8 truths to live (and lift) by

1) Chase your passions while you can.


Life is not short. It's the longest thing we will ever do. With that said, it is finite in regards to allowing us to pursue the things that will ultimately be the most fulfilling to us. These things are very individualistic, and may not always be understood by those closest to us, or even casual strangers. And that's good. It will be what sets you apart, gives you character, and makes you uniquely who you are.


If you never ever muster up the courage to take a chance on these things, then it's a lost opportunity to be courageous. After all, without fear don't have the opportunity to show courage. And more often than not, pursuing a passion will require a healthy dose of it.


Be willing to lose and say "I tried" rather than being left with "if only..." when the opportunity is no longer available.



2) Trust is a choice, respect is to be earned.


Regardless of what people tell you, trust is not really earned. Eventually it is something you have to make a choice about. You could do everything someone asks of you, and they still not make a choice to trust you. And you could do the same. Truly, it cannot be earned.


Respect on the other hand, generally comes from doing or saying things that garner admiration from both your peers and adversaries. Respect isn't synonymous with fondness. You can respect someone you don't like, and someone that doesn't like you can still respect you. Do your best to give both your enemies and your friends a reason to respect you.


Yes there are overlaps in regards to trust and respect both being choices and something earned, but generally at the end of the day, people choose to trust someone and give their respect based on what they have done, and said.



3) Strength, honor, integrity, compassion, loyalty, and forgiveness should be the foundation of your character and relationships

All of these virtues have a myriad of meanings and context. However it's hard to argue that at their core, they are all positive virtues. Many of the times throughout life, adhering to these virtues will be incredibly difficult because often enough, doing what is hard is what will make life easier. And doing what is easier will make life harder.


Don't take short cuts when it comes to meeting the highest standard of these virtues. Every time you do you will find it easier and easier to do so. Then eventually you will find that life has gotten harder and harder.


And that's when you wake up asking yourself "how did I get here?"


4) Be willing to hurt people you care about with honesty. If they care about you, they will forgive you for not bullshitting them. If you care about them, you won't enable their shit behavior by lying to them.


There's nothing worse than enablers.


These are the friends that never make you reexamine how you behave, how you treat people, and what your "weak points" are.


In lifting it's the guy that lets you squat high all the while telling you what a "beast" you are.


In life, it's the same friend that knows you're fucking someone over, yet agrees with all of your fucked up rationalizations as to why you're doing it.


Don't surround yourself with enablers, and don't be one. If someone values your friendship they will also value your constructive criticism. If you lose a "friendship" because of it, then it wasn't much of a friendship to begin with.


5) Tell your family and friends you love them daily, or at least at every chance you get.


I learned this lesson from my best friend who got killed when I was 13.


I have no idea why most "modern men" feel like telling their friends "I love you" is nancy boy bullshit. I always tell my closest friends I love them. I am forever thankful that one of the best friends I ever had, told me he loved me before he died. And that I did the same for him.


To quote Lao Tzu...


Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

6) Never let the sun set on your wrath.


This is actually from Ephesians. Regardless of your beliefs about the Bible or what faith, or lack of faith, you have, there are lots of great lessons in the Bible that can shape your life for the better. Don't be dismissive of an entire book because there are parts you don't agree with (even the skeptics annotated bible agrees the Bible has some "good stuff" in it).


I always find that when I am troubled or upset at someone, or about something in my life, I can't sleep very well. If you are at odds with someone you feel as wronged you, forgive them in your own mind, or in your own way. And then seek resolution for your problems the following day. Letting your anger rob you of a good nights sleep means you are intentionally depriving yourself.


Forgiveness can be hard. Which is why only the strongest of individuals can do so on a regular basis. It's the weak spirited that struggle the most with finding forgiveness. 

 

7)  Honor your word if you value your character.

It can be hard to hold to promises that we made when enthusiasm was at an all time high.  As circumstances change for the worse, people often go back on their word because staying true to those words can mean they have to sacrifice something they don't want to.  

It's easy to keep your promises when those promises mean something positive is added to our life.  It becomes infinitely more difficult when adhering to them means we will suffer.  Most of us don't want to intentionally suffer or have loss in our life, thus we often avoid keeping our word when circumstances require it.  

Your word has a degree of value to it.  And that value can increase or decrease with people based on your follow through of those words.  Remember that taking one on the chin for someone generally garners their respect (once again, earned) and more often than not, they will got to bat for you in the future when it is required of them.

The funny thing about this is, your strength of character often gives them the same thing because of your own sacrifices for them.  Most people value the courage it takes to see something through for them, even when it doesn't benefit you.  

People often talk of "be the change you want to see in the world."  This is because when you live in accordance with those changes you want to see, you will often see them returned to you as well.

8) Give back more than you take. Or life will eventually take away more from you than you have to give.

Unfortunately I see a lot of people in the industry get ahead by ripping other people off, and fucking them over.  

We often see this throughout all aspects of life.  But eventually, it usually comes back to them if they aren't willing to give back in some way.  Life and business will eventually crumble if it is not cemented in the areas described in rule #3.

Speaking of which, I want to thank an old friend for inspiring me to write these.  Your words are poignant.  

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What the dadbod is really all about

I swore I wouldn't do this, even though I was asked by several people to give my thoughts on it.

But I've broken promises before.  And about much more important things, so I think I will be able to live with myself by breaking this one.

Right now, articles about "dad bods" are popping up all over the net.  Both showing affinity and disdain for them.  Just about all of them depict Leonardo Dicaprio running around on the beach, sporting a pooch belly, some very prepubescent looking boobs, and that awful top-knot/man-bun thing, along with a beard that looks like he stole it off of a drunken hipster.

Apparently, this is what women are claiming they find attractive at the moment.  Not all women mind you, because I don't want to use generalizations here.  Plenty of women are appalled by it, and think men with dad bods look disgusting.

Most of these women are of course, fit, or train, or care about what their body looks like.

Which of course creates a incredible amount of discord because the first thing that will come out of the mouth of women and men who support dad bods, are.....

"that's because you are shallow."

Indeed.  It has to be about being shallow, narcissistic, and self absorbed.  If one cares about their health, their appearance, and their body, that is the only logical explanation there could be.

If one is not attracted to the dad bod, these are the reasons why.

I'll get back to that in a bit.

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like every few months women, or a woman, starts a fire storm over what women should currently find attractive.  A few months ago, it was that whole lumbarsexual thing.  Which was nothing more than hipsters dressed up in flannel shirts, carrying axes.

Hipsters carry axes of course, because one never knows when a hipster will find himself inside a shitty pub that catches on fire, and he suddenly needs to become a firefighter.  Or when he's having coffee somewhere and suddenly a large tree will need to be cut down.  Women will swoon as he swings away like a homeless looking Babe Ruth.  By the time the tree hits the ground, there will be more panties dropped than world's largest broom could sweep up.

Before all of that of course, it was the man-bun.

Women have been telling other women what to find attractive as of late, and then other women see this and flock to it.  Like some massive sale on cotton panties at Victoria's Secret.

"Special two panties for one."

And then of course there is the "beauty at all sizes" movement, where women tell other men and women if they don't find obese women attractive, that they are shallow, narcissistic, and self absorbed.

I'm not sure why women feel the need to start "trends" based on what they should find attractive.  It seems like, based on articles like these that women are in a state of "man ADD".  Every few months something new is "hot" and "sexy", then it's something completely different few months later.

You generally don't see men doing this.  We figured out what we liked centuries ago for the most part.  Again, this is backed by science for the most part (that hip to waist ratio) and men don't really go around on the net telling other men what is NOW hot and attractive.  We made a decision long ago and just stuck to it.

So I will give a real life clue in here in regards to what people find attractive.

You cannot help what you find attractive.  It's not entirely a matter of "choice".  If you don't agree with me, then we can use that argument about gay people.  Do they choose to find someone of the same sex attractive, or do they tell you it feels instinctive?

Case closed.

I could end the article there, but I have other points to make so I digress.

Attractiveness, or beauty they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  What that means of course is, what I am looking at and feel is attractive, may not be for the person on my left, or the person on my right. Generally I don't find myself in a position where I surrounded by people like that, but you get my point.

To a certain extent, I agree with that.  Sometimes you even know when you look at someone, and find them attractive yet know deep down inside of you that most people would not see the beauty or attractiveness of that person.  At least, not in the way you do.

On the flip side, it's irrefutable that some beauty transcends these laws and is considered attractive or beautiful regardless of individual taste.  Some may argue with this, but I don't care.  There is a reason that women get paid millions of dollars for photo shoots and grace the covers of magazines and work for billion dollar companies.  If we didn't know what universal beauty looked like, such things would not exist.  No billion dollar company is going to promote an ugly chick and try to sell her off as being beautiful.

This is just science.  Yes, it's science.  It's actually been proven through science that beauty has direct correlation with symmetry.  I could research this and provide lots of studies but I just did an article that made me read about 1,223,452 studies and this is largely an opinion piece, so I'm not going to.

That brings us back to what people instinctively find attractive.

When I see a woman I find beautiful, I know it immediately.  It's not like looking at a menu when I can't decide what I want to order.  It almost always comes back to getting some form of grilled chicken with veggies anyway, but perhaps I like to appear as though I would order something else so I gravel over the selections for a while before eventually making the same order that I usually do.

We know what we find attractive, hot, beautiful, sexy, pretty, etc as soon as we see it.  Yes, there are times when we meet someone and think they are just "ok", then as we get to know them we come to find them more attractive through the virtues and attributes they exhibit as a human being, and that is indeed what I would call seeing someone's inner beauty.  But this is something that takes a certain amount of time or investment in someone and we don't always get the chance to do that with everyone we cross paths with.  So the whole "you should see someone's inner beauty" is really a bunch of horseshit.

Ain't nobody got time to do that with errbody.

Is that unfortunate?  Of course.  But time is our most precious commodity and unfortunately everyone doesn't get equal shares of it.

So that often leaves us with getting to know, or wanting to get to know the people we instinctively find attractive.

Which brings us back to people being called shallow by being repulsed by the "dad bod".

There's nothing shallow about not finding that attractive.  And there's nothing shallow about personal preferences when it comes to what you like, from a sexual standpoint.  You like what you like.  I like women with round, muscular glutes, great smiles (nice teeth), big lips, and big eyes.  After that, from a non physical standpoint I like women that have cultivated enough depth to them that if we got stuck in a traffic jam for a few hours, I'd be perfectly happy.  What that means is, we can have conversation that is just as stimulating to me as her physical presence.

Dating on looks alone is a recipe for disaster.  Because after the initial attraction wears off, after all of the new relationship energy has subsided, what do you have?  There's a good chance that it won't be much.  Not enough to sustain something lasting or fulfilling.

Perhaps the shallowness in all of us is when we do that very thing.  Ignore the fact that the person we are investing in is severely lacking in so many other areas we know we need fulfillment in, yet continue to date or invest in them because, well....dat ass.  In the case of women who find dad bods attractive I guess it'd be...dat gut!

Since we're back to guts, why is it that women are not proclaiming their lust for dad bods?

Is it really personal preference?

I can't say.  I absolutely cannot speak for all women, or even a single woman.

Women seem to care less about looks like men on the whole, and often can and do see men with great physiques as being overly self absorbed.  I've also been told on many occasions by women, that they would not date a man that gets a lot of attention from other women because they have "been there, and wasn't worth the headache that came with it."

The same goes true for men as well.  I've read from two high profiled bodybuilders where both stated they would never ever date bikini or figure competitors because of the same reasons.  Self absorbed, narcissistic, think it's all about them, and they did not want the headache that came with it.

I think these things have been said often enough that while it may not be true in every case, where there's smoke there is fire.

What the dad bod is probably really about are a lot of women who don't care about lifting, don't care about their appearance so much that they may actually see a man who looks like that, and sees confidence.

"How the fuck is that, Paul?"

Because through their own experiences, they may have dated men that were jacked and ripped as fuck on many occasions and found that underneath all of that blistering muscle mass, there was actually this very insecure, "small man" residing inside of it.

Is that possible?

I think it is.  After all, most of us started lifting weights in order to become something we were not.  Because of that very insecurity that reside inside of us that made us desire more muscle and strength.  And why?  Simple.  Respect and acceptance.  Which is ultimately what every single one of us truly want from most other people.  We want them to accept us, and respect who we are.  If that means it starts with something as "shallow" as our physical appearance, then that's where it starts.

It could also be that these women do in fact feel insecure as well.  The fact that one of the reasons the article stated that the dad bod was so attractive was because women "want to be the pretty once".

If that's not a cry of blatant insecurity I don't know what is.  You're going to find someone else attractive because they are less attractive than you?  Please, find a self help book and go to work.

You have issues.

I'm not really worried about women finding the dad bod attractive because these things seem to sort themselves out.  Men get all in a huff about women finding the dad bod attractive because they think it means suddenly women will be swarming the beach, ignoring their six pack in favor of the guy holding one.  But the fact is, if you care about your physical appearance, more than likely you will be attracted to someone who does as well.  And if she's busting out some knee to chest action to get across the beach to jump up and down on ol' dad bod, it's a good chance you weren't going to give her a second look anyway.

In a few months, the dad bod will be the lumbar sexual.  And some chick who has had less than two menstrual cycles will be writing some article for elitedaily about something new women should find attractive.  The same women that found the dad bod attractive will then run off to find some man based on this new trend.

And if you're dating people or finding people based on what is trending, then that ladies is truly what is shallow.  And that's what the dad bod is really all about.  Trends.  I mean let's face it, the reason they are using Leo as the poster boy for this is because he's surrounded by hot chicks 24/7.   But that's because he's Leo.  And is a famous actor.  And has hundreds of millions of dollars.  He could cover himself in rotten bison meat and still pull this off.  He's not surrounded by hot women because of his dad bod.

Men who stay in shape and take pride in their appearance; stay the course.  All you have to do in order to be considered sexy by these women again is hold out for opening day of Magic Mike 2.  Then you'll be back in trending style.  And in the meantime, there's going to be plenty of women who still find muscular, in shape dudes attractive.

Peace out.

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Maximizing Anabolic Effects through Peri-Workout Nutrition

My article at Strength Sensei -

http://www.strengthsensei.com/maximizing-anabolic-effects-through-peri-workout-nutrition/

5 movements to help improve your deadlift

My article at Captain Jacked ..........


http://captainjacked.com/5-movements-to-increase-your-deadlift/

Hypertrophy and Strength regarding frequency, volume, and intensity

I've been meaning to write this for a while and just haven't gotten around to it.  But Brad Schoenfeld just released this study regarding hypertrophy and strength in relation to bodypart frequency, so it sort of sparked me getting this done.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25932981

Like any study, there are lots of factors that could be debated to make it more robust and give more insight, but it's a decent look.

Essentially.....


Results showed significantly greater increases in forearm flexor muscle thickness for TOTAL compared to SPLIT. No significant differences were noted in maximal strength measures. The findings suggest a potentially superior hypertrophic benefit to higher weekly resistance training frequencies.

What they found was that training a muscle group more times a week resulted in a higher degree of growth, where multiple times a week did not result in significant strength increases. 

This really is of no surprise to me.  

From my own experience with my own training and training others I've never noticed some marked improvement from training the competitive lifts multiple times a week.  I think that beginners/novice lifters will, and often do.  However noobs can do pretty much anything and show fast improvement.  So let's leave those types out of this because there really is no reason to talk about "what worked great for me as a noob."  Noobs need to be quiet with their opinions on what works and what doesn't.  

From a hypertrophy standpoint, I think this makes sense on a lot of levels to train with more frequency, than worrying as much about volume or intensity.  I will get to that.

I always factor in three important training variables to meet to single most important variable in regards to what is efficient.

I call this the sliding scale of frequency/volume/intensity to meet the recovery variable.  

Frequency - How often you train a lift or bodypart 

Volume - How much total work you do for a bodypart or movement or in a given training session

Intensity - The percentage of 1 rep max you are using or RPE (rate of perceived exertion)

The single variable that cannot be violated here when managing these three, is of course recovery.

If all three variables are too high, then recovery will generally not be met.  Two of the variables can be high, but the third variable needs to be lowered in relation to those two.  

So if you want to train many times a week, with a high intensity level, then you need to lower the amount of volume you will be using in said programming.  

If you don't/can't train many times a week, then you can train heavier with more volume.  

So forth and so on.  

For example, in Sheiko, you train only three times a week.  But you bench twice, squat two times, and deadlift once.  This is the usual practice with that programming.  

But the intensity used in each session is often pretty low.  In fact, it's between 68 and 72 percent on average.  

This is smart.  

If you're going to train with an insane amount of volume for a lift, and do that lift multiple times a week, you will not be able to train it with a high degree of intensity and still meet the recovery factor.

The interesting part of the study for me, which backs my thoughts about training for both hypertrophy or strength, is that if you want to grow larger, hitting bodyparts a little more often works very well.  But if your goal is strength, then hitting the lifts once per week works just fine in comparison to doing them many times a week.

The latter there is what will probably get debated more severely.  

Right now there's been an influx of the suggestion that you need to squat, bench, deadlift 1,234,954 times a week in order to really improve on the big 3.  I don't agree with that.  Especially with more advanced/qualified lifters. 

The idea behind this of course, is "practice".  The more practice you have with the lifts, the more efficient you are at performing them, thus because maximal strength has a neural capacity, you'll see results there.  

But there is, in my opinion, some flaws here.  

First off, I believe this "multiple times a week" thing has its roots in Olympic lifting.  Olympic lifters do their competition lifts, or some form of it many times a week.  And because some of the world's greatest lifters and coaches created their programming this way, it bled into powerlifting circles.  

However there is a problem with this in relation to training for developing maximal strength in the powerlifts. 

For the Olympic lifts, there is no eccentric portion of the movement.  And the eccentric portion of the movement causes a great deal more of damage at the cellular level than concentric only training (which is what Olympic lifters mainly do).  

This throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the sliding scale of F/V/I because one can more easily recover from concentric only training, than training that involves both eccentric and concentric.  Thus a high degree of F/V/I can be met and still meet the recovery factor.  

When the eccentric portion of the movement is added into this equation, then the sliding scale needs to be adhered to in my opinion, lest recovery not be met.  

Remember, recovery is both at a system level and localized, i.e. you need to recovery as a whole and the musculature trained needs to recover as well.  Fatigue will mask fitness.  So while training a sore muscle will often cause a decrease in soreness the following day, that muscle group will not be able to perform at it's zenith if it is sore from a previous training session.

Second, the Olympic lifts are far more technical than the powerlifts, and need to be practiced more often for the motor cortex to be patterned more efficiently.  This should make sense as there is another variable in Olympic lifting than doesn't play as big of a role in powerlifting.  

Speed.  

Speed plays a significantly larger role in making lifts in Olympic lifting than powerlifting.  No one makes it into the highest levels of Olympic lifting by being slow.  In powerlifting, some people are indeed explosive lifters, but lots of elite level guys are "grinders", and make maximal attempts for them, despite what looks like slow bar speed.  In fact, when you see a maximal lift made in powerlifting it often is slow, and grinding.  

What this comes back to is strength vs power.  

Power is largely unimportant when it comes to testing maximal strength.  I don't want to say it's unimportant, as a lack of speed will still cause someone in powerlifting to miss a lift if enough speed isn't generated to make it through the transition point in the movement.  But it's far more important in Olympic lifting.  

Maximal strength is about maximal weight moved.    

Power is about how fast one can move it.  

So as you can see, in powerlifting strength is more important than power, and in Olympic lifting, power is more important than strength.  Of course, they are important in both areas but the degree of importance varies between the two (I have to add that because without fail some asshat will try to disagree by saying you need both....yes you do.  But not to the same extent in each sport).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, so the other reason that Olympic lifting needs to be practiced more is because the competitive lifts are more complex because of the power/speed factor.  In powerlifting, the big three are not overly technical lifts compared to the Olympic lifts, and over time, once the technique is dialed in it's all about just getting stronger.  A guy in powerlifting can get a lift out of position, but be strong enough to finish making the lift.  I don't believe there are any such corrections in Olympic lifting as if the bar is out of the desired path it ends up just being a missed lift most of the time (I have to add so many caveats to articles now because people will add an exception to everything you write).

So to sum this way-too-long part up....

1.  Olympic lifters can violate the F/V/I scale because of a lack of eccentric portion in their movements.  The F/V/I should still be adhered to in regards to training for strength or mass. 

2.  Olympic lifting needs to be practiced more often because the competitive lifts are more complex because of the power/speed factor.  It has less of a factor in training for powerlifting and bodybuilding (it has zero factor in bodybuilding).

The two above parts are in my opinion very big factors in why powerlifters shouldn't pattern their programming after Olympic lifting programs to reach maximal results.  These are two very big factors and need to be taken into account.

From a powerlifting perspective, in order to meet the single factor of recovery, once someone becomes efficient at performing the lifts, doing them once a week should work just fine for achieving maximal strength.  Of course there is a caveat there too.  I've often seen guys benefit more from benching twice a week than once a week.  But I believe there is a reason for this.  And it has to do with what else we saw in the study above, and what I've seen with my own training and training my clients.

Hypertrophy - 

This article is getting long and I only wanted to sort of blurb it so I will get to the point here.

Because there is generally less musculature in the torso than the lower body, there is less overall taxation on the system as a whole, and localized as well, so recovery is doesn't take as long.  I believe for MOST guys, this is why big pressing tends to be a maturity lift.  It takes longer to really hypertrophy the chest, shoulders, triceps, etc in order to be able to push big weights.  This is why you will often see a very young kid squatting and deadlifting pretty significant weights (sometimes almost at elite levels) but not bench pressing anywhere near elite levels.  That is something that generally takes much longer to develop because the muscle mass to move elite level weights just have not been developed yet.  

Since the recovery factor tends to be quicker for torso muscle, especially pressing muscles, then one can train those muscles with more frequency, volume, and intensity, without violating the recovery factor as easily as lower body movements like squats, deadlifts, etc.  Thus, pressing twice a week tends to work well for people who have lagging bench presses.

This is why I believe that over time a lot of guys settled on a split that looks similar to this...

Day 1 - Squat

Day 2 - Bench

Day 3 - Deadlift

Day 4 - Light bench - Heavy Shoulders

Or something to that effect.

This leads us back into the hypertrophy part of things.  

So why does frequency look like it plays a much larger role in developing hypertrophy at a faster rate?

My own thoughts and experience from it...

More chances for muscle protein synthesis/repair from the training stimulus (this is what growth is, after all) without violating the recovery principle.  

Of course, once again the F/V/I scale has to be adhered to in order for recovery to be met (again, that's where growth happens).  So the more often you can tap into that stimulus and recover from it properly, the more instances you get to repair damage, thus the more chances you have for growth.

So why doesn't this apply to strength?

Because to reach maximal strength levels, as in a powerlifting peak, there tends to be a greater system recovery factor than localized one (I believe this is related to the neural factor).  

Again, muscle growth can be done by training at a very high volume, with great frequency, but the intensity factor is lowered (training with much lighter weights and more res).  My personal belief (again, an opinion) is that the intensity scale (going heavy - 90+%) causes more of a longer recovery period, thus must be managed more conservatively than frequency and volume.  

This is why bodybuilders can and often do train often, with a lot of volume, but don't always need to go super heavy in order to get very massive (tension is another factor here as well).  Where lots and lots of powerlifters can train the big three once per week, but use higher intensity ranges, and manage their volume appropriately, and get very strong.

Getting big and getting strong have overlapping factors, but they aren't always completely related to each other in regards to a training ideology, i.e. certain things can be used to get bigger but not stronger, and certain things can be used to get stronger but not bigger.  Or let me say this, not as efficiently as the other.

"What about Sheiko, Paul?  You referenced Shieko above!"

I did.  My point about that was that even for powerlifting, Sheiko takes into account the F/V/I factor by making sure not to maximize all three, so that recovery can be met at the neural/system/whole body level.  

But guess what?

When you look at the peaking cycle in Sheiko, what happens?

The volume gets lowered as the intensity rises.  Again, this is smart and what has to happen to make sure that recovery at the system level is met.

Conclusion - 

This should give an idea about how to plan both offseason or hypertrophy cycles, and then of course strength cycles.  This is exactly how I plan things from offseason, to pre-meet work, to peaking for competition.  

Working the sliding scale of F/V/I to meet recovery is a huge factor regardless of whether you are training for strength or mass.  If you don't recover, progress will be slow coming or not at all.  It's up to you to balance these factors into your training or find yourself stuck in a plateau.  

There's lot of opinion/anecdotal stuff in here.  I'm sure that will make someone go out and research lots of pubmed to "prove" me wrong.  Just take this article as an "insight" piece to my thoughts on the factors written about above.

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Simple isn't sexy, but it works

I can't tell you how many times over the last two decades of training that I've heard the same story from advanced guys about a common mistake they often made in their training or dieting, that kept them spinning their wheels.  

"Everytime I deviated from simplicity I made less and less progress."

And yet I can't tell you how many times I've read in regards to what I write about, or espouse, that I'm not offering anything "new" or groundbreaking.

Well no shit, Sherlock.  

I'm not sure why people believe that complicated means better.  But that often appears to be the case in regards to training, dieting, supplementation, etc.  The more moving parts a training or diet program has in it, and the harder it is to explain, the more worth it seems to have.  At least, on the surface or in some internet debate.

I think it's because people really love to debate and talk about training and dieting that makes those kinds of programs so popular.  These days, it seems, lots of people would rather talk and debate about training and dieting methodologies rather than DO THEM.  I literally had a discussion the other day where, of course, studies had to be thrown in to determine whether or not something was valid or not.  When in this particular case, all that people had to do was actually TRY what was being debated.  That's where we are at now, and have been for a while in regards to what is trending. Nothing is actually tried.  It's just all debated on whether it will or won't work.  

I watched a foremost expert in the field of strength training with more than 30 years of training some of the best athletes in the world defend his stance that doing antagonist muscle stretching before working the agonist muscle gave an increase in strength.  In this instance, it had already been shown in a study but the fact was, instead of just trying it, people wanted to debate it.  

People would rather debate about training and dieting modalities rather than do them.  And of course, the more simple a training plan or diet is, the less merit it appears to have.  Yet most of the guys I see debating about this all the time, don't even look like they lift.  There seems to have been some kind of influx of nerds into lifting now that care more about debating than doing.  Then of course, they get their panties in a knot when you tell them that your ideas work and you have a mountain of anecdotal evidence behind them to show they work, but some study says otherwise.  

At some point, we have to get back to actual results.  Because after all, isn't that all that really matters?  As one of my friends, who also has a PhD in this field told me, "at some point you have to get back to results.  Fuck your arguments.  Produce or shut the fuck up."  

I recently did a series of seminars in Australia with two of the very best in their respective fields.  I can't say who, as then that qualifies me as a "name dropper".  I never realized talking about the people I work with and talk with on a daily and weekly basis, guys that are also close friends, meant I was name dropping but apparently it does.  So I will say it was Bert and Ernie.  

Anyway, if there was a common theme shared between the three of us it was this - 

1.  Keep things as simple as possible

2.  The answers usually lie somewhere in moderation, not extremes.

3.  Don't deviate from what is working.

4.  Make choices based on what can be done long term, i.e. longevity.  

When Bert was going over his dieting strategy, I was shocked.  Shocked because it was so simple.  It was exactly what I used to adhere to, and I what I eventually came back to when the diet information overload got to me.  

For years and years, I thought dieting was a really simple idea.  You figured out your total calories needed to gain, maintain, or lose weight, factored in protein and fat requirements, filled in carbs with the rest and had your "diet".  This is exactly what Dorian Yates did during the years he was winning the Mr. Olympia.  

He simply reduced calories over time from 6,000 a day to 3,500 a day, and got shredded to the bone.  Of course he did cardio and trained, etc.  However his dieting strategy was that simple.  But people will tell you now that it isn't that simple, and that while that worked for him, it won't work for everyone.  

But because there is a new diet every few weeks in the industry filled with "science" as to why it works and is far more efficient in it's approach than the simplicity of "counting calories."  After all, you don't need a degree in nutritional science to use an online calculator to figure this out.  So something that simple surely cannot work.  That would mean people could sit down and iron out a diet all by themselves, thus making diet coaches obsolete.  Even worse now, is the diet coaches who use such simple and doable methods often get questioned because it doesn't seem complex enough.  There has to be some crazy method involved that other people couldn't possibly fathom on their own in order to get leaner, or grow.  

When Ernie and I were going over both offseason and contest peaking cycles, everyone was amazed at how simple it was to plan these out, so long as you adhered to some simple rules about planning...

1.  Leave your ego at the door - Don't plan your cycle around unrealistic goals

2.  Don't miss or grind any reps in training

Simple.  And it works.  

And simplicity is what has really become a lost art in training and diet.  It's not sex or fancy and people constantly bitch that "this guy isn't writing anything new, and has nothing original to say."  

I could make up some crazy ass training scheme or diet scheme, and use all sorts of fancy studies and manipulate them and I guess it could be a big craze but in the end, like a lot of fads that come and go, it would be seen as such and take away from what really works, and what people should be doing.

I think it's hard for people to accept that, to get shredded you're probably going to have to eat chicken and broccoli, and that to get stronger it's just going to take a long time more than likely, and you're just going to have to do the basics over and over and over again, but that is actually what works.  I could sit here and write out all the complex and trendy diets and training methodologies that have popped up over the years, and show that they didn't last or have any sustainability but that would be a waste of my time.  I've literally had to have arguments with people that doing more reps had far bigger benefits for hypertrophy than staying in low rep ranges.  Nevermind that it's been proven for decades and decades, and that there are lots of studies that show it's far more efficient.  

"No, you can gain the same degree of hypertrophy doing low reps as well."

You may can, but it's terribly inefficient at best, and pretty dumb at worst.

And for all the talk about people understanding what works and doesn't, I often see these very complex and dynamic systems pop up, and people get crazy about them, then they fall off after a while and everyone gets that they don't have merit.  

Then they fall for it all over again in a few months when a new fad pops up.  My guess is, these are the same people that spend money on trendy clothing and haircuts, get armband tattoos, and grow a beard because they think beard culture is awesome (yes I have a beard because I hate shaving more than having a beard).

I remember a conversation a few years ago where a guy told me that the naturally gifted guys could get away with just doing the basics because it was all they needed.  That the people who weren't gifted would need to train in a more complex way to get to that level.

This made no sense to me at all.  So then why didn't the naturally gifted guys also train in such a manner?  Wouldn't this have made them even more elite?  Like, elite elite?  Does that make any sense?

I think some of this falls back on special snowflake syndrome.  That being, if a guy isn't elite or competing at a high level or getting massive gainz from his program, then it must be because the program is flawed.  It can't be because genetically he might be more inferior than someone else.  His mom told him he was special, so it has to be true.  

And yet, as I opened the article with, even the very special snowflakes, the genetically elite often found where they went wrong was when they deviated from staying basic and made things far more complicated than they had to be.  So if the elite didn't benefit from getting fancy, you probably won't either.  

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Some benching and updates

Hey all -

Sorry I have slacked so hard the last month with updates.  Obviously traveling makes it more difficult to get content out but I have a lot of shit coming, so stay tuned.

I am still a bit jet lagged coming back from Aussie.  Going there was no big deal, but coming back has really caused a lot of fatigue.

Still, I went in and benched today and decided to go ahead and test my EDM for benching cycles because I am very fatigued.

Happily I hit an easy 455 close grip so that's what I am going to base my cycles around.  I am pretty sure I could have done a double here, so that puts my close grip at around 475ish right now at 249 pounds.

After that I did some guillotine presses.  I think I will do a video on these in the future.  I used to do these a lot when I was younger but haven't in a long time.  They felt awesome.  I went light as they do put the shoulders and pecs in a bit of precarious position but the stretch is fantastic.

I will be having articles coming out at flex, t-nation, and for Poliquin in the coming weeks so be on the look out for those.  Also, I was picked up by True Nutrition as a sponsored athlete and I'm really excited and happy about that.

Today's session -

Close Grips -
bar x 20, 20
135 x 12
225 x 5
275 x 4
315 x 3
365 x 2
405 x 1
455 x 1
365 x 10



Guillotine Press - 225 x 3 sets of 10

Flex Machine Bench (seated) - 315 x 3 x 8
Cable Cross Overs - 4 sets of 12

Db Curls - 30's x 5 sets of 20
Incline Hammer Curls - 30's x 3 sets of 20

Good session for only having 3.5 hours of sleep.