BUT BEGINNERS SHOULDN’T

One of the constant criticisms I hear in regards to my writing is that everything I write is all well and good for an experienced trainee “but beginners shouldn’t” X.  It’s all well and good for an experienced trainee to focus on technique rather than form, for an experienced trainee to train in a weakened state, for an experienced trainee to hit stupid dropsets and stripsets, for an experienced trainee to keep pushing volume until they break, etc etc, but a beginner shouldn’t.  There are SO many guardian angels for beginners out there that it’s a goddamn miracle how many weak beginners are out there spinning their wheels for years.  Where are the results for the hard work of all these valiant guardians?  Why, with so many helpful, watchful eyes out there dictating what is good and not good for beginners, do we still see SO many beginners struggling with just the basics?  It’s because your mother henning has made them soft, weak, and fearful.  You’ve spent so much time preoccupied on what beginners SHOULDN’T do that you’ve completely forgotten exactly what it is that they SHOULD do.

It sounds better when he says it

First, let’s start with the obvious: I don’t write for beginners.  I don’t write for anyone but myself.  I’ve said many times that this blog is for me; it forces me to write about 1000 words a week and get rambling thoughts out of my head and onto paper, much like what is happening here.  The cautionary tale for beginners is unwarranted, especially when considering that my sphere of influence is GREATLY diminished, as I have minimal social media profile nor do I engage in self-promotion.  All of THAT aside, the warnings are STILL silly, because they seem to operate from people who must have forgotten what it was like to be a beginner.

I haven’t forgotten.  It’s been 19 years and I still remember.  I still remember saving up cash to buy a standard bench and dumbbell set from Play it Again sports at age 14, putting it in my backyard with a tarp over it to protect it from the elements, and doing bench and dumbbell curls 5-7 days a week on it.  I still remember that bench giving me the confidence to train in my high school weight room, where me and my buddies would take turns trying to max out on every machine and barbell lift possible.  I still remember slinging iron with wild abandon, not having any idea that there was a “right” pair of shoes to wear, how to brace, optimal training frequency, protein timing, MRV, low testosterone markers, fatigue management, etc etc.  And I STILL remember that, after a few years of that, people started considering me big and strong.

 
You gotta keep in mind that, as you keep training, the standards keep getting worse

I STILL remember getting into my college weight room, which was a dank little poorly outfitted afterthought that was STILL twice the size of my high school weight room, my eyes lighting up, and deciding I was going to get “serious” with my training and start a bodypart split.  Yes, the same kinds of splits that the internet SWEARS “don’t work”.  I remember gaining 20lbs in college while STILL having no idea what I was doing: just training hard, training often, and eating very well.  How did you forget?

How did you forget that it was effort, intensity and consistency that got you to where you are?  How did you forget that people had been getting big and strong for decades without ANY real knowledge of training?  How did you forget that what is now called “bro-science” was the stuff that WORKED?  And now, here you are, saying that ADVANCED trainees can get away with training hard, often and for a long time, but that BEGINNERS need to do something super duper special?  That beginners are just fragile little snowflakes that will rupture the instant they do anything outside of the party approved method for training?

Oh hey, a new one

“But if they fail, they’ll get discouraged and quit!”  Let them!  Folks, anyone who is going to quit the instant they meet resistance is simply not long for this activity.  It does you no good to coddle, protect and “save” them from themselves.  If the ONLY way they’ll stay on the path is by encountering nothing but success along the way, not only are they simply not going to last, but they’re also going to miss out on the ACTUAL value of training: learning how to overcome adversity. And I say this understanding how sheltered it is to say such a thing, but that’s the point.  For many of you, this is going to be the ONLY adversity you really have to overcome, and that is especially true for those beginners that are ready to quit as soon as they encounter failure.  If your first instinct is to quit, follow that instinct.  Find another hobby.  It’s not for everyone, and that’s fine.  I quit guitar for the same reason.  But if you have some tenacity and wherewithal to hit a wall and decide to figure out how you’re going to get past it, you might just make it.

There are no restrictions or limitations on what a beginner should or shouldn’t do.  They should absolutely copy the routines that are too high in volume, they should train like people far more accomplished than themselves, they should push their limits too far, burnout, fail hard, and crash.  The ones that survive are going to be pretty awesome.  “But that’s survivor bias!”  I certainly hope so.  Not everyone is going to succeed, and it’d be MUCH better for you to figure that out at the start of your journey rather than be 5 years deep because you followed every possible path that WOULDN’T lead to failure only to discover that the absence of failure isn’t success: it’s simply ambivalence.  But hey, maybe, just maybe, there are a LOT more survivors than failures among the population, and all we have to do is LET them go out on their own to figure it out.  Maybe just hitting the weight room hard for a few years will get you some results, the same way it gets results for thousands of high school kids every single year.  Maybe we’ll be surprised from the results, and maybe we’ll start saying that the only thing beginners shouldn’t do is go online and listen to every guru that comes along with minimal accomplishments and a lot of youtube videos.

I genuinely have no idea who this is, but he seems to pop up a lot on the topic of lifting

All I can do is hope.