A GOOD STORY

Inspiration for today’s post comes by way of a conversation I had with Will Ruth, who I’ve had the pleasure of competing alongside and who also runs r/strongman on reddit, with a dedication to maintaining a solid signal to noise ratio that I find incredibly admirable.  In discussing Jamie Lewis’ latest rant, I found myself expressing the sentiment that “these days, I dig a good story more than I care about facts”, and since expressing that I’ve been reflecting on the significance of that.  It becomes especially topical as I observe that this blog has grown to be 7 years old, a feat I had no intention of accomplishing upon it’s outset, especially as I’ve remained diligent in updating it weekly, meaning a substantial amount of work having been created.  But I also think to the outset of the blog, and the name itself.  “Mythical Strength” was a nod to the notion of “strength of legend”: strength so immense that stories, tales, and myths were created around it.  7 years ago, when I started writing, it was exactly what I hoped to capture and, truthfully, what I hoped to achieve on my own.  Fundamentally, I’ve found that stories, legends and myths, irrespective of their truth, are immensely more valuable than the facts.

Sometimes, a good story can have a ridiculous plot

Allow me to share a few “good stories” of my own.  My hardcore readers will recognize these, but going back to my childhood, my father always liked to share stories of his buddies in basic training when he was in the Air Force.  My dad served 4 years and, to this day, maintains that serving was one of the best decisions of his life, and, in turn, in my childhood, his time in the Air Force had a significant impact on how he raised me.  He’d tell me stories about a guy that was a professional boxer that would catch flies in the barracks with his bare hands, about a dude that studied Tae Kwon Do and jump kicked over my dad’s head, and also a time about a guy with an afro (remember how old I am and then factor in the era my dad served) who leaned forward over a candle during a shoe shinning party and lit his head on fire.  However, 2 stories really cemented in my psyche as a kid: one about a guy that went from no abs to a six pack set of abs by doing 200 sit ups a night, and another about a dude that took off his shirt and was ripped out of his goddamn mind that attributed his physique to 200 push-ups a night.

My dad told me these stories frequently, first as a young kid and then as a teenager as I started getting bit by the fitness bug and, in turn, they were the “physical myths” I grew up with.  And much like a kid that doesn’t think to question how Santa can get around the whole world in just one night, it never dawned on me to notice that “200” was the magic number my dad settled on that seemed to just be the universal “a lot”.  Those numbers WERE magical, and if I did just that, I’d get these same results.  And so, at age 14, when I started turning my life around physically, I set out to do these things.  And I accomplished them.  And I didn’t get the results I expected.  And I pushed even harder, going for 300 a night, and then 400 a night, before I gave up on the myth.

But it looks like the world didn't

How many of us had these myths?  My dad’s friends in basic training were someone else’s uncle that could bench 800lbs in his basement and he did it with HIT.  Or it was someone’s big brother that got totally jacked by working construction over the summer and eating a jar of peanut butter a day.  And these were just the “local myths”.  What about the Colorado Project?  Or Super Squats “30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks”?  Or Hulk Hogan telling us to say our prayers and take our vitamins?  Circus strongman of old?  Or the original myth of Milo of Croton?  Or Hercules, or Samson?  Or watching a Rocky montage, something we know for SURE was fake, but was still “a good story”?

What was the point of these “good stories”?  They drove us to action.  It implanted an idea in our head, and even if that idea was totally unreasonable, it now existed.  Prior to the telling of that story and the sharing of that myth, the idea simply “wasn’t”, but once spoken and shared, it now existed, and was something to be pursued.  And even if the end could not be realized: so what?  I could do 200 push-ups in one go as a 15 year old, and I held at that number for a long time before deciding to chase at 400 at 19 years old.  I’m 34 now, I never do push-ups, and I can still knock-out 68 in a minute when called upon because I built up such an immense amount of volume and repetition in my youth that I’m STILL riding it out.  Chasing after the 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks on Super Squats taught me a TON about the significance of effort in both training and eating. And who else out there has a story about chasing after something ridiculous, completely failing to achieve it, and growing significantly from that effort?

Assuming you remember the lesson when it's over

Too many people are unwilling to pursue something if it’s not supported by the facts and, consequently, they tend to be in pursuit of facts that place the greatest possible limits on themselves.  There are entire communities out there dedicated to rooting out “fake natties” (lifters that use steroids by claim otherwise, for my lifters that are fortunate enough to not be infected by this toxicity) with a real primary mission to establish a norm of sub-mediocrity for human performance, claiming that pretty much all noteworthy physiques are only achievable through drugs, and that a natural trainee hits their lifetime potential after a mere 2 years of training.  Hah!  The same is true of those that believe they have determined their maximal effective volume, constantly watch dogging for the dreaded “junk volume”.  Go do some 10x10s and get back to me.  You can only train like Arnold if you’re on drugs?  Tell that to all the kids that bought the Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding and ran the programs exactly as written.  Before we had so many “facts”, we had a bunch of good stories, and, consequently, a lot of folks willing to go out, do something stupid and reckless, and gain a ton from the experience.

I quite frankly don’t care about the facts anymore.  That story is boring.  The story of the facts always ends with us being lackluster and underwhelming.  I’d rather hear a good story: something that convinces my mind that there must be more, and that it’s simply a question of reaching for it.  And who knows: maybe if you hear enough of these stories, after chasing after enough of them, they may tell one about you. 

READER REQUEST: ON VARIETY

A question came in from Panopticon on one of my more recent posts.

“I would like to hear more on your opinion on variety, maybe an idea for a future post?”

Let's see how old my references can get 

This is actual pretty topical for me, as I’ve been having a lot of success recently by employing more variety in my training.  Specifically as it relates to pressing overhead.  Before continuing, for any of my readers that are not familiar with my training, unless I have a strongman competition in the horizon, my pressing overhead is always a strict press (meaning, a press without leg drive), so as I write about pressing or overhead pressing here, understand it’s a strict press rather than a push press.  Relating to one of my more recent posts about “playing the game the way I want to play it”, the strict press is one of the few movements I actually care about progressing these days, as, for me, it’s one of the best indicators of brute upper body pressing strength.  Sure, the bench has always been the gold standard there, but quite frankly, I don’t care about benching, while I care greatly about pressing weight over my head.  In turn, I’ve been including overhead pressing in my training since around 2006 or so, and the great majority of that has been the basic barbell press overhead from the front rack position.  Around 2015 I switched to pressing purely with the axle, but that’s about it.

I give this background to demonstrate how much I’ve applied the principle of specificity as it relates to pressing and, in truth, it worked: to a point.  I managed to get a strict press 1rm of 240lbs in 2013 or so, but I’ve also pretty much stayed around there since then.  Rep maxes remained consistent too, with being able to hit 225 for a set of 3 or 4 on multiple occasions.  Yet, last training cycle, I hit 221lbs for a set of 8, and for the first time in many years it seems like my strict pressing is moving in a very solid direction, and I attribute this to a recent inclusion of greater variety in my training.  Specifically, along with the strict axle press, I’ve included behind the neck barbell pressing, trap bar pressing, and strongman log pressing in my supplemental work.  I’ve seen improvements as well in my bench pressing with the inclusion of swiss bar incline bench and close grip benching, and I’ve been rotating between buffalo bar, safety squat bar and safety squat bar front squats in my squat training.

Chest workout completely ripped off from this delightful lunatic

What’s at play here are two complimentary yet conflicting concepts: the principle of specificity vs “strength”.  I’ve written on these topics many times before, but to sum up as it’s relevant to here: specificity gets you better, but variety is what gets you stronger.  With specificity, a trainee is basically closing the gap between where they are and what their potential is on a movement.  The first time you try a movement, your lack of coordination and ability prevents you from expressing maximal strength in a movement, so you apply maximal effort but still don’t move as much weight as you “should” be able to.  With consistent practice, you keep improving your skillset, and the gap between where you are and what you’re capable of gets smaller and smaller until you’re at the point that you’re making incredibly small improvements.  These are “beginner gains”, and how linear progression operates.  Once we’ve reached the point where the gap is small and growth is limited, a trainee needs to get stronger to create growth.

The difficulty trainees experience here is that their tendency is to just keep employing the same movement to get stronger at it, operating off the principle of specificity.  You want to get better at something, you keep doing that thing, right?  But we ALREADY got better at the thing: we’re pretty much the best we CAN be at the thing right now (within reason): now we need to get stronger instead.  And since we’ve maximized our potential on the movement, continuing to do the same movement is going to create a limited strength response, because doing the same movement over and over again is going to keep strengthening the same areas it strengthens while neglecting the same area it neglects.  A close grip bench, for example, emphasizes the triceps at the expense of the pecs and deltoids (and oh my god, if you guys with the EMG studies will just shut up for a second, I’m sure I screwed that up but you get my point).  If we keep hammering the close grip bench and never change it, our ability to bring up the pecs and deltoids is limited.  But if we start including variety in our training, we can attack those areas that were getting neglected before and now bring them up.

No

This is where variety shines as an avenue for strength building: you now improve strength for different muscles or at different angles than before.  Going back to my case, even though I’m pressing overhead in the case of the strict axle press, behind the neck press, trap bar press and log press, the angle and emphasis is different on each movement to the point that different aspects of my press are getting trained.  I’m now getting stronger from different angles than before, and muscles are called in differently than before in order to shoulder the brunt of the work.

But why does this result in improvements on the original movement?  Because, eventually, your smallest and weakest muscles are going to be what limit your strongest muscles.  In much the same way that a weak core can prevent your legs from expressing maximal strength on a squat, on any other movement, the muscles that are de-emphasized can eventually be the ones that serve as the breaking point, and using something that actually emphasizes these movements can improve your original movement as a whole.

Like that time I found out my ACL was a weakpoint...

This is why I’m able to train movement infrequently while still improving them: I’m getting STRONGER, not better.  Currently, so many trainees are absolutely CONVINCED that they MUST bench 3 times a week and squat twice a week if they have any hope of moving more weight on these movements.  They claim that, if they use a frequently at all less than that, their bench and squat fall apart.  You can see how such a rigid set of guidelines can be VERY limiting on programming options, and this in turn results in plateauing and stagnation, because not all plans work forever, and eventually one maximizes their achievable potential from the principle of specificity.  If these trainees take a step back, relegate themselves to benching and squatting once a week at MOST (meaning maybe even once every 2 weeks), they may experience an initial dip in their numbers as their skills degrade on the movement, but will ultimately experience an increased in strength overall and a greater ability to move more weight once they spend this time training a greater variety of pressing in order to get stronger from various angles.

Since this wasn’t my normal philosophical ranting and more academic stuff, let me leave you with a summary to make sure you’re following along.  Specificity is how you get better at a movement.  The better you get at a movement, the smaller the improvements you experience between training sessions, to the point that, eventually, there isn’t enough of a skill gap to be able to make meaningful progress in a movement.  The way you move more weight from there is by getting STRONGER, rather than better.  You get stronger by making muscles bigger and stronger.  If you’ve only been applying the principle of specificity, you’ve been improving some muscles at the expense of others.  With variety, you can bring up the muscles that have been neglected.  By doing so, you can overcome plateaus that result from weaker muscles limiting the potential of your stronger ones.

ON SOLIPSISM

I’ll be trite for this one and kick it off with a definition, because I imagine not all of my readers are familiar with the term solipsism, and I figure I’d save you the google search.  Solipsism is defined as “the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist”, and is most typically associated as a philosophical belief system, akin to absurdism, nihilism, stoicism, etc.  Whereas Descartes utilized “I think, therefore, I am” or “Cogito ergo sum” for my more pretentious readers, as means to establish A baseline from which to start drawing other conclusions regarding the nature of existence, solipsism basically stops there and says “I am, and that is all I can know.”  Many will, of course, criticize such a view for being, at best, incredibly limiting while also opening up to a world of debauchery and psychoticism/sociopathy, as one who does not believe in the existence of anything outside of themselves has no need for empathy, compassion, or regard for the health and wellbeing of others, HOWEVER, I have found solipsism to be a fundamentally beneficial belief system in the realm of physical training and nutrition: so long as one is willing to accumulate enough experience to be able to have a significantly LARGE “self” to know.

That looks to be about big enough

Solipsism is ultimately a conclusion that one arrives to in reaction to stimuli, and in this instance, it would be that of too MUCH information: especially so when such information can appear to contradict other information.  We exist in an age wherein there is no shortage of information available.  The internet is a wondrous tool, and contained within it is a wealth of real, authentic, peer-reviewed and verified, rigorous scientific research on a WIDE variety of subjects, with exercise science being among them.  However, with access of this research comes the unfortunate consequence of those that would seek to employ said research in order to further their own agenda.  Now, let’s rule out those that CONDUCTED the research with an agenda.  Let’s say (falsely) that all scientific research is conducted without bias, purely for the sake of benevolence and the betterment of knowledge.  Even if that WERE the case, there still exists those who would seek to employ this research in a manner that benefits their own specific agenda, and ultimately they accomplish this by twisting the findings, masking the shortcomings, willfully misinterpreting the conclusions, or flat out bombing an individual with such a large volume of information that they hope to simply drown them out, even if it turns out the information does not actually reflect what this individual is saying.

We observe this frequently with individuals who seek to profit from fitness.  I’ve said frequently that “anyone that says ‘scapula’ instead of ‘shoulder blades’ is trying to sell you something” as an only slightly tongue-in-cheek nod to this.  But then, discounting malice once again, we also experience a second consequence of this information overload: those who have access to the information, lack the means to correctly interpret it, but are unaware of their shortcomings in this regard.  The well recognized “Dunning-Kruger effect” is the explanation of such phenomena, which means that these individuals pour over these studies, draw incorrect conclusions as a result of their inability to correctly understand them, and use this to dictate their own success and failure.  And FREQUENTLY, these individuals take to the very same internet to unleash their false conclusions on unsuspecting and gullible new trainees who, also lacking the ability to distinguish truth for untruth, buy into what is being sold to them, and then go on the perpetuate the falsehood.  And sadly, the sole purpose of this information sharing was NOT to educate the uneducated, but to instead protect the ego of the information sharer from the cognitive dissonance of information that contradicted their dogma.  Once again, an acknowledgement of things outside of the self to exist resulting in a negative.

Pretty much how these conversations go with me these days

Enter solipsism: the savior.  In my earlier training days, I opened myself to all the information that was available. I read the studies, listened to the esteemed elders, “did my research”, drew all the conclusions, and stalled HARD.  And one day, I decided that I KNEW what it took to progress, and that was what I was going to do.  And what I decided on went against much of what I “knew” prior to that moment, but all of those things existed “outside of the self”: they were things learned that contradicted my instincts and, in turn, could not be trusted to be known.  Only the self could be known.  So I trained and ate according to only that which I knew, from experience, to be the truth.  Any familiar with my training and nutrition know how bizarre it can appear: I don’t care about my form, my back rounds, my squats look ridiculous, I almost always pull touch and go, I eat very few carbs, I train to get stronger on low calories, I push my conditioning during my caloric surpluses, I train movements only once a week to make them stronger, I never get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night, etc etc.

And very frequently I’ll have some super helpful “Timmy the Trainer” (points if you get the reference) who attempts to stop me in my tracks and inform me that what I am doing cannot work, will not work, and does not work, and I just look at them like they’re crazy.  I’m seeing it work right NOW.  I know it works, because all I can know to be true is the self.  You saying that it does not work does not disprove MY existence: it goes to show that there is something wrong with your science.  And frequently I am told by these people “no, science can’t be wrong: it’s just the interpretation/application/observation/etc etc that’s wrong”.  That is true in the universe of a non-solipsist, but with solipsism, I can flat out say “no: science is wrong on this and I am right.”  At least, so much as it relates to me, which is ultimately all that matters.  I don’t have to prove anything to anyone but myself, because fundamentally I’m just here to make myself better.

Unlike some of you

Which is, in turn, one of the arguments levied against solipsism from a philosophical perspective: it’s a non-falsifiable belief.  That’s frustrating whenever we want to have a logical argument, but yet again, logic does not exist to the solipsist: only the self does.  Which should serve as a warning to those who seek to argue against a solipsist, as it does not matter what studies or journals you have: if it contradicts their experience, it is untrue.  But also, at the same time, don’t you feel just the TINIEST bit silly trying to tell someone that something doesn’t work when it clearly DOES for that individual?  Maybe they’re a genetic mutant or they did the wrong thing so wrong they ended up doing the right thing, but in either case, you can’t argue against results.  At least, not with any hope for success.

Fundamentally, to successfully utilize solipsism, one must have a large enough experience with success to be able to decide what is not effective as it relates to the self.  One has to take risks, make mistakes, encounter many different failings, and ensure that they LEARN through these processes rather than simply lament time wasted.  This is why, when asked to give a review for a training program I’ve never run before, I unsatisfyingly tell the trainee “I’ve never trained that way before: I can’t vouch for it.”  I will only speak of the self, for the self is all that I can know.  But it also puts one in an easy position of authority as it relates TO the self, as I can assuredly say “I did this, and it worked for me”, and that’s ultimately the only credential I need to be able to share my experience.  If it works for someone else, great.  If it doesn’t, also great, because it worked for me, their failure does not invalidate my success, and my self is the only thing I can know to exist. 

READER REQUEST: “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”

Blog reader John Willow submitted this request a while back. 

“I know you've faced many injuries and have had times when you were smaller and weaker than you'd like, and I observe the same with many top athletes, with Big Z being a particular example of someone who is mocked and looked down upon by some people because he's currently not at his prime, even though he is the strongest man, as well the greatest strongman, who ever lived. I get the impression that some people just want to see circus acts and freaks for their own amusement, they only value and respect others for as long as they are at the absolute peak of their athletic abilities, attaching their worth as competitors and as people, as well as their lifting legacy, purely to some ephemeral notion of absolute everpresent pristine physical ability, which, to my mind, relates to a selfish, destructive and ignorant view of what Strength is. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, if you're ever willing to share them.”

Pretty much sums it up.  Also, I just realized this movie came out 19 years ago and predates some of my readers...

And though this is already just a solid argument for my continued misanthropy, it’s worth exploring a bit more as well.  Fundamentally, when examining the question of “worth” here, the issue is that many outside observers tie worth all into one inherent quality, when realistically we’re witnessing two distinct sets of “worth” being expressed here: worth as an athlete, and worth as a human.  But, in turn, that boils down to the fact that, for many individuals, they’d rather have a good athlete than a good human if given the choice, in much the same manner that Machiavelli advised one rather be feared than loved.  However, I see this less as a selfish view of what strength is, and more just the inherently selfish view of what the value of other humans are: for MY entertainment. 

That’s not just unique to strength athletes: people are like that when it comes to all athletes, and honestly, to all humans involved in some manner of entertainment, and if we continue to go down the rabbit I’m sure we’ll expand it to be all humans period, but let’s stick with entertainment.  I’m a part-time NFL watcher (American Football, for my ever growing foreign audience.  Hello out there in Holland!), and every year there are more and more rule changes that are enacted as a means to protect the players, and these rule changes coincide with complaints from the “fans” about how unfun it is to watch the sport.  Penalty flags frequently for safety based rules infractions, “concussion protocols” that remove key players from the game and ruin fantasy football scores (which, let me say, as a DnD player, fantasy football is for nerds), players ejected for tackling in unsafe manners, etc etc.  If these folks were truly “fans” of the players, wouldn’t their concern be the safety of the players?  No, for these fans are not fans of the players as humans, but fans of the players as PLAYERS, and ultimately these fans only want to see these humans do the thing that they are good at doing while doing it the BEST way that they can do it.  Less than best is inadequate.  This is the same sentiment about musicians not sounding as good “now that they’re sober”, with fans wishing addiction and all the consequences that go with it upon their “favorite” artist so that they can continue to make their best music, or demanding that their favorite actors get so “method” in their roles that their personal lives take a total downward spiral, just to produce 2 hours of entertainment.  It is not just strength sports where we observe that the “worth” of a person is linked entirely to their ability to be at their absolute best irrespective of the toll it takes on that individual.

The OG when it comes to NFL helmet combat

And buying into all of that crap IS destructive, both externally and internally.  The demands of the sport of strongman to keep getting heavier and heavier eventually forced out one of the greatest strength athletes to ever like, Mikhail “Misha” Koklyaev, who entered the sport an extremely accomplished weightlifter for Russia and went on to become an accomplished powerlifter and highland games competitor AND even participate in some Crossfit workouts.  Incredibly talented, strong, explosive, coordinated, adaptable, Misha eventually stepped down from the sport among a rash of competitors dying saying that the demands of the sport on the body were becoming too much, and, per today’s discussion, some of his fans supported his decision because they were fans of Misha, and others booed it because they were fans of the athlete.  But Misha was at least enough of his own man to make the decision to do what was right FOR Misha: not the athlete.  Those that instead live for the public doom themselves to live at their whims and, in many cases, won’t ever actually realize their full potential BECAUSE they live for the crowds.

This is the recent observation of the impact of social media making athletes WORSE instead of better.  Athletes seek out sponsorships, and now the only manner to obtain one is through a strong and, honestly, annoying social media presence.  Every single waking moment must be filmed and broadcast for the world to see.  And this means an athlete can never allow their abs to blur, they can never have a sloppy set, they must always squat to depth, have to max all the time, set a new PR every workout, can’t have any failed reps, etc etc.  They train, eat and live TO the whim of the public, who fundamentally does not actually care about the athletes’ success or wellbeing, but simply their ability to entertain.  AND, now as a manner of the bizzaro world we live in, the entertainment is NOT to be found in the few hours of competition that happen at the end of the cycle, BUT in the many weeks leading up to it.  It doesn’t matter if an athlete bombs out at a meet, placing last in a bodybuilding show, tears a bicep on the stones, etc etc, so long as the entire prep process leading up to the competition was entertaining.

Just imagine if Kaz was worried about having year-round abs

Living for the public is a hollow existence.  The praise you receive is short lived, tied exclusively to your ability to entertain, and once that is gone, there is no love or support left to rely on.  One fundamentally must, at one point, make the decision to live for oneself if they have any hope of surviving past their entertaining years.  And, in addition, in a bit of irony, living for oneself will fundamentally allow oneself to have MORE entertaining years, as they allow themselves to engage in less entertaining processes in order to prolong their ability to entertain when it comes to the actual competition.  Mark Felix remains a presence at the highest stage of strongman at an age of over 50, and when asked about his training, states that it’s sub-maximal and easier on his body, so that he can recover better and get in more training.  Most of the guys that have hung around for a while have a similar story, while those that trained, ate and lived for the public tend to be the dudes that rose high in the ranks quick and burned out faster, and just as quickly fell out of the public mind.  It flat out isn’t worth it, and YOU are worth more than the adoration of the public.      

       

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.

“I DIDN’T WANT ANY PART OF MIKE TYSON”

Folks, today is gonna be about boxing rather than lifting, but it’s really all the same.  The quote for the title of today’s post comes by way of George Foreman, in a recent interview.  For those of my readers who only known Mr. Foreman as the guy who sells electric grills, George was a 2 time heavyweight champion boxer, 2 time being significant in this instances as he experienced a 20 year gap between reigns as the champ.  This means that George got to fight in what many would argue to be the greatest era of heavyweight boxing ever: The era of Muhammad Ali, wherein George got to fight Ali, along with Joe Frazier (having beaten the latter twice, both to win and retain the heavyweight title) but ALSO means that, during his comeback era, he was around during the time of a prime Mike Tyson.  Mike and George never fought, despite how amazing of a match up it would have been.  George has been regarded by many to be one of, if not THE, hardest punchers to exist in the sport of boxing, with devastating power in both hands and a total willingness to stand and trade with any man, having weathered the punishing shots from Joe Frazier.  Tyson is a man who needs no introduction, and his rise to the top of the sport was like watching a sentient buzzsaw tear through unready heavyweight fighters.  How did this matchup never occur?  Because, as George said “I didn’t want any part of Mike Tyson.”

Starts at 14m and 45 seconds

https://youtu.be/4-incOaF0dE?t=14m45s

Before I go on, I am not going to hide, nor apologize for, my Mike Tyson fandom.  If you grew up in the 80s and early 90s like I did, you most likely feel the exact same way I do about Mike Tyson as a fighter (reviews are, I’m sure, mixed of him as a person, but it’s not what we’re here to discuss today).  Mike Tyson ruined pay-per-view parties, because his fights ended in 80 seconds.  Fighters could not form strategies to fight him based off fight tapes, because fights did not last long enough to figure out how he fought.  People always wondered if he could go the distance because he NEVER had to.  For the love of God, in the late 80s/early 90s, the most feared video bosses were Ganon, Dracula, and MIKE TYSON.  We were effectively conditioned to be afraid of this man, and in truth, before the UFC became REALLY big the whole world pretty much agreed that the baddest man on the planet was always going to be whoever held the heavyweight title in boxing, and Mike held ALL the titles.  Mike Tyson could be on chemotherapy and men my age would STILL be afraid to fight him TODAY.

HOWEVER, Mike never tends to get ranked as the best of the best in boxing, and it’s due to a fair critique: during his reign as champ, he didn’t fight anyone that was particularly skilled.  He tore through all available opposition: it just so happened that the opposition that was available wasn’t great.   He beat an over the hill Larry Holmes, but that was about it, and his loss in the Buster Douglas fight proved that he COULD be stopped by someone that had a solid gameplan against him.  Foreman, with his many decades of experience, to including against fighting some of the best to have ever lived, means he very well could have put together a solid plan against Mike.  To the point that, when asked, Foreman in the same interview is assured he would have won.  He doesn’t waffle on it, he doesn’t go back and forth, and doesn’t even say that on a good day Mike would have had him: he is very confident that, if they had met up in Tyson’s prime, he would have won.  And yet, within the same interview, he said he wanted nothing to do with Mike Tyson.

Quite possibly due to dialogue like this

Why?  “Because he is a monster.  Mike is something you see in nightmares.  And you just hope you wake up.”  George went on the say “If he misses you with the left, he hits with the right, and if he misses with the right…he bites you!”  And it fundamentally showed what made Mike so much different than anyone else in his era, or really, anyone else in his profession.  Some boxers showed up to box, and some showed up to win, and some even showed up to fight, but Mike, quite frankly, showed up to hurt people.  He had “bad intentions”, to quote Jack Dempsey (who, in his fight with Jess Willard, showcased such brutal domination that, quite frankly, in today’s combat sporting era, he would have actually been charged with assault, battery and attempt murder in the ring).  And even if you are the superior boxer, even if victory is assured, even if you’ve fought “better” people: no one wanted to fight a man like Mike Tyson.

Because of this, Mike so often won his fights before they even began.  His opposition was so terrified of Mike that they froze up, abandoned their gameplan, and went limp as soon as they were hit to try to make the pain stop.  Fighting him became like riding a rodeo bull: dudes were just holding on for the bragging rights of longest time.  And now we observe that he even had a shield to protect his legacy built in with this mentality.  There was George Foreman, on his comeback, still a contender, eyeing up the heavyweight title, seeing Mike Tyson there, KNOWING that he could win, and saying “…nah, I think I’ll wait this one out.”  As I wrote about before, Mike became “more trouble than he was worth”, and in doing so, he crushed those that were beneath his skills and even defeated those allegedly superior to him through just sheer, unbridled nastiness.

Every Mike Tyson fight came with free facial reconstructive surgery

I love this, because it shows just how much one can be simply by changing how they THINK about something.  I’ll cop to Mike having not been the best boxer ever.  Hell, he may not have even been the best boxer Cus D’Amato trained.  Floyd Patterson was an intelligent and well regarded student of Cus that obtained Olympic gold and was the youngest man to hold the heavyweight title PRIOR to Mike, having made very effective use of the exact same “peek-a-boo” style of boxing employed by Mike.  However, Floyd never got to win the fights before they started, and, in fact, endured such horrific mockery from Muhammad Ali that some argue that it may have been responsible for the ending of his boxing career as a whole.  Put that same skillset (or a lacking one perhaps) in Mike Tyson and pair it with Mike’s “bad intentions” and suddenly things flip.  Suddenly the boxing “style” takes a back seat to the boxer himself, and now it doesn’t matter if he’s a slugger or a boxer or a puncher or a counter fighter: he’s got bad intentions, and he came here to hurt you. 

You have the same ability.  You are born with your own limitations.  Your genetics, height, structure, etc etc.  There are some things you do not have the power to change.  But you ALWAYS have the power to change how you think about things, and how you approach them.  And if you approach them like a monster, like a nightmare, like a man with “bad intentions”, like someone who came here to hurt people, you’re not just going to beat those that are worse than you: you’re going to beat those that are BETTER than you that don’t want any part of you.  Some folks can make themselves bigger, stronger, faster and better than you: make it so that no one can make themselves nastier than you.              

HIGHER POWERS, FAITH AND IDOLATRY

I’ve written before on how my formal educational background is politics, with an undergrad and masters focused on political science, and that, prior to that, I was the top theology student in my Catholic high school, which was somewhat scandalous being that I achieved that having not been Catholic.  I bring all that up because, as a high school student deciding on what major to pursue in college and having zero interest in going into any sort of theology related field, I picked politics because it appeared to be the next closest thing.  I bring all THAT up because one of the key characteristics of both areas is the determination and control of what one believes in.  The parallels and overlaps are honestly rather fascinating, and a mastery of one tends to allow a significant understanding of the other.  And you, as a trainee, can take the lessons from these two fields to understand the significance of what you vest your faith in as a “higher power” and how it controls the way you think and act.

For instance, now I'm just confused...

What (or who) we believe in is always the most important part of Western religions, and this is easily observed in the 10 Commandments.  Start with number 1 (paraphrased, because it’s funnier that way): “I am your God: don’t have any other gods”.  Ok, cool, what’s the second?  “Don’t say my name in vain”.  Ok, this guy is a real big deal, got it.  Number 3?  “Block off your Sundays (or Saturdays if you’re sticking with the Old Testament…or Fridays if you want something slightly more “modern) for me”.  Alright alright, so apparently this dude is a REAL big deal.  Ok, let’s just skip to the middle here.  What’s number 5?  “Oh yeah, hey, don’t kill people.”  Well f**k me, we spent a 3^rd of our commandments just spelling out how big a deal God is and it’s only halfway through that we find out we shouldn’t be killing each other?  You’d think that would be pretty high up there, no?  But that’s the point: figuring out what and who we believe in is HUGE, and needs to be established before we can move on to the important stuff.

The US Bill of Rights has a similarly hilarious bent to it.  First, it should be understood that the Founding Fathers never saw fit to include a Bill of Rights because everything that was in the Bill of Rights was already IN the Constitution: you just had to read the damn thing.  But, just like how folks won’t spend an afternoon reading a training manual to avoid spending 5 years screwing around in the gym, people demanded a “cliffnotes” for their doctrine of government.  And again, what do we see in the first amendment to the Constitution?  Freedom of religion.  The citizens of the United States KNEW the significance of being told what they could and could not believe in, and they wanted to decide that for themselves.  They knew that, once the government started controlled who and what we believed in, the controlled pretty much everything.  This was the FIRST amendment, meaning it was the very first thing they came up with when they were deciding “what protections and freedoms should we be allowed”.  Know where they decided to protect themselves from cruel and unusual punishment?  The 8th amendment.  Meaning they first went “Hey, the government shouldn’t get to tell me what I believe in” and then, several hours later, they said “Oh yeah, also, the government shouldn’t be allowed to rip out my fingernails”.  Know when they decided that humans shouldn’t own other humans like property?  The 13th amendment: in 1865, about 80 years after they wrote the original Bill of Rights.  THAT is how crucial they felt it was to determine what they believe in.

When you can write "all men are created equal" while owning 80 of said men, you get to have a smug look like that

I bring up all this rambling history to point out that for millennia people understood the significance of believing in a higher power and the sheer power such belief held, and it’s why you, as a trainee, need to embrace the significance of this.  Faith is an incredibly powerful tool in the toolbox, and its absence hamstrings several trainees.  Some folks out there are training atheists: they refuse to believe in anything.  In turn, these folks constantly undermine their own progress, because as soon as they read or hear about an effective method, they immediately spring into action to find something that disproves this very same method.  And there’s no shortage of that information out there: if you want to find it, you can.  Soon, these folks exist in a world with no higher powers: nothing to vest their faith in, and they suffer existential torment and an inability to self-actualize.  In their attempt to be “too smart to be fooled”, they’ve robbed themselves of the power that faith and fanaticism grant to so many others.

In the middle of the spectrum, there are those that have faith in “the way”.  This is to say, those that have vested all their faith in the higher power that is their program or coach.  You’ve seen these before, and we’ve had derogatory terms for them as well such as “HIT Jedis” and “Cultfit”, but it’s also true for the Westside or Die crowd, Deep Water, 5/3/1, Juggernaut, etc etc.  And as I wrote above: you can EASILY find something online that “disproves” all of these methods if you were so inclined.  HOWEVER, those that are truly “bought in”, the real deal fanatics and zealots, those that have fully vested their faith in the “higher power” that is the program, simply don’t care.  For sure, those that are simply paying lip service in their attempts to “get into heaven” will always have that lingering doubt and never get to fully realized the benefit of this real deal faith, but we’ve frequently observed the benefits that the real fanatics experience with their faith in “the way”.  If you can find a way that you are willing to give yourself to, you will be all the better for it.

I bet the Mentzer brothers would feel PRETTY silly to find out now that HIT doesn't work

However, I suggest one alternative course of action: make yourself your own higher power.  Have faith in oneself, and a strong, firm, unflinching belief that, no matter what, you will overcome and succeed.  Have an ego, be prideful, be arrogant, all of those things that other entities tell you are sins and evils.  Why?  Because THOSE entities want to have control over you, and they do so by not allowing you faith in yourself.  Nietzsche wrote about this in his Genealogy of Morals, of how the ruled are taught one sets of morals while the rulers another, and what you choose to believe in will greatly alter where you fit in those categories.  If you believe that, no matter what course of action you take, you will somehow make it work, chance are, you’ll be right.  If you’re always doubting yourself, wondering if you’ve made a wrong decision, using “I can’t”, coming up with excuses, examples and justifications for why you will come up short and fail, that’s exactly what you will do. 

You are the only being on this planet like you.  You have so much potential and ability if you choose to tap into it and employ it.  But, ultimately, you need to believe in yourself FIRST before you can do so.  And, specifically, as your own higher power, you have to believe in the thing you can BECOME, rather than the thing that you are.  Sure, who you are now may be small, weak, frail, etc, but that is not who you can become.  So long as the belief is there that there is something great within you that needs to be realized, you have the ability to accomplish great things.  Put your faith in yourself and worship at your own altar. 

MIYAMOTO MUSASHI & LIFTING: DON’T FOCUS ON THE DETAILS (OR YOU COULD DIE)

As I’ve confessed many times through my writing, I am a complete and total unabashed nerd.  In addition, those of you familiar with my age and constant references are aware that I grew up in the 90s.  As such, I imagine you’re all just as shocked as I am that this is the first time I’ve decided to bring up Japanese philosophy in the blog, as by all accounts I should be a complete and total Japanophile, steeped in anime, JRPGS, and manga.   And though I admit I do tend to indulge in all those manners of debauchery, I just was never super big into eastern philosophy.  However, irrespective of where you fall in the philosophy spectrum, you have to know and appreciate Miyamoto Musashi, the Ronin that fought and won about 60 duels to the death with a sword in each hand, making up his own style and ending the lineages of many other styles he deemed inferior.  Musashi was so focused on perfecting swordsmanship that he would kill entire schools of certain swordfighting styles so that they would no longer pollute the population with their inferior methods: and you thought I was a fanatic about the signal to noise ratio.  Musashi literally lived by the sword, risking his life on scores of occasions for nearly 50 years, he lived and breathed swordfighting, it was his focus, his life, and his ultimate tome on swordfighting, “The Book Of Five Rings”, Musashi had this to say regarding the fine details of swordsmanship

“If you concentrate on details you will neglect the important factors, and you will become confused.  This will make it impossible to win.”

People will listen to your quotes if you have a sword in each hand

I am reproducing this from the Ashikaga Yoshiharu translation, first published in 2003, so I apologize if your version reads different, but let all of that sink in for you.  Musashi, arguably the greatest swordsman to ever walk the planet, the winner of around 60 duels to the death, who put his very life at risk when he fought, felt like focusing on the details was unimportant.  In fact, doing so was detrimental.  If you focused on details, it is impossible to win.

And what happens when you don’t win?  Typically, that means you lose.  And what does it mean when you lose a fight to the death?  You die.  Focusing on the details was how you die.

Musashi understood this about 400 years ago.  And he understood it without the miracle advances in science, technology, and education we have today.  And yet, somehow, with how smart we’ve all become, we’ve grown so very very stupid, because we all forgot this lesson that he learned.  People WANT to focus on the details so bad.  They want to AGONIZE over every little detail in their training and their diets.  They want to account for every macronutrient, they want to be able to quantify, measure and evaluate every single rep performed and ensure it was an “effective rep”.  They want to make sure they consume their quick carbs in the right window and take out tendo units to calculate their speed and plug it in a spreadsheet to map progress…all for what? Because it’s important?  Motherf**ker what could be more important than NOT DYING?! 

Not all of us get an extra life

Let it continue to sink in!  Musashi wrote a book about how to win in swordfights AND how to win in large scale full on assaults, and his advice was “don’t focus on the details or you will die”, and 400 years later some pubmed glasses pusher is daring to say “Well ACKTHUALLY…”  No, oh my god, shut up, you sound SO stupid right now.  The details are not how you win fights: it’s the foundational guiding principles that matter.  If you read the rest of Musashi’s book (and I highly encourage you do, it’s an easy read, because Musashi was also smart enough to know that it’s important to communicate complicated ideas simply, and it has tons of great little gems in it) he constantly explains that it’s less about fine and precise details of how one holds their pinky and to what precise angle one steps and more about mastering the core concepts, ideas and principles of combat and being able to apply them.  He explains how individual combat is a microcosm of combat between armies, and how the same principles apply universally because they are GOOD principles, and, in turn, you as a lifter/athlete/whatever should be able to ALSO apply them toward whatever pursuit you have.

In fact, Musashi has an entire section dedicated to debunking those schools that DO focus on the details: demonstrating exactly how and why they fail in their pursuit of doing so.  And Musashi wasn’t blowing smoke: he knew their stuff didn’t work because he KILLED THEM when they tried to use it.  Could you imagine a world with such scientific rigor!?  Think about how many self-proclaimed geniuses are online cranking out numerous evaluations on programs they’ve NEVER run, simply because they think they can look at a pirated e-book and measure effectiveness by how many sets and reps a movement is performed at a certain intensity.  These folks aren’t out there winning swordfights: these dudes don’t even own a sword.  How about we take up arms and see who survives before we start saying what does and does not work.

Pretty sure Musashi would have slaughtered everyone in this town for good measure

How about we get things back in perspective, shall we?  You folks that “live training”: do you really?  Is the consequence of you not achieving your goals actual, literal death?  Because that’s what it was for the dude who was one of the best ever at killing other dudes with a sword, and he said that focusing on the details was how you die.  If your passion doesn’t result in death if you fail, you DEFINITELY don’t need to be sweating the details.  Whatever fate your failure has could not possibly be worse than death, so maybe you can quit worrying about getting all the details right and focus more on getting your principles and fundamentals squared away.  What’s the worst that could happen?