EAT LIKE YOU SLEEP

I am by no means a nutrition guy.  I eat a low carb diet because it’s one less thing to think about, I’ve never counted a calorie or a macro in my life minus 1 day in 2004 when I started my training log, and I found the whole experience so off-putting I never tried again.  I really don’t think it’s all that complicated, yet I constantly have trainees asking me to explain to them the idea of “eat to recover from your training.”  That is ALWAYS the advice I offer when it comes to nutrition: your food supports your training, so you need to eat in a manner where you are recovering from training.  Inevitably, the brain of the person asking the question starts going to the realm of macro counting, and they ask me if I mean to eat so that they’re gaining 1-2lbs a week, or eat for maintenance, or something else entirely.  Folks: that’s a WEIRD question to ask in the context of the conversation.  Food is recovery: just like sleep, yet somehow folks completely understand how to sleep and have no idea how to eat.  Allow me to demonstrate…

Some of you already have this figured out

Let’s say you and I have a big day planned tomorrow.  It’s winter, in North Dakota, so we know that the first thing we’re gonna need to do is shovel snow for 2 hours so that we can get our car out of the driveway, and then we’re gonna drive to a strongman competition, compete all day and drive back home that same day so that we can beat the winter storm that will inevitably follow us home and snow us in again.  I tell you in the evening: “Hey, we got a big day tomorrow: make sure you get enough sleep.”  How come that’s ALL I need to say to you in order for you to understand intent?  Why is it that when I say “get enough sleep to perform” you know that means you probably need to get to bed an hour earlier than you usually do?  You’re not asking me dumb questions like “Do you mean get enough sleep that my eyes aren’t red when I wake up in the morning?  Or should it be that I get enough sleep that I wake up naturally on my own and don’t need an alarm clock?”  No, somehow, when I say “sleep enough that you are recovered from today and ready to perform for tomorrow”, you know what you need to do, but when I say “eat enough that you are recovered from today and ready for tomorrow”, you’re helpless.  It’s ALL just recovery.

And it’s the same thing when it comes to QUALITY of recovery.  Same exact scenario, I tell you to get enough sleep for tomorrow, you KNOW that what you need to do is get to a bed in a dark room and try to get some solid, unbroken, restful sleep.  You won’t try and do something stupid like take a 1 hour nap on the couch with the TV on, wake up, hang around for 20 minutes, then go sleep on the floor for 2 hours with the lights on and dogs barking, then figure you’ll grab a nap on the car ride to the comp and that should be good.  We KNOW that quality sleep is important ALONG with quantity sleep, but when it comes to nutrition?  We have “If It Fits Your Macros”, the “car nap” of nutrition: collecting macros from anywhere just like getting your hours of sleep at any time.  We have folks that have memorized the amount of carbs in a large McDonald’s French fry yet have no idea what Vitamin A does.  We have folks that have convinced themselves that fast food and TV dinners are the superior choice because they are mega high in sodium and “salt is good for lifters bro”, not recognizing the terrible quality of food they’re putting into their bodies.  Yet again, I tell you to sleep to support your training and it makes total sense, but when it comes to eat to support your training…

Yup

The real kicker out of all of this is that I’m the first to say that sleep isn’t that important for recovery: at least, not compared to food.  Folks, if sleep was the most important part about getting big and strong, I woulda been a world record holder at age 17, but I slept a LOT as a teenager.  I slept like a baby, multiple double hour sleep sessions a day, ESPECIALLY in the summer, when I had no real obligations.  My body was PRIMED for recovery: but my nutrition was crap.  Not enough food, and what I did eat wasn’t very good.  I’m in my 30s now, and I continue to grow bigger and stronger every year, despite the fact I’ve been sleeping less, and the sleep I get tends to be erratic and broken.  It’s a byproduct of children/pets, being a light sleeper who tends to react to both of those things when needed, and a weird work schedule that forces my sleep to adapt.  But my nutrition has improved substantially.  For one, I learned how to cook, and can make enough quality food that I’m never forced into a situation where I have to eat something awful for me “for the macros”.  I’ll indulge in fast food or eating out, but that’s the thing: I acknowledge it’s an indulgence.  I understand I’m getting a “car nap” of nutrition out of it, but in turn, it’s not a permanent fixture of my lifestyle.  I’ve experimented with both, and folks, given a choice between an abundance of good quality sleep with awful nutrition vs awful sleep with an abundance of good quality nutrition, the latter absolutely wins, hands down, at least insofar as getting bigger and stronger goes.  In fact, in a true bout of “proof of concept”, the IDEA for this blogpost came to me as I was driving home at 3:00 AM, with an alarm set to get up at 6:15 to walk my kid to school so I could get back to bed by 7:30 and get another 3 hour nap before starting my day and training at 12:30.

So take this metaphor to heart and uncomplicate how you eat.  When you hear “eat to support your training”, think of it as no different than how you would sleep.  If you have an average training block ahead of you, feel free to eat averagely.  If you have light training, eat lightly.  But if you’re entering a training block that is going to be intense, and call upon your reserves, you’re going to need to eat in a way to support that training.

Sweet dreams.

MAKE LIGHT WEIGHT HEAVY

One of the joys of injury is that it forces you to learn new ways to train in order to keep achieving your goals, and in the course of recovering from a knee surgery and a buggy shoulder, along with dealing with the joy that comes with aging (though it’s really the mileage that gets to me) I’ve learned the benefit of making light weight heavy.  When I first began training, I fell into the trap of many trainees where I assumed the only way to get bigger and stronger was to ALWAYS lift as much weight as I possibly could on every exercise, to the point that I started growing neurotic about the benefit of exercises LATER in the routine because I wouldn’t be able to lift as much weight on them compared to if I did them earlier.  Later in my training, I realized that one can still gain significant benefits in their training using reduced poundages, insofar as that trainee made it such that those reduced poundages represented the max amount that trainee could lift under THOSE circumstances.  The other benefit to this approach of training is that, once understood and mastered, it means there are a LOT more options opened up when a trainee is limited in access to weight.  I’m not original in this approach in the slightest, with John Meadows being someone who has ultimately mastered this, but, in turn, there’s proof of concept out there about this approach to training and how viable it is.  Intro aside, I wanted to share a few ideas I’ve been using recently in order to make the most of less weight. 

RAMPING SETS

Not all ramps are created equal

This is a classic approach to training, and one that generates a lot of questions from new trainees, specifically “why use ramping sets instead of straight sets?”  It’s once again for the sake of making a light weight feel heavy. 

For an example, a straight set of 5x5 would simply be a case of a trainee taking a weight and doing 5 sets of 5 reps with that weight: so 185 for 5x5, for example.  Ramping sets, on the other hand, have the trainee stick with sets of 5, but ultimately work up to a topset of 5 reps in 5 sets.  The weight on the final set will be the highest, and the trainee isn’t going to failure in the sets leading up to it BUT those sets ARE generating fatigue and reducing the ability of the trainee to exert to their absolute maximal ability.  Instead of moving your actual 5rm if you were to just lightly work up to it, the topset of 5 that you accomplish with ramping sets will be lighter while still being incredibly effective. 

As of recently, I’ve been enjoying combining ramping sets with…

GIANT SETS

Don't use giant sets with viking press: bad combo

Anyone that has been a fan of Brian Alsruhe’s channel knows what these are, but for the uneducated, a giant set is like a superset, except it’s composed of 3 or more moves.  Because of the structure of a giant set, the movement performed after the first movement is going to necessarily be of less weight vs what you could handle if you were fresh, and it will continue on as the giant set goes.  This effect is particularly pronounced when you use giant sets that employ the SAME muscle rather than opposing ones.  2 that I’m currently employing is a press day giant set of press (strict press or behind the neck), parallel bar dips, dumbbell lateral raise and band pull aparts, and a deadlift day giant set of axle deficit deadlifts, reverse hypers and squat (buffalo bar or front squat).  Whereas I can normally hit 40+ dips in a set, going after pressing limits me to around 15-18, and I’m lucky to hit 3x10 of 230lbs on squats at the end of my deadlift day giant set, yet I’ve seen significant growth in my deadlifting and pressing while employing these giant sets as supplemental work.  Proof of concept that employing lighter weights will make you stronger as long as you make those light weights FEEL heavy.

PRE-EXHAUST


The SEALS have mastered this technique to spend a whole WEEK pre-exhausting themselves

The above mentioned giant sets are effectively benefitting from the concept of pre-exhaust.  This was a popular notion in bodybuilding circles, and was specifically intended to bring up lagging muscle groups, but can also simply be useful for sparing connective tissues by once again making light weights more effective.  For the down and dirty: get the muscle groups tired BEFORE you train them.  I’ve been employing this technique specifically with direct arm work via “running the rack” with dumbbell curls.  I have a set of powerblock classic 50s, so I can work with 10-50lbs going up in 5lb increments.  I’ll start with 10lbs and hit a set amount of reps (say 20), then move up 5lbs and repeat, and keep going until I can’t hit the required amount of reps, at which point I’ll start progressing DOWN by 5lbs going for max reps on each set.  By the end, my arms are absolutely fried, yet I’ve placed little stress on the elbow itself due to the light weight.

This technique can also be employed with heavier compound lifts.  The squat, in particular, benefits from this, as it’s pretty easy to load/unload the weights and the consequence for failure isn’t quite as awful compared to benching without a partner.

DROPSETS

No dumb caption: this is still just plain awesome

This is a classic staple of mine.  Work up to a topset, do it, then immediately take some weight off and keep chasing after reps.  This doesn’t quite have the same effect of pre-exhaust, since the topset weight you’ll be using IS around the max you can handle, but the follow on sets will employ less weight than if you were to do a straight set workout across multiple sets, while the training effect is VERY powerful.  Some of the best results I’ve ever got in my squat training came from dropset workouts.  I’m particularly fond of combining it with rest pausing, so I’ll hit a set of squats, strip weight off, take 12 deep breaths and then go after it again.

Along with the benefit to your body, dropsets have a PROFOUND training effect on the mind, especially when performed with heavy compound lifts, and particularly with the squat.  When you just do a burnout set of some lift, it’s easy to go until you quit, but having to get back UNDER the bar after that set to do even more work requires some serious guts.

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There you go folks: one my rare posts with some actionable advice.  Go forth, do some damage, and write any questions you have in the comments.

WE’LL SEE WHO GETS THE FIRST LAUGH

Yet again dear readers, allow me to reassure you that, in my haste, I did not screw up the topic title here: I do, indeed, mean to discuss getting the FIRST laugh.  The traditional expression, of course, being “we’ll see who gets the last laugh”: an expression referring to the notion that the expresser is sagely aware that downfall awaits those that they warn who are, in turn, the one’s currently laughing.  Yes yes, you may mock the expresser now, but just you wait! …right.  Wanna know one of the interesting things about getting that first laugh?  It means that you already GOT to laugh.  Your laugh has happened: you were able to deride the other, hold advantage over them, experience joy at their defeat, exert your will on them, etc etc.  In short, you already got to achieve victory.  You were the bully kicking sand in their face at the beach in the Charles Atlas ad.  And yeah, MAYBE that dude is gonna go risk a stamp and get a book on isotonics and get jacked and come back and punch you in the face, but until that time happens, YOU got the first laugh.

Maybe you'll come back and avenge yourself, but he will DEFINITELY be fooling around with your girl until you do

Let’s go about this from a logical approach for a bit, shall we?  There’s no benefit in getting the LAST laugh.  That’s a hollow victory if I’ve ever heard one.  We’re all on a finite timeline here, and when you get your laugh in EARLIER than the other person, you can experience the joy of that laughter for MUCH longer than the span of the laugh itself, for now you can also look BACK upon that laughter in your twilight years.  Those that laugh last?  The laugh LESS.  They laugh closer to the end than the beginning, and spent much more of their timeline NOT laughing, attempting to take solace in a laugh that MAY happen one day in the future.  That’s a dumb psychological trick best reserved for children that are being good NOW in the hopes of Santa coming later to reward them. 

Does he who laughs last laugh best?  Once again, a pithy saying at best, but let’s say it’s true: he who last first may ALSO be the one that laughs last.  If you laugh FIRST, you are guaranteed to have at least LAUGHED: your laughter is locked in and assured.  Meanwhile, while you hold out hope that one day you TOO will laugh, and it will be the last laugh, and therefore the best laugh, you haven’t laughed YET.  You have no guaranteed your laughter will arrive.  You may, in fact, find that you have expired in your wait for the last laugh, and that the last laugh happened LONG ago: you just missed it, assuming that, since it was the first laugh, it couldn’t possibly be the last laugh.  You failed to recognize the opportunity, because you foolishly assumed that the first laugh was the inferior laugh.

"Since WHEN has it been good to be the first to do something? ...oh"

We see this SO often in training: this preoccupation with getting the “last” laugh, while meanwhile folks are out there busting their hump and getting the first laugh and rubbing it in everyone’s faces.  The mother hens cluck their tongues at dudes exerting themselves, straining, pushing past limits and say “We’ll see how they feel when they’re 40, lol!”  Yeah, well guess what idiot: you’re going to feel like crap when you’re 40 because you were sedentary, while this person is going to feel like crap because they were active.  But in the interim, they got the FIRST laugh, because you spent your 20s and 30s being small, weak and insignificant, while they were out there succeeding.  And just imagine the REAL comedy when it turns out it’s not 40 when these things start to show, but 50, or 60, or 70…or never.  And there they were: just WAITING to get that last laugh, only to expire on their deathbeds having never had the chance to laugh.

There are SO many training opportunities out there that afford the trainee an opportunity to get in the first laugh.  After about a decade of neglecting them, I brought behind the neck presses back into my training.  And upon bringing them back, I heard from all the gurus about how they would cause my shoulders to spontaneously combust in a visceral display of blood and sinew, like a piñata filled with the contents of a butcher shop dumpster.  Well to quote Matt Dimel “Ha ha ha mother f**ker”, I got the first laugh, because I ended up crushing some lifetime PRs that I had plateaued on for years once these got added to my programming.  Meanwhile, what last laugh are the people hoping for on this one?  Healthy shoulders when they’re 80?  Man, that’s gonna be awesome to brag to your great grandkids about.  “Ya know Jimmy, I was never a terribly impressive man in my 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s, but NOW I can reach for the package of Jello on the HIGH shelf.”  Rest assured, as you enjoy that last laugh for your last few years on the earth, I had enjoyed my first laugh for decades.

Rest assured, I can laugh at the same thing for a LONG time

Because, fundamentally, I’m laughing at those of you waiting to laugh last, because you’re missing out on the true comedy: you aren’t at peace with your mortality.  You’re so absolutely terrified of a future where you’re old, crippled, decrepit, feeble and unable that you desperately cling to anything within your power to prevent it, ONLY to make yourself all of those things when you are in your youth!  In order to not be weak when you are old, you choose to be weak when you are young.  THAT is something worth laughing about.  Life can either be a comedy or a tragedy: it all depends on when you’re willing to open yourself up to laughter.  The people waiting to laugh last decided to die first, but if you pursue the first laugh, you’ll be laughing a LOT. 

I REFUSE

More fun stories from real life, because sometimes procrastinating to write my blogpost gives me an opportunity to do some living.  Was out on a walk with the Mrs yesterday, and we started off in suburbia before we ended up on a nice path by a lake near the house.  We hadn’t been on it before, so we decided to just follow it and see where it went.  We soon transitioned from pavement to a nature path, and from there ended up completely twisted around in what I believe were actually horse trails upon reflection.  We’re walking on a carved out grass pathway surrounded by very tall weeds/marshland, but can clearly see where we want to end up: we just don’t know which trail or path we need to take to get there.  We eventually find the way out, and all in all the experience was totally enjoyable, but in discussing it my wife told me she was glad we found the path, and I told her I wasn’t worried, because if worse came to worse, I was just going to walk through the weeds straight to where we wanted to go.  When she said she wasn’t going to do that, I assured her that I would carry her through it, so that she wouldn’t have to concern herself with ticks or other nasty critters.  When she asked why, I said “because I refuse to be trapped by grass”, and from this she made the pointed observation that I refuse to be trapped by a lot of things.

How I saw it in my head

And that’s today’s lesson: “I refuse”.  My wife’s observation was incredibly spot on, and I could do nothing but admit her accuracy when faced by it.  She elaborated that she was referring to how I refuse to be trapped by weather, having a history of driving through dangerous blizzard conditions, flashfloods, mudslides, etc, all of which she has had to endure alongside me, so it’s etched into her mind.  However, my training is mired in “I refuse”.  One of the primary ones, that constantly seems to blow the mind of others, is that I refuse to do mobility or flexibility work.  The more I get told that I “must” do it, the more I refuse to do it.  And I’ve been told that I must do it for over a decade, which, in turn, is a decade of refusing.  AND a decade of succeeding!  Where are the consequences that I was told I was going to face?  It’s going to happen when I get old?  Well how interesting, because….

I refuse to grow old.  I’m in my mid 30s with 19 years of training mileage, and I’m training harder and crazier than I ever did in my 20s, despite what I hear from my peers about how everything is harder and worse in your 30s.  I find THAT to be the fundamental issue: they tell themselves it’s going to get harder, and it gets harder.  I refuse to let it happen, and I force my body to adapt to that stimulus.  Much like the expression “We don’t stop playing because we get older: we get older because we stop playing”, you grow old when you start training like you’re old.  So many people have simply given up while they are in the PRIME of their lives, and I observe the unfortunate ways their bodies decay over the next SEVERAL decades from neglect and, ultimately defeat.  Not me: I refuse.

What many of my peers wanted for their 30th birthdays

I refuse to be trapped by injuries.  This is one I see SO much among other trainees, and it just blows my mind.  ONE part will have an injury, and they just quit ALL training.  “Broke my hand: looks like I won’t be lifting for the next 3 months”.  What?  Go pull a sled, or hit up the leg press, or safety squat bar squats, or zercher good mornings, or cable or machine work, etc etc.  These people lament how they “love” training and won’t be able to train and won’t put in ANY effort to figure out other ways to train.  Man, if this is how they treat things they love, I’d hate to be a family member or loved one to these people, because they are QUICK to abandon their love.  I hate training, and I will rig up the most Rube Goldberg-esque contraption possible to train around whatever injury I have because I REFUSE to be trapped by injury. 

And fundamentally, that boils down to the fact that I refuse to let anything external to me determine MY fate.  This is Sartre’s “radical freedom” taken to the extreme.  It’s Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”.  The fact so many philosophers have discussed it as a means of existentialism is proof of concept of just how inherent such a notion is in ALL of us: that we CAN refuse.  And when you wallow in self-pity about your powerlessness, you simply refuse TO refuse.  Otherwise, exercise your ability to refuse when presented with an obstacle that threatens your success or presumes to alter your fate. 

Shoulda refused this idea from the trainer

And do so out of anger.  Understand that these external variables are an affront to your very nature, and that they act in hopes of defeating you.  And you refuse to be defeated!  You refuse to let them have the last word!  And if you crash and burn in a fireball, it is on YOUR terms.  You decide your fate, because you refuse to let anything decide what will be your downfall BUT you.  When you go out, it’s because you decided to, and when others tell you your time is up, you refuse to listen.  You refuse to give in to fear, to injury, to age, to fatigue, to convention, to science, to anything that is not what YOU want it to be.  And if people tell you that’s insane, you can refuse to listen.