Two videos:

Chaos and Reductionism

Emergence and Complexity

Robert Sapolsky lectures on chaos theory and nonlinear complex systems.

Update your ideas on biology and exercise science accordingly.

Several years ago, I wrote a post on the subject of adrenal fatigue. I don’t recall exactly what prompted the rant, but I’m sure it had something to do with a personal trainer or MD-turned-author trying to make a quick buck by pushing supplements. It really annoyed me (still does, really) that people who should know better would jump on bandwagons built on almost insultingly simplistic science. Capitalize on the general mistrust of mainstream medicine and you’ve got a set of passive income streams in the making.

I think that this is a topic worth revisiting. It appears that my original article, now almost five years old, garnered some attention in the last day or two, so I thought it’d be worth addressing some of the “interesting” replies. More importantly, my understanding of stress and fatigue has progressed since those days, so this post can serve not only to debunk “adrenal fatigue” claims, but to explain how stress actually works and what might be happening in lieu.
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Do you ever get bored in training? Do you ever get stuck and wonder why it’s so hard to get any stronger?

Sometimes it comes down to repetition. You do the same things over and over, to the point that the monotony alone brings on staleness.

You get stuck because you aren’t doing enough to stimulate your body into new development. Here’s a few ideas to shake you out of your rut.

Have an Off-Season

You’d never know it to read around these days, but GPP — which stands for general physical preparedness — is not about conditioning circuits or extra recovery workouts.

A long time ago, Russian sports scientists broke up their athletic training year into rough off-season and in-season programs. GPP was their off-season, and used for similar purposes — namely, giving the athletes a break from the maximum contest-specific performances.

Not only do you get a break from going all-out, you spend your training time working on things you wouldn’t normally do. This can mean sets of 10, instead of heavy singles. This can mean doing cardio. It can mean going outside and getting activity that way. GPP is anything that doesn’t directly help your sport, but provides a mental break and works on all the fitness elements you wouldn’t normally worry about.

Of course, having an off-season only applies if you have a competitive season in the first place. If your sport has a less clear schedule, or competitions spaced year-round, you won’t get too far using the split-year model. What you can do is build in smaller GPP phases throughout the year. Throw in two weeks after a meet, or whenever you’ve got a long break.

Your GPP phases don’t have to be months long. Throw them in whenever you feel beat up or just need a change of pace.

Don’t treat the lifts like lifts

A couple of years ago, I decided to do a powerlifting meet, my first one in quite awhile. During the entire winter I’d been training with a low-key strength program and roughly equal parts conditioning. I’d gotten my numbers up reasonably high, and I was in shape to boot.

Then it came time to peak for the meet and it wasn’t two weeks later that I tore my right quad. This pattern — deciding to go for a meet, then having a muscle pop — has been consistent for me as long as I’ve been lifting. Why is this?

I always came into meet preparation with the belief that I had to change everything around compared to my normal training. Push those numbers up. Get time under the bar, learning to strain. This is mostly true, mind you, but I think I came at the problem wrong.

The training I was doing before this last meet was working just fine. I was getting stronger, and I was lifting heavy weights one workout out of every three. If I were to do it over again, I wouldn’t have changed anything.

The training was enough to drive progress. If I’d left it alone, maybe done a simple taper at the end, I’d have been just fine. But I had to be hard-headed and change everything.

Why do that when you can let your regular training carry you? Your baseline performance, your hit-that-any-day strength, the strength that you’ll always return to if you take a few weeks off training, that will always be determined by your overall preparation.

I find that no matter what I do, I can always pull five plates (I’m listing my deadlift because it’s my least embarrassing number; there’s no shame in that). I can train hard and push that up. I can not deadlift for six months and, as long as I’m squatting, you can throw 500 lbs on the ground and I can pick it up.

You don’t get to own a weight like that with lots of specialized focus and the quick-fix strength of neural gains. Owning a weight comes from changes in tissue, rebuilding your anatomical structure over years as you condition yourself to stresses and strains.

Likewise, you’re not going to make yourself that much stronger with preparation cycles. Why spend 12 weeks to get 5kg on a lift, when you could do as good or better without the “peaking plan”?

Don’t underestimate the strength-building potential of normal training. Still peak, of course, but I’m getting away from the idea that you need to spend eight weeks or longer for a meet. Train hard, and then come up with a six-week peaking plan. More time spent on productive training, less time getting hurt.

And newbies, you need to pay attention to this most of all. I think that if you want to train with razor focus, whether that’s for powerlifting or any strength sport, you should balance that specialization with GPP or some equivalent to an off-season.

I think the worst mistake a newbie can make is to jump into a specialized training process with both feet. A newbie means less than 2-3 years of general training. You need to train your back and your shoulders; ladies, this especially applies to you and your bench desires. Men, especially you long-armed lightly-built men like myself, you need to do this so you don’t make hash of your shoulder joints.

The newer you are, the more weak-points you’ll have, and training specialized, including suits and wraps, month after month isn’t the best way to get that development. It’ll work just fine over the short term, but you’re short-changing yourself over the long run.

Train at a Disadvantage

Fred Hatfield called for using the OL-style high-bar squat for most of the year, only switching to the “sumo” low-bar squat in the last 6-8 weeks of prep for a meet. I like that strategy. The low-bar squat is great for hoisting weight, provided you’ve got the right levers, but it’s not such a great development exercise.

When you train how you compete, month after month, you get stuck in that pattern. Contrary to popular belief, the low-bar PL squat isn’t all that great of a developing exercise. The idiosyncrasies of technique make it great for hoisting weights, but this comes at a price.

Developing the quads, and torque around the knee joint, is just as important as the strength of hip extension in the posterior chain.

The same principle applies to supportive equipment. Even the seemingly innocuous, things like old knee wraps and belts, can take away from the essential loading that builds muscle and tendon strength. Throw these on to support you through intense phases of training or leading into a contest, and you’ll see a huge boost. Train with them year-round, and the effect is diminished.

I often advise people to train without gear as much as possible, especially as beginners. When you get pretty strong without support, you can expect a big gain when you finally do throw it on. Train in it year-round and you neglect weak-points, losing any kind of “reserve” you might get out of equipment.

Even pre-workout stimulants can become a crutch. Training on “nerve-power” as Bob Hoffman said almost guarantees that you’ll feel worse the next day. Use stimulants sparingly, when you want to improve training.

This is a personal belief, but I’m of the opinion that you should be ‘in shape’ strong — strong beyond the technicalities of competition — even if you have a favored sport. Powerlifting has become focused on training to the rules, with people using equipment and techniques that, while legal, don’t reflect a genuine and balanced development of strength.

Before I get nasty comments and emails, let me remind you that this isn’t a criticism of competing powerlifters. When you compete you do what you have to do to win. I’m only suggesting that non-competitors, and lifters with no meets in the next 6-8 weeks, should think twice about emulating the powerlifter’s contest training methods.

Train to improve your baseline, the weights you can handle calm and without support. Leave your secret weapons in reserve and train with a disadvantage most of the time. You’ll reap the rewards when it’s time to bring the pain.

Cover All the Bases

Powerlifting, in the sense of heavy low-rep training, focusing on the three lifts and only minimal diversity of exercises, is not a good plan for beginners. There’s too much focus on narrow rep ranges, too much focus on specific exercises, and not enough general build-you-up exercise.

There are so many aspects to physical conditioning that straight powerlifting doesn’t address. I don’t mean conditioning as your work capacity or aerobic fitness level. Conditioning means things like muscle balance, like supporting tendon and ligament strength, like hypertrophy in the muscles that the three lifts won’t target.

If you’re Mike Bridges, you can maybe get away with training the three lifts heavy and doing little else. If you were Mike Bridges, you’d also be lifting near world records on your first day in the gym.

Train the lifts hard, but focus on bodybuilding for assistance work. Lots of volume, more diversity in rep ranges and exercises. Leave the gear at home until you’ve got a meet looming. Build up the body. Create that “muscle armor” as Dan John calls it.

It feels good to see the numbers jump, but it feels even better when you can handle the weights cold with no question of your ability.

A few days ago, my buddy Bret Contreras wrote up a summary of John Broz’s training methods over on T-Nation. I’ve been following Broz and his athletes closely for the last year and a half, and he’s never failed to impress. Whether you agree with his methods or not, you can’t argue with his results.

My own experimentation with daily training started when Broz’s comments convinced me to give it a good try. Over the years, I’ve always found that I respond better to more training, but less “intensity” in each session. By intensity I don’t mean weight on the bar as a percentage of maximum. I mean effort. I mean exhaustion. Typical wisdom says you need to throw all your energy into your workouts and leave yourself crawling out of the gym.
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A few years ago, I posted a squat video on Youtube. Not the best source of intelligent commentary on good days, several comments stuck out to me. These users, with the best of intentions I’m sure, gave me what I can best describe as “internet powerlifter squat advice”, which I found confusing.

I’m not a geared powerlifter. I don’t train in suits or briefs. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve wrapped my knees. For me, “equipped” means putting on a belt. My preferences are not to be taken as a criticism of supportive equipment, or those of you who choose to train in gear. They’re exactly that: my preferences.

It happens that my preferred squat style resembles that of Olympic lifters, with a high bar position and a narrow stance. My knees travel over my toes. My torso stays fairly upright, rather than folding over into a quasi-good morning. I arrived at this style after years of experimenting with the more traditional low-bar, wider-stance “powerlifting” squat. This suits big men, natural squatters, and geared lifters very well. But I’m skinny, with the proportions of a tall man. The high-bar Olympic squat fits me much better. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two muscles I’ve torn while squatting both happened with a wider stance.

I have no reason to listen to the Westside-EliteFTS approach to squatting. No, I don’t need to keep my shins vertical. No, I don’t need to sit back more. No, box squats don’t help my squat very much. I don’t squat like you. None of that matters. You might as well be telling me how to change a lightbulb while I’m fixing my car.

Context matters. Squats, like every other exercise, are individual. Your levers are different from my levers. Squatting raw might as well be an entirely different exercise from squatting in a suit and wraps. What builds your squat may not build my squat. What builds a raw squat does not necessarily build a geared squat.

Remember this when digesting training advice. Hammers will always find nails.

Links of interest:

The Belief Engine by James Alcock — A nice look at the confabulation powers of the brain which lead to bias and irrationality.

Inducing Disbelief in Free Will Alters Brain Correlates of Preconscious Motor Preparation — Your belief in free will influences voluntary control over movement. More evidence that abstract beliefs and psychological framing have a real impact.

How to Keep Catastrophic Thoughts from Killing You by Joe Robinson — More on overriding the built-in stress response with psychotherapy methods. This has obvious applications for “overtraining”.

Brains manufacture beliefs and beliefs generate physiological responses.

In the 1930s, linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf argued that language shapes thought. Language, wrote Sapir, can be considered “the mold of thought.” Languages doesn’t simply latch on to pre-existing concepts. The words themselves define the concepts available to us and provide the raw building material for our thoughts. There can be no thoughts without the words to define them.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, as this argument became known, itself went on to influence social theories and, perhaps most famously, the ‘newspeak’ in George Orwell’s 1984.

I’m no linguist and I won’t try to argue over the correctness of linguistic relativity. What I find interesting is the premise that words can influence our thoughts, if not outright shaping them.
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Since I’ve been back on a daily-squatting kick, I thought this would be appropriate an appropriate read to get some discussion going. For reasons that will become clear, Bob Peoples has been a huge motivator in the “just go lift” scheme of things. You see that he wasn’t shy of trying new and different methods to see where it took him, and yet he always wound up back at heavy daily lifting — and this was going on with full-time manual labor and, just by the dates, no possibility of steroid use.

What you do is what you get used to.

The Training Methods of Bob Peoples

Reprinted from April/May 1952 Issue of Iron Man

by Bob Peoples

[Editor’s note, by Peary Rader -- Most readers are aware of the great feats of deadlifting performed by the subject of this article. He eventually attained a lift of 725 pounds officially and has come close to succeeding with much more than this on numerous occasions. His bodyweight for these stupendous feats was usually around 180 lbs. and never exceeding 190 which made them still more amazing.

Mr. Peoples is a very successful farmer in Tennessee and has his training interrupted often by seasonal work. He has never had the ideal training quarters and fine equipment that most of us enjoy. Most of his equipment was made on the farm. Most of his training has been done out of doors in his farm yard or wherever his weights happened to be at the time. In bad weather he trains in one of the outbuildings or in a cellar. Under such training conditions and without the incentive of training partners his accomplishments are nothing short of unbelievable. But now we let him tell his own story.]

When I started training I could dead lift 350 pounds and clean and jerk about 160 on the crude apparatus I had been able to make up. My first lifting instruction was obtained from an early article in Physical Culture by David P. Willoughby and from a copy of Calvert’s Super Strength.

My first weightlifting apparatus was made with a 1 1/4 inch bar and some wooden drums on the end into which I put weights of various sorts through a hole in the top. I later applied pins to the ends from which I could hang iron plates. This could be loaded up to 1,000 lbs. or more. I later purchased a Milo Duplex set and then added a Jackson International Olympic set plus a lot of plates of various sizes totalling well over a ton. At one time I had two 50 gallon drums on legs with a bar through them to practice carrying heavy weights on shoulders. The drums or barrels were loaded with rocks. [Ed. note: Sounds familiar, eh, guys?]

For some time I trained rather irregular on the five lifts, the dead lift and squat, as well as some strength stunts and played a year of football in college. Eventually, I began keeping notes and records of my lifting and training. The first of these is dated Nov. 1, 1935 and shows regular dead lift of 500, press and snatch 150, jerk 215, right arm jerk 150, left arm jerk 135, deep knee bend 300, bent press 125 and my bodyweight was 170.

About this time I worked out a regular schedule and worked daily on it for six weeks. I don’t remember the weights used or the repetitions but do know my poundages went up — the dead lift to 540 and jerk to 225.

I then drifted along until 1937 when I entered a contest at Chattanooga where I made 150, 160, 205 at a bodyweight of 163. This was my first experience in such contests and I didn’t do too good. I trained in the back yard, or barn or wherever I decided to move my weights. I set up two posts in the ground and bored holes through them in such a way that I could load a bar up and finish dead lift height. From this I would take the loaded bar and do dead hang dead lifts which I found to be of great value in developing the dead lift. [Ed. note: In other words, he started at the top, lowered the bar, then pulled it back up.]

I also built what I called a ring bar. This was a large ring of steel to which I fastened two short bars (one on each side) on which I could load plates. I would stand inside this ring on a box and do lifts from a very low position, going into a full squat and bent over position. [Ed. note: a home-made trap bar.]

I have also fixed two posts in my cellar where I train in winter. These posts have holes bored in them about every 4 inches. I insert pins in these holes to hold the weights at the desired height for various types of lifts. I also have holes on the sides of these posts into which I insert pins to support a pipe or bar with the other ends of pipes or bars resting on a sawhorse at the proper height.

I feel this apparatus is an absolute necessity for anyone training alone as I do. I insert the pins in the proper holes for a quarter dead lift for instance, so that when I load the bar up it will come just below the kneecaps. I take the bar in hands and step back and do my dead lifts. I also find that the pipes on the pins and horse work very well for this. If the pipes (or, preferably, steel bars) are strong enough, you can do dead lifts on them at any height and they work well for the called “hopper” dead lifts for you can lower the bar fast and get a good rebound from them.

I also use this set up for the deep knee bend. You can set the supporting bars at any height and do almost all the power lifts known, such as half dead lifts, half squats, half supine presses, short pull cleans or snatches and a lot of others too numerous to mention.

You will also see me in one photo using a supporting device I made for the jerks, short presses, etc. I fastened two strong leather straps to two posts at the proper height as shown. I load the bar up to a very heavy poundage and get under it with straight arms and stand erect with it, holding it for several seconds then lower it and repeat again after a rest. This gives great supporting power in the jerk position. To develop locking out power you can lower the weight slightly bending the arms a little then straighten them out and lock them tight. You should do about 6 reps of this. If you wish you can also apply longer straps (or bolt chains to the posts if you prefer) and these will allow you to get into the low split and take the weight on straight arms and stand erect. The advantage of having the supporting chains or straps fastened to these posts is that you can slide the bar up the posts as you come erect and it helps you maintain your balance and concentrate more on the power developing phase of the exercise rather than divide your attention between balancing and lifting as is the case when using loose chains suspended from the ceiling.

I have tried a lot of different training stunts over the years in an effort to develop more strength. I will try to describe some of them for you and tell you the ones that were successful and those that were not.

In an effort to improve my press, I rigged up a hand stand machine. This however, didn’t work out and my press remained the same. I also tried a rowing inaehine adjusted to about 500 lbs. in an effort to localize the blood circulation in the hip area but this too failed.

From 1937 to 1940, I trained rather irregular but gradually gave more attention to the dead lift, which was becoming my favorite lift. I usually used the reverse grip and 3 to 5 reps usually with several sets. One program I remember well was composed of the stiff legged dead lift with dead hangs, the regular dead lift with dead hangs, and the regular dead lift with single reps, working up in poundage. I used heavy weights in all the exercises. I also used the ring weight dead lift. I improved my dead lift to 600 lbs. on this program but believe I had too much variety for best results. This lift was made at the 1940 Tennessee State Championships. It was then considered a Southern record. I was now beginning to think of a world record in either the light heavy or the heavyweight class.

Here is at sample program of the summer of 1940. Dead Lift 450 lbs. times 1 rep, 484 x 1, 519 x 1, 560 x 1, 584 x 1. Press 143 x 4, 153 x 2, 163, 173, 178, 183. This was one days workout. On the second day, I would do Half Deep Knee Bends 300 x 4, 490 x 12, 530 x 6, 555 x 4. On another workout day, I did Press from Behind Neck, 123 x 5, 133 x 2. Press 143 x, 5, 153 x 2, Bench Press 153 x 6, 163 x 1. Alternate Press 70 x 5.

During 1941 and mostly in the summer, I worked again on the three lifts and also the leg press, deep knee bends and dead lift. I did mostly dead hang lifts in both stiff legged and regular style. After this training period I did a 630 dead lift, 400 deep knee bend, 170 press, 190 snatch, 260 clean and jerk and a 290 clean.

I trained very irregular in 1942-3 and missed 5 months straight due to a serious set back. After this I was pretty weak and my dead lift had dropped to 400. My back strength did not seem to come back very fast and I seemed to have lost the technique. My leg strength came back rapidly, however. In July of 1943 I finally did a half squat (dropping about I foot) with 635, which was a personal record for me. Also did 7 reps with 600, and still later in August I made 10 reps with 600. I also experimented with the three quarter deep knee bend but without any improvement.

My dead lift began to slowly come back up and in September I did 500 again and my press came up to 185, snatch with 195. On September 21, I did a dead hang lift with 600. Also a half knee bend with 675. October 21 I did a full squat with 410. I snatched 190 without any foot action. My Olympic total had come up to 642 1/2 and all lifts seemed to be responding. My program was still the same—usually 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps with each Lift.

On up to 1944 I continued to progress and found that my strength gained more then anything else for I finally reached a half deep knee bend with 725 lbs. I did a dead hand dead lift with 625 and 2 reps with 600 in workout.

In February 1945, and still working on the press, snatch, jerk, alternate press, squat and dead lift I made further progress using the following schedule. February 1, Squat 350 x 10 and alternate press. February 2, Squat 400 x 2, alternate press two 80 lb. dumbbells 7 reps each. February 3 squat 400 x 3. February 6 alternate press 90 x 4. February 7 half squats at 600 x 7, alternate press 90 x 5. February 8 dead lift 450 x 5. dead hang dead lift 600, press 170 x 4, 180 x 3, jerk 230 x 2.

February 10, dead lift 500 x 3, dead hang dl 600, snatch 180 x 4. press 180 x 3. Fcbmary 11, half squat 650 x. 1, alternate press 90 x 6. jerk 230 x 4. February 12, dead lift 500 x 4, dead hang dl 600, press 180 x 4, snatch 180 x 4.

You will note that I did not use any set schedule but varied the program between the lifts according to the way I felt, some days doing just one lift and on others doing several. Most of the time I worked every day but never did more than 3 to 5 reps in any lift. I followed this typo of program throughout 1945 with slight variations and finally worked up to 475 squat, 217 1/2 press, total 670.

Due to more responsibilities and work in 1946 I missed 6 months at training but started again in July to attempt a world record in the dead lift for the 181 lb. class. I trained as follows. I used the three olympic lifts and then worked on the dead lift; starting with about 350 lbs. for 3 reps and adding weight in 50 lb. jumps until my limit was reached. I trained daily in this manner. [Ed. note: go back re-read that paragraph very carefully.]

In September I lifted in the Tennessee State meet and made 185 press, 220 snatch (state record) and clean and jerk of 230. The jerk was always hard for me due to my extremely long arms though the clean was very easy due to my powerful back. At this same meet I made a record dead lift of 651 1/4 at at bodyweight of 175 so you see I had made good progress on this lift.

I trained regularly until the end of the year making the following personal records — Press 221 1/2, snatch 221 1/2, jerk 265, total 700. My 651 1/4 dead lift was performed with reverse grip and rounded back and full lungs. More about this later. In July, 1947, I did a squat of 440 x 3 and just missed doing 480. I did a dead lift of 600 x 5. I was finding it difficult to hold the weight in my hands for high reps. and often had sore hands, so I fashioned a device to tie my wrists to the bar for repetitions. This was composed of a couple of hooks with wrist straps.

I started on another heavy daily schedule similar to the one outlined above using the same lifts and training daily and on July 18 did Press 120 x 3, 140 x 3, 160 x 3, 180 x 3, 200 x 3, Dead lift 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, 550, 600 all three repetitions each then did 660 once for a new personal record. I continued this way each day working hard on dead lift and either the press or snatch each day, occasionally doing some half squats until August 2 when I finally made a dead lift with 675.

On August 6 I did a dead lift of 650 then did 700 off the floor. On August 14 I did 600 x 7 in dl and just missed a 500 deep knee bend. On September 3 I finally made a 680 dead lift, and on September 4 I made a 500 deep knee bend.

On October 4 I went to Chattanooga YMCA for the Bob Hise show and warming up with 350 x 4, 450, 550, 610, 660 I finally made a new world record with 700 lbs. At this time I was lifting on normally filled lungs. However I than started lifting on empty lungs and with at round back — that is I would breath out to normal then do my dead lift. I feel this is much safer than following the customary advice of the experts to take a deep breath and than dead lift.

Breathing out you lessen the internal pressure and by lifting with a round back you lessen the leverage — all of which helps add many lbs. to your lift. I realize this style may not work well with everyone but in my case it seems ideal. I have used the reverse grip and also the over and will experiment with it a while to see if it helps. To date I have made a 225 press, 230 snatch and 271 clean amd jerk as well as 530 deep knee bend. At slightly over the light heavy weight class limit I have been making in the neighborhood of a 725 dead lift recently. I have ambitions of pulling up towards 800 some day.

My more recent dead lift records have been made with more limited training. I don’t necessarily think the limited training is better but and just didn`t have time to devote to a larger program. I use the regular dead lift and a half dead lift (the upper half) and at one time used the dead hang lift but didn`t use it long enough to prove it. I’m firmly sold on its value, however.

The practice of holding heavy weights in the hands in the finish position is very important. The use of hooks strapped to wrists will help on repetitions because your grip usually gives out before anything else. Always be sure your grip is strong enough to make your single attempts for records.

I tried a Hopper that I made especially for the lift but did not use it enough to give it at fair trial as far as results were concerned. I used two auto wheels on a bar and stacked weights around them. This gave a good hop or bounce.

Another method of training that gave me good results was to alternate between dead lifts and the squats. I’d work on the dead lift alone for a time. I’d start out with single attempts and work up to my limit. I would work at this every day until I began to go stale, then I quit the dead lift and went to work on the squat with the same system, and so on back and forth. This system gave me very good results. [Ed. note: Again, go back and reread this paragraph.]

I think a training schedule should he built around the individual, especially in advanced work. I have never used the set system as far as high reps are concerned, but liked a system of low reps and working up to my limit, This seemed to work much better for me. I am no authority on diet but feel much better and do a great deal better lifting when well fed. I don’t generally favor irregular training although I’ve done a lot of it by necessity. I do not approve of long layoffs although I feel rest periods of a week or so at intervals are helpful and even necessary. I favor a daily training program for myself as long as I can get away with it.

Another thing which most people seem informed wrong about is the age at which a man ceases to improve. It always amuses me to hear people at 30 say, “Oh, I’m getting to old for that sort of thing.” I feel a man can continue to improve until he reaches a pretty advanced age compared to the general opinion.

I sincerely hope that what I’ve been able to tell you about my training, rambling as my remarks have been, will be of some help to readers of Iron Man. I could have given more of my workout programs but they all follow the same pattern as outlined above — that is, daily training with a few exercises and working up to limit poundages and 3 to 5 reps. Half movements have always been an important part of my training for power. Such movements as half squats (deep knee bends) and half dead lifts, etc., are very important in developing strength for heavy weights.

This is going to be another short clip-show post.

The John Broz Q&A Thread – an older thread from BB.com, chock full of golden wisdom from Broz himself. The first 5-6 pages are mandatory reading if you want to squat to a max every day.

Speaking of squats and maxes, Max Aita gives his input on frequent squatting over on Glenn’s board. And congrats to Max for finally hitting that 302 kg (that’s 665 lbs) squat after his 17th try. No-no-no squats have always been the most impressive to me.

Otherwise been a slow week, so that’s all I’ve got for you. I’ll be back with a real post next week.

The first chapter of Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard by Chip & Dan Heath (link to my review) tells the story of Jerry Sternin, who came to Vietnam in the 1999 with a big mission and a small budget. Sternin had the task of fighting child malnutrition in poor villages, without government support and only limited resources of his own.

Most of us can relate to feelings of despair that come up in overwhelming situations. The goal seems impossible and the trip hopeless, so why bother at all? It’s easy to just give up.

Sternin took a different path. He went out to the villages and looked for cases where the children weren’t starving, and then copied that solution. Within a year, while the problem wasn’t solved, there were measurable, and almost unbelievable, improvements. Because Sternin focused on what was working, rather than everything that was wrong and in his way, he got results.

The Heath brothers used Sternin’s story as an example of finding the bright spots. When you’re looking for a solution, you don’t focus on all the facts that, no matter how correct, don’t help you solve the problem. You look at what is working and you copy it.

The human mind has a built-in negativity bias. We’re wired to focus excessively on the downsides and drawbacks and to ignore the positives. We make up our minds unconsciously and then rationalize our decisions after the fact — what’s called motivated reasoning.

There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions.

You want to be right, and being right means everyone else must be wrong, or stupid, or your choice of derogatory term. Your brain then makes that happen and convinces you that you’re being objective and reasonable.

When faced with a large and challenging problem, whether a project at work or trying to stick to a diet, it’s easy focus unduly on how hard it will be, on all the drawbacks, potential risks, and all the reasons why trying to pull off this forsaken scheme from HP Lovecraft’s imagination is a bad idea.

This is where perfectionism originates.

You can quote facts all day long. In human decision-making, facts are largely irrelevant. We’re so inherently biased that we will give less weight to facts that disagree with us, to the point of ignoring or outright dismissing them. Meanwhile, the facts that agree with us are elevated far beyond their relevance.

Chris Mooney recently wrote an excellent piece titled The Science of Why We Don’t Believe in Science, which covers the power of cognitive biases and motivated reasoning. This article is well worth the read for a summary of the field as it stands. We see that humans are not pure rational beings, but instead engines of rationalization who create fictional narratives based on a loose approximation of the real world.

Believing that a project will be difficult to the point of impossible means that you’re quite likely correct. Facts alone can’t change that. As much as we love to immerse ourselves in the concrete world of science and reductionist materialism, as much as we want to base our actions on research, this information is largely worthless when it comes to getting things done.

Perhaps most insidious, even a research-informed viewpoint is subject to potentially immense biases — the educated and informed are not exempt from the slimy tendrils of motivated reasoning. Consider that next time you’re evaluating an allegedly informed source. Not adhering to your arrived-at set of beliefs doesn’t make a person stupid or ignorant. It makes them human.

And if you want to persuade human beings, your best bet is not to put them on the defensive or bombard those people with endless series of useless factoids. Jerry Sternin referred to info-dumping as facts which were True But Useless — information which is technically true and probably correct from a factual standpoint, and entirely useless for generating solutions.

At this point I stop, review my older writing, and cringe. How much time did I spend on True But Useless information? I hardly want to think about it.

We’re supposed to focus on solutions. Pontificating over useless truths and acting obnoxiously pedantic over every last piece of trivia is not productive. As the Heath brothers said, find the bright spots and ignore the rest.

Find what works, take away what you can use, and don’t worry about anything else.

Consider my recent review of the paper on light-load constant tension training, and some of the skeptical responses this paper generates. Every criticism in the world can be leveled at this paper. They didn’t use a mid-range group to test between the extremes of heavy and light loads (this wasn’t the point of the paper). They didn’t control for the results. There’s always something wrong with a paper if it disagrees with your previously established viewpoint. Everybody has a motive.

But that’s not helpful. That doesn’t provide a solution.

Find the bright spot. What’s bright about this paper? It shows us that there is a physiological mechanism to explain how light, constant-tension ‘pump’ training can build muscle. It doesn’t say ‘drop all heavy work and do nothing but light training’. It says ‘here’s how light training might work’. It says ‘maybe this is why bodybuilding methods using light isolation exercises build muscle’.

The subtext is that things we observe happening in the Real World can be explained. The research provides an explanation for why it works. The paper isn’t perfect — so what? What benefit do I get from pointing out that there are largely irrelevant flaws in research methods? Does that help me achieve what I want from the gym?

Sitting on forums and deconstructing the fine trivia of workouts or research studies or diets I don’t like isn’t a productive use of time. Caving in to the petty nitpicking urges of motivated reasoning is not useful.

Over the last few years I’ve become more and more frustrated with nitpicking and obsession with True But Useless details. This mindset becomes negativity for negativity’s sake, whether for ego-building or arguing for the sake of arguing. Either way, nothing useful comes out of it.

I’d rather focus on what works, find the bright spots, and take away those things that help me.