire program with both feet. Don’t disregard
someone’s information because they’re a “pencil-necked labcoat,”
or because they’re a strong but inarticulate “broscientist.” The nerd
99
probably got something out of the scientific literature you can learn
from (even if he puts the kiddie gloves on for application), and the
meathead obviously knows SOMETHING to see the success he has,
even if his reasoning (and perhaps grammar) is horribly flawed.
100
Beneath this seemingly innocent face, this guy will work you into
the ground. Truth.
So, now that you know what type of lifter Charlie is, I can tell you
this little story.
It’s very rare as a coach to have a request like that dropped into your
lap. It was too good to pass up. Plenty of people THINK they can
101
take a lot of abuse, but I knew first hand that Charlie is the type of
guy who SEEKS and THRIVES on that type of abuse. Of course,
I’m not going to just give him a program that’s blatantly just seeking
a trip to the PT (i.e. “do a Sheiko program, but start each session
with a 1rm on each lift, and triple the volume.”), but I didn’t want to
give him something that would stretch him without making it
impossible to train his other lifts.
Monday: Squat to a 10rm. This was the easy day, so it’s also when
deadlifting usually happened.
Drop 5% morex10 (so if you hit 200×10 on Monday, you’d hit 180
3×10, 170×10, 160×10 on Wednesday).
102
Friday: Squat to a 5rm. Drop 10%x5. Drop 10% morex5
Looks hard, but not terrible, right? I mean, there ARE more difficult
programs out there. Except, there was one more stipulation: they
had to move up in weight each week. Sort of like Smolov, but it’s
been going for 8 weeks straight (with no end yet in sight) rather than
just 4.
The result: they’ve been PRing for 2 months straight now, and are
now hitting their old 1rms for sets of 5. They’ve both put over an
inch on their thighs. Chaney didn’t even find out until this weekend
that the program was even SUPPOSED to be hard.
Lessons learned:
103
3. Mindset is everything. When Charlie tells me to write him
something terrible, it doesn’t intimidate him. He sees it as a
challenge. Chaney, on the other hand, didn’t know that it was
SUPPOSED to be that difficult, and just aloofly dominated for 2
months straight. If you go into a program thinking it may be too
much, it can own you and crush you. If you think you can master it,
you probably can.
(Update on this: I’ve had about 2 dozen people try this program and
report back to me – to this point literally everyone has gotten
stronger. The average increment of improvement is a 5 rep max
becoming a 10 rep max in about 10 weeks)
104
I’ll be the first to admit it. My training does not, in any way,
maximize health. I think this is a point more of us need to be honest
with ourselves about before we can help other people.
Squat 315
Bench 220
Deadlift 365
Run a 5k in 24:00
105
Now, I’m sure we could quibble that some of those numbers are a
little too high or too low, but I think most of us can agree that the
person I just described is probably quite healthy.
106
hazardous for cartilage which has poor blood supply and does not
repair very well.
Consider your goals. If your main reason for training is so you can
look good, feel good, and live a healthy life, then ignore all the noise
107
out there telling you that you should get down to 4% body fat, run a
marathon, lift ungodly amounts of weight, etc. Your training is not
somehow less important or less productive because you’re not
training to break records. Your goals are your goals, and your
training is perfect if it serves those goals. If a trainer tries to mold
your goals to conform with his or her area of interest, give them the
boot and find someone who prioritizes your goals over their own.
108
hit every time you enter the gym, regardless of circumstances. As
you get stronger, you claim the next increment. Then the next. Then
the next. It’s sort of like a psychological placeholder that makes the
weight seem like they’re never getting any heavier. Your PR is
never more than 90 pounds away from “your” weight. For example,
last spring, I owned a 455 squat. My max was just north of 500, but
I knew on my worst day I could smoke 455, and I did so a minimum
of 3 times per week. You get VERY used to seeing that weight on
the bar. When I went for my first 545, it wasn’t intimidating because
it was only a plate per side away from a weight I’d done (literally)
100+ times. Plates aren’t that heavy. If I could so thoroughly
dominate 455, there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to dig out a
single at 545. When I claimed 495, PRing at 585 wasn’t a big
deal. My placeholder had moved. Now 495 was my easy weight,
which made 585 much more doable. The placeholder is physical as
much as it is psychological. Eventually 365 felt like 315 did. Then
405 feels like 365 did. PRs are never more than 90 extra pounds on
your back/in your hands.
My bench program
Week 1
Week 2
110
Week 3
Add one rep to each set (using either week one’s number of sets or
week two’s. I used a mix and it worked fine)
Week 4
Week 5
(Update – I’ve done this program two times since – it’s resulted in a
10-20 pound PR every time. Splitting it into 5 sessions helps a lot –
vs. 2-3x per week high volume programs - because no individual
session is too high in volume, so they’re really unintimidating on
paper)
Nutrition:
111
The Three Laws of Protein
On the flip side, if you’re not getting in this amount regularly, you
WILL probably benefit from increasing intake. For some people,
.82g/lb may seem like a ludicrously high number. However, if
you’re currently under that level of intake, you will accrue benefits
as you eat more protein.
112
As an aside, increasing protein intake above .82g/lb may have
benefits if you’re trying to lose weight. Protein is more satiating per
gram than either carbohydrate or fat, and in a caloric deficit, erring
on the high side to ensure you hold onto as much muscle as possible
is wise anyways.
Maybe there was some wisdom in your parents’ insistence that you
eat 3 square meals a day after all (provided they all have a fair
amount of protein).
113
3. Get your protein from high-quality sources
This issue is definitely not as important as the first two, but it’s still
worth mentioning.
114
Pictured: gains
The takeaway:
Calories in vs. calories out “works,” but it’s very hard to apply.
People assume that “calories out” is static, or really only affected by
exercise. So, if you manipulate “calories in” via diet, weight loss
should be easy and predictable. However, this doesn’t always work
because “calories out” isn’t as static as we’d like to believe.
116
The macronutrient breakdown (carbs, fats, proteins) of your diet, as
well as the timing of those nutrients, has a notable influence on how
well you lose weight at a given calorie intake.
117
TEF – definitely not a negligible part of your daily energy
expenditure.
118
Finally, there’s the matter of energy storage. Your body can only
store a certain amount of carbohydrate as glycogen. Past that point,
it needs to store it as fat. So how efficiently can your body do
that? Well, using this study as a reference, it’s only about 70%
efficient. In this study, limited in size though it was, men were fed
basically a crapton of carbohydrate – starting at 783g and building
to 1059g per day. They ended up storing about 150g of fat (1350
calories) per day that they had converted from about 475g of
carbohydrate (1900 calories). It’s no small deal when 550 calories
per day just go “missing.” Other studies have corroborated this
same basic idea in healthy, weight-training people – if you’re on a
short-term all-out bulk, it may be a good idea to go REALLY high
carb and low fat to gain lots of muscle quickly while minimizing fat
gain.
119
Somehow you manage to lose a little bit of energy in the process. A
process with 17+ steps isn’t 100% efficient? I’m shocked.
So, all I’m getting at here is that even though “calories in vs. calories
out” may be technically correct, all the contributing factors make the
equation much thornier than most would assume to the point that, at
120
the very least, being super anal about calories shouldn’t be your
number one concern.
Which leads us to to the exciting part: people losing more fat and
being more satiated with the SAME caloric intake because of
nutrient timing. Also the confusing part: the beneficial effects were
seen on almost opposite protocols!
The study was done on Israeli police officers, all of whom were
obese at the start of the study. They all ate the same number of
calories, but some ate the bulk of their carbs during the day, and
some ate them at night. The result: the group that ate them at night
lost 28% more fat, had increased satiety relative to baseline (even
though they were on a calorie restricted diet!), had improved insulin
sensitivity, saw a 44% increase in adiponectin, and had decreased
inflammation – essentially outperforming in every single parameter
the group that ate their carbs early in the day.
121
You must eat all of this at dinner if you ever want a 6 pack. I’m sorry.
I realize life can be really difficult sometimes.
But before you head out to buy a quart of ice cream to polish off
after dinner…
2) Eat the bulk of your calories at breakfast for more weight loss
122
Ahh, verification of orthodoxy. In this study, obese women were
fed 1400 calories a day. This included a 700 calorie breakfast, 500
calorie lunch, and 200 calorie dinner, or a 200 calorie breakfast, 500
calorie lunch, and 700 calorie dinner. The group eating half their
daily calories at breakfast lost more weight and inches off their
waist, saw larger decreases in fasting blood glucose and insulin,
decreased triglyceride levels 33% (compared to a 15% increase in
the group with a large supper), and experienced less hunger and
greater satiety relative to the large supper group.
Most importantly, I think what you should take away from this is
that, if you aren’t satisfied with the results of your diet, don’t be
afraid to play around with it. The solution to weight loss plateaus
doesn’t always have to be simply dropping calories lower. Play
around with when you eat your carbs, moving the bulk of your
calories to one meal, trying carb/protein and fat/protein meals
instead of mixed meals (or vice versa), moving more calories around
your workout, running a higher surplus on training days and a larger
deficit on rest days, etc.
124
Healthy pumpkin apple cheesecake recipe
3 eggs
Directions:
Bake at 350 degrees for 75-90 minutes. Remove from the oven and
put it in the refrigerator for 3 hours if you’re a loser who doesn’t
want to indulge in hot gooey cheesecake.
Macros:
125
115g fat
337g carbs
146g protein
52g fiber
2967 total calories. Just want to point out that it’s pretty much spot-
on macros and calories for an entire day of eating for a 200ish pound
active guy. Just saying…
126
Science-backed training tips
I had another awesome question come in, and one that’s rarely
addressed:
First, let me just start off with a working definition of work capacity,
and an explanation of why it’s so important. Work capacity is,
essentially, the total amount of work you can perform and recover
from.
127
How do you progress then, to attain your 18 inch pythons of glory
(I’m already regretting the example I picked, but I’m to stubborn to
go back. Curl bros, savor this moment)? Well, obviously, you do
more work. You pick a more challenging weight, increase you sets
do more exercises, decrease you rest intervals, etc. It’s not rocket
science, and we all know that eventually, if you want your arms to
grow, you’ll have to do more work.
However, this concept seems foreign to most people when you apply
it to anything besides arm hypertrophy. The fitness world has
become so entranced by minimalism that we’ve forgotten that
eventually you just have to do more work. People are surprised
when they do the same program with the same sets and reps and the
same accessory work for several months, and they eventually
plateau. Then they ask about it on a message board and get a
response like, “oh, you’re doing too much so you can’t recover. Dial
back what you’re doing and you’ll keep getting stronger.”
So, lo and behold, they dial back their training volume and the gains
start coming again. Only they last for a mere 4-8 weeks. Then they
plateau even harder. Why? They weren’t getting stronger. They
were peaking. Their body was used to a certain level of work. When
they reduced the amount of work, supercompensation happened, and
they could put more weight on the bar. However, that’s not
something that happens indefinitely. But, the fact is, it “worked” for
128
a while, so this person ends up banging their head against a wall on
a super low volume routine wondering why they’re not getting any
stronger, not questioning the efficacy of their new routine because
it worked initially.
130
recovery outpaces stress. The whole point of increasing work
capacity is for stress to slightly outpace recovery until recovery
catches up to the stress. Once you’ve increased your work capacity
and allow recovery to catch up, you’re in a position where you’re
able to tolerate much more volume, which means a greater stimulus,
which means an increased potential for gains. Also, it gives you
more ability to taper and hit PRs at meets. You know those guys
who always hit their biggest lifts in training, but fail hard at
meets? Typically, they’re the ones who never trained with high
enough volume to get any significant supercompensation when they
tapered.
So, that finally brings us back to the question: How does one
actually go about increasing their work capacity? For a full, in-
depth answer, I’d recommend you read Supertraining, some
Zatsiorsky, some Verkhoshansky, or some Issurin. This answer is
more based on implementation and strategies that have proven
themselves effective over time.
There are several different ways. The one in the original question
really isn’t a bad way to do it. Adding sets DOES increase work
131
capacity. Let’s say you can do 3 sets of 3 with 315 on squat. What’s
easier? Trying to go 325 3×3 (assuming you’ve exhausted your
linear gains), or doing another single with 315 at the end? The
single, obviously. Then a double the next session, then a triple the
one after that. Once you could do 6-8 triples, you could drop back
to 3 sets, and probably go 335 3×3 and do it all over again. That’s
a 20 pound increase in about 2 months. Not too shabby. The key is
that adding one rep per session isn’t all that taxing on your body
over your established baseline. Then when you drop back to just 3
sets, it’s less volume than you’ve grown accustomed to, setting you
up nicely for the subsequent re-ramping of the volume.
132
months as well (the second month has crazy volume, the third is
similar volume to the first but with higher intensity, and the fourth
is a taper). Then, when you’d start over, you’d dive back in with
slightly higher volume to continue to drive
adaptation. Unfortunately, not all of Boris Sheiko’s writings have
been translated into English, but you can see the progression from
ranked lifter routines to CMS/MS routines, to MSIC routines. The
volume increases incrementally as the lifter gets stronger until
you’re on a MSIC routine that makes you want to cry just reading
it.
133
Another way to increase work capacity is to add extra
workouts. This method was popularized by Westside, and can be
easily implemented (although what I’m about to say isn’t how they
do it). Let’s say you squat 315 5×5 twice per week, and you’ve
plateaued. Try adding in a third squat day. Start with 225 5×5. Just
the simple act of practicing the motor patter more often MAY get
your maxes moving again. However, 225 5×5 shouldn’t be enough
to mess with your recovery. If anything, it would enhance recovery
by promoting blood flow without inducing any more muscle
damage. Add weight on your third squat day until it becomes
difficult to get 315 5×5 on both of your main workouts (maybe 275-
295 5×5). Then drop the third workout. You should be able to
increase the working weight on your main training days. Then,
slowly build back up the weight on your third squat day again,
initially starting very light.
Now, I’m not going to deal with how insulin insensitivity and
hyperinsulinemia are primary risk factors for a host of chronic
diseases. I’m not an MD. That sort of stuff interests me, but it’s not
my area of expertise, and it’s not why you read my blog.
So, the problem with gaining fat while training for mass and strength
is this: gaining fat specifically reduces insulin sensitivity in skeletal
muscle.
137
As you accumulate fat, blood levels of free fatty acids (FFAs)
increase. Elevated blood levels of FFAs decrease insulin sensitivity
in the muscles two different ways. Firstly, they directly decrease
insulin sensitivity, and secondly, they contribute to increased muscle
triglyceride levels, which also decrease insulin sensitivity.
The more fat you gain, the LESS anabolic insulin is for muscle, and
the easier it is to increase fat storage. It’s a positive feedback loop
where the more you eat over baseline, and the more fat you gain, the
138
less it benefits strength and hypertrophy and the more it simply
increases the proportion of extra calories that go to fat storage.
Jesse Norris is one of the best PLers in the world today. However,
staying lean is obviously killing his gains. Imagine how strong he’d
be if he gained 50 pounds of fat.
Implications
139
Seriously. Gaining mass uses the same basic principles as shedding
fat, except in reverse. Keep track of weight and waist circumference
(a good indicator of visceral fat, which is much more a culprit in this
process than subcutaneous fat). If you’re fairly lean to start with,
eat at a little above baseline with the goal of gaining a pound
every 2-3 weeks, and don’t let your waist circumference increase
by more than 1/4 inch every couple of weeks. If the numbers are
increasing too fast, bump calories down. If they’re stuck in place,
bump calories up.
You’ll still probably gain some fat. I mean, you ARE in a surplus,
and it’s much easier for your body to store extra energy in
triglycerides (relatively cheap metabolic currency) rather than
muscle protein (expensive metabolic currency). However, at the
sane rate of weight gain I proposed, fat gain shouldn’t be extreme as
long as you’re training hard. Minimizing fat gain means that your
muscles will stay more sensitive to anabolic signalling than they do
on more extreme bulking plans.
Short term, you MAY see better results with a huge surplus. Sure,
I’ll grant that. However, it’s absolutely a case where there are
diminishing returns past a certain point. So if you are seeing better
results initially, they’ll be marginally better, NOT exponentially
better. And yes, exercise will mitigate the decreases in insulin
sensitivity, but that’s still not the same as no decrease at all. You
may have to pay the piper later, but that day will still come
eventually.
141
progress by 2-3 months (assuming you’d need to cut for 4-8 weeks
if you’d managed your weight gain better).
Clarifications
(citations)
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/3/662.long
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20973164
142
ajcn.nutrition.org/content/83/2/461S.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18094066
https://www.uoguelph.ca/hhns/grad/courses/HBNS6130W08/HBN
S6130W08Week9APSreviewcopy.pdf
Short-Term
143
1) You can still get bigger and stronger with doing strength training
and cardio simultaneously.
So, there’s one major takeaway here – aerobic training does not
hamper strength training in and of itself. The effect starts
materializing when it begins causing additional stress to the muscles
and soft tissues. Running, with its impact element, affected strength
and size gains especially as volume increased, whereas cycling
didn’t. I’d venture that the oldschool bodybuilding staple of incline
treadmill walking would also have minimal effects, just like cycling,
due to its minimal impact, and hence its minimal addition to training
stress.
144
If your choice of cardio is 1) low impact, and 2) not overboard on
volume and intensity, you shouldn’t have to worry about it
negatively affecting your training or your results. There’s also a
strong vein of broscience suggesting that low intensity steady state
cardio may actually aid in recovery from workouts by promoting
blood flow to the muscles without causing further damage. It makes
sense intuitively (and I’ve noticed it to be true in my own training),
though there’s not any studies confirming it at this time.
145
My friend Alex Viada is a poster boy for combining aerobic and
strength training as an ultra endurance athlete and an 800 pound
squatter.
Long-Term
So, short term, running for hours on end all the time may not be the
best idea, but a reasonable volume of low impact stuff is fine. But
what about long-term effects? This is where the potential benefits
come in. This part is a little more theoretical, but also a lot more
exciting.
Programming
147
In these longer-term programs, building up work capacity at the
beginning of the training cycle is necessary for the volume and
intensity of training that’s necessary to hit PRs at the end of the
cycle. Aerobic work can be used to build up that base.
I’m sure someone will object and say, “well sure, people write about
that in training books, but no good strength athletes ACTUALLY
train that way.” I suppose no one told Ilya Ilin, Olympic champion
weightlifter and one of the greatest strength athletes walking the face
of the earth. Near the end of the article: “Ilya has a program that
encompassed 10 months and went from swimming and rowing to a
gradual inclusion of the lifts, to an ultimate elimination of
everything but the lifts and squats.” The Chinese weightlifting team,
whose lifters have been winning international competitions like
they’re going out of style for the past several years, also jogs or plays
aerobic-based sports regularly to improve and maintain conditioning
and work capacity. Also sprinters, who are some of the strongest
and most explosive athletes pound for pound in the world, get a large
portion of their training volume from “tempo runs,” which is
basically a fancy way of saying “jogging.”
Body Composition
148
Next, aerobic training positively influences body composition. Yes,
I know, “abs are made in the kitchen.” However, the combination
of aerobic and resistance training has been shown to improve body
composition moreso than either in isolation. Resistance training
increases metabolic rate, while aerobic training decreases hunger
moreso than resistance training, which is perhaps what makes the
combination especially potent.
But what about the arguments against aerobic training? All the
people crying that your muscle will shrivel up, leaving you skinny
fat?
149
training, they’ll claim that it’s impossible, and cite research from
people running for hours and hours each week in a massive calorie
deficit. Well sure, in that context, they may be onto
something. Starving yourself while putting in 100 miles of road
work every week without lifting isn’t exactly ideal for muscle
growth or metabolic health. However, in that regard, they’re less
prophets and more just stating the obvious while making huge
extrapolations.
Summing it all up
Hopefully, at the very least, you can walk away from this with the
assurance that the worst case scenario when combining strength
training with reasonable aerobic training is that you’ll still get bigger
and stronger, but perhaps at a slightly slower rate. However, when
programmed correctly, it can actually improve your results, and
your body composition as well!
150
Share this around with your cardio-phobic friends. Hopefully
they’ll see the light and “cardio” can stop being such a dirty word in
the strength and fitness worlds.
This was a guest post from my friend Martijn Koeveots. He’s one
the top powerlifters in his weight class in the Netherlands, and
through some of his connections in the European powerlifting
world, he got his hands on a really awesome study that hasn’t gotten
much press yet, but which has obvious applications for most
peoples’ training.
151
It’s the result of a Norwegian powerlifting experiment by Raastad et
al[1].
The only thing that was different, was their training frequency.
Right now you are probably on either a full body routine for 3 days
a week, on a 4 day per week upper/lower split where you train the
squat, bench and deadlift 2 times a week, or you’re using a split
where you train each major lift once per week.
152
As you might know, Olympic weightlifting training methodologies
are deeply influenced by the methods used by the eastern European
countries in the 60’s to 90’s. These countries have developed an
understanding of how to train for maximal strength that will transfer
to Olympic weightlifting.
I’m sure you have heard about the Bulgarian method and the fact
they ruthlessly dominated the sport of Olympic lifting for over 2
decades.
153
Just like you, for years most Norwegian powerlifters were training
3 days a week.
And, just like you, they were training each big lift (squat, bench-
press, deadlift) 1 or 2 times a week.
154
The experiment group consisted of 16 competitive powerlifters
between 18 and 25 years old, squatting between 125kg and 205kg
(275-451lbs), bench pressing between 85kg to 165kg (187-364lbs)
and deadlifting between 155kg and 245kg (342-540 lbs).
The results
All lifters were put on the same 15 week program (same exercise
selection, volume, and intensity) before reviewing the results by
maxing out in the squat, bench-press and deadlift. All maxing was
done without powerlifting suits.
This means that the 3/week group needed to twice as many sets as
the 6/week group in each session.
The increase in the squat was 11±6% in the 6/week group vs. 5±3%
in the 3/week group
Bench-press increased 11±4% in the 6/week group vs. 6±3% in the
3/week group
In the deadlift there was no significant difference when compared in
both groups (9±6% vs. 4±6%)
This means that total weight lifted all all three lifts increased about
an average of 10% in the 6/week group, as opposed to 5% in the
3/week group.
I told you this wasn’t like the many headlines of fitness magazines,
these are real results.
156
In addition to looking at the changes in 1RM of each of the lifts, the
researchers also looked for increases in muscle mass of the vastus
lateralis, and the quadriceps as a whole.
The average increase in the 6/week group was almost 10% in the
vastus lateralis and nearly 5% in the quadriceps as a whole.
In just 12 weeks that is great progress. The 3/week group did not
make significant increases in muscle mass.
But first I want to point out that it’s important that when training
high frequency, you cannot max out out every time you hit the gym.
The Norwegians recognized this, so with the new routines, both the
training frequency and the total training volume were dramatically
increased, but intensity was reduced.
157
press, deadlift). So the only time the lifters were grinding lifts were
when they were going for new PRs at the end of the program.
Let’s review:
Although the experiment didn’t cover it, let’s try and see if there is
any science relating to these results. After that we will try to put
these results into practice.
158
We know that weight training triggers protein synthesis and muscle
building. Research done by MacDougall et al.[2] and Phillips et al[3].
shows that this peaks in the first 24h after training.
Another important factor could be that if you can start your squats
fresh more often you can work to improve technique. It is quite hard
to perfect technique when in a fatigued state. And if you’ve ever
done a true 1RM attempt you know that your technique needs to be
perfect.
Additionally, because you feel fresh more often when you squat, it’s
probable you can produce more force on average.
159
What you should do
Today, the best lifters in Norway typical train 5-6 days a week, some
even train two times a day.
160
Deadlifts can be done about 2 times a week, alternating conventional
and sumo for instance.
What now?
If you want to be bigger and stronger, you should try to divide your
current training program into more but smaller sessions.
It can skyrocket your strength and size. Just make sure to keep your
intensity in check.
Also, keep in mind that although the IPF allows the use of gear, this
study was done with lifters training raw.
162
protein synthesis following heavy resistance exercise. Can J Appl
Physiol. 1995 Dec;20(4):480-6
[5] Hartman MJ, Clark B, Bembens DA, Kilgore JL, Bemben MG.:
Comparisons between twice-daily and once-daily training sessions
in male weight lifters. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2007
Jun;2(2):159-69.
Genetics – How much do they limit you, and what can you do
about it?
163
I’ll warn you from the outset – this post is going to be a cold dose
of reality. There’s a ray of sunshine at the end, but it’ll take a while
to get there.
So, with this in mind, it’s time to stop being a Debbie Downer and
actually talk about implications.
165
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
166
any mass-marketed program. The marketing and the claims are all
very similar – achieve a lofty goal in a modest amount of time.
Problem is, no one can make those promises. Unless they know a
way to market their program ONLY to the genetic elite who aren’t
yet near their genetic potential, people putting out programs with
claims like “gain 2 inches on your arms in 6 weeks” or “blast your
bench 50 pound in 8 week” or “get six pack abs in 30 days,” are
lying to most (if not all) people, and they know it.
167
a) Research has to control for as many variables as possible. That
means subjects complete the same exercise program to make sure
you know exactly what’s producing the results. Good coaches know
how to alter programming based on individual needs, and I think
that drops the “nonresponder” rate considerably. Those 20% still
aren’t going to walk across the Mr. O stage any time soon, but I’m
convinced they can improve, at least some, with the proper
motivation and individualized coaching. I’ll admit I have no
scientific studies to support this contention, but I have yet to come
across someone who literally can’t get at least a little bigger,
stronger, or leaner.
b) Just because you were dealt a bad hand in one parameter, that
doesn’t mean there’s not something you can excel at. Growing up,
I wanted nothing more than to be a great basketball player. I was
alright, but the NBA just wasn’t in the cards for this 5’9″ white
boy. However, I was dealt a very good hand for powerlifting, so
that’s where I’ve channeled my efforts and I’ve really come to love
it. If you weren’t destined for greatness as an aerobic athlete, you
may find your calling with the iron, or vice versa. Don’t be afraid
to experiment with different modes of exercise until you really take
to something. I love lifting weights, but by no means do I think it’s
the only way to be healthy and have fun in the process. Once you
find what you’re good at, a funny thing tends to happen: you’ll often
168
fall in love with the things you naturally have an aptitude for. The
old cliche applies here: “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.”
The fact that someone has accomplished the goals you’d like to
attain has little bearing at all on their ability to get you there. The
best athletes often don’t make the best coaches.
And yes, if you’re keeping track, this is a horribly ironic point for
me to be making.
169
Now, there’s certainly something to be said for experience. For
example, if someone’s a good coach, their personal
accomplishments do add to their value, I think. But, first and
foremost should be concrete knowledge (the nuts and bolts of good
programming – research, periodization models, etc.) and practical
application (experience coaching). Experiential knowledge from
competing at an elite level is an added bonus, but the first two are
much more important.
We have in our minds that effort —-> results, and that the two scale
linearly. I think that’s a quintessential part of the American Dream
narrative.
However, like we’ve been talking about this whole time, the two
don’t necessarily equate when you’re talking about fitness
goals. Someone’s lack of results doesn’t necessarily mean they’re
lazy and not putting in as much work as you.
170
In one of the classic studies looking at the influence of genetics on
sports performance, they looked at the ACTN3 gene, which codes
for a binding protein necessary for fast twitch fibers to have their
full degree of power output. Essentially, without it, you can’t
produce force nearly as quickly as you could otherwise.
If you assume you’ve got bad genetics, then you’re doomed to fail
regardless of what your true potential is. If you assume you’ve got
genetics on your side, then you may be proven wrong, but you may
get farther than you originally thought possible.
Going back to the idea of separating effort and results, don’t let
anything keep you from exercising. Regardless of your genetic
makeup, exercise is good for you.
171
Maybe you won’t get really huge – but lifting weights is good for
coordination and bone mineral density anyways.
Maybe you won’t get super lean – but maintaining a healthy weight
drops your risk of almost every chronic disease
Fall in love with the process. Fall in love with simply being active
and exercising in some fashion.
At the end of the day, your health matters more than a six pack, a
marathon time, or a powerlifting total. And that’s something you
can ABSOLUTELY improve by exercising, regardless of what your
genetics say about the other stuff.
172
This is a common problem, and one I get asked about frequently
enough that it was worth explaining what’s happening and how to
fix it in a blog post.
173
When you squat like this, odds are you’re going to wind up missing
the lift when the weight rounds your back over and folds you
forward. Consequently, the common prescription is to strengthen
your back or hip extensors (glutes and hamstrings) to keep you from
getting folded forward. Makes sense, right?
Nope.
Instead, you need to strengthen your quads. When your quads are
weak, your butt will shoot right up out of the hole without your
shoulders moving much - getting knee extension out of the way
without much of a change in center of gravity – taking your quads
out of the equation and shifting the load to the muscles that are
already strong, and putting you in a GM position. Strengthen your
quads, and they can pull their own weight, allowing you to stay a
little more upright so you won’t have such a tendency to round
forward with heavy weight.
174
Training your quads will also increase your max more for the
amount of effort you invest into the training. If you strengthen
what’s already strong, you’ll probably be able to move more weight,
but it’s a matter of diminishing returns. If you bring up the weakest
link, you get a much much better return on investment.
And, just for social proof and all that (as an aside, it’s a little funny
I feel like I need to justify a recommendation to train the
quads. They’re big, strong muscles that need to be well
developed for powerful knee extension – which is one of the basic
tasks involved in squatting. But the strength world has been so
enamored with the “posterior chain” lately, I feel like I’m being
slightly rebellious by suggesting that people should directly train
175
their quads!), consider that Dan Green shares my opinion with his
865 squat, and the study on elite powerlifters I wrote up for Bret
Contreras’s blog basically said that the hallmark of elite squatting
was *minimizing* GM-ing the squat.
So, if you end up looking like Miley Cyrus on Robin Thicke at the
VMAs every time you squat heavy weights, train your freaking
quads. Your back, and your squat numbers, will reap the benefits.
Some people would say that, naturally, you should try to make the
squat more hamstring dominant. The hamstrings are powerful hip
extensors, hip extension is important for the squat, and the more
musculature you’re activating to a high degree, the more weight
you’ll move.
Nope.
I see where that point of view is coming from – advocating the low
bar squat with considerable forward-lean to engage the hamstrings
more in the squat. But I think its proponents fail to remember one
important fact about the hamstrings…
Originating on the ischial tuberosity and inserting near the top of the
tibia, the hamstrings are effective at both knee flexion (i.e.
hamstring curls) and hip extension (i.e. RDLs or good
mornings). Furthermore, when you flex the muscles, it’s not like it
can pick and choose which end it pulls on – without other muscles
activating to stabilize the joints, hamstring activation means both hip
extension and knee flexion torque.
177
Hamstrings: both for extending the hips AND flexing the knees
So, what does that mean for the squat? Referring back to my article
write-up about characteristics of elite squatters:
“The three group A lifters (the best squatters in the study) exhibited
the largest extensor-dominant (i.e. quadriceps producing more
torque at the knee than the hamstrings and gastrocnemius) thigh
torques. This is not to be confused with merely having the strongest
quads. It means that throughout the movement, the group A lifters’
quads were producing more torque relative to their hamstrings and
gastrocnemii, resulting in a higher NET extensor torque.”
178
In layman’s terms, what all that means is that excessive hamstring
activation is actually detrimental to optimum squatting
performance. The harder your hamstrings are pulling you toward
knee flexion, the harder your quads have to contract to produce the
SAME amount of net knee extension torque. That’s the exact
opposite of what you should be shooting for!
Context:
Also, just so we’re clear, I’m not saying hip extension isn’t also
important for the squat. It’s just that it doesn’t need to be coming
from your hamstrings. Prioritizing glute activation is a much better
route, since the gluteus maximus is a one joint muscle – only
producing hip extension without accompanying knee flexion torque
as with the hamstrings. The good news: (based on my
understanding, at least) range of motion is the primary determinant
of glute activation during the squat, so as long as you’re squatting
deep, your bases are covered there!
If you want to get a massive squat you should train your quads, try
to minimize forward lean, and not concern yourself with hamstrings
involvement when squatting. Squat for a huge squat, and pull or do
direct hamstring work to turn you hamstrings into pork
cords. Purposefully trying to increase hamstring involvement in the
180
squat is an exercise in futility if your goal is to move more weight
and get stronger.
Share this article with your misguided friends who preach “posterior
chain” and then wonder why their squat is stalled. When they see
the light, they’ll love you for it.
- The subjects used the same load for both sets – their beltless
8rm. This is an important thing to point out. I’ll touch on its
importance later.
182
2. There were no significant differences between belted and beltless
with regard to kinematic and force plate data. HOWEVER, in both
groups, the amount of forward lean increased across the sets, from a
minimum of about 51 degrees to a maximum of about 46 degrees.
Implications:
1. In spite of the set with a belt being easier (since both sets were
performed with the beltless 8rm), it still resulted in greater quad and
hamstring activation, especially during the sticking point and as the
set progressed, respectively.
Based on the variables assessed in this study, it seems like one could
use it to argue for training with a belt. Wearing a belt allows you to
lift more weight, and even with the same training weights it
increases muscle activation in the quads and hamstrings without
decreasing abdominal activation.
However, before you take this one study and run with it, keep in
mind that it was looking at ONE training session. It could be that
activation patterns change over time, and that adaptations would
occur over 12-16 week of training with a belt/beltless that aren’t
immediately apparent from this study.
186
Sorry for the delay between posts. I’m currently in the middle of a
*huge* project. I can’t give details about it right now, but I’m
halfway through the first of two major phases. It’s probably eating
4ish hours a day right now, so in addition to training, school
(midterm week), time with Lyndsey, and admiring my beard every
time I walk past a reflective surface, I haven’t had time to write as
much as I’d like to. Hopefully that’ll change soon, but I really do
appreciate everyone who reads my blog, so I wanted to give you
guys a heads up as to what’s been going on. Sorry I neglected to do
so on the front end.
Now that that’s out of the way, I have three pretty exciting nutrition
topics to touch on today. I’d guess all three of them affect most of
you on a daily basis.
Hydration
So, this means that we can all just forget about hydration now,
right? Not at all! If you’re worried about long-term performance
and not just short-term performance, you still definitely need to
consume your liquids. When I asked Adel Moussa, the guy who
runs the Suppversity blog, about this recent study, he sent back two
other studies showing how hydration and Angiotensin II (a hormone
your body produces to maintain blood volume and blood pressure
when you’re dehydrated) can affect protein metabolism. The less
hydrated your cells are and the more Angiotensin II you produce
(which inhibits IGF-1, the hormone that mediates most of Growth
Hormone’s effects), the less protein you synthesize and the more
you break down.
188
Do women need to train differently than men?
For starters, let me give you the TL;DR of this article – 90% of a
woman’s training should be just like a man’s. Allow me to elaborate
on the other 10% by going through the major physical differences
between men and women that affect weight training, and the impact
they should have on a woman’s training program.
1. Larger Q Angle
For those of you who don’t know what a Q angle is, here’s an
illustration:
189
The average female has a steeper Q angle than the average male,
which means more valgus force on the knee during activity. In
general, this fact leads to two suggestions. First, women need to
really keep an eye on knee health if they’re doing a lot of running,
especially if they have a broader pelvis, and thus a bigger Q angle
generally (including straight running, soccer, basketball, etc.). The
same amount of running has the potential to do more damage to a
woman’s knee than a man’s. This isn’t to say women should never
run (as the recent trend on the interweb has been), they just need to
be judicious and do more corrective exercises (a great segue
into…). Number two: women should focus on VMO work and
always squatting below parallel. The VMO helps stabilize the knee
when valgus forces are placed upon it, so strong VMOs help prevent
190
ACL injuries for women. Terminal knee extensions (TKEs) and
step-ups will help with this. Squatting below parallel will help
reduce shearing forces on the ACL as hamstring involvement
increases with squat depth.
2. Narrower waist
191
What accounts for this difference? Guys have thicker torsos with
thicker abdominal musculature that can better support the pelvis and
spine. To close this gap, ladies need to focus on “core” work even
more than guys do. I’m not talking about sets of 500 crunches or
buying the latest pseudo-sexual ab gadget. I’m talking breathing
paused squats and front squats, farmers walks, waiters carries, and
other HEAVY core work that will strengthen the transverse
abdominis and thicken the obliques, allowing for better support of
the pelvis and spine under heavy loading.
3. Broader hips
This isn’t true in all cases, but it is in most. In general, women tend
to do better with a wider stance on squat and a sumo deadlift rather
than conventional. This is true both because they have the hip
mobility to get to those positions which allow them to shorten the
bar path substantially, and because a wider stance means a more
upright torso, helping to address the problem of having a narrower
waist.
In general, fast twitch fibers are the ones most prone to hypertrophy
and that most contribute to maximal force output. There are two
implications here for women:
192
1) You should train even heavier than a man (relative to your
max). Since you’re already working with fewer fast twitch fibers,
you need to train in such a way as to ensure you optimize the fast
twitch fibers you DO have.
One more offshoot here to keep in mind is that since women tend to
have a fiber blend that is more fatigue-resistant, they shouldn’t rely
as much on rep max calculators. I’ve seen a girl squat 155×15 with
a 1rm of 185. 155×15 would project a 1rm of 235-255ish. If a man
can squat 185, he’s only going to get 6 or 7 reps with 155.
5. Hormonal factors
193
vitamin S). However, it is worth noting that higher testosterone
levels are the primary reason there’s a bigger gap between the upper
body strength of men and women than lower body strength. The
muscles of the shoulder girdle have more androgen receptors than
any other muscle group. This means that testosterone’s anabolic
effects are most potent on these muscles. As an aside, that’s the
biggest reason a big chest and broad shoulders are seen as a sign of
virility in men – it’s a sign the man has higher testosterone levels
and is therefore probably more fertile than other guys.
One of the most amusing myths in the fitness industry is that you
can’t simultaneously lose weight and get stronger.
The reasoning behind this notion is based on the fact that it’s
difficult to see significant muscle hypertrophy while you lose
weight. I’m not going to contest this point (except for beginners or
seriously detrained/overweight people). However, there’s a lot
more that goes into getting stronger than simply gaining muscle.
194
maybe Naim Suleymanoglu. He weighs 138 and probably clean and
jerked more than you deadlift). Firing rate, intermuscular
coordination, intramuscular coordination, and decrease in inhibitory
signals can all be improved upon.
Neural factors are what allow grandmothers to throw cars off of their
trapped grandchildren. If you can’t lift up a car on whim, then you
haven’t reached your neurological capacity for improvement. If a
grandmother can do it when she needs to, the issue is NOT muscle
mass, so you can’t blame limited hypertrophy on lack of strength
gains.
Practice. Heavy weights (75%+), low reps (fewer than 5. Less than
3 is better). Keep in mind that if you’re losing weight, muscular
recovery will be problematic. Therefore, don’t even go close to
failure. If you’re sore the next day, you did too much. Drop the
volume next time. Also, since your main goal should be to
PRACTICE a skill (to enhance neural efficiency), high frequency is
best: 4+ times per week. If you wanted to get really good at
shooting foul shots, you’d practice every day. So if you want to get
good at benching or squatting, why not find a way to practice them
every day as well? Remember, you’re practicing a skill to improve
your firing rate and muscular coordination. That’s best done with
perfect form and frequent exposure.
195
So what if you don’t get a pump the whole time? Your muscles will
not shrivel away to nothing. As long as you’re taking in adequate
protein, you shouldn’t lose much if any muscle mass at all. Once
your cut is over, you’ll be stronger and with that added strength
you’ll find it easier to build more muscle since you can place a
greater stress on your musculature by handling heavier weight.
Take home: even if you’re losing weight, you don’t have to resign
yourself to losing strength as well. Set up your training properly,
and you should be able to gain strength, if not muscle, throughout
your cut and end up a stronger, lighter you at the end.
p.s. Obviously this doesn’t apply as much for people who are
already lean. But for cutting from >15%bf to around 10-12%,
there’s no reason you can’t keep getting stronger the whole time.
You may have noticed this before, but the hardest part of a diet is
the first month or so. Once you lose those first 5 or 10 pounds, you
fall into a groove and the diet hums right along.
196
The opposite, I’m sure you’ve noticed, is also true. You fall off the
wagon a bit, gain 5 pounds or so, and then it’s almost as if you wake
up the next week and you’ve gained another 20.
197
1. Testosterone and estrogen
The leaner you are, the more testosterone you’re pumping out and
the more free testosterone – the test that’s actually able to have a
biological effect – you have (it drops a little bit in a hypocaloric diet,
but a leaner you on a normal diet has more free test than a chubbier
you). Also, as you get leaner you produce less of the aromatase
enzyme, which means less testosterone gets converted to estrogen.
Essentially, the leaner you are, the better hormonal environment you
have to build more muscle and burn more fat. The fatter you are,
the better your hormonal environment is to store more fat.
And just like that, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
198
He has so much testosterone because he’s so lean, obviously.
*sarcasm*
2. Inflammation
So, in essence, as you get leaner and have less inflammation, your
body stops pumping out as many new fat cells, making it
increasingly easy to lose weight. And just like that, the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer.
“But Greg, why would dieting get easier as you go? Doesn’t your
metabolism shut down from prolonged dieting?”
Just get the ball rolling, and you should experience increasingly
smoother sailing from there.
201
Some thoughts about retaining muscle as you diet
I hit a new low for bodyweight a couple days ago at 234. When I
get to 231, I’ll be at the 20 pounds weight-loss mark (251 was the
highest I got before the meet). Not bad work for about 9 weeks of
dieting while still hitting PRs!
The biggest difference between this cut and ones in the past was that
I had a definite, moderate plan.
Usually my successful cuts are a bit more extreme. The only diets
I’ve really had much luck with in the past are PSMF-esque diets (not
strict PSMF, but no carb and fat probably 60g a day or so) or cyclical
keto diets. They strip the fat right off of me, but my energy levels
are horrible, and I’m borderline homicidal until I get into ketosis
(i.e. for a cyclica keto diet, if my refeed was Saturday, I’d been
foggy and irritable until probably Tuesday. Low carb fog does not
make Mondays any more fun). My workouts are a combination of
decent days and horrible days (occasionally I’ll be strong, but I can
never handle much volume), and I’ll lose some muscle. I don’t
worry about the muscle loss much because of good ol’ myonuclear
domain theory (more on that later).
202
More moderate cuts I’ve attempted haven’t worked because I didn’t
have a definite plan. With cyclical keto or PSMF, you know exactly
what you can or can’t eat every day. When I tried more gradual
approaches, I never had a solid plan. It was basically just the idea
that I’d eat a little less to get the weight loss started, and eat less
from there as needed. I’d always fall off the horse somewhere and
fail because I could never get myself to actually make a plan (with
measuring my food and whatnot) and stick to it.
When you gain muscle mass, you are gaining myonuclei for your
muscle fibers to support the extra sarcoplasm in each fiber. When
you restrict calories and lose muscle, the amount of myonuclei
basically remains constant (unless you’re essentially under famine
conditions). You can catabolize fibers themselves if you literally
starve yourself, but otherwise you don’t really lose myonuclei.
This makes sense, really. You DID work hard for that extra muscle
mass. Your body doesn’t want to throw it away and have to work
204
just as hard to get it back (i.e. what would have happened every
winter until about 50 years ago).
Have you ever trained for a few years, taken time off, then got back
in the gym and got most of your old gains (muscle and strength)
back in a matter of months? No, it’s not because you worked THAT
hard and you’re THAT smart. It’s because you still have the vast
majority of the myonuclei you gained from when you were training
previously.
Also, you know that guy who used to be on a ton of juice, then he
came off, but he’s still huge? Yep, he still has most of the myonuclei
that fused onto his muscle fibers when he was on the sauce.
205
Parting words:
Thanks for taking the time to read this book. It is, in essence, a
chronicle of the mental attributes and understandings about training
that were necessary to take me from a ground zero to record-holding
powerlifter.
Just to remind you about the deal: this book was free to read. If you
benefitted from it all I ask is that you share it with your friends who
are lifters.
Lift things, learn things, eat, sleep, repeat the process. That is the
way forward.
206