Perpetuating Lies

In the past couple of years strength sports have received a large influx of new athletes. Whether they are serious competitors or not really doesn’t matter, but what does matter is the mentality that you get stuck in when you self identify with your sport. When this happens people adopt the common mentality and ideals of their sport good and bad. An example of this would be Olympic weightlifters training heavy all the time multiple times a day, a training methodology brought to popularity by Ivan Abadjiev.

The common thing I hear among powerlifters is that you only need to Squat, Bench and Deadlift, anything else would be a waste of time. With the advent of the internet you can see certain sports dogma coming out through the keyboards of many young new athletes. The fitness industry has always been dogmatic, it is more or less the, my way or the highway kind of mentality. You will have powerlifters screaming “SQUATS ONLY COUNT IF YOU GO TO PARALLELL OTHERWISE YOU ARE A PATHETIC LOSER.”

Bodybuilders will say that “I don’t need to squat to depth because it takes the tension of my quads, and that is the muscle group I am trying to hypertrophy.” When it comes down to it everyone is right it is just about learning what you can from EVERYONE and implementing it in a way that will benefit you. With that out of the way I will just give some bullet points in regards to certain dogmatic statements that just perpetuate lies.

• The Bench Press will give you a massive chest BRO! - Just doing a Bench Press will NOT develop your chest, it is as much about how you do the movement as it is about what movement you choose.

• Squats don’t count unless you squat to parallel. - Squatting to parallel is an arbitrary standard set so that the sport of powerlifting could have a set of rules in which to judge multiple competitors by. Squatting to parallel is not the only way to squat! (Cue autistic screeching.)

• All you have to do is Squat, Bench, Deadlift, and Press! -This is partially true, IF YOU USE THE CORRECT TECHNIQUE TO ILLICIT THE RESPONSE YOU ARE TRYING TO GET. However a often overlooked side of training is, FUN! Doing nothing but Squat, Bench, Deadlift, and Press is going to get mind numbingly boring and you will probably get overuse injuries.

• Hypertrophy is a waste of time, JUST FOCUS ON STRENGTH!!! - This is just not true; working in the lower rep ranges all the time is much riskier than working the higher rep ranges. I still don’t understand why people cannot wrap their heads around the fact that if you increase your 10RM or your 20RM you are still getting stronger!

• The CORRECT way to do bodybuilding-esque movements is to move the weight slow and under control and squeeze at the top. - This is a statement that should be taken on a case to case basis. For example certain muscles like the traps will not respond well to light weight with a squeeze at the top. While other muscles like the biceps might. Remember that nothing is universal take everything on a case by case basis.

• Calisthenics won’t make you big and strong. - Just plain false, the calisthenics movements require coordination and massive amounts of strength and stability. If you eat enough and train smartly there is no reason why you cannot get very large doing the calisthenics movements.

Those are just some of the main ones I see all the time online that people fall for. There are many many more and if you are in the game long enough eventually you will see what I am talking about. Just pay attention; you don’t need a degree in exercise science to know bullshit when you see it. The best thing you can do for yourself is to learn from EVERYONE!

Cue autistic screeching...................