For the record, I am pretty much done with it. I’m tired of looking at people’s emails and forum posts about the incredible number of pull-ups or Hindu pushups they have done for three months and the failure to gain any appreciable muscle mass. Worse, these fine people email and ask what they are doing wrong. Of course, our readers will know my only question:
What are your goals?
The answer, almost universally, is 1. Lose fat and 2. Gain some muscle mass. So, why, I think to myself are they doing a half-baked high school P.E. class program designed from the boot camp training programs for wars nearly 75 years ago? It’s one thing to train a depression era farm boy (and I am related to many) into an infantryman or Marine, but it was never the Drill Sergeant’s goal to prepare you for a photo shoot on the beach with a T-Vixen.
The problem with this Boot Camp approach is that it has been keyholed into what appears to be a modern and scientific training approach for elite training. And, to be honest, it makes sense. Sadly, for most of us it is not working, but let me offer some help. When you read that the Soviets or East Germans developed these secret techniques in some secret facility in some secret location, hell, I get all 007, too. Let’s look at this approach and let me offer the great insight of this program: the development of qualities.
Let’s break it out simply. There were believed to be three kinds of stages that one went through for elite performance in a sport. (Really, I should have an exclamation point after sport, because that is the point most people miss: if you aren’t doing this for a sport, usually an individual sport that is part of the Olympics, none of this stuff is going to be important, but follow along, please). The stages were:
General Physical Preparation (GPP)
Specialized Physical Preparation (SPP)
Competitive Period.
If you were born after 1964, none of this has been utilized in your lifetime, but it is very important to keep reading. While many trainers embrace these three steps as set in stone, and it certainly has great value even if I am probably too critical, elite athletes have moved to far more specialization. Of course, as John Jerome wrote years ago, “specificity works, but at a price.†The price for me has been at best a lot of limping and at worst a lot of surgeries. Many of the more modern principles of elite sport training were discussed in my article
http://www.t-nation.com/portal_includes/artic les/2005/05-137-training.html The lessons of Accumulation are probably what most people “mean†when they talk about General Physical Preparation, but lets discuss these older views of training.
Basically, it is this:
GPP is all about building whatever “qualities†are important for your sport. Hang on here, this is important.
SPP is attempting to continue upon the measurements that define the qualities of your sport, but now you attempt to hone your skills specific to your sport.
Competition is fairly obvious. It is an attempt to master the skills of your sport during the time of competition. The qualities that you built upon for the past years may or may not support your success and that, as I often tell athletes, is the tragedy of this brand of training.
The skill aspects, which I am going to ignore after this, relate solely and simply to that sport. If you can barely stand up from a chair, but can toss a shot put over 75 feet, you are the best shot putter in the world and nobody is going to ask about your heart rate. Every second you walked on the treadmill to get your cardio was time away from building yourself into a champion shotputter.
What are the “qualities?†You can come up with your own list, but let’s put out the basics:
Strength, the ability to move loads.
Power, the ability to move a load pretty quick
Flexibility and/or joint mobility
Endurance, whatever that means any more.
Fat loss, if applicable to your sport or goals
Hypertrophy, if applicable to your sport or goals
Obviously, skill shows up in much of any training. Something as simple as “speed training†can involve lots of deadlifts and squats but there is also a need for smooth and efficient technique, too, although I would argue genetics is where we start when it comes to elite sprinting.
Here is the issue: for most of our readers, what Qualities are we addressing? Recently, a bodybuilding magazine stated something along these lines: “We don’t want to be strong, we just want to look strong.†After I vomited a little in my mouth, I thought about it. It’s true. Guys who simply tell me that “I want to look good naked,†and I pray they aren’t thinking of doing that with me, are probably thinking along these lines. Of course, and I love to point this out, most guys who train to look good naked nearly have to be close to naked before you can tell they even train. In street clothes, they look like members of the high school band which is probably why most of them wear t-shirts three sizes too small and love to cut the sleeves and sides off of most of their clothes.
In other words, the two Qualities that perhaps the bulk of our readership wishes to achieve nearly all the time are:
1. Fat loss
2. Hypertrophy (more muscle mass or size, but with an eye to symmetry)
Without a doubt in my mind, with perhaps just a simple nod to the Two-week Atkins Diet Induction, there is no better plan for Fat Loss than the Velocity Diet. I went from 249 (or 251 depending on how we stood on the scale that day) to 226 in 28 days. My blood profiles improved so much my doctor kept flipping the results and shaking his head. Hear me: the 28-Day Velocity Diet is the best route for most of our readership for fat loss.
But, I am also honest: many people fail on the V Diet. Day One is tough, but Day Two through six are simply brutal. Yes, it eases after Week Two, but it is never easy. But, it accomplishes the single most common goal for people when they ask me for advice in diet and training. I strongly urge you consider the Alpo Diet as part of your rewards and punishment goal setting work if you consider the Alpo Diet. Oh, the Alpo Diet? If you fail the V Diet, you have to eat a can of Alpo in front of your friends. Hell, make a movie and put it on the net and let me watch it, too. If you can’t help but eat a doughnut, smell some Alpo and think about it.
The problem with these two Qualities, Fat Loss and Hypertrophy, is that so much has been written on it that most people have lost site of the keys here. When people think Fat Loss, in many cases, the first idea is to do massive amounts of crunches which one world famous bodybuilder has told me is the key to getting back surgery in your future.
The answer, then, to most people’s goals is to go on the V Diet or something along those lines. As always, I am fine with whatever serious approach you take, either the V Diet or the Atkins Induction or the Warrior Diet or whatever, but Fat Loss is Diet. Sorry. The truth will set you free, but you will crave doughnuts.
Folks, the V Diet will find your six-pack. Mine were there under a nice padding of insulation. As we turn our eyes to hypertrophy, many people will instantly ask about “fat burning exercises.†Outside of some walking along with strict dieting and perhaps some top end sprinting or other horrific training ideas, exercise is a poor relative when compared to diet in the world of fat loss. Ten thousand crunches won’t do a thing for your six-pack. In fact, most people are so far off in their understanding of the entire abdominal and lower back area that most of our training dogma of the past few years is guaranteed to lead to injury. There is a phrase that has reached almost cliché status in the last year or so and I think it deserves some review: “First, stability, then, mobility.â€
I like the concept far better than using that word I despise: the core. I think of the area from below the shoulders to the top of the hips like the athlete has a chain link fence wrapped around it. A few years ago on a road trip in Utah, I came across a car that had slid off the road and had been stopped and held up by a chain link fence. Now, certainly the 2000 pound car driving at 65 miles per hour had ruined the chain link fence beyond its original job description, but the car was still being held up. If you follow my image, you need those interlocking strands of steel, but you must be flexible enough to expand and contract. It’s not “To Six-Pack or Not to Six-Pack,†it’s the idea of being solid, strong and flexible.
While I am on the topic, mobility is really pretty simple. Work your butt, literally. I like Gray Cook’s great insight about training this area: “Maintain your squat, improve your deadlift.†I will go to my grave telling people that the movement of squatting is important, so important you should do it every day, but the load is secondary (within reason). Do all the deadlifts you can discover: Sumo Style, Snatch Grip, Snatch Grip on Blocks, Thick Bar, Duck Footed, Clean Grip, Thumbless or whatever else you can find on the internet’s Black Books of Deadlift Secrets.
Let’s now address the real issue: gaining muscle mass. As a strength coach, I field a lot of questions about hypertrophy. Actually, against all public opinion to the contrary, for many sports hypertrophy is an important part of the game. Mike Ditka, a great American Football coach, noted on Mike and Mike in the Morning last week, that “some guys look good in the showers, but can’t play.†I always say: “Looks like Tarzan, Plays like Jane.†So, you do have to be careful here with the balance of things.
One way I address this issue is by changing the term “Hypertrophy†or “Body Building†to “Armor Building.†Yep, armor. I played Varsity Football for South City High back in the glory days (key Bruce Springsteen) and all my games were at night. My last game was played on Thanksgiving Day early in the morning. Hours later, when during a normal week I would have been asleep, we ate Thanksgiving Dinner and I was simply amazed at how much pain my upper arms felt from the banging of a game. Since that time, I have bought into the idea of Armor Building for football.
There is no question that the more time one spends under load, the more likely hypertrophy (bigger muscles) will result. Note that I never give absolutes here. I had an athlete ask me about soreness and I found myself speechless as I have never found or read credible work that soreness is an indicator of anything. Like soreness, any and all methods of training seem to work across the spectrum, but few of us have ever found the answer that works for every body every time. So, how do we increase the amount of time under load?
Recently, I discussed the idea of complexes. Like the circuit training programs in the 1960’s, especially Bob Gajda’s P.H.A. (Peripheral Heart Action) where you literally combined lifts and movements to drive the heart rate through the roof to both burn fat and build muscle, the downside for most people is simply this: we (and I am including all of us) come into hypertrophy programs too weak. So, when most people begin doing complexes or circuits or whatever, the weights are too light.
There I said it: to build muscle, most of us need to build strength. So, Stability, Mobility then Strength should be the mantra for most of us in our weight training. And, I think it is far simpler than I ever imagined. Recently, I increased my Thick Bar Deadlift from 265 pounds (this is a seriously thick Thick Bar) to 315 pounds. I also used this same program to match my best Bench Press in a decade without ever going hard one workout. What is this miracle? Well, give me forty days.
A few years ago, Pavel Tsatsouline, noted Kettlebell master and perhaps the keenest mind in strength I have ever met, gave me a simple program. Be wary, this program is so simple, you will ignore its value.
The Forty Day Workout
1. For the next 40 Workouts (and, for the record, I find that most of my goals are reached by Day 20-22, so you can also opt for a shorter period), do the exact same training program every day.
2. Pick five exercises. I suggest you do a squatting movement like the Goblet Squat or the Overhead Squat as part of the warm up as you don’t want to ignore the movement, but it might be fun to focus on other aspects of your body.
3. I suggest you focus on these five movements:
a. A Large Posterior Chain movement (the Deadlift is the right answer),
b. Upper Body Push (Bench, Inclines, Military Press)
c. Upper Body Pull (Pullups, Rows, or, if you have ignored them like me, heavy curls)
d. A simple full body explosive move (Swings or Kettlebell Snatches)
e. And something for what I call an “Anterior†Chain move (an abdominal exercise; I think the Ab Wheel is king here, but you can also do some movements best suited to lower reps)
4. Only do two sets of five each workout for the Deadlift, Push and Pull and one set of twenty to 50 for the explosive move and a solid single set of five reps for the abs.
5. Never plan or worry about the weight or the load. Always stay within yourself and let yourself go heavy “naturally.â€
6. Don’t eat chalk or scream or pound on walls. Simply, do each lift without any emotion or excitement and strive for perfect technique.
So the workout might consist of these five movements:
Thick Bar Deadlift
Bench Press
Curl
Kettlebell Swings
Ab Wheel
For the record, this is exactly what I am recently used in my workouts. I often did this five days a week and found that my lifts naturally waved up and down through the week and the full 40 days. Sometimes something like a 250 Bench Press would feel so light for both sets of five that I had to hold back on the excitement to do more sets and reps.
The secret to the program is simply that you get your volume from doing up to ten sets of a lift in a week and the load increases as you naturally feel like the weights are “easy.†It is that simple. The first time I tried this program under Pavel’s direction, I added 15 pounds to my lifetime Incline Bench Press during the 21st workout, approximately a month after starting the program. Note well, I did this max with no spotter and I got the lift for a double. It was a 15-pound improvement over my lifetime best with an extra rep as parting gift without one single hard workout. Just two sets of five any time I entered the gym.
Certainly, come up with your own variations, but try to stick with the basic five movements and don’t stray far from two sets of five. You will be amazed at how quickly your strength will improve after just a few weeks. Also, notice the element of randomness in this workout. With a home gym, I can train this program daily but I naturally find that I take days off here and there simply because of the nature of life. You “could†do all forty days (or twenty) in a row, but things will come up.
After finishing either all forty days or when you feel your strength has come up to a level that more advanced training methods are appropriate feel free to move along. The short time you invest in focusing on strength building will do wonders for your muscle mass as you begin to attack super sets or whatever you deem important. The Forty Day workout might be an excellent way to progress through the V Diet or any other diet strategy that involves a set number of weeks. After ending the 28 days of the diet, one’s strength will take off as you ease off the strict nutritional efforts.
To review:
1. If your goals are fat loss and hypertrophy, why are you doing all this other nonsense?
2. If the two “qualities†that you want to address are fat loss and hypertrophy, why are you doing all this other nonsense?
3. Fat Loss is diet. I think the Velocity Diet is the best, but I also found amazing success with the Atkins Induction. Although you shouldn’t ignore exercise, focus on the diet side for fat loss.
4. For many of the people I have worked with on hypertrophy, basic strength needs to be addressed before we move the program into something complex. Try the 40 Day Workout and drive your basic lifts up.
5. For most of us, our goals will be reached far quicker and relatively easier by a focused diet and a simpler lifting program.
Daniel John
Just handing down what I was handed down...
Make a Difference.
Live. Love. Laugh.
Balance work, rest, play and pray (enjoy beauty and solitude)
Sleep soundly. Drink Water. Eat veggies and protein. Walk.
Wear your seat belt. Don’t smoke. Floss your teeth.
Put weights overhead. Pick weights off the floor. Carry weights.
Reread great books. Say thank you |
