NIGHT SHIFT BULLET POINTS

- Gonna kick off with the sensitive topic of drugs, but not what’s usually discussed when it comes to lifting.  I often see people ask the question about the impact of marijuana on lifting.  My follow up question is always “If you found out it had a negative impact, would you stop using it?”  I’ve never seen a single person respond with an affirmative to that, simply that they would use LESS of it, or that they’d try to time their use better.  What the hell is the point of this question?  We’ve now run into that weird bit of pseudo-optimization where we want to do everything in our power to maximize gains…except of the things in our power to maximize gains.

Not pictured: a steak

- On that note, let’s discuss being “drug free” here.  People use that term to mean free of performance enhancing drugs, but consider taking it a step further.  The only drug I’ve ever used recreationally is caffeine.  I never got into drinking (to the point that I’ve never had a drink), no nicotine, and nothing illegal.  I’ve used pain killers when I was in pain, with a doctor’s prescription, and even then, sparingly.  I’ve managed to accomplish some things that some folks in the internet community insist are only possible with the use of performance enhancing drugs.  Perhaps it’s worth considering what the impact of being drug free has as it relates to training and achieving physical results.  I’ve never been hung over, I haven’t imbibed controlled poisons for prolonged durations, haven’t filled my lungs with smoke, haven’t made poor nutritional choices as a result of an altered mental state, etc etc.  I don’t say all this to be holier than thou, as hedonism is just as valid a decision as asceticism when we see things as an absurdist, but it’s more something worth considering when we view what is possible.  When we talk about the limitations of “drug free trainees”, as we really thinking of trainees that have been “drug free”.

- Diving down even further into discussion on natural limits, I observe a direct overlap between those individuals that claim that a natural trainee achieves their max potential after 2 years of training and those same individuals that want to optimize their training to the greatest degree possible.  I genuinely don’t understand how one can hold both of these beliefs in their head at the same time.  If you’re going to reach your maximal potential within 2 years of training while training the most optimal way possible, how long will it take you to reach those same results training just a little sub-optimally?  2 years and 3 months?  2.5 years?  A mere pittance really.  Why not just train the way you want to train vs worrying about being as optimal as possible?  You’ll get there soon enough.  You’d imagine the only people worried about training as optimally as possible are those folks that will admit that a natural trainee can grow for over 2 decades of training, because in THAT instance you wouldn’t want to waste any of your training time: eventually, your body will be too aged to make the most of your training.  In THAT situation, you’re up against a clock, but 2 years?  Hell, it takes longer to graduate high school.

- Paul Carter is pissing some folks off right now talking about how volume isn’t the answer to growth, but instead it’s intensity of effort that drives it, referencing back to DoggCrapp style training.  I had to admit: my experience agrees.  Now, that having been said, Deep Water is still, in my mind, the most effective program I’ve ever done, and it has tons of volume, but it ALSO mixes it in with an insane degree of intensity of effort.  But left to my own devices, I tend to favor a lot of “single set” work.  It can get a little confusing to the outside observer, as what I’ll consider to be a single set will, in fact, have a significant degree of rest pausing and dropsets in it that one could make the argument I’m really doing several sets with short rest periods instead, equating to an argument FOR volume, but I feel that a trainee with experience can tell the difference between the two.

And if you REALLY think of it, time between reps is an illusion anyway

- Let’s talk about that experienced trainee above though.  One of the biggest arguments AGAINST single set work for a new trainee is that they simply lack the ability to push themselves hard enough to get anything out of just 1 set of work.  I’ve had SEVERAL trainees talk to me about the Super Squats program and ask if they should do 2-3 more sets of squats after that first set, at which point my eyes bug out of my skull and I ask them how they can even THINK about squatting after the 20 reper in that program.  But the fact of the matter is that they can’t push themselves hard enough to actually dig in deep and get as close to failure as someone with more experience under their belt.  So we tell these trainees to just get in as much volume as possible because, in the absence of intensity of effort, one can substitute with an abundance of training volume.  But now we also have arguments that reps below a certain percentage of 1rm are “junk volume” and don’t contribute.  So now we have trainees that can’t train hard enough to make use of single set work, because of that they also have no conception of what their real 1rm is, and when they push for volume sets they’re staying so far from failure that they aren’t getting in effective reps.  So should we just tell new trainees not to train?

- I came up with the ultimate “weight gain plan”: 2 cycles of 5/3/1 BBB Beefcake, a 1 week deload, Building the Monolith, 1 week deload, Deep Water Beginner then Deep Water intermediate.  Boils down to 26 weeks of training: half a year, all mapped out, and there’s even an eating plan detailed 18 weeks of it.  Well, in watching people implement this program, it looked like I forgot to include one important piece of instruction: don’t f**k it up. 

- That I have to say “don’t f**k it up” blows my mind.  I can’t tell if it’s a sign that I’m smart or that I’m stupid, but I don’t have any issue with program compliance.  A program says “Do X for Y”, and that’s what I do.  But I observe trainees who hire coaches and pay them money and STILL go off program.  “I know today was supposed to be 80% for triples, but I was feeling really good so I set a new 1rm!”  Hey, genius, the reason you felt good was because your coach was PROGRAMMING you to feel good: so you could set that 1rm in a competition.  But no, it’s cool: now it’s on Instagram.  That’s all that matters, right?

One day, you're gonna wish it was never posted online

- I genuinely, truthfully, do not understand the current claims about unrealistic male body image expectations in the media.  Some 40 year old dude recently got in shape for a Marvel movie and there was a bunch of backlash for it because of the expectations it set for young men.  Did we forget the 80s?  Did we forget Arnold, Stallone, The Barbarian Brothers, Dolph, JCVD, etc etc?  If anything, the male image has been getting SMALLER, not bigger.  It’s becoming MORE realistic.  How come no one cared when the ideal male image was absolutely bonkers? 

- I’ve had a few requests for me to voice my thoughts on “evidence based training”.  I suppose first I have to learn what the hell that is.

- I remember when we were concerned about the results training had on US, rather than the results it had on other people.

- I’ve noticed a direct correlation between someone having leaked 5/3/1 Forever online and a rise in very stupid question about the book.  Almost as though paying for a book promotes more careful reading.

- I am going to show my ignorance on this one, but are English speaking authors (and primarily Americans) really the driving force behind all things health and fitness related?  I ask, because the common complaint about 5/3/1 Forever is “international shipping is expensive”.  Don’t folks in other countries have their own dudes putting out material?  Like, Jim Wendler doesn’t seem like he should be that big a deal to reach world-wide acclaim.  And I say that as a guy who is a big fan of his work, but fundamentally we’re talking about a dude that was in one of the most niche sports ever with unlimited-ply powerlifting.  You don’t need 5/3/1 Forever: you can use a different book and still get big and strong.

I bet THIS guy has some cool things to say on the topic of training

- “You protest too much” is such a stupid thing people say, yes, even if you’re paraphrasing Shakespeare.  It’s typically when it comes to accusations about using steroids, where if a trainee doesn’t argue against the accusation it’s guilt by omission, but if they argue against it they “protest too much” that it’s a sign that they’re being too defensive and, therefore, are guilty.  There’s no winning on that situation, which is typically the intent of anyone that makes the accusation in the first place.

- I’m getting sick of people thinking strongman is a sport where you eat a lot of food and lift weights on occasion.  I’ve seen more photos of food than I have of lifts on certain sections of the internet, and you got dudes who absolutely REFUSE to lose any weight.  Remember how we started exercising to get healthy? 

   

UNLOGIC AND BRO SCIENCE: THE CASE OF CLEAN EATING AND MUSCLE CONFUSION

In having a recent conversation with someone that, I can only hope, was arguing in bad faith, I found myself once again expressing the concept that it’s possible to arrive at correct conclusions despite using flawed logic.  That is to say that simply because one’s logic is flawed (and thus containing one of the dreaded and deadly fallacies of logic) does not necessarily mean that what they say is incorrect: simply that it is correct for the incorrect reasons.  This is where the discussion of “bro science” exists.  And before continuing, allow me to address this phrase, and it has, once again, become mutated.  “Bro science”, in its original inception, was about the things meatheads said in the gym that had the faintest of scientific inklings behind it, but was fundamentally just something based on experience.  Multiple meals a day to stoke the metabolic fires and keep them burning, high reps to lose fat and tone, no eating at 7:00pm, etc, these were all “bro science”.  The term has now been taken to mean any matter of science that an individual disagrees with that relates to physical fitness, and, in turn, the term has been muddied.  I have no intention of discussing the abstracts of studies performed on 20 college kids as it relates to operating within 80% of one’s 1rm on the leg extension: that’s stupid for entirely unrelated reasons.  No, today I wish to discuss two long-standing bits of bro science, and why the conclusions are correct despite the methods taken to arrive there: specifically the case of “clean eating” and “muscle confusion”.

Whereas some combine the two and confuse the f**k out of their eating

To begin, people already get stupid when they hear the term “clean eating” and will say stupid things like “what, you washed your food?”  Much like the case of pornography vs art where “I’ll know it when I see it”, those of us that aren’t children are typically able to discern a clean food when analyzing nutritional choices.  But as it relates to bro science, why are certain foods considered the “clean foods”?  The specific examples being chicken breasts, egg whites, rice, and olive oil.  New trainees look at these foods and wonder if they have some sort of magical bodybuilding qualities, while the “educated” on the internet mock the bros for eating the egg whites and throwing away the nutritious yokes, or eating the chicken breasts and now the fattier cuts of the bird, losing out on valuable hormone regulating dietary fats.  Oh these stupid bro.  All they have to show for this work is decades of success and achieving mind blowing physiques and incredible feats of strength.

 …wait, crap.  What’s the deal?  It’s not that there’s some sort of inherent “cleanness” in the food that results in superior results compared to less clean options (though, typically the super “dirty” foods come with excess baggage like excessive amounts of transfats and zero micronutrients), but moreso that these “clean” food sources are effectively a sole source of a single macronutrient.  Why egg whites instead of whole eggs?  Because if you’re the kinda dude calculating macros, it’s far easier to just factor in pure protein from egg whites than having to crunch the numbers on how much protein is in an egg vs how much fat and track and balance all of that.  White rice is pretty much entirely carbohydrates, so when calculating your daily values, it’s easier to just put some scoops of rice in a tupperwear than try to figure out the value in something more complex like a burrito, casserole, pizza, etc.  And yeah, sure, for those of you that are foodies, you can diligently weigh out all the bits and pieces and construct the macro perfect recipe, but when you’re eating like it’s your job, you quickly get sick of that s**t and just mass produce a bunch of chicken and rice so you can be over and done with.  And with that we unravel the mystery of “clean” foods: they work because they’re pure macro sources and make the calculation of nutrition far easier than trying to use more complex recipes.

And sometimes you get even simpler by eliminating an entire macronutrient

Speaking of greater complexity, let’s transition to muscle confusion.  The bro science on this one operates as follows: when the body gets used to training, it stops growing, so the way to ensure that your body keeps growing is to confuse the muscles by changing your program.  Rate of change prescriptions vary, with some folks adamant that they never perform the same workout twice while others recommend changes every 6, 8 or 12 weeks.  In either capacity, it’s not the notion that one needs to change that’s debated: simply the frequency.  One can change the reps, sets, exercises, exercise order, or completely overhaul the entire program, training with more or fewer days, 2 a days, etc etc.  The idea remains the same: one has to confuse or shock the muscles semiregularly to prevent stagnation and continue growth.

Folks: this is periodization, plain and simple.  People chide the bros over the stupidity of the idea of muscle confusion, but all this boils down to is a great idea expressed poorly.  And even then, one can argue that the bros did something that tends to be the truest demonstration of intellect: taking a complex, multi-faceted idea and reframing it in a manner that it can be understood by the most junior of trainees.  And yes: one can take a much more detailed and structured approach to periodization, making use of accumulation, intensification and peaking blocks, but for a non-athlete, whose simply interested in getting bigger and stronger, there’s really no need for all of that.  A very basic periodization approach is more than sufficient, and that’s what “muscle confusion” is: training in a certain way for a certain while, getting what you can out of it, and then chasing after a different goal with a different manner of training for a while.

I've used this in periodization, where I did it once in 2006, and then never again for the rest of my life

Ultimately, the lesson here is that sometimes the conclusions are worth listening to irrespective of the premises utilized to arrive there.  Exercise science is still a fledging field, with not nearly the degree of research, funding, or legitimization afforded to other scientific research communities such as those dedicated to eradicating cancer or STIs, primarily because the world will always consider these to be higher priorities than maximizing how jacked you can get.  Hell, I’d wager that the research on curing baldness is most likely more robust.  In light of this, often we lack the scientific explanation needed to explain regularly observed phenomena.  Some bros took it upon themselves to invent a science to explain it away, in much the same way primitive people created gods and religion to explain nature (and, in that regard, in much the same way many embrace science as their own religion in light of their own inability to explain the world), and though it may not make any sense, the outcome remains the same: it works.  Instead of deciding that a conclusion cannot be true because the premises are false, look at if it’s possible that a true conclusion has been realized and we simply need to find the premises that actually support it. 

A GOOD STORY

Inspiration for today’s post comes by way of a conversation I had with Will Ruth, who I’ve had the pleasure of competing alongside and who also runs r/strongman on reddit, with a dedication to maintaining a solid signal to noise ratio that I find incredibly admirable.  In discussing Jamie Lewis’ latest rant, I found myself expressing the sentiment that “these days, I dig a good story more than I care about facts”, and since expressing that I’ve been reflecting on the significance of that.  It becomes especially topical as I observe that this blog has grown to be 7 years old, a feat I had no intention of accomplishing upon it’s outset, especially as I’ve remained diligent in updating it weekly, meaning a substantial amount of work having been created.  But I also think to the outset of the blog, and the name itself.  “Mythical Strength” was a nod to the notion of “strength of legend”: strength so immense that stories, tales, and myths were created around it.  7 years ago, when I started writing, it was exactly what I hoped to capture and, truthfully, what I hoped to achieve on my own.  Fundamentally, I’ve found that stories, legends and myths, irrespective of their truth, are immensely more valuable than the facts.

Sometimes, a good story can have a ridiculous plot

Allow me to share a few “good stories” of my own.  My hardcore readers will recognize these, but going back to my childhood, my father always liked to share stories of his buddies in basic training when he was in the Air Force.  My dad served 4 years and, to this day, maintains that serving was one of the best decisions of his life, and, in turn, in my childhood, his time in the Air Force had a significant impact on how he raised me.  He’d tell me stories about a guy that was a professional boxer that would catch flies in the barracks with his bare hands, about a dude that studied Tae Kwon Do and jump kicked over my dad’s head, and also a time about a guy with an afro (remember how old I am and then factor in the era my dad served) who leaned forward over a candle during a shoe shinning party and lit his head on fire.  However, 2 stories really cemented in my psyche as a kid: one about a guy that went from no abs to a six pack set of abs by doing 200 sit ups a night, and another about a dude that took off his shirt and was ripped out of his goddamn mind that attributed his physique to 200 push-ups a night.

My dad told me these stories frequently, first as a young kid and then as a teenager as I started getting bit by the fitness bug and, in turn, they were the “physical myths” I grew up with.  And much like a kid that doesn’t think to question how Santa can get around the whole world in just one night, it never dawned on me to notice that “200” was the magic number my dad settled on that seemed to just be the universal “a lot”.  Those numbers WERE magical, and if I did just that, I’d get these same results.  And so, at age 14, when I started turning my life around physically, I set out to do these things.  And I accomplished them.  And I didn’t get the results I expected.  And I pushed even harder, going for 300 a night, and then 400 a night, before I gave up on the myth.

But it looks like the world didn't

How many of us had these myths?  My dad’s friends in basic training were someone else’s uncle that could bench 800lbs in his basement and he did it with HIT.  Or it was someone’s big brother that got totally jacked by working construction over the summer and eating a jar of peanut butter a day.  And these were just the “local myths”.  What about the Colorado Project?  Or Super Squats “30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks”?  Or Hulk Hogan telling us to say our prayers and take our vitamins?  Circus strongman of old?  Or the original myth of Milo of Croton?  Or Hercules, or Samson?  Or watching a Rocky montage, something we know for SURE was fake, but was still “a good story”?

What was the point of these “good stories”?  They drove us to action.  It implanted an idea in our head, and even if that idea was totally unreasonable, it now existed.  Prior to the telling of that story and the sharing of that myth, the idea simply “wasn’t”, but once spoken and shared, it now existed, and was something to be pursued.  And even if the end could not be realized: so what?  I could do 200 push-ups in one go as a 15 year old, and I held at that number for a long time before deciding to chase at 400 at 19 years old.  I’m 34 now, I never do push-ups, and I can still knock-out 68 in a minute when called upon because I built up such an immense amount of volume and repetition in my youth that I’m STILL riding it out.  Chasing after the 30lbs of muscle in 6 weeks on Super Squats taught me a TON about the significance of effort in both training and eating. And who else out there has a story about chasing after something ridiculous, completely failing to achieve it, and growing significantly from that effort?

Assuming you remember the lesson when it's over

Too many people are unwilling to pursue something if it’s not supported by the facts and, consequently, they tend to be in pursuit of facts that place the greatest possible limits on themselves.  There are entire communities out there dedicated to rooting out “fake natties” (lifters that use steroids by claim otherwise, for my lifters that are fortunate enough to not be infected by this toxicity) with a real primary mission to establish a norm of sub-mediocrity for human performance, claiming that pretty much all noteworthy physiques are only achievable through drugs, and that a natural trainee hits their lifetime potential after a mere 2 years of training.  Hah!  The same is true of those that believe they have determined their maximal effective volume, constantly watch dogging for the dreaded “junk volume”.  Go do some 10x10s and get back to me.  You can only train like Arnold if you’re on drugs?  Tell that to all the kids that bought the Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding and ran the programs exactly as written.  Before we had so many “facts”, we had a bunch of good stories, and, consequently, a lot of folks willing to go out, do something stupid and reckless, and gain a ton from the experience.

I quite frankly don’t care about the facts anymore.  That story is boring.  The story of the facts always ends with us being lackluster and underwhelming.  I’d rather hear a good story: something that convinces my mind that there must be more, and that it’s simply a question of reaching for it.  And who knows: maybe if you hear enough of these stories, after chasing after enough of them, they may tell one about you. 

READER REQUEST: ON VARIETY

A question came in from Panopticon on one of my more recent posts.

“I would like to hear more on your opinion on variety, maybe an idea for a future post?”

Let's see how old my references can get 

This is actual pretty topical for me, as I’ve been having a lot of success recently by employing more variety in my training.  Specifically as it relates to pressing overhead.  Before continuing, for any of my readers that are not familiar with my training, unless I have a strongman competition in the horizon, my pressing overhead is always a strict press (meaning, a press without leg drive), so as I write about pressing or overhead pressing here, understand it’s a strict press rather than a push press.  Relating to one of my more recent posts about “playing the game the way I want to play it”, the strict press is one of the few movements I actually care about progressing these days, as, for me, it’s one of the best indicators of brute upper body pressing strength.  Sure, the bench has always been the gold standard there, but quite frankly, I don’t care about benching, while I care greatly about pressing weight over my head.  In turn, I’ve been including overhead pressing in my training since around 2006 or so, and the great majority of that has been the basic barbell press overhead from the front rack position.  Around 2015 I switched to pressing purely with the axle, but that’s about it.

I give this background to demonstrate how much I’ve applied the principle of specificity as it relates to pressing and, in truth, it worked: to a point.  I managed to get a strict press 1rm of 240lbs in 2013 or so, but I’ve also pretty much stayed around there since then.  Rep maxes remained consistent too, with being able to hit 225 for a set of 3 or 4 on multiple occasions.  Yet, last training cycle, I hit 221lbs for a set of 8, and for the first time in many years it seems like my strict pressing is moving in a very solid direction, and I attribute this to a recent inclusion of greater variety in my training.  Specifically, along with the strict axle press, I’ve included behind the neck barbell pressing, trap bar pressing, and strongman log pressing in my supplemental work.  I’ve seen improvements as well in my bench pressing with the inclusion of swiss bar incline bench and close grip benching, and I’ve been rotating between buffalo bar, safety squat bar and safety squat bar front squats in my squat training.

Chest workout completely ripped off from this delightful lunatic

What’s at play here are two complimentary yet conflicting concepts: the principle of specificity vs “strength”.  I’ve written on these topics many times before, but to sum up as it’s relevant to here: specificity gets you better, but variety is what gets you stronger.  With specificity, a trainee is basically closing the gap between where they are and what their potential is on a movement.  The first time you try a movement, your lack of coordination and ability prevents you from expressing maximal strength in a movement, so you apply maximal effort but still don’t move as much weight as you “should” be able to.  With consistent practice, you keep improving your skillset, and the gap between where you are and what you’re capable of gets smaller and smaller until you’re at the point that you’re making incredibly small improvements.  These are “beginner gains”, and how linear progression operates.  Once we’ve reached the point where the gap is small and growth is limited, a trainee needs to get stronger to create growth.

The difficulty trainees experience here is that their tendency is to just keep employing the same movement to get stronger at it, operating off the principle of specificity.  You want to get better at something, you keep doing that thing, right?  But we ALREADY got better at the thing: we’re pretty much the best we CAN be at the thing right now (within reason): now we need to get stronger instead.  And since we’ve maximized our potential on the movement, continuing to do the same movement is going to create a limited strength response, because doing the same movement over and over again is going to keep strengthening the same areas it strengthens while neglecting the same area it neglects.  A close grip bench, for example, emphasizes the triceps at the expense of the pecs and deltoids (and oh my god, if you guys with the EMG studies will just shut up for a second, I’m sure I screwed that up but you get my point).  If we keep hammering the close grip bench and never change it, our ability to bring up the pecs and deltoids is limited.  But if we start including variety in our training, we can attack those areas that were getting neglected before and now bring them up.

No

This is where variety shines as an avenue for strength building: you now improve strength for different muscles or at different angles than before.  Going back to my case, even though I’m pressing overhead in the case of the strict axle press, behind the neck press, trap bar press and log press, the angle and emphasis is different on each movement to the point that different aspects of my press are getting trained.  I’m now getting stronger from different angles than before, and muscles are called in differently than before in order to shoulder the brunt of the work.

But why does this result in improvements on the original movement?  Because, eventually, your smallest and weakest muscles are going to be what limit your strongest muscles.  In much the same way that a weak core can prevent your legs from expressing maximal strength on a squat, on any other movement, the muscles that are de-emphasized can eventually be the ones that serve as the breaking point, and using something that actually emphasizes these movements can improve your original movement as a whole.

Like that time I found out my ACL was a weakpoint...

This is why I’m able to train movement infrequently while still improving them: I’m getting STRONGER, not better.  Currently, so many trainees are absolutely CONVINCED that they MUST bench 3 times a week and squat twice a week if they have any hope of moving more weight on these movements.  They claim that, if they use a frequently at all less than that, their bench and squat fall apart.  You can see how such a rigid set of guidelines can be VERY limiting on programming options, and this in turn results in plateauing and stagnation, because not all plans work forever, and eventually one maximizes their achievable potential from the principle of specificity.  If these trainees take a step back, relegate themselves to benching and squatting once a week at MOST (meaning maybe even once every 2 weeks), they may experience an initial dip in their numbers as their skills degrade on the movement, but will ultimately experience an increased in strength overall and a greater ability to move more weight once they spend this time training a greater variety of pressing in order to get stronger from various angles.

Since this wasn’t my normal philosophical ranting and more academic stuff, let me leave you with a summary to make sure you’re following along.  Specificity is how you get better at a movement.  The better you get at a movement, the smaller the improvements you experience between training sessions, to the point that, eventually, there isn’t enough of a skill gap to be able to make meaningful progress in a movement.  The way you move more weight from there is by getting STRONGER, rather than better.  You get stronger by making muscles bigger and stronger.  If you’ve only been applying the principle of specificity, you’ve been improving some muscles at the expense of others.  With variety, you can bring up the muscles that have been neglected.  By doing so, you can overcome plateaus that result from weaker muscles limiting the potential of your stronger ones.

ON SOLIPSISM

I’ll be trite for this one and kick it off with a definition, because I imagine not all of my readers are familiar with the term solipsism, and I figure I’d save you the google search.  Solipsism is defined as “the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist”, and is most typically associated as a philosophical belief system, akin to absurdism, nihilism, stoicism, etc.  Whereas Descartes utilized “I think, therefore, I am” or “Cogito ergo sum” for my more pretentious readers, as means to establish A baseline from which to start drawing other conclusions regarding the nature of existence, solipsism basically stops there and says “I am, and that is all I can know.”  Many will, of course, criticize such a view for being, at best, incredibly limiting while also opening up to a world of debauchery and psychoticism/sociopathy, as one who does not believe in the existence of anything outside of themselves has no need for empathy, compassion, or regard for the health and wellbeing of others, HOWEVER, I have found solipsism to be a fundamentally beneficial belief system in the realm of physical training and nutrition: so long as one is willing to accumulate enough experience to be able to have a significantly LARGE “self” to know.

That looks to be about big enough

Solipsism is ultimately a conclusion that one arrives to in reaction to stimuli, and in this instance, it would be that of too MUCH information: especially so when such information can appear to contradict other information.  We exist in an age wherein there is no shortage of information available.  The internet is a wondrous tool, and contained within it is a wealth of real, authentic, peer-reviewed and verified, rigorous scientific research on a WIDE variety of subjects, with exercise science being among them.  However, with access of this research comes the unfortunate consequence of those that would seek to employ said research in order to further their own agenda.  Now, let’s rule out those that CONDUCTED the research with an agenda.  Let’s say (falsely) that all scientific research is conducted without bias, purely for the sake of benevolence and the betterment of knowledge.  Even if that WERE the case, there still exists those who would seek to employ this research in a manner that benefits their own specific agenda, and ultimately they accomplish this by twisting the findings, masking the shortcomings, willfully misinterpreting the conclusions, or flat out bombing an individual with such a large volume of information that they hope to simply drown them out, even if it turns out the information does not actually reflect what this individual is saying.

We observe this frequently with individuals who seek to profit from fitness.  I’ve said frequently that “anyone that says ‘scapula’ instead of ‘shoulder blades’ is trying to sell you something” as an only slightly tongue-in-cheek nod to this.  But then, discounting malice once again, we also experience a second consequence of this information overload: those who have access to the information, lack the means to correctly interpret it, but are unaware of their shortcomings in this regard.  The well recognized “Dunning-Kruger effect” is the explanation of such phenomena, which means that these individuals pour over these studies, draw incorrect conclusions as a result of their inability to correctly understand them, and use this to dictate their own success and failure.  And FREQUENTLY, these individuals take to the very same internet to unleash their false conclusions on unsuspecting and gullible new trainees who, also lacking the ability to distinguish truth for untruth, buy into what is being sold to them, and then go on the perpetuate the falsehood.  And sadly, the sole purpose of this information sharing was NOT to educate the uneducated, but to instead protect the ego of the information sharer from the cognitive dissonance of information that contradicted their dogma.  Once again, an acknowledgement of things outside of the self to exist resulting in a negative.

Pretty much how these conversations go with me these days

Enter solipsism: the savior.  In my earlier training days, I opened myself to all the information that was available. I read the studies, listened to the esteemed elders, “did my research”, drew all the conclusions, and stalled HARD.  And one day, I decided that I KNEW what it took to progress, and that was what I was going to do.  And what I decided on went against much of what I “knew” prior to that moment, but all of those things existed “outside of the self”: they were things learned that contradicted my instincts and, in turn, could not be trusted to be known.  Only the self could be known.  So I trained and ate according to only that which I knew, from experience, to be the truth.  Any familiar with my training and nutrition know how bizarre it can appear: I don’t care about my form, my back rounds, my squats look ridiculous, I almost always pull touch and go, I eat very few carbs, I train to get stronger on low calories, I push my conditioning during my caloric surpluses, I train movements only once a week to make them stronger, I never get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night, etc etc.

And very frequently I’ll have some super helpful “Timmy the Trainer” (points if you get the reference) who attempts to stop me in my tracks and inform me that what I am doing cannot work, will not work, and does not work, and I just look at them like they’re crazy.  I’m seeing it work right NOW.  I know it works, because all I can know to be true is the self.  You saying that it does not work does not disprove MY existence: it goes to show that there is something wrong with your science.  And frequently I am told by these people “no, science can’t be wrong: it’s just the interpretation/application/observation/etc etc that’s wrong”.  That is true in the universe of a non-solipsist, but with solipsism, I can flat out say “no: science is wrong on this and I am right.”  At least, so much as it relates to me, which is ultimately all that matters.  I don’t have to prove anything to anyone but myself, because fundamentally I’m just here to make myself better.

Unlike some of you

Which is, in turn, one of the arguments levied against solipsism from a philosophical perspective: it’s a non-falsifiable belief.  That’s frustrating whenever we want to have a logical argument, but yet again, logic does not exist to the solipsist: only the self does.  Which should serve as a warning to those who seek to argue against a solipsist, as it does not matter what studies or journals you have: if it contradicts their experience, it is untrue.  But also, at the same time, don’t you feel just the TINIEST bit silly trying to tell someone that something doesn’t work when it clearly DOES for that individual?  Maybe they’re a genetic mutant or they did the wrong thing so wrong they ended up doing the right thing, but in either case, you can’t argue against results.  At least, not with any hope for success.

Fundamentally, to successfully utilize solipsism, one must have a large enough experience with success to be able to decide what is not effective as it relates to the self.  One has to take risks, make mistakes, encounter many different failings, and ensure that they LEARN through these processes rather than simply lament time wasted.  This is why, when asked to give a review for a training program I’ve never run before, I unsatisfyingly tell the trainee “I’ve never trained that way before: I can’t vouch for it.”  I will only speak of the self, for the self is all that I can know.  But it also puts one in an easy position of authority as it relates TO the self, as I can assuredly say “I did this, and it worked for me”, and that’s ultimately the only credential I need to be able to share my experience.  If it works for someone else, great.  If it doesn’t, also great, because it worked for me, their failure does not invalidate my success, and my self is the only thing I can know to exist. 

READER REQUEST: “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”

Blog reader John Willow submitted this request a while back. 

“I know you've faced many injuries and have had times when you were smaller and weaker than you'd like, and I observe the same with many top athletes, with Big Z being a particular example of someone who is mocked and looked down upon by some people because he's currently not at his prime, even though he is the strongest man, as well the greatest strongman, who ever lived. I get the impression that some people just want to see circus acts and freaks for their own amusement, they only value and respect others for as long as they are at the absolute peak of their athletic abilities, attaching their worth as competitors and as people, as well as their lifting legacy, purely to some ephemeral notion of absolute everpresent pristine physical ability, which, to my mind, relates to a selfish, destructive and ignorant view of what Strength is. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, if you're ever willing to share them.”

Pretty much sums it up.  Also, I just realized this movie came out 19 years ago and predates some of my readers...

And though this is already just a solid argument for my continued misanthropy, it’s worth exploring a bit more as well.  Fundamentally, when examining the question of “worth” here, the issue is that many outside observers tie worth all into one inherent quality, when realistically we’re witnessing two distinct sets of “worth” being expressed here: worth as an athlete, and worth as a human.  But, in turn, that boils down to the fact that, for many individuals, they’d rather have a good athlete than a good human if given the choice, in much the same manner that Machiavelli advised one rather be feared than loved.  However, I see this less as a selfish view of what strength is, and more just the inherently selfish view of what the value of other humans are: for MY entertainment. 

That’s not just unique to strength athletes: people are like that when it comes to all athletes, and honestly, to all humans involved in some manner of entertainment, and if we continue to go down the rabbit I’m sure we’ll expand it to be all humans period, but let’s stick with entertainment.  I’m a part-time NFL watcher (American Football, for my ever growing foreign audience.  Hello out there in Holland!), and every year there are more and more rule changes that are enacted as a means to protect the players, and these rule changes coincide with complaints from the “fans” about how unfun it is to watch the sport.  Penalty flags frequently for safety based rules infractions, “concussion protocols” that remove key players from the game and ruin fantasy football scores (which, let me say, as a DnD player, fantasy football is for nerds), players ejected for tackling in unsafe manners, etc etc.  If these folks were truly “fans” of the players, wouldn’t their concern be the safety of the players?  No, for these fans are not fans of the players as humans, but fans of the players as PLAYERS, and ultimately these fans only want to see these humans do the thing that they are good at doing while doing it the BEST way that they can do it.  Less than best is inadequate.  This is the same sentiment about musicians not sounding as good “now that they’re sober”, with fans wishing addiction and all the consequences that go with it upon their “favorite” artist so that they can continue to make their best music, or demanding that their favorite actors get so “method” in their roles that their personal lives take a total downward spiral, just to produce 2 hours of entertainment.  It is not just strength sports where we observe that the “worth” of a person is linked entirely to their ability to be at their absolute best irrespective of the toll it takes on that individual.

The OG when it comes to NFL helmet combat

And buying into all of that crap IS destructive, both externally and internally.  The demands of the sport of strongman to keep getting heavier and heavier eventually forced out one of the greatest strength athletes to ever like, Mikhail “Misha” Koklyaev, who entered the sport an extremely accomplished weightlifter for Russia and went on to become an accomplished powerlifter and highland games competitor AND even participate in some Crossfit workouts.  Incredibly talented, strong, explosive, coordinated, adaptable, Misha eventually stepped down from the sport among a rash of competitors dying saying that the demands of the sport on the body were becoming too much, and, per today’s discussion, some of his fans supported his decision because they were fans of Misha, and others booed it because they were fans of the athlete.  But Misha was at least enough of his own man to make the decision to do what was right FOR Misha: not the athlete.  Those that instead live for the public doom themselves to live at their whims and, in many cases, won’t ever actually realize their full potential BECAUSE they live for the crowds.

This is the recent observation of the impact of social media making athletes WORSE instead of better.  Athletes seek out sponsorships, and now the only manner to obtain one is through a strong and, honestly, annoying social media presence.  Every single waking moment must be filmed and broadcast for the world to see.  And this means an athlete can never allow their abs to blur, they can never have a sloppy set, they must always squat to depth, have to max all the time, set a new PR every workout, can’t have any failed reps, etc etc.  They train, eat and live TO the whim of the public, who fundamentally does not actually care about the athletes’ success or wellbeing, but simply their ability to entertain.  AND, now as a manner of the bizzaro world we live in, the entertainment is NOT to be found in the few hours of competition that happen at the end of the cycle, BUT in the many weeks leading up to it.  It doesn’t matter if an athlete bombs out at a meet, placing last in a bodybuilding show, tears a bicep on the stones, etc etc, so long as the entire prep process leading up to the competition was entertaining.

Just imagine if Kaz was worried about having year-round abs

Living for the public is a hollow existence.  The praise you receive is short lived, tied exclusively to your ability to entertain, and once that is gone, there is no love or support left to rely on.  One fundamentally must, at one point, make the decision to live for oneself if they have any hope of surviving past their entertaining years.  And, in addition, in a bit of irony, living for oneself will fundamentally allow oneself to have MORE entertaining years, as they allow themselves to engage in less entertaining processes in order to prolong their ability to entertain when it comes to the actual competition.  Mark Felix remains a presence at the highest stage of strongman at an age of over 50, and when asked about his training, states that it’s sub-maximal and easier on his body, so that he can recover better and get in more training.  Most of the guys that have hung around for a while have a similar story, while those that trained, ate and lived for the public tend to be the dudes that rose high in the ranks quick and burned out faster, and just as quickly fell out of the public mind.  It flat out isn’t worth it, and YOU are worth more than the adoration of the public.      

       

WHERE ARE THE STRENGTH PROGRAMS?

Today’s blog post stems from something I posted on reddit a while back. In a fit of boredom and out of a desire to have more dialogue on the topic, I wrote up a post on my top 5 Hypertrophy programs (quick summary: Deep Water, 5/3/1 BtM, 5/3/1 BBB, DoggCrapp and Super Squats).  The topic was well received, and a recurring trend in the comments were “I can’t wait for you to post your top STRENGTH programs next.”  And each time I read that comment, I felt confused by it.  Primarily because hypertrophy IS how one gets stronger.  These programs made me very strong BECAUSE they made my muscles grow, and after running all of them I experienced significant success in all of my strength endeavors.  When you make a muscle bigger, you increase it’s potential to be stronger.  So then why are these hypertrophy programs, and where the hell are the strength programs?

There's a reason coach Smolov has such a prestigious track record of producing athletes...

Once again, the dialogue turns to the notion that “strength” seems like an easily understood concept until one starts getting Socratic and really drilling down into the nature of the word.  People are quick to point out that strength is the ability to move weight, but already we see the issue there: the word “ability”.  Ability refers to more than simply an inherent force, but instead includes all other aspects that make up ability: to include skill, talent, genetic blessings (leverages and muscle fiber makeup for example), etc etc.  In this case, muscle size plays a contributing factor towards that ability, but not the SOLE contributing factor.  This is why the trotted out argument about bodybuilders not being stronger than powerlifters is just a confusing mess: people are measuring the strength of bodybuilders against the metric of what is used by powerlifters.  Of course those that dedicate themselves to mastering the ability to move maximal weight on only 3 lifts are going to be at the advantage. But note the presence of weightclasses in the sport: almost as though we realize that, once the playing field is leveled as far as skill and focus goes, size becomes a primary contributor in determining who will be the strongest.

So yet again I say that these hypertrophy programs ARE the strength programs.  So then, why don’t I follow them ALL the time?  Especially since my stated goals are to get bigger and stronger: wouldn’t it make sense to always be running these programs?  Shouldn’t one just always be getting bigger and bigger?  Well as damning as you may feel these rhetorical questions are, the fact of the matter is that those that have dedicated themselves toward absolute and total strength HAVE realized the truth of this, and one observes historically that this is EXACTLY what these people did.  Bruce Randall ate his way up to 400lbs, and was adamant that, if he could have managed 500lbs, he’d have a 1000lb deadlift.  And speaking of big deadlifts, we saw Eddie Hall pull this same stunt eating his was up to 430lbs.  And Paul Anderson made prestigious size gains to get stronger.  Louie Simmons has frequently been quoted on the advice that a lifter should keep gaining weight until their leverages on deadlift start to suffer.  These were ALL folks dedicated to pursuing STRENGTH, not size, as a goal, but recognizing that size was the avenue needed for achieving strength.

Photos and videos of Paul Anderson cleaning move at about the same speed

So again, why don’t I do this all the time?  For the same reason Bruce Randall DIDN’T get to 500lbs, or Eddie Hall DIDN’T stay at 430lbs: it’s exhausting to eat and train this way.   When you first start training, growth occurs rather easily as your body rapidly adapts to new stimulus, but eventually the amount of effort one needs to make in their diet and training to make a change is immense.  In particular, it’s the eating that becomes too cumbersome to me, and primarily the tag alongs that come with it (specifically the cooking and cleaning), as I eventually end up with a second job of 1 man restaurant.  Eventually, I just get to the point where I cannot sustain the lifestyle necessary to keep training and eating in this manner, and it’s at this point that the emphasis on training changes from making muscles bigger to making myself BETTER at moving heavier weights. Conveniently, I tend to coincide these shifts to correlate with when I have a strongman competition looming.

And HERE are the strength programs that everyone is looking for, but, in turn, HERE is why I have zero ability to answer the question about my “Top 5 Strength Programs”.  Strength for WHAT dude?  As an example, my upcoming competition requires me to press a 250lb keg overhead for as many reps as possible at the end of a keg press medley.  So now my current training has me focusing on improving my ability to press heavy kegs.  What’s the strategy?  Pretty much basic, old school linear progression.  I started cleaning a 100lb keg just to relearn the movement, and then got a Bartos loadable keg and have been using it for keg clean training, starting with doubles of 175, then 200, then 210, etc.  I’m going to add weight every week until I can’t keep up with doubles, and then I’ll switch to singles.  If I get to 250 in that time, I’ll add reps to it.  That’s my “strength program”.

It's like I ripped off Starting Strength, which ripped off Bill Starr, which, of course, ripped off Milo of Croton

I’ve done the same thing when competitions demand I get better with other movements too.  Done it with circus dumbbells, logs, car deadlift simulators, atlas stones, etc etc.  The STRENGTH was all built in the off season: now I’m refining and focusing the strength toward a specific goal.  If I was still powerlifting, then instead I’d be working on getting better with those 3 lifts, but the premise would be the exact same: keep adding weight to the bar until I can’t.  And this is why linear progression is constantly confused for “strength training”: one observes that it’s what is used when one wants to succeed at specific strength endeavors.  HOWEVER, the strength was built in the off-season. 

If you go back to the beginning of this blog, I was a big advocate for abbreviated linear progression training.  At the time, it seemed like magic to me, as I just kept on getting stronger and stronger with it.  HOWEVER, I was coming into lifting as a lifetime athlete, and though I wasn’t blessed in any way regarding athletics, I had such a firm foundation of that training paired with a very long period of “bro” style lifting that I had accumulated enough muscle on a 5’9 at 180lbs that I could ride out linear progression for a LONG time.  I’m talking years.  Powerlifting finally got me to start examining my training, because once competition arrived I finally reached the peak of what I could do based off what I had built, and after banging my head against a wall and making little growth over the course of a few meets I had to do something OTHER than my beloved linear progression, which led me to 5/3/1 BBB, which led me to growing to 202lbs, which led me to having more room to grow in terms of strength.

"But 5/3/1 doesn't have enough volume!"

This is getting wordy, and in truth my regular readers have read this all before, but I still feel the need to explain why I won’t be writing a “Top 5 Strength Programs” post, so allow me to continue.  I need to clarify (yet again) that, when I say “hypertrophy programs”, I DON’T mean bodybuilding programs.  Once again, just like strength training doesn’t mean powerlifting, hypertrophy training doesn’t mean bodybuilding.  Hypertrophy is IMPORTANT for bodybuilding, but it’s not the sole determining factor, and, in turn, trainees of strength sports can affect hypertrophy in manners that bodybuilding may deem unsuitable but would be just dandy for a strength athlete.  Hypertrophy of the obliques would be pretty awful for a bodybuilder, but fantastic for a strength athlete, as an example. 

So then what the hell makes a hypertrophy program a hypertrophy program?  In truth, what made the ones I listed so effective to me is how much they pushed me beyond my comfort level, and it was based off of percentage work.  DoggCrapp is going to be the exception here, but DC also pushed me beyond my comfort level because it was so radically different than anything I had done before, so it gets a pass.  But DeepWater, BBB and BtM all used percentages of a 1rm or training max and assigned it to a set and rep scheme that, when I first looked it at, made me sweat.  They made me just stare at the word document I wrote out (excel is for nerds: have some pride guys) and just go “f**k”.  BUT the program creators all knew something I didn’t, and they knew exactly how hard I could get pushed and still progress, and by following the programs and eating well, I grew.  In proof of concept, I had read the DeepWater e-book before, knew it was 10x10 squats with changes in rest times, and did some “DeepWater-esque” squat sessions before actually committing to the program, which meant I did no calculations and just used a weight I felt was “right”.  When I actually did the program, I found out I was using 30lbs less than what the program recommended.  It was a BIG kick it the ass when I actually bought it, and it was just what I needed to grow.  Super Squats may not use percentages, but “do 20 reps with your 10rm” achieves very much the same effect: it’s something you wouldn’t think was possible until someone else tells you “Not only is it possible, but a bunch of other dudes have done it before you, and they all grew from it.” 

If in doubt, you can always get the DAILY DEEP WATER MOTIVATION!

When training to realize strength, it’s ultimately more about balancing the intensity of the lifts against enough volume in the supplemental and assistance work to maintain all that muscle you worked with while also balancing the recovery demands, especially if calories came down.  It’s far more science and math than the alchemy of size programs where we’re creating a monster in a lab with enough food and effort.  If all I do is a bunch of heavy singles, I’m most likely going to lose out on strength.  If I try to train like I’m building size while ALSO hammering a bunch of heavy work, something is going to break.  Jim Wendler honestly does a great job offering trainees a crash course in these concepts with his “leader and anchor” programming models, and that alone is worth picking up 5/3/1 Forever. 

Ok, this got totally out of hand, so let me sum it up.  You build strength by training to gain size.  Training to gain size is HARD, both in terms of training and in terms of eating.  If/when you can no longer sustain it, emphasis can shift toward realizing the strength that was built in the MUSCLES by focusing on specific MOVEMENTS.  While focusing on moving as much weight as possible on those movements, a trainee can use a basic linear progression approach on those movements but needs to be able to balance it across enough supplemental and assistance volume to not lose out on strength that was gained through the size training.  There are a lot of different ways to go about realizing this strength: you gotta figure out what your desired movements are and use a strategy that works for them.