THE TYRANNY OF FREEDOM

   

As much as people think they want it, people HATE freedom.  Freedom is reviled, despised, rejected and feared by a great majority of the population.  People crave restrictions, boundaries, bondage, limitations, rules, laws, oaths, vows, etc etc.  They crave this because it prevents them from engaging in something truly terrifying; introspection and reflection.  It prevents them from being held accountable for themselves.  The truth is that there is nothing more tyrannical than freedom to most people, because freedom forces you to act and decide for yourself, and very few people would ever willingly choose themselves as their masters.

Granted, some people shouldn't be left to their own devices

Alright, so that had nothing to do with lifting, so let me reign it back in.  What I’m trying to get at here is that trainees are always looking for rules, boundaries and limits when it comes to training.  They want to find the exact parameters of all things and then hold all things TO these parameters, to the point that they’ll engage in tremendous amounts of arguments with other trainees in some sort of pursuit to find out what is right.  They determine what maximal volume is acceptable in training, what ideal frequency is to occur, the exact moment protein synthesis occurs at, what specific genome is best suited for lifting, etc etc.  Why do they do this?  Because they FEAR freedom.


It’s so terrifying when you are told that you have the freedom to do whatever you want.  Don’t I HAVE to squat if I want to get strong?  Don’t I HAVE to drink a protein shake immediately post training?  Don’t I HAVE to have a strength foundation before doing a bodypart split?  Hell no!  YOU ARE FREE!  You have the freedom to decide, to act, to plot and plan and scheme and execute and conquer and succeed!  It’s a choice that gets made by YOU!  …isn’t that horrible?

Sometimes it can be

It’s absolutely tyrannical because there are SEVERE consequences for exercising your freedom: specifically, the consequences of your own actions.  If you decide to never squat, you suffer whatever consequences are inherent in those actions.  The same is true of never doing mobility work, of benching 7 days a week, of running Smolov on top of Westside, or any other idea you come up with freely of your own volition.  There are laws of the universe that you are beholden to as you exercise your freedom, but this ultimately means that YOU are your own dictator here.  No one else gets to decide the results of your actions.



Why does this matter?  Because people are so quick out there to tell you what you MUST do.  And, in turn, people are equally in a rush to listen to these nutjobs, because people CRAVE a master.  Having never tried otherwise, they’ll tell you that you HAVE to consume protein in the “anabolic window” or else the workout is wasted.  And they’ll cite studies and references until they’re blue in the face, but never once was it a question of exercising their freedom and trying otherwise.  They’d rather live like a prisoner.  These are the same people who beg to have some sort of drill sergeant type trainer to keep them on task in their training and nutrition, because left to their own devices, they’d exercise their freedom to not get to their own goals.  These people are so terrified of freedom that they’ve sold themselves to slavery for the sake of security.

Little known fact: Ben had an 800lb deadlift

But with as comfortable as a life of bondage may be, it is never a fully realized existence.  It’s an existence within a bubble: confined, restrained, and ultimately unfulfilled.  It is the allegory of the cave: a life that exists of observing shadows and imagining them to be real.  To REALLY exist, to live authentically, to experience life, one must choose freedom.  And it is a choice.  And it is a terrifying choice, because within freedom there is uncertainty, and there is the potential to fail...but only with freedom is there also the potential to succeed.  Only when one is free are they able to take the risks NECESSARY to achieve the reward.  A slave’s only reward is to not die, but a freeman’s reward is to LIVE, and the two could not be further apart.


Be your own master and live under the harsh tyrannical rule of your own freedom.  Take chances, make mistakes, stray from the beaten path and face all the consequences that are a result of your actions.  And face them as a man who is free, with no one to blame but yourself, and, in turn, LEARN from these actions.  Those that are constantly in a rush to find a way to blame anyone but themselves miss out on the best part of failure: learning.  You will become much stronger, inside and out, when you are able to accept what you have done, why you have done it, and what you will do in the future to make it better.

I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR PROGRESS

I’ve been writing 1000 words a week for about 5 and a half years now, and unfortunately, when you produce that much content, there is a tendency for things to get misunderstood or misinterpreted.  People will read what I write, but inevitably they’ll still discuss with me about how certain things make a beginner progress faster than others, so why shouldn’t they do that program instead of some other program.  Constantly I am inundated with questions and critiques about optimal progression rates, models and schemes, and it just blows my mind.  It seems I haven’t been clear in my writing, so allow me to absolve all ambiguity here; I don’t care about your progress. 

But it WOULD be nice if you'd at least get through the door

This isn’t me being ugly and saying that I don’t care about you, although to be totally truthful I have no idea who you are and most likely DON’T care about you.   But in the more global “you” sense here, to include “me” in with the you, I simply don’t care how fast a trainee is progressing.  That has NEVER been what I have been about.  That is NOT what I write about.  Jesus, how could you even misunderstand me to think that I ever once cared about optimal progression?  The fastest possible gains?  The quickest path to success?  Folks, I’m a strongman competitor with no coach or crew, training out of a garage by myself first thing in the morning for an hour a day with terrible technique: I am the complete opposite of the embodiment of optimal.  I’ve never cared about your progression: I care about your discovery.

There’s no value in just looking up the optimal mix of volume and intensity, plugging it into a spreadsheet, and mechanically grinding out reps until you’ve “won.”  That’s not being human.  That’s not being strong.  That’s simply being a machine, programmed to run and function by outside sources, with no autonomy.  I want you to fail. I want you to make mistakes.  I want you to choose poorly.  I want you to go against the party-line!  Stop running your state approved beginners programs with the exact right amount of sets and reps, and go off the rails and do something dumb, different and dangerous so you can LEARN something.  Go be experienced, find out what does and doesn’t work, and figure out WHY it doesn’t work.  THAT is the value of training.

This guys is about to learn a LOT

“But surely you agree a beginner should do a beginner program and an intermediate should do an intermediate program, right?”  What the Hell do those words even mean?  I thought beginners were mythical unicorns capable of the magical “beginners gains” that mean that, if they even LOOK at a weight, they get stronger, right?  So why do they need a specially crafted approach to training?  Why can’t they just get big and strong like everyone else that lifts weights?  Are you trying to tell me there are programs out there that intentionally SLOW DOWN your growth?  Who would design such a thing?  Surely no one is out there looking to put a governor on their growth.  Any program built around making someone bigger or stronger will work for someone seeking that goal, no matter what weird internet name they’ve decided to classify themselves with.

No one can reasonably explain to me WHY optimal training NEEDS to happen, especially for a non-competitive trainee or one who makes zero income based off their physical ability.  This is primarily because few want to admit that this stems from a childish mentality of “I WANT IT NOW!”  Guess what; you ain’t getting it now, even IF your training is optimal.  It’s STILL going to take a long time, and the difference between your optimal training and someone else’s non-optimal non-optimal training is going to be so microscopic that it’s not worth even analyzing. 

Hate to break it to you, but trying to rush your journey never turns out well

Hey, why don’t I clumsily break out some math, as I am prone to doing from time-to-time.  Say we agree with the currently en vogue notion that the max amount of muscle mass a human can grow over a lifetime is about 40lbs.  I’m not talking about lean mass, but pure, solid real muscle.  Well let’s say you’re Johnny Optimal, and you’re able to eek out 5% better growth than everyone else with your super optimal approach to training.  Congrats!  You gained…2 extra pounds of muscle.  Wow, that seems insignificant, considering how visually striking the first 40lbs were.  10%? 4lbs.  Still pretty small.  You’d have to be training in some manner that netted 20% better growth to even be getting into the realm of something SOMEWHAT significant, and realistically, how likely do you figure doing 5 sets instead of 6 sets is going to play into getting that extra 20%?

You can play that same stupid game with weight lifted too.  Beginner is supposed to optimally put 5lbs on the bar each training session, 3 times a week for 12 weeks if they’re following the optimal training program?  Cool story.  So looking at 180lbs added to the bar, assuming everything goes right.  Say someone trains sub-optimally, and only gets 90% of that growth?  Well damn, that poor fool only added…162lbs to the bar.  Hah!  What a chump!  Dude left 18lbs on the platform.  Wait, who cares about 18lbs?  36lbs at 80%?  Still not even a real plate.  These differences are insignificant in terms of results on paper, but MEANWHILE, what results did the guy get who just ran a cookie cutter program and put no thought in it vs the guy who gambled, tried something weird, and saw what happened?

But it's the BEST beginner program!

I do not CARE about your progress.  I’ve been lifting for 18 years, and I’ve done that with a torn labrum and a ruptured ACL and a bunch of other small nagging injuries.  You have SO much time to train, there’s no point in trying to rush to the end.  Hell, I don’t even like training and I’m still in no rush to reach the end; what the hell is up with all of you masochists out there they claim you LOVE training?  Don’t you want to do it for longer?  Why are you trying to get to the end so quickly?  Use this as an opportunity to grow, not just physically, but mentally as well.  Expand your mind and your horizons on what can and can’t work, and understand why and how people succeed with methods different than your own.  Don’t see it as a challenge to your paradigm; see it as an opportunity to get even better, expand your toolbox, and become well rounded and all encompassing.  You risk nothing by training non-optimally, and gain a lot.

  

QUIT BEING A COWARD: STOP MICROLOADING

Boy am I certain that title is going to rile some folks up, but my regular readers probably have thick skin by now, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: everything I write in this blog is essentially my current self yelling at my past self.  I made all these mistakes, to include this one.  For my less insane readers out there that live normal lives and would have no idea what microloading even means, it refers to the practice of using fractional weights (1lb or less) to very very slowly add weight to the bar between workouts, eventually working up to the smallest real plate (2.5lbs per side) increase.  Why does microloading equate to cowardice?  Because a microloader is simply someone who refuses to abandon their current programming for ANY reason and instead seeks to apply the wimpiest, dumbest possible means to continue assured progression.  Rather than take any risks whatsoever, they instead insist on going for the guaranteed .000000000000001% return on investment.  They are the folks making $.17 a year off their investments and saying “well at least it’s progress!”.  No, it’s not progress: it’s cowardice.  Go be brave and get some growth.

Stupid will do in a pinch

Microloading almost always goes hand in hand with linear progression, which is essentially the “hooked on phonics” of lifting as far as programming goes.  It’s kinda sorta programming, but really it’s taking just ONE aspect of programming (overload), applying it to only ONE aspect of training (weight on the bar) and then saying that all the necessary thinking is done.  Always keep the reps and weights the same, always keep the movements the same, always do things in the same order on the same day, just put more weight on the bar.  Congrats!  You can program lifting!  Quick, go write an e-book and make an app, become an Instagram coach, and be incredibly snarky on the internet whenever someone asks about training.  Hey wait, how come some folks use different reps?  Because they’re idiots of course!  That, or advanced trainees.  Or on steroids.  Probably all 3 really.

So where does microloading fit in?  Again, with linear progression being a total one-tricky pony, eventually that one trick stops working.  If the only thing you ever needed to do was just keep adding weight to the bar, there would be 1000lb benchers in every gym.  Milo of Croton’s story of the calf was a myth folks; eventually things stall and new programming has to be introduced.  But not if you MICROLOAD!  Nope, you don’t need to do anything different if you microload; you can just keep on slapping more weight on the bar and riding out your linear gains for as long as possible.  Well, slapping is probably the wrong term, because you’ll most likely break a microplate if you slap it on.  “Gingerly place it on”, is probably more accurate.  But either way, joy of joys, you STILL don’t have to think, and can just keep on being the lifting monkey.

Just think: if you microload from the START, you'll NEVER stop progressing!

Coward!  Go take a risk and try something new!  Your program has STOPPED working: all you are doing now is just riding out the slow death rattle as the corpse settles.  You are the desperate clinger on in a failed relationship sending unanswered text messages and looking for ANY sign of hope.  It’s over!  Move on!  Because guess what?  You’re in the best possible situation you can be in!  What you are doing does not work, which means you now have the freedom to do ANYTHING you want.  Any program now is available for your undertaking, and will most likely result in something better than your current approach.  Even if your new program doesn’t work (which, by the way, is pretty much impossible with enough effort), you’ll learn more through FAILING a new program than you will from desperately clinging on to your old one.  Now is the time to make mistakes and learn something.

Want some examples?  Sure thing.  How about something that completely spits in the face of microloading: Dan John’s “Quarters and Plates” idea?  Only use 25s and 45s in your training?  “Hah, yeah, good luck going from a 135 to a 185 bench, let me know how that works out!” Hey, shut up for a second because you sound stupid, it works REALLY well.  Know how you make the jump?  Get to the point that you can bench 135 for 15 good reps, and then jump up to 185 and watch what happens.  And then, when you can get 185 for 15 reps, throw on 225 and watch what happens.  I’ve used this method with squatting (both regular and front squats) with amazing success to the point that I genuinely wonder why I don’t do it with other movements.  The opposite of microloading; this is MACROLOADING, and it works AND you will actually get bigger and stronger through the process.  And hell, you might actually learn something.

Method may not work in all instances

There are SO many ways to create progress in training that it’s just about ridiculous, but it’s ALSO true that nothing works forever and changes NEED to be made to continue to grow.  The only thing you can do to really sabotage yourself in that regard is refuse to make changes.  Programs work until they don’t, and instead of trying to figure out how to make it all work again, be thankful for the good ride you got and move on to the next stage.  After a few different programs, you can most likely come back to what worked before and find out it works AGAIN: it just needed a break.  And this is why people cry “there are so many programs: it’s too confusing!” not realizing that this is an example of all the avenues of success available to them.  Just do yourself the favor of NOT trying to make your new program fit into the paradigm of your old one.  Don’t try to do 20 rep squats with 3x5s for everything BUT the squats, don’t try to do Westside Barbell’s approach with 5/3/1s loading, don’t try to run HIT training with a Bulgarian daily max, etc etc.  Your program STOPPED working, so quit trying to bring it back and go do a NEW program. 

Be brave, explore those uncharted waters, and reap the benefits of being a pioneer. Let everyone else stay back home and catch the plague.  Comfort never made anyone strong.

RAISE YOUR FLOOR, NOT YOUR CEILING: SOCIAL MEDIA AND TRAINING

Before I begin, I know for a fact I’ve already talked about this subject before, but it’s a classic and still something that I’m figuring out in my own training, so it’s worth coming back to from time to time.  I’ve witnessed a few authors lamenting the negative impact of social media on training these days, and ironically enough I’ve witnessed this lamentation ON social media, but I digress.  The primary complaint here is that, with the constant 24 hour surveillance inherent in those individuals who choose to effectively live their lives on social media, there is a constant pressure to perform and, in turn, be at peak performance during all training.  What we observe are trainees that are always as lean as possible, always setting PRs in training, moving the heaviest weights, etc etc…in training.  Where is this performance on the day of the competition?  It’s when the excuses come out, assuming these people ever even compete in the first place.  These folks end up peaking in training and have nothing left to give when the time actually comes to perform.  They made the mistake of focusing on raising their ceiling so much that their floor has remained the same.

And sometimes, you can get hurt when you keep trying to raise the roof

These days, people greatly misunderstand the purpose of training, but it wasn’t always that way.  Prior to the era where you could upload every meal you took, most people trained in solitude, with only their training partners aware of how their training was going, what they were doing, and what it looked like.  For everyone else, the only time you observed a trainee was when they showed up at a competition and displayed the benefit of their training.  In turn, there was a clear distinction of WHEN performance mattered: at the competition.  This meant that training was the place where the ugliness occurred, where “the sausage got made”, to borrow a pretty horrifically imaged metaphor.  In training, it was where you had bad days, looked bad, grinded out awful reps, failed to meet some arbitrary internet standard, etc etc.  It didn’t matter how you looked THEN, as long as it made you successful in competition.

But now, trainees operate with two different competitions in mind: the looming one at the end of the training cycle, and the daily competition to always look good and strong.  Unfortunately, you can’t compete every day.  Once again, we knew that BEFORE the internet, but somehow lost that knowledge.  With trainees recording every set to upload to the internet, they’re overly concerned with ensuring that they’re always lifting the heaviest weights possible so that they look VERY strong in training, they want to make sure they are always as lean as possible so that they look good in their selfies, they want to ensure they are at peak performance 24 hours a day, every day of their life, hitting perfect depth on squats and not grinding a single deadlift in fear of internet red lights.  How ELSE can they hope for the prestigious sponsorship that gives them 10% off the ONLY legal herbal testosterone booster on the market #BREASTMODE?

I suppose there are worse sponsors

The result of this insanity is ineffective training.  Training is supposed to increase your FLOOR, not your ceiling.  By this, I mean it’s supposed to improve your baseline, bottom of the barrel ability.  You train so that your WORST performance continues to improve, because if you improve your worst, your best inevitably gets better too, but that does NOT work in reverse.  When you take a handful of semi-legal stimulants and blast death metal until your ears ring and hit up the nose tork and slam your skull against the bar and hit a grindy squat single with the entire gym screaming at you, you’ve absolutely improved your top performance as much as possible…for a training PR.  Congrats. No one but the internet cares.  But when you add 5lbs to your “still asleep” squat, it’s only going to increase exponentially when you add all that other stuff.  When you finally let your abs fade so you can add 20lbs to your frame, you’re only going to look better once you chip away the fat again and let the abs out.  When you eat enough food to allow yourself to accumulate more volume in training, it means you’ll have better conditioning available to help you recover once that food goes away. 

Your training is where looks don’t matter.  This is where you need to do the things that make you better for when it DOES matter.  This means some reps can be not clean, some squats can be not to depth, some deadlifts can be soft locked, box jumps can be missed, etc.  It means LOWER weights can be used.  I’ve honestly taken the approach that I try to train in the least ideal conditions possible, because it means I get to lift less weight in order to achieve a desired training stimulus.  This was a boon when I was recovering from knee surgery and didn’t want to put a heavy load on my recovering knee.  And, amazingly enough, I ended up setting PRs and winning events in competitions with weights I never even came CLOSE to handling in training, because the training made me STRONGER for when it mattered.  Had I been concerned about making sure my weights always looked impressive in training, I’d never actually get to the point of actually getting stronger.

But think about how COOL you can look!

Keep your eyes on the prize and remember WHY you’re training in the first place.  Training isn’t the goal; training helps you ACHIEVE the goal.  It doesn’t matter how you look on the way there, so long as, once you get there, you are big and strong.  Let the Instagram stars have their followers be all agog over their amazing training lifts, and let those some Instagram stars be the master of excuses when the time comes to either explain why they had such an awful competition or why they don’t even compete in the first place.  Spend your time being ugly in training so that you can come out the other side something unworldly.  Build your cocoon in training, focus on the goal, and transform.