The basics are often boring, monotonous, slow changing things that
you can’t slap on a billboard and expect a big return from. Big
wins often require a series of small, incremental, and repetitive
tasks that accumulate over long periods of time. Put more succinctly,
if you show up, lather, rinse, and repeat, you will come out with
more than you came in with. Yet, the micro-variables get all the
attention, and we seem to have an endless stream of people fixating
on them for failure to make progress.
Unfortunately, telling
someone to master the basics is not a winning strategy, whereas
focusing on the minutia is quite lucrative. Ask your favorite
bodybuilder with millions of YouTube subscribers. So, let’s get
down to business, kiddos, and see if we can get your panties out of a
twist and keep the ball moving forward.
The novice effect,
honeymoon phase, newbie gains, and a host of other terms to describe
the phenomenon of making rapid progress by simply learning a new
skill, is quite fun, addicting, predictable, and something we all
want to continue indefinitely. However, the law of impermanence
prohibits such a thing, and we all reach a point where we grow up and
realize that “shit has changed.” In this case, stable,
predictable, and relatively easy linear progress ceases to continue
and we are now tasked with figuring out how to adapt the
stress-recovery-adaptation cycle for our own situation. Let’s list
the most common ways many of you are going to mess up, and end up on
the programming hamster wheel. First, a disclaimer:
Post-Novice training is
for a lifter, not an exerciser. Once the linear progress ends
the trainee must decide
whether to become a lifter or not. If he desires additional strength
training progress, it only happens if he becomes a lifter. This means
that he makes every effort to find reasons to Do The Program and not
succumb to reasons to Not Do the Program. To reiterate: if you are
no longer a novice, you must approach training through the lens of a
lifter if more weight on the bar is the goal. If this is not you,
skip the rest of this article and go play pickleball or whatever the
latest exercise trend is. If this is you, read on.
#1.
Skipping workouts entirely
Contrary to popular
belief, as we get stronger, squats and deadlifts do not require as
much frequency and volume to continue progressing. It’s easy to get
seduced by the reality that if you skip a workout here and there,
those two are likely to keep moving if you are strong enough.
However, bench press, press, and overhead pulls are not as forgiving.
If you are scheduled to train 3 times in a week and you skip one that
leaves you with 1-2 bench presses or presses for that week, which for
most post-novice lifters is insufficient.
The gym bros know this, which is why there is a 3-year long waiting
list for benches at most commercial gyms. If they know this, surely
you can figure it out. All roads will lead to “arms and chest
everyday” if you seek to continue gaining upper body strength. This
means showing up 3-4 days per week, for months and years.
#2)
Skipping pulls
The most common error I
see in late novices and early intermediates is the skipping of
deadlifts, power cleans, and overhead pulls (i.e. chin-ups, pull-ups,
and pulldowns). These are main lifts that work a large majority of
your upper body musculature. If your goal is to become a squat
specialist, that’s fine – just don’t complain that “Starting
Strength is a lower-body program” when you’ve made the decision
to skip exercises that build a large percentage of your upper-body
musculature.
The deadlift works
every muscle from your neck down to your ankles and around your
waist, along with the forearms and biceps. Your torso is growing more
from deadlifts than it is from bench pressing and pressing, so have
some dignity and do not skip the deadlift. The vertical pulls grow
your biceps and forearms along with your lats. They are also the
inverse of press, so if the press is a main lift, so are your
overhead pulls. If you skip them, your lack of biceps growth is on
you and nobody else.
#3)
Taking too much time off
This is an addendum to
#1. Many of you travel for work or for personal reasons. Lifters find
gyms when they travel. If you have chosen this path, then you need to
do the same and if you can locate a real gym that provides reasonably
good equipment, then do it. Vacationing once a year is one thing,
frequent trips, like work related travel, falls into the routine
responsibilities category along with lifting. Find a gym, get
something done, and make sure that attendance streak remains
unperturbed. Otherwise, you spend most of your year resetting and
working back up.
Remember, you read the
disclaimer above. If you think this is not practical, then go back
and re-read the disclaimer. 1,2, or even 3 weeks off is not practical
for a lifter with goals. You don’t get to be shocked when your 3rd
bench press warm up barely moves after 2 weeks off. That is
precisely what is expected from that many days off.
#4)
Under-eating
This error has been
beat to hell but sometimes the 1,234,115th time strikes
the right nerve. Following a vegan diet, doing keto, eating 1200
calories, forgetting to eat because you were busy, and all the other
silly things people have reported on their diets is simply
insufficient if you are a post-novice lifter. Your body needs to
recover, and this means ~200 grams of protein and ~300 g carbs for
adult men, 100 grams of protein and ~150 g carbs for adult women need
to be met on a daily basis. If you are older or have a chronic
disease that interferes with recovery, then you need more than this.
Before you ask, these
are not precise numbers for 100% of human beings who do barbell
training. These are you-are-unlikely-to-fuck-things-up estimates,
meaning if you eat that much you’ll probably train well even if
it’s a little more than what is needed. We are not professional
researchers looking to publish manuscripts, we are lifters looking to
hit PRs and grow muscles. Start with an estimate and adjust based on
your lifting performance. Then repeat this process daily from the
start of a training cycle to the end of it. Then do the same on the
next training cycle and the one after that. You see a theme here? You
are a lifter with lifter responsibilities that do not go away because
you feel like dog shit. On the contrary, you need to own them more
when you feel like dog shit.
#5
Adding other activities
In the old days, we
were worried about young men doing too many curls and triceps
extensions or women doing too much conditioning work outside of their
strength program. While we still deal with those things, we now have
people of all ages doing a variety of different things, some silly
some not, at levels that disrupt recovery from lifting. Combat
sports, cycling, running, pickleball, bootcamp, dancing, traditional
recreational sports, and a list longer than my word count allows for.
Since most of today’s
workforce spends their time in a sedentary position throughout the
day, activities outside of lifting will compliment lifting by keeping
a reasonable aerobic baseline and keeping the joints and connective
tissues from getting stiff from sitting all day but only to a
point. If a little bit is good, more is not better. If you
push to the limit in an aerobic activity, you will not recover to
lift heavier weights, especially as a post novice. You can do them
but spending several hours per week on them is not productive for a
lifter who wants more weight on the bar. Use them for conditioning
but do not train them unless you plan to move away from
lifting, in which case, see the disclaimer.
If you are a
post-novice lifter spinning your wheels on the programming hamster
wheel, go through this list and do an honest assessment of
your situation. If you are guilty of one or more of these things,
address them before program hopping or blaming your coach for
hitting the same sticking point every time you run up your lifts. Programming, and thus applying stress, is often simple for most
humans. Recovery is where the complications arise, and the complexity
often stems from human behavior and motivation.
Start by being honest
with yourself about your goals, your bottlenecks, and what you are
willing to do about them. If you need help or an additional kick in
the ass hire or consult with a coach to turn things up a notch.
Otherwise, you can play the blame game and retire to sitting on your
phone watching your favorite internet expert sell you the next SECRET
TO SUCCESS with his favorite program he never followed taking his
favorite supplement he never took. The results of that approach speak
for themselves. Otherwise, own whatever silly things you have been
doing, stop doing them, and get to work. You may surprise yourself
and see a return on your investment.
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