As coaches, it is important to always remind ourselves where we came from. It is easy for me to lose sight of that and let myself get frustrated with the many mistakes lifters of all levels make. The fact is we all start somewhere, and we all make mistakes. I feel it should be a goal to help clients avoid the mistakes we made in strength training and to solve their mistakes faster than we did.
The idea is that strength takes time, which is the biggest limiting factor for how strong someone can get. I want more time to work on the struggles at a much higher level of strength than I get. Strength will always be about learning, and to me, a coach's job is to help lifters learn how to negotiate the peaks and valleys of higher and higher levels of strength. As each lifter gets stronger and journeys into uncharted territory, I may not be able to say I have been to that exact place; I can, however, help them negotiate that situation more efficiently and effectively because I have been thrust into new territories so often.
Coaching is not just about spotting mistakes and telling them what to do. For me, coaching is more about helping them recognize issues as they arise and teaching them to figure out the best solutions. I do not want to give them a fish but rather teach them how to catch their fish. First, I suppose I have to let them know they can eat fish and it has protein!
Types of Lifters
I always find it funny when people say, "There are two types of people in this world." I always think, "Come on, just two?" At the risk of making myself look funny, I will separate lifters into three types for my purpose here.
Some lifters just do not do enough or do not have enough intensity. These lifters have to be pushed all the time and are the biggest group. Next, we have the lifters who do too much work and need to be held back. These lifters are way less than the first type. Then the third type is the lifters that, either naturally or through work, have learned to listen to their bodies. These lifters go hard when they feel good and back off when something does not feel right. These lifters are the rarest of the three types. This type is also the one we should all strive to become.
Training With Intent
The major problem is that many lifters I see have no real idea how much work and intensity they should be doing. The worst-case scenario I see is when lifters believe they are "busting their ass," while to an accomplished lifter, they are not working hard at all or just doing the bare minimum to make minor progress. Going to the gym and working out is not busting your ass. Eating somewhat healthy 60 percent of the time is not busting your ass. Doing some lazy cardio once or twice a week is not busting your ass. If you are going to lift the weight up and down with some struggle but zero focus on intent, you are not busting your ass.
This is one reason I like the idea of the EliteFTS Train Your Ass of seminars. They show you what training hard feels like and help you find out what you have inside you. Most people find out they can push harder than they ever thought possible. The seminars also translate into a better understanding of Reps in Reserve (RIR) and Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). With a faulty baseline, these ideas have little meaning.
The Role of Recovery in Strength Training
On the other side are the people who actually kill themselves every single day but still feel like it is not enough. These people will work very hard and with great intensity but have no real concept of how hard they are working or realize how much recovery their body will need from such tough training. This balance of training to recovery is where the best gains live.
In the end, this idea is simple in principle but complex. We must work hard enough to stimulate the body to grow. Next, we must recover from the training session and allow the body to adapt to the growth simulation. This idea will stay constant for however long you train. Your skill level at training will change, though. If you are a newer or younger lifter, you do not have the skills, practice, or knowledge to push yourself too hard. In these years, you can have super high intensity and push yourself very hard.
Recovery Flex
As you progress, so will your ability to push yourself and get much more out of your body. Your technique will improve, allowing you to lift heavier weights, which therefore allows you to stress your body more. Your CNS will improve and allow for stronger contraction, enabling you to push your body more. Also, your muscle control, mental strength, training efficiency, and actual muscle strength will all improve, allowing you to push your body even further. The day will come when you look back at your early years, and even though you thought you pushed yourself so hard, it is nothing compared to how hard you can push yourself now. This means you will need more recovery time to recover and grow. Just because you have been training for years does not mean you have increased the time you can train. Remember, this is strength training, not an endurance sport.
How hard you are training in the gym matters, but how much effort are you putting into the rest of your training outside the gym? This is a big "how-to fish tip" that I see getting missed quite often.
Strength Training Goes Beyond the Gym
Say a lifter comes to me for help because his bench is plateaued. He asks me to look at his technique. His technique looks pretty good, so he asks me if I can see a weakness. His lats are weak, and he gets stuck at the bottom of the lift. So, I change his training routine and add some good exercises to fix that. A month later, he comes back to me and says it did not work and his bench is still stuck. He tells me he trains very hard with good intent all the time. At this point I decide to go deeper into all the information he had told me.
Well, come to find out that this 270-pound guy eats around 1800 calories daily and gets 150 grams of protein. So, it turns out his biggest weak link is his nutrition, and no matter how he trains, he can not outwork shitty nutrition.
Strength Training as a System
The point is that strength is a whole system, and all parts of that system work together. Training is not just what you do in the gym but what you do outside the gym. In fact, you will spend a lot more time outside the gym than in the gym, and I could argue that being outside is even more important.
Your nutrition is not where this whole system ends, either. Nutrition gets broken down into macros and micros, but there is still much more. Your flexibility, mobility, cardio, sleep, mentality, etc all play a role in the system.
A lifter comes to me complaining he keeps getting stuck at the bottom of the squat. The first thing I see is his horrible position in the hole. It is going to be difficult to drive major weights in that position. So, we worked on his technique, but it turns out he understands what he is supposed to do but can not do it. In this case, his flexibility does not allow him to be in the strongest position. This, simply stated, means his inflexibility is making him weak by not allowing him to lift the weight he can lift. I do not know about you, but not being able to lift the weight I worked so hard to lift just because I was too lazy to stretch would piss me off. Which is why I always stretched, even when it bored the hell out of me.
Everything plays a role in this system. Some things play a bigger role than others, but they are all important.
The Power of Technique
We must learn to see the system as a whole. I look at this like a mechanic would look at a car. The first step is to see how it runs, stops, and handles. If the horsepower is at the right output, if the brakes work great, if it handles well, and if everything meets the specs, drive away. If any of these areas do not meet the specs, you start searching. Of course, if the horsepower is good but the brakes suck, this could be bad. What is the point if brakes and steering are good but power is low? If you want optimum performance all the time, then you have to stay aware of the whole vehicle.
I continue to see many lifters who seem to feel it is just about picking up heavy weights. I will even admit to a time on my journey when I got to focusing on just picking up heavy weights. Yes, I made the mistake of thinking I needed to strengthen my muscles during these times. I was not thinking of the system as a whole. Suppose you are just at the gym, only focusing on lifting heavy with intensity. You are missing out on tons of gains. Just lifting and having no intent or attention to technique means you are not lifting as heavy as you could be. So then, are you stressing your muscles or CNS as much as possible? You are not stimulating growth to the best of your ability.
For example, if you are squatting 315 pounds for your reps with shitty technique, it may feel hard, and you may feel you are putting high intensity into it. If you fixed your technique and lifted it with intent, you could lift 365 pounds for the same reps. This would push your body much harder, stimulating growth.
RECENT: The DOs and DO NOTs of Picking Your Next Training Program
In a similar situation, let's say you are doing a face pull because you want to train your upper middle back. It turns out you are not performing these face pulls with intent or the correct technique, so you are not training the muscle you are supposed to be and not to the level you should be. You are also working on other muscle groups, which can increase the recovery needed from that session.
So, you took an exercise planned into your program for a specific reason and did it incorrectly, basically throwing a wrench in the work. That exercise is there for a reason, and it is meant to train specific muscles. Maybe they are a weak link or need to increase in size. In this case, you can not blame the coach or program because you did not execute the exercise correctly. You must be vested in your training, even if you have a coach. You must use your mind to develop knowledge about what you are doing and why.
Fueling the Machine
I want to talk about one of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to nutrition itself. Would you put a lot of money and time into your car's motor so it can put out major horsepower and then put the cheapest fuel in it? Would you expect it to run to its top performance with cheap fuel? I continue to see so many lifters not know what their nutrition should look like. The worst part is the misconceptions of what they are eating. It is similar to the lifters that think they train hard or bust their ass, while to the advanced lifter, they are doing the minimum.
Over and over and over, I get clients who say they do not track their nutrition, but they know they are around so many calories, and they hit certain macros. So, I ran a quick generic addition problem with what I usually eat in a day. Big-ass surprise, they are not even close to the calories or macros they should be getting. The only people I have seen close when not tracking are those who have previously tracked their nutrition over the years. You are not going to build big, strong muscles without enough nutrition. That is like saying I am going to build a whole car out of this piece of 4" x 4" sheet metal. You cannot build something with nothing.
I am not a huge stickler for a certain nutritional plan. I feel that if there was one plan that worked for everyone, then why would we have so many different nutritional programs? Also, I feel nutrition is very important, and I think, in many cases, nutrition is the weakest link. Which macros are best, which micros are best, should I eat this, should I eat that, etc. I say find a program that makes sense to you and the one you are most likely to stick to. Try it out for a few months and slowly tweak stuff to fit your needs. Most of all, except that you will be building a machine that uses a lot of fuel but does it efficiently. This means getting used to eating even when you do not feel like it and eating all you are supposed to, even if you feel full.
Is Strength Progress Linear?
I often say lifting is life, and life is lifting. You will not be able to successfully compartmentalize the gym and your life. You may think you can, but they are intertwined and locked together. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can begin to learn. Once you understand how they fit together, you can begin to master this system in your favor. When most people think back to their training, they will usually find training was the best when life was good, and when life was bad, training was subprime. Understand you will need to adjust life to training at times and adjust training to life at other times. If you know you have a competition coming up, you must be clear with people in your life and plan training as a higher priority for that time. Sometimes, you must adjust your training to fit your life priorities.
For example, you are getting married, and this is a very special time for your spouse. They have sacrificed for you before, so you set your training up around this event this time. Say you are up late one night with a sick child. Adjusting your training the next day would be best because you got little to no sleep. I get that blue-collar mindset of "so what? I can still kill it today," but this is not optimal. It is better to have the mindset that I am an intelligent, hard-working athlete. Still, make your training and focus with intent, but adjust it knowing your recovery has been less than optimal. This mindset and vision of your life as a whole are not just ok but, in the long term, will give you an outstanding life and exceed your training goals.
Is strength a linear curve progression? This is a great question I love to ask and answer, but it depends on perspective. Are you zoomed in or zoomed out? If I put points on a graph daily, it will look like the Saw Tooth Mountains silhouette. If I put points on the graph from month to month, it will begin to look like a much smoother curve with much fewer drops. Spread these points every six months; you should see a pretty linear upward curve. The fact is there are going to be ups, downs, and plateaus. This is unavoidable, but the smarter you train, the smoother it will become. Do not fret about the small stuff; day-to-day is the small stuff because this is a sport of years or even decades.
Key Principles for Lifters
- Do not be the lifter that trains too much, and do not be the lifter that does not train enough. Balances stimulation of growth with recovery and growth.
- Do not assume you are busting your ass. Find out what busting your ass looks and feels like.
- Never forget that training continues after the gym. There is a whole lot more than just lifting weights.
- You are only as strong as your weakest link. You will always have a weakest link. The faster you fix it, the faster you will reach your goal.
- It is not just about picking weight up. Intent, mind-muscle connection, technique, and intensity must always be present in all aspects of training.
- Fueling the machine is enormously important, so do not guess what you are putting in and how much. Know exactly.
- Life is lifting, and lifting is life. These two will always interact, so use this to your advantage.
- Strength and growth do not look linear when up to focus, but from further away, they are, so do not fret about the small downs.
Here are some foundation principles I have used throughout my powerlifting career. Ones that kept me on the best path when I veered off. I challenge you to see if these are in accordance with your training. I challenge you to write down your list that you can look at when progress is not as you want. Do not go after one fish when you can learn to fish in all situations.
Chad Aichs is a world-class and elite powerlifter in the SHW division. He began training seriously for powerlifting in 1999 in Sparks, Nevada, where he currently trains at American Iron Gym. In the ten years since he started, Chad has proven to be one of the strongest lifters in the world. His best lifts are an 1173 squat, 821 bench press, and a 755 pull. Aichs' best total is 2733, which makes him one of the top lifters of all time.
