SUCCESS CAN’T BECOME OBSOLETE

It most likely shocks no one that I’m not an “early adopter” as far as technology goes.  I didn’t get text messaging until 2013, and that was only because my work was sending schedule changes by text and I wasn’t getting them.  I still don’t own a tablet.  I write these blogs on a laptop I bought in 2015, and I also use that same laptop to play through my 300^th playthrough of Fallout and Diablo (man, 1996-1997 was a GOOD era).  I’m still driving the first car I ever bought back in 2008.  Examples abound, the fact of the matter is, when something works, it doesn’t really matter to me if something better comes along: I only tend to make changes when I need to.  But here’s the crazier thing about this: this is me not adopting new technology in the face of the fact that obsolesce is a real concept in the world of technology and still achieving success.  So why would you need to change how you train to avoid obsolesce?

This is the exact look I imagine I'd get from him after he read that

Where is this rant going?  Specifically, I’m rallying against people that read one article or watch one Podcast (say, the Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Pavel Tsastouline or Rob Oberst) or one study (abstract of course) and suddenly decide that their entire training protocol needs an overhaul and everything needs to be thrown out.  These trainees discover that any rep above 5 is “garbage volume”, or that they should never do deadlifts, or that they should never strain in training, or that they need to train bodyparts twice a week, etc etc.  And I ask them “Was your training working PRIOR to this discovery?”  And what do I get in response? 

People act like that question is completely immaterial to the conversation at hand, and that, quite frankly, is insane.  And not the kind of insanity that I champion, of Viking berserkers charging headlong into battle against mounted armored cavalry wearing nothing but bearskins, but more the “tinfoil hat to keep the government radiowaves out of my skull” kinda insane.  The primary goal of training is to achieve your goals: THAT is why you train.  If your training is achieving your goals, IT IS WORKING.  If you are getting bigger and stronger training a bodypart once a week, you have demonstrated that this method is a method that achieves success.  If a study comes out that says otherwise, THAT STUDY IS WRONG.  At least, insofar as it relates to you.  The same is true if you’re the kinda dude that squats until you puke and find out that submax training is what works, or if you’re a walking JPS meme and have “there is no reason to be alive if you can’t do deadlift” tattooed on your body and discover that you’re not supposed to deadlift: if it works for you, then the “new technology” is wrong.

“But I want to be optimal!”  Oh my god, shut up.  I think I had plans to make this into a paragraph, but honestly, that about says it all.

Folks, the human body is not evolving at a rate that you can perceive, to include by the decade.  Things that worked in the 1920s are going to work in 2020, let alone things that worked in 2010.  Sure, there are a few mutations roaming around, but you’ll know if you have one pretty quick, and unless you’re a new X-man, it means that methods that work will work for you.  This includes things like “bro splits”, which were just called “splits” back in the day, because people somehow were less stupid despite having access to less information and “knowledge” back in the day and didn’t need to give derogatory names to a way to train.  It includes HIT, Heavy/Lights, Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding training, Abbreviated Training, Heavy Duty Training, Dogg Crapp, and yes, EVEN the first edition of 5/3/1 (so you can stop getting upset that Jim released newer editions, because you can still use the old one if you want to).  Simply because new information came along doesn’t somehow invalidate the success of that old information: it just means there’s even MORE ways to achieve your goals now.

And let me just make the observation that, the more I see trainees try to follow the “new rules” of training, the more I see trainees failing to make results.  One of the most popular programs I’ve seen recently is a 6 day a week Push/Pull/Legs program.  Since push/pull/legs would only train the muscles once a week (taboo, you see), this means trainees need to run the program 6 days a week, in order to hit that holy “2 days a week’ for training muscle groups.  And every time I’m online and I see someone say that they’re stalling in their training, I ask them what program they’re running and they reply with this.  And I can’t help them.  Primarily because I grew up in an era where, if you told any dude you were lifting weights 6 times a week, their immediate reply would be “stop doing that: it’s too much training”.  Primarily because there was an expectation back then that you were absolutely slaughtering a muscle group when you trained it, and that you needed to rest it so it could recover and grow.  And now we’re told that idea can’t possibly work, in spite of the fact that it does, and that instead, this new idea is what works…in spite of the fact it doesn’t?

I suppose I've seen crazier ideas...

And before I get flooded by people that want to defend their holy PPL program, LEARN the lesson of what I’m writing here.  If I’m writing a blog saying your program can’t work, and your program HAS worked for you: that means I’m wrong.  BUT, if someone wrote that the program you’re following will work, and it’s NOT working: that means THEY’RE wrong.  Success can’t become obsolete, but failure is a SURE sign that something needs to get evolved.  And maybe, sometimes, evolution moves us backwards or sideways instead of forward.