Sunday, April 24, 2016

REASONABLE GOALS



Every time the topic of goal setting is brought up in the world of lifting, the vast VAST majority of people always expose the absolute and fundamental need to have reasonable goals.  It is absolutely imperative that one’s goals be reasonable when lifting.  In turn, this is why athletes who use performance enhancing drugs and claim that they don’t are a bane to all society, because they create unreasonable goals for trainees to follow.



Image result for Batman Bane
Hah! Bane! You get it?! But seriously, Jeep Swenson was jacked.


I ask you, dear reader; when was the last time you applauded someone’s super reasonable accomplishments?  When was the last time that you saw a bumper sticker that read “My kid is a solid B student at Doucheface High School?”  How about that elusive copper medal for 4th place?  Do you remember the parade your city threw when your college football team had a really decent season?


Reasonable goals create reasonable people: and reasonable people are BORING.  We only remember the UNREASONABLE people in history.  It was completely unreasonable for George Washington to think that a group of militia men with minimal military training could stand up against the largest and most well trained army in the known world, but that’s exactly what he did.  It was UNREASONABLE for Alexander the Great to want to conquer the entire world, but that’s exactly what he did.  It was UNREASONABLE for the US to attempt to land on the moon a mere 50 years after man had just barely mastered flight in general, but that’s exactly what we did.  Where would we be as a society were it not for people having unreasonable goals?



Image result for native american crying
...maybe a touchy subject


People mandating reasonable goals are attempting to choke your progress in an attempt to keep you mediocre.  They tell you that wanting to bench 700lbs raw is unreasonable, and that you should focus on getting to 315 first.  To hell with that; keep your eye on the prize.  315 will happen, and so will 320 and 325, but making these numbers the goal does nothing to break you out of the ordinary.  Making these small mile markers “the goal” would be like if we celebrated every single mile from orbit until the moon during the first landing.  You’re manufacturing participation trophies within your own training.


What is the downfall of having unreasonable goals?  You’ll be upset when you don’t meet them?  God I HOPE you are upset.  I hope your failure to meet your goals eats at you with an ever consuming passion that DRIVES you to do whatever it takes to meet them.  You want to be happy?! Why on Earth would you want to be happy with your training?  Happiness is being content, and content people DON’T push themselves to the point of breaking in order to reach levels that only select few humans can only dream of.  Do you want to be the guy deadlifting 320 who is super excited to have added 5lbs to their 315lb bench or the guy deadlifting 890 who is pissed off that it’s not 900?

 Image result for Lee Moran 1,000lb squat
Remember back when the 1,000lb club was for 1,000lb squatters?

Greed is good.  That’s the lesson Gordon Gecko taught us.  It’s one of the 7 deadly sins, but as Machiavelli pointed out, the company in Hell is much better than in Heaven.  Those with their reasonable goals are remaining pious; they dare not pursue what is beyond their means.  They are peacefully living the existence that is allotted to them.  To hell with that; take what is yours by force!  Ask not if it can be done, but instead who will stop you.


This is why I take no issue with people looking up to those using performance enhancing drugs and trying to emulate their success.  These people are literally pushing the limits of what is possible for a human to accomplish, and it shows what CAN be done.  Spending one’s time debating about if someone was or was not on gear when they accomplished something is trying to argue for reasonable goals.  Who cares?  At least we know it CAN be done.  In the 1930s, a 1,000lb deadlift was unfathomable to the point of being science fiction, and a 700lb deadlift would be thought of as practically otherworldly.  Flash forward to today and you can find some high school kids hitting 700.  Why?  Because the number has become so common place that the mental hurdle is gone, and part of that reason IS the people using gear to change what is considered normal.

Image result for steve pulcinella deadlift
No big deal, just Steve Pulcinella deadlifting 700lbs at 19 years old because OF COURSE he can

People talk about how the world now has unrealistic expectations due to the prevalence of steroid use (along with photoshop and other trickery) but this is honestly a smokescreen.  Yes, it is true that the idealized male image these days (large and muscular with sharp definition) is most likely unobtainable by a natural trainee, however keep in mind that the STANDARDS of society are comically low.  Everyone is fat and weak, and simply NOT being that is an accomplishment.  If you pursue an unrealistic body image and, through the course of that journey, end up maximizing your potential and looking and performing as awesome as possible, you will stand out.  Will you be The Rock?  No, but hell, who is?  At least you won’t be The Blob.



Make your goals unreasonable.  Chase your unreasonable goals with an unreasonable amount of effort, tenacity, intensity and ferocity.  Maintain an unreasonable amount of anger over failing to meet your unreasonable goals.  Do all this, and you will create a margin between you and those who were pursuing reasonable goals that is completely unreasonable.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

DON’T CUT UNLESS YOU ARE BODYBUILDING/DON’T BULK UNLESS IT’S THE 1940S


This is a departure from my normal pseudo philosophy, but it’s something I wished I knew when I first started training, and it’s something I want to pass on to others.


I have said it many times before; the notions of bulking and cutting are far more destructive than they are beneficial.  Way too many beginner trainees get fixated on these terms, and they learn to understand training and nutrition as a very binary approach, when in reality there is infinitely more grey than there is black and white.



Image result for 50 shades of grey 
You were already making the joke in your head


Ultimately, these terms are misused, and it results in a fundamental misunderstanding of the goal and the approach.  “Cutting” is a term meant to be used in the context of bodybuilding.  Not “bodybuilding”, but actual bodybuilding; as in, the physique based competition wherein one goes on stage and has their body compared to others.  When a bodybuilder cuts, they are peeling off the very last little bits of fat to really get their physique to pop.  It’s the transition from high single digit bodyfat to low single digit bodyfat.  This means that the bodybuilder was already VERY lean to start with, and they’re now getting into contest ready condition.  THAT is cutting.  If one were at a higher bodyfat percentage, they were not cutting, but were instead “dieting”, or simply losing fat.


However, outsiders observed bodybuilders using the term “cutting” and imagined it to mean any manner of weight loss, and in turn decided that they too wished to use the industry lingo in order to seem more “legit”, thus cutting began to refer to any manner of weight loss.  This made matters confusing, as overly chubby individuals began to think that they needed to apply the same mentality and approach that bodybuilders did for cutting toward simple fat loss.  This resulted in the matrydom you see today, where people with 20% bodyfat are eating 500 calorie diets of lettuce and chicken trying desperately to “cut for summer”.  They typically destroy their hormone profile, get weak, smaller AND fatter in the process, and conclude that drugs are the only possible explanation.  They never realized that


1: Most bodybuidlers simply don’t let themselves get that fat unless they are trying to create a “before” photo for a supplement add.


2: The initial fat loss process for a bodybuilder is not nearly as drastic as the “cut” is when it comes time to get the last little bit of definition.



 
Let's save the drama for reality TV


This is why I refuse to say that I am cutting when I am losing weight.  I don’t pretend that what I am doing is anywhere close to what a bodybuilder goes through to get stage ready.  It doesn’t’ take much to go from 20% bodyfat to 15%, but the lower you get, the more challenging it becomes.  Adjust your approach as necessary.

Additionally, one of the other destructive aspects of casual trainees adopting the hardcore lingo is that they tricked themselves into believing that they would experience the same side effects.  Bodybuilders lose strength when they cut.  This is inevitable when you are dieting down to low single digit bodyfat levels.  The body simply doesn't like to be at that level for long, and it negatively impacts one's ability to perform.  Were that NOT true, weightclass based athletes would ALWAYS walk around at that weight, as less fat means less weight on the scale.


However, the casual trainee that is just transitioning from "fat" to "not fat" should NOT expect strength loss, and should instead anticipate strength GAIN.  When one starts eating a better quality diet in the pursuit of improved body composition, they should note an increase in performance.  Additionally, a surplus of calories is NOT a requirement to move more weight on a lift.  Yes, muscle won't necessarily be developed in this state (though there are of course studies saying otherwise), but one can always get better at recruiting available strength during this time.  The trainee that walks into fat loss anticipating automatic strength loss creates a self fulfilling prophecy, while the one that walks in anticipating strength increases will create the same.  There is no "cutting" happening here.



Image result for Fat person eating salad
Nope, sorry, you're just eating like a human

On the topic of bulking, we have to once again understand the origin of the term to grasp its application.  In “The Keys to Progress”, one of the stories involves 2 ironheads talking about the most important thing to create a striking physique.  One replies “muscles”, and is chastised by the other for that answer being “too obvious”.  The first one then considers for a second before offering the answer “bulk…sheer, powerful bulk”.


Stop there; they just classified “bulk” as a quality DIFFERENT than muscles.  This is what modern trainees NEED to understand.  In the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, a masculine physique was one that was beefy, muscular, and large…but no one really knew or cared about abs or low bodyfat.  Occasionally, some guy would show up with a set at a bodybuilding/physical culture show, but they were more an oddity than anything else, and it was primarily the case of someone with the genetic disposition to carry abs no matter what they ate.  Instead of being ripped, men wanted to be BULKY. Doug Hepburn, Pat Casey, Reg Park, J.C. Hise etc etc, were the men that were held up as a prized male physique due to their (“obvious”) muscles combined with their bulk.

 Image result for Doug Hepburn Image result for pat casey bench press
Make no mistake; those are some goddamn big men

We understand at this point that bulk is essentially well positioned fat.  It’s no secret that if you take someone who is 3% bodyfat and then get them up to 10%, they will be bigger, even if none of the weight gained is muscle.  Proportionally they will appear smaller (a less dramatic v-taper), but in terms of taking up space and sheer physical size, they will be larger.  When you combine this information with the knowledge that, in the early to mid 20th century Americans WEREN’T obese, and that the average physique was slim to athletic, the prospect of simply getting larger in any way, shape or form was appealing to those chasing a more masculine physique.  Look at the old Charles Atlas adds about the bully on the beach; the bully wasn’t ripped, he was just big, and so is the kid who eventually kicks the bully’s ass…and Charles Atlas for that matter.



THEN, let us consider this; the recipe for bulking back in the era was to eat copious amounts of food and drink lots of milk.  I hate to sound like a hippie here, but consider the QUALITY of food back then versus now; we exchanged quality for convenience.  I love the modern world and all of its advances, but from a nutritional perspective, our forefathers had it WAY better.  The default setting for beef was “grassfed”, milk was delivered to you in bottles from a diary with cows who saw no hormones, veggies were grown locally, real butter was used, etc etc.  These days, you have to shop VERY specifically if you want to eat like your parents and grandparents did, and it will cost you significantly more even WITHOUT adjusting for inflation.



Image result for Milkman
In retrospect, it was pretty ballsy of this guy to be knocking up your mom while delivering milk to your dad that got him jacked

So, take all of the above and put it together.  If you follow the nutritional guidelines of a generation that was less concerned about staying lean and more concerned about just being big (and had no real notion of obesity) and try to apply it using food that isn’t the same, what will be your outcome?  It’s the same reason why the Paleo diet misses the mark; you can’t try to apply rules from one era of history with food from another and expect the same results.  To try to want even BETTER results (ie: getting more muscular without getting very fat) is just sheer insanity.



This is why bulking is a terrible idea for most trainees that aren’t looking to simply add weight of any variety to their frames.  New trainees get on the bulk train, eat everything in sight (just like it says to do in Super Squats and Starting Strength and etc etc), get incredibly fat with minimal muscle, then wonder what they did wrong.  They took advice that didn’t apply to them, applied it with food that it didn’t apply to, and typically trained with intensity far below what was needed and got exactly what they deserved for their efforts.




Not all mix-ups end so well

And that is of course one of the other significant issues with the beginner trying to bulk; they simply cannot train HARD enough to utilize the surplus of calories they have ingested.  There are many factors at play here.  To start with, beginners enter training untrained in the lifts, and the majority of their early training career is spent getting BETTER at the lifts rather than stronger.  Each week, numbers may increase, but their muscles are barely getting increasingly taxed; they are simply learning how to better recruit their muscles FOR the task.  Combine this with the fact that the poundages are too low to generally be taxing along with the fact that most new beginners are lacking an athletic base, so their rest times are long and their bodies are barely getting taxed (and they walk in with a healthy amount of bodyfat) and it’s just a disaster.  Trying to force anabolism through a surplus of calories without performing with the necessary degree of intensity needed to create the stimulus required is how obesity occurs.


We want to believe that the secret to getting more muscles is by eating more.  I fell into that very trap; when I was 21, I went from 190lbs to 217lbs in the span of 9 months.  I did this by eating everything in sight (a lot of terrible junk food and fast food because I was big into elitefts at that time, which was 2008).  I trained reasonably hard at the time at least, following a Westside Barbell-esque approach, but I was so fixated on adding scale weight that I didn’t stop to consider the fact that just because weight was going up didn’t necessarily mean ANY of it was muscle.  I got very fat.  After years of being fat, I finally dieted down to see how much muscle I had put on and first I got down to 200lbs…then 195…then back to my original 190…then 185.  Yup; though I was a slightly more solid 185 compared to my previous starting 190, bulking up to 217lbs did exactly crap when compared to if I had just slowly and gradually tried to add muscle with some quality nutrition.

Image result for Fat dave tate
Surely listening to this man would guide me toward a great physique...wait...crap, should've waited until 2010

I have just recently regained 10lbs lost after my surgery, going from 185 up to 195.  I have done this WITHOUT being able to perform heavy squats or deadlifts WHILE still maintaining my abs, which I think speaks volumes to the effectiveness of my approach.  I very slowly and gradually increased my calories and kept my food choices reasonable (yeah yeah, everyone hates the term clean eating, but we all know what it means).  I limited myself to 1 cheat meal a week (no, not 1 cheat DAY, and no, not cheating all weekend), and only eat carbs around my workouts (and even then, it’s a bowl of oatmeal before lifting and a poptart afterwards).  Everything else is just meat, veggies, greek yogurt or nuts.  Additionally, I increased my training volume like MAD in order to actually create a training stimulus that would result in muscle growth.  In my most recent phase, on top of training 5 days a week, I included an extra 80 NG chin ups, 1 max set of dips (usually 70-75) and 100 band pull aparts every day to increase my weekly volume.  That was an extra 560 chin ups a week ON TOP of a ton of volume during my actual workouts.  3x5 just plain isn’t going to cut it.


The people that need to forcefeed are incredibly rare.  The truth is that people need to eat more quality food, rather than simply more food in general.  Dave Tate talked about how he got up to 270lbs eating chicken and rice, and he needed to start eating Twinkies and Oreos to finally get to 300lbs.  A beginner isn’t in that situation.  They simply need to eat well and train hard to add muscle, and train well and eat less to lose fat.