COMING FULL CIRCLE PART 1: THE TRAINING

This is going to be totally self-indulgent, but I’m going to give myself a moment to reminisce and reflect, because as of recently, as I look back, I realize it’s not really like looking back but more like looking forward.  Primarily because it appears I have gone full circle from where I have started, which, in turn, means I have a pretty good idea of where I am going.  That’s one of the nice things about a circular timeline: they’re very predictable, it just falls upon us to recognize when they’re happening and where we are on them, once we’ve identified them.  And once we have that ability, we can use that predictable ability to anticipate where we are headed and, hopefully, apply some of those lessons learned from the LAST time we were on this part of the journey.  But, already, I’ve digressed.  Let’s go back to the beginning, which is to say, now, the present.

Trust me: it just gets more confusing

 

I started writing this blog in 2012, and during that time announced that I was a fan of abbreviated training.  Almost immediately after saying as such, I departed on a journey that was very much NOT abbreviated training, with 5/3/1 BBB having been a program that broke me out of that abbreviated rut, with 5x10 seeming like insane volume to my 3-5x3-5 based mind, only to go completely into “Deep Water” with some 10x10 efforts, “daily work” racking up volume totals, 2, 3 and 4 a day training sessions, and other just maddening feats of training volume, effort and intensity.  Yet, after all of that, here I am again, back to abbreviated training.  And I eased BACK into it, having 5/3/1 Krypteia lead me on a “high speed/low drag” approach to training, Mass Made Simple and Easy Strength reminding me just how little I needed to train to see results, Building the Monolith reminding me that I used to train 3x a week full body and see results, and DoggCrapp reminding me that just ONE big set is enough, before I re-read and re-remembered Tactical Barbell and found myself once again excited to train, primarily because the training no longer consumed my life, time and being.  It was something that ENHANCED me, rather than consumed me, and it created a positive feedback loop, wherein, the less I trained, the more I grew, which allowed me to train harder and better in the limited time I trained, which re-affirmed that I didn’t need to train so much.

 

But what got me to abbreviated training in the first place in 2012 for me to have been such a big fan of it?  The EXACT same process as before, just less refined.  I started lifting weights at the age of 14, armed with a standard adjustable bench press station I bought at a Play-it-Again sports from some birthday money I saved, equipped with a leg extension/curl and preacher curl station, along with 2 spinlock dumbbell collars.  I lifted weights 5-6 days per week, and just did all the exercises I could, which was a lot of flat and incline barbell benching, 2 different kinds of curls, leg extensions and leg curls, and then I’d finish each day with 200 push ups and 200 sit ups, because that’s what my dad told me would get me a six pack and a big chest.  This was during the summer, as once the school year rolled around, I got access to my high school weight room, which meant I got to do all sorts of benching and dumbbell work on top of maxing out all the machines with my buddies and doing tons of chin ups and pretty much everything that wasn’t a squat or a deadlift (we were told they were dangerous by our football/weightlifting coach…so much wasted potential).  I kept this up until I got to college, which, interestingly enough, was the same college Jon Andersen went to (he had graduated before I started attending, sadly), wherein I got access to an even BIGGER weight room and decided to “step up my game” by using a bodybuilding split, which I, of course, designed myself, which was FULL of volume and movements….and a leg day that had no squatting whatsoever and was all just machines.

In retrospect, there's probably a reason I was always such a fan of this guy...

 

BUT, eventually, I decided I wanted to be a “powerlifter”, since I was into martial arts and in the early 2000s we KNEW that powerlifting was how you got STRONG vs just “looking pretty” from lifting weights, so I FINALLY started squatting and deadlifting, and actually navigated my way into a Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards workout.  But, of course, I had NO idea how to effectively run it, and just kept slamming the max effort lifts with too much frequency and did a bunch of bodybuilding for the supplemental and assistance work, before someone on the internet sent me a copy of Pavel Tsastoluine’s “Beyond Bodybuilding”, which was the SECOND book I had ever read on the topic of physical training.  The first being Loren Christensens’s “Fighting Power”, which was geared more toward building strength and explosiveness for martial arts…and it really pretty awful, but still holds a special place on my bookshelf for being the first book I ever got on the subject.  But for a SECOND book on training, “Beyond Bodybuilding” absolutely ROCKED MY WORLD.

 

I drank WAY too deep of the Pavel Koolaid, no question, but I “learned” how sets of 5 were the answer to all training questions, and how you only needed 1 movement for your pushing muscles, your pulling muscles, and your legs per day, and that full body was the only way to train, and read stories about Paul Anderson and Bob Peoples and learned about Stuart McRobert and Randall Strossen and Super Squats.  But I ALSO learned about deloading, practicing strength, and ultimately fatigue management balanced against training stimulus.  AND, coming from having absolutely NUKED my body with volume for YEARS up until this point, switching to abbreviated training allowed me to unlock a LOT of growth, as I was able to recover from all the fatigue I had accumulated and actually spend some time growing and gaining.  This, in turn, led to me becoming a big fan of abbreviated training, because it felt like magic to me.  After years of throwing everything I had into training and getting ok results, I started training LESS and getting MORE results.

That's how linear progression works, right?

 

Which, as I said, turned me into a total Koolaid drinker, and suddenly abbreviated training was the answer to everything, and I remember when I wanted to run Super Squats for the very first time I was trying to make all the OTHER lifts in it 5x5, and I tried doing the same when I attempted another run at Westside Barbell, and then I’d alternate between conjugate and 5x5 for a long time until I eventually blew out my back so hard I couldn’t deadlift for 3 years and almost completely quit lifting…until I discovered DoggCrapp for the very first time, which led me to elevated deadlifts, which had me remember that lesson I learned about ROM progression from Paul Anderson/Bob Peoples, which got me able to deadlift for my very first powerlifting meet….which led to me finishing my third meet in 2012, and then the blog started, and there I was…

 

As I said: full circle, and, of course, that’s an overview of 25 years of training in the span of 1000 words, but what IS worth appreciating is that, though things come full circle, it appears the circles get “tighter” as time goes on.  When I started, I was a babe in the woods, operating completely off of instinct and drive, with no real guiding knowledge.  But, at the time, that WAS enough to create some manner of change toward physical transformation, and, to this day, those principles of effort, consistency and time still hold true.  But, after coming all the way around to abbreviated training the first time, when I departed back to the land of volume before coming back to where I am here today with Tactical Barbell, I had picked up a LOT more tricks and knowledge along the way to help me apply that effort, consistency and time in a more focused and productive manner.  It’s fine to make mistakes: just avoid making the SAME mistakes.  Make new, INTERESTING mistakes, so that you’re always learning.  And that’s what I’ve been doing the whole time: making new mistakes on my circular path, so that, when I meet myself at the start again, I have so many interesting things to share before we go all the way around again.  Like Bill and Ted meeting themselves: “Don’t forget to wind your watch!”

EXCELLENT!

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Folks, this was originally going to be a one shot, but when I finished up writing about how the eating has also gone full circle, it ended up being over 4500 words, so I'm breaking it up here and will post the second part next week.  Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!