YES, EVEN MORE BULLETPOINTS

-It’s amazing how 2 people can read the same thing and walk away with 2 different messages.  Most people read with the hope of reinforcing their perspective rather than challenging it.

-The body does not understand reps, sets, days of the week, range of motion, or many of the other things people consider crucial.  It DOES understand effort and fatigue.  Try to design programming around THOSE 2 variables and everything else will fall into place.

-I legitimately wonder how many people lift weights purely as an excuse to experiment with meth.

 
Christ this is so stupid

-Bringing back bodyweight dips into my training has been huge for my growth and development.  Sticking with bodyweight is amazing for accumulation, and my pecs, triceps and shoulders are growing while elbow pain has been minimal.  Additionally, if you’re sticking with bodyweight, you don’t need a super hardcore set-up to do dips.

-I found out I CAN press twice a week, as long as one of those days is a push press.

-We were all so cool in the mid 2000s and we KNEW that western periodization was garbage, but here it is making a comeback.  Accumulation vs intensification is an incredibly helpful lens to view training from.  Know WHY you are training and vector around that.  Some phases are going to be higher volume, some are going to be higher intensity.  Trying to do both is silly.

-People with confidence in their knowledge and experience welcome questions as an opportunity to discuss and share.  People insecure with their knowledge and lacking experience respond to questions with venom.

He may very well be insane, but he will go live on the radio to spread his insanity...for free

-I am unreasonably excited about the “Westside vs the World” documentary.

-People say things like “strongman training” or “train like a strongman” as though it means anything.  There is no codified approach.  It is simply doing what one needs to get better at.  It’s smart training: the way you SHOULD be training.

-The “donuts=gains” meme is creating a LOT of fat and weak trainees.  Don’t perpetuate it.

 
Remember how we all made fun of Planet Fitness for free pizza...yeah, this is just as stupid

-A lot of folks don’t know the difference between injury and pain.  This leads to too many reports of injuries and an overabundance of “injury prevention” voodoo.  To put it simply; injury means dysfunction.  There is physically something broken that is preventing you from being able to function normally.  When a bone is broken, you are injured, because no matter what you do, that bone is broken.  Pain can be an indication of a pending injury, or it could simply mean you pushed too hard one day, but if you can move THROUGH the pain still, you aren’t injured.

-As a home gymer, I never understood the comment “my gym doesn’t have X.”  Cool story bro; go buy it.  And hey; if you REALLY like your gym, maybe you can donate some equipment to it.

-I can’t keep track of all these youtube heroes and gurus.  I feel like there is a new one every week.  How do people have so much time to watch all this stuff, but no time for conditioning?

-I think I liked it better when we used to day that the powerlifting gear was doing all the work, vs now where we blamed it all on steroids and genetics.

 
Gotta love when this is a selling point

-Everyone says having a strong grip is important, but no one wants to actually TRAIN their grip.

-Breaking the emotional bond with food was HUGE for my progress.  Food isn’t a reward or some source of joy: its fuel.  You can enjoy it if you want to, but keep your mind on the goal. 

-On the topic of food, I got an instant pot for Christmas and it’s blowing my mind.  Pressure cooking is awesome, and a great way to make a lot of food really quick.  It also plugs in to the wall and has minimal clean up.  Get yourself one.

-People ask me how to program conditioning, and I give them a look like a dog looking at a wristwatch.  Just do a thing until you puke, and then go home.

 
This guy gets it

-I legitimately don’t understand people with the desire to make money off of lifting.  Don’t get me wrong; if you’re an actual professional athlete and you can do something you were going to do anyway AND get paid for it, that’s awesome.  I’m talking about the people that are trying to capitalize off youtube views and Instagram follows and stuff like that.  Taking a passion and trying to make it a job is a great way to resent your passion, because when money is on the line, you tend to have to do things you don’t like in order to increase your mass appeal.  The pay off just doesn’t seem worth it either.  I really like having a job that pays me and a hobby I spend that money on, and having neither one of them get in the way.  But that might just be me.

-As a former fighter, I just scratch my head when people say stupid stuff like “It doesn’t matter how much you deadlift; you’ll still get tapped out by a black belt.”  You mean to tell me that, if you take 2 athletes and have them compete in 1 of those athletes specialty, that athlete will win?  Do wonders ever cease?   And I feel it’s endemic to the reality that, no matter how we slice it, we’re still trying to do the stupid “alpha male” thing, and size and strength conveys it so much better than anything else.  People get threatened by signs of strength, and try to find some way to minimize it.  Meanwhile, most legit big and strong guys don’t like the idea of fighting, because it sounds exhausting, and you could probably get hurt doing it.

-No one on the internet knows how to lift right, and there is definitely a right way to do it, that’s for sure.  At least, that’s what I’ve gained seeing how everyone’s form gets critiqued for being “wrong”.  People; less Plato, more Machiavelli.

THE AXLE DEADLIFT WITH STRAPS: WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT

Anyone that has been following my training in the past year knows that I’ve become something of an “axle-holic”.  Ever since I purchased the Ironmind Apollon’s axle, I’ve been inclined to use it with pretty much any movement I can.  Axle curls, axle presses, axle bench, axle front squats, etc etc, yet the most controversial movement will of course be the axle deadlift with straps.  Many people mistakenly believe that the only real attribute of an axle is the increased diameter compared to a barbell, making it a grip training implement.  Operating under this paradigm, using an axle with straps makes no sense, because you’ve now removed the grip training element out of the equation.  However, those operating with this understanding are severely underestimating the more significant contributing factors the axle has to the deadlift: lack of flex, and putting the weight further out in front of you.  These two factors radically change the deadlift into an incredibly effective and brutal movement, and provide a strong argument for why YOU should include this movement into your programming.

 
You may have to drop something from your program to fit it in

Powerlifters love to brag about the stiffness of their bar when it comes to a deadlift, as though it’s some sort of badge of honor.  “Oh, you pulled 600lbs?  But it was with a whippy deadlift bar.  I pulled 500lbs with a squat bar, so it was WAAAY harder.”  You know what has zero whip?  A 2” axle.  World’s Strongest Man will occasionally use the Ironmind S cubed bar (stiff, strong and straight) for deadlift competitions, and once things get up to 900+lbs even THAT bar will start to whip a little, whereas the Apollon’s axle still doesn’t budge.  Now, imagine the effect of such a ridiculously stiff bar when you try to pull a deadlift.  I’ve equated it to making every deadlift a deficit deadlift, because the bar will NOT move from its starting position.  Whereas a deadlift bar might give you 2” of wiggle room, and a regular/stiff bar might give .5”, you are pulling a LEGIT deadlift here. 

This ALSO means you can’t use the bumper plate trick like you could with a normally barbell.  For those uninitiated with this concept, it’s another way to take advantage of the slack in a barbell.  If you load a bar in such a way that you have occupied all of the space on the sleeves, it makes it so that, at the start of the pull, you’re actually deadlifting LESS weight than at the end.  Basically, you pick up the middle of the bar, it bows upward, and then the plates closest to the center of the bar start picking up off the ground.  The plates at the end of the sleeves will actually stay on the ground for a lot of the initial pull until the bar finally whips back up and you’re finally carrying the full load.  The hummer tire deadlift event at the Arnold REALLY showcases this phenomenon.  It’s a surefire way to add some poundages to your pull, and there is absolutely no dice trying this with the axle.  Load the collars all the way to the end, find the fattest bumper plates you can, it doesn’t matter; you ARE pulling all the weight on the bar, no question.  For those of you weak off the floor, this is the answer to your problems.

A more extreme example

Now we get onto the topic of diameter and its influence on the deadlift itself; not just your grip strength.  Since the axle has a wider diameter than a barbell, this means that, in turn, the weight on an axle deadlift is further out in front of you than it is with a barbell.  Any decent deadlifter knows that you want to minimize distance between you and the weight as much as possible, as the further out the weight is in front of you, the harder it is to lift.  This is why the scraped and bloody shin is such a prized mark amongst deadlifters; it means you were keeping the bar close to your body and dragging it up, getting as much poundage as possible.  Well the axle gets to rob you of this pleasantry, because even WHEN the axle is scrapping up your shins, the weight is STILL out in front of you.  That increased diameter makes it so that, even when the axle is pulled as close as possible, it’s still like pulling a barbell deadlift with the bar about an inch in front of your body.  Just try to visualize that and you will surely understand the hell that is an axle deadlift.

This is a BRUTAL deadlift compared to pulling with a thin barbell.  It is far more taxing on the lower back, because the lower back gets called in more to try to correct the barpath and support the weight.  Then, let us consider that the lack of whip means that all of your hitching is going to be pretty useless, because you can’t try to oscillate the bar up your body.  You either get the pull or you don’t, and you can fight all you want, but if the strength isn’t there, neither is the rep.  This is an HONEST deadlift, with no tricks or skill saving you.  You’re pulling the weight dead off the floor, far from your body, with a legit lockout. 

 
So help me if you pull sumo with an axle I WILL find you

For personal anecdotes, ever since my ACL injury I’ve only used the axle for my deadlift training.  About a month ago, I finally broke out the Texas Deadlift Bar, and ended up hitting the smoothest 615lb deadlift in my life.  I did this first thing in the morning, off of 2 pieces of toast on a bad day.  There was no need for any hitching, hyping or theatrics.  The carryover between this to your competition pull is insane.

Not the absence of hitching, ramping, shaking, dramatics, magic, smoke and mirrors

Before we conclude, let’s discuss straps real fast, since it’s imperative to this topic.  You don’t want grip to be the limiting factor on this sort of pull, as it defeats the purpose.  Sure, some unstrapped axle deads are awesome for building up some grip strength, but for maximizing the benefits of this brutal deadlift, you NEED a good set of straps that won’t fail you and will allow you to move maximal poundages.  I HAVE used a set of Ironmind Strong Enough Straps for axle deadlifts in a competition before, and they’ll work for a single, but for getting in multiple reps without slipping, you owe it to yourself to pick up the Why Our Way straps.  For those of you up to speed on internet sensations, these are the same straps Chris Duffin uses for 1000lb deadlifts and 675 for sets of 20, and they will absolutely not fail you.  They have some sort of top secret maximally effective way to set up that are supposedly amazing, but I use them like regular straps and they work just fine.  I own the Ironmind Black axle straps and honestly haven’t been too impressed with them, so try not to cut costs here if you can.

Quick recap here: axle with straps is a different animal than axle without straps, and SHOULD be included in your training.  It’s a stiff and brutal pull with no parlor tricks that will make you stupid strong.  Get a good set of straps.

BASELINE STRENGTH

Here I am once again redefining something we all know but don’t quite understand.  I’ve written on many occasions about just how deceptive “strength” can be.  What we interpret to be strength can in many cases be instead a wide variety of other qualities that simply contribute to amount of weight lifted on a movement.  Factors like nutrition, time of day, amount of acquired fatigue, amount of sleep, being psyched up, warmed up, etc etc can all affect how much weight is moved on a movement…but none of these factors ARE “strength”.  Strength is what exists in the absence of all these factors; it’s what is there irrespective of these qualities.  This “baseline strength” is what we need to endeavor to improve, as it’s what fundamentally dictates if we are actually getting stronger in our training.

Although a little of this doesn't hurt too

I’ve written about “bad day strength” before, but baseline strength goes even deeper.  Whereas bad day strength was about setting a baseline in your worst circumstances and striving to improve it, fundamentally bridging the gap between bad days and good, baseline strength is what is there when you are practically dead.  It’s the strength that is there after 2 days of throwing up with food poisoning, after 48 hours of being awake, after living off a water and lettuce diet for a week.  This is the strength that is ever present; it’s the strength that we build UPON with all those other extraneous factors and details.

This is why it’s imperative to focus on building up this baseline, rather than attempting to maximize the other variables.  Yeah, you could perfect your technique, dial in your nutrition, get your optimal amount of sleep, have the excellent supplement stack, etc etc, but none of this actually builds up that baseline; it simply amplifies it.  The baseline strength is built over a long, arduous period of time, through a constant grind, effort and toil.

You didn't realize this movie was actually a documentary 

I already know what most of my regular readers are saying at this point; “You’ve already said this!  You’ve said this many MANY times!”  True!  So allow me to explain this significance of this concept; how to know IF you are building this baseline strength.  “How do I know if I’m getting stronger” is a question that is constantly posed by trainees, and fundamentally the metrics employed to measure strength are flawed because they are incumbent upon the factors EXTERNAL to baseline strength.  A trainee sets a PR on one day, under one set of circumstances, and then attempts to compare a different effort under a different set of circumstances in order to measure “progress” or “strength”.  In turn, trainees interpret an increase between the two attempts as an indication that strength was gained or that the program worked, and a decrease is of course an indication of the opposite, but without consideration of the context, this data is useless.

So how DO we know if we have gained strength?  How do we know if the baseline strength was increased?  We know not by the results, but by the method!  Specifically, the consistent application of the same degree of effort/intensity over a prolonged period of time.  We KNOW we increased our baseline strength if, over the course of this specific phase of training, we consistently busted our ass with limited interruptions.  What other possible alternative would there be?  How could we have gotten weaker if we were truly pushing our bodies to their limits, breaking ourselves down and rebuilding over and over again?  This is simply how strength is built; real, pure, brutish strength.  This is how our BASELINE of strength is built.

So not like this

Sure, skill can be lost or diminished depending on the method employed.  One may train their upperbody hard over a period of several months only to witness a decrease in their bench press because they deprioritized that specific movement, but strength was not lost.  It was built, and simply needs to be refined for that specific purpose.  The same is true in instances of reduced weight moved due differing nutrition, sleep, time of day, or other variables; the baseline strength increased, it was simply differently amplified than previously.

This is why, in many cases, the solution to “plateaus” is to simply keep on training hard and plugging along.  In most cases, the plateau is unrelated to matters of strength, and instead related to other factors that we are improperly controlling.  Technique may have shifted, small injuries might have manifested, we may have made nutritional changes, etc etc, but those can eventually be addressed and overcome.  Meanwhile, while we continue to grind away day in and day out, we are STILL building strength.  This is WHY, once we overcome whatever issue it was that was holding us back, we tend to witness explosive growth in the movement gain.  We finally pulled our heads out of our butts and now we get to amplify that baseline strength that we spent months and years steadily increasing.  The untapped potential is now getting tapped.

If you are training hard and often, you ARE getting stronger.  Be honest with yourself here.  If you’re dogging it, putting in half-efforts and skipping workouts, then of course you are going to get weaker while you train, and no amount of heavy metal and ammonia is going to fix that.  But if you’re actually putting in the effort, you will get to the point where even at your worse, you’re stronger than you once were at your best.