WHERE ARE THE STRENGTH PROGRAMS?

Today’s blog post stems from something I posted on reddit a while back. In a fit of boredom and out of a desire to have more dialogue on the topic, I wrote up a post on my top 5 Hypertrophy programs (quick summary: Deep Water, 5/3/1 BtM, 5/3/1 BBB, DoggCrapp and Super Squats).  The topic was well received, and a recurring trend in the comments were “I can’t wait for you to post your top STRENGTH programs next.”  And each time I read that comment, I felt confused by it.  Primarily because hypertrophy IS how one gets stronger.  These programs made me very strong BECAUSE they made my muscles grow, and after running all of them I experienced significant success in all of my strength endeavors.  When you make a muscle bigger, you increase it’s potential to be stronger.  So then why are these hypertrophy programs, and where the hell are the strength programs?

There's a reason coach Smolov has such a prestigious track record of producing athletes...

Once again, the dialogue turns to the notion that “strength” seems like an easily understood concept until one starts getting Socratic and really drilling down into the nature of the word.  People are quick to point out that strength is the ability to move weight, but already we see the issue there: the word “ability”.  Ability refers to more than simply an inherent force, but instead includes all other aspects that make up ability: to include skill, talent, genetic blessings (leverages and muscle fiber makeup for example), etc etc.  In this case, muscle size plays a contributing factor towards that ability, but not the SOLE contributing factor.  This is why the trotted out argument about bodybuilders not being stronger than powerlifters is just a confusing mess: people are measuring the strength of bodybuilders against the metric of what is used by powerlifters.  Of course those that dedicate themselves to mastering the ability to move maximal weight on only 3 lifts are going to be at the advantage. But note the presence of weightclasses in the sport: almost as though we realize that, once the playing field is leveled as far as skill and focus goes, size becomes a primary contributor in determining who will be the strongest.

So yet again I say that these hypertrophy programs ARE the strength programs.  So then, why don’t I follow them ALL the time?  Especially since my stated goals are to get bigger and stronger: wouldn’t it make sense to always be running these programs?  Shouldn’t one just always be getting bigger and bigger?  Well as damning as you may feel these rhetorical questions are, the fact of the matter is that those that have dedicated themselves toward absolute and total strength HAVE realized the truth of this, and one observes historically that this is EXACTLY what these people did.  Bruce Randall ate his way up to 400lbs, and was adamant that, if he could have managed 500lbs, he’d have a 1000lb deadlift.  And speaking of big deadlifts, we saw Eddie Hall pull this same stunt eating his was up to 430lbs.  And Paul Anderson made prestigious size gains to get stronger.  Louie Simmons has frequently been quoted on the advice that a lifter should keep gaining weight until their leverages on deadlift start to suffer.  These were ALL folks dedicated to pursuing STRENGTH, not size, as a goal, but recognizing that size was the avenue needed for achieving strength.

Photos and videos of Paul Anderson cleaning move at about the same speed

So again, why don’t I do this all the time?  For the same reason Bruce Randall DIDN’T get to 500lbs, or Eddie Hall DIDN’T stay at 430lbs: it’s exhausting to eat and train this way.   When you first start training, growth occurs rather easily as your body rapidly adapts to new stimulus, but eventually the amount of effort one needs to make in their diet and training to make a change is immense.  In particular, it’s the eating that becomes too cumbersome to me, and primarily the tag alongs that come with it (specifically the cooking and cleaning), as I eventually end up with a second job of 1 man restaurant.  Eventually, I just get to the point where I cannot sustain the lifestyle necessary to keep training and eating in this manner, and it’s at this point that the emphasis on training changes from making muscles bigger to making myself BETTER at moving heavier weights. Conveniently, I tend to coincide these shifts to correlate with when I have a strongman competition looming.

And HERE are the strength programs that everyone is looking for, but, in turn, HERE is why I have zero ability to answer the question about my “Top 5 Strength Programs”.  Strength for WHAT dude?  As an example, my upcoming competition requires me to press a 250lb keg overhead for as many reps as possible at the end of a keg press medley.  So now my current training has me focusing on improving my ability to press heavy kegs.  What’s the strategy?  Pretty much basic, old school linear progression.  I started cleaning a 100lb keg just to relearn the movement, and then got a Bartos loadable keg and have been using it for keg clean training, starting with doubles of 175, then 200, then 210, etc.  I’m going to add weight every week until I can’t keep up with doubles, and then I’ll switch to singles.  If I get to 250 in that time, I’ll add reps to it.  That’s my “strength program”.

It's like I ripped off Starting Strength, which ripped off Bill Starr, which, of course, ripped off Milo of Croton

I’ve done the same thing when competitions demand I get better with other movements too.  Done it with circus dumbbells, logs, car deadlift simulators, atlas stones, etc etc.  The STRENGTH was all built in the off season: now I’m refining and focusing the strength toward a specific goal.  If I was still powerlifting, then instead I’d be working on getting better with those 3 lifts, but the premise would be the exact same: keep adding weight to the bar until I can’t.  And this is why linear progression is constantly confused for “strength training”: one observes that it’s what is used when one wants to succeed at specific strength endeavors.  HOWEVER, the strength was built in the off-season. 

If you go back to the beginning of this blog, I was a big advocate for abbreviated linear progression training.  At the time, it seemed like magic to me, as I just kept on getting stronger and stronger with it.  HOWEVER, I was coming into lifting as a lifetime athlete, and though I wasn’t blessed in any way regarding athletics, I had such a firm foundation of that training paired with a very long period of “bro” style lifting that I had accumulated enough muscle on a 5’9 at 180lbs that I could ride out linear progression for a LONG time.  I’m talking years.  Powerlifting finally got me to start examining my training, because once competition arrived I finally reached the peak of what I could do based off what I had built, and after banging my head against a wall and making little growth over the course of a few meets I had to do something OTHER than my beloved linear progression, which led me to 5/3/1 BBB, which led me to growing to 202lbs, which led me to having more room to grow in terms of strength.

"But 5/3/1 doesn't have enough volume!"

This is getting wordy, and in truth my regular readers have read this all before, but I still feel the need to explain why I won’t be writing a “Top 5 Strength Programs” post, so allow me to continue.  I need to clarify (yet again) that, when I say “hypertrophy programs”, I DON’T mean bodybuilding programs.  Once again, just like strength training doesn’t mean powerlifting, hypertrophy training doesn’t mean bodybuilding.  Hypertrophy is IMPORTANT for bodybuilding, but it’s not the sole determining factor, and, in turn, trainees of strength sports can affect hypertrophy in manners that bodybuilding may deem unsuitable but would be just dandy for a strength athlete.  Hypertrophy of the obliques would be pretty awful for a bodybuilder, but fantastic for a strength athlete, as an example. 

So then what the hell makes a hypertrophy program a hypertrophy program?  In truth, what made the ones I listed so effective to me is how much they pushed me beyond my comfort level, and it was based off of percentage work.  DoggCrapp is going to be the exception here, but DC also pushed me beyond my comfort level because it was so radically different than anything I had done before, so it gets a pass.  But DeepWater, BBB and BtM all used percentages of a 1rm or training max and assigned it to a set and rep scheme that, when I first looked it at, made me sweat.  They made me just stare at the word document I wrote out (excel is for nerds: have some pride guys) and just go “f**k”.  BUT the program creators all knew something I didn’t, and they knew exactly how hard I could get pushed and still progress, and by following the programs and eating well, I grew.  In proof of concept, I had read the DeepWater e-book before, knew it was 10x10 squats with changes in rest times, and did some “DeepWater-esque” squat sessions before actually committing to the program, which meant I did no calculations and just used a weight I felt was “right”.  When I actually did the program, I found out I was using 30lbs less than what the program recommended.  It was a BIG kick it the ass when I actually bought it, and it was just what I needed to grow.  Super Squats may not use percentages, but “do 20 reps with your 10rm” achieves very much the same effect: it’s something you wouldn’t think was possible until someone else tells you “Not only is it possible, but a bunch of other dudes have done it before you, and they all grew from it.” 

If in doubt, you can always get the DAILY DEEP WATER MOTIVATION!

When training to realize strength, it’s ultimately more about balancing the intensity of the lifts against enough volume in the supplemental and assistance work to maintain all that muscle you worked with while also balancing the recovery demands, especially if calories came down.  It’s far more science and math than the alchemy of size programs where we’re creating a monster in a lab with enough food and effort.  If all I do is a bunch of heavy singles, I’m most likely going to lose out on strength.  If I try to train like I’m building size while ALSO hammering a bunch of heavy work, something is going to break.  Jim Wendler honestly does a great job offering trainees a crash course in these concepts with his “leader and anchor” programming models, and that alone is worth picking up 5/3/1 Forever. 

Ok, this got totally out of hand, so let me sum it up.  You build strength by training to gain size.  Training to gain size is HARD, both in terms of training and in terms of eating.  If/when you can no longer sustain it, emphasis can shift toward realizing the strength that was built in the MUSCLES by focusing on specific MOVEMENTS.  While focusing on moving as much weight as possible on those movements, a trainee can use a basic linear progression approach on those movements but needs to be able to balance it across enough supplemental and assistance volume to not lose out on strength that was gained through the size training.  There are a lot of different ways to go about realizing this strength: you gotta figure out what your desired movements are and use a strategy that works for them.