Sunday, January 13, 2019

ON YOUNG TRAINEES




Since this is my blog, I get to be self-indulgent, and this is one of those times.  I’m at the ripe old age of 33, but I’m going to use this as an opportunity to get on my old man rage and talk about “back in my day.”  Why?  Because I spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, to the point that I now observe trainees that were the same age when I started training, and through these observations I’ve noted some bizarre trends that are completely hamstringing young trainees.  No matter how much information we make readily available, problems always exist with all levels of trainees, and more information just results in new problems.  In fact, I feel it’s to the point that new trainees need to quit learning so damn much and just do like we did before all this information was out there; experiment, fail, learn and grow.

Image result for Muscle and fitness Derek Poundstone
This used to be where to get the "latest and greatest information"

One of the primary issues I observe with new trainees is a massive pre-occupation with the programming of their training.  They get it in their head that programming is the most critical aspect of programming, and the key to their success.  They believe that any sort of miscalculation will result in years of failure and regression, that they have a finite amount of “newbie gains” that can be exhausted on poor programming and result in stagnation and terminal “skinny fatness”, they believe the only way worth training is the most optimal way to train, etc etc.  What’s the issue with worrying about programming?  This preoccupation with programming typically comes at the expense of NOT being preoccupied with knowing HOW to move.

I’ve observed a trainee ask approximately 1000 questions on 5/3/1 for Beginners.  For those of you that are not “in the know”, 5/3/1 is marketed as the simplest training program for gaining raw strength and size.  The “for Beginners” variation of that would be the even SIMPLER version of the simplest training program for gaining raw strength and size.  It is spelled out set for set, rep for rep, exercise for exercise, you are told what day to train per week, what to do on that day, etc.  That ANY question can be asked about the program blows my mind, let alone the amount of questions I observe about the program on a daily basis.  One fateful day, among the myriad of questions this trainee asked, he asked about substituting deadlifts out of the program.  Through his trails and tribulations, he had deduced that the deadlift was simply “not for him”, and he needed a new movement for the program.  When prompted to post a form check, he uploaded a video of him deadlifting that looked like a cat dry-humping a barbell.  He literally could NOT hinge at the hips, all movement stemmed from his lower back, he couldn’t even bend down to reach the bar without significant rounding, etc.  Hours spent researching programming, not a second spent learning how to move.

Image result for awful deadlift
"Hey guys, my deadlift has stalled at 135: should I run deadlift Smolov or Coan/Philippi?"

And this preoccupation with programming stems from a problem that IS as old as time when it comes to new trainees: emulating the more experienced trainees.  Before, the issue was that new trainees would just directly copy the training programs of experienced trainees and burn out because they lacked the work capacity, but now new trainees simply ape the mentality and mannerisms of experienced trainees, and with that comes another new bizarre trend in young trainees: pre-mature aging.  What do I mean here?  There are 15 year old trainees that, if you hear them talk, you’d swear they were 80 years old and worked in a coal mine their whole lives.  They talk about how they have bad knees and can only front squat, bad shoulders so they can only use a swiss bar and safety squat bar, lower back problems so they only belt squat and do romainian deadlifts, etc.  Jesus Christ, what did you do in 15 years of living to do this?  I’ve trained for 19 years and I’m not that broken.  I have a right shoulder with a torn labrum after 6 dislocations and a dozen subluxations, and I have the shoulder mobility to low-bar squat and press with a straight bar.  I blew out my knee so bad that they could not FIND my ACL in my MRI and I can still squat.  How did you get so old?

The internet, of course, makes this behavior self-validating, because these ancient teenagers get online and find others just like them and keep agreeing with each other.  They’ll all lament about how they can’t run certain programs because they can’t do the movements in them, they’ll help each other come up with replacement movements, they’ll find someone even YOUNGER than them and caution them with their years of wisdom to “not do like they did”, etc etc.  Why is all of this?  Because these trainees observe guys like Dave Tate, Ronnie Coleman, Steve Pulcinella, Ed Coan, etc, being broken and assume it’s some sort of badge of honor that comes with getting big and strong.  They’re in such a rush to be just like the big boys that they can’t WAIT to be crippled and lame.

Image result for squatting on a bosu ball
This should do the trick

Once again, this stems from a lack of patience in what really matters for young trainees: learning how to actually MOVE.  So much of these aches and pains are due to poor execution of a movement pattern, NOT the inherent danger contained within these movements.  This gets to be my old man rant again, but a lack of patience among young trainees stems primarily FROM their youth, specifically as it relates to their perception of time.   A young trainee decides that they have to give up on a movement because they “tried figuring it out” and it just didn’t work.  When you ask them how long they spent trying to figure it out, they say 3 months.  It’s easy to scoff, but when you’ve only been training for 9 months, that seems like FOREVER.  And when you start out training not knowing how to move your body in general, 3 months spent “learning” a movement is really just 3 months spent screwing up a movement.  So what ends up happening?  These young trainees amass a HUGE list of “off-limits” movements for training at an incredibly young age and completely hamstring themselves from any growth, and their brokenness becomes self-perpetuating. They lock themselves into bizarre movement patterns and habits and lose out a significant degree of basic mobility (but don’t worry: that can be fixed with a mobility routine!  Another rant, for another time).

Wrapping up the old man rant, what we’re observing is the ramifications of a lack of athletics and genuine “play” among adolescents.  These basic movement patterns used to be reinforced by going outside and playing, climbing trees and playground equipment, running around, and playing a variety of sports.  Instead, trainees spent a significant degree of their youth sedentary, then reach an “oh crap” moment where they realize their youth is escaping and they look and perform like junk, and try to reverse it.  They’re sold a pack of nonsense that they’re running off “natural steroids” as a teenager, and that they MUST maximize this by weight training as hard as possible, run into all these issues because they don’t know how to move, and thus the above happens.  Instead of trying to find the most perfect program, instead of accumulating a list of fake injuries, instead of ruling out 90% of training movements, these trainees need to go become athletes.  They need to move through space, resist another human attempting to score points, move laterally, etc etc.  THIS is the beginner foundation, THESE are the “beginner gains”, and with this they’ll actually be set up for success.  They’ll also learn what a real injury looks and feels like, and the difference between pain and strain.  And, of course, they’ll hate this advice, because they want to train like all the big names in lifting…but hey, guess what THEY did?   

24 comments:

  1. "Why is all of this? Because these trainees observe guys like Dave Tate, Ronnie Coleman, Steve Pulcinella, Ed Coan, etc, being broken and assume it’s some sort of badge of honor that comes with getting big and strong. They’re in such a rush to be just like the big boys that they can’t WAIT to be crippled and lame."

    We might observe different segments of society. From my experience, I don't think it's this at all. The barrier to getting big and strong used to be picking up a magazine to get a training program, or going to the gym and struggling until you figured things out or someone forced you to listen to their help, or being real smart and asking someone bigger/stronger for help from the start.

    IN MY DAY, I took weights in high school and we figured things out ourselves, with some help from the teacher, and by copying the older, bigger, stronger, football players in the class. When I came back from freshman year of college over winter break and wanted to learn how to power clean, I didn't get online, I emailed my old weights teacher and asked if I could come in and he could teach me. He taught me "jump and shrug," which is ***so not okay by USAW teaching standards*** (lol) but hey, he was huge and was once an NFL practice squadder, so he must know how to power clean. He knew better than a 160lb Crossfitting USAW nerd--and I know, because I took that ****ing certification!

    I think most of us who started lifting in the pre-or-early-Internet era did so by a lot of physical trial and error, because there was no other option.

    The barrier now is...nothing. Get on the Internet. Join a forum. Post a discussion. Read a FAQ if you're real smart. Zero physical investment in the process. I highly doubt that the majority of new /r/fitness subscribers would know any of the names you listed--that was our generation's version of online fitness info. Flawed in its own way, yes, but now, it's hordes of Youtube Gurus peddling fear for clicks, if it's anyone.

    More likely, they just see jacked dudes around them, refuse to believe that it's effort, physicality, and trial-and-error that is the answer, and look to where we get the answer for everything else--the Internet--and never bother trying anything themselves.

    Then, you add in the sedentary lifestyle courtesy of cutting away physical education funding, community sports, outdoor recreation, and any sort of manual labor (in the USA, at least), and it is zero wonder to me why kids think you can learn anything you need to know from the Internet (we've taught them this) and have no clue how to physically move (we've not taught them this).

    Shit man, learning from Tate, Pulcinella, Coan, and Coleman would be about the best thing a young person could do by comparison.

    WR

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    1. It's a fair point you bring up. I appear to be discussing 2 different classes of beginners in that regard. There is surely an abundance of the type you've discussed, absolutely clueless and consumers of youtube and instagram "mr. wonderfuls", but I also observe those that try to separate themselves from that heard by establishing themselves as the "hardcore beginner".

      They're too good for that stuff: they're going to become the next WSM. You've seen the type on r/strongman: "How do I become Thor in 5 years". And, in turn, they're in a rush to get beat up, just like these guys too.

      If you ever read Paul Kelso's "Powerlifting Basics Texas Style", he has a good summary about this in a story called "The Stretch Mark Machine". Great read.

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    2. There are plenty of mistakes to discuss.

      Kelso is on my list, but I haven't pulled the trigger on buying any of the books yet.

      WR

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    3. It's a great book, and "the stretch mark machine" is easily one of the best chapters. It's strange how it's even a thing.

      Knew a guy who tried to deadlift what I was doing back in college and he almost threw his back out. He was taller and a lot lighter than me too, by about 60lbs.

      Strength just takes time.

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    4. And, heck, the way some of them talk, you would think they were all scientists by profession and elite athletes already, the way they go on about things needing to be backed up by science and by what "all the elite athletes are doing"

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  2. I'd attribute some of it to a lack of understanding the difference between hurt and injured, which can probably be blamed on an increasing lack of physical activity and sports among kids today. Most shit I do hurts in some way, but that doesn't mean I'm injured or even heading towards injury. Just means its uncomfortable which isn't an inherently negative thing.

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    1. Understanding that difference is HUGE. I see so many people hanging up training, stopping movements, etc, just from a little pain, if not just even simple discomfort.

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  3. I'm saying this all the time: "Learn to move your body through Space".

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  4. The beginner also faces the issue of worrying too much about how they move. They film every single rep, as if they are going to analyze it meticulously and move closer towards that perfect rep (And in reality it's not just the beginners doing this but also people who have trained for years). While all this filming requires ridiculous breaks between lifts, and I what I would assume causing a lack of focus on training.

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    1. Completely mind blowing. There are 15 year olds with instagram accounts that have every single rep of every workout they've ever done, and they're followed by a thousand teenagers just like themselves, and it just self-perpetuates, all in a desperate bid to get a sponsorship so they can get 10% off BCAAs.

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  5. Overheard a couple of youngins' having exactly these types of conversations in the past week. It amazed me that these college-aged types were talking about limitations in programming due to some inability to do a movement. Coincidentally, these were some of the same people that pooh-poohed anything outside of the "Big 3" movements, as if there was no real value to them as they couldn't put a big number up on the PR board.

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    1. Absolutely guilty of that as well during that time. So cool to be counter-cultural and only do the big 3. Sooo stupid, haha.

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  7. I grew up doing Karate, a season of wrestling, and took PE in high school which was weight training, and so I never really considered how picking up a barbell isn't simply "starting Athletics". As a result, I guess I just never considered subbing out bench or deadlift or squat and never saw the issues people have with them being difficult.

    I did make some substitutions to assistance exercises, of which I didn't get much out of it (I think mostly due to ego and adding weight constantly and using more and more leg drive), but they were at least in the same family of movements, and my main lifts did go up regularly.

    I guess where I'm going with this, is, people who start out just assume everyone starts at the same place. I never considered that people didn't do a few sports growing up or play outside as a child or whatever, and I bet the young crowd today bet all the big lifters were couch potatoes to start. Meanwhile the idea of work capacity tends to get overlooked and 5x5 gets confused for building strength when it's really just learning how to realize what's there, which is why people eventually stall.

    As far as I can guess, anyway. I know I went from 165 for 5x5 to 205x1, 200x3 and 200x2, and 175x6-7 or so for a few sets on bench press, and since running two rep ranges like that it feels like I'm actually building strength rather than getting better at a lift.

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    1. Took me a while to break out of my own paradigm and realize many people live sedentary lives. Once I did, I found myself recommending abbreviated training far less.

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    2. I can't imagine being sedentary. I mean, I certainly played my share of video games (could seriously play ff7 for 8-10 hrs, in a day, and ditto with Skyrim and fo4), but I always moved in some way. Either biking to/from college or walking where needed or doing groundskeeping or warehousing or unloading trucks.

      Movement has been such a part of my life such that, when I say I can't imagine being sedentary, it's absolutely mind blowing that lots of people don't move.

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    3. What is abbreviated training as opposed to something like 5/3/1? 5/3/1 doesn't look like it would take too long to run through, and what do you think the sedentary trainees should be doing today if they decide they want to get into strength if they're out of high school or college and so their only access to sports seems to be swimming, calisthenics, or martial arts on their area.

      How long should someone be in this foundational period?

      Genuiinely curious because I haven't had the sedentary experience lifestyle in it's full and had the luxury of actually being taught the powerlifts in high school.

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    4. Abbreviated training, at least as far as beginners go, tends to mean stuff like Starting Strength or similar. Low volume, moderate-ish frequency, higher intensity. It works very well for teaching people to use the strength they have. The problem is that sedentary beginners don't have much to tap into and most beginner programs in that style don't have an answer to that problem.

      Not every program in that style is pushed at beginners and the programs certainly can work but they hit the same problem in a lot of cases - if you're only gonna do a couple of sets a couple of times a week, you have to be able to make those sets worth a fuck. Without that, you'll just spin your wheels. With that, people have gone very far indeed.

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  8. You touched on something which always annoys me, the "any miscalculation will cause years of failure", and the dread of finite newbie gains. It seems like a lot of newbies posting online think the way it works is you put a bar in a squat rack for your first 3x5 and from that moment onward the clock is ticking, so you'd better add 5lbs as quickly as you can before you're fucked. I assume starting strength is to blame. The whole "You're Not Doing the Program" attitude, and their perspective on what novice training should be, are kinda absurd.
    Coincidentally, any quasi auto-regulated program sidesteps the "problem" of not racing through your newbie gains as quick as possible: if the weight is too light right now, just do more reps. There, you accomplished something. You're progressing.

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    1. It's amazing how complicated beginners want training to be. They seem to always want to be doomed through the process. Remember how it used to he the opposite? You'd watch a Rocky montage and think that, if you start now, you'll be indestructible in just a few months? Now they seem to think, if they start now, they'll ruin their potential. Better to wait until they know for sure.

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  9. Veering a bit off, but I never got how 5/3/1 and its variants became the go-to program for internet lifters. That's not a knock on Wendler, just that his templates tend to be the utter opposite of what most of them want/seem to think they need and yet they insist on mangling his programs rather than doing what they're told or cutting their own path.

    I don't understand it.

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    1. I think it having a clearly defined progression scheme is the big draw to it. It's a program, and it's very effective, but it's also dummy proof when you first look at it. Westside requires quite a bit of self knowledge, but 5/3/1 tells you what to do and when to do it.

      ...and people STILL screw it up, haha.

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    2. Just going off of the most recent 5/3/1 thread of the guy having success, I'm guessing that people mess this up because they don't see the program for what it is, because they assume that the only strength is maximal strength (i.e, weight moved on the bar), and not also maybe actually moving a weight for 15-20 reps.

      It sounds like the OP hit a 15rm that keeps increasing and some people don't realize that increasing your 15rm means increasing your 10, 5, 3, and 1 rms even if you don't test those.

      I've tried a few things to get stronger faster. It doesn't seem that you can, and it seems that largely you can't.

      I'm nowhere near the level of Wendler's, but reading even the t-nation article a few times on 5/3/1, it seems that Wendler's tapped into a philosophy that builds a baseline of strength over time, and people mess it up because they just see "weight moved on the bar" because it's the most obvious.

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