We are now well into 2013, and I felt it would be worth writing a follow-up to the original article. By now you’ve hopefully added some bodyweight movements to your training, finally admitted that you want big arms, have been more discerning in regards to taking supplements, and are using a program of some kind. Well, here are six more training insights that hopefully will make you better in some fashion or another.
The best bench cues (for novices)
Trust me on this one, if you are trying to teach a beginner how to bench, or even if you are just working to improve your own technique, this exercise will yield dividends. It randomly came to me when I was showing a new client how to bench press properly. He was doing the typical flared elbow, tucked chin, feet all over the place position, and he had no idea how to engage his body when pressing. So, I had him stand up, and we went over to the Smith Machine where I set the bar at chest height. I then asked him how he would push a car. Talk about a night and day difference! I then told him to replicate what he did standing to pressing on the bench. To do the same:
- Stand your client in front of a barbell set at chest height.
- Have him place his hands wherever he feels strongest. (This will typically be a 90-degree position for most people).
- Tell him to set his feet, keep his head up, and push as hard as possible.
What happens? He gets an arch going in his lumbar, his elbows will tuck in, his chest stays up, he packs his shoulders down, and he plants his feet on the floor.
I’ve used this exercise with all of my clients now, and everyone immediately “gets it.” Now when I tell them to get their shoulder blades down, plant their feet, and get their upper backs engaged, they understand what I am talking about. Try it and see.
Your “front” is only as strong as your “back”
Rather than get into a lengthy discussion about the lats, muscular recruitment, and bench set-up, I’ll simply say that your chest is only as strong, or as weak, as your back. If you can bench press more than you can deadlift and you can't do a single pull-up...yeah, your bench press is going to suck. It was suggested to me by an accomplished strength coach that you should be able to explosively bent over row your max bench press. Now, that might be overly ambitious for some lifters, but you get the point. If your posture is lousy and your back is weak, your set-up will suck and your bench press will be awful. You will probably have pain overhead pressing as well, and then you will inevitably latch on to the idea that overhead pressing is “bad” for you.
Don’t over-think this one. Just get you back stronger. The best suggestion I can give is to simply double your back training volume next to your pressing volume. The easiest way to do this is by reps. If your typical bench press workout consists of 200 reps altogether, then make a point to do 400 total reps for your back during the week. Of course, make sure you do some heavy rows, pull-ups, and inverted rows. By doing this, you should be back in balance in no time at all.
Your back and your abs are the same thing
I’ve noticed that the more I train clients with what I deem “posterior abdominal” work, the stronger they become and the better their backs feel. What kind of work is this? I'm talking about good mornings, hyperextensions, and glute thrusts.
I examined the good morning in great deal in a prior article, and I honestly think it’s the most underrated “ab” exercise one can do. The transverse abdominus is always sexy to talk about as being the deep core muscle that does all the work, but it also attaches at the spine. The importance of the glutes in the squat, bench, and deadlift is finally being understood and appreciated. What is the one exercise that trains both of those things? Would it not make sense that the attachment point should be the strongest part of the muscle? In that same vein, do the glutes not support the sacrum? This may be very “broscience” sounding, but it works. Start training your low back and glutes directly and watch how much your ab/core strength improves.
Because it works can be as good a reason as any
On the subject of “broscience”...why all the hate for it? The new fitness internet troll is the “theyress no study that proves that yur training sucks! (Bad grammar included). Well, riddle me this then: What the hell were strongmen doing 100 years ago when they trained? The grand old hoisting science?
If Arthur Saxon, Louis Cyr, Eugene Sandow, Joe Greenstein, or any other golden age bodybuilder were alive today, they wouldn’t accomplish a damn thing because all of their training workouts and diets would be nothing but “broscience.” The deadlift being my favorite exercise, Herman Goerner was incredibly jacked and could one-hand deadlift 700 pounds. He also drank dark ale post-workout and consumed two dozen eggs a day. I don’t think he would have cared that a pubmed study states that only 30 grams of protein can be consumed every two hours.
Broscience by its nature is doing something because it seems to work. So what if it worked for the wrong reasons? If it works, then do it! Now, I will readily acknowledge that broscience doesn’t always work, and that its reasons can readily be wrong, but the pursuit of creativity or self-innovation for the purpose of achieving results should not be dissuaded. There’s no study that supports doing shrugs with the entire DB rack, but I know a good many bodybuilders with stupid traps that have done exactly that. Paul Anderson did partial squats with 1,000 pounds in a hole he dug in the ground, and he drank a gallon of whole milk sweetened with raw honey. It seemed to work for him quite well. Something worked, so who cares if it's not supported by a university study?
Metabolic slowdown
You can either up the activity or cut the calories...but not both. I have often observed cases of people who performed daily physical activity, ate low calorie, and failed to lose any actual body fat or reduce their weight in general. Having witnessed this enough times, I have moved away from the conventional “thermodynamics say that you need to create a 500-calorie deficit a day for X amount of fat loss a week.” Simply because I have seen many cases where it flat-out did not work. I've had far greater success with having my clients strength train and eat to feel healthy and energetic than I ever had with trying to get people to “cut” calories.
Lo and behold, I recently came across this very excellent article by Lyle McDonald that discusses the negative effects of trying to follow a very low calorie diet while doing a high volume of exercise, study included. To give you the short version of it: you can't do both. At least, you can't do both long term. To simplify the science: when you cut back calories and increase activity, your metabolism can only run in deficit for so long before it slows down. Over time, your metabolic rate will steadily drop, and your body will no longer lose weight nor will progress happen in regards to athletic development. Other coaches such as Layne Norton have discussed this phenomena in physique athletes, especially bikini competitors. For those of you who deal with weight loss and the general population, who have to cut weight yourself, or even who work with high school athletes who are trying to cut weight classes, this should be highly relevant.
Always and never means never and always.
This falls into the “good vs. bad” line of thinking. This arose from a conversation I had with a new client who brought in a list of questions on food and eating habits. She wanted “always/never” answers to the questions. I told her that there is simply no such thing. You cannot assign a negative or positive value to foods, exercises, or methods without having the appropriate context and reasoning for those values. Any time these kinds of always/never rules get set, they inevitably always get broken or just completely wrecked.
Examples:
- Dietary and saturated fat are evil—John Meadows's Mountain dog diet, paleo/primal/caveman, etc.
- Overtraining will destroy you—High frequency training, Bulgarian and Chinese weight lifters
- Not eating carbs at night—carb backloading anyone?
- Overhead pressing will destroy your shoulders—Any Olympic lifter or golden age bodybuilder
- Six small meals a day—Intermittent fasting seems to be quite popular right now
- Carbs are evil—Blue Zone populations that eat high carb diets apparently live the longest out of all world populations
- Fat and protein are evil!—Native populations in both Africa and North America eat almost exclusively all protein, high fat diets and live longer than the average American while also having lower cardiovascular risk factors
- Soy—Because apparently you hate testosterone
- Vegans—Yeah, because you would have totally survived in the Roman empire eating a diet of rice, bread, and composted raw almond bars and pea protein...you know, since all that crap has been readily available to human beings for thousands of years. And of course there was a Whole Foods in Germania where the warring tribes frequently shopped for organic gluten free bread. Oh wait, there weren’t any of those things, and people feasted on animal carcasses while apparently being more ripped than you, judging by their statues and artwork. Huh, how about that…
I could go on and on with this, but the point is that one should always ignore anyone who warns “never” to do/consume a particular exercise or food. In the same vein, never pay attention to the self-proclaimed guru who claims that his training/diet/method always works. Flat-out, if the claim isn’t bullshit today, it probably will be come tomorrow or the next year.
Well, that wraps up the second edition of “It's Not That Complicated.” Bench press right, get your back strong, and don’t believe anyone who says never and always. And if something works for you in your training, then by the blessing of the iron gods and the bros at the gym, keep right on doing it.
