Monday, January 16, 2012

The hills, and the mother fuckin valleys

So I got an e-mail this week from Georg, and so many of his questions are the same ones I remember having and ones that a lot of guys tend to send me.  Namely, stalling out, wondering why progress is slowing, and other shit.

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I've been training pretty religiously for the last 10 years, mainly bodybuilding type stuff. I am 6 foot 1, currently weighing around 230-235 lbs. I have been doing 5/3/1 for eight months straight now, and this type of training has been real good for me. I've been doing squats/deads/bench and variations of those lifts ever since I first started lifting, but I never really followed a preset progression like I do now. I have always been a totally drug-free lifter, and I reached my current bodyweight about 4 years ago, and I'm still pretty happy about that, seeing that I started out as the proverbial 165lb weakling.


The Wendler-style is much closer to powerlifting than anything I've ever done before, and I've also noticed that it's made my muscles bigger(?) and more dense. BUT, after 8 months I find I am stalling, especially in the deadlift, which is getting brutally heavy. Earlier this week I pulled a 3x465lbs (week 2 of 5/3/1), something that for me is pretty good. My calculated max at the moment isn't that much higher than what I started out with, though. General fatigue has also been an issue lately, but that might also stem from me working a lot, the Norwegian winter being dark all the time, with rain and/or snow.


To get back on point here, I've been reading your 2011 post on mismatched training ideologies, which made me wonder if I'm on the right track for my goals? I'd like to get bigger and stronger, but I'd never want to end up looking like the 'typical' powerlifter with the big gut and all. I gravitated towards 5/3/1 because it seems to have the best of both worlds, pre-calculated numbers to shoot for in the main four lifts, then a more 'free' approach in the assistance lifts, allowing me to continue in the bodybuilding style I'm used to training in. Generally I've found the program to be a great way to keep me motivated, and stalling in the lifts at some point is of course to be expected. I've been thinking of doing a recalibration of my numbers in the deadlift after this cycle, I'll wait and see how the lift goes this coming Tuesday.


So, I would like to get stronger in the main lifts, but I am also interested in getting bigger. In your opinion, am I going about this the right way?


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So basically Georg feels like he has been training hard, doing all the right things, but has been stuck for a while now both in terms of strength and size, and is wondering where to go from here.

To start, you need to understand that the closer you get to your genetic potential, the slower things become.  Whether that is fat loss or muscle gain or strength.  There is a ceiling to everything.  And the closer you get to that ceiling, the harder things are to come by.  In the beginning shit was easy.  You just needed to show up and you would get stronger every week.  Almost irregardless of how you trained or what you did.  Just be there.


After a decade, you've thrown a lot of shit at your body.  And there isn't a lot of room left for it to give.  


You ever see those shows about hoarders?  People that fill their house with shit?  Well think about your strength and mass levels like an empty house.  The longer you train, and the more things you do, the more "full" that house becomes.  Eventually there isn't much space left to add anything.  Then you have to actually rearrange shit to fit something in.  


Closing in on genetic potential is very much like this.  


Even with supremely gifted individuals, it's like this.  You just see that they have a better starting position.  Where Andy Bolton pulled 600 pounds the first time he walked into the gym.  Well Andy eventually pulled a grand, but Andy has been training a long fucking time now.  He won his first competition in 1991.  So he's been competing a long time, and him took him a long time to add that 400 pounds to his deadlift.  


After that let's tackle a few issues - 


The problem with the deadlift - 


Not pulling heavy enough. 


I think pulling for reps is fine, but from all of my experience the deadlift builds itself backwards from the squat and the bench press.  Sort of.  Let me explain.


You can go from benching 315x8 to 315x12 and you are GOING to have a new 1RM.  I have found that adding reps on the deadlift, doesn't always translate to a bigger 1RM.  It's hit or miss.  


If you want to pull big, pull singles and triples in the deadlift.  If you want to do some reps, do stiff legs for sets of 8-10.  


Yes I am aware that strongmen pull for reps.  But there seems to be a bigger carryover for doing repping on deadlifts if you build the 1 rep max.  But not the other way around.  Or at least not for a lot of people.  


So Georg, I'd start pulling heavier in the dead.  If you still want to run 5/3/1 just program your dead heavier so that your week of 3's and the single are heavier than you have been going, and actually pull a heavier triple or single.


As far as LOOKING as certain way, that's almost all diet.  Cardio helps too.  But if you want to look a certain way, diet is the key here.


People don't realize how long and how hard you need to diet to shed bodyfat.  It's difficult.  The body doesn't want to lose that shit.  It fights to hold into it like Whitney Houston fights to hold on to crack.  


On the flip side, if you have been spinning your wheels for some time in terms of strength and size, you have to do some shit that is hard too.  You have to make up your mind to train harder than you have trained in years.  You are going to eat more food than one of those disgusting "feeder" people.  You have to do this for a while,  and feel like complete shit.  I've never known another way.  


It's all a process.  


So to answer the overall question, how to get stronger and larger?


1.  Train hard as fuck for a while, but train accordingly.  Bust your deadlift down to heavy singles and triples


2.  Push the reps, add in some PIT (perceived intensity techniques) like strip sets and rest/pause.


3.  Take a good break when you feel burnt. 


4.  Be Patient


















11 comments:

  1. Your answer's to Georg's questions answered a few of the ones I have had as well. In regards to the deadlifts for reps, based on your response to Georg's email it seems that they are ineffective for building strength. Why do you program deads for reps into the strong-15 then?

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  2. I program in 5's 3's and then a testing week. The testing week may go soon as I think there is a better way to go about it. I am working on that programming for this coming meet.

    I don't think that reps are ineffective for building strength, I just think that if you want to pull a heavy single you need to pull singles and triples most of the time. The strong-15 is based around that. The back off sets are there to compliment that work.

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  3. Paul,

    Your statement about rearranging stuff in your "house of strength" touches on something I've been wondering for awhile.

    As you've said before, a fully developed individual would be strong in all of the basic movements (squat, pull, bench, press, row, chin, dip, curl). But what if you feel like you just can't balance all of those at once? For example, I always hit barbell rows as heavy as possible because I've been told they're a staple exercise. I would be sore for days, including when my deadlift day arrived. After awhile I just got tired of my back always being exhausted. So I just focused on pushing chins and started doing face pulls and band pullaparts and only did much lighter rows maybe every 2-3 weeks. As a result, I can chin more than ever now and I feel much fresher for deadlift.

    So now I'm wondering about trying to push bench and overhead at the same time too. I've run 5/3/1 for years and Wendler is adamant about cycling overhead along with the big3. I've gotten much better at overhead but I don't really think it's carried over to my bench at all. My shoulders have also been taking a beating every week, and getting mentally pumped up for 4 big lifts a week gets exhausting after awhile.

    So TLDR; do you think one should fill up their strength capacity with only the big3 for optimum results and make the rest secondary, or generalize their efforts across all the compounds?

    Thanks,

    Adam

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  4. OK, so with pulling heavy single and triples how close to failure should we go? Even though I pause for a second staying tight between reps in the deadlift, I can usually get a double or triple if I get the first one up. My 3 rep max is 465, but single rep max is 485. Should I just do quite a few singles but at a lighter weight even though it is easier, or should I stay closer to my one rep max? I know your Strong-15 is programmed with lighter singles, but I never seem to get much from those? Is it just a mental issue, and I need to be more patient, or is this something you have seen before? A side note, it seems that the only thing that moves my deads is squatting.

    --Jim

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  5. Hey Paul, pretty fundamental (read: may sound like a noob) question here on a subject I haven't seen you address previously - how long are your rest periods generally, on the big15 for example?

    Really appreciate all that you share with us man.

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  6. Adam - Great question.

    Generally what I have found is, 1 or 2 of the lifts will do good and the other 1 or 2 will either maintain or regress a bit. I think it's really difficult to bring up all three at the same time.

    I found the same as you, my overhead didn't make my bench move. Mainly because overhead work is natural to me, but benching isn't.

    So if you want to push benching, then just maintain the squat and pull for a while so you don't tax yourself with them. Hell sometimes going into maintenance mode for a lift makes it move the most. You have to do some calibration.

    Jim - If you're a guy that is lucky enough to see his dead move just from squatting, then squat like a champ and pull heavy every other week. On the in between weeks do some light speed pulls. That should fix you up.

    Jonts - I don't rest very long between sets. I don't time it, but I don't mess around. I'm generally in good shape, so I basically load the bar, do a set, load the bar, do a set, etc. I don't waste much time.

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  7. question...my squat sucks!!!! i think one of two things are happening, either im squatting to much or not enough. currently squatting once a week...maybe i should double up with squat heavy one week dead light/ then switch? how would i program that for a 8-10 week pre meet cycle? wouldnt i have to move up in weights a lot quicker?

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  8. Squat heavy on one day, then do the pause squats on another and work on your descent and explosiveness.

    One of the chapters in the next book is called "my squat sucks". I am going into detail on fixing every possible issue I can think of.

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  9. Alright Paul, I've read your article. I must admit it felt kind of weird to see my words on your blog like that, but it was cool! haha
    I appreciate it very much!
    There's a few points that I'm not sure if I'm a 100% clear on though. First off, I think you may be absolutely right about doing reps in the deadlift. I have never liked doing high reps in this lift at all. In the past I have treated deadlifts like I would pretty much every other excercise, doing 8-12 reps, probably in a 'touch and go' style for the most time, and it sucked! I remember doing a 10x385lbs a couple of years ago, and although I'm pretty sure I could still do it with less difficulty now, it's really nothing compared to the effort of pulling a 5x440lb or whatever deadlift. Now, I should mention that I never did deadlifts regularly before about 5 years ago, and even then it was not on a weekly basis like I've been doing now with the 5/3/1 program. So I'm slowly getting better, there's no doubt about that.
    Which leads me to question number one about the article: Would you have me doing fewer reps in the deadlift, and still follow Wendler's setup apart from that? Should I not be doing the first week of 3x5 the way he wrote it? Lately I've been sort of dreading the 3 sets / 5 reps week, especially regarding the deadlift. It might not be all that impressive, but having to do a 5x440lb set is a real ballbuster for me. I have been getting through those sets according to the recipe so far, but the weights sure don't fly off the floor at this point.
    You mention doing stiff leg deadlifts for sets of 8-10, and I do those later in the week as my first assistance lift after squats. I also do front squats as my first assistance lift after deadlifts, so I am doing squat/dead variations twice per week, in a heavy/light fashion. I feel that's a good thing. For the last year or so I have been recovering from pain in my upper left quad area, which I think I might have injured from overuse and/or squatting too wide onto a box. Yes, I know, I'd been reading too many EliteFTS articles... ;) My squat has been going up steadily since starting off (light) on 5/3/1. Technique has been getting better too, I was never one of those guys who piled on the weight just to wind up doing a half squat, but I am consistent in hitting the correct depth now.
    Another thing is that I don't train solely in order to look a certain way anymore. I'll admit, Arnold was probably the main reason I got into lifting all those years ago, but I quickly realised I was never going to look like that. And so regarding dieting, my own philosophy has always been to get in quality food throughout the day, every day of the week, and apart from that I've been eating pretty much whatever I want. I've never had much of a sweet tooth, and McDonalds style food makes me sick, so it's never really been an issue. My point is that as far as I can tell, I get enough quality calories in. My most important lesson when I started training seriously 10 years ago was that I needed to work hard on eating as well. The lifting part of my training is (mostly) in order, I stretch/PVC roll almost every day, I eat well, but I've been doing less cardio/conditioning than I'm used to. It's something I'm going to get better at though, times have been pretty busy lately, and the shitty weather outside hasn't helped. All pretty dumb excuses, I know.
    Anyway, I can still see the outline of my abs, at a bodyweight of 235lbs, so I'm not complaining.

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  10. To finish off, you mentioned doing PIT, and I already do those for my assistance work, just not like I've been doing earlier. For years and years I had only one way of training with weights, and that was to go balls out pretty much every single session. Obviously that does not work in the long run, especially when focusing on the compound lifts. But, I am glad I have the ability to push really hard, since that's something I see lacking in most people.
    Patience is not normally an issue either, I've been doing this for long enough to realize that Rome wasn't built in a day.

    OK, that's it from me this time! I can't say how much I appreciate you taking time out to help me with these things, Paul! I live in a rural area on the west coast of Norway, and there's not much of an interest for getting stronger around here, and unfortunately I'm the head authority on all things strength related, so I'm having a real hard time finding people to answer my questions. I am a certified personal trainer and I work part time at a gym, and I always do my best to steer clients on to the right path when it comes to training, even if it's seldom what they want to hear. But it's a little more difficult when it comes to my own queries.
    Again, I thank you very much. Hope you have a great week!

    Best regards, Georg Notland

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  11. Georg - Then it could just be a case where you need to....

    a. take some time off

    b. rearrange some of the things you are doing

    c. understand your strength "house" is more full than you realize, and you might need to be more patient than usual

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