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Kupdf Com Anthony Mychal The Skinny Fat Solution Soldier 30 1 Training Guide 2014 PDF
Kupdf Com Anthony Mychal The Skinny Fat Solution Soldier 30 1 Training Guide 2014 PDF
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X physique Training guide
& Philosophy
A piece of The Skinny-Fat Solution
And let’s get serious: this book is not a substitute for medical or professional health and/or
fitness advice. Please consult a qualified health professional prior to engaging in any exercise.
The content here is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Talk to the old
health care professionals that can better direct the application of the materials to your specific
circumstances. Never disregard their expertise regardless of what you read in this text or
through my website. The author, any contributors, publisher and copyright holder(s) are not
responsible for intestinal spillage, vomiting, asthma, banana crusades, adventures in
sadomasochism, or any other adverse effects associated with any use of this work. In other
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T day, people try to change their body. 99% of them think it will come easy,
and only muster the motivation to dip one toe in the water. These people
will be quick to judge that nothing works for them, or that they’ve tried
everything to no avail. But let’s be honest: these people don’t really want to go
through the work. They want to wish to Shenron and have their problem fixed
overnight without effort.
But then there’s the 1%. This 1% is all in. They have what it takes to change.
They’re ready for change. They’re on their way into the water from the highest
diving board. This sounds well and good, but the truth is that not all of
these 1% make it. Not because of anything they do wrong, either—that’s the
sad part. They fail, instead, because of the philosophy they follow.
A lot of skinny-fat guys are in the 99%. They want to change, but they aren’t
ready for the work.
And I felt bad because I, too, was skinny-fat. It plagued me. I can save my own
psychosocial issues for a therapist, but it’s safe to say when a thirteen year old
kid is told (by a girl nonetheless) that he has “girl boobs,” it has the potential to
change a man.
Most people at the top of this body composition world are either (a) genetic
freaks, or (b) people that were in the 1% but just plain old skinny. And what I
came to learn over time is that the whole fat baggage that a skinny-fat guy has
changes things.
A true skinny guy needs to do the right kind of training and then often times they
also need to eat the house in order to solve their issue and pack on some muscle
to their frame. This is totally fine and 100% correct . . . for them.
As a skinny-fat guy, your fat cells change the game. You aren’t “true” skinny, nor
should you act like someone that is. Where most true skinny guys add most of
their weight as muscle mass, you have fat cell baggage. Fat cells generally want
to consume. So when you eat a bunch of food in the name of muscle building,
your fat cells are often the first in line to chomp the nutrients and energy down
for storage.
But you can change. In most instances, skinny-fat syndrome isn’t 100% genetic.
Now, as a skinny-fat guy, you might not have the best genetics (not on par with
those at the top of the pyramid, at least), but that doesn’t make change
impossible.
Skinny-fat syndrome is what you’d call epigenetic—it’s how your genetics have
interacted with your environment. Because your genetics likely aren’t the best for
building muscle (as evidence by the skinny frame), most people in the 1% have
to nail down the perfect environment to fix skinny-fat syndrome. Your genetics
aren’t helping, but the ability to change it all is in your hands.
Most people get into this physical space and follow mainstream advice. They get
obsessed over calories and it becomes a game of burning calories to the gizzards.
If you have body fat and are under muscled, your body has made the decision
that any excess energy or nutrients should be stored in your fat cells. In other
words, your body thinks the fat is an important thing to have around—certainly
more important than your muscles at this point. For whatever epigenetic reasons,
this is the way the body is thinking. This is the way the body is flinching.
You can play the calorie game here and probably manage to lose weight. But the
problem with that is that once you return to “normal” eating and life, then you’re
still going to be flinching the same way: saying fat cells are important, muscle
isn’t. We don’t want that, because it doesn’t make for any sort of muscle building
and it makes for easy fat gain.
Problem is that you probably have a long time of this behavior at your back. It’s
long since been learned by the body that this is how it should function. Just like
you flinch to protect your head, your body is flinching nutrients and calories a
certain way in your body in a way it sees best fit for survival. It’s your job to not
necessarily give it less to flinch with, but to rewire the flinch. To change how your
insides are functioning in a way specific to skinny-fat syndrome.
Although what you’re about to read is a program, it’s a part of a system. This
system is based around skinny-fat physiology.
The system as a whole is called SOLDIER, and it’s a triforce. There are three
sequential parts designed to reset your body and put you in a mode where your
body is more apt to deliver nutrients to your muscles, and less apt to dump them
off in ever growing fat cells. If you were a computer, SHEILD is like a system
reboot, only during the rebooting process, you’re also upgrading your equipment
to run more efficiently when you finally come back online.
Along the way, you’ll build muscle and work towards that athletic “X” physique
you’ve always dreamed of and also play to other skinny-fat stubborn spots, like
the upper chest. And let’s not forget, you’ll also lose the love handles and moobs
that are probably looming overhead.
What makes all of this special is that it’s designed specifically for the skinny-fat
sufferer. Each stage builds upon the previous one, and even within each stage—in
detailed ways that you’ll see when reading each phase—there are unique
What’s in front of you now is SHEILD 3.0. Both SHEILD 2.0 and 1.0 are more
advanced and respect the skinny-fat sequence I use to get in a spot in which it’s
easy to build muscle without getting fat. So all of this was created to be
sequential, with each level building off of the previous, and it exists in opposition
to most one and done programs out there. With that said, here’s a quick overview
of SHEILD, and then “the next step.”
The covert goal is to begin turning the wheels of a deep physiological shift. Your
body is unconsciously doing things a certain way right now. Just like a flinch is
hardwired into your body—happening unconsciously—so too is the way you
handle nutrients and how your body decides to build itself. SOLDIER 3.0 is the
beginning of recreating the “flinching” that has made you skinny-fat.
The strength and experience you gain here will be invaluable in the later stages.
The ultimate goal is something I call “the solid base,” which represents—in my
opinion—the ideal level at which you can pull back the fat loss reigns and really
begin to build muscle. Don’t be fooled by that last sentence.
You’ll often gain muscle while you lose fat if you tackle this stage correctly, even
though it errs on the side of fat loss. No guarantees, but it’s not uncommon to
gain muscle while simultaneously losing fat when the body is completely new to
this world. This is because we focus on physiology, not calories or numbers.
Don’t worry about turning into a skinned rabbit. With the way training is oriented,
you won’t wither away into nothingness. You’re going to tell your body that it
needs muscle, just like you’re going to tell it that it needs to get rid of its body
fat.
The reason fat loss takes the priority cake, and why the solid base is the overt
goal, is because the solid base represents ideal physiological functioning for
putting on muscle without getting fat. Often times, when skinny-fat guys try to
When you begin a strength foundation on your way to the solid base, and then
get to the solid base, you’re sitting pretty. You will have gained some muscle and
some strength, both of which will help you gain even more muscle and strength
when you shift focus.
Stubborn fat thrives on weakness. Often times, strength training will make magic
happen. But sometimes, even those that go through the first phase hit a point in
which their body stops responding to the initial training and nutrition plan just a
few % points of body fat before the solid base.
Stubborn body fat is biologically different than regular fat. You have to treat it as
a different beast, and that’s what this stage is all about. But you also have to be
careful once you beat stubborn body fat. If you go muscle building crazy at this
point, you’re simply just going to get fat again.
So after the stubborn fat phase, you should spend some time evening out things.
Find a calorie intake that keeps you stable—neither losing or gaining. Settle into a
more basic training program with nothing but strength training. The fat is gone,
so any “extra” training is just going to create noise.
For this, I have my own program and philosophy that I’ve found to make this
happen. After this, SOLDIER is finished. Your body is fundamentally different, and
you’re in the market for true clean bulking. The strategy I use to make this
happen is what I call The Chaos Bulk.
Most of what I know and what you’ll read comes from my experience. So this is
what worked for me, and my theories as to why certain things tend to work
certain ways for guys with the same body type.
It may seem bleak out there—like no one understands you. But don’t worry. I do.
I’ve also assembled a fellowship of others that have been doing good work, too.
We all exist inside of the Phenophalanx, and you can get in there if you purchased
the Hyper Pack. There’s more tips, regularly scheduled Google+ hangouts, places
to ask questions, different learning courses (both new and ones that supplement
what you’re reading) and even a small forum to share your own training and
troubles.
The bottom line is that skinny-fat philosophy simply doesn’t exist out there. Most
everything is written by people that don’t understand what you’re going through.
This is important because you’re dealing with fat cell baggage. Baggage that
doesn’t really go away. Baggage that, if not controlled, will get out of control.
Perhaps this is best served with a little passage from Steven Pressfield’s Gates of
Fire, where Spartan’s really did rewire the flinch.
A secondary nexus, for which the Lakedaemonians have twelve more exercises, is the
face, specifically the muscles of the jaw, the neck and the four ocular constrictors
around the eye sockets. These nexuses are termed by the Spartans phobosynakteres,
fear accumulators.
Fear spawns in the body, phobologic science teaches, and must be combated there. For
once flesh is seized, a phobokyklos, or loop of fear, may commence, feeding upon itself,
mounting into a “runaway” of terror. Put the body in a state of aphobia, fearlessness,
the Spartans believe, and the mind will follow.
Under the oaks, in the still half-light before dawn, Dienekes practiced alone with
Alexandros. He would tap the boy with an olive bought, very lightly, on the side of the
face. Involuntarily the muscles of the trapezius would contract. “Feel the fear? There.
Man and boy worked for hours on the “owl muscles,” the ophtalmomyes surrounding
the eyes. These, Dienekes instructed Alexandros, were in many ways the most
powerful of all, for God in His wisdom make mortals’ keenest defensive reflex that
which protects vision. “Watch my face when the muscles constrict,” Dienekes
demonstrated. “What expression is this?”
“Phobos. Fear.”
“Aphobia. Fearlessness.”
Remember, it’s in your hands now. It’s going to be tough, but imagine what it’s
going to feel like when it’s all said and done. Let that sink in for a second.
Did you know that, in car crashes, the most damaged part of the body is usually
the hands? That’s because the hands reach up and protect the face from the
impact. Think about how fast an airbag deploys. Now think about how fast your
hands have to flinch to beat the airbag. That flinch is hardwired. You don’t think
about it.
That’s where most people stop. Training and nutrition as the one-two punch. But
that’s not true either. There’s also soul.
Understanding this is the master key that unlocks every door from now until the
end of time.
hat is muscle? You can get all biochemical here if you want to, but that’s
W not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the stuff itself. What does
it do? Why is it there?
For the most part, skeletal muscle moves the skeleton.* Go figure. It hangs
around, waiting for the brain to send electrical love-notes throughout the nervous
system, release neurotransmitters, and do a bunch of other things (that were
once crammed into my cranium for a final exam only to fade into oblivion the
moment I walked out of the classroom) to tell it what to do.
*There are other types of muscle, like cardiac muscle and smooth muscle, that go like
gangbusters without conscious command. That’s a good thing, otherwise your heart
wouldn’t be beating right now.
*A semi-common genetic mutation affects the protein myostatin, which then codes for
an uncapped muscle growth of sorts. A Google Image search of “myostatin” helps.
†When a muscle gets bigger, the existing fibers get bigger. This is called hypertrophy.
Hyperplasia, which also deals with muscle growth (and which also sounds a lot like
hypertrophy), involves the formation of brand new muscle fibers. Muscle growth in
humans is of the hypertrophy sort.
Things like 21’s seem to build muscle because they flush lots of fluid to the
working area. This makes your muscles look fuller and bigger.
Once again, we return to the concept of need. Higher repetition training is less
about creating more muscle tension, and more about being able to shuttle fluid to
the working muscles. We can get into the metabolic reason as to why, but that’s
not necessary. Most of the time, with pump style training, you’re mentally hung
up about the burn before being physically unable to complete a repetition.
Since the body adapts based on need, the cells become better at holding and
dealing with the fluid rush. This is known as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. In other
words, when you challenge your body’s ability to hold and flush fluid into the
muscle, it gets better at doing just that. The body doesn’t interpret it as a force
or tension threat, but rather an endurance (for lack of a better word) threat. Part
of endurance is being more metabolically active, and being metabolically active is
about flushing fluid and blood to the area.
With muscle growth, we need to challenge the muscle fibers to contract more.
That’s the only reason they’re going to grow. This is done by training in a way
that’s going to stress the fast-twitch fibers (more on this soon). Myofibrillar
hypertrophy is the actual increase in size of the muscle fibers, and it trumps
sarcoplasmic hypertrophy for long-term muscle building effect.
Another way the body can produce more tension to move the skeleton is neural
adaptation.* Remember, muscle awaits directions from the nervous system. If the
nervous system fires more efficiently or synchronizes existing muscle fibers a bit
better, that turns into more tension output on the other end.
And if you haven’t learned enough from emergence yet, there’s also more at play
here. Whether or not adaptations err to the muscular or neural (or even
metabolic) side primarily depends on two factors:
Type IIB – these are fast-twitch fibers that are used for
explosive and fast contractions and are better than
Type IIB at this job, so consider them faster
The ones that grow most in the name of muscle are the fast-twitch fibers, and the
overriding theme of this resource is that the body preferentially takes care of
what it needs most.
Doing 100 push-ups might seem cool and all, but you aren’t going to be packing
on the meat during that quest. Endurance training stimulates slow-twitch fibers
You have two ends of a spectrum. On the endurance end, the body adapts to
make the muscle it already has more resistant to fatigue. On the explosive and
really heavy end, the body adapts to make the muscle it already has contract
more efficiently. (It’s as if the contraction needed is so powerful that the body
recognizes that it’s now or never—use what you got or else.)
Somewhere in the middle is where the neural is big enough to produce lots of
tension in the muscle, the metabolic is big enough to help with blood flow and
nutrient delivery, and both are too small to steal the adaptational thunder—this
somewhere is where muscle building magic resides.
I’d be lying if I said there was one number that ruled them all. Some people get
big using three repetitions, others get big using twelve repetitions. Part of this
has to deal with your specific muscle fiber makeup, as everyone is different.
Someone chock full of fast-twitch fibers is likely to respond much better to fast-
twitch training.
The best compromise, in my opinion, is the 5-10 range. Perhaps the most famous
rep number seen in well-regarded programs (and the number we're using) is five
repetitions. In The Strongest Shall Survive, Bill Starr mentions studies showing
that 4-6 sets of 4-6 reps seemed to be ideal for strength. Five, being the middle
man, then became the go-to. Doug Hepburn—known as “the world's strongest
man” in his day—enjoyed using five repetitions way back in the first half of the
twentieth century.
Keep in mind that higher repetition work is useful at times. Flushing fluid through
muscles increases nutrient delivery and waste removal. And improving the
nervous system can then improve muscle building by being able to contract the
The meat-and- muscle more, or handling more weight.
taters muscle-
building zone for I know you want absolute rules here, but there just aren’t many. You can use sets
of ten reps or even twelve or even fifteen and find a way to build muscle, as long
most is as you strive to increase overall tension over time. As mentioned before, however,
somewhere I’d rather not have you deal with the combination muscle-metabolic fatigue right
around 5-10 now. That’s why we stick to a lower range. To safeguard from the extremes, our
training lands somewhere in the 5-10 repetition range. I generally go with 5-8,
repetitions.
partly to get away from the dreaded 3x10 that seems to so common in fitness
lore.
And this 5-10 zone is about tough repetitions. If you can do 100 push-ups,
stopping at 8 doesn’t mean you’ve done a good job and you’ve fallen in the secret
muscle-building zone.
For some wild animals, muscle is plumage. It’s a signal to the opposite sex that
you’re well fed enough to have a bunch of extra energy around to upkeep
metabolically costly muscle.
“Hey look at me, I’m a healthy specimen with big muscles. Don’t you want my
genes?”
When you aren’t well fed, your body isn’t really fond of keeping muscle around.
Muscle is metabolically expensive. This is known by now. But because of this,
what happens when you put yourself in situations that demand stronger muscle
contractions, yet deny it of the energy it needs to create and upkeep
metabolically expensive muscle tissue?
When you give yourself enough energy and nutrients during the change process,
the body is much more likely to add muscle. This is why bodybuilders often go on
"bulks" where they eat tons of food. (Keep in mind, most of their performance
enhancing substances mitigate total fat-gain during this process. For most of us,
we need to be a bit more cautious with supplying nutrients and energy for muscle
gain. This philosophy is built into the skinny-fat system.)
You might be worried after reading this, as our sights are set primarily on fat loss
and building a solid base. Although you won’t exactly be optimizing muscle gain,
beginners will almost always build some muscle. The muscular-neural tail-off is
more pronounced as you gain experience. There are two benefits of going the
route within this skinny-fat system:
chapter 2 summary
Muscle is active body armor and must be challenged in the right way in order to
grow. You have three different types of muscle fibers, but the fast-twitch fibers
are the ones that grow the most. For the most part, you want to stick within the
5-10 repetition range if you’re in it for muscle.
B at this point, but you’ll soon learn why. And with this, you’ll learn why the
gamut of contraptions and machines guaranteed to "blast" and "confuse"
muscles to get you "ripped" will do nothing but take you further away from what’s
truly effective—even if you’re training in the right muscle building repetition
range.
The first question you should be asking yourself is, “Why do all of these
contraptions fizzle out over time if they’re so great?” The second question, which
“If you don’t do You don’t use it? You do lose it.
‘x,’ then
The body doesn’t adapt on a whim, it adapts on need. Don’t need it? You won’t
something bad have it. Want it? Then need it. Need is a tough word to use, but tough is good.
will happen, The fastest way to get the body to mobilize is to threaten its survival. This is why
perhaps even a fly buzzing around your face gets a hand wave, and why a bear chasing you in
the woods leaves a brownish-yellow stain in your pants, increases your heart rate
death.” and makes your muscles ready for action.
Now, with the idea of death and danger getting thrown around, don’t soil yourself
in terror. I don’t mean danger in the injurious sense, nor do I mean actually
coming close to dying. These are just thrown out to convey that whatever you do
needs to say “This is an intense stress.” This will be clearer as this chapter moves
along.
Focusing solely on the muscle side of things isn’t enough. Even though it seems
at first glance that muscle stress would be the only factor in getting a muscle to
grow, there’s more that goes into signaling to the body that muscle needs
building than simple contractions.
If a lack of gravity causes bone-density loss and muscle wasting, what do you
think reverses those trends?
Wolff’s law and the astronauts showcase the power of gravity. Gravity is a
downward force imposed on the entire body every second of your life. You, no
doubt, take this for granted (imagine the fecal waste no-gravity alternative).
Every time you stand up from the toilet, you’re working against an external
resistance you can’t see. It’s essentially an invisible barbell.
Without gravity (external resistance), the entire skeletal system weakens. The
only reason you have semi-strong bones and muscles is because of gravity!
Zero-gravity hints at how the body interprets a lack of external loading, which
then hints at how the body interprets an excess of external loading. Imagine
Earth's gravity was fifty times as strong. Would you be able to squat up from the
toilet with the same muscle and bone strength you have now?
That’s not to say machines can’t be used as a sort of icing on the cake. But, by
their lonesome, they usually don’t get the job done. What trumps them:
• Free weight exercises with the barbell, dumbbells, and other like equipment
• Body weight exercises
The beauty of bodyweight exercises, and why they’re a great addition to free
weight exercises, is because they require relative body strength.
Doing a chin-up is all about moving your entire body mass with just your arms.
Gravity is literally trying to pull your arms from their socket. You can’t be good at
chin-ups if you have a lot of “dead” weight on your body (fat). Think about it.
Getting good at bodyweight exercises is a sign that more of what you have is
useful mass. They are also a powerful signaler in the fat loss department,
surprisingly enough.
Fancy new fandangled machines are invented often. But lifting heavy objects and
controlling your body weight through space outlive practically every training
modality in existence.
The machines that have had the longest shelf life are the typical circuit of
machines that infiltrate most mainstream fitness facilities. These things boomed
because they required little in the way of teaching. You could tell people to go in,
sit down, and read the directions. Lots of people in and out, more dollars in the
pocket, less dollars to qualified coaches. While these machines are more viable
than the "As Seen on TV" stuff, they have drawbacks.
In other words, you’re working against resistance, but often times that resistance
only affects the muscle. The bone doesn’t encounter the same loading as it does
during gravitational situations.
Second, they don’t deliver the "free movement" aspect of training. When you’re
on a machine, you don’t balance or stabilize anything. The machine does that for
you by guiding the movement. Imagine if you walked around in a machine that
balanced for you. What do you think that would do to your muscles? Balancing
and teetering are what activates so many muscles in your body. If you don’t
believe me, stand on one foot with your eyes closed and see how your entire
body fires to maintain equilibrium.
Third, compare "danger." Compare a bench press and a machine chest press.
Which is more "threatening?" Which one requires more mental effort? Which one
is going to freak the body out to the point of justifying the investment of change?
Which one is going to say, "Pssst, you know this can kill you, right?" Which is
going to create strong bones, which will then encourage stronger muscles? Which
is going to stress the entire system in a way that would mimic supragravitational
conditions?
The comprehensive systemic effect of working against gravity isn’t realized with
machine training. You may be able to stress the muscles, but the muscles are
only one factor in the grand scheme of muscle growth.
There’s more here. Much more. The nervous system, endocrine system, immune
system, and just about every other system has some part to play in the process
of muscle growth. World famous sport coach Buddy Morris even said that training
is more stressful than breaking a bone!
And I know we’ve been talking a lot about bones here and loading bones, and the
reason is because the body is smart enough to not grow a muscle stronger than
the bone that it’s attached to. How cool would it be to rip your muscles off your
bones in a feat of superhuman strength?
Holway measured the forearms of a group of tennis players ranked in the top twenty
in the world and found that their racket arms grew slightly differently from their
nonracket arms. The racket-side forearm bones of the players grew around a quarter-
inch longer than the forearm bone of the nonracket arm. And the elbow joint widened
a centimeter. Like muscle, bone responds to the exercise. Even nonathletes tend to
have more bone in the arm they write with simply because they use it more, so the
bone becomes stronger and capable of supporting more muscle . . .
. . . Holway has found that each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of bone supports a maximum
of five kilograms (11 pounds) of muscle. Five-to-one, then, is a general limit of the
human muscle bookcase.
Bone strengthening relates to muscle building more than you probably think. All
of our muscles funnel into tendons, which then attach to bones. Rarely will a
muscle grow to a level of strength in which it can rip itself from the bone. Bone
strength is important for muscle growth, and, ideally, both muscle stress and
bone stress come in combination. So, in general, holistically loaded bone
stressing movements that also stress the muscle are going to be voodoo for
muscle growth.
The smith machine reduces the need to balance and stabilize. It also puts you in
a fixed plane of movement. It’s actually quite silly when you think about it. If
because they Learning how to dump a barbell isn’t very difficult, and that’s really the only
have to be reason a smith machine exists: to "catch" the bar if you ever get stuck on a
stabilized and repetition. Being safe with a barbell is easy, and it’s all about learning how to
arrange yourself in the right kind of rack with safety pins set at the correct height
controlled to "catch" the bar in case something goes wrong. (And, of course, learning how to
through space. not be an idiot and max out, especially when no one is around to help you.)
Let your body move through the world the way its individual and unique
proportions want to move. Don’t let a machine do that for you.
Olympic barbells are what you’re looking for. They can hold heavier plates, most
of which have two inch holes in the middle to fit on the ends of the barbell. Often
times, people looking for free weights find standard barbells and standard plates.
Standard barbells are thinner and shorter, and often have a one inch diameter
(and thus, the plates have a one inch hole). There’s nothing wrong with a
standard barbell, as downward force is downward force, but if you’re serious
about this, you’re better off springing for an Olympic bar. Standard bars won’t
hold enough weight in the long run, and mess with programs centered around an
Olympic barbell because the plates are different heights.
Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t exactly seen as "normal," and neither were other
bodybuilders of his day. Back then, if you toyed around with a barbell, you were
probably involved in a barbell sport (Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding,
powerlifting).
Non-barbell sport athletes didn’t even start using the barbell until the 70’s, fueled
by the Soviet and Eastern Bloc sporting dominance. Athletes in America thought
that strength training made them muscle-bound and slow (which isn’t the least
bit true). And then the Eastern Bloc started dominating sporting competitions,
with systematic preparation (of which strength training was a part).
The barbell has outlived practically any other piece of physical training
equipment. Call it a coincidence, but you wouldn’t convince me.
uilding muscle is kind of like building a callous. Tickling the skin with
B feathers doesn’t build a callous, just like gentle exercises don’t build
muscles. You have to need thick skin, just like you have to need muscle.
Once you understand that, it seems like building muscle is all about hopping on
the nearest program with any old worthy (barbell, bodyweight, free weight)
exercises.
There’s a reason "body of a Greek God" is such a powerful image, and this
resource explores that. Some seedling inside of you has a specific aesthetic idea
of perfection. We will call this the Ideal. Ignoring the Ideal is going to put you in a
As an artist, you don’t just hunk clay down and hope for the best. You hunk it
down in the right places. If you’re doing just any old training program, you’re in
line for just any old results.
This "X" aesthetic was brought about by old-time bodybuilders such as Steve
Reeves, Vince Gironda, and Frank Zane. They are still considered to have some of
the best physiques of all time, even though bodybuilders of today dwarf them in
absolute muscle mass.
Getting it is all about emphasizing the right muscles and movements. When
Arnold Schwarzenegger got beat by Frank Zane, Arnold said, "I just got beat by a
chicken with 17-inch arms." Despite Arnold being "bigger," Zane won because
Zane was in better "condition." And Zane had proportion people would have died
for.
The biggest killer is that, despite using performance enhancing substances, Zane
topped out at about 185 pounds during competition. Here we have Frank Zane,
who some consider to have the greatest and most well proportioned physique of
That’s because physique is proportion. You can have little muscle and look
better than someone with more, as long as your muscle is ideally placed.
Note: I should mention that it wasn’t until I after I had long admired Dragon Ball
characters that I really stumbled on this idea of proportion. Who would have
thought that a cartoon would ingrain such an idea, and who would have thought
that such an idea would have stuck with me for so long?
Here’s the thing: losing fat doesn’t really change the wire frame. The only thing
that fundamentally changes the frame is building muscle in the right places in
order to create an illusion of having a different body frame. Training has to be
skewed to the side of preferentially developing the muscles that most contribute
to the "X" physique. Generic muscle
building programs build generic muscle.
Your hip-bone width is set. It’s genetic. So if you have a naturally wide waist (as
us skinny-fat sufferers tend to) you have to create an illusion of having a narrow
waist by building the lats, shoulders, upper chest, and upper back—basically the
entire area above the lowest point of the shoulder.
By sheer dimensions, House Goku looks like a "V." Its roof is much wider than its
base. House Pat looks like an "A." Its roof is much narrower than its base.
In other words, if, after the houses are built, you want to change the shape of
House Pat to look more like a "V," tearing the bricks off won’t do much. The "A"
frame remains. The only way to make it look more like a "V" is to add bricks to
the exterior of the house—to build the right parts on the outside of the house to
give it the illusion of having a different shape than its internal wood frame. This
would essential amount to growing wings on at the bottom of your "A" to turn it
into a "W."
The second is the "halo." That’s everything above the deltoid tuberosity on arm
(yellow sphere), but primarily the shoulder itself (both rear and front) and the
upper chest.
Most guys train in complete opposition to the "X" physique. When you think about
most people that go to the gym in the name of muscle building, you get an
abundance of flat benching and curling—typical meathead stuff. Too bad flat
bench pressing overemphasizes the lower chest (most skinny-fat are upper chest
poor), and this kind of meathead training neglects the muscles that make a
physique pop. Pop is phasic.
Muscles That Get Tighter (Tonic) Muscles That Get Weaker (Phasic)
Biceps Triceps
Hamstrings Deltoids
Calf Muscles
Table taken from The More You Lift, The Worst You Look? on T-Nation
On the whole, phasic muscles get weaker with age, and tonic muscles get tighter
with age. The weaker-tighter relationship is best illustrated by posture—
specifically the degradation of posture. If you picture a hunched older man, you’re
seeing a weak upper back and a tight chest. You’re seeing weak glutes and tight
hips.
As Dan John points out in one of his articles, The More You Lift, The Worst You
Look?, the vast majority of people are obsessed over their tonic muscles, and
often forget about their phasic muscles.
The shrug is a popular exercise, and you’ve probably seen before. It hits that
giant muscle in between your shoulders and neck: the trapezius. Since shrugs
can be loaded up with a lot of weight (because of the small range of motion), and
since they’re relatively easy, it’s a rather common exercise among gym rats.
But here’s the thing: when you’re going for the "X" look, you don’t want to jack
up the upper trapezius by its lonesome. Any big size additions to the trapezius
must come in proportion to the upper back, rear deltoids, and deltoids in general.
Shrugs neglect this proportional development and often give a blocky build as
opposed to an winged out "X" build. In other words, don’t do shrugs.
Now, that’s not to say you never want the trapezius to grow—because you do—it
just needs to happen in tandem with everything else. We want to grow side-to-
side in the upper back; we need wings. Shrugs grow you up-and-down. (Check
out the chart a few pages back. Upper traps = tonic. Rhomboids, mid-back =
phasic. See a theme?)
*This is just a general beginner rule. The body is an adaptable machine, and tolerance
can be built up for many things, including frequent training in phasic muscles.
With these things in mind, and with a few more skinny-fat specific tricks, you’re
looking at the foundation of a solid program. Not that you need to neglect certain
muscles, but you should play to what you need, not what others tell you that you
should need.
When you see the typical hunched, poorly muscled, posture-impaired form (a lot
of skinny-fat sufferers deal with this), you’re seeing a tonic overtone. The phasic
muscles aren’t big, strong, or dominant enough to hold the chest high with proud
posture.
We’re going to put huge emphasis on the phasic muscles—to the point of making
a few tweaks to skew our training—in order to give these muscles the attention
they deserve. We’re also going to expand the tonic muscles by focusing most
stretching attention on them.
If you have little muscle and overly obsess about adding a teeny tiny bit of
muscle to the upper chest, you will fail. This is why a lot of people don’t even
bother with the whole shaping business. There are lots of guys out there with
very little muscle mass that prematurely obsess over aesthetic imbalances. It’s
just downright silly to obsess over specific ratios of growth between body parts
when you don’t have much muscle to begin with. There are certain philosophies
out there that are calculated down to Polykleitos’s canon and ratios based off of
Fibonacci numbers.*
*Polykleitos was the sculptor that made the Doryphoros. He usually used a canon (rule)
throughout his works to show perfect harmony and balanced proportions.
This will get you nowhere. It’s unfortunate we aren’t as easily shapeable as one of
Polykleitos’s sculptures, but the reality is that we can’t change our bone length or
wire frame. Some things just are what they are.
Building a physique isn’t solely amassing weight. Don’t listen to people that say,
“You must be 200 pounds if you’re a male. Blah, blah, blah...” Physique is about
creating an illusion. You can do things that make you look bigger than you really
are. This illusion is created by phasic proportion.
t this point, most people just want the program. “Gimme the sets, reps,
A and exercises. I’ll be fine.” But remember that you’re artificially imposing a
stress on your body that forces it to recreate itself. This isn’t a gentle
process that can be easily captured by numbers on a slip of paper.
Lots of people dive in, thinking they have a grasp on things, only to get injured
and then quit. They think they have a grasp on things, but don't employ exercises
The sad part of mainstream fitness is that it doesn’t address the things that make
people sink. If you want to change your body, you have to understand your body.
And your body is more than a mathematical calorie calculation or a fancy chart
with sets and reps.
This is a process, not a switch. You don’t get to the top of a pyramid without a
base. Four movements are the foundation, and teach you how to move in a way
that transfers over to just about every exercise, develops mobility, and prepares
the tissues for the work down the road.
The best part? You can do them in your home with nothing more than a milk
jug—you can develop the abilities you need within your own doors before showing
yourself to the public world and feeling embarrassed. When you bust through the
gym doors, you’ll know what you’re doing.
With movement, it’s absolutely true. Not many in the Western world can squat all
the way down. Those that can won’t be very comfortable. Yet among hunter-
gatherer tribes, the squat is a basic resting position. When done correctly, the full
range of motion squat is a beautiful expression of skeletal and muscular harmony
that involves contractions, relaxations, and coordination throughout the entire
body.
We’re entering a world that’s forcing us to wake up things that have been
sleeping. It’s unpleasant to wake up to an ice bath, and yet most people climb
into the ice bath voluntarily. If you’re 18 years old, your body has probably been
asleep for ten years. And if you’re 30, 40, or even 70, your body has probably
been sleeping for a lot longer than that.
1. Squatting
2. Hip Hinging
3. Pressing
4. Pulling
5. Carrying*
Personally, I consider carrying to be a part of the broader category “locomotion.” For our
purposes, though, we won’t be focusing much on this designation, so don’t worry about
it. For each of the top four categories, there is one basic exercise that serves as the
bottom row on the pyramid—every other exercise within the category is built atop it.
In order to focus on certain muscles and stress certain muscles to build the look
that combats skinny-fat syndrome, you have to be able to achieve and get into
certain positions and contract muscles in those positions. After beginners hear
about how powerful the basic barbell squat is, it’s not uncommon for them to run
to the gym the next day, load up the bar, and give their hand at the movement.
This ends in complaints, no doubt. Things end up hurting. “My knees hurt on
squats.” Excuses are made. “I’m just not built for it.” Maybe that’s the case. But
it’s probably not. An exercise is going to make your shoulder feel funky if you
don’t understand how to put your shoulder in the right position. An exercise is
You didn’t learn the body mechanics and the underlying principles that almost
every exercise is founded upon. You’re trying to squat with a loaded barbell when
you’ve never squatted down more than ten times in your life without a loaded
barbell! And I know this because, well, I might have been that guy that I’ve been
referring to throughout this text. You know, that guy and that person or those
people that always make x, y, and z mistake? I’ve been there, done that. And I
don’t want you to make the same mistakes.
Just about everyone can do the exercises outlined in this resource. I’m 6’ 4” and
get by just fine. You can too, even if you’re taller. You just have to reinvigorate
your body and nudge it back to life. Don’t be the douche that dives into ice water
before he learns to swim.
When done correctly, it alleviates strain on the body from long days of standing.
The reason most people hate the squat is because they don’t have the mobility to
be comfortable in the bottom position. And since no one does the fundamental
Squatting can hurt your knees, yes. And saws can chop off fingers. A lot of things
can happen if you do things wrong. Take the time to understand the machine at
work, practice within a comfort level, and slowly build ability over time.
Gentle awakening
Learning the fundamental human movements is a gentle waking up. They
showcase the natural expression and movement of your skeleton through space
and teach you how to activate certain muscles in the process. A while ago, we
talked about training the lats and building wings.
Can you even contract your lats? Do you know what position you need to be in to
contract your lats? And if not, how do you expect to get into this position during
an exercise? How do you expect to contract your lats during an exercise?
So the fundamental movements not only help you with these things, but also
training the smaller postural muscles that are often neglected when people dive
into heavy training.
More weight is better . . . until you can’t "feel" the muscles execute the
movement.
“If you really want to experience the greatest benefits from your training, you must
enter a stage of deep concentration. Do not let your concentration be broken by
anyone or anything.”
- Steve Reeves
In the quest, it’s easy to forget feel. Often, training is a tao of slapping more
weight on the bar, hiking it in the air, and rubbing the joints down after. But we
can avoid that.
The muscles that encounter the most stress have the greatest potential for
growth. Short track speed cyclist are a great example of this. Their quads are
huge because they encounter the most stress. Increasing the mind-muscle
connection increases the stress on the muscles. And if greater growth potential
wasn’t enough, it also decreases stress on the joints.
The mind-muscle connection stems from conscious thought. That’s all. One of my
best anecdotes comes from the principles of my knee pain book. Sometimes,
people instantly get rid of knee pain by simply putting their mind to use in a new
way.
I just finished your book. I was having patellar tendon pain EVERY TIME I stood up
from a chair. I’m now extending the hips similar to the way you described . . . and the
pain has disappeared. I’m already impressed.
- Jahed Momand
Try keeping your mind on your muscles. Feel them work. Feel them lengthen. Feel
them shorten. Feel the targeted muscles doing the work. You won’t regret it.
That’s not to say, “Turn into a sissy.” We’ll get into what matters later, but lifting
weights like molasses isn’t on the menu.
As for how to increase your connection, I like Frank Yang’s "anatomy book"
technique of pretending the working muscles are a different color than the rest.
The entire rationale behind patterning a muscle for more feel can be found in A
Mortal Man’s Guide to Upper Chest Size and Strength, which is an adventure in
getting the chest more active in those that have years of bad patterning under
their belt.*
*Preferentially developing the upper chest is a focus of this program. If you have some
experience at your back, and have bench pressing for a long time or training in an anti-
upper chest manner, you should consider checking out A Mortal Man’s Guide to Upper
Chest Size and Strength as it outlines a complete repatterning program.
Consider feel on par with comfort. You won’t be able to feel if you aren’t
comfortable with a movement. In a squat, for instance, if you’re shaky at the
bottom, you’re going to be too worried about balance.
The goal of the fundamental human movements is to develop the comfort and
control you need to make for a safer and effective journey throughout training.
So you might be browsing YouTube and see things that go against what is taught
here. Aside from the fact that they may be using an exercise for an entirely
different purpose what’s intended here, know that there are little in the way of
absolute rules. Rules can be broken, so long as you know why and how.
3) Pressing: Push-up
Pressing, specifically the push-up in the way it’s taught, teaches how to apply
torque to solidify the shoulder.
We also add on top a solid warm-up and a solid cool-down. The cool-down
emphasizes stretching the tonic muscles that bottle us up and ruin posture—it
reverses the aging process.
Chapter 5 summary
Life has taken us away from movement that our body is capable of, and in order
to re-learn it, we must gently coax ourselves back into the fold. Jumping right
into training without this prep work usually ends in complaints and excuses.
To prepare yourself and learn about the body, you should master four
fundamental human movements: squatting, hinging, pressing, and pulling.
“The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of
talk, get told that you' re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick
you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing
perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have
found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never
runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two
hundred pounds.”
A familiar with your body, you’re ready for increased loading and more
holistic exercises.
Squatting
Hinging
Vertical Pressing
Vertical Pulling
Horizontal Pressing
Horizontal Pulling
Now that we have some movement categories, the remaining variables are:
which exercises should we use, and are there any quirks we should know about to
make them more effective for us? Are some exercises better than others? How do
you arrange all of them into a program that enables the best progress?
For each category there is usually a "best" variation to use for now. And I say "for
now" because this is only the second layer on the pyramid (although, it’s the
most important layer). Much like the fundamental movements prepared for this
layer, this layer prepares for future layers.
Benching compares to rowing in a crude way, as you’re pressing and pulling in the
horizontal plane. Chin-ups compare to overhead pressing, as you’re pressing and
pulling in the vertical plane. These movements aren’t exactly in direct opposition,
but they’re close enough.
It would make sense to keep all of these things aligned and do the same for each
movement pattern to keep prevent imbalances and keep the body equally
developed. Unfortunately, we aren’t balanced as is, and what we want requires
unbalance.
(By the way, the theory of muscle imbalances is a crooked one. No one really
knows what balance is, we just know that weak opposing muscles can sometimes
limit performance of moving muscles. Great athletes, however, will always have
some kind of imbalances.)
Right now, your physique is unbalanced. And realistically, you want it even more
unbalanced in the opposite direction. There’s nothing "balanced" about an "X"
physique. You want wings and halos, and this means putting more emphasis on
certain muscle groups. We do this, but we also take heed to keeping the body
relatively healthy.
If you check out the pictures above, you see huge leg growth with lackluster
growth everywhere else. That leg growth is great and I wouldn’t not want that,
but I think that better upper body gains should have accompanied it.
To keep your head on straight, focus on two: the deadlift and the chin-
up.
These are your two most important lifts. The deadlift is the supragravitational,
holistically-loaded exercise you need to freak out the body. It’s really a lower-
body exercise, but the back is also heavily involved. It leads into other great "X"
physique pulling exercises like barbell rows, snatch grip deadlifts, and a bunch of
other pulls. Not only will it grow your back now, but it will be the catalyst for
“secret weapons” in the future.
The chin-up is, perhaps, the most important exercise you can do. Not only does it
grow your lats and upper back, it hints at where your body composition stands.
You know your body composition is improving if your chins improve.
So to be a bit more accurate, both chin-ups and pull-ups are king. Chin-ups, with
the increased bicep activation, will be easier and you’ll likely always be better at
them. Magical things happen when you get good at either, or when you do them
often.
They not only develop everything needed for the "X" look in the upper back,
posterior delts, lats, and arms, but they also silently work the abs. Not only will
they grow your wings, but they also do something incredibly unique in gauging
your relative strength.
Chapter 6 summary
The four fundamental movements turned into six in order to broaden our muscle
activation and growth across the entire body. A few others were thrown in to take
care of the fact that skinny-fat sufferers have arms like string beans.
― E.F. Schumacher
hat matters? Sure, we know the repetition range that tends to build
W
matters?
muscle. We know the types of exercise that build muscle. We know what
muscles to build. We now know the general exercises, too. But what
Eating the right things at the right time What matters is focus. Your mentality shouldn’t be
that of an ADD three-year-old. Your mentality
should be of mastery. How do you become a master? You pick a few things and
get really good at them.
If you want to become a good tuba player, spend your time playing. Imagine if
you wanted to get good at playing the tuba, violin, guitar, and drums. What do
you practice with? How do you get good? Will you master any of them? The trap
most enthusiasts fall into is spreading their efforts across too many exercises.
Physique is proportion. The goal is set. An "X" physique. The only thing left is to
practice the lifts that preferentially build the muscles develop the "X." Get better
at these skills over time. It doesn’t happen in one day.
Common myths float around about having to confuse muscles in order to spur
gains, and that this is a good (if not the best) way to go about making progress.
(This is the premise behind P90X, I think. I don’t know much about it though,
which should tell you how I feel about it.) There are a few things wrong with this
logic.
First, muscles don’t get confused. They respond to stress, not calculus problems.
You’re either adapated to stress, or unadapted to stress. If you’re unadapted,
things probably break down from being used in an unfamiliar way. Do things
Once you get settled into a solid training program, soreness won’t be as
prominent. A stupid rookie mistake is "changing things up" in order to continue
If you know the good exercises, the one’s that hit (and work for) skinny-fat areas
of need, the only thing left is “callousing” over time. It’s not a short-term
program. short-term programs are poison. So you have an eight week stint
planned. Good. But what do you do after those eight weeks? Jump to another
program? And then what? Another one? And another? How do you callous?
Program hopping is the worst behavior anyone can adopt. If a program isn’t
sustainable and adaptable for long-term use, don’t bother with it unless you have
a narrowed short-term goal (stubborn fat loss, for instance).
That’s not to say you’re doomed into doing the same thing day in and day out—a
program should be adaptable to some degree--but progress is the ultimate
motivator, and progress comes from practicing a handful of lifts consistently
enough to get good at them. Doing barbell row for two weeks and then switching
to dumbbell rows and then switching back to barbell rows before trying arc rows
after moving to inverted rows after doing chest-supported machine rows makes
progress impossible to gauge. Your body doesn’t get familiar enough with a
stressor to adapt accordingly.
I’d rather you do chin-ups or push-ups or certain squats more frequently than
rotating exercises every training session to hit different muscles.
It’s a tough mindset to take, but for a while, all you’re going to be doing is
practicing. You don’t really think of yourself as playing the tuba when you can’t
orchestrate good sounds. You’re practicing.
Rep speed is also known as tempo. Usually, when someone says to do something
with a certain tempo, they’re talking about lowering a weight for a specific
number of seconds, and then lifting it for a specific number of seconds.
Some people worry about tempo, but I’m not one of them. In fact, I think most
people are hurt by tempo. You can’t have your mind on your muscles and the lift
while simultaneously counting how many seconds it takes you to lift and lower
the weight. I’d much rather you think about the muscles at hand.
Perhaps the best thing you can do is think about lifting gracefully. Yeah, it’s kind
of meta, but think grace. Always. Grace. You’d be amazed at what happens to
your body when you put that word in your mind. You can’t lift with grace when
you’re unfamiliar or tentative. You can’t lift with grace when you’re bouncing and
dropping weights to help you lift them.
I don’t even look at a clock when I train, and I think you should take as long as
you need without being excessive. This means nothing to you, I know, but it
usually translates into taking 2-3 minutes in between sets. This varies if you’re
supersetting non-competing muscle groups. (Non-competing supersets would be
Supersets aren’t inherently special, nor are they anything magical. What they do,
however, is save time. Time is valuable. Therefore, supersets are valuable.
"Supersetting" is a fancy term for alternating exercises, set for set. So instead of
doing five sets of pull-ups back to back to back to back to back, you can alternate
a set of pull-ups with another exercise set for set. This usually works better on
your upper body days, and looks like:
• Set of pull-ups
• Catch your wind for about one or two minutes
• Set of presses
• Catch your wind for about one or two minutes
• Set of pull-ups
• Catch your wind for about one or two minutes
• Set of presses
This cuts down workout time as rest periods in between sets generally become
shorter, as you’re working non-competing muscle groups for the most part.
(When you train your pressing muscles, your pulling muscles get a slight break.)
If your gym isn’t set-up for supersets, don’t fret. They don’t have to be done.
They’re just recommended to save time. As for how to arrange the supersets,
that’s already done within the program. If exercises have the same letter by their
What’s most important about rest is making sure you’re in the moment. If you’re
stumbling around over the clock, you aren’t really worried about your body. Listen
to your body. It tells you things, and you’re better off having listened to it. Rest
as long as you need before you feel fresh. Now, this doesn’t mean you should
take five or ten minutes (although some do), but you shouldn’t go so quick that
you aren’t confident before doing another set.
You know that simply practicing and getting in quality repetitions is going to be
the most important thing you can do. Rest enough so that you can lift with grace,
make everything you do matter.
We know the exercises that build the kind of muscle we want, and we know how
heavy we need to train in order for muscle to actually be built. If you take this
mindset with you, I’m confident you’ll be in a better place than 99% of the people
out there.
This isn’t anything special either, it’s just practice. But the problem is that a
monkey can bang on the tuba in the name of practice. Just because you’re doing
something doesn’t mean you’re aiming for something in particular. In order to get
places, you have to have intent. You have to want to get better.
Chapter 7 summary
Don’t fall into the mainstream muscle-confusion bologna. Pour your heart into the
good exercises, lift with grace, and be mindful of the process. You need to
practice your way to success.
T just going through the motions. Practice is useful if you’re getting better
along the way.
It’s one thing to understand the body mobilizing for action (see a bear in the
woods, run from the bear in the woods), but it’s another thing entirely to
understand the body getting better at a particular mobilization over time.
Something that freaks the body out initially won’t always freak the body out.
When someone unexpectedly jumps out at you behind the water cooler at 12PM
as you’re about to go to lunch, you’re going to freak out. Your heart rate jacks up.
You get sweaty. You breathe harder.
Humans are wonderfully plastic creatures that adapt to regular demands (as long
as they aren’t too much too soon). It’s like creating a callous; use your hands a
lot, and callouses form on the parts that encounter the most stress. And they do
this as a means of protection. Without the thick skin, it would rip open daily. Your
body is one smart cookie, and it doesn’t want that to happen. Why risk infection?
But callouses don’t form overnight. The skin thickens gradually, and only in the
area that encounters the stress. It doesn’t make sense to build tissue where it
isn’t needed. That’s just waste. And so, the two-step process to create a callous is
to introduce some kind of stress, and then repeat that stress over time. Careful
though. Increase the stress too fast, and you don’t get a callous, you get a blister.
Blisters are useless. Nothing gets accomplished. The skin doesn’t thicken in
protection. It just rips open, hurts like hell, and makes you rip excess skin off
creating even more injuries. With a blister, you’re immediately in the hole (you
can’t use your hands like you need to), and you’re also long-term in the hole.
After the blister heals, you start with a fresh patch of skin. You have to restart
the callous from the beginning.
In the land of callous building, take your time and all goes well. Too fast too soon,
and you’re defeating the purpose of the protective mechanism by voluntarily
hurting yourself and restarting the thickening process.
• Start light.
• Get stronger.
Strength is important in this world, especially for a beginner. When you start at
some baseline level, your body adapts. The only way to continue adaptation is to
increase beyond the baseline—to continually create a new baseline.
If you go in the gym and do the routine with some easy weight to start, you’re on
the right track. But if you do nothing but do the same routine with the same
weight week after week, you’re going to fail. You have to continually increase the
stress of the exercise. You have to make a callous. Without trying to get better,
you’re nothing more than a monkey banging on the drums and calling it practice.
If you’re in this world already, you’ve likely heard of a little something called
progressive overload, AKA doing more than you’re used to. There are many ways
to do more, but for you, there are really only two things you should worry about:
more weight, or more reps. If you go into the gym and you’re not either adding
more weight or more reps, you’re doing it wrong. This more business is
So even if it’s just by one repetition, you should get better. If you attack this with
a “small win” mindset, and with a proper program, you will snag some serious
progress. The footnote of this process is starting light, working within your
means, and giving your body ample time to callous and recover from training
session to training session.
Understanding adaptation
A great analogy used in Starting Strength, a famous barbell training resource, is
that training is like tanning. Go outside when the sun is high for five minutes one
day, and that’s your baseline. Go outside every day for five minutes when the sun
is high, repeat that for one month, and where do you end up?
You probably think you’d be a lot tanner, but you probably wouldn’t be. Your body
adapted to handling the sun for five minutes, and you didn’t give it reason to
adapt further.
Your body only adapts to the right now. If you want to push beyond what you are
right now, you have to train beyond what you are right now. You have to get
*I’m aware that homeostasis is being replaced by the much more comprehensive
allostasis. A bit beyond the concept presented here, but something worth checking out if
you’re a science geek.
Consistently upping that baseline functioning level is what consistently forces the
body to make change. When you stagnate, and do the same thing over and over,
the body stagnates, too.
You just need to stay fresh and get as strong as possible within the repetition
ranges and with the lifts given. You need to callous yourself, not blister yourself.
You need to tan, not get sunburn.
The goal is slow progress over time, but the important part is progress. There’s
no maxing out until your eyeballs dangle from their optic nerves. You will work
hard. It will be difficult. But, all things considered, it’s not about bringing deathly
intensity. It’s about bringing intensity, period, with consistency. This leads to
better progress, better results, and, most importantly, better health.
“Yeah, well, I got hurt and stopped going to the gym, and now I’ve been trying to
get back.”
We don’t want to be that guy. Stay smart. Progress slowly. Let your body’s muscle
and connective tissue adapt with you slowly over time. Crock pots cook some
damn good food, but they cook it slowly over time. So slow, in fact, that some
people don’t bother. But you can’t deny the tasty results.
There are many factors that affect the adaptation process, but there are three big
ones: number of muscles involved, size of muscles involved, and range of motion
involved.
More muscles, bigger muscles, and less range of motion make for more weight
and more potential for rapid strength increases. So, in general, lower body lifts
progress not only quicker, but also more—you’ll be loads stronger with them.
Upper body lifts progress less all around, which makes for a skinny-fat
conundrum—your upper body is small, yet strength (which is the driver of
muscle) stalls early. This is why we do more for the upper body.
It’s common for skinny-fat guys to hit a huge wall in upper body progress when
following traditional rules, or doing something silly and expecting the upper body
to adapt at the same rate as the lower body. (Pressing movements are usually
the toughest. Blame the small wrists.) Remember, a smaller bookcase doesn’t
hold as many books. You can’t compare your progress to others that have a
1. The deadlift
2. The squat
3. The incline press
4. The overhead press
Dumbbell exercises (and the barbell curl, really) fall into a side category. Smaller
exercises that involve less joints won’t be anxious to make much progress.
Dumbbell exercises are just different and don’t progress as fast as barbell
exercises. The technical reason as to why doesn’t matter as much as the reality—
don’t expect them to progress fast.
Bodyweight exercises are sort of their own entity. They load the system a bit
differently, so they are trained a bit differently. Most barbell exercises load the
spine. Bodyweight exercises don’t, so they don’t "freak out" the entire system as
much. They can be trained at a higher frequency if you program properly.
One: Pick a worthy exercise that loads the body in a way that’s actually going to
cause muscle gain (rubbing feathers on the skin don’t create a callous). Think
supragravity and all that fun stuff here.
Two: Make sure the exercise is efficient at targeting the muscles you want
targeted. Think phasic and tonic, and building something that opposes the skinny-
fat build.
Four: Gradually increase the stress over time to create a thicker callous. Don’t go
too fast, too soon, or else you’ll blister.
That says nothing about any kind of training split, or how to arrange the
exercises. Part of this is because the split isn’t magic. How you arrange exercises
into a weekly routine is a façade behind the bigger picture, which is overloading
the right muscles with the right exercises within the right repetition ranges.
If you started with the empty Olympic bar (which weighs 45 pounds), that means
you’d be squatting 305 pounds in one year. Do you think you’d be a tiny bit more
muscular if you took whatever you squatted now and took it to 305? The answer
is yes.
But in comes the paradox of improvement. If you take the above example and
say . . . well, why not go in and do that twice every week! And then I’d add 520
pounds in one year! MAYBE THREE TIMES PER WEEK, AND I’D BE SUPER SAIYAN
IN NO TIME!!
There are many things that go into our ability to add weight on the bar, one of
which is nutrition. This is why you often see people recommend drinking a gallon
of milk every day (a strategy known as GOMAD)—it eliminates the energy and
nutrient factor. If you GOMAD, you know you’re getting enough stuff to repair and
build muscle tissue and recover from hard training.
Since we don’t (you shouldn’t) want to blow up like a cow, you don’t want to do
the GOMAD thing. And because of this, you have to accept that your progress will
be slower because you aren’t absolutely ensuring that you’re getting enough
energy.
Go back to our previous example. Say you stuck with the first example and added
five pounds per week. That’s 260 pounds in one year, 520 in two years.
I’ve never squatted 520 pounds. The most I’ve ever squatted was 405 pounds,
and I’ve been training for a lot longer than two years. What I’m trying to say is
that if you chipped away and did the five pound per week thing for two years—
played the slow card—your progress would trump my 6+ years of training.
Not to be the bearer of bad news, but, as a skinny-fat sufferer, your ability to
adapt and make great strength progress isn’t the best in the land. My small wrists
aren’t really all that great at supporting a load, and my pressing strength suffers
for it. This is the rule, not the exception. I’ve never met a skinny-fat sufferer that
excelled in pressing strength, and, more often than not, they hit a wall they can’t
escape from.
It’s a sad reality: a toothpick won’t hold as much weight as tree trunk. This
doesn’t mean we can’t progress, because we absolutely can. We’re just better off
slow-cooking the process and giving our body ample time to change. This isn’t
the fancy-flashy eight-week solution, but if those things worked, you probably
wouldn’t be here. Think crock pot. Put it all together, set it, and forget it.
Chapter 8 summary
Training and muscle building follows similar rules to callous building, tanning, and
just about every gradual adaptation you can think of. Just as a callous forms
primarily on the areas in the immediate stress vicinity, muscle preferentially
grows in the areas that receive the most neural signals for meaningful
contractions. This could be a muscle group as a whole or even a select part of the
muscle, as long as there’s a separate nerve innervations to make the latter
possible.
It’s possible to preferentially callous the upper chest more than the lower chest
because the upper chest has its own neural connection independent of the one for
the lower chest. Increase the upper’s circuitry, you get better growth. This is what
A Mortal Man’s Guide to Upper Chest Size and Strength is about.
This is not a fast process. Rushing progress is like creating a blister, and blisters
are a regression, not a progression.
G huge strides in progress, the workload should be split to allow for ample
recovery. At the same time, it shouldn’t be split so much as to go against
sending signals at the right frequency.
From full-body routines to body part splits, there are many ways to put exercises
into a program. Not all of them are necessarily created equal either. Consider full
Total body routines are generally the most demanding type of training, as the
entire system is used in one training session. This is a good thing for skinny-fat
sufferers because it’s a very powerful, holistic signal. The drawback, however, is
that they’re tough to recover from. Think of a full body training session as a fever
of sorts—something that throws the entire body out of whack at once.
Split routines are more like colds; they are localized, not as systematic as a fever.
While advanced body part splits give more attention and potential volume to
individual muscles, this is usually a bit too much for a skinny-fat sufferer. Goes
back to the whole "ceiling" thing. If you start out training with ten exercises per
muscle group, where do you have to go afterwards? Often times, I recommend
advanced splits be saved for those with solely aesthetic goals that also have a lot
of experience (those that can stress their body enough to warrant a lower training
and signaling frequency).
The best strategy for a natural dude erring towards aesthetics, in my opinion, is
either a full body routine or an upper-lower body split. For the most part, I err to
the upper-lower split, as it’s not too split-esque and not too whole-esque, which
puts us in the middle. We can focus on the exercises that matter most, while also
We always train our back first when applicable. Always. Even though we might
mix in other exercises via supersetting, a back exercise is always first. Most
people? The do a press first because they think pressing is going to solve their
problems by its lonesome. It won’t, and you should know that by now.
It might just be me, but I like going into every training session with one or two
big goals. With the lower body, it’s usually one. Once you hit that goal, you know
you did good things. With the upper body, it’s usually two—more movement
patterns allow for more training without being totally gassed.
Although it’s possible to squat and deadlift the same day and live to talk about,
there’s enough overlap in between the muscles (and they improve much easier,
too) that I think each should be given their own focal day. One day, improve your
squat. Another day, improve your deadlift.
A – squat focused
B – deadlift focused
For the upper body, since movement patterns aren’t as competitive, you can
focus on two non-competing movements. In other words, one press and one pull.
Given that much emphasis is put on the back and chin-ups, they come first in the
training session.
A – deadlift focused
C – squat focused
This is a crude shell, and much more detail will emerge, even blurring the
upper/lower distinction we have now.
If you can only train twice per week, that’s better than nothing. It’s not really
ideal, but sometimes constraints can be beneficial. Each day you go to the gym,
you know you have to do damage and you’ll be fresh enough to do so. More on
two day options in a future chapter.
Repeat...
You’d ideally train three non-consecutive days, leaving two days to recover
between the last session of each week and the first session of the next week. This
is the classic MON-WED-FRI set-up. Of course, the days don’t matter. You can
train TUES-THURS-SAT if you wanted or needed to. Just hold on-off-on-off-on-off-
off pattern, rotating between the training days in sequence as each training day
arrives.
1.0 is a great basic install for friendly development all around. It sets the stage
for just about every future install. The lines are clear cut between upper and
lower body, which makes for the best recovery.
You can figure out the details by checking out the next install (which is dissected)
and then subtracting what is omitted.
C – squat focused, perfect chin, light hinge, perfect push-up, calves + abs
Install 2.0 is one that I recommend doing. It’s loaded with body weight extras
even on lower body days, and with two exercises that are going to signal for not
only fat loss, but also the fabled "X" physique.
Of course, one does not simply walk into Install 2.0 without a plan. Considering
that I just harped over needing more recovery, and this split basically trounces
recover with the frequency of certain movements, let’s clear up the loose ends.
• Work up to three sets of 6-8 reps, keeping the workload lower than a max level
• Do one or two reps in between each set of squats. If you can’t yet do one rep, go for a
rocket wing hold for five seconds. (Rocket wings are explained in the Fundamental
Movement Guide.)
• Work up to three sets of 8-10 reps, keeping the workload lower than a max level
• Work up to three sets of 6-8 reps, keeping the workload lower than a max level
• Do one or two reps in between each set of squats. If you can’t yet do one rep, go for a
rocket wing hold for five seconds.
• Work up to three sets of 6-8 reps, keeping the workload lower than a max level
• Work up to three sets of 8-10 reps, keeping the workload lower than a max level
• Use more difficult variations when the workload gets easy
• Work up to three sets of 8-10 reps, keeping the workload lower than a max level
• Use more difficult variations when the workload gets easy
If you have some training history under your belt, I recommend starting over
from scratch. Seriously. If you’re skinny-fat and have been training for a while,
you’ve been doing something wrong. Pick an easy weight, run the program with
this progression, and let it do its job.
Of course, you can always ignore this, get hurt, stall early, remain frustrated, and
sulk in your skinny-fatness for another century. That’s your choice.
With linear progress, you’d likely continue on for a little while, only to fizzle out
down the road. Everyone fizzles out eventually, no matter the method of
progress, but most with subpar genetics (and without shoving food down their
face) don’t often make it that far on a strict linear progress regimen. This
hearkens back to a concept we talked about at the beginning: everyone has a
different bookcase.
It stops working because you outwork your capacity to adapt. There comes a
point when the body throws the cards on the table and say, “I’m out. I can’t do
this. I can’t change rapidly enough to accommodate the increasing weight. It was
fine at first because it was kind of easy. Now though? Can’t do it.” At some point,
injecting too much of a pathogen is going to get your sick, not make you
immune.
The problem with the five pound linear logic is twofold. First, five pounds is an
arbitrary mass. Second, it doesn’t respect differences between upper body and
lower body.
But because we live in a commercial world, and 2.5 pound plates are often the
lowest increment plates we have at our disposal, the answer then becomes to add
the 2.5 pounds on each side of the bar every training session. Lo and behold,
that’s the magical philosophy behind adding 5 pounds to the bar every training
session.
Most mortals find that sustaining progress on upper body lifts at a clip of 5
pounds per session is simply too demanding. The muscles of the upper body are
smaller and weaker than the lower body's, so they tap out on strength faster. The
logical thing to do is to add less weight to the bar, but that’s impossible unless
you have fractional plates. Instead of spending boatloads of legit fractional plates,
head over to McMaster Carr and buy their plumbing washers.
You can buy fractional weight plates, but they cost bundles. Two inch plumbing
washers fit nicely over the bar and weigh around 10oz apiece. Put two on each
side of the bar, and you’re looking at just about 2.5 pounds added to the bar
total. You can even add one to each side to add around one pound the bar total.
Before we go further, it’s best to dissect the set and rep scheme within to
program.
Although Reg Park classified his scheme as 5x5, it was actually two warm-up sets
with 5 reps and then three work sets with the maximum weight for the day. So if
the incline press workout was supposed to be with 165 pounds, the workout
might end up looking something like this:
• 5 x 95
• 5 x 135
• 3 x 5 x 165
Some would write that as a 5x5 workout, but in reality, it’s really only a 3x5
workout. Sticking with one weight and doing it many times is known as doing sets
Perhaps best written, [2x5], 3x5. Translation: do two escalating warm-up sets
with five reps, then stick with a weight for three sets and five reps. If you aren’t
all that strong yet (you will be in the future, don’t fret) in a given lift, you might
not be able to escalate the warm-up. For instance, if you’re just squatting 65
pounds (which is fine—it doesn’t matter where you start, it matters where you
finish), you warm-up sets might be with just the bar.
No matter how strong you are, ALWAYS START WITH THE EMPTY BAR FOR ANY
EXERCISE. Even the strongest people in the world start with the empty bar.
Seriously! Watch Olympic weightlifters. They grab the bar and do their
movements to get the blood flowing. They throw a little weight on and gradually
increase the weight. You’re never advanced enough that you can forget about this
prep work.
Most barbell lifts will have some kind of warm-up recommended. For other
movements, it’s always a good idea to get the blood flowing, and it always
depends on how good you are with the exercise in question. If you can’t yet do
• Session one: 1 x 5 x 95
• Session two: 1 x 5 x 100
• Session three: 1 x 5 x 105
• Session four: 1 x 5 x 110
For upper body barbell pressing lifts, you can get away with adding 2.5
pounds per training session for the first few sessions. These are all about
working up to three maximal sets—sets across.
• Session one: 3 x 5 x 95
• Session two: 3 x 5 x 97.5
• Session three: 3 x 5 x 100
• Session four: 3 x 5 x 102.5
Keep in mind, you can only do the 2.5 pound increments if you have the right
plates. You shouldn’t make the bar unbalanced by only adding weight to one side.
Work sets and reps stay constant, weight increases five pounds per session, and
warm-up sets come along for the ride as your strength increases. This rate of
progress will soon curtail though, which is why I recommend a slower rate of
progress all around, hence the repetition zones.
You might be able to add weight to the bar every session for a while, but you’re
going to hit a wall. If you’re skinny-fat, that wall will come sooner rather than
later. When this happens, most run around without a plan, swimming in
uncertainty and doubt, not knowing what to do next. The answer isn’t to jump on
some fancy program, it’s to dial it back and progress incrementally but slower.
Almost every exercise has some sort of zone attached to it. A "zone" is a
repetition range, not a static number. So if you’re slated to do 3 x 8-10, then your
first workout you pick a weight you can easily do 3 x 8 with (the lowest repetition
number in the zone). You do 3 sets of 8 reps at 50 pounds (or whatever weight).
The next time you do ( 9 – 8 – 8 x 50 ). Then ( 9 – 9 – 8 x 50 ). You keep adding
one repetition per set until you reach the top end of the zone. It would take eight
training sessions before you increased the weight on the bar in the example
When you reach the top end of the zone, you add 2.5 pounds for upper body lifts
(metric: one kilo). Make it 5 pounds for lower body lifts (metric: two kilos).
Sample barbell curl progression:
This method of progress is a must if you aren’t willing to spring for the plumbing
washers on upper body lifts. Keep in mind, the rate of progress stays the same.
With the lower body money lifts, since there is only one set, you simply increase
the weight after you hit the top end of that one set.
To recap: one rep to the workload per training session, increase the weight only
when the top end of the repetition range is hit for every set.
If you can’t do any chin-ups, then hold the top of the chin-up position for five
seconds. (Check out the Fundamental Movement Guide for rocket wing
information.) If you’re doing less than ten push-ups, make it one single push-up.
Do these gracefully. Use a full range of motion and have control over the entire
movement. It shouldn’t be fast. It shouldn’t be slow motion. It should be
graceful. If someone was watching you, they would say, “Wow, that looked easy.”
Or, it should look like you have absolute control over what you’re doing. Perhaps
the best way to describe this graceful concept is to show you a video of a muscle-
up done by Andreas Aguilar. Now, if you aren’t familiar with the muscle-up, you
should YouTube around. Note that most muscle-ups are done violently, swinging,
and without much control. Then when you watch Andreas, “It looks so easy.”
That’s kind of the tempo and feel you want these reps to have.
Good question. So with chin-ups, pull-ups, push-ups, and inverted rows, this will
be your guide.
Grinding reps feel just like they sound. They’re slower, forced. You’ll only fail one
repetition unless a spotter helps you complete more past failure (not
recommended, not one bit). Your objective with this test set is to find out how
many reps you can do with ease. We need to start light and build our way into
this program.
Say you got four reps but the third and fourth rep were eyeball busting—grinding.
You’d then start with TWO REPETITIONS, because that’s how many you got
before feces hit the fan. For now, I’m going to assume you got less than ten
repetitions. If you got more, hold onto your pants—we’ll get to advanced
progression techniques in a little.
As we move along, it’s important you see every exercise separately. You might be
rank beginner on the pull-up and more advanced on the push-up. This is normal,
and each exercise will use a different method.
So if you can do three reps with ease, but four or five reps is tough, start with
three. This puts you in the second category, doing five total sets.
Take your initial number (3) and apply it to the five sets to give you a workload of
five total sets @ three reps per set. You then work towards 5 x 5 using rep-by-rep
progress.
• Workout one: 1
• Workout two: 1-1
• Workout three: 1-1-1
• Workout four: 1-1-1-1
• Workout five: 1-1-1-1-1...
Once you hit ten, then you’d go into the first category of the original progression.
If you can’t do any repetitions, or you can’t do at least one repetition with ease, I
hope you were smart enough to spring for the Hyper Pack to get the Perfecting
the Pull-up Guide, which covers basic pulling strength for the chin-up and pull-up.
Here’s another example from the original chart: say you can only do one “ease”
repetition. Start with eight sets of one repetition. Add one repetition to each set
until you get to ten sets of two reps.
This is the simplest way to improve your abilities over time. It might seem “slow,”
but that’s what you want. Trust me on this. You’d be amazed at what going from
<10 REP PROGRESS takes you from the ground to being able to do ten
repetitions on any exercise. I recommend following <10 REP PROGRESS until it
ends for pull-ups, but for chin-ups, I’ve been known to ditch <10 REP PROGRESS
around 6-8 reps in order to add weight.
Once you’re fairly experienced, developing lower rep strength can boost you
through higher rep plateaus. This is why I think you should stay on course with
pull-ups, as weighted chin-ups will have some carry over to your pull-up abilities.
Keep in mind, however, higher repetition exercise prepares the connective tissues
for heavier work. If you have any hint of elbow pain or shoulder pain after loading
the chin-up, you should dial back and continue your higher repetition <10 REP
PROGRESS.
From my own experience, however, I’ve found that loading the chin-up
tremendously improved my overall abilities. I got stuck at a lower repetition
range for a long time, but once I added weight, I blew past that range.
On the chin-up, you add weight with something called a dip belt. It buckles
around your waist and has an opening to feed a chain through. Loop the chain
through the weight plate, through the opening on the dip belt, and then connect
the chain to itself so the weight dangles from the belt.
Once you’re in weighted territory, you’re back to loading it and progressing it like
any other upper body exercise. When you add weight to your bodyweight
exercises, they become "barbell" exercises, for our intents and purposes. Since
you’re just moving into the territory, your warm-up sets will likely be two sets
with just your bodyweight.
As you advance, I think the washers come in handy for adding weight below the
2.5 pound mark. At some point, squeezing out little progress is better than no
progress. Adding one pound or so to your upper body lifts is progress that should
be gladly accepted. That’s just about five pounds per month, which adds up
quick. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: don’t rush strength—don’t be
greedy.
This might be stupid to say (but it might not be), start your weighted
bodyweight exercises with 2.5 pounds (1 kilo) attached to your waist—no
more!
Once you can do more than ten reps on inverted rows and push-ups, move onto a
more challenging variation. Your money zone for these exercises, then, is thirty
total repetitions (3 x 10).
When you move onto a more challenging variation, your reps might drop below
ten. Don’t fret. Simply work them back up with +REP PROGRESS (or something
similar).
You might not be able to do 6-8 reps, depending on the new variation. If you
want to use +REP PROGRESS, set a baseline number of repetitions, do that
amount for three sets, and then strive to increase your workload by one rep
every training session until you reach 3 x 10.
So, for the most part, I think that once you hit ten repetitions on any given
variation, it’s time to move onto a more challenging exercise. That is, of course,
unless you’re intentionally doing higher repetitions. In that case, I have
something for you.
On some of the bodyweight exercises, one you hit a certain cusp of ability, you
can use this advanced method of progress to ratchet up to a final set of high(er)
repetitions. You should be beyond the beginner phase (doing more than ten
repetitions) before considering this.
Most people will be able to crank out more than ten push-ups, at which point
progress becomes a little tough to wrap your head around. Usually doing a
bodyweight exercise for higher repetitions isn’t really all that "dangerous" enough
to signal for the necessity of muscle building.
That last one may seem like an anomaly. Why boost repetitions higher if higher
repetitions aren’t all that effective for muscle building? Two reasons. First, by
doing it within the confines of my program, this tactic will often be alternated with
a complementary exercise that’s trained for lower repetitions, so it’s not like we’re
going to forego muscle supragravitational signaling all together.
Second, higher repetition bodyweight exercises, for reasons I can’t explain, seem
to do wonderful things for muscle building and body composition as long as
they’re icing on the cake and not the cake itself (making sure you’re not just
getting the tit . . . er . . . you know what I mean). It could be because of the
relative strength aspect of bodyweight exercises, or the metabolic fatigue that
flushes blood and nutrients to the area—I’m honestly not certain. But I’m not one
to ignore results, so it’s definitely worth trying when you’re beyond beginner
level.
The method I like to use for this is an alteration of a method popularized by Tom
DeLorme, which looks something like this:
Basically, a lighter set with higher reps first. A medium set with lower reps
second. Then going for broke on the last set.
Since I don’t often like shooting blind, I enjoy using something simple like +REP
PROGRESS to guide the last set, always looking to tack just one more repetition
onto the final set.
For instance, if you can do 15 chin-ups, you’d arrange your sets something like...
• 8 reps
• 4 reps
• Try for 16 chin-ups
And then if you got 16, your next training session, you’d try for 17. Then 18. It’s
a little bit more structured than going for broke every week, as you’ll often burn
yourself out trying to do that.
Once you’re doing weighted chin-ups and weighted dips, don’t be afraid to carry
this high with push-ups and inverted rows. If you can rock 30-50 push-ups, feel
free to give +DELORME a try for a change of pace. Training heavy all the time
with +TOUGH PROGRESS can run you down, so don’t be afraid to throw in an
Easter egg like this every once in a while.
Ideally, your warm-up sets shouldn’t fatigue you for your work sets, but they
should escalate in intensity. Your last might walk the border of challenging and
slightly fatiguing, but it shouldn’t gas you for your work sets.
Work sets are your "meat" sets. They are the one that help us track progress.
Warm-up sets come before the work sets and will change over time with your
strength level. As you get stronger, you might need to do more warm-up sets
with lower reps, but you should still do the warm-up called for.
So, for instance, let’s take the squat in the program. [2x5], 3x5. Say you’re a
beginner, and your warm-up looks like this: 5 x 95, 5 x 135, and then you go into
your three work sets at 155, which looks like this: 3 x 5 x 155.
As you get stronger and your work sets are using a weight of, say, 275 pounds,
your beginner warm-up of 5 x 95, 5 x 135 won’t really provide the same
preparation. You’ll have to do a little more.
• 5 x 135,
• 5 x 185,
• 3 x 225
and then hit your 3 x 5 x 275. As you can see, you still hit two decent warm-up
sets with five repetitions, but you added another set with lower repetitions before
your work sets.
Now, you could have kept the repetitions constant and did 5 x 225 for your last
warm-up set if you didn’t think it would fatigue you too much for your work sets.
This is where the warm-up has play, and where everyone is different because
everyone needs different things to feel ready for the work sets. And this is
precisely why warm-up sets aren’t often used as a marker of progress (why I said
we don’t calculate volume).
Gauge your progress on your work sets. As long as you get in the warm-up sets
called for in some fashion, you’re on the right track. I would advise against using
too low of a weight on your warm-up sets though. They should be heavy enough
to prepare the tissues for the work ahead, but light enough not to overly fatigue.
Resetting
At some point, you’re going to fail to increase the reps one workout on your
weighted lifts. When this happens, try the workout one more time. If you
complete the workload, keep going as if nothing happened. But if you fail the
workload twice in a row (in two consecutive workouts), you need to reset. Drop
the weight by 15% and do the same exact progression, working your way up until
you stall again.
If you do this right, the initial stall and re-stall will take months to achieve. Don’t
get hung up over stalls; embrace them. They mean you’re getting stronger, and
stronger is good.
At that point, you should have gained a considerable amount of muscle and you
should be free of the initial skinny-fat grasp. Programming will have to take on
more complexity, and that’s more SOLDIER 1.0 and beyond realm.
If you’re failing to make all of your lifts for consecutive sessions, take one week
and only do your warm-ups. So go through the motions, just ditch the work sets.
For your body weight exercises, cut the volume in half.
First, if you’ve toyed around with a barbell for a while, and still consider yourself
skinny-fat, your initial training didn’t go as well as it should have. Second, the
methods of progression and frequency of training the lifts (perhaps the split) are
undoubtedly different.
DAY ONE
Conventional deadlift
Chin-up
Incline press
Push-up
Curl
Abs
DAY TWO
Pull-up
Overhead press
Unilateral floor press
Back squat or front squat
Inverted row
Abs
Yeah, you only train your lower body once per week, but everything essential is
crammed in there. The reason why squats come before deadlifts, even though the
deadlift is the prioritized lift, is because squats after deadlifts generally end
horrifically. The other way works better.
hy now? Why not talk about fat loss first, especially when the goal is the
W solid base? Aside from it being much easier logistically now, being an
install, the bulk of your focus should be on strength training. Although
we sprinkle in fat-loss goodies, the majority of fat-loss progress comes from
nutrition. Get strength training going, get your nutrition ironed out, and good
things will happen. Sprinkle the extra fat-loss work on top, and you have the
ultimate recipe.
Exercise burns calories, sure, but not that many. Most people can forego the
Tastykakes and see the same net caloric reduction they would see after running
on the treadmill for two hours. (If you go by the treadmill calorie burning
counters, you’d probably reach 300ish calories. Eat two Twinkies, and you’re
looking at 300 calories. Two hours of work, only to mitigate two Twinkies.)
Training, in this sense, is more than simply burning calories. It’s “stimulating” the
body to understand that weighing more (or carrying more useless [useless here
depends on the context, but fat sacks aren’t useful for sprinting] material) is
hurting survival potential.
It’s not uncommon to seek out a massive calorie burning activity in order to lose
weight, as if burning calories was the only determinant in weight gain or loss. But
this isn’t true, and it’s a shortsighted view. For instance, lifting weights
"burns calories." It’s activity. It’s movement. Anytime you’re moving
around, you’re using energy. But lifting weights, despite "burning
calories," provokes weight gain by stimulating muscular growth. This is
known as a negative feedback loop.
The body, however, isn’t quite as easy as simple arithmetic. Governed by these
negative feedback loops, the body senses lower calorie and nutrient intake, so it
becomes stingier with what it has. It’s the investment banker all over again. No
income? You won’t be as apt to throw your saving away at strip clubs.
Just because something has a metabolic cost doesn’t mean it’s in the name of fat
loss. If our muscles grow to better survive an external stressor, we can lose fat to
better survive an external stressor. It all depends on how the body interprets
the stimulus and then signals for adaptation.
So training follows the same rules. What does the body "think" about what is
happening, and how is it going to adapt to survive? From a physiological
standpoint, low-intensity running (typically known as cardio) utilizes fat as a fuel
source better than just about any other exercise, which is something to consider.
But, once again, this takes us back to the type of adaptations in response to the
activity.
This makes it tough to pinpoint any one thing in particular because there are
many signals being sent to the body at once. This is the nature of emergence,
and everything having a hand in everything. The only thing we can do is be as
comprehensive as possible—fix nutrition, and fix training.
Moving slowly (walking, light jogging, anything that can be sustained for a good
while) is the best way for the body to use fat as an energy source. As exercise
intensity increases, the body pulls more from its carbohydrate stores. There’s a
whole world where higher intensity exercise can be beneficial for fat loss, because
it impacts hormones and does some other neat things, but that’s more for the
stubborn fat loss phase in SOLDIER 2.0.
HIIT is one of the most intense forms of training because you’re working more
than you’re resting. This taxes every metabolic system in addition to the
muscular and nervous system. For those without proper preparation, it’s like
jumping into a frozen pond. System shock.
I typically recommend HIIT for those at the stubborn fat phase as long as it’s
prepared for, and your routine is adjusted so that you don’t set yourself up for
injury. Part of this preparation is embedded within this resource, so that you can
seamlessly transition into SOLDIER 2.0.
For the body to get good at chasing down an animal that lures you across the
savannah for 20 miles, you can’t have a lot of excess body mass, period. This
includes muscle. You’ll waste away, and your energy demands will be impossible
to meet. This is why distance runners aren’t often all that muscled. You simply
On each end of the spectrum though—walking and fresh sprinting (or mutations
of each)—your body isn’t getting conflicting messages. It won’t be torn in
deciding whether or not to build muscle. Sprinting and other like activities even
go for the creation of muscle at times, as muscle contributes to running faster.
Walking isn’t demanding enough to wither away muscle tissue either.
Now, this isn’t to say you absolutely can’t be a distance runner and have muscle.
Some people are able to walk this line, but most of us on the genetically
unfavorable side of muscle gain are better off not going there.
A little bit of aerobic training won’t kill you. But when you get into doing
prolonged steady state aerobic sessions (50+ minutes) more than three days per
week, you’re creating problems.
First, the adaptations of prolonged aerobic training go against what we’re training
for. Second, it means you aren’t really expending most of your energy where it
needs to be expended.
The primary signal sent to your body should be towards building muscle. Too
much aerobic work and the body shifts adaptation means towards the functions
that boost aerobic capacity. Since adaptation is finite, these changes compete
with muscular changes, too.
3.0 Most people fail because they send too many signals via training. Too many
signals means a lot of noise—that fuzzy sound you get when tuning into a radio
station.
So you might train hard, and lift some weights in a way that’s going to build you
an "X" physique. Good. That’s a good signal. But if you add in high intensity
interval sprints one day and low intensity, long duration aerobic work the next,
you’re now sending three distinct "signals" to your body.
You’re sending one from standard barbell strength training. You’re sending one
from your high intensity interval training. And you’re sending one from low
intensity aerobic work. You’re not tuning into one radio station and things get
fuzzy. We want to send one clear signal at the start. That’s all. One signal.
Some of the best athletes in the world fly themselves to beaches and simply walk
along the shore as a means of mental and physical recovery. Walking is good for
the soul. Instead of slugging out on your rest days and having your intestines rot
into a comatose state, walk. Even on your training days, if you have some extra
time, get outside and talk a walk. Brisk walking for the sake of walking never
hurts. And this isn’t something I’d even call "training."
You can walk outside for training too, but a treadmill has one primary benefit of
use in the name of walking for the sake of training: it creates a constant incline.
Inclines, more so than any other tweak, encourage the body to use more energy.
So simply hop on a treadmill, jack up the incline, and move at a decent pace for
20-40 minutes three or four times per week. Walk fast enough to get your heart
pumping, but slow enough to still be walking.
You’ll feel awesome and rejuvenated after breaking a little sweat; revitalized and
ready to tackle the world.
4.0 One of the most old school ways to get “in shape” (whatever that means
anymore) is to jump rope. It’s so non-fancy that you’ve probably forgotten about
it. All you need is a rope and a small space, and you can jack your heart rate up
while also having some fun. And yes, it will help you lose fat.
At first, put ten minutes on the clock and just go. Don’t think you’re going to
jump for the ten minutes consecutively—always strive to prolong how long you
can jump before resting. Set a time you can jump for—maybe thirty seconds or
so—and then set a rest interval—maybe ten seconds or so. Try to repeat this
work and rest interval until your timer ends. When you get good enough to do
that, then reduce the rest time or increase the jump time.
As you get better, up the time to twenty minutes. Or, spike it.
Go back to Install 2.0. Note how, on lower-body days, calf work and abdominal
work are paired. There’s a reason for this. When you get into rope jumping, you
have a choice. You can ditch the calf work, knowing that rope jumping is going to
Instead of jumping until gassed, resting, and then repeating, spike the rest period
with your abdominal exercises. This keeps your heart rate up and continues to
stimulate your body, all while your legs rest for the next bout with the rope.
For instance:
Be sensible about things. Go as long as you can, rest until you feel good. Your
heart rate won’t return to its absolute baseline, but you shouldn’t be puking in
the trash can. The goal is to be able to go longer and rest a little less each time.
Finishing touches
For Install 4.0, I recommend jumping rope after every training session if you’re
training three days per week. (If you really enjoy the spiked jump rope method,
feel free to also use it on your upper-body days, even though there is no
programmed abdominal work.)
If you’re training four days per week, be a little bit more careful with recovery.
Jump rope on your lower-body days, and maybe go with incline treadmill walking
on your upper body days.
Also, don’t forget that you should still be walking. Walk on rest days, walk to get
some fresh air. Walk.
Now, sprinting isn’t high intensity interval training (HIIT). Sprinting is running a
short distance (100 meters or less, for our purposes), taking enough time to
recover and get your wits about yourself, and then sprinting again. When you get
into HIIT—which would essentially be the same “sprinting” activity, but with a
short rest period, getting gassed, and probably puking in the nearest garbage
can—you’re going to stress yourself in a way that makes it harder to recover
from, which is going to hinder strength
gains.
Nothing you do should hinder There is a time and place for HIIT, if you
need it. That’s down the line if you
strength gains right now. happen to get hung up on stubborn body
fat though.
Second, it’s a demanding form of exercise that most people aren’t ready to do
without some preparation. This is why there’s a skipping sequence that’s sort of a
sprint prep program built into the warm-up.
As a recap: If you haven’t sprinted in a while, you should prepare for legs and
hamstrings for a few weeks. The first week of preparation focuses on the skipping
progression:
• Butt kicks
• A skips
• High Knees
• B skips
These skips go in order of hamstring involvement and should be done before any
sprinting to get the legs loose.
These are included within the warm-up to every training session to prevent
neglect.
Starting after week one, begin incorporating sprints at 50-60% of your perceived
max. Week two, 70-80%. Week three, 80-90%. And then week four, just touch
on 100%. After that, you can do multiple runs at 100%. For our goals, which are
mostly metabolic (and not sport), stick to hill sprints. The angle of the hill lessens
the stress on the hamstrings which reduces the likelihood of injury.
Implementing sprints
Sprint post-workout on your lower body days. I like to do them directly after a
training session while your muscles are still warm and ready to go.
In either case, you might as well club baby seals. Neglecting slow progression out
of impatience is a mistake, and a huge one at that. You need to start winning.
Winning creates a mindset not apt to be forgotten.
Getting the body you want requires consistent, dedicated effort. Not effort here
and there. Not half-assed effort. Or inconsistent effort. But consistent,
Slow progress steadies your mind. Progressing too fast leads to plateaus.
Plateaus are met with question marks. What do you do when you aren’t making
progress? Rarely do people stick with what they’re doing, and why would they? It
stopped working, so they hop from one program to the next. Six months and
twelve programs later, they’ve regressed more than progressed.
I don’t want that to happen to you. Go to the gym and chip away consistently.
You don’t get the body you want in one day, one week, one month, or even one
year. It takes hard work, consistency, and time. Now, that’s not to say you can’t
look better in a month, or a whole helluva lot better in one year. You can and you
will if you stick to the slow progression.
Go
Having said that, you aren’t going to find one holy grail exercise, so stop looking.
Results come from consistent training. There are a few tricks that manipulate
physiology through training and nutrition to trip the body into the, “I need big
muscles and a low bodyweight to survive,” mentality, but the actual exercises in
themselves aren’t overly critical as long as they’re within the same ballpark.
If you want big arms, you have to curl. Sure, you should do chin-ups and rows.
But you should curl here and there, too. You’ll never match the arm growth you
would otherwise have with isolation movements. Adaptation is specific to the
stressor.
It’s like math. Why do long division by hand when a calculator gets the answer
much quicker? Now, this isn’t a squat bashing. I squat. I always have. And I will
until I can’t. You should too. But there’s simply more to consider for a well
rounded physique.
It seems silly, but we know what exercises produce good results. We know that
rows target the back. We know benching hits the chest. We know squats hit the
legs. We know curls hit the arms.
The only unknown is you. You have to get out there and do these things regularly
enough to get good at them.