Tag Archives: motivation
Don’t be Afraid of Strength
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?
Make Things Manageable
One of the key principles to achieving goals, becoming good at something, or learning a new skill is simply to start doing that thing or task first. You can’t work out if you don’t go to the gym, you can’t eat right if you’re never prepared to cook or pack your meals and you constantly have to buy fast food. You can’t have a successful business if you aren’t even in business. See what I mean? Today’s topic is about how we go about “doing” these things that we need to do to get to our goals.
A weight lifting plan ripped right off some genetic freak’s youtube channel may seem like a cool thing to do. It seems hardcore and legit, and any number of other bullshit phrases we use now days to convince ourselves to do/try stupid things, but once the terrible, brutal reality of this plan sinks in and your legs are so sore that you cant even sit down to take a shit, then we will see how hardcore it really is. Once we take a whole week off to recover, we can come back again and hit this stupid workout with some new vigor…..and repeat the cycle again. Before you know it a month has passed and you have only hit the gym 3 times in that month. Hardcore or not that doesn’t sound productive to me.
Now lets look at the sensible scenario, lets so you can only hit the gym 30 minutes a day. You’re busy, family, kids, work release, what ever, but you’re so busy that you can only get in the gym 30 minutes a day. You want week ends to yourself so you only hit the gym during the week, 5 days a week, 30 minutes each time. This seems quite easy to you and after a few weeks of floundering you have put together a plan that works with your time frame and now you’re starting to see some progress. Next thing you know 6 months has gone by and your lifts are thru the roof, you’re ripped, strong, and excited to hit the gym every day. By making it manageable you have also made it consistent, which is one of the most important things in the fitness and strength world.
Let’s ignore the fact that it’s only 30 minutes a day and instead lets look at the bigger picture. 30 minutes a day 5 times week is 2.5 hours in the gym a week, 10 hours a month, 120 hours a year. See how that is adding up? With well chosen exercises lot’s of progress can be made in just 30 minutes a day.
I’m going to switch gears here a little and show you a little bit of how I make things manageable for myself. This time I’m going to talk about my food, and meal prep. Right now i’m using Mark Rippetoe’s Texas Method and Monday is my hardest day of the week, five sets of five on bench press, squats, and the deadlift. My nutrition is crucial on a day like this and if i do not eat right during the day my energy is dramatically reduced by the time i get to the gym around 6 or 7pm. So how do I prepare for this? Easy, I spent 4 hours today (Sunday) cooking all my food for my gym days. I need lots of carbs on this program so I chose some easy carbs to make in bulk, pasta, rice and potatoes. For less then 20 bucks you can get a 3 month’s supply of each of these carb sources. To fuel muscle growth I need protein, I prefer protein from animal sources so I made 3 pounds of ground beef, 5 pounds of chicken breasts, 6 or 8 eggs and a pound of Italian sausage. I also cooked up a bunch of broccoli to go with my lunch and dinner meals. Right now here is what my three major meals each day consists of:
Breakfast-homemade hot pockets stuffed with eggs, sausage and cheese
Lunch- one cup of rice or pasta, one or two cups of broccoli, and two chicken breasts
Dinner- ground beef with green chilies and jalapenos, 2 cups of broccoli or mixed vegetable, and one whole potato, cooked and seasoned.
Right there are my major meals for each of my major workout days. They may not be the most tasty meals ever but right now they are made, packaged and ready to go for the rest of the week-manageable. They were also made with the cheapest, and easiest to prepare in bulk ingredients. See how all this works?
Mornings are tough for me so I have something that I can microwave and eat on the drive to work and it still has the protein, carbs and fats I need. I only have to pack my lunch in a container, so that’s one container to carry to work, it reheats fine and doesn’t take long to eat and gives me the carbs to get me thru work. Dinner happens after the gym and I have the most time to prepare it so I can season the potatoes any way I wish or prepare them any way I want. I can forget the potatoes and instead have my burger meat on a bun for my carbs, or I can just heat all of it up and just throw it all in one big bowl.I’ve easily tailored each meal to make it easier to manage for the different parts of my day. I’ve also bulk cooked items that can all be combined with each other or with other items to create a number of different dishes should I get tired of the same stuff each day. Manageable
With a little planning and some wise use of my time I have now made it manageable to eat properly on ever major workout day this week. This is a starting point, if I find myself feeling weak by the evening I can add more carbs. If I’m losing too much weight I can add more protein/meat sources, or if i’m gaining too much I can take out some carbs. Rather then strive for the perfect diet I first created “A” diet, it’s not perfect but it can be improved. Or I could have done nothing and then I’d have to buy crap food to eat on the way to work, be late, then buy some junk for lunch, spend more money, not get enough vegetables, then buy more junk after my workout and spend even more money and still not get enough vegetables or protein. Make it manageable first, then make it perfect. The same goes for your workouts, and even other areas of your life. A little wise planning and effort can take you a very long way.
Beginners Primer- Start Getting Strong Today!
First off let me give credit to the tagline in the image for this article, that line belongs to Mark Rippetoe and it is the name of his famous book “Starting Strength.” I am not affiliated with him or the book in any way but you should definitely check it out if you’re think about getting stronger.
Now to the nuts and bolts of this article. I am assuming that if you’re following this site/blog that you are interested in getting stronger, and probably getting stronger in general as opposed to competing in powerlifting or weightlifting. The focus of the majority of my content is going to be about general strength and athleticism. There are plenty of great websites out there specific to bodybuilding/powerlifting and weightlifting. many of which will be mentioned and quoted here but my main focus is general strength as opposed to competing in a strength sport. This article is going to be a quick primer so to speak of some of the things I would recommend if you are new to this pursuit.
Now to it. Here is my advice for a beginner:
- Get Started-If you are completely new to the gym as opposed to a person transitioning from another sport or type of weight training my first piece of advice is to get started. That sounds so simple and that’s because it is that simple. The first step is to get started with going to the gym and making it first a habit and secondly a point of enjoyment. A lot of why people hate the gym or are apprehensive at first is because it’s new to them and they are unfamiliar with the equipment and movements and they feel out of place among all the avid gym goers. The first simple step is to go to a good gym, meaning a gym with free weights, and walk around and get a feel for things, talk with other members and become more familiar with the setting. Every person in that gym was a beginner at one point so they all know how you feel and most will be happy to answer questions or provide help. Don’t be afraid to approach them, just be careful about when you decide to as the middle of a hard set is probably the wrong time. The second part of this is establishing a habit of going to the gym. In the very beginning it doesn’t matter at all what you do in the gym, just get in there and start getting in there consistently. It’s easy to skip the gym for lots of reasons but after a while it really becomes hard to skip a workout or leave once YOU ARE ALREADY IN THE GYM. Getting there is the first step and once you’re there it’s just easier to rationalize working out rather then leaving and wasting a trip. Get to the gym!
- Use a Proven Plan-After you’ve found a gym and become familiar with it and started cultivating a habit of going it is now time for my second point of advice: Use a proven plan. There will come a time when your own specific needs will dictate a plan of your own design but now is not that time. There are just too many trainers and coaches who have dedicated whole careers to proving what works to ignore their work. You are not a special snowflake, barring some unique physical abnormality you are just like every other person who has ever begun lifting weights. Make it easy on your self and use what has been proven to work. Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength is a good one, Wendler’s 531 is another, Bigger, Faster, Stronger is another, Stronglifts 5×5, Bill Starr’s 5×5 and on and on. These are proven plans that consist of the best overall movements for building strength and muscle and the best part for you is that they are simple to learn and require a minimum amount of equipment. The temptation to customize a plan is to be avoided at all costs especially during this stage. Worrying about big arms or calves when you can’t even squat your own bodyweight is foolish and short sighted. It’s a much better investment of your time and effort to get really strong first, then work on anything that has lagged after that point. Establishing a good base line using a simple beginner program is going to be the best bang for your buck.
- Set Goals-This is a crucial point because this helps provide the glue that holds your motivation and mindset together. Pick a specific goal, most likely in this instance it’s a strength goal, but it could be a specific weight loss goal, or another performance goal or even a physique goal. I remember my first physique goal and it was to be like Bruce Lee from enter the dragon. Bruce Lee was ripped and athletic and most importantly, attainable. In that movie he weighed 127 pounds and at that time in my life I weighed about 112 pounds, so ripped at 127 was an attainable goal which is a point I’ll address later. The goal needs to be specific. I absolutely hate the goal of “getting in shape.” What the hell is “in shape?” At what point are you in shape? Another one is “I want to get toned” Again, what the hell is toned? When are you toned enough? The goal needs to be specific so you know when you achieve it. An ambiguous goal is much easier to slack on once you realize that you can change the definition in your mind to suit your current level of fitness, or strength or whatever. If your goal is to bench press 300 pounds then you know exactly when you have reached it and then hopefully, you reevaluate and make new goals afterwards. These points are not numbered and listed in order of importance as your goals may dictate what plan you decide to choose, or what gym you have access to may dictate your goals at first.
- Manageable-This is my last point and it goes hand in hand with points 3 and 1, make things manageable. This goes hand in hand with point number one. Just like going to the gym needs to happen before you start training, having a manageable way of making this happen is key to sticking with it. If you really, really, can only get to the gym twice a week then just go with that and alter your routine to accommodate that. You have to be able to actually get to the gym, actually able to do your workout, actually able to recover enough to hit your next one and your goals need to be realistic enough to attain them. This is a good time to put your ego aside. I know watching some guys on youtube doing crazy crossfit WOD’s or Smolov squat routines looks cool but trying to emulate these things as a beginner will run you into the ground and next thing you know you aren’t going to the gym at all, partly from being sore and partly from a new found hatred of training. It simply won’t be manageable or sustainable. The same goes for your goals. Making your strength goal squatting 1000 pounds is a stupid goal. That would take years to achieve if you achieved it and long term goals also become easy to drop. It’s good to envision a future but that needs to consist of small manageable goals along the way. Squat 100 pounds, then 250, then 400, etc. My first physique goal was Bruce Lee, as I got bigger my next one was Steve Reeves. It was never a Ronnie Coleman or Dorian Yates. Now lots of guys were inspired by the greats from a beginner and they always strived to be like them or hit those goals and this is what made them champions, and that’s a good thing, but along the way they made smaller goals part of the larger goal. Your goals can grow and change as you achieve them but they must be achievable goals first. This goes for your training, your meal prep, and your personal life. Make it manageable first and then make adjustments as necessary as they are needed.
Those are my best pieces of advice. Some of those points I know very well because I chose not to do them at various times and it derailed my progress and set me back. This is the good part of experience, someone else’s experience can now help someone else avoid potholes in the road. Get started, pick a plan, make some goals, make it manageable and get to it. Starting strength? Yes, Starting Today!