One of the biggest things I notice people do when they program a workout is they program too much. I have been a victim of it. Sean has. We all have at some point or another. The reality of it all is that less is more.
You need to know when to pick and choose your exercises as well as your goals. For example, if you are strength training, need to bulk up, and only weigh 110lbs at 6’1″, you have no business worrying about conditioning. If you are overweight and still can’t seem to shake eating McDonald’s everyday then counting your macronutrients is very cart before the horse. Simplicity is where the gains are.
A simple strength program for beginners will put focus on the compound lifts and the compound lifts only. Accessory exercises are nothing more than either a) aesthetics or b) accessories for the compound lifts to help succeed in the compound lifts. You can’t even deadlift your body weight and you are worrying about your bicep curls (although there is utility, but chances are you are not doing them for the practical reason)? Bro, get your shit together.
Ivan asked me the other day if he can add in some additional abdominal work into his programming so he can lost body fat.
Less is more:
First of all, in regards to abs, all your compound lifts require your abs to be stabilization muscles. You don’t have weak abs if you can squat 2x your bodyweight. You don’t have weak abs if you can pick up 500 pounds. Your abs are even engaged when your press or bench press, clean, snatch, barbell curl, take a shit, walk, stretch, do a chin up, have sex with your significant others- I think you get the point. You work out your abs extensively. If you add ab work to your program, you better do it in order to improve your trunk stabilization and not because you wanna look like a dainty little boyish girl with cute abs. Get your priorities in line. There are a lot of good methods out there on strength training. But if you take a program like Starting Strength and think that you know more than Mark Rippetoe or Lon Kilgore and say “That’s not enough exercising, when do I get to isolate my abs?” you are an idiot
Secondly if you prioritize everything, then you have no priority. You can’t worry about conditioning, strength, endurance, hypertrophy, and your abs all at the same time. If you are a newb and decide to do hill sprints before your heavy squat session because you wanna “look shredded,” don’t cry when you can’t seem to get past your mark and then try to blame the program. Don’t add on to a program that you choose to do. Do the program as it is written. Unless you are an experienced athlete, then you can experiment with adding things, or learn to program your own routine with goals in mind. Of which, most people don’t know how to program properly. Get educated before you decide to throw a program together and piss in the wind. Prioritize.
Let’s get one thing straight: you can do 9,000 crunches a day; you won’t see your abs if you have a high body fat percentage. The change in body fat percentage is completely dependent of your diet. Ivan’s flaw is he drinks his calories with things like Gatorade, sugary ice teas, soda, energy drinks, etc. If he actually cut these things out of his diet, he would begin to notice a difference. But this would require patience which most people do not have. Most people say “I can eat what I want as long I jog for four miles and do my crunches.” No, man. You needa stop eating shit and eating properly.
Less is bad:
You may have also heard about low carb and low fat crash diets. I’m not against low carb, but I’m not for it either because most people don’t know how to do it properly. But this fear of fats has gotten out of control. Fat is good for you. Fat helps you recover. If you choose to eat in an extreme calorie deficit on a strength program, you will get weak (I wouldn’t even go with a deficit on a strength training program anyway, just eat better). If you just choose to only eat one meal a day and not get in your daily caloric or macronutrient needs in that meal, you will become so sickly, you’re own mother will stop loving you, and you may actually get fatter (!). Calorie deficits are fine if you know how to calculate them properly. 30 percent decrease at maximal is sufficient, but just because your on a calorie deficit does not mean you are excluded from acquiring the proper amount of protein, fats, and carbohydrates a day. When you don’t do this, you can increase your fatigue; your body learns when you are ignoring food, so your brain will slow down your metabolic rate (!!). At this point your testosterone is decreasing while your cortisol is increasing (the hormone that puts a lot of fat around your belly and tries to keep the body alive because it thinks it’s shutting down). If you don’t eat enough (like Ivan) your loss will be slow- you need to eat in order to lose weight (!!!). I know for a fact Ivan doesn’t get in all his macronutrients a day, which is absolutely a reason why he is always tired, hurts himself regularly when working out, and (although he is thinning out) is not losingany faster than he is (and he has shit mobility). Do you think your body is stupid?
Less is more:
I’m not saying eat six smaller meals a day either. Take a look at this citation by Martin Berkhan on http://www.leangains.com:
“Each time you eat, metabolic rate increases slightly for a few hours. Paradoxically, it takes energy to break down and absorb energy. This is the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). The amount of energy expended is directly proportional to the amount of calories and nutrients consumed in the meal.
Let’s assume that we are measuring TEF during 24 hours in a diet of 2700 kcal with 40% protein, 40% carbohydrate and 20% fat. We run three different trials where the only thing we change is the meal frequency.
A) Three meals: 900 kcal per meal.
B) Six meals: 450 kcal per meal.
C) Nine meals: 300 kcal per meal.
What we’d find is a different pattern in regards to TEF. Example “A” would yield a larger and long lasting boost in metabolic rate that would gradually taper off until the next meal came around; TEF would show a “peak and valley”-pattern. “C” would yield a very weak but consistent boost in metabolic rate; an even pattern. “B” would be somewhere in between.
However, at the end of the 24-hour period, or as long as it would take to assimilate the nutrients, there would be no difference in TEF. The total amount of energy expended by TEF would be identical in each scenario. Meal frequency does not affect total TEF. You cannot “trick” the body in to burning more or less calories by manipulating meal frequency.”
You can find more research through his site and through academic journals. Berkhan preaches on intermittent fasting (IF). That’s another article for another time.
The aforementioned has been written before by numerous people online. There really is no other way to hone it into anyone’s brains. You’ve all been brainwashed to believe more is more. You’ve been told that fat is scary and low carb is the way to go. You’ve been told that lifting weights can make females bulky and manly (almost physiologically impossible, by the way [you have like, 1/16th of the testosterone we have]). You’ve been told machines are safer, but then you wonder why your back hurts when you squat 135 on the smith machine (ha-der). You’ve been told cardio is the best way to lose fast. You’ve been told wheat and multigrains are healthy for you. You’ve been told that ab work needs to be hit from different angles nine times a day and that there are thousands of different curl variations that hit the muscle the perfect way. Why? Because the FDA looks at your central nervous system, endocrine system, metabolic rate, average height, weight, etc. and says to itself “Hmm…how can I just make this human live survive.” Not excel. Not get better. Stay stagnant. Just survive. Barely. You’ll be weak, you’ll be kinda fat and inflamed. And mostly, you’ll be pathetic. You’ve also believed all the people who claim to be experts because they benched once, back in a garage, in front of their brother, half their body weight and thought that was the picture of health, and automatically dictated to themselves that they are a fitness guru, who informs you that you have to do various body splits and “confuse the muscles” so that you can get maximal gains, but wonder why you can’t even curl past the 25lb dumbbell on his thrown-together-last-minute-mickey-mouse-simple-simon-mother-fucker-program.
Have fun being the sheep in the field.
-Billy