Are you afraid to be strong?

Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder but no one wants to lift no heavy ass weights-Ronnie Coleman, 8 time Mr Olympia

It seems nowadays that no truer words have ever been spoken.

Literally every single friend  I have who is into lifting who doesn’t do powerlifting says the exact same thing. None of them care about getting stronger. Every guy, and every girl I talk about training with, only wants to “get toned” or “build their physique”

Why is everyone so afraid to be strong?

When did strength and performance become completely detached from “building a physique”? Do these people ever wonder why they seem to have the same physique year after year? Do they ever wonder why they spend so much time in the gym isolating every little muscle,or spending hours prepping strange trendy foods only to never  appear significantly leaner or more muscular?

How is it that these same people seem so obsessed with watching sports, and envying the physiques of their heroes but none of them seem to look like these people?  How can these people be spinning their wheels and not going anywhere? Bad genetics? No drugs? Not enough money to eat right?

The simple answer is this-THEY ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH!

It really is that simple. Want bigger legs, then squat more weight. Want bigger shoulders, overhead press more weight. Want a bigger back, then deadlift and row more weight.  I can almost just end this article right there and be finished; the answer is really that simple.

Every single person i know who wants to tone or just look buff has this one problem in common without fail. They are not strong enough. How do  know they aren’t strong enough?

Its easy, they are not even anywhere near their genetic potential. How do I know what someone’s genetic potential is? The real answer is-I don’t need to.

No one knows the answer to that but it certainly isn’t less then a double body weight squat, a 2.5 times body weight deadlift or a 1.5 times body weight bench press (for men.) With the exception of some medical problem every single able bodied person can get to these numbers and exceed them with fairly little effort. Yet everyone I know with a less then impressive physique who still spends hours in the gym, can not hit any of these strength bench marks.

The basic barbell exercises are the fundamental corner stones of the most basic human movement patterns. Even the barbell itself is the most basic yet most efficient tool for building strength in these fundamental movement patterns. Oddly enough, strength is also one of the easiest athletic traits to grow and improve. The vertical jump cannot be dramatically improved and sport skill can take many many years to perfect. Yet building some decent strength can be done in a relatively short amount of time with efficient training, and without drugs, and it is a fairly permanent physical change to the body. So why the hell isn’t anyone doing any of this?

Two main reasons:

1: Mental laziness

2: Lack of education

To varying degrees and combinations these two things are the main reasons that most gym goers refuse to believe that getting strong on the basics barbell exercises is the answer to their physique goals.

Mental laziness: A lot of the people I’m talking about are not actually lazy, they really do “work hard in the gym” the problem is that it’s physically hard to  do tons of drops sets to get a burn or pump but it is way easier mentally to do drop sets or high reps with 135 pounds on the squat then to climb under the bar with double body weight and pound out 5 or 6 grueling reps. Real heavy weight can be scary, it can be stressful, and that can make it very appealing to use other techniques to make lighter weight seem harder. But at the end of the day its still just lighter weight, and while in the very short term you may see a change, this will lead to stagnation very quickly. This is a time when you need to work smarter, and harder.

This brings me to a lack of education. The very principles of volume, frequency, intensity, and hypertrophy are simply not taught to people by the magazines or whatever bullshit websites these people read. The actual hormone response from lifting heavy weights simply cannot be faked by using light weights until they feel heavy. If it could we could all just squat 10 pounds a thousand times and build huge legs.

The best strength results come from training with 85-95 percent of your one rep max, the best muscle building or hypertrophy results come from using 65-75 percent of your max. The middle ground of 80-85% works well for building strength and mass. Roughly speaking, 75% of your max is a weight that you can lift ten times and not an 11th.

What does this mean? It basically means that the prevailing common knowledge of higher reps building more muscle then lower reps, to a point, is true. The key here however is that weight used still has to increase over time. If you can bench 225 for 10 reps and you increase to where you can do 245 for ten reps then you will be much larger. if you don’t add weight to the bar, that weight simply becomes too light to stimulate an adaptation in the muscle, because it falls out of the hypertrophy range and into the endurance range 50-60% and your physique will begin to stagnate. It’s perfectly fine to stay in the lighter range of the spectrum (75%) for a while, maybe a very long while, but improving within that range has to be your main priority. You simply have to add more weight. You have to get stronger.

This brings me to another point-Efficiency

You’re already spending hours in the gym each week, why not spend it on the most efficient exercises you can. Tons of arm curls may build big biceps but they won’t build anything else, but being able to row a large amount of weight will build a big back and big biceps. You can flail around with tricep extensions all day, but that won’t build a bigger chest or bigger shoulders, but building a bigger over head press or bench press will build all three of those muscle groups. These days everyone seems super busy and we can only spend so much time in the gym, why not spend that time as efficiently as possible?

This brings me back to the basic barbell exercises. These exercises work the largest amount of muscle groups thru the fullest range of natural motion. More muscles moving more weight equals more muscle mass being built.

They are also scaleable. You can always add more weight to the squat, or deadlift, but 900 pound deadlifters aren’t doing bicep curls with 200 pound dumbells.

They aren’t doing lateral raises with 150 pound dumbells. The isolation exercises simply can not be scaled up that far. However, you can always add a little bit to your bench press, squat and deadlift.

I’m not saying that isolation lifts don’t have a role to play but they should never make up the bulk of your training time. 

There isn’t a 500 pound squatter on earth who doesn’t have impressive quads. There isn’t a 600 pound deadlifter who doesn’t have an impressive back. If you want to get bigger, you have to get stronger. it is that simple. Every major muscle growth spurt I’ve had coincided with large strength increases, and also, every period of stagnation I’ve encountered happened when I focused too much on making lighter weights feel heavy, and not actually increasing the weight on the bar. So after reading all this, ARE YOU STILL SCARED OF GETTING STRONGER?