“HOW DO I KNOW IF I’M RECOVERED?”

 This needs to be written, because I get asked this question a lot and it ends up absolutely blowing my mind.  I’ve made my position on nutrition clear for some time now: food is an agent of recovery, and, in turn, eating supports training, not the other way around.  This means that, when one “bulks”, they train hard enough to cause the body to need to add muscles as a response to the demand of training, and then they eat to be able to recover from that training and add muscle.  Employing this guideline, I’ve never needed to count a calorie or macro in my life to be able to add muscle to my body.  But, having shared this, I inevitably get asked the question “well how do I KNOW if I ate enough that I recovered?”  How do you know!?  Dude: have you ever NOT been recovered before?

Looks like we're good!

 

Being asked this question demonstrates one of two possibilities by the question asker: they’ve either always overeaten and, thus, never been in a state of undercovery OR they’ve always undertrained and, in turn, STILL never been in a state of underrecovery.  And a quick look at the trainee can reveal their sins: if they’re fat, they’re most likely an overeater, and if they’re skinny, they’re an undertrainer.  Whichever sin they indulge in, the solution is the same: it’s time to go get uncomfortable so you can LEARN what it feels like to NOT be recovered, and then, that way, you can know when you ARE recovered.  That’s the thing: if you’ve ALWAYS been recovered from your training, you have no idea what it feels like when you fail to accomplish that goal, so you’ll have no guiding mechanism in place to help you understand how your nutritional approach is working.  This is why people love to rely on counting calories and macros: they just punch numbers into an app and it tells them if they ate good (terrible grammar by design).  But what is the MIRROR telling us here folks?

 

These folks need to go out and actually TRY to overtrain.  There is SO much value in that experience.  For one, when you try to overtrain, you become aware of just how difficult of a feat that is to accomplish.  And yeah yeah: someone is going to tell me about that time they got rhabdomyolysis at their very first cardio kickboxing class: you’re in too poor of shape to even be concerned with adding muscle at this point.  Go do some exercise and get in shape so you can start getting into shape.  I’m talking about a trainee that actually has SOME degree of base built: trying to overtrain is tough.  The body is incredibly adaptable and will rise to meet several challenges when you really push it, so you need to start working it HARD to find its limits.  And once you DO find it, be cognoscente of HOW you feel at that point: that’s what underrecovery feels like.  When you’re feeling that feeling, that means your nutrition is inadequate and needs to come up in order to start recovering from training and start growing.

This should do the trick

 

“Well what if it’s my sleep that’s the issue?”  Talking to the wrong dude here: I haven’t gotten 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep since 2010, and have recently overcome a brief insomnia spell where my dogs were getting in a LOT of walks at 0300 while I wore a weighted vest…and was STILL making progress in the gym.  No: let’s just focus on food here shall we?  The big shocker I think a lot of you are going to find out is you’ve honestly been eating WAY more than you needed to your whole life and, in turn, have been enjoying a very plushy life of being constantly OVERrecovered from training.  And here’s the thing: that’s an AWESOME thing to be if your concern is to always be growing, BUT, if you ARE one of those people that’s super concerned about not accumulating too much fat in your pursuit of muscle, you gotta have more awareness of where your limits are.

 

Going even further into this, this knowledge of eating enough to know when you’re recovered becomes crucial once you start running those programs that WILL break you if you don’t eat enough.  And, in turn, this is WHY I suggest those very programs when it comes time to focus on weight gain.  Super Squats, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith and Deep Water all place incredible recovery demands on the trainee, and they need to eat to recover from those programs.  It is honestly pretty rare I find a trainee that runs the risk of OVERrecovering from these programs, and far more likely that they put the breaks on in their nutrition in fear of “getting fat” and, in turn, not realize the potential of this training.  When I ran Super Squats, I was drinking a gallon of milk a day and eating as much food as I could fit on my plates at the dinning hall in my college, ending most meals with gigantic peanut butter sandwiches with plans for late night runs at the on campus restaurant later.  When I ran Deep Water, I legit just plain ran out of time to eat.  I’d start my lunch break and eat until it was over and know that, the next opportunity I had to eat, I’d need to do the same thing.  And on these programs, I’d often BARELY be able to meet the demands of the training day, and even have a few occasional failures.  THAT is how I knew that I had eaten enough to recover: I’d see the results of my nutritional efforts reflected in my training ability (along with the changes in my physique and scale weight of course).

Right about now is a bad time to discover that you're under-recovered

 

If you don’t find yourself absolutely terrified of your next workout, you’re most likely overrecovered.  If you find yourself staring down at a bowl of ground beef and veggies, fork in hand, praying that this will somehow be enough food to make sure you get all of your reps tomorrow, you are most likely in that sweet spot of eating enough to be recovered from your training.  If in doubt, go find out how it feels when you don’t do it.

TRAIN FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION, EAT FOR SELF-PRESERVATION

 This is one of those that came to me in the middle of a workout and the more I think about it the more I like it, primarily because I enjoy pithy throw-away comments and sound bites.  Similar to Pavel’s “Meat for strength, vegetables for health”, “train for self-destruction, eat for self-preservation” is a fantastic way to summarize my approach to training and nutrition and also goes on to demonstrate how many people do this completely BACKWARDS.  The vast majority of trainees are training for self-preservation and eating for self-destruction and it’s TOTALLY evident in their results.  Once we get this paradigm flipped, we can start actually making some progress!

I was in high school when the movie came out: it will never NOT be cool to me

 

What charge and I levying against the general population when it comes to training?  People train for self-preservation: they’re overly concerned with making sure that they’re not going to get hurt, injured or overtrained.  Well what’s the consequence of such a focus on training?  The very dreaded and very REAL risk of UNDERtraining.  Yes, people are so worried about overtraining that they play it WAY too safe and don’t train hard enough to actually CREATE a demand on their body to promote the necessary stimulus to grow muscle.  Isn’t that why we were training in the first place?  If you refuse to actually push your body to the point where it perceives that it is threatened by it’s environment, it won’t have any reason to respond by adding more muscle.  Trust me: the BODY will do all the self-preservation it needs: that’s not your job.  YOUR job is to BE the element of destruction TO your body so that it will seek growth.

 

This is why we train for self-destruction, rather than self-preservation.  We train with the goal of trying to destroy the body as much as possible.  We push WELL beyond our perceived limits, finding new realms of volume or intensity, or finding just how little we can rest between sets, or just how many movements we can chain together into a giant set, or how much conditioning we can tack onto a training week, etc etc.  We’re trying to BREAK the body, because when the body fears being broken, it responds by hardening the f**k up.  When a body perceives it is safe, it allows itself to get soft, but when the body perceives that it is in danger, it responds by growing bigger and stronger to better fight off that danger.  YOU need to BE the danger that your body fears.

Just going big with the cliche quotes

 

Then we tun our attention to nutrition and, once again, most trainees have this BACKWARDS.  Most trainees eat in a manner that is best described as “self-destructive”.  This goes in one of two directions, the first (and most awful) being the trainee that eats like a bird in fear of adding an ounce of fat onto their frame.  These min/maxing munchkin pub-med abstract reading small NON-sidewalk cracking motherf**kers as so absolutely terrified of the prospect of their abs ever having an element of blur on them that they’ll meticulously count every molecule of toothpaste on their toothbrush to ensure that they’re only ever at the “optimal” amount of caloric surplus…and then wonder why they’re not growing.  Hell, when you pair that approach to nutrition with the above mentioned “self-preservation” approach to training, it’s no wonder why one spins their wheels: there’s no demand to grow, and no FOOD to support growth.  The other side of the equation are those that decide that the path to greatness is to eat like an unsupervised child: nothing but fast food, frozen pizzas, candy, and crap that comes out of a box.  These trainees can’t boil water, and will spend $400 on pre-workout supplements but not $20 on a slow-cooker.  Yes, Dave Tate is evidence that you CAN get big and strong eating junk food, but Dave got to 275lbs eating CLEAN food and THEN used junk to get to 308.  You don’t need to do that to get from 165 to 180.

 

So again, we flip the script and we eat for self-preservation.  After we break ourselves in training, we heal ourselves in eating.  We eat BIG and we eat WELL.  And f**k it: I’m going to say “we eat clean” because, once again, if you DON’T know what I mean when I say “eat clean”, you’re being a petulant child.  Justin Harris has said on numerous occasions that people know far more about nutrition than they let on: it’s just convenient to pretend like we don’t understand so we can find a way to justify not eating our veggies.  Stop being stupid: pick solid protein sources (animal flesh, dairy you can stomach, eggs/egg whites), veggies, fats (nuts/nut butters, avocados, olives, oils) and fruits and carbs if that’s your thing.  If you are seriously in doubt, download Jon Andersen’s “Deep Water” ebook and look at the food list on it for a great quick reference.  Also check out the stuff that John Meadows promotes in his Mountain Dog diet approach.  And read Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” for the Texas Roundtable. 

Here is an easy way to tell that you f**ked up

 

Really, there are SO many dudes out there that will give you a basic nutrition list to pick from: but you gotta actually EAT the damn food and ENOUGH of it to recover from the training you’re doing where you’re trying to break your body.  If you refuse to put on any amount of bodyfat in your pursuit of physical greatness, you’re going to get terrible results.  The body needs to know that it’s got some nutrients coming or, once again, it’s not going to want to add muscle.  Just like how a body that is subjected to trauma will respond by adding muscle to defend itself, a body that is subjected to STARVING will clamp down and prioritize it’s OWN self-preservation over the self-destruction you’re trying to subject it to with your dietary habits.  And yeah yeah “starvation mode is bro-science”: let me know how that’s working out for you chief.  The dudes eating frequently and getting in protein and quality nutrition are getting jacked: it worked for decades.  The dudes trying to re-invent the wheel aren’t getting too far.  Even the folks that are proponents of a fasting based approach ensure that they engage in a BIG nutritional splurge to offset the damage done from fasting: reference “The Warrior Diet” and Jamie Lewis’ “Apex Predator Diet”.  These folks are eating for self-preservation.

 

All things balance.   With destruction comes creation, and with creation comes destruction.  The trick is to make sure you’re on the RIGHT side of that balance.  Don’t preserve your body in the gym and destroy it at the dinning table.  Train so hard that you break and eat so hard that you heal.

YOUR HUMILITY IS SELF-PERPETUATING

  

I am fully aware I have a popular (for me) video out there on youtube where I tell people to embrace being beginners and get on a beginner program, but it looks like the pendulum has swung and I must go back and tear myself apart, which is fundamentally what this blog has been since the beginning.  Specifically, I observe, now, trainees that REFUSE to move on beyond the beginner phase, desperate to “milk their linear progression gains” for as long as possible.  Why?  …because that’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do…right?  That seems to be the answer.  Moving on to a non-beginner program is some sort of taboo that brings with it all sorts of evils: a veritable opening of Pandora’s box and unleashing all manner of doom upon the world.  If you transition too early, you leave precious gains ON THE TABLE.  Christ people, the only thing you need to worry about is leaving FOOD on the table, because most of you aren’t eating in fear of losing your abs (which Chase Karnes already covered in his amazing article “How to Stay Small and Weak”, which you need to read https://www.elitefts.com/education/novice/how-to-stay-small-and-weak/).  What’s happening here?  People are afraid of admitting to being “not a beginner” in fear of displaying some manner of pride in, in turn, they continue to remain beginners because they refuse to do the things NON-BEGINNERS do to be NON-BEGINNERS.  Your humility is self-perpetuating, as its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you're going to have self-fulfilling prophecies, why not make it writing your future bench goal on your body?

 

A beginner program (as they’re understood these days) needs to be run for about 12-14 weeks.  That’s it.  Yet discussion of beginner programs occupy about 98% percent of training discussion despite being responsible for about .000001% of your training time (assuming you’re a lifer).  Why?  Because there will ALWAYS be far more beginners than non-beginners in the world of training, and crafty authors looking to turn a quick buck are going to target the larger demographic over the smaller one.  In addition, beginners are FAR easier to deceive compared to the more experienced dudes.  This is why some yahoo with a 6 pack can hoodwink people by the thousands and make a living off Instagram selling “secrets”: gullible beginners will buy them.  Put that same dude at just one strongman competition (not even as a competitor: just a vendor) and see competitors look through him like they have x-ray vision.  However, the unfortunate consequence of ALL this material aimed at beginners is that it’s created a (false) notion among trainees that the beginner phase of training is both a very LONG phase and a very IMPORTANT phase.

 

The opposite is the reverse: it lasts a short time and really isn’t all that important in the long run.  Wanna know MY beginner program?  Bench press, dumbbell curls and preacher curl on a standard bench 5 days a week.  Yup.  Pretty sure it was 1 topset of each too.  And then I got into my high school weight room and went for max weight on all the machines for singles with my buddies.  I turned out ok.  Meanwhile, you got kids that are only week 176 of Starting Strength, having deloaded down to the bar for the 96^th time, swearing that THIS is the cycle wherein they will conquer the dreaded “butt wink”.  Dude: you’re not a beginner anymore.  Its time to put away childish things: go do a REAL program so you can actually start growing.

Oh hey

 

You keep claiming you’re a beginner, and so you have the strength and look of a beginner.  You’re never going to NOT be a beginner unless you start TRAINING like someone that isn’t one.  And this isn’t just restricted to training programs either: quit waiting for permission to use a lifting belt and just go out and get one.  “But won’t I look stupid lifting with a belt on with only 135lbs?”  Who cares?  You’ll look JACKED when you use that belt to start lifting heavier weights than you normally do in training and actually force your muscles to grow from the stress.  Quit being so humble that you can’t use straps, or wraps, or sleeves, or creatine, of ANYTHING that is for “more advanced guys”.  Give yourself permission to acknowledge your achievements so you can go after even BIGGER ones.

 

And oh my god, let’s talk about acknowledging your achievements.  No one is impressed when you post a lift or accomplishment and say “I know it’s not much/it’s not like what you guys can do/etc etc.”  As soon as I see that, I stop watching.  You just told me this is an insignificant thing: I’m not going to waste my time on it.  F**k that: be PROUD of your accomplishment: you earned it.  And if you CAN’T be proud of it, then it’s NOT an accomplishment, so just shut up about it, knuckle down, move forward, and do something you CAN be proud of.  Just like I wrote in my “How Much Ya Bench” post, the people that are actually big and strong have no reason to hide how big and strong they are: it’s only the people that have something to be ashamed of that have shame.  Don’t let this stupid fake humility self-perpetuate and turn you weak: be proud of what you’ve done and share it blatantly and openly.

Maybe sometimes shame is good...

 

The power of positive thinking IS real, and it IS self-perpetuating as well.  You spending all your time telling yourself that you’re still a beginner, still insignificant, still unimportant, still small, still weak, etc etc, is just making you EXACTLY that.  There’s no prize given to the most humble lifter: that dude gets to walk home in a dirty singlet while the best lifter carries home the trophy and MAYBE even some cash if they’re in the right sport.  Tell yourself you’re a monster, you’re a titan, you are a “sidewalk cracking motherf**ker”.  Hell, at least tell yourself you’re not a beginner anymore after you’ve spent 6 months lifting weights.  A wrestling season is only about 4 months long, and within the first month you’re expected to compete in a tournament and a bunch of meets and by the end of the season you SHOULDN’T be a beginner anymore: lifting weights is far simpler (powerlifting is in the special AND para Olympics), so you should be able to eclipse the “beginner” stage in a similar timeframe, if not shorter. 

 

Don’t let humility prevent you from actually being something great.  You gotta actually be accomplished in order to be humble: otherwise, you’re just being honest.

 

ON FANTASY

  

I know I’ve already written on this topic before, but it’s worth re-visiting.  I was blessed to have grown up before the internet was a thing, because, in turn, I was blessed to have been so ignorant in the ways of science and human limitation when I turned to making myself bigger and stronger.  But along with that, I was ALSO blessed because none of my heroes and idols were REAL people.  There was SO little focus the world gave to strength athletics in the early to mid 90s that there WERE no role models for me to adopt.  Yeah, WSM would still air on ESPN at 2:00 AM on occasion, but otherwise, the world (as it still does) cared about REAL sports, and the only time strength sports got any sort of love was once every 4 years in the Olympics.  So what did that leave me?  Fantasy.  And with that, ZERO conception of what was and was not possible.

 

Who did I look up to?  I looked up to Colossus from X-men.  

Yup: speedo, hooker boots and all.  This was MY Colossus as an 80s kid

You ever think about how awesome he was?  Primarily because, when NOT empowered, he was STILL peak human strength, able to press 700lbs overhead, and THEN he could transform and become super-human strong.  

Because again, when you can still f**k up Cyclops BEFORE you power up, you get to pick whatever uniform you want

And then there was Juggernaut, who needs no introduction, and then those lunatics that wrote the 90s X-men cartoon had them face off and my brain exploded from so much awesome.

True nerds will know that this is from the wrong show, but I couldn't find a decent enough photo of the 90s cartoon to reference

Hell, I even looked up to The Blob, because even though he was super fat, it came with being super strong (Paul Anderson woulda made a GREAT Blob), which I know, because I had a bunch of X-men trading cards that had all the stats listed.  I had Hulk Hogan, who IS a fantasy character played by Terry Bollea, with 24” pythons, tearing his shirt off, and, as a fat kid growing up, WAS a fat kid that totally transformed himself through diet, exercise, saying his prayers and taking his vitamins, along with the whole other cast of jacked up professional wrestlers that my brother and I would watch on Saturday mornings, getting WAY too riled up until our dad screamed at us to go back to bed because it was too early.  

To this day I don't know WHY this symbolizes being strong: I just know that it does

I, of course, had Arnold, but it wasn’t Arnold I looked up to: it was Conan, knocking out camels with one punch, or Commando, throwing a phone booth.  I had no idea how much weight Arnold could REALLY lift, but I DID see him carrying a gigantic log like it was nothing in a movie.

 

LumberJACKED...I am so, SO sorry

I had NO idea which of these feats were possible and which ones were fabricated: all I knew is I wanted to be like these dudes.  I wanted to be like Samson from the Bible, or Hercules, or any figure I ever heard of that was known for their physical strength.  And it drove me to chase after this strength.  My earliest memory is of wanting to be big and strong, going back as far as the age of 4, and 31 years later I’m STILL chasing after it, for reasons I don’t even understand any more NOR do I even bother to try to understand it.  I just know this calling is inside of me and I’m just going to chase after it.  And since I’m still a nerd, I STILL read comic books about strong characters (did you see the arc where Colossus BECOMES the Juggernaut?  Holy sh*t!), but it’s also because, in truth, there’s so much more value in fantasizing about being this strong vs being grounded in reality.

In case you thought I was joking

 

I see young trainees now that are so well versed in all the limitations of humanity that they’ve basically given up before they even try.  They know the full extent of genetic possibility of the human race based off the performance of top strength athletes and a series of controlled studies and have extrapolated their entire potential based off these data points, deciding, unquestionably so, that they can ONLY add 2lbs of muscle a month, and that they can ONLY add 20lbs of muscle their first year of training.  Meanwhile, I was running Super Squats under the guise that I could add 30lbs of muscle in SIX WEEKS, based on the cover of the book and Randall Strossen’s constant reassurance it was possible, with STORIES of several trainees that had managed to accomplish such a feat.  Is it possible?  I don’t care: I put on 12lbs in six weeks following that program, which meant, for the FIRST time since I started lifting weights, I was FINALLY over 200lbs bodyweight, having gone from 190 to 202lbs.  I ate my face off and trained as hard as I had ever trained before in my life on that program, because I had a FANTASY narrative I was following that wasn’t being bogged down with facts or reality. 

 

Think of how many trainees simply WON’T run that program because they won’t believe in the fantasy behind it.  “30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks is a fantasy, and I’M so grounded in reality that I’m ONLY going to do training programs that promise me MEAGER and realistic results.”  Yeah, and what did you learn from that experience?  What did you gain?  Because after Super Squats, I learned what it’s like to be OBSESSED with training and nutrition.  To FORCE myself to drink my gallon of milk a day no matter what, because I know that the next workout that comes is going to be Hell unless I am recovered.  Do you know how many trainees confer to me that they can’t TELL if they’re recovered or not?  It’s because they’ve never trained hard enough to ever be UNDER-recovered.  You ever spend 47 hours kicking yourself because you only did 19 reps instead of 20?  Been there, and that obsession drove me to eat bigger and squat harder than I ever did in my life.  And before this becomes another ode to Super Squats, it’s not just THAT program: it’s the simple pursuit OF fantasy that drives this.  Of chasing after things that are completely impossible and, in doing so, experiencing things that are extraordinary BUT possible IF someone is willing to dig VERY deep into their potential.  A reserved and measured approach will not get you there.

You won't believe in Super Squats but you WILL believe in THIS?!

 

Reality is boring: it’s why there are writers for “reality TV”.  You get enough reality in your reality: bring some fantasy into your training.  It’s X-men time, and you’ve got a mutation that lets you heal faster from training, produce fewer fatigue toxins, and achieve super human strength.  Or there’s something magical in that 20^th rep of squats, despite what the latest science says about MRV, RPE or PCP.  You’re training so you can slaughter Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.  Get over yourself about how super serious you are and let yourself be that kid watching Saturday morning cartoons again, because that rich imagination brings with it PASSION, and that passion is the driving force necessary to make ridiculous progress to the point that fantasy stories will be written about YOUR achievements.