Why You Suck.
Your training and/or life sucks because you are a sheep. What I mean by this is: you lack awareness of your personal principles solely because you've never taken the time to sit down and put them on paper. Principles are a beacon of light that keeps you on the correct path, your path. Everyone has personal principles, but most just never think about them. Principles allow you to separate yourself from the influences of others and when you are violating one of them, you know.
Your heart rate jacks up, you get nervous, and you may get a feeling that says “this is wrong, I don't know why, but it is”. Everyone knows that old (almost cringe worthy) example of peer pressure. Lets say you feel that using drugs is wrong for whatever reason. As you enter high school, you find your friends are doing [insert drug name here] and offer you some. An alarm bell in your mind goes off. The underlying reason? This would be violating a long held personal principle. The problem most people have is staying on their own path. How can you if you're not aware of the factors that created it in the first place? Better yet, how can you if you don't even know where it is?
It helps if your path is dark and cool looking.
You haven't taken the time to sit down, think about it and put them on paper. Once you do, and whatever your personal principles may end up being, you must live by them consciously and with deliberation. This also directly relates to training principals. If you are brand new to training, you probably don't know jack shit. The easiest thing would be to just follow whatever google tells you to do. This is one reason you see people continuously hop from one program to another. They simply see words and numbers on a piece of paper, just sets and reps. Behind those sets and reps are well thought out time tested training principles. If you take the time to actually look at the program you can tell whether this person is a fan of high volume, low intensity or extreme specificity or whatever it may be.
When in doubt squat the weakness out.
Jim Wendler has made his training principals well known. Every program he has written, whether in book form or
not, falls into line with those principles. If you choose to run his program or anyone else's and you make unnecessary changes you are not running their program anymore. The changes you want to make are a good starting point to figuring out the type of training system you like. If you find yourself always adding more volume then that's probably a sign that your more of a high volume kind of guy. Keep that in mind for the down road when you are more knowledgeable, but in the meantime don't fuck with other peoples programs and just run them as is. If at any point your training program or diet starts to fall out of step with your training values, you need to step back, go to the drawing board, and reassess why you've abandoned said values. This will keep you moving in the right direction and from falling for fitness or diets fads. Only you know what works and what needs to be written down. For some people this is very difficult, so below I have listed examples of training principles from respected figures in the strength and conditioning world.
Jim Wendler
- Use basic multi-joint lifts
- Start to light - Progress slowly
- Break personal records
Paul Carter
-Over-warm ups (The staple of my training ideology): This means you warm up PAST the weight you intend to do your "work sets" with for the day. For example, if you plan on squatting with 315 you would warm up with 135 x 5, 185 x 4, 225 x 3, 275 x 2 and 315 x 1. Then, depending how you feel, do a single at 365 or so. At that point you would go back to 315 for your working sets.
What consistently pops up among those that have been in the game for decades are the principles that have stood the test of time. So to make this even simpler I will list out the values I constantly see come up. Because they have worked....forever...and will continue to work......forever.....
Use compound lifts
- Squat, Press, Deadlift, Dips, Pull-Ups, Push-Ups, Handstand Push-Up, etc.
Use moderately heavy to heavy loads
- 75-90% of 1 rep max
Do volume work after your primary strength work
- Drop sets Add weight over time- Standard add 2.5-5 pounds to the barbell whenever you can
Recover
- Take off days, how many depends on how insane you are
Do assistance work....no matter what people say
- Curls, Face-Pulls, Lateral/Rear Raises, Calf/Toe Raises, Push-Downs, etc.
STICK TO THE BASICS (My personal favorite)
Squat, Press, Deadlift, Dips, Pull-Up IN THAT ORDER!
The next time you come across a training program that you are thinking about running, put it to the test. See if it matches most, if not all, the principles listed above. If it does, it will work. We know this to be true. If it doesn't, kick it to the curb. Remember to not train blindly. If something works for you then keep it. Just because it does not fall under the common principles does not mean it won't work. This just means that it MOST likely will not work. Take training values from people who have been doing this for literally DECADES but at the same time develop your own. Once you figure out your training values then immortalize them by WRITING THEM DOWN. Live the rest of your life in line with those values and you will finally be on the right path, your path.
