Truthfully,
this is just going to be my chance to rant at people who believe in the idea of
“programs for steroid users”, but I had no idea how to title that, and this
gives me a bit more of a vector. I’ve
already written previously about how work capacity, conditioning and GPP get
mixed all together by people who are hoping to sound smart by using all those
terms but also don’t know what they mean so they say them all at the same time
every time. To review though; for our
purposes here, “work capacity” refers to one’s ability to recover between
workouts, rather than the ability to recover WITHIN the workout. Work capacity is important, because volume is
a critical driver of progress, and as such, ability to recover from amount of volume
accumulated in training facilitates the ability to UTILIZE enough volume to
drive progress. Without work capacity, a
trainee will stall out and not be able to train hard enough to make progress without
the risk of overreaching and burning out.
Or they'll just do this
Or they'll just do this
So how do we
acquire work capacity? Once again, the
trifecta of effort, consistency and, most importantly, time. It simply takes time to accumulate the
ability to recover from more and more volume. You spend years and years just pounding away
in training and, in turn, you train your body to be able to recover from this
sort of activity. And each time you go
back to train, you push it just a little harder, and continue to stretch your
work capacity greater and greater.
Sometimes you take breaks from this approach, and focus more on
intensifying and peaking, but after that time is done, it’s back to improve
that work capacity so you can get more volume and make more growth.
It’s worth
noting as well that it doesn’t necessarily require lifting weight to build work
capacity. Sure, specificity is dandy,
but fundamentally we’re talking about improving the body’s ability to recover
from physical stress, and this can come from many forms. This could be acquired from a lifetime of
physical labor, or from being active in athletics from a young age, or even
simply being an actively engaged human that enjoys physical pursuits with no
specific direction. There really can’t
be enough positive things said about the benefit of being and remaining active.
Most trainees would love to look like that when they're 80...or now
Most trainees would love to look like that when they're 80...or now
“Get to the
part about steroids!” Yeah, ok, fine. So
first, I’m going outside my wheelhouse a bit, as I have zero experience with
anabolics. Never used them, never even
seen them, wouldn’t know where to buy them.
However, the reason I bring them up is that, many times, trainees will
see a program posted, look at the total volume, balk at it and right away go “Psh,
that program only works if you’re on steroids!”
Or they’ll see a program advocated by a particular trainee and say “It
only worked for them because they were on steroids.” Arnold’s 2 a day split program from his
Encyclopedia of Modern bodybuilding is notorious for this charge, as are many
other programs.
Here’s the
thing; yes, chemicals can enhance the recovery process, but they cannot
replicate the benefits of a decade or two spent increasing your work capacity. Yeah, it can improve protein synthesis rates
which can result in better growth and recovery, but if you spent your lifetime
as a slug and then shoot up a bunch of anabolics, it’s still only going to be
so effective. Crying “steroids” whenever
you see a challenging program is taking the easy way out; the reality is, you
need to start crying “work capacity!”
But how else will you become a sexual tyrannosaurs?
But how else will you become a sexual tyrannosaurs?
These
athletes and lifters tend to come from a lifetime background of training in
some capacity. The Soviet lifters
engaged in play and athletics as soon as they were able to, and constantly
stayed in that state while being groomed to be athletes such that, when the
time came to train, they had the work capacity of a horse and could handle
absurd workloads, which translated into crazy growth. We saw the same with the Bulgarians. Arnold shared stories of his childhood where,
for insolence, his father would punish him by making him before hundreds of
squats and other bodyweight exercises. Successful
bodybuilders were bit by the ironbug at a young age and spent much of their
youth training in some way, Eddie Hall was a national level swimmer before
transitioning to weights, Mariusz Pudzianowski’s dad was an accomplished
weightlifter that taught those skills to his young son who also had an interest
in karate and boxing, etc etc.
So yeah, when
looking at these routines, it’s quite possible that you shouldn’t follow them,
but not necessarily because you “have to be on steroids” to make them work; it’s
because you need the WORK CAPACITY to be able to recover from them. And, consequently, the notion that you can
evaluate that a trainee is on steroids purely by the amount of volume they have
in their program is absurd; they very well may simply have spent the necessary
amount of time to develop the work capacity that grants them recovery from
these sessions. I’ve witnessed
first-hand natural trainees progressing off these very “steroids only”
programs, and it’s because they were simply lunatics that spent a lifetime
becoming machines that fed off volume, and I’ve also witnessed lifetime coach
potatoes hop on a cycle of steroids, throw all the volume they could at
themselves, and end up looking like a sack of crap because one steroid cycle
can’t undo 20+ years of bad living.
No, that doesn't mean try different products
This is
incentive for WHY you should continue to keep pushing yourself in your training;
so that you can expand your work capacity to these levels. People want to stay on prescriptions of the
minimal effective dosage like it’s some sort of badge of honor to do as little
work as possible. Screw that; go hard as
often as you can so that you have a super deep well to dig into when it comes
time to push the volume. Keep expanding
your body’s ability to recover so that you can keep throwing more at it and
continue to grow to a ridiculous level.
Pair this with a solid base of conditioning and you’ll come up with monstrous
training programs that accumulate a ton of volume in short order that has you
outgrowing everyone.
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ReplyDeleteEmevas- curious as to your thoughts on John Broz’s “dark times” and if you’ve experienced something similar.
ReplyDelete-Will
Hey Will, I'm honestly not familiar with Broz's "dark times" concept to be able to speak intelligently to it. I googled and couldn't find anything definitive on the topic.
DeleteMy understanding is that it’s an adaptation period to doing more work. He speaks about it mostly in the context of daily squatting, but I imagine it appeals to any extra stimulus/stress. Idea is that you feel terrible for a while (“dark time”) before you adapt. If you have some time, this is a great older Q&A: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=121212081&pagenumber=
DeleteI haven't trained in a manner similar to Broz to really be able to comment on it. I do concur with his idea though that being able to set PRs while under fatigue means you'll set even bigger PRs once out of fatigue.
DeleteEmevas (or pwnisher). On the subject of work capacity/20 rep squats, I'm planning to run a program using 20 rep squats later in the year. Previously, squatting heavy and hard consistently has left me unable to walk (I thought I was doing smolov jnr), which is something I can't afford in my life at this point. To me, this is an obvious lack of what you'd call work capacity, and I was wondering what your thoughts would be on how to prepare for this so that I can still work and look after my family while squatting heavy (For me) and hard.
ReplyDelete