1. Progress comes irregularly. Some
months you add a few pounds to most of your lifts, some years you end up where
you started at best, or even regress in some. Within any given month, some days
you feel great and have no problem moving weights that were very challenging
just a few weeks ago, and some days you feel like the empty bar is already
difficult to lift. That’s OK, learn to accept it and keep going.
2. Consistency beats any other
variable. Perform Lift A frequently (2-3 times a week, every week, w no
excuses) and regularly (always with good form, 15-25 total reps per session, in
the 70%-80% of your 1RM, trying to improve the total number of reps or the
average pounds lifted from one session to the next) and it will improve.
Perform Lift B every now and then (less than once per week) and haphazardly
(changing substantially the number of reps, the intensity and the variable you
aim to improve between consecutive sessions) and it will most likely stall,
unless you are a total noob (when almost any training methodology, or lack
thereof, will work).
3. Beyond the intermediate level there
is no such thing as “general strength”. As it grows farther from its baseline
level, strength becomes more and more movement specific. If you want to get
bigger numbers in the deadlift, past certain point it won’t help much to do
good mornings with 40% of your 1RM DL, or “grip work” with your 0.5 CoC… if you
want to improve your bench press (and who doesn’t?), past certain point it won’t
help much to do standing presses with pink dumbbells or hundreds upon hundreds
of bodyweight push ups. You will need to deadlift heavy and bench press heavy
to improve in those lifts, and that means using the competition stance (the one
that allows you to move more weight). There is just no way around it
4. However, squatting is the closest
thing to a magic juice that provides you with that hypothetical “general
strength”. In doubt, squat heavy and frequently, and most of the rest of your
lifts will go up even if you change nothing else. There are lifts that allow
you to move a greater tonnage (the DL), but they take more than what they give.
There are lifts that require the use of a greater number of muscles (the power
clean and the power snatch), but they require such a level of speed and skill
that they do not allow for the high number of reps at high intensity that the
squat does, and I believe it is that sweet spot of being demanding enough,
challenging enough and systemic enough that makes it an unrivalled option for
growing stronger. Want proof? Any sensible weightlifting program relies almost
exclusively on the squat to make the lifters actually stronger, and then has
them performing countless reps of the competition lifts just to perfect the
technique. Why? Because said comp lifts are too technical to be “trainable” in
a sense that allows for strength improvement beyond a quite modest level, while
the squat allows for an almost infinite progression with very modest technical
demands
5. There are a number of things almost
as valuable as strength: speed, flexibility and mobility, being mostly pain
free, and having a modicum of endurance (I define that modicum as being able to
run 10K under or around 50’ any day of the week without any special
preparation). A sensible, balanced training plan would account for the
maintenance and development of all of them. However, notice the “almost” I
placed before “as valuable as”… There are times when you throw common sense
through the window and devote some time to maniacally pursue greater strength
to the exclusion of everything else, and rather than stretch and foam roll and
do some cardio you just add a couple sets of heavy deadlifts or twenty crazy
widowmaker squats (you know the old routine: load the bar with the maximum
weight you could do ten reps with, and do twenty reps, whatever it takes… a
real test of character!). Yup, everything aches almost daily, you can barely
walk, you need five minutes to reach your shoelaces so you can tie them and you
couldn’t sprint to cross the road even if an eighteen wheeler was barreling
towards you. But when you break your previous squat PR, even if it is by a
modest 5 pounds you feel so elated that you really don’t care about all the
misery you have put yourself through
6. Lifting with gloves is like running
a marathon in high heels. It probably could be done, but what’s the point?
7. To lift big you need to eat big.
Trying to “cut”, or reduce your percentage of body fat, or do a “recomposition”
is all well and good, but it won’t in any way help you put up bigger weights.
Unless, again, you are quite a newbie and can still get some mileage of
improving your neuromuscular efficiency (from inhibiting the golgi organs in
your tendons to learning to recruit more neuromuscular units and using your
leverages more efficiently through better technique) the only way to move more
weight is to have more muscular units to begin with. That means making your
muscles bigger, something that happens spontaneously if you train consistently
and non-idiotically, as long as you feed them enough. Which in turn requires
almost axiomatically eating above maintenance level (sometimes significantly
above) and gaining weight, and not all of that weight is going to be lean mass.
If you had “striations” and visible veins (even more visible abs, which require
a body fat below 10%) better say goodbye to them if you really want to beat
some PR’s. Hey, I’d rather be fat, strong and awesome than skinny, “well toned”
and weak (and ladies on my age bracket are not that big on striations, veins,
abz and all that unhealthy looking paraphernalia, anyway), but to each
one his own
8. Rest is what happens between
productive sets. It serves to recover barely enough to complete what you had
planned. Your attention and focus are an important part of that recovery, to
ensure you get to the bar anew ready to crush it and overcome what (specially
in the final sets) should be, if the session was properly planned, a grievously
challenging task. Talking to other people does not help that process, but
distracts from it. Ditto for browsing the web in your mobile phone, looking
lecherously at the girls in the gym or looking intently to your own image in
the mirror (mirrors are banished from serious training places), doubly so if
you raise your shirt to have a loving look at your abs or “flex” or “pose” in
any manner whatsoever. Hearing distractedly the background music (as long as it
is not some testosterone-reducing current commercial monstrosity, as is
frequently the case in big box gyms) is OK, though
9. Lifting is not funny, exciting,
entertaining, amusing, merry, mirthful or gay (although a lot of gay people do
a lot of it, strength not being normally their main concern, but I digress). It
is hard work. It is a struggle which demands sacrifice, renunciation and
joyless dedication to give even middling results. Why do we do it, then, and
stick with it through thick and thin, in the hot and humid days of summer and
the dark and freezing days of winter? Beats me…
10. The most complex periodization
schemes can be summarized as “take one step back so you can take two steps
forward”. Then repeat. And repeat, and repeat and repeat
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