HOW DO I KNOW WHEN I’M NOT A BEGINNER?

I get asked the question “how do I know when I’m not a beginner” a LOT, and every time I give the same response “if you don’t know, then you’re a beginner”.  People tend to not like that answer, because they want something quantifiable.  They want to know how much they should be able to squat to not be a beginner, or how many years they need to train to not be a beginner, or what rate of progress that can achieve before they are no longer a beginner.  The thing is, ironically enough, this is approaching the question of “how do I know when I’m not a beginner” in the way that a beginner would approach the question, and it’s why an answer that requires thinking beyond quantifiable metrics confounds the asker.  But today, let me offer something a bit more in depth to elaborate on the answer: you are no longer a beginner when you are at a point in your training where you will take full accountability for your decisions and your actions.

And sometimes that means telling the trainer you hired that he's an idiot

Let me back up a bit and discuss 2 of my favorite topics: beginners, and beginner programs.  Beginners are people new to the world of training, both physically and intellectually.  However, what is fascinating about those two qualities it that lack of experience in the former is a blessing, whereas the latter is a curse.  An untrained individual will flourish on ANY program or protocol they are put on, because, simply put, a body transitioning from sedentary to active undergoes substantial physical changes under a rapid timeline due to the nature of physical adaptation.  This is why those select few people that actually stick with their New Year’s resolutions look totally different at the 4-6 month mark, because simply sticking with AN approach for a few months will yield rapid and remarkable results.  Hell, Jared Fogle of Subway infamy lost 200+lbs by walking to Subway and eating veggie sandwiches, and his story is honestly not terribly unique in the world of extreme weight loss, and, in turn, physical transformation.  So then, why the hell do beginner programs even exist?

Knowing that beginners can pretty much do ANYTHING and see results, the point/benefit of a beginner program is to not bolster the physical inexperience of the trainee but the INTELLECTUAL inexperience.  Beginner programs don’t unlock magical physical powers that lay dormant in a beginner trainee to “maximize beginner gains”; they outfit a new trainee with a program that is basically impossible to screw up as long as they do it EXACTLY as written.  It’s why these modern day beginner programs are so incredibly basic and can be hosted on a single webpage of poorly programmed app.  Give the beginner only 3-5 movements to learn, give them only 1 rep range, only have them train 3 days a week, and only have them focus on putting weight on the bar.  If you think the beginner is REALLY dumb, you make the number of reps the same number as the number of sets, so that they only need to know 1 number to do the program.  This type of programming coddles the beginner, spoonfeeding them a very very basic routine (I hesitate to call it an actual program) in the hopes of building compliance with training and established habits to one day transition to something greater.

Or you could just try to follow it indefinitely and see what happens

And what inevitably occurs?  The physical outpaces the intellectual.  Trainees stay on these beginner routines for WAY too long because they keep waiting to transform into something else: a non-beginner (or, of course, the real goal of so many of these: the esteemed “intermediate” title).  In fact, I’ll go off on a small rant here to point out that I’ve seen people refer to themselves as various stages OF being a beginner, to include late stage beginner, advanced beginner, intermediate beginner, etc.  What the hell?  Being a beginner should be a VERY short period of time in your training history: there shouldn’t BE stages.  But I digress.  Once this situation occurs and the trainee is no longer seeing the results they saw when they first started, they want to know if they are in fact ready to begin on the fabled “intermediate programs”.  And then, a follow up question: what the Hell IS an intermediate program?  And from there, the fabled search begins.

Oh, sure, the same charlatans that sold these trainees a beginner program will GLADLY sell them an intermediate program as well.  And what does it look like?  It’s the same damn beginner program with just a few of the numbers scrambled around.  And the “graduated beginner” eats it up…and makes no growth.  And then the tailspin begins, and with it comes the overeating, the “overtraining”, the stalling, the regression, and the eventual giving up.  But it doesn’t have to be that way!  All that trainee needs to do…is take control.  They have to give themselves autonomy and wrestle it away from those who stole it in the first place.  They have to lay claim to their own destiny and, with it, agree to suffer the consequences of failure in the pursuit of success.

Author's note: please do not take this as a call to shoot someone working on SkyNet

Specifically, they need to start trying new things, seeing how they work, and figure out what they respond to.  New rep ranges, new movements, new splits, differing amounts of days per week trained, max effort, repetition effort, EXTREME stretching, dropsets, rest pausing, etc etc.  Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.  But again: they have to be willing to take accountability for their decisions.  If that trainee posts one “sanity check” on some forum somewhere in regards to the path they’ve decided on, they just gave up their “non-beginner” status.  Get into an argument on social media over the validity of your approach because you’re insecure?  That guy you’re arguing with just made you a beginner again.  Beginners see the training of intermediate/advanced lifters and observe a variety of different approaches and techniques employed, and they mistakenly interpret those techniques AS “intermediate/advanced techniques”, under the guise that they “do not work for beginners.”  Here we mistake effect for cause, as it’s not that the techniques don’t work for beginners: it is that beginners cannot use these techniques, for they lack the ability to take the necessary degree of accountability should these techniques fail.

And sometimes we revert back to being a beginner, and that’s ok.  Sometimes, we’ve been out there on our own, doing our own thing, trying stuff out, and we stray so far from our roots that we forget how the hell to train in the first place.  When this happens, we become beginners again, and we seek out someone to give us another “beginner program”.  Something that is bound to work, so long as we stick with it.  We get our feet back under us, remember our core principles, and take on the mantle of accountability again.  And some people will simply never NOT be beginners, and if that’s how they want to live, that is their choice, but they will find that their results simply will not be significant until they’re willing to take some chances and deviate from the program to find out what they personally need to do to ensure growth.  But for those that are on the fence, wondering if they’ve “maxed out their beginner gains”, wondering if they are still considered a beginner, wondering if they’re ready for the next step, I will once again say that: if you are wondering, yes, you are still a beginner.  Once you know you aren’t, then you aren’t.       

THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON AND 400 PUSH UPS: STORIES FROM MY YOUTH

A thanks is owed to user “oldbeancam” on t-nation for suggesting this post, despite the fact I have it on good authority he is not a member of the legume family, nor is he particularly aged.

Like most boys that grew up with a strong male presence in the family, my dad was my hero.  Honestly still is.  He was a big influence on me too.  As a kid, he was always the strongest and smartest man around, and anything he said I took to heart.  He lifted a little when he was in the military and a little when he got out, hurt himself and stopped later, but when I was really young he was still staying in shape, so that struck a chord.  Anyway, I say all this because the things he would tell me when I was young would stay with me for a LONG time, and, in turn, it sets up the reasoning and origins behind this story.

Although my dad's advice to "never get a girl pregnant" messed me up a little when he would never go on to specify "outside of wedlock"

My dad would always tell me stories about guys he knew in basic training or tech school that could do amazing things.  I was into martial arts when I was young (started Tae Kwon Do when I was 9, YMCA karate before that, super into the Ninja Turtles, etc), so my dad would tell me stories about a guy that did Tae Kwon Do that would do jump spin kicks over the heads of the guys in the barracks.  Or how he knew a guy that was a boxer that would reach out and snatch flies out of the air.  But one day, my dad told me the story about a guy in the barracks that went to take off his shirt to change uniforms and was completely jacked out of his mind.  My dad told me how he stared at him agog, and then asked him “Dude, how did you do that?”  The guy’s answer?  “200 push ups a night, every night.”

So, of course, that implanted the seed in my brain.  If you do 200 push ups a night, every night, you will be jacked.  Moving on, a few years later, when I was about 14 or 15 or so, my dad gave me a book called “The Richest Man in Babylon”.  For those that haven’t read it, it’s a very short read that basically gives financial saving and investing advice in the form of Babylonian parables.  Honestly very enjoyable, but at one point in the book, the author goes on to explain small investments staying up to something big with the following example (paraphrased): “Let’s say you were to do just 1 more push up a day, every day.  Just 1 push ups doesn’t seem like much, but after 100 days?  Suddenly you’re doing 100 push ups.”  I imagine my Dad had no idea that I would read this book and completely miss the message there, but my mind locked on to that notion and I wondered “Wait…will that actually work?”

The fact I've tried all sorts of crazy ideas but not this should say something

So teenage me set out to try it out.  I went and tested my top amount of push ups for the day and clocked in somewhere in the low to mid 40s.  With a baseline established, I decided to keep testing.  I did them every night before bed (remember, it’s push ups a NIGHT, not a day…because reasons), never missed a session, and true to form, I was able to get to 100 with that approach.  And now, the fire was lit.  I was halfway towards a childhood goal.  If I could get to 200, and then do them every night, I’d be just as jacked as the recollection of a guy that I had never actually seen before.  Yes, 30 something me realizes how silly this was in retrospect, but as a teenager it was brilliant.

I’ll spare dramatics and just say, 100 days later, I had made it to 200.  I’ll unfortunately spoil the end here and let you know that a 158lb 17 year old doing 200 push ups a day honestly doesn’t look very impressive. My teenage friends would call me jacked, but you be the judge

I still own that shirt by the way

Sadly, this was one of those fish stories.  I don’t doubt my dad that he saw a visibly impressive looking guy whose claim to fame was 200 push ups a day, but I imagine the hidden variable is a dude that walks around at low bodyfat and will look impressive from any muscular development.  As a person that naturally carries higher bodyfat, I wasn’t looking like much of anything.  Still, I diligently kept the 200 push ups a night going for as long as I could on top of a regular regimen of weights and sports training. 

Wait, doesn’t the title say 400? Alright, here we go.  I kept up the 200 push ups a night thing for a long time, but with me not seeing a great deal of benefit from it and college looming, it eventually fell off my radar in my later high school years.  However, once I got to college, the spark got re-lit.  For one, I went from my very bare bones high school weight room to (what seemed like at the time) a very well stocked college weight room, and my lifting took off.  Along with that, I put on about 12lbs of mostly shoulders in about 3-4 months upon arrival, and was suddenly becoming “big”.  It was like 180-185 at 5’9, but having transitioned from wrestling 152 in high school, I felt huge.  And so, I thought, this might be the time to REALLY get the most out of those push ups.

Yes, I may have had some other influences at the time too

I started it up once again, and found that I could get 100 in one go when I first tried.  Huh, interesting.  Looks like all that time before had a little carryover.  Well, on to 1 more a day.  And so I went, and once again worked my way back to 200.  And then, in a true Forest Gump-esque fashion, I wondered how far I could push this.  Since I was doing 200 a day, it was getting to be pretty easy to add 1 more, so I started adding 5 a day.  When I got to 300, I went with 10 a day.  Finally, there I was, home for a fall break, doing my daily push ups, and I worked my way all the way to 400.  The “set” took about 20 minutes, because I operated under the rules that I could rest as long as needed in the top position, I just couldn’t break 4 points of contact.  The first 200 flew by, the final 200 sucked, I collapsed in a heap, sweating and panting…and wondering what the hell I was doing.  I didn’t look any different, and didn’t feel any stronger, and I couldn’t see any sort of end in sight.  If I just kept it up, where was I going to go?  Was 500 going to matter more than 400?  And thus, the end of the journey.

But why do I share this?  A few interesting things of note.  Remember how I said that, when I tried to do the push ups again, I could do 100 in a set at the start?  Well that “memory” became even crazier after getting up to 400, because that set pretty much documents the last time push ups were a regular part of my training.  I pretty much never do push ups when I train.  However, I take a physical fitness test once a year with a max push ups in a minute, and without practice always manage to hit the max (68 up until very recently) with about 20 seconds to spare.  I do Murph once a year, and have no issue with getting in the push ups, even with the weighted vest.  And my 1000 push ups in under an hour challenge workout is a thing.  I have some sort of “push up reserve” in my body now that won’t ever go away, despite my last serious attempt being about 15 years ago. 

Inspiration for the 1000 push ups came from this dude, who is a legit badass

Along with that, this is literally the easiest program ever, and no one EVER believes me when I tell them about it.  If you have a goal that involves doing as many push ups as possible, I can’t think of a better approach.  You don’t need the 100 push ups program, or grease the groove, or anything like that: just do 1 more than you did yesterday.  Once you’re at like 40 or 50, it’s REALLY not a question of getting stronger or more endurance: it’s purely a mental challenge.  It’s about having the willpower to do just 1 more, and when it IS “just 1 more” it’s easy to overcome.  And you can see how those “just 1 mores” can add up to something great.  In a roundabout way, I learned the lesson my dad was trying to teach me, I just had to live out the allegory.

And finally…doing 200 push ups a night won’t make you jacked.  Neither will 400.  Quit eating so much you fattie.

A CELEBRATION OF OBSTINACY: ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER AND TRAINING

Boy do I feel sorry for you, because I’ve had the chance to do some more reading and how you get to hear about it. In Schopenhauer’s “Parerga and Paralipoema”, he touches on many interesting themes, but today I’ll discuss two quotes of particular interest.  The first is that “when will crowds out knowledge, the result is ‘obstinacy’.”  In understanding Schopenhauer’s writing, one must know that he viewed will as the primary motivator of action, rather than reason, and in turn viewed knowledge as the sole agent humanity possessed that could possibly elevate them above the power of will in order to achieve something greater.  Schopenhauer prized knowledge, the pursuit of it, and the possession of it, and constantly berated those that were content to let others think for them, rather than to think for themselves.  HOWEVER, also of interesting note is Schopenhauer’s quote in regards to the play between religion and knowledge, stating “Either believe or philosophize!  Whichever you choose, choose whole heartedly.  But to believe up to a certain point and no farther, and to philosophize up to a certain point and no farther – this is the half-heartedness…” after which point he is going on to attack a following of religion known as Rationalism.  Here, we observe that, even in the man who prized knowledge, there exists a celebration of obstinacy, for even in he who would rather be an agent of intelligence than an agent of will, he would much rather be completely one or the other than a lukewarm amalgamation of the two.  So how about you?

I wanted a "heart pun" photo, but didn't want to post the original in case people accidentally mistook my blog for "Chaos and Pain"

If we review the choice of philosophy or religion, Schopenhauer attested that BOTH were manners of arriving at fundamental truths: it was simply different packaging.  To note, Schopenhauer felt philosophy was for those that could understand truth without allegory, while religion was more for those of lacking intellect that required a medium to grasp these notions.  Feel as offended as you need at this point, but understand that there was still an acknowledgement in that both paths lead to the same goal, and both paths were IF followed in their entirety without attempting to stray down the other path.  The same holds true in training.  People constantly lament that there is “SO MUCH INFORMATION” out there, and that everything contradicts everything else and they don’t know what to do, but they fail to understand that all this indicates is that there are MANY ways to succeed.  On my goodness so many ways.  For diet alone, there is low carb, high carb, high fat, keto, paleo, atkins, RPT, vertical, etc etc.  For training, this is HIT, high volume, low volume, low frequency, 5/3/1, Juggernaut, Westside, etc etc.  THEY ALL WORK.  But they all work ON THEIR OWN.  Contained in their own rulesets, following their own prescriptions, they work.  It’s when you become the bespoken “rationalists” of Schopenhauer’s time that you get all the negatives and none of the positives.

Quit trying to play systems against each other in order to find some sort of ultimate hybrid with nothing but positives, because you will continue to get the negatives.  If you are a lifter that responds very well to highly cerebral training, go ALL IN with that stuff.  Learn about RPEs and MRVs and tempo speeds calculated with a piece of string tied to a bar and band tension and advanced calculus.  If that gets you going, go for it.  Then why do I mock it so much?  Because I’m the opposite, and I’m ALL IN for the opposite.  I AM a willpower based lifter, who cares more about testing myself and doing dumb crap that I have absolutely no business doing and biting off more than I can chew and beating myself into the ground just to see if I can recover.  And it works, because I don’t try to stray out of my lane and go and see if I can explain any of this with science.  Just as much as you shouldn’t slap a 100 rep dropset onto your precision calculated training plan, because you’ll definitely wreck yourself.  Find one way and commit to it fully.          

I mean, at least he did that...

In truth, this playing of systems against each other is simply yet another creative way to be lazy and weak.  People will find a method that has succeeded MANY times.  The empirical evidence is ever present.  But, before they decide to commit to it, they find some sort of way to question and invalidate it, so that they don’t have to actually work hard and suffer.  I rag on the keto diet, because I think it’s dumb to follow a diet intended to stop seizures if you don’t suffer from the affliction, but I have to admit that it works.  If you comply with it, it will be effective.  But that’s the thing: compliance with it actually REALLY sucks.  You have to be in a goddamn state of ketosis, you have to eliminate a LOT of carbohydrates from your diet, you have to prepare food in advance, etc etc.  That’s too much work!  Much easier to just clash keto against some study that says you need carbs, and then, PHEW, now you don’t have to follow it.  Same with how 20 rep squats doesn’t have the optimal amount of volume.  Dodged THAT bullet.  Training every day is TOO MUCH volume now?  Good, because that sounded hard too.  It’s much better to just explain away all training methods and diets by contrasting them against each other and never actually having to commit vs finding your “faith” and pursuing it fully.

And in this, I celebrate obstinacy, because I wish for my will to crowd out my knowledge.  I was once the opposite, and I tried to justify everything intellectually and “know” all there was to know about training…and I failed hard.  I failed everything, because I could never get my knowledge to match the output of material that was there.  I couldn’t get smart enough, FAST enough, because as soon as I’d “learn” something, something new would come out and challenge what I thought I knew, and my “faith” would be shook, and I’d spiral and make no progress.  I had to come to terms with the fact that I simply wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.  Whereas others could philosophize, it appeared that I needed “religion”.  I just needed something I could believe and shut off my brain and just let the truth happen irrespective of my actual understanding of it.  I let my will overcome my knowledge, and became an agent of obstinacy, refusing to let new knowledge get in the way of my pursuit of my goals. 

RALLY CAR HUMAN

Time for more bizarre metaphors, and I’ll start by saying I’m NOT a car guy.  My favorite car is the DeLorean, because I grew up watching Back to the Future, suicide doors are awesome, and it’s made out of stainless steel, so now you know the kinda guy you’re dealing with here.  That said, I will say that some of you folks out there really enjoy your luxury vehicles.  You dig your GPS navigation built into your Bluetooth stereo with your WiFi support, you need your automatic seats and power windows and dual climate control and heated seats, and you love to brag about how economically friendly you are because you have at tracker that monitors fuel efficiency.  Screw all that, gimme a rally car.  Strip all that crap out and give me just enough to get from A to B, and make me light enough that nothing is weighing me down and giving me any unneeded drag.  Let’s not forget our purpose here: it’s NOT the journey, it IS the destination, and some of you folks are living like luxury vehicles, when you need to start stripping down so you can finish the race.  Be a rally car human.

This...isn't quite what I mean

We’ve been sold a pack of lies from people who have a vested interest in making “driving an experience.”  It’s not about getting there, but about enjoying the ride, right?  Hell no!  This is how you get upsold and buy a bunch of crap you don’t need.  Why did we go to the dealership in the first place?  Because our ride broke down and we need a new vehicle.  I didn’t come here to buy a stereo, so why am I being upsold on a bunch of speakers and an entertainment center?  Hell, Best Buy wasn’t trying to sell me a car, why is Honda trying to sell me a radio?  Take all that crap out, you’re slowing down my ride.  Hell, take out the suspension if you can: I’ll just bounce a lot.

Alright, I’m clearly losing my mind on this one, but I’ll try to spell it out a little better.  In training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc, people fixate too much on enjoying the whole experience, and eventually their focus gets too shifted onto enjoying the experience that they forget why they ever “got in the car” in the first place: to get somewhere.  They get fixated on having enjoying training, enjoyable meals, an enjoyable life, that they don’t stop to wonder if all this enjoyment might actually be slowing them down or even weighing them down so much that they may end up NEVER reaching their destination.  They need to start jettisoning all this junk out of their car so that they lose some bulk, get more streamlined, and finish the race.

The Mariusz on the left looks terrifying, the Mariusz on the right has a winning record

What does it mean to become a rally car human?  It means to start cutting away at some of those things that really don’t matter.  People ask me often why I don’t eat direct carb sources, and the truth is because they just get in the way.  Carbs are too complicated.  Look, I know what protein does: it builds muscle.  I know what fat does: it’s good for hormones.  I ALSO know that there are essential fats and essential amino acids, which is to say, if you don’t eat them, you die.  But carbs?  They’re for energy right?  But so are proteins and fats…  Are there essential carbs? …no…  So why the hell am I supposed to eat them?  Because they taste good?  You know what, this is getting too complicated, just get rid of them.  These thoughts no longer weigh me down, one less thing to think about, and I can keep driving on my journey.

Why don’t I do stretching or mobility?  Because my goal is to get bigger and stronger, not more flexible or mobile.  I know how lifting weights gets me there: because resisting heavy stuff makes you stronger.  How does stretching or mobility make me bigger or stronger?  It makes me feel better?  Feeling better isn’t my goal: being bigger and stronger is my goal.  It makes me less prone to being injured?  That’s not my goal.  Why would I do these things that aren’t going to help me reach my goal?  Rally car human: cut it out and move on.

Why are you doing ANY of this?

Why are you intermittent fasting when you want to gain weight?  Because it fits your schedule better?  Hey, that’s cool, but how many guys do you think got big by NOT eating?  Quit enjoying the journey and start driving faster.  You’re going to eat chocolate cake when you’re losing fat because it fits your macros?  Sounds fun, I’ll be waiting for you at the finish line.  Instead of spending more time in your cars and having to find ways to make that experience more enjoyable, why not just make it that you get to the finish line faster and therefore don’t need to spend as much time on the road? 

Become a rally car human.  Shed your need for enjoyment for a second and see just how much faster your car moves.  Eat the food you need because it makes you bigger and stronger, not the food you want because it makes you happy.  Train the way you need to train because it works, not the way you want to train because it’s your favorite movement, or your favorite split, or because the program has an app.  Do the things that get you to your goal and stop doing the things that don’t matter.  The ride will be bumpier, there will be no built in entertainment, and you’ll probably be uncomfortable with no climate control, but you will get there quickly and have to wait for everyone else to catch up.        

STRENGTH TE CHING: UNSPEAKABLE STRENGTH

With my philosophy background and propensity to be smartass, it most likely surprises none of my regular readers to know that I was a total pain in the ass during my undergrad years.  During a course on Asian philosophy, we started reading the Tao Te Ching, which opens with “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao”.  I asked my professor, “If this is true, will you give me an A if I turn in my test with nothing written on it?”  In fairness, my professor told me that, if she had tenure, she would totally live up to that.  Anyway, I open with that story because, as promised, inspiration struck while I was on a cruise and I wanted to share with you all.

First, let me just say that my life is a constant source of comedy despite my best intentions, and though I am incredibly misanthropic, for some reason humans seem to like ME.  This cruise proved to be no exception, as one of the staff members took a liking to me early in the cruise.  He was a fit gentlemen, and on the first day made comment in regards to my physique.  Later in the cruise, he asked if I had worked out on the ship’s gym, and what I thought of it.  Another time after that, he asked if I competed.  On the final day, he asked me if I could write a program for him.  Apparently, this was something he often did with cruise members that he thought seemed exceptionally fit.  Before I go any further, yes, I’m fully aware of the man-crush this gentlemen had on me, you don’t need to bring it to my attention.  Anyway, this is a 2 paragraph intro into the main crux of what I want to write here, because despite the fact that I’ve been writing 1000 words a week for almost 6 years now, I went back to my room, stared at a blank piece of paper for 30 minutes, and came up with nothing.

I know this is what this intro seems like, but stick with me

How is this possible?  Everything I’ve written up until this point is all stream of consciousness.  I’ve NEVER been at a shortage for words.  Sure, many times it’s the same idea already written before simply expressed in a different manner, but it’s still new words and a few small new ideas.  Where did all that inspiration go?  Well what can I say folks, you found me out: I’m a charlatan.  I write about concepts, notions and ideas, because THOSE are easy to expand upon.  But when it came time to put down how I train, in a manner that someone else can use it…I came up empty.  Yeah, I coulda just wrote “Do 5/3/1” or “Buy the Deep Water book”, but when asked to come up with MY OWN program, I just couldn’t do it.

Folks, how can you put training into words?  Not the mechanics of it, but the real actual HUMAN element of training?  How can that possibly be captured into a spreadsheet?  This isn’t a formula, this is poetry.  It’s art.  And I don’t say that in a manner to convey pretentiousness, in an attempt to elevate it “beyond” numbers, but more to express how, with training, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  A poem is just words arranged in an order and usually to a rhyme scheme, however the effect of a poem (at least a good one) is that it stirs emotions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the reader.  It evokes, and it makes the words resonate on a personal level.  Each person experiences the poem differently.  The same is true of art.  Sure, colors, shapes, patterns, but the EFFECT of the art is in the human.  Mere words aren’t enough to capture this, they simply provide the liaison between the creator and the recipient, and the same is true of training.

Some people end up not experiencing the art at all

A training program may end up being just some numbers and words, but if executed as thought that is ALL that a training program is, the results become incredibly lackluster.  Not captured in those words and numbers is the effort, the intensity, the aggression, the overcoming, the fighting through injury, pain, discomfort, and fear.  I can write you a program that says “1 topset of 10 squats”, but not captured in that statement is the notion that “You’re going to think it’s time to rack the bar at rep 5.”  The program might say “Lift 4 days a week”, but not captured in that is “irrespective of schedule, sickness, pain, injury, or sleep depravation”.  Nowhere in your excel sheet will you find “you’re going to be in pain the whole workout”, nowhere is it expressed “you’ll most likely think you’re going to get injured, keep pushing”.  How does one capture “Take the disappointment you feel in having not yet reached your true potential and channel that into the spirit needed to get through this next set, and the next workout, and the next decade?”  This intensity simply cannot be captured and expressed in words, it must simply be understood without knowing.

And as such, I’m hesitant to write a program, because I cannot ensure that what I’ve written will in turn be what is received by the reader, which means the effectiveness cannot necessarily be captured.  And a reader who “follows the program” and does not see the same results as the author will immediately claim it is the author who is at fault for writing an ineffective program, rather than a reader being at fault for following an effective program ineffectively.  In turn, when faced with this task, I will admit that I floundered.  I did not submit a program, but instead merely some training ideas that could be implemented into an already established program.  “Running the rack”, and using it for leg press, dumbbell press, curls, etc.  Mechanical Advantage Dropsets with the incline bench.  “As few sets as possible” for rep totals with pull ups.  Etc etc.  All effective techniques, all ideas that get to the notion of how I train, but nothing that quite fully grasps exactly how I approach training.  And why?

Because I write about notions, ideas and concepts.  Just like today.