A MADMAN’S NOTEBOOK

I’ve had a few wild ideas for training circling around in my head a bit, so I thought I’d share them for anyone crazy enough to actually undertake them.  None of these have been personally tested by me, and they’re on my radar as things I’d try, but I definitely can’t vouch for them.  If nothing else, I’m letting you peek behind the curtain to see the kind of things my diseased brain comes up with when left to idle.

 

 

ALPHABET WORKOUT

Hard to beat this training menu!  And yes: I HAVE eaten here before.

* 13 workouts, 2 movements per day, 2 week cycle. Train M-Sat for the first week, Sunday off, then 7 days on.

* Pick movements or muscles based off letter of the alphabet, in order.

Example

Day 1:
Arm-Back

Day 2:
Chest-Deltoids

Day 3:
Erectors-Front Squats

Day 4:
Glutes-hamstrings

Day 5:
Isometrics-Jumps

Etc etc.

* PAIR IT WITH THE ABCDE DIET!

For those unfamiliar with that particular diet, here is a great discussion on it

https://physicalculturestudy.com/2016/11/30/gaining-muscle-and-losing-fat-the-abcde-diet-experiment/

* Basically, it was 2 weeks of controlled undereating followed by 2 weeks of overfeeding, operating under the premise that the undereating would prime the body for growth during the overfeeding.  We see a similar approach in Jamie Lewis’ “Feast, Famine and Ferocity” diet, wherein he employs a 2 week protein sparing modified fast followed by 4 weeks of overeating (with the option to fudge those numbers around based on the physique of the trainee).

 

* If you do the traditional 2 week underfeed/2 week overfeed approach, it would mean each alphabet cycle would map directly onto the nutritional phase.

* In THAT regard, you could make hardfast rules, like, during underfeeding we focus on movements, and during overfeeding we focus on muscles.

 

DAN JOHN PROGRAM CYCLING

I've earned many eye rolls from this man

 

BACKGROUND DATA

 

* Mass Made Simple is a 6 traditionally a 6 week program with a heavy emphasis on complexes and high rep squats, with no particular emphasis on the hip hinge. 

* Dan John’s 10k swing challenge is the opposite: 4 weeks/20 days (5 days a week of training), getting in 500 swings a day, for a total of 10k swings.  HEAVY hip hinge emphasis, with squatting typically relegated to goblet squatting done between swings, if at all.

* Dan’s “Armor Building Formula” book includes 2 specific workouts: a kettlebell workout and a barbell workout.  I’ve written a review of this very recently, but to summarize, the KB workout is based around alternating workouts of the Armor Building Complex (2 KB cleans, 1 press, 3 front squats) and the KB clean and press away (1 clean, press from there, vs 1 clean per press).  The barbell workout is based around the continuous clean and press (clean each rep before the press), the barbell curl, and the barbell front squat.  The kettlebell program is 8 weeks long, and the barbell program tends to run a bit longer.

* His “Easy Strength” workout is 40 workouts (8 weeks of training if done 5x a week) of the same movements (an upper body push and pull, a hinge, ab wheel/similar exercise, and a loaded carry) each workout, no more than 10 reps per exercise, no struggling on any reps, the intent to gradually nudge up one’s baseline ability, rather than their maximal ability.  Basically, make our “easy” work stronger.  You’ll observe there is no squat in this workout.  Dan has said on multiple occasions that he’s been unable to get the squat to work for Easy Strength.

TOO LATE!

 

Understanding this, it becomes too easy to chain these programs together.  Especially if we also apply Dan’s “Bus bench-park bench” philosophy.  10k swing and Mass Made Simple are very much “bus bench” programs.  Easy Strength is very much a “park bench” program.  The ABF somewhat straddles the middle: it’s bodybuilding for “REAL people”, intending to be a less harsh program than Mass Made Simple.

 

In that regard, one could start off with Mass Made Simple, run it the traditional 6 weeks and really focus hard on the heavy complexes and high rep squats.  From there, 8 weeks of Easy Strength to recover, nudge up poundages, and bring back the hip hinge that wasn’t present before (outside of the bits in the complexes).  This time away from squatting will be helpful for recovery.  From here, you could go to the Armor Building Formula KB workout for 8 weeks, which will bring back the squats via KB front squats, then finish off with the 10k swing challenge for 4 weeks to re-emphasize the hip hinge.  So we’re looking at 6 weeks-8 weeks-8 weeks-4 weeks, for a total of 26 weeks of programming: half a year. 

 

You could keep it even simpler, and just always use Easy Strength as a “palate cleanser” between the harder workouts.  MMS-ES-10K-ES-ABF-ES, etc.  In theory, every time you finish a run of Easy Strength, you’ll be stronger than you were at the start, which will mean you’ll be even more capable of producing changes on these “bus bench” workouts, plus you’ll be in a great state of recovery after the time away from the hard grinding workouts.

 

OR, we could get REALLY wild. 

Just leave it up to these 3 maniacs...props if you get this reference

 

Dan has said that, in Mass Made Simple, the REAL magic is the complexes and the squats.  He’s played around a lot with the upper body work, going so far as to replace everything with just the handstand push up.  This lets us know we have some room to play around.  You already remember my experiment combining Mass Made Simple with Easy Strength, and it went quite well.  We can do something similar here, combining MMS with the Armor Building Formula.  Specifically, we take Dan’s advice to make MMS a 7 week program by splitting up the upper body and complexes/squat workouts, so now we train 4x a week (squat on Mon/Thurs, Upper body Tues/Fri).  We keep the complexes and squats as laid out in MMS, but for the upper body work, we do the KB press workouts from ABF.  We won’t do the ABC portions because we’re already squatting on the squat days, and don’t want to add KB front squats to the mix, but we can certainly use that press workout for our upper body. 

 

Another way to combine programs that I’ve observed is to run the 10k swing challenge alongside Mass Made Simple.  In this instance, you’d do the 10k swing workouts on the non-lifting days of MMS, which will mean NOT doing 5 days a week of swings, which allows you to stretch out the 10k swing workout long enough to fit within the 6 weeks of MMS.  What this also does is give you an avenue to train the hip hinge ALONGSIDE the squats in MMS.  That was similar to my solution of running Easy Strength alongside MMS, giving me opportunities to hinge while still playing hard on the squats.

 

A NEW WEIGHTGAINING BLOCK

Hopefully it gets you as jacked as Zangief!

Once again, going back to Dan John’s fantastic “Mass Made Simple” book, one of the many reasons I’m a big fan of it is Dan includes an entire starter section on it teaching the new trainee HOW to squat.  Specifically, how to avoid running into your own legs at the bottom of the squat: learning how to squat BETWEEN your knees.  He provides a program dedicate to just this feat, and THEN, when you actually run Mass Made Simple, he walks you through every workout, telling you exactly what to lift and for how many reps.  It’s incredibly prescriptive and leaves no doubt for the trainee.

 

In that regard, I feel like it’s an EXCELLENT starting program for a new trainee focused on gaining mass.  After they finish running the program for those 7 weeks, where do they go on from there?

 

You won’t like this answer, but…SUPER SQUATS.  Now we transition from 50 rep squats to 20 rep squats…but they’re BREATHING squats.  We’ll be conditioned and prepared for this demand from all the hard work in MMS and definitely have an improved squatting ability.  And after 6 weeks of the traditional Super Squats program, where do we go?  Into the 5x5 program that’s ALSO in Super Squats, so that we can FINALLY stop doing high rep squats for a minute, regroup, and focus on getting stronger.

And then what?  Why, then back to Mass Made Simple.  Why?  Because Dan designed the workouts to be done by weight class, and at this point, we’re SURE to be up a weight class, so we can run THOSE numbers and continue to progress. 

7 weeks MMS-6 weeks Super Squats-6 weeks 5x5-7 Weeks MMS gets us 28 weeks of training, and we can really just keep running this until the wheels fall off…perhaps quite literally with all those damn squats!

 

DOGGCRAPP AND SUPER SQUATS

 

Dog squats...been going 90s a LOT here

It’s not as though DoggCrapp necessarily needs improving, but I have an idea for morphing these two programs together in order to make Super Squats more sustainable.  I always found, toward the end of the 6 weeks, I tended to be pretty broken down from the frequency of Super Squats.  DoggCrapp resolves this issue by rotating exercises, and I figured we could employ the same principle here.

 

Super Squats is traditionally run 3 days a week.  It’s usually the same movements each time, specifically with the squat as the focus, adding 5lbs each workout, resulting in 90lbs added from start to finish.  What we could do, instead, is pick 3 different exercises for each body part (which the Super Squats book actually DOES lay out as far as suitable replacements go) and train them in a rotation: 1 set of movements on day 1, 1 on day 2, one on day 3.  Start a new week and restart the process.  This would INCLUDE the focused squat movement of the program: we’re going to rotate that one as well.  In doing so, we can slow down the progression rate, only adding 5lbs once a week rather than every workout, OR we could feel braver and go for 10lbs, but still reduce the frequency of progress AND the frequency of the exercise itself, meaning a reduced change of experiencing some form of repetitive motion trauma.  In turn, we COULD run Super Squats for LONGER than the traditional 6 weeks…which sounds absolutely HORRIBLE, but is at least something different.

 

 

This is tip of the iceberg stuff here, but hopefully ya’ll found it interesting and it got you thinking about ways you can play around with your own training.

MORE OF THE BAD, LESS OF THE GOOD

In the realm of physical transformation, the notion of “do the stuff you’re bad at” isn’t novel at all.  In fact, that extends beyond physical transformation: that applies to pretty much all physical activity, and beyond that, activity in general: at least so much those activities that we seek TO become better at.  We, as humans, have a tendency to shy away from our weak areas and attempt to emphasize our strengths instead, as no one LIKES to feel weak, clumsy and incapable, and we enjoy having the ability to peacock and strut our stuff when it comes to those things that come naturally to us…which, in turn, is a surefire recipe to never actually BECOME better at our chosen activity.  Paul Kelso highlights this brilliantly in “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style” when he discusses the club hardhead that has a decent enough bench press but refuses to ever train in a submaximal way to ever actually BUILD the bench even stronger; instead wanting to always be maxing so he can show off his strength in the training hall.  However, what I hope to discuss today is a PRACTICAL means that we can apply this mantra, and, specifically, just HOW we would still train those things we’re good at WHILE also focusing on the things we are bad at. 

Always playing to our strengths can often result in some imbalances...

 

Stealing from the greats once again, I’ll default to Dan John’s 4 quadrants notion.  He describes the 4 quadrants of movement: pushing, pulling, squatting and hinging, and, from there, goes on to describe that one is typically strong on 2 of those quadrats and weak on the other 2.  Pushing and pulling refers to the upper body, while the squat and the hinge are in the realm of the lower body.  From here, we observe that there are 4 combinations of humans that can exist with these quadrants: push/hingers, pull/squatters, push/squatters, pull/hingers.  Quite often, one can identify where someone falls on these quadrants without even observing them train: simple body construction will tell the story.  Someone with a long torso and short/stubby legs is going to be quite gifted at squatting, while finding the hinge to be rather unenjoyable, whereas a short torsoed/long limbed fellow will hinge masterfully and then…hinge their squats, because squatting is so unnatural to them.  But, if NOT readily apparent, simply analyzing performance metrics or even mere preference in the gym will be enough for us to determine amongst ourselves what we are.  I, myself, am a push/hinger: I got my first 300lb bench press before my first 300lb squat and am nowhere close to being able to row that amount, and managed a 540lb beltless deadlift with a technique that best resembled a terrified cat pooping in a litterbox before I ever really learned HOW to deadlift.

 

So now that I know what I’m good at and what I’m bad at…so what?  Well now we go back to the basics.  How do we grow?  Through toil: through struggle, through placing a DEMAND on the body that says “you NEED to adapt to this new stimulus”.   Well, in turn, HOW do we struggle?  Do we struggle when we do the things we are naturally gifted at?  Do we struggle when we shine?  NO!  The opposite, of course: struggle is brutal and ugly and, quite often, NOT how we want to be seen, captured and documented.  Unless we’re shooting some sort of broody noir piece for a commercial, no one LIKES to be observed struggling, because it’s an admission of weakness in face of a challenge or obstacle.  We want to effortlessly overcome that which is placed in front of us…but, in doing so, we never actually generate the necessary demand or stimulus TO get bigger and stronger.  In the absence of struggle, the body remains stagnant, but when SUBJECTED to struggle, the body overcomes.

Somehow we all understand this when it comes to fiction but NOT reality

 

Again: so what?  So now we know: when our goal is to grow, we must struggle, which means that we must pick from our WEAKER quadrants.  Historically, this completely checks out for me: the best gaining programs I’ve ever undertaken were HEAVILY focused around the squat.  Super Squats, Mass Made Simple, 5/3/1 Building the Monolith (2 squat workouts per 1 deadlift), Deep Water (equal parts squatting and deadlifting, to be fair, BUT…it’s a lotta damn squatting), DoggCrapp, Jamie Lewis’ protocols (a self-described non-fan of the deadlift), etc.  In addition, I saw my greatest upper body physical developments WHEN I focused quite exclusively on improving my pulling ability, which my long time youtube followers will recognize with my 3 part series on how to pull with the elbows alongside my various forays into the world of obtaining mandatory amounts of daily pull ups.  And, looking at Building the Monoliths 100 chins and 25 weighted chins, the pull day of Deep Water, Jamie Lewis’ appreciation for the pull up in his protocols, etc, we observe this proclivity continuing.  Whenever I have needed to grow, I’ve always gravitated toward those programs that force me to do those things I’m bad at and to do a LOT of them.

 

I admit I’ve already pretty much written this post previously, but here is something of a recent revelation while walking down this path: since we’re doing MORE of what we’re bad at, we must, necessarily, do less of what we are good at.  HOWEVER, recall from previous postings my philosophy about what happens when volume drops: intensity will naturally rise!  Intensity and volume are on opposite sides of the scale, and the increase of one results in the decrease of the other.  The consequence of this is that, while we’re hammering the volume on the hard stuff, we’re lifting heavy on the stuff we’re good at.  But the one-two punch is this: BECAUSE we are good at these lifts, we are ALSO good at INTENSIFICATION of these lifts.  Intensification is about increasing our ABILITY to maximally express the strength we built during accumulation: it’s a phase where we focus on getting BETTER at BEING stronger, rather than actually GETTING stronger.  Coordination and proficiency are key there, which, when we take something we are naturally predisposed to, we have an advantage.

 

Just imagine if he exercised!

But to go even FURTHER into the implications here, consider this: we frequently advise junior trainees to train with much volume and, as one becomes more seasoned, the volume tends to become reduced.  Why is this?  Because a more experienced trainee is better able to recruit their body (motor units/neurons/muscles/whatever term you wanna use here) toward the task of training, which, in turn, means they can dig deeper into the “recovery well” by being able to better maximally exert themselves compared to a junior trainee.  A junior trainee may only be able to squat 20lbs above their 10 rep maximum, simply because they’re not good at squatting, so when they do 3x5@80% of 1rm, it may be tough but still well within the realm of recovery.  An advanced trainee with an 800lb 1rm squat will effectively die somewhere in that second set.  In turn, this is why Dante Trudel advises people NOT follow his DoggCrapp protocol UNTIL they have about 3 years of basic bodybuilding under their belts: his single set work approach isn’t going to be effectively utilized by a junior trainee who simply does not possess the ABILITY to maximally recruit themselves into one single set of all-out effort.  Similarly, minimalist training protocols are intended to be employed only AFTER a trainee has engaged in a prolonged period of maximally volume training in the pursuit of maximal gains, and HIT AND abbreviated training tended to find success amongst those trainees who had “tried EVERYTHING” before finally settling on 1-2 sets of all out effort.

 

What’s the point of all that?  We treat our BAD lifts like junior trainees, and our GOOD lifts like advanced trainees.  So we maximize the volume of the bad BECAUSE we’re not able to squeeze out our maximal effort on them, but for the good?  THAT is the time to employ a single set of maximal effort in order to make the most of our abilities.  This is the EXACT revelation I’ve had with my current training protocol, wherein I’ve simply taken a grab bag of things that have worked for me and slapped them all together.  Key of which being this: I only do single set deadlift work, with one of those being a max rep set of low handle trap bar pulls once a week, and the other being my well documented ROM progression mat pull protocol for deadlifts, and on BOTH of those I am seeing continued perpetual progress week to week.  Meanwhile, I am squatting in SOME manner 3x a week, giving me lots of volume, and one of those squat protocols is my infamous “Zeno Squat” protocol, which is RIFE with training volume.  Because, historically, whenever I try to do high volume deadlift training, I burn the hell out because I can dig WAY too deep into myself, and whenever I try to go with infrequent heavy squatting, I regress because I can’t train hard enough to make that work.

Some dudes CAN work hard enough to train that infrequently

 

As a bit of an aside, I’ll add that, for those lifts we are bad at, it’s a sound idea to ensure we implement some manner of movement rotation in order to prevent overuse injuries.  BECAUSE we are not good at these movements, they are an unnatural fit for our anatomy, which, in turn, means the constant and frequent grinding of the same motor pattern is going to wear the hell out of us.  This is why my elbows scream at me when I do too many kettlebell cleans for too long, or don’t change up the angle of my chins frequently, or my well documented hip and hamstring issues I was running into at the end of Super Squats.  With my current training protocol, I rotate between 3 different styles of squats each week, and the first day in particular has me rotate between 2 squatting variants each week as well (so Monday is either SSB front squat or SSB squat, Wed is Axle zercher squat from floor, Friday is Zeno squats with the Buffalo Bar).  And really, movement variety is a GOOD thing in the pursuit of accumulation anyway: we get to get stronger from multiple different angles while still emphasizing the same general movement pattern.  That’s the premise behind the assistance work in 5/3/1: just build some muscle.  And really, it was the same for the accessory work in Westside Barbell: build some muscle that will support the powerlifts.  I am finding this work of caution need not apply for those lifts we ARE good at, primarily because the volume is naturally lower.

 

This already got really long and rambly, but to make it actionable, here is how I am saying one would construct their own training protocol if their goal was to abide by what I’ve laid out here.

 

* High volume on the bad quadrant lifts, achieved via high frequency (for frequent exposure) and high volume in the session itself.

* Low volume via frequency and low volume within the workout with high intensity on the good lifts.  Intensity could be via percentage of 1rm OR via intensification modifiers (rest pause, dropsets, beyond failure training, etc)

 

As always, take caution when designing something yourself

If you didn’t want to think too hard about this: remember when I combined Easy Strength with Mass Made Simple?  That had me doing Easy Strength lifts 5x a week, and squats 1-2x a week for limited amounts of VERY intense sets.  That would be a simple avenue to approach this.  One could even take another Dan John program, the “one lift a day” program, and run that on top of Easy Strength: using Easy Strength for the bad lifts and running the “one lift a day” program 1-2 times a week for the good lifts.  And, of course, Dan isn’t the only one out there with high frequency programs: Pavel made a ton of those as well, with “Power to the People” being one of the most well known, and you even have Steve Justa’s (RIP) “Barrel Lifting Program” from “Rock, Iron, Steel” to play around with.  And, of course, you can always just gran one of Jim Wendler’s millions of 5/3/1 variants and play around with frequency as needed.  We learn from playing around and experimenting, so take these thoughts and observations and see what you can do with them. 

MAY YOU GET THE RESULTS YOU DESERVE

One of my favorite ancient curses is “may you live in interesting times”, as it reads like a fortune cookie from someone that was really mailing it in at work, but is, in reality, probably one of the most damning things you could ever wish upon someone.  As those of us who HAVE been living through some interesting times these past few decades (9/11, SARS, Swine Flu, COVID-19, Murder Hornets, Ukraine Incursion, recent US presidential situations, and I’ve seen the Exorcist about 167 times…and it keeps getting funnier, every single time I see it!) will attest: interesting times are awful!  It’s so much easier when times are boring!  Boring means no one is shooting at you.  Boring is WHY the 90s created Grunge: we stopped having the existential threat that was the USSR and potential nuclear disaster and we absolute schwacked the 4th largest military in the world in the span of 72 hours and saw fit to call it “The Gulf War” simply because EVERY generation was “supposed” to have a war: we were so BORED with everything that our music and clothing reflected an era of apathy, sarcasm and ennui.  And here I am being nostalgic about it all, when really my intent was to say that, my own curse that I wish upon all those undergoing the process of physical transformation is “may you get the results you deserve”.

I remember watching this when it was a new episode

I genuinely smile whenever I say this, because honestly, to say it’s a curse IS a bit dramatic.  For many folks, this is honestly a blessing: some folks are out there EARNING results through their actions and intentions, and sometimes the cruelty of genetics and circumstances robs them of that which they deserve.  But for the vast, VAST majority of folks out there, “may you get the results that you deserve” is one of the evilest curses I could possible inflict upon a populace.  It’s downright villainous of me to even UTTER this ancient incantation: pulled straight from the Necronomicon itself, whispered about in secret amongst only the most depraved and vile of sorcerers and warlocks.  This is primarily because so many of those claiming to be seeking physical transformation are in no way putting INTO the process what is necessary to get what they desire OUT of the process.  For these individuals, “may you get the results that you deserve” is a longwinded way of expressing profanity and vulgarity at them.  For these people, it’s how people in the south say “bless your heart” as a means of politely saying “f--k you”

 

What results DO these trainees deserve?   The results one achieves from laziness, because these trainees ARE lazy, by self-proclamation.  “I’m too lazy to cook, so I just order out”, I’m too lazy to read a book on training, so I just rely on an app”, “I’m too lazy to learn about nutrition, so I just let an app determine my nutrition goals”, etc etc.  Folks, I ask you: when is the last time you marveled at the results of laziness?  When is the last time you saw an outstanding physical specimen and thought to yourself “I wonder how LAZY that person was to get there?”  When did you see someone of immense wealth, power, prestige, capability, capacity, knowledge, etc and think to yourself “I bet you that person is INCREDIBLY lazy?”  Unless this was spiteful or wishful thinking, your lizard brain did NOT come to these conclusions upon these observations.  We are wired to ADMIRE an admirable physique BECAUSE to us it is the sheer physical manifestation of hard work and intense effort applied over a long period of time: traits that our species finds desirable when it comes to securing our futures.

This communicated SO much in just one image

 

Don’t get me wrong: laziness is absolutely a boon when it comes to creativity.  Quite often, leaders are told to recruit from the intelligent and LAZY vs the intelligent and motivated, for the latter will go to great lengths to make sure the job gets done, but the FORMER will go to great lengths to figure out the EASIEST way to get the job done, and through that we discover more efficient processes and methods.  Yes: that’s absolutely cool when the goal is to become more efficient…but how incredibly awful is it when we realize that the process of physical transformation is a process of being INEFFICIENT?  It goes against everything we prize and value, but it’s absolutely the case that, when seeking to transform ourselves, we “gotta do I the HARD way”, BECAUSE the efficient and easy way, by definition, is the way that does NOT require us to invest the necessary degree of toil to signal to our body a NEED to transform in order to develop a means to overcome our present state of adversity.

 

Think about what resistance training is: it’s in the name.  We must RESIST, not “go with the flow”.  It’s the process of intentionally finding a means to inefficiently locomote a physical object over a distance in order to force our muscles to come into play and develop.  We could absolutely develop an easier way to move the weights in our gym, but it would defeat the purpose of doing so.  Think about how INEFFICIENT 10x10 squats are in Deep Water, or those 3 DEEP breaths you’re taking between each rep on Super Squats, or hitting those complexes before a FIFTY rep squat set in Mass Made Simple, or when you rest pause to get MORE reps on DoggCrapp, or getting that 200th dip in “Building the Monolith”.  Surely there’s a lazier way?

The ultimate comedy of this is when you realized that 8 minutes is a LONG time to spend on an ab workout

 

And nutrition is REALLY fascinating in this regard.  When you wanna talk efficient energy delivery, nothing is gonna beat pure sugar…and unless you’re a hummingbird, good luck with THAT diet.  To say nothing of the unholy trinity in junkfood of sugar (High Fructose Corn Syrup) fat (refined seed oils) and salt: caloric bombs you just can’t stop eating.  And then companies will further process these foods so that they’re EASIER to eat, much like how J.M. Blakely pointed out that you can put a McDonald’s cheeseburger in your mouth, NOT chew it, and it will eventually just dissolve and be swallowed.  Meanwhile, when we throw down with some steak and eggs and set ourselves to the task of actually CHEWING and swallowing our food, we employ an inefficient means of energy delivery AND actually get in some quality nutrition.  And geez, do you realize how many trainees DON’T want an efficient metabolism?  We call that a SLOW metabolism: it’s great at squeezing out EVERY last nutrient possible from every calorie we eat.  Our body does that in times of starvation.  Instead, you’ve got folks like John Berardi out there advocating “G-Flux”, where we INTENTIONALLY go out of our way to get our body burning through energy SO that we can feed it even MORE food so that we can get more nutrients into the body.  We go from mopeds to space shuttles: just BURNING through fuel and putting more and more in the furnace.  And you’ve got dudes like Justin Harris and Robert Sikes who intentionally go out of their way to build UP the metabolism of their clients during periods of gaining SO THAT, when it comes time to lose weight, we have enough “caloric runway” that we can drop weight while still eating moderately high calories, so that we don’t back ourselves into a corner, eating 800 calories a day to try to lose, living off of “lettuce, water and marijuana”, to retell a story of Dan John’s roommate that entered a bodybuilding competition.  Does any of this SOUND like the work of the lazy?

 

No, when you outsource your effort, you outsource your results.  When you have “nutrition goals” that were given to you by an app and you don’t even know WHY you’re following them, you don’t have goals: you have orders.  And the Nuremberg Defense doesn’t work: just because you were “just following orders” doesn’t mean you don’t get held accountable in the end.  When you’re running your 18th consecutive month of Starting Strength because you don’t want to learn anything other than 3x5 for 3 movements, you will get exactly what you deserve for your intellectual laziness.  When you refuse to put a bar on your back and toil, swearing that the leg press and leg extensions are “just as good for leg hypertrophy according to MUCH independent research”, your attempt at intellectual rigor to REPLACE physical exertion will yield exactly what it should.

Ogre has something to say on the matter

 

May you get the results that you deserve.  Hopefully, you will do your best to reverse that curse and turn it into a blessing.

 

 

HIT ROCK BOTTOM SO HARD THAT YOU BOUNCE

The title for this blog comes from a rant I heard Dennis Miller make one time on “Dennis Miller Live”, which, once again, significantly shows my age, but perhaps you’ll mistakenly confuse that with wisdom, so let’s go with it.  All that said, I am a big fan and supporter of the notion of “hitting rock bottom so hard that you bounce”, because aside from the hilarious visual imagery, it’s a VERY true experience for those that have actually experienced it.  Society presents to us the idea that hitting rock bottom is the absolute worst experience we can have: that it is something to be avoided and fought against with as much resistance as possible, but this is binary thinking.  The notion being presupposed is that, if one is not at rock bottom, they are in a superior space…but between the peak of the mountain and rock bottom lies SO many other levels of elevation that many, in their attempts to AVOID rock bottom, find themselves mere millimeters above the surface, just barely subsisting off of whatever scraps they can obtain at such a meager existence.  Would it not be much more preferable for these individuals to, instead, allow themselves the necessary degree of free fall to actually STRIKE rock bottom and, in doing so, bounce and begin to progress UPWARD?  Rather than to float idly above the surface, to actually me sailing skyward once more?  Rock bottom is not to be avoided: when it is in our sights, we must instead endeavor to hit rock bottom so hard that we bounce!

Speaking of Dennis Miller and hitting rock bottom...but this movie DID have an awesome soundtrack

 

“No half measures”, if I’m going to quote a slightly more current television program there with “Breaking Bad”, because that’s ultimately what this is a rallying call for.  In order to ACTUALLY hit rock bottom, you have to be committed to SOMETHING, even if it IS the “wrong thing”.  No one hits rock bottom from part time drug use: they are there from constant benders and spiraling out of control.  You don’t get there from penny-slots: you get there from a completely out of control gambling addiction.  And when it comes to physical transformation, you’re not going to hit rock bottom with moderate intensity, 3 reps in reserve, frequent rest breaks, perfect form, etc etc.  No dear reader: you get there by going absolutely and totally completely off the rails, using way too much volume, intensity, frequency, variety, etc etc.  You do too much, or you do it too often, or you do it for too long, or a combination of the 3, or all 3 at once, but you OVERdo.  And the same of diet: you don’t get there with moderation: you get there by going STUPIDLY extreme in one direction or the other.  You Bruce Randall your way to 400lbs, or you find the limits of the body by going on a 32lb Kroc cut in 36 hours.  You decide to give the Gironda 36 eggs a day diet a go, or the gallon of milk a day…or both!  Here we are FINDING the limits: here we are hitting rock bottom HARD!

 

Why?  Because rock bottom is the absolute BEST place to be.  Oh my goodness yes.  Much like how the Art of War says to never cut off all avenue of escape from your enemy, because it means they will now fight as though they have nothing left to lose, OR the old joke about how “we’ve got the enemy in front of us, behind us, to the left and to the right: they can’t escape us now!”, once you are at rock bottom, the only place you have to go is UP!  Could you imagine   a better scenario for someone seeking physical transformation?  If the goal is simply TO transform, it means you’re at a place now where ANY decision you make is the right one, so long as that decision ISN’T “keep doing what I’m doing”.  What you were doing MAY have been working (as I imagine it’s why you selected it in the first place), and now you’ve so completely exhausted any potential good out of it that you’re at a point where ANY decision you make now is “the right one”.  You could not BE more empowered.

Yeah pretty much

 

And THAT decision that you make IS the “bounce” from hitting rock bottom.  It’s why you MUST hit it so hard, because the alternative IS stagnation, and we observe that so much.  So many trainees are so afraid of deviating from a “working” protocol that they will just stretch it out WELL past the point of usefulness.  How many times have we seen the trainee on their THIRD year of “Starting Strength”?  “Starting” is in the name: this isn’t supposed to be forever!  The trainee that is running the same bro diet, despite the fact that every single time they eat oatmeal their guts blow up, because they refuse to learn how to cook any other foods.  The warrior diet zealots, the HIT Jedis, “Westside or Die”, etc etc.  These folks are just hovering over rock bottom: maintaining stagnation and mediocrity year round.  They achieve NO transformation because they are unable to bounce: their trajectory toward rock bottom is glacial in speed. 

 

We must have no fear in attempting to find out limits, for in the pursuit of them we WILL grow and transform, and once we actually DO discover these limits, we open ourselves up to the opportunity to grow in ANOTHER direction once we make the pivot necessary to capitalize ON discovering these limits.  If we live in fear of accidentally achieving something, we’ll constantly be hovering above the surface of rock bottom: barely scraping by and achieving nothing.  But if we hurl ourselves perilously toward the floor in a lunatic pursuit for progress, we may find ourselves striking it with such force that we propel ourselves to our very peak.  Shoot for the moon, for if you miss you’ll land along the stars?  No dear friend: aim for the floor, aim true, shoot hard and hit them with the ricochet!

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Hey readers, if you made it this far, Jamie Lewis and his wife have been incredibly awesome and offered a discount code for my readers on any of his books.  Use code "BetterLate10Never" for 10% off.

I’D RATHER BE WRONG AND STRONG THAN RIGHT AND WEAK

I have said the topic title on many occasions, and may have actually even written this exact same blog post at some point over the nearly 12 years of this blog’s existence, but I thought this thought this morning while putting on my shoes (which seems to be when a lot of my thoughts come about) and decided to just run with it, because it’s one of my favorite things to say to upset people.  One of the benefits of growing up a full-fledged Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons playing 90s fat kid nerd was that I got to be a total social outcast degenerate BEFORE it was cool and, in turn, I gave up on being cool or socially accepted very early in life.  This has been a boon in my pursuit of physical transformation, because, for one, being that fat kid gave me a catalyst to WANT to change, but more topical to today’s discussion: I never cared if anyone agreed with how I was approaching the transformation.  It didn’t matter if what I did was accepted, agreed upon, backed by science or research, “party approved”, or the method-du-jour: all that mattered was if it WORKED.  And whenever people would tell me my methods were wrong, didn’t work, weren’t backed by science, weren’t “approved”, I’d reply in kind “I’d rather be wrong and strong than right and weak.”

Think how much time Arnold spent being wrong...

This is fundamentally Dan John’s “The goal is to keep the goal the goal”, because it’s amazing how quickly we lose sight of that, and, once again, I attribute it to this desire to be “one of the tribe”, irrespective of where that actually lands us.  So many trainees seek assurance that their method is THE method: the one true path that will ABSOLUTELY get them results without question.  And the only way to ensure that one is following the one true path is to have all the necessary assurances that we are heading the right way: scientific backing, agreement amongst the tribe, the right influencers singing its praise, etc.  I mean, without all of that stuff, how can we possibly KNOW that what we’re doing is right?

 

…how about by looking at the RESULTS?  Why not evaluate the outcome of our actions to determine if they’re effective or not?  Madness, no?  For some, actually, yeah, that’s apparently a patently insane idea, to the point that I’ve had at least one well respected author in the sphere of physical training inform me that I could NOT rely on my own personal experience to determine the outcome of my efforts because I did not possess an ability to objectively evaluate my outcome…at which point I looked at them like a dog looking at a wristwatch.  “You have some sort of purpose, I’m sure, but I don’t know what…”  One of the surest ways to know if a thing works is to try the thing and see if it works.  If you want to know if a light switch is working, try flipping it and seeing if the lights turn on.  And yes, my undergrad philosophy professor used that analogy to explain Hume to me, and in turn went on to explain how only REALLY know that there is a correlation there between action and outcome…but also said, when it happens often enough, that’s “good enough”, and thus here we are.

Other lesser known philosophical quandaries 

But, of course, no one likes the “f**k around and find out” approach because it requires a few things people hate: being patient enough to wait for the outcome, and willing enough to pursue an avenue with no guarantee for success.  People HATE the unknown: they FEAR it, and they are incredibly impatient, especially in this world of instant gratification and streaming on demand everything, and putting these two principles together will absolutely break their brains, so instead they seek to be “right” right out the gate by finding ANYTHING that will back them up and make them right…and, in turn, when they run into someone that is “doing it wrong”, they MUST destroy them, or else it was fracture the reality and narrative they have delicately constructed that is protecting them from the unknown.

 

But we pioneers in the realm of physical transformation have discovered a terrible secret: it’s REALLY hard to eat and train wrong.  Like really REALLY hard.  This very blog is proof of concept of that: over the 12 years I’ve been logging, I’ve tried a BUNCH of different approaches, and I kept finding success with all of them, so long as I had faith in the approach (overcomes the fear of the unknown) and poured my effort into it.  Super Squats, Deep Water, Mass Made Simple, various 5/3/1 programs, Westside Barbell/Conjugate, DoggCrapp, Easy Strength, 10k Kettlebell Swing challenge, programs of my own design, seefood diet, body by Taco Bell, low carb, carnivore, gallon of milk a day, etc: ALL of it worked.  And absent my own experiences, I observe other people having success with methods I wouldn’t even CONSIDER because they don’t jive with my own personal psychology…but I can’t deny that they’re working.  There are successful vegans, HIT-Jedis, calorie counters, If It Fits Your Macros types, MRV/MEV/RPE calculators, Sheiko, etc etc: just because it doesn’t suit ME doesn’t mean it doesn’t work…and THAT is what those seeking to be “right” fail to take under consideration.

Sure, you can bench 600lbs raw with conjugate periodization and resistance bands, or you can do it with heavy dips and meatloaf sandwiches

 

The success of someone else does NOT invalidate your own personal success: it simply means there are even MORE ways to succeed out there than what your own experience and education has led you to believe.  This is a GOOD thing: isn’t it awesome that you can accidentally do the “wrong” thing and all it means is that you’ve stumbled into yet ANOTHER way to succeed in the pursuit of physical transformation?  Blindly stumbling, completely ignoring all the “right” ways to go out there, guided only by hubris and effort, one has an abundance of opportunities to succeed, all the while being “wrong” according to all those who are dutifully following the one true path and getting the results they deserve for their piety…which is to say, nothing impressive.  Because THAT is why I would have rather been wrong: I saw what “right” looked like, and, quite frankly, I was NOT impressed.  Doing what everyone else was doing was getting the results everyone else was getting: who wants that?  If the goal is to BE different, we must ACT different.

 

Because I’d rather be wrong and strong than right and weak.       

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Hey readers, if you made it this far, Jamie Lewis and his wife have been incredibly awesome and offered a discount code for my readers on any of his books.  Use code "BetterLate10Never" for 10% off.

CONVERSATIONAL SURVIVOR BIAS

On its surface, the notion of “survivor bias” seems like a GOOD thing: wouldn’t I want to be biased toward the survivors?  Wouldn’t I WANT to only be exposed to those people and ideas that “survived”?  Why would I WANT to hear from the non-survivors?  Because, quite often, we learn MUCH more when we fail than when we succeed.  The classic story that illustrates HOW survivor-bias works is this: in World War II, airplane mechanics observed that planes that returned from battle had a significant amount of bullet holes in their wings, so they concluded that they REALLY needed to reinforce the wings on the planes, since the wings kept getting shot.  Eventually, they realized that, since it was the planes that RETURNED that had these bullet holes, this meant that the planes that got SHOT DOWN where the ones that got shot all over the body of the plane.  Once they reinforced the body…more planes returned.  The mechanics were attempting to learn from the survivors, but instead needed to focus on the planes NOT returning, and, in turn, in conversations regarding physical transformation, WE need to pay less attention to what is being discussed and more attention to what isn’t.

Silly Skynet just kept building Terminators with more left arms

 

Upon writing that, I’m reminded of the Simpson’s exchange on jazz music where Lisa says “You have to listen to the notes she’s not playing” and the response was “I can do that at home”, but stick with me here ardent obscure 90s pop-culture reference fan, because what’s “not being said” happens to be the loudest part of the conversation.  When people successful in the realm of physical transformation get together to discuss said transformation, it’s interesting just how nuanced the discussion becomes.  Dave Tate’s “Table Talk” is a fantastic example of this exact phenomenon: Dave, a multi-decade veteran of the sport of powerlifting, brings on other incredibly accomplished guests in a wide variety of iron sports and other avenues of physical transformation, and they essentially “talk shop” for LONG stretches of time (2-5 hours), letting the conversations just meander with an occasional nudge “back on track” before it devolves yet again.  You can learn SO much from these conversations, pick up some amazing tips and some really fascinating one-offs and quirks from these accomplished individuals…but what you’re NOT going to be able to do is figure out the basics. 

 

Why?  Because they’re not going to TALK about that.  Why?  Because they already KNOW the basics, and they already AGREE on the basics.  The fundamental foundational principles of physical transformation remain constant, unflinching, and unchanging.  You have my 3 principle summary of effort, consistency and time, but it’s been expressed in multiple other instances before, yet, much like the Tao, it’s one of those where the IDEA transcends words but not understanding.  We all “get it”.  Pat Casey bench pressed 615lbs raw in 1967, and just to show he wasn’t a one-off freak of nature, his training partner, Superstar Billy Graham, benched 605.  We’ve KNOWN how to get big and strong for a LONG time, and those principles haven’t changed at all…which is why these bits of conversation “don’t survive”.  Much like how the body of the plane is where the engine and the pilot live, the basics are where physical transformation “lives”, and those people who figure that out and “survive” on the course of physical transformation get to come home with their wings all shot up.

Heavy weights and meatloaf sandwiches: we had it all figured out in the 60s

 

And so many young trainees are those eager airplane mechanics, observing the conversations between these two accomplished trainees and drawing a survivor bias conclusion: “all these guys do is talk about nutritional timing and bar camber angle and exercise frequency and macronutrient ratio and protein powder compositions and pre/prei/post workout nutrition: THAT must be what REALLY matters”.  No you fool: they talk about THESE things because the core principles already survived so there was no need to bring them up any further!  For them, effort, consistency and time are a GIVEN, but for you?  Young trainee, you are but a babe in the woods: you need to cut your teeth first before you start even worrying about this stuff.

 

For what inevitably happens is a trainee will completely flip the 80/20 equation and try to get the majority of their results by focusing on those things that drive the minority of progress.  I am frequently asked questions regarding matters of exercise splits, movement frequency, movement selection, “how to program conditioning”, etc, and I keep coming back and saying “it all works”, much to their complete lack of satisfaction.  It’s the truth!  Your wings can be completely shot up, but as long as your engine is running and your pilot is alive, you’re going to survive this journey.  But, quite frequently, these trainees have exhausted so much of their bandwidth trying to conform to all the little rules and nuances contained in the smallest of details in matters of physical transformation that they run OUT of space for actual effort.  I’ve observed trainees bemoan how they simply don’t have TIME to make sure they’re hitting all muscle groups twice a week for 15-20 working sets per muscle while ensuring they train to absolute failure while ALSO making sure they keep 2 reps in reserve while maintaining proper tempo of 3-1-1-3, so they may as well just quit!  When I reveal to them that they can get bigger and stronger training as infrequently as twice a week, or 3 times every 2 weeks, instead of this liberating them, it just sends them into an even further downward spiral: how can this be!  Why would science lie to me!?

This is about how it looks

 

Dan John is one of the few big names I know of that has managed to make a career out of restating the basics over and over again, and, in turn, he is the ultimate palate cleanser whenever we find ourselves too far down the rabbithole of physical transformation.  “Mass Made Simple”, “Easy Strength”, and his most recent “Armor Building Formula” all reinforce the same basic principles of hard work, consistency and time driving success, as does every line he speaks in his podcast.  “The secret to being a great discuss thrower is to throw 4 times a week, lift weights 3 times a week, and do that for 8 years” is such an excellent prescription for success in just about any physical endeavor.  He’s someone out there that does NOT have a “conversational survivor bias”.  There are, of course, others as well, and I enjoy partaking of them, but I bring it up just to illustrate an example of just WHAT a conversation would appear like IF one were to observe these individuals discussing the fundamentals: ultimately, repetitive and basic.

 

And while we bring up Mass Made Simple, think about it alongside the other fantastic physical transformation protocols: Super Squats, Deep Water, and DoggCrapp for example.  Super Squats is 20 breathing squats for 1 set where the weight goes up each workout, Mass Made Simple keeps the weight at bodyweight but strives to get the reps up to 50, Deep Water keeps the weight AND total reps the same but gets it done in less time (either with reduced rest times or fewer sets), DoggCrapp combines heavy and light work with beating the logbook.  A young, confused trainee might see all those protocols and think they have to combine them ALL in order to get the benefits…but an experienced trainee looks and sees what these have in common: they all make you work REALLY hard in some way, and from that you grow.  What is being said is sets, reps and protocols: what ISN’T being said, because it’s understood, is the effort.

And a little bit of this

 

Pay attention to what is surviving in the conversation and ask yourself what DIDN’T survive.  Look for the non-survivors and learn from them.