STUPID QUESTIONS

The person who said “there are no stupid questions: just stupid people” was most likely a stupid person who asked a lot of stupid questions.  There are ABSOLUTELY stupid questions, especially in the realm of getting bigger and stronger.  Allow me to discuss some.

"STOP GATEKEEPING!"

* “How much strength/size will I lose?”  This stupid question comes up for a variety of reasons.  Someone got injured, has a scheduled surgery, is taking a vacation somewhere without gym access, plans to go backpacking through Europe, etc etc.  The reason doesn’t matter, because the answer will be the same: you’ll find out.  Because really: what does the answer matter?  Is there some specific threshold that, if crossed, will cause you to alter your plans?  “ThirTEEN pounds of muscle?  No sir!  12 I was ok with, but now I’m canceling the trip!”  No, just stop: your fate has already been decided.  You’ve made a choice, your choice has consequences, you’ll experience those consequences and then you’ll move on.  We refer to that as “life”.  And as an aside, folks, for f**ks sake, the human body does NOT lose muscle that quickly.  If you lose ANY muscle after only 2 weeks off, seek IMMEDIATE medical attention, as you most likely have some sort of muscle wasting disease, flesh eating bacteria, or a parasite.  “Quickly gained, quickly lost”.  Muscle takes a LONG time to gain, and once it’s there, it’s pretty stubborn.

* “How bad is it?”  Once again, various reasons.  How bad is one drink a night?  How bad is one cigarette a day?  How bad is it if I skip ab work?  If I train 2 days in a row?  Etc.  Once sort of metric of “degrees of badness” are you wanting employed here?  “It’s 4 bads”  You know it’s bad: that’s why you’re asking in the first place.  You also CLEARLY don’t care that it’s bad, or else you’d STOP DOING IT.  All you’re looking for is re-assurance.  “It’s not that bad”.  You know who will give that to you?  Enablers.  You don’t need those.  How bad are enablers? Real bad.

* “How long will it take?”  Once again: does it matter?  How long will it take to get to a 300lb bench?  How long will it take to cut down to 6% bodyfat?  How long will it take to add 20lbs of muscle?  You’ll find out!  What are you going to do when you get an answer?  If I tell you it takes 14 weeks to get to 6% bodyfat an you do it in 12, are you going to demand a refund from me?  If the answer is too long are you just plain not even going to start?  Hey, sorry for the reality check on this one, but if you’re trying to prep for next summer: you already failed.  People who look good next summer started prepping TWO summers ago.  BUT, that means, if you start NOW, you’ll look great in 2 summers.  If you quit now because it’s going to take too long, guess how you’ll look in 2 summers.  The best time to start was yesterday.

* “Do I have bad genetics?”  What does it matter?  Unless you’re asking this question from a jazzed up Delorean, there is nothing you can do with this information.  You have the genetics you have: they are what they are.  You want an answer?  Ok: when you look at your hands, do you have 2 of them, and an even distribution of 10 fingers?  What about your feet?  Two of them and 10 toes evenly distributed?  You, my friend, are genetically blessed.  Born with full function: go conquer.  Don’t squander these gifts.

They have short collarbones!

* “What is the most optimal?”  Oh here we go.  Hey, here’s the thing: YOU are not optimal.  How do I know?  Because you’re looking up training!  The optimal dudes out there are so blessed that they NEVER had to think about this stuff: they went out and crushed it.  Meanwhile, the optimal crowd studied SuperTraining in their basements so that they could finally join the illustrious 1000lb club, never realizing that club was for 1000lb SQUATTERS.  You aren’t optimal, nor will you ever be, so quit concerning yourself with optimal methodology.  The majority of the world is average, primarily, because, that’s how “average” works.  If you can be just ONE standard deviation above that, you will stand out in the crowd.  Once again: because that’s how standard deviations work.  All that requires is being “pretty good” at something.  There are SO many “pretty good” methods out there.  And guess what?  The difference between “optimal” and “pretty good” is going to be practically insignificant to any sort of outside observer.  I always like to show this with math.  People like to say things like “A natural trainee can only put on 40lbs of muscle in their life, assuming they do everything right”.  Cool: 40lbs for optimal.  What kind of results does a sub-optimal method get you? Only 90%?  That’s 36lbs of muscle…is anyone going to notice those 4lbs?  80%?  32lbs of muscle.  Again: that’s a LIFECHANGING amount of muscle to put on.  And meanwhile, you picked a method of training that YOU personally respond to, such that you’re willing actually dedicate yourself to it, work hard, and get results.  You end up doing MUCH better than if you try to pledge allegiance to the banner of optimal and just phone it in.

* “Are there any studies?”  Let me answer your question with a question: do you have the necessary training to be able to interpret a study I provide you?  What, exactly, is your scientific training and background?  Because if you DO have one, clearly you understand just how meaningless studies can be.  Stats can easily be manipulated, variables confounded, poor samples selected, etc etc.  A study PROVES nothing.  Again: someone with actual scientific training understands that.  A study merely documents something we’ve observed, through which we can draw conclusions.  Prior to studies, we had hand me down knowledge from dudes in the trenches.  AND IT WORKED.  If you want a study, someone out there probably did it, but it’s not going to do you any good unless you go out and TRY something.

Honestly folks, I could go on, but look at what all of these have in common: they’re all about avoiding risk.  Specifically, the risk of the unknown.  These are the questions asked by people who refuse to give up control and, in doing so, are completely NOT in control.  When you refuse to ever try something NOT KNOWING the outcome, you lock yourself into a VERY fixed and static pattern.  And guess what: fixed and static is how you stay the same.  If your goal is physical transformation, you are going to need to do DIFFERENT things than what you’ve been doing, and this is going to mean venturing FAR outside your comfort zone.  Comfortable people LOOK comfortable: which is to say, soft and squishy.  Uncomfortable people look like the products of discomfort: they are hardened and rugged.  They perform like those that are the products of discomfort.  They transform as a result of the discomfort, because that is the only option if one wishes to endure.  

Comfort not found

So if you want a sure thing, bet on this: it’s not going to be comfortable and you won’t know the answers until you try.    

MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU ARE WORTH

This is going to be incredibly self-indulgent, but solipsism permits that.

And really, who is going to stop me?

Anyone that follows me on tnation has already seen a precursor to this, but I’ve had to take some time to consider what, exactly, it is that I am training for these days.  COVID struck right around my prime competing years in strongman and doesn’t look to be resolving at a reasonable pace any time soon, which has made attempts to compete a logistical nightmare as competitions either get canceled or travel to such comps becomes difficult to the point of being not feasible.  Yet still I train.  And a big part of that is, I never cared about being the best strongman I can be.  Part of THAT is I’ve fallen a bit out of love with the sport, as it used to be a freakshow event with all sorts of insanity and is now growing increasingly more standardized.  I went to through the same thing with MMA: what was once the “wild west” had become quite formulaic.  With strongman, there were now CLEARLY established protocols of how to train, what gear to wear, how much weight to cut, how far out to prep (to say nothing of how far out events were getting released), etc, and things were getting done on standardized equipment, quite often for the goal of “breaking records” rather than wining competitions.  Yet…I was still training.  Why?  And furthermore, how?

The how was interesting: I noted I had gravitated quite heavily toward a focus on conditioning.  I was doing it daily, and often multiple times a day.  Reference my “conditioning is magic” post to see the breakdown of how that shakes out, but in that conditioning I found myself drawn to either very short and super intense bursts or long, drawn out arduous tasks with heavy-ish weights that demanded a lot of grit.  Using Crossfit WODs as an example, Grace and Fran would be the former, Kalsu and Murph would be the latter.  I had no reason to train this way: it was just what I was naturally gravitating toward.  I still kept lifting as well, and used some awesome programs during that time (to include 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith, Deep Water Beginner and Deep Water Intermediate), but the conditioning was really taking things to another level.

Combining two awesome things to make a super awesome thing is not without precedent

As for the why?  One day, while driving (when I tend to do a lot of my thinking), I realized what it was I wanted: to be “more trouble than I was worth”.  What does that mean?  Brian Alsruhe has articulated training to “be dangerous”, and I think that’s a fantastic goal that captures a lot of what I’m discussing.  Be big, be strong, be conditioning, be healthy: able to generate “danger” on demand.  I took it in a lateral direction, based off my experience with martial arts and, in particular, when I stopped training them.  The early part of my life was VERY focused on martial arts training, and, in turn, I had become quite “dangerous”.  However, martial arts training takes a LOT of time, and when I got married it was hard to justify all that time away from my new spouse.  I had to pick between martial arts and lifting, and I settled on lifting, with the logic being that, though I may not be as great a fighter as I could be with regular training, I could become so big and strong that, to any potential predator out there, I was simply “more trouble than I was worth”.  Yeah, I might lose the fight, but the other guy is going to know he was in a fight when it’s all said and done, and when they weigh the risks and benefits of trying to make me a victim, it’s just not worth it.

This mentality is easy to extrapolate beyond the realm of self-defense.  When it comes to competition, I want to be “more trouble than I am worth”.  I’m not there to be the best and win: I’m there to push other competitors SO hard in order to beat me that they HURT when it’s over.  They end up having to dig DEEP into the well to find that final deadlift rep, the feel their shoulders start to separate getting that final second on the Hercules hold, they check into the hospital to look for rhabado when it’s all over: that was trouble than it was worth.   I aim to be able to outmuscle whatever I can’t outfight, outwork whatever I can’t outmuscle, and outfight whatever I can’t outwork.

"Of course, the solution is so obvious now: just put him in a headlock and punch him!"

That established, and with a new year looming, lets lay down the principles for becoming “More trouble than you are worth”

---

* Conditioning will happen EVERY day.  There are no excuses or exceptions.  People that skip conditioning are worth the trouble.  You can do conditioning in 2 minutes (reference my “Keg Grace” workouts): there is no excuse.  When you CAN do more, do more.  When you can’t, do what you can and move on.

You REALLY don't have a minute and 45 seconds to spare?

* Conditioning will be chaotic.  The whole point is to get conditioning: not good.  When we adapt to conditioning, we lose the effect of the conditioning, because we become more efficient, and a more efficient athlete does not waste energy.  Energy waste is the GOAL.  In addition, when we adapt, we become comfortable.  Comfortable people are worth the trouble.  We’re going to be the most uncomfortable people on the planet.  We will live discomfort.  Frequent exposure is the key to overcoming.  All this to say that, we will vary conditioning a LOT.  Different protocols, different implements, different times of day, different movements.

* There will be no mobility work, no stretching, and minimal warm ups.  If we are truly being chaotic in our conditioning, and if we are truly doing conditioning every day, we will BE mobile and flexible.  Seriously: you want mobility, go do the Bear Complex Crossfit style-cluster into a squat thruster.  You will move everything through a full ROM.  And in that regard, if we are doing conditioning everyday, our body will be ready to perform on demand.  Those who are not ready are worth the trouble.  If you need more than a few light reps to get ready to train, find out why that is.

* The day will ALWAYS start with something physical, without exception.  This is a great opportunity to get in your mandatory daily conditioning: I’m a fan of Tabata burpees over bar these days, but have also done full lifting workouts, Crossfit WODs, prowler workouts, weighted vest walks, etc.  

* When we start the day with strength training, we will start it fed.  When we start it with conditioning, we will start it fasted.  For the former, we are wanting to ensure there is adequate nutrition in the body to support the recovery and building of muscles that comes from such training.   For the latter, we want to generate significant hunger response so that we can flood the body with nutrients.

NUTRIENTS!

* All pressing overhead will start with the weight on the floor.  Those that cannot take a weight they can press overhead and get it from the floor to the rack position are worth the trouble.  Taking a weight off the floor drives an incredible anabolic response.  Some sets will have us take the weight from the floor once and press away, others will have us take it from the floor every rep.  A variety of implements will be used here: barbell, axle, keg, log, sandbag, dumbbell, kettlebell, etc.

* Food will support training: never the other way around.  There will be some phases of training where volume is high, which means food intake will increase and weight will be gained.  Eventually, this will stop being sustainable and a break will be needed.  Volume will drop, with it, intensity will necessarily increase, and our food and bodyweight will drop as well.  Using training to justify eating big is disordered, as is using training to try to burn more calories for the sake of fat loss.  

* The food we eat will be healthy and nutritious.  This should be obvious.  A fat, unhealthy individual subsisting off of pre-packaged garbage is worth the trouble.  What are some easy guidelines?  Justin Harris said “if you can’t hunt it or grow it, don’t eat it”, Dan John said “Eat like an adult: avoid cardboard carbs and Frankenstein fats”, Jon Andersen has an outstanding food list in “Deep Water” and John Meadow’s “Mountain Dog Diet” has an amazing structure as well.  At this point, we know what clean eating is, and if we pretend otherwise we are doing just that: pretending.

* Training will be done under SUB-optimal conditions.  We will not be well rested, we will not be fully recovered, we will not try to time our nutrition to give us energy spikes during the peak of training, there will be no stimulants.  Those who require such preparation BEFORE training (which is to say, preparing before they prepare) are worth the trouble.  We will train ourselves to be able to perform under less than ideal conditions so that, when a less than ideal situation is encountered, we are ready to be more trouble than we are worth.

Just imagine how badly these guys will f**k you up when they AREN'T dealing with all this

* We will train to get physically stronger.  This means more than just our ability to lift as much weight as possible for 1 rep.  That involves focusing on one lift, peaking for that one lift, and eschewing other rep ranges: the opposite of being “more trouble that you are worth”.  We will get strong on a variety of movements through a variety of rep ranges and a variety of ROMs.  We will lift enough weight to overpower almost anything we come across.   Anything we cannot overpower, we will find other ways to be more trouble than we are worth.

* Effort will be the most valuable metric in all training.  If we set a PR on a lift or a conditioning workout but did not work as hard as last time, we failed.  If we lift 20lbs less than last time and gave our absolute all to the point that we blew out every blood vessel in our face and momentarily lost hearing, THAT is a PR.

* Our physique will be a reflection of our effort.  This will be our effort in our strength training, in our conditioning, and in our nutrition.  If we are truly working hard, it will be impossible to get fat or scrawny: we will simply continue to become bigger, stronger, leaner and better.  We will be so imposing that it is clear we are “more trouble than we are worth”.

People can debate how good a fighter he is...but no one wants to get hit by him

This is good to start for now.  Onto becoming more trouble than we are worth.

   

ON “BOOKENDING”

  

I want to share a strategy I’ve accidentally stumbled across purely out of the result of reaching an inevitable conclusion in my own lifestyle that, in turn, I’ve actually adopted as an intentional strategy.  Holy crap that opening sentence is awful, but we’re rolling with it.  Basically, I never set out to use “bookending”, it happened on accident, I didn’t realize I was doing it until I stopped and looked, but now that I’ve done that I realize it’s a pretty solid approach for success.

Some of you folks that grew up with a different background may not be able to appreciate this book centric post

 

Ok, what the hell is “bookending”.  I realize, in this digital world, many of you may have never seen an actual bookcase before, but back in the day, when one had a physical library of many books, to hold them all in place on a shelf, one would employ “bookends”.  These were solid structured objects that would stand on either side of the books to keep them in place, and were typically ornate and cool looking.  If I’m still confusing you, think of the books as the meat and the bookends of the bread on a sandwich.  And if you’re keto: think of books as the cheese and bookends as the fried chicken tenders on a KFC doubledown. 

 

What does bookending have to do with getting bigger and stronger?  Aside from the fact that a lot of folks out there need to read more, what I’m getting at is the notion of things occurring at the start and the end, specifically of a day.  And getting more specific, I apply this principle to training AND nutrition.

No, not like that

 

As soon as my day starts, I do SOMETHING physical.  Now, being fully transparent, I’ll get downstairs, feed my dog if it didn’t sleep in with the Mrs, take some apple cider vinegar per Jon Andersen’s recommendation and, depending on the next part, either have a very light meal (typically some keto pancakes with sunbutter) or go fasted.  At this point, a whopping 10 minutes has passed since I woke up, and now I head into the garage and do SOMETHING.  Sometimes, it's a full on lifting workout.  Sometimes it’s prowler work (requires me to drive out 3 minutes to a parking lot).  Sometimes it’s a conditioning workout like Tower of Babel, Kalsu, Faust, etc.  Sometimes, it’s only 2-4 minutes of conditioning.  But either way: I do SOMETHING physical to start my day.  In doing so, no matter WHAT happens for the rest of the day, I can say “At least I got in A workout today”.  And aside from the mental assurance that I didn’t spend the full day as a slug, I get blood flowing through aching muscles and connective tissues, my heart rate elevates, I get more awake, I’m limbered up (way better than mobility work), and my metabolism is fired up and ready for some nutrients, and, quite frankly, I don’t care if that statement upsets someone with a scientific background that feels otherwise.

 

After that physical part, the nutrition book ending begins.  I have a VERY substantive breakfast.  As I’m currently in a phase of training where volume is high, this is what I eat as “breakfast 1” (not counting the quick meal eaten before lifting, nor the post workout shake I’ll drink of 10oz of drinkable egg whites mixed with a scoop of whey isolate)

* An omelet of 2 whole eggs (organic, pasture raised, because I’m special), 1 egg white (eyeballed), dice tomatoes, 2oz of red meat (either grassfed beef or bison) and grassfed butter.  I take this omelet and put it on top of an egg white wrap that is slathered in sunbutter, and then top it with some sort of fat free cheese (I like feta these days), half an avocado and some sort of sauce (tatziki sauce with the feta) to make a morning breakfast burrito.

* 4-6 celery sticks, all slathered in Nuts n More (half in a peanut based one, half in an almond based one)

* 2 keto pancakes or a slice of keto toast slathered in sunbutter (assuming not eaten before training)

* 3/4 cup of fat free greek yogurt mixed with a serving of naked PB powered peanut butter, an equal serving of some sort of protein powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar free/fat free jello or gelatin (for texture and extra calories)

* 1 cup of cashew milk

This one was a bit more festive with a slice of low carb pumpkin bread instead of pancakes

 

This is an undertaking, and I’ve had to really develop my multi-tasking ability to turn it out in a reasonable timeframe.  I have almost the exact same meal even when I’m traveling: in which case I’ll make it the night before with my 4” skillet and just eat it cold.  But there’s a method to the madness.  This meal has a TON of protein, and ALSO a great amount and variety of fats, to include saturated fats from the eggs and red meat and poly and monos from the avocados, sunbutter, and Nuts n More.  Once again, this is setting me up for success, because if, for some reason, my day turns to complete and utter chaos and I end up going from breakfast to the evening without a chance to eat, I KNOW I got in a ton of protein and a lot of beneficial fats at the start of my day.  I’m not leaving anything up to chance.

 

Onto the bookending aspect of this: at the end of the day, I eat almost the exact same meal.  There’s a slight variance: I swap out the butter with 1/4 cup of grassfed cottage cheese, I get rid of the egg wrap, I cut out the fat free cheese, I don’t do the yogurt mixture, and I’ll include 2 slices of keto toast with 1 slice with natural peanut butter and 1 slice with natural almond butter.  I, truthfully, “developed” this meal to help combat some insomnia I was dealing with while I was at my leanest: basically giving my body a lot of slow digesting nutrients to keep it fed at rest.  Lots of fats and slow digesting protein in the cottage cheese.  HOWEVER, what this meal REALLY does for me is, once again, work as “nutritional insurance”.  I can make all SORTS of mistakes during the day and it won’t matter because I know I’ll have this meal to fall back on when I get home.  If I under-ate, I can just add more food.  If I decided to have some sort of big cheaty meal that day, I can trim this down.  It also means that, when I DO go out to eat, I don’t need to rely on that particular meal to meet any sort of nutritional demands.  I don’t need to look up the menu ahead of time, throw crap into a macro calculator, determine which particular item best fits my diet, etc etc: I just eat what I want to eat and know that, when I get home, I have a meal waiting for me that will take care of anything I may have missed.  Again: we bookended so that we could let the middle be what it may.

However, when this bell sounds, all bets are off

 

When it comes to bookending the physical training, this is more of an “as needed” basis.  Anyone that follows my training log knows that I tend to have 1 big workout in a day followed by several smaller “extra workouts” ala Westside Barbell.  The large workout will be like an hour of lifting or conditioning, and then throughout the day I’ll accomplish my daily work (previously written about, but 50 chins, 50 dips, 50 pull aparts, 40 reverse hypers, 30 GHRs, 25 push downs, 20 standing ab wheels and neck work), and then some short-ish conditioning work or a longer walk (with or without a weight vest).  Quite often, that daily work will get pushed to the end of the day, or I unwind with a walk, or I end up getting in a 2 minute workout of Keg Grace or 4 minutes of Tabata burpees, but once again I have it in my head that, no matter what, SOMETHING will get done at the end of the day.  In turn, I waste no brain power wondering about managing my schedule, working around obligations, etc etc: I know that I started off my day with some activity and, if I need more, I will get it there at the end.

 

This was honestly incredibly self-indulgent, but I wanted to write about it and hope it provides some help.  Much like my “start with a win” post: succeed as soon as you possibly can upon waking, and end the day with a victory as well.  Whatever happens in between will become immaterial.

 

 

ON "TOO"

  

“Too” is a word we need to strike from the vocabulary of many young trainees, as quite frankly it is holding back many from achieving any degree of success.  Quite often, a trainee is too preoccupied WITH too (yes, I already see what I did there) to be able to even accomplish anything in the first place.  “How to I gain muscle without gaining TOO much fat?”, “I don’t want to get TOO big”, “I can’t afford to eat like that, it’s TOO expensive”, “Training takes TOO much time”, etc etc.  Quite frankly, this word is cowardly on multiple levels, as it avoids employing an actual arguable metric AND attempts to separate responsibility and accountability from the agent employing it.  Explain?  Gladly.

His team had the best strong guy...

I’m going to tackle the “too much fat” thing, because I see it a lot and it drives me nuts every single time.  I am ruthless the instant I see it, because I will immediately ask the question of “How much fat gain IS acceptable during your muscle gain phase such that I understand where the threshold is for ‘too much’?”  Or, to simplify it, as Bobby Hill once said about fried chicken: “How do you know if it’s extra yet?”  Once you start to pry, you reach the obvious and inevitably conclusion: ANY fat gain is “too much” to this trainee.  They want to go to heaven but they don’t want to die to get there.  Some will even try to church it up and say that they don’t want to gain “unnecessary fat”, but once again, when you press them to explain the exact amount that is necessary, there is no answer.  And, of course, what these people fail to understand is that the muscle building process is SO much harder than the fat losing process that excessive concern about gaining “too much fat” is limiting their ability to actually put on the muscle in the first place…and that’s because…

 

People legitimately concern themselves with getting “too big”.  Quite frankly: that’s insane.  There are people out there that spend DECADES trying to get “too big” and fail at it…and you somehow think it’s going to happen on accident?  Both of these camps don’t seem to understand that physical transformation, in ANY capacity, takes time.  No one gains TOO much mass, fat or muscle, in such a rapid amount of time that it’s non-perceivable until it’s “too late”.  The signs and symptoms are painfully obvious and, upon observing them, one can choose to cease the offending activity.  One is not doomed to ride some sort bullet train to hugeness and, quite frankly, will need to engage in a degree of effort that is hilariously absent from those in the greatest fear of accidentally applying themselves in any given venture.  Trust me, young trainee: you are at no risk of achieving “too”.

Should have stayed at 9 reps instead of 10...

 

“Too” in the budgetary sense is always hilariously and depressingly eye opening, both in terms of budgeting funding and budgeting time.  Everyone I encounter is at a shortage of both.  Because here’s the secret: no one has extra time or money.  We all have only the exact amount of either that we need to support our priorities.  In turn, what must occur is a shifting of said priorities in order to necessitate the appropriate shifting of finances and time.

 

Examples?  Of course.  Quite often, those who suffer from a severe shortage of time, as it relates to fitness, find themselves absent of that shortage when it comes to binge watching a Netflix series, or playing video games, hanging out with friends, getting lost in YouTube rabbit holes, etc.  And this becomes especially comical when one comes to understand that one can make LIFE CHANGING impacts on their health and fitness with a mere investment of 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week.  That’s an hour, total, in a week, dedicated to moving one’s body through space, experiencing discomfort, and seeking self-improvement.  Is that really “too much time”?  Or do we simply value other things “too much” compared to improving ourselves?

I mean I get it...

 

The same is true on the cost of eating well.  Once it comes time to gain weight, people balk at how food is “too expensive”.  I’m not too sure how people figured they were going to eat more food without paying more money, but I’m also at the point where I no longer feel I have the ability to engage in expectation management because, quite frankly, you people are insane.  But that aside: one is typically able to observe the ultra thin shoestring budgets of these folks and find that there is MORE than adequate funding available for streaming services, daily Starbucks runs, recreational drugs and alcohol and all other delicious forms of debauchery…but not enough for food.  Yet again, shall we, perhaps, examine our priorities?

 

Dare I even discuss how books are “too expensive”?  I’m going to confess to a dirty little secret: whenever a trainee expresses a desire to me to radically transform themselves physically, I typically send them down the path of Super Squats, with occasional nods to Deep Water or 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake or Building the Monolith.  The dirty secret here being that I KNOW these programs ALL require a book to be run, and that this book costs a whole TEN DOLLARS on amazon kindle. The reason I suggest this is simple: if this trainee does NOT have $10 to spend on a book that will radically transform their physiques and, quite possibly, their lives, I KNOW they don’t have enough money to BUY THE FOOD needed to fuel this process.  It’s one of the easiest screening processes I’ve ever engaged in, and it allows me to rapidly determine who I actually have the capacity to aid vs who is full of good intentions and zero follow through.  Because again, I ask the question: “If $10 is too expensive for a book that will change your life, how much will you spend?”

We all knew the answer

 

Folks, let it not be said that I am not a helpful author.  Aside from just ranting at you, allow me to offer you a solution to the majority of these problems.  Spend $20 (no, that isn’t too expensive), get a slow cooker, and learn how to make 3 recipes with it.  You don’t even need to buy a cookbook, so you can save money there, slow cookers thrive on cheap cuts of meat and vegetables, so you save cash there, they require zero attention once they are set to cook, so that saves you time, they make food in BIG batches, so you can meal prep easily, saving you time AND money AND getting you the food you need to ensure you get big without worrying about getting “too big”, AND you will most likely NOT get “too fat” when you’re eating a bunch of delicious homemade food vs going out to eat for every meal because you failed to plan.

 

After you’re done doing that, try to train too hard, eat too big, and sleep too much.

 

It’s almost too easy.

UNPOPULAR OPINIONS AND BELIEFS

I like to write these every once in a while just to alienate my readerbase, make them feel weird, and have them try to rationalize why they read what I write.  Enjoy!

I am too good at this...

---

* I believe in somatotypes.  I don’t care who that offends or what the science says.  I acknowledge that the origin of somatotypes is goofy, and attempting to employ them to explain criminal activity is goofy, but I also “know” that I’ve known dudes that were beanpoles that lived on fast food and cinnamon rolls and I’ve known dudes that just seemed to put on muscle no matter what they ate or trained and I’ve known dudes that, when they get fat, they get humpty dumpty looking.  I know I’m part of the latter group.  I also know that there seems to be instances wherein those in the endomorph group always seem to respond better to low carbs for some reason, and those in the ecto and thrive on carbs.  

* On the above there, I believe in fast metabolisms.  I’m not too sure if I believe in slow ones, which is a funny contrast, but often I find people complaining about slow metabolisms are just eating garbage THINKING it’s healthy and moving very little.  But I know there are some cats out there that are just pounding the food and NOT seeing the scale move.  I don’t think it’s an excuse, because we all have to play the hand we’re dealt, but I still think it’s real.

"It's a glandular issue!" 

* Training a muscle once a week is fine.  It’s more than fine.  It worked for decades.  It still works today.  I’d even be willing to say that the people who aren’t at peace with this have never done an actual hard training session before.  I can train my legs to the point that once a week is ALL they are good for.

* I take apple cider vinegar about 3-4x a day, before meals.  Does it do anything for insulin sensitivity?  Who knows, but it’s so cheap I may as well.

* The mind-muscle connection is VERY important when one’s goal is to actually GROW the targeted muscle.  There’s been a trend of folks expressing the idea that “if you are moving the weight through the full ROM, you are training the muscle”, and I’ve seen enough cats with big arms and no back doing rows and chins to know that it’s just not true.  I WAS that guy.  I had to learn to actually FEEL my lats in pulling to be able to actually GROW the lats.  I could do a practically all bicep chin up.  I know how to bench using almost entirely delts and triceps.  All of that can be cool if your goal is to move max weight, but if your goal is to build specific muscles, you need to have that MMC.  Like Dave Tate said: “if you can’t flex it, don’t isolate it.”

* There had to be at least ONE natural Mr Olympia in the steroid era, World’s Strongest Man winner, and world record holding powerlifter.  I hate the idea of natural limits so much, because on one hand we all acknowledge that there’s going to be a “one in a million” athlete and then we turn right around and the instant one of those shows up, we just say they’re on drugs.  At one point, SOMEONE has to walk the earth that was just so goddamn gifted they never needed them.

Let's not forget this fine specimen

* Counting calories is STILL goofy to me.  If you wanna get bodybuilder stage ready peeled, it’s absolutely necessary (although there are STILL some bodybuilders that never count calories), but for the everyday person it’s just insanity to me.  I have gotten stupid lean never counting calories and also got VERY strong the same way.  In that regard, food QUALITY is SO important and so overlooked, and I feel like calorie counting contributes to that.  And here’s a sneaky little thing about that: sometimes, switching to a better quality food source results in calorie reduction.  I went from grainfed grocery store beef to grassfed piedmontese beef and, in doing so, equal cuts of beef were lower calorie because they had less fat and more protein.  

* Let’s tackle the above with a little more: clean food DOES exist.  What’s the simplest way to define it?  I think Justin Harris put it well “don’t eat it unless you can hunt it or grow it”.  What’s another definition?  Single ingredient food.  Or how about with Dan John’s “eat like an adult” meaning to avoid “cardboard carbs and Frankenstein fats”.  And clean foods SHOULD make up the majority of a diet.  “Will it get me more jacked than a IIFYM approach?”  Ya know what, I’m just gonna say yes.  Yes it will.  Calorie for calorie, clean food is better.  Go ahead and prove me wrong.

* Stretching isn’t important.  Neither is mobility work.  Both can be addressed with conditioning work and GPP.  Guess which of those things people will do and which ones they won’t.

* Bill Kazmaier was the most impressive and captivating World’s Strongest Man of all time, making him the best.  Pudzianowski is second.  Shaw and Big Z are boring.  

Shaw would spontaneously combust if he tried this

* Sumo deadlifts…oh boy.  If you wanna make powerlifting watchable, get rid of the squat and make it a push/pull meet with conventional only.

* I think protein supplements are not at all required to get big and strong…yet I STILL have a protein shake post workout.  Used to be water and 2 scoops of whey, because milk slowed down absorption of course.  Then it became skim milk and 2 scoops of whey, because skim milk had no fat and it was fine, plus more protein.  Now it’s drinkable egg whites and 1 scoop of whey…and it’s honestly because protein powder is SO tasty these days compared to when I started that I feel ripped off and it’s my chance to have a treat post workout.  And sometimes that whey gets switched out with a protein blend.  

* Pre-workout supplements are still gimmicks.

* I WANT to believe the Mark Rippetoe story that you can take a beginner lifter, give them 15 reps of squats a workout, a gallon of milk a day, and they will put on 40lbs of muscle in 3 months.  Same way I walk into a supplement store and WANT to believe the lies.  The world is so mundane without it.

* Most people don’t need a cheat meal, let alone a cheat day.

* The trap bar pull does NOT replace a conventional deadlift.  They train the same muscles: they aren’t replacements.

* Pressing is better than benching.  If you have to ask what a press is, start over.

Why no, it's NOT called the "clean and overhead press" you idiot...

* There is no point in knowing your bodyfat%.  You look how you look irrespective of that number.  You mean to tell me that you’ll give yourself the greenlight to bulk even if you look like a melted candle because some machine spat out a 12, but if you are diced to the gills but the machine says 15 it’s time to cut?  And no: no one can tell you a number from a photo.  You have fat between your organs that contributes to bodyfat %, and no one is seeing that without x-ray vision.

* Beginner lifters shouldn’t even be beginner lifters.  If they’re starting out with NO athletic foundation, they need to play a sport FIRST and get used to moving their body through space.  After that, they start with bodyweight exercises, sled dragging, and high rep (12+) machine and dumbbell work.  They won’t touch a bar for a while.  They need to get STRONG enough TO train.

* Social media is for entertainment: not education.  If your “education” comes from internet stars, you haven’t learned.  Yes, this includes blogs.  Yes, this includes this one.  Please go read from an established author/coach with real bona fides that was able to take the time to compose their thoughts and put them down on paper.    

WISDOM OF YOUTH/EXPERIENCE OF AGE

  

In my 22nd year of training now, it’s been fun to look back and think of what I’ve learned along the way.  In a podcast I was recently featured in, I mentioned how I was SO much smarter about training when I was 14 vs when I went out and got “educated”, reading ALL the studies and the books and the articles and the forum posts that were out there on the subject of getting bigger and stronger.   Primarily because, at the age of 14, I was an action movie, comic book, video game and anime junkie that had been inundated with montages and over the top cliché so much that I KNEW, with every fiber of my being, that what you NEEDED to do to get big and strong was work REALLY REALLY hard.  And that was it.  That was “the secret”.  It HAD to be.  I saw Vegeta train at 400 times gravity and he was ALMOST as strong as a Super Sayian WITHOUT powering up!  And when Goku took off his thousands of pounds of training weights you couldn’t even see him move!  And The Punisher was ALWAYS training, even after busting up a drug ring and getting his bones broken.  And who could forget Rocky, or Vision Quest, or Bloodsport, or etc etc.  THAT was the wisdom of my youth: work REALLY hard and you get results.

Why yes, I DID train myself to the point of being able to do 1 armed push ups on my fingers...why do you ask?

 

So what led me to do all that damn reading in the first place?  Unfortunately, the folly of that very same youth: impatience.  I WAS working really damn hard: why wasn’t I REALLY damn strong?  It’s been 3 WHOLE months: what gives?!  I remember deciding one summer that I was going to get a six-pack, and to do that I was going to burn off ALL my belly fat with cardio.  There was an 8 mile loop around my house that I would run once a day, every day, during the school year to keep me in shape for wrestling, so for the summer I DOUBLED it.  I’d run the first 8 in the morning (fasted, to REALLY burn that belly fat) and then the other 8 in the evening before bed.  Looking at that, you’d imagine I’d have ZERO glycogen in my body…except for the fact I lived with my parents, with my mom being an absolute champ at buying those GIANT Costco muffins to have in the house for breakfast (which, after an 8 mile run, you gotta have at LEAST 2), and I lived in San Diego, so I had access to the BEST Mexican food in the world, to say nothing of the fast food mecca of Jack in the Box and In n Out.  As you can imagine, I was unsuccessful in my quest for abs that summer…but I DID have the most amazing cardiovascular system in the world afterwards, so that was cool.

 

But there were my 3 WHOLE months of effort and NOTHING to show for it, so of course, I turn to academia to figure out what I need to do different.  And some studies said that training fasted WAS the cure…and some said that I was being a big stupid dummyhead because I was being SUPER catabolic and eating away ALL my muscle, so no WONDER I didn’t have my six pack.  And by the way, don’t bother training those abs to get a six pack, because abs are made in the kitchen…except you SHOULD train them, because a bigger muscle shows through.  Except a six pack doesn’t even mean you’re in shape…but it IS the crowning achievement of fitness.  Maybe my issue was carb timing, or maybe I shouldn’t be eating ANY carbs, or maybe ONLY carbs.  Who was I kidding: clearly the issue was all the drugs and supplements I WASN’T taking.

In fairness, you could buy this over the counter when I was that age...

 

A few years later, one day, after a sparring session (we called them “McThrowdowns”, salute to bullshido.net, I miss you folks), someone took a group photo of us, and in it, I realized something: I had abs!  I hadn’t been training for them, I hadn’t dedicated myself to them, my diet was still whatever I could get away with…but there they were. 

 

What was the missing element?  The start of that sentence: “a few YEARS later”.  And therein is the experience of age: you do this LONG enough and you begin to realize that effort WILL pay off: it just takes time.  And yes, I know I just recently wrote “the secret is patience”, but herein we observe the detriment of IGNORING that secret.  I was letting my “lack” of results get to me, failing to understand that I wasn’t observing LACKING results: I was observing results occurring at the rate they occur at.  Which, for physical transformation, is SLOW.  If you ever get the chance, listen to Justin Harris break down the rate at which the body adds muscle, because he does a much better job that I do, but using the most extreme example (Big Ramy in this case), assuming you do EVERYTHING right, have the best genetics, are using the best drugs, eating the best food, following the best training, you’re adding GRAMS of muscle to your body each day once you’re past the beginner stages of training.  The solace of such information is that it means ONE bad day isn’t going to ruin anything…but it also means one GOOD day is also meaningless.  It’s going to take a LOT of decent to good days all stacked up in a row for anything to start mattering.

Just like you might get the gold with 1 good day...but you get to be a legend even in defeat

 

Which is something I got to learn with experience.  Because, eventually, I got fed up doing things the way I was “supposed” to do it.  I almost quit lifting entirely around 2010 because I had completely lost my passion for it.  I never liked training in the first place, but I at LEAST liked getting results, and now I wasn’t even getting that.  I was nursing year 2 of a 3 year long lower back injury I got from squatting to pins to make SURE I was squatting to the “correct” depth that kept me from deadlifting: the ONE lift I was decent at.  I was sick of doing EVERYTHING for 5 reps because that was “the best rep range”.  I was sick of ONLY doing the big compounds because “isolation work was pointless”.  And so I decided to give it one last push and just do what I was doing before…and goddamn if it didn’t work!  Because now I was willing to play the long game and give things TIME to shake out.  I had recovered from enough dislocated shoulders to know that injuries DO heal, so long as they are given time…the same time needed to see the results of the efforts of physical transformation.  And not fearing injury allowed me to push myself harder in my training, which comically enough made the results come faster than when I was trying to play it safe.  Because of my experience, I knew a TON of things that DIDN’T work: because I had tried them all before.  This made coming up with a plan for a way forward EASY: I could eliminate SO many choices.  And because of my experience, I could STILL remember being that teenager, relying solely on effort, and just how powerful it was.

 

And therein the two merged.  The wisdom of my youth met the experience of my age and I realized that, so long as I pushed myself as hard as I could, given enough time, I’d get the results I wanted.  And if I’m not getting the results, I just need to ask my younger self if I’m training hard enough and my current self if I’ve waited long enough.

PODCAST: "MOVE SWEAT SUFFER" FEATURING YOURS TRULY

     Howdy folks.

This week, instead of my normal written post, allow me to share a podcast I was on recently: "Move Sweat Suffer".  In it, I discuss my basic training and nutrition philosophy and approach and field a few questions.  Feel free to leave any questions or comments on this post

CONDITIONING IS MAGIC

I remember the exact moment I discovered that conditioning was magic.  My sophomore year of high school, I joined the school wrestling team.  Prior to that, I was a fat kid, and my freshman year I played football.  I went to a small enough school that I played both sides of the line, as a center and nose tackle…which is also how I was able to join the wrestling team my sophomore year with NO wrestling experience whatsoever.  I had lost about 25lbs the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, and no longer had the ONE thing I had going for me in football: weight, so now I had to try a different sport.  Wrestling is an awesome sport, because you’ll get taught how to shoot a single leg, how to sprawl, and then get cut loose to go wrestle at full speed.  Within 2 weeks of my first lesson, I was in my first tournament…and I did AWFUL.  BUT, thankfully, there was another “fish” just like me in the losers bracket, and I got to square off against him after my first loss.  Wrestling is an EXHAUSTING sport, and even though I had been doing a lot of cardio to help cut those 25lbs, being in the 3rd round of a match after only 2 weeks of wrestling training, this other dude and I were GASSED.  As we both stood there, hands on our knees, facing each other, waiting for the other guy to do something, it dawned on me that, if I just did SOMETHING right then and there, I could actually win.  So I gathered up my reserves, spear tackled the dude, fell on top of him and got a win by pin.  At that moment, I realized that conditioning was magic, and the guy who had the better conditioning stood the chance of actually winning.

Yeah, I imagine we looked like this by that point

So how is conditioning magic?  Conditioning makes EVERYTHING ELSE better when it gets better.  It’s the rising tide that raises all boats, and, consequently, the very same tide that, when it goes out, you discover who has been swimming naked this whole time.  What’s also magical about conditioning is the inside dividends it pays off.  A VERY small investment in conditioning pays off HUGE in matters of getting bigger and stronger, whereas the same cannot be said in regards to training for hypertrophy (and, by extension, strength).  

How does conditioning help you get bigger and stronger?  When your conditioning is better, you recover between sets faster.  This means that, in any given amount of time, you can accumulate more volume in your training.  You’ll either be able to get in more sets, more reps per set, or use a higher weight on your worksets compared to if you had worse conditioning.  In addition, conditioning can improve your recovery between workouts themselves.  A common trope is for a trainee to do a leg training session and then spend the next 4 days walking around like a wind up toy because their legs are sore.  BUT, if that said trainee were to engage in some prowler pushes or a few rounds of thrusters, they will get some restorative blood flow into the healing muscles and find that they bounce back quicker…which means having another opportunity to train due to having recovered quicker…which means more volume…which means more growth.

Sometimes recovery can REALLY suck

And this is just addressing the benefit of conditioning in the realm of getting bigger and stronger: the other benefits are rather obvious.  Conditioning will improve your cardiovascular shape, muscular endurance, give you extra avenues for skill practice of certain movements, improve mobility, etc.  Do a few bear complexes “Crossfit style” where you thruster out of the clean and push press out of the back squat and you’re going to become fast AND mobile.  Bodyweight circuits will get you moving your body through space JUST like one of those mobility drills you like so much while ALSO actually making you more awesome.  

In that regard, I’ve listed a whole bunch of things that are considered conditioning, which inevitably leads to the question of “how do I do conditioning?”  Whenever I get asked this question, it’s hard for me to grasp, because my approach has basically been “do something that sucks for longer than you want to”, but the more I think about it the more I realize I DO have some sort of system, so I figure I’d share it in case you’d like to use it.

CONDITIONING MATRIX

Realizing conditioning is magic sucks because now you HAVE to do it

Ok, so to start: conditioning WILL happen EVERY day.  When you start off with that, figuring conditioning becomes easier. 

From there, it becomes a question of how much time do I have that day to dedicate to conditioning.  If an hour is available, I then have another decision to make: hard or easy conditioning, to steal from Jim Wendler.  This decision is easy: if it’s ALSO a day I’ll be lifting, I do easy conditioning, typically in the form of a walk (either weighted or unweighted).  If it’s a day with no lifting, I then opt for a hard conditioning workout.  Some classics that fit within this are the Kalsu WOD, Faust, Murph, the Tower of Babel, Juarez Valley Front Squats, etc.  This is typically where a lot of my “bad ideas” are born, as I’ll come up with something that occupies the time and absolutely crushes me.

My brain ALL the time

If I DON’T have that kind of time, I then go for short, intense conditioning sessions.  A 4 minute walk is pretty worthless for conditioning, but a tabata workout can have a great training effect in that short of a timespan.  Here is where things like tabata, Fran, Grace, Hill sprints, etc, can go a long way.  

Some days, I start out thinking I’m going to have an hour to do conditioning and my schedule gets compromised, so I switch to a short intense session.  Other times, my schedule opens up out of nowhere and I grab a long, low intensity session.  Capitalize on every opportunity you get.  If you try to be too rigid in an attempt to “optimize” your conditioning, you’re going to get frustrated and end up simply NOT doing a conditioning session.  Some times, my schedule makes it so that I don’t get in a low intensity session for damn near a month, but then a light season of work rolls around and I end up getting in a TON of them.  It will all even out.

Regarding what movements to use once you’ve determined what protocol to take: conditioning can be restorative AND a good way to get in extra volume, so I try to maximize that.  What this means is, I’ll train muscles/movements that I’ve either trained THAT day OR the day/days before, BUT I tend to avoid movements/muscles that I have coming up.  The way my lifting week shakes out (ideally) is I press on the first day of the week and then squat on the second day of the week.  For my first day’s conditioning, this will mean I’ll typically do something like Grace later in the day so I can get in a little extra shoulder pressing volume AND start the recovery process of my shoulders.  BUT, I’m not going to do Fran, because thrusters are a front squat and press, and that could cause me to carry some fatigue into my quads coming into my squat day.  Grace is about cleaning and pressing, so it’s all good before squat day.  Now, on the NEXT day, AFTER my squats, I’ll most likely intentionally do something like Fran or something thruster focused, because the front squats will help my legs recover AND the pressing will be good on my shoulders.  And then day 3 is typically Tower of Babel with front squats, which will, again, get blood flowing into my legs to help them recover.

With all this, the best thing you can do now is try a bunch of different conditioning workouts so that you have a rolodex (super dated term) of workouts to rotate through on any given moment.  I wrote up my book of bad ideas, which contains an assortment of conditioning workouts, but along with that you can check out “Tactical Barbell II” or the website “wodwell.com” to mine some ideas.  Try out a bunch, see what suits you, and from there you’ll gain some ability to do some free styling.  Swap out movements, do longer rounds, shorter rest periods, stack workouts on top of themselves, etc.  

And if in doubt: do Tabata burpees.

   

JUST TAKE THE THING OFF THE FLOOR AND PUT IT OVER YOUR HEAD

I am a sucker for all-encompassing/all-in-one information sources.  I don’t think I have a particularly short attention span and, in fact, believe I have obsessive tendencies (as evidenced by a blog that I’ve written a weekly post in for nearly a decade on the subject of getting bigger and stronger), but just the novelty of having A book or A lecture that contains ALL the information you “need” in order to progress is just so satisfying to me.  It’s why I like “Powerlifitng Basics Texas Style”, as Paul took the time to include some nutrition/cooking sections in with the lifting: same with Marty Gallagher’s “Purposeful Primitive”, John Berardi’s “Scrawny to Brawny”, John McCallum’s “Complete Keys to Progress”, “Super Squats”, etc.  And, in turn, I recognize the limitations inherent in having an all-in-one approach, my like how a swiss army knife has a bunch of OK tools instead of 1 really good one, but, in turn, I’ve often been VERY happy to have a swiss army knife on me vs a REALLY good corkscrew.  All of this said, allow me to provide my own all-in-one answer to all things transformation related: take the thing off the floor and put it over your head

Colossus is here trying to get The Thing into position

                                                    

This just answers ALL the questions about training.  How do I train conditioning?  Just take the thing off the floor and put it over your head.  I plan on writing a longer post on “how to conditioning” later, just because people really seem to struggle with the HOW behind it, but if you want an “all-in-one” answer, you’d be hard pressed to beat this answer.  Taking things off the floor and putting them over your head is one of the most effective means of building whole body conditioning out there.  And there are SO many ways to make it work.  Do it all in one motion like a snatch, break it down into two parts like a clean and jerk, or start using permutations of all of this.  Just think: there are power snatches, muscle snatches, hang snatches, clean grip snatches, power cleans, muscle cleans, hang cleans, and then we can get into thrusters, clusters, one motions, etc.  And this is just using a barbell: if you have a log you can viper, you can continental an axle (or a barbell if you’re weird).  And you can do a lot of this crazy nonsense with dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, kegs, stones (natural or atlas): pretty much ANYTHING can be picked up and put over your head.  And since we’re doing it for conditioning, we just do it until our heart feels like it’s going to explode.  “What if the weight is too light?”  Move it faster, or do more reps with it.  Set a timer and do as many reps as you can in that time.  “What if it’s too heavy?”  Going Every Minute on the Minute, so you can recover in time and keep your heart rate up.  Snatch it until you can’t, then push press it until you can’t, then strict press it until you can’t, then just clean it until you can’t.  You will be gassed.

How do I get big and strong?  Would you believe the answer is “just pick the thing off the floor and put it over your head?”  Oh my goodness how AMAZING that approach is for that goal.  And pair this with my most recent post about bad form making big muscles and you’re REALLY onto something special.  If you wanna hit a beautiful, flawless looking clean and then split jerk the weight overhead in an instant, that’s groovy dude and it looks REALLY pretty, but if you wanna build some gnarly, ugly, brutal musculature, take something that DOESN’T want to be picked up, like an axle, keg, sandbag, fire hydrant, etc, pick it up and get it over your head.  It’s going to look TERRIBLE, and it’s going to call into play a bunch of muscles you didn’t even know you had, and, in turn, it’s going to make you TREMENDOUSLY big and strong.

I kept it dark to hide my shame

“But what about my legs/pecs/triceps/serratus/pineal gland/metacarpals?”  Oh my god I’m tired of those questions.  Do you know how often I get asked if Building the Monolith has enough chest work?  Do you know how often I ask those dudes if they’re dong the full 200 dips and the answer is “…no”?   Taking something off the floor that doesn’t want to be lifted and lifting it over your head is going to make your WHOLE BODY grow.  You are gonna need some strong legs to get the damn thing off the ground in the first place along with some strong biceps, a strong back to balance the load, that back musculature is going to extend all the way up to the base of your skull as you’ll need strong traps to get the weight to your chest and strong rear delts when you’re pressing to keep it stabilized, and then the shoulders and triceps are obvious in the press, BUT the chest comes into play as well because you’re going to be pressing at an angle, since the object will be big and bulky and NOT going in a straight line.  And then, of course, your abs will light up as your core balances everything into place.  Talking from personal experience, I saw the most significant whole body growth in my life when I tried to bring up my keg press from 200lbs to 275lbs in 12 weeks.  

Could a more specialized approach get different results?  Absolutely, but remember: this is a simple all-in-one solution, and in that regard it works FANTASTICALLY well.  You’d be well on your way to the kind of musculature that was popular among Greek statues, because hey: guess how those dudes built their bodies?  They picked the thing up and put it over their heads.

Sorry if you consider this NSFW, but it's art...and that dude is JACKED

“But how many reps?  How many sets?!  How long do I rest?”  Ya know what, I could outsource this and say go check out Dan John’s “One Lift a Day” program.  Or go Jamie Lewis “Chaos and Pain” style insanity and just see how many times you can press the weight overhead in a fixed amount of time, and then either break that record or go for more time next time.  You could run 5/3/1 for just the one lift, or go Bulgarian on it and just hit multiple workouts with it in one day.  I’ve taken to running Crossfit WODs with implements: axle, keg and log for Grace and Fran.  Hey, isn’t that conditioning?  It all comes full circle: you’re not gonna lift something and NOT build some muscle from it.  If your implement is a fixed weight, do lots of reps if it’s light and few reps if it’s heavy.  If it’s light, take every rep off the floor: if it’s heavy, take only the first rep or first rep reps off the floor and press out the rest.

And folks: this is instinct.  This is what your mind WANTS to do when it sees a heavy imposing weight.  It’s why it’s a show of physical dominance in professional wrestling to lift another man overhead and slam him down.  Almost any child, when given a weight, will immediately try to press it overhead.  They don’t lay down and floor press it, they don’t put it on their back and squat it, they MAY deadlift it if it’s just too heavy to press, but otherwise, we KNOW, on some sort of biological level, that the secret to physical transformation is to just take the thing off the floor and put it over our heads.     

Boy I hope this uploads as a .gif...

So if in doubt, just take the thing off the floor and put it over your head.  And use bad form when you do it to build big muscles.  And figure out your sets and reps by rolling a 20 sided die.  You’re onto something.