Common Sense and Lifting

By Marc “Spud” Bartley

For www.EliteFTS.com

Today, because of the internet (and pure laziness), many ideas on training are based on perception, NOT reality. The internet is a great tool for tossing ideas around, but it’s also a place where everyone’s opinion is available whether they have the facts to back them up or not. On the internet, anyone can be perceived as an expert on any topic. It (especially in powerlifting) makes the rumor mill look like kindergarten, and it leads to laziness. Laziness is a by-product of perception.

What does any of this have to do with lifting? Well, everything as I shall explain.  Think what you want, but I’m not an expert. What I am is a guy who has tried many things in the lifting world, some successfully and others unsuccessfully.  

Logic tells you that the fundamentals of lifting are form and technique, right? The best way to learn proper form and technique is to watch the guys with the most perfect looking form or “kinematic flow” as I call it. After all, lifting is just human movement with really heavy weight. So what is perfect form? Perfect form is when all systems operate perfectly and the lift(s) looks and feels almost completely effortless and graceful. Perfecting my form is the only thing I think about before a lift (as long as I can hold the butterflies down). If I take my mind off of the perfect lift, I miss all of the details that I have concentrated on for so long in practice. (I say “practice” because that’s what gym lifting is. It’s only practice.)

Another fundamental of lifting is overcoming your fears and anxieties. Don’t worry. It’s ok to admit this, and it’s ok if these anxieties don’t come from just your lifting. We all know guys in the gym who suck at meets or don’t go because you won’t get a trophy. If you’re this type of “gym only lifter” and all of your great lifts happen in the gym, then you’re missing the whole point of lifting—overcoming your biggest enemy in life, which is usually yourself. If you can get past this anxiety, you can do anything you want in life.

For example, there is a dude at my gym who is a lifetime gym lifter. He has trained with us from time to time but never really listens or watches and half-ass learns. He is too busy talking about us behind our backs or whoever instead of getting better and doing it himself. He could lift some amazing weights but has his own perception of strength and how you get to it. He blames drugs, gear, whatever he can besides the truth. And the truth is that he won’t commit 100 percent to lifting. There are no shortcuts to getting strong, only time and effort.

Another problem with the weak “gym lifter” is the people they surround themselves with. Usually, they surround themselves with people who are sub par and have no real goals. They don’t share any of the same aspirations to get stronger or better like their partners. The Rock said it best—these guys are real Jabroni’s. A few adjustments here and there and some real time training could yield big results for this guy from our gym. However, his lack of desire and super ego (I want, I want, I want like a baby) without the practice of form, proper technique, and hard work will never get him to where he thinks he wants to go.

Every person walking can increase their performance and strength by 10–20 percent simply by changing and learning proper form and technique. I enjoy watching people try their hearts out to lift big weights. It gives me a thrill and real self-satisfaction. I feel like a father, grinning from ear to ear, watching his child learn to walk. When this guy lifts at the gym, I purposely avoid him. I know in his head he thinks he can lift as much as me (he loves to tell everyone how strong he is), and on a certain level, I guess he could given the right training. It is his perception of reality—which is far from the truth—that will keep him from making any real progress in his lifting.   

What is the moral of this story? Find someone who is stronger than you and your fragile ego and do three things—spot, load, and listen! Then apply what you learn from them and work and work and work and work. (I repeat myself a lot but all dudes have ADD so this is okay.) Your form flaws will show your weaknesses. You should then attack these weaknesses with a vengeance. Is this making sense to you yet? You can memorize and regurgitate information from the internet and other publications all day long, but if you don’t apply it to your training, it’s a waste of time!

Let’s talk volume ideas next. I get asked these questions all the time. What’s the perfect volume? How do you determine perfect volume (if it exists)? When do you back off? When do you keep trying?

To get started with some answers, there isn’t a book or program that will tell you exactly what to do. And there shouldn’t be. The only thing there should be are guidelines. Follow a program or an idea only if it will actually improve your lifting. When you stop making gains, the program is done.

My old training partner, Don Thompson, has always subscribed to the mentality that you have to do retarded volumes of training to get stronger. When we first started training, we did everything that Louie Simmons and the Westside method said verbatim. I’ve said this before, but just to rehash this, we trained EVERY DAY on something. We did 10–14 workouts per week plus wheelbarrow movements three times a week and more sled trips than any Iditarod dog sled team could ever do. This is no joke.

Did I get strong? No, but I did get in great shape. I did okay in competition but only to the extent that a beginner would do when he started out training. I got stronger from learning the skills, not from the volume. Don got stronger purely because he believed that the volume was making him stronger. He would just pile work on top of work instead of weeding through what works and what didn’t work. Don is also the type of person who thinks that if he stops training for one second or does something different he’ll become weak overnight. That’s not going to happen. This is the way some people think though, and that’s okay.

Don has become very strong doing things his own way, but overtraining has never worked for me. The second I stopped most of the extra work, my weight and strength began to shoot up. I don’t believe in super high volume (as you guys know already), but I do believe that you have to go through the ringer to figure this out. Please use some degree of sanity. Remember, Susan Powder, the crazy, short-haired lady from the 1980s. Her slogan was “stop the insanity.” Her definition of insanity was “doing the same things over and over but expecting a different outcome.”

Unless you do something different and experiment at your OWN level, you’ll flounder in this same cycle. Some people just love to train, and competition becomes just a pit stop in between training cycles. I’m the opposite. I train just for the competition. The meet gives me a high, not the training. No matter what your training style, what you do should teach you lessons about life. Training isn’t your life because in the end, nobody remembers what weights you lift (unless you write it in every article). They only remember what kind of person you were and the impressions you left on them—good and bad. I’ll take Rudy Ruttiger any day over the “Kaz” or any champion like that. Yes, I said that.

That doesn’t mean that nice guys finish last. I fight every day for the extra pounds on my total. If my total wins the meet, that’s great. With each meet, I just want to improve my total, which in turn improves me and (this is corny I know) my physical, mental, and spiritual goals. What I’m saying is nothing new. This is only my version of the battle and its outcomes so far. When I started, I was like most people, stuck in the rat race (more like on the outside lane about to be put in the wall) and trying to fit in somewhere and be like everyone else. About halfway through the last nine or ten years, I realized what was what and began to BELIEVE in myself. This is the best kind of perception—when you begin to get okay with yourself. Notice, I said BEGIN to get OKAY.

What about learning, degrees, studies, and academics? They’re all great, but where did they come from? For the most part, they substantiate the trial and error we go through on a daily basis, at least in weight training. For example, one of the kids who worked for me started coming to the gym in high school. When he went to college, we asked him to work for us. He did so for one summer and part of the fall. He trained with the powerlifting crew and got decently strong (probably saved 3–5 years of training on his own). He did a Strongman contest and powerlifted with us for six months or so.

Suddenly, he quit because of college, a new girlfriend, and an attitude about menial work at the gym. Why the sudden departure? He’s a physical therapy student and is very smart according to the professors. If physical therapy is your field of study, why would you leave training with a bunch of really strong guys who look out for you and support your training? I call it the Big Head Syndrome (BHS). BHS strikes when an individual (usually around 20 years old) reads a few books, memorizes some things, and then vomits it back up on the test. After some time, the academic world can actually brainwash the common sense and sheer logic out of you. This is when you get your elitist Boy Scout badge and your attitude changes.

BHS is what happened to our young friend. Now he sucks in training, has no motivation, and has separated himself from the group. I can also vouch for BHS because when I was in college (a long time ago), I got BHS and thought I was smarter then everyone including my parents and friends. I don’t knock anyone for improving themselves, but sit back, evaluate your situation, ask questions, and then make a decision on how to act. Why can’t you have your cake and eat it too? A year or two of more training with us and this kid could have been light years ahead of all his peers and climbed the ladder twice as fast. Now, he is just another face in the crowd fighting for the crumbs. Park the big head. There is always somebody smarter then you, and besides, training is all a crap shoot anyhow. Nobody really knows. We just guess and see if it works contrary to what the “docs” and “gurus” say. (Notice I didn’t say anything about the information in the books. The books aren’t the problem.)

Last but not least, I’d like to address lighter work or dynamic effort. What is dynamic work? Basically, it’s just moving lighter weights as fast as you can. The idea is that when you move light weights as fast as you can, the force (maximum pounds you can push) generated is similar to an absolute maximum weight. This is a hard concept to grasp and most of all believe. Have faith in it. It has worked for the majority of people who try it.

If you look closely at many programs for various sports, there is some increment of speed work. Don’t fret so much about perfect percentages. Just keep the weights light enough to control form and produce adequate force. As mentioned earlier in this article, work on one thing each training session to enhance your skill level. For example, push out on the belt as you descend on the squat, tuck the elbows on the bench, and keep the head up on the deadlift. If you do this in each dynamic training session, you’ll master the lifts in a much shorter timeframe then I did.

Keep it simple, stupid. How many times have you heard this? Let’s examine some unwritten facts about the human body, training, and the mental game, and let’s see just how simple we can make real lifting.

Q: How many exercises does it take before your CNS shuts down?

A: Unless you’re a superhero, you have one to two major movements a training session before you shut down. Shutdown means that there isn’t any motor recruitment and you have CNS fatigue. You can still do some auxiliary work, but when the major work is done, you’re usually done.

Q: Isn’t 1–5 reps strength and six to whatever hypertrophy?

A: Do you even know what you just said? Thanks to every jackass health publication out there, you, the public, are even more confused about strength versus growth than 20 years ago. Both rep schemes give you strength and both give you size. The first will develop more strength and more actual muscle development (i.e. more muscle fibers) over time while the second will yield fewer strength gains and less dense muscle (i.e. more sarcoplasmic development, which is collagen and other factors that aren’t muscle).

To put this in a visual perspective, if you train for both, it’s like a full pack of cigarettes. All of the cigarettes are packed tightly in the box, and each cigarette is full to the brim with beautiful cancer causing tobacco. If you miss any part of the process, you’ll have fewer cigarettes in the box and more paper. Train them BOTH.

Q: I don’t know if I should compete as a powerlifter? Or how could I still put on size and keep my abs?

A: Well, stop reading and go to the previous question. If you still don’t get it, stop reading this article and find a vaginal support group. I think they meet at all the Gold’s Gyms and great fitness centers across this rapidly declining country. (I think they meet on MySpace as well.) I will repeat this—YOU HAVE TO TRAIN BOTH. Try to keep the “compound movements” more like powerlifting with the larger weights and smaller reps. This will stimulate the aforementioned muscle development and raise hormone production, which is what we all want, right?

As far as the ab thing goes, most people are confused about this too. If you’re serious about gaining a lot of muscle, then you have to put on some size…and I mean fat. You don’t have to be a sloppy bastard like me, but you have to get some body fat and keep it on. What I’ve learned is that the body always fights for homeostasis or equilibrium. If you stay too lean, it’s very hard for the body to add muscle (without pharmaceutical help). If you stay 10–15 pounds above your optimum weight, the body will relax (a form of equilibrium) and add muscle relatively easily. Once your body catches up to your new muscle, you add 10–15 more pounds of body fat and the cycle continues. It’s a very simple process that is documented in studies all over the world. You will have to find them though.

Q: Should I deload?

A: As Jimmy Wendler, the great interrupter, put it at a recent seminar, go away and lift for at least five years (maybe it was ten years) and then ask this question. Until then, you haven’t earned your right (not an exact quote, but you get the gist). My answer to deloading is if you feel like crap and keep missing lifts, bag it and come back another day. The weights aren’t going anywhere. Refusing to stop when you’re physically and mentally worn out is where most of the injuries come from. If you still don’t get it, deload means that your bones hurt and you would rather be eating a bag of Oreos than lifting a stupid heavy weight.

These are just a few observations that I’ve seen over the years. Sometimes, even the simplest things just have to be expressed before you have that moment where you finally get it. Most everybody gets it at different times, and that’s just fine as long as you allow yourself to GET it.

As a lifter or athlete, you’ll only learn one detail of a skill at a time. In those moments of pure disgust and hate for yourself because you keep missing the lift for this reason or that reason, step back, breathe, and step back in with a different attitude. Go back to the perfect lift in your head. Work the details of that lift from start to finish. Visualize yourself doing the perfect lift. Once you have done this, visualize yourself stepping to the next level, wherever that may be, but enjoy the moments as they come because they are far and few between.