Let's Get Controversial, What Dogma or Conventions Do You Disagree With?

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

We absorb so much information, and the world of fitness is in a constant state of evolution. Many “influencers” are quick to stand by unique viewpoints solely for the sake of views, while the old school clings to familiar practices because they believe the results speak for themselves. I thought it would be cool to try to break out of the status quo as an opportunity for gaining fresh insights. Let’s challenge some conventional ideas and get some discussion going.

There might be some beliefs about nutrition you find questionable, or maybe it’s a certain training methodology. Anything you can think of relating to fitness.

It doesn’t need to be just flat-out disagreements here - even if you have a slight apprehension or lack of understanding about something, that’s great. Don’t worry if you think your opinion might make you look a little silly. Keep this thread respectful and use it as a chance for learning. There are some clever people here, maybe we can iron some stuff out.

I have a couple myself which I’ll type up a little later.

4 Likes
2

Isolation work is mostly useless for most people. This is used as a substitute for putting in the work on the big lifts. If you cannot bench press your bodyweight for 10 reps, then don’t worry about tricep kickbacks. Too many people I know that never have seen results from lifting have workout plans that are littered with: curls, skull crushers, lat raises, calf raises, leg extensions, and the like. I see these as fine-tuning for those that are advanced and have a low enough BF% that working isolated small muscles makes sense.

Calisthenics are highly underrated. Everyone that considers themselves strong and conditioned should be able to do 15 dips and 15 pull ups without much trouble. You can get very strong and fit if you progress to harder versions (pistol squats, muscle ups, one-handed push ups, etc…) or throw on a weight vest and crank out calisthenics circuits.

Don’t go too far down any rabbit hole. Your progress will stall and you will open yourself up to overuse injuries. I have done this (hello, weighted pull ups) and I’ve seen others do it as well. Especially when it comes to conditioning and metcon-style work. Variety is the key here. Wall balls, thrusters, burpees, sleds, box jumps, rowing, jump rope, running, biking, KB swings, etc… Use them all.

Learn new lifts and exercises. When you suck at something, you have a lot of room to improve. I also believe, just like learning new things with your mind, introducing your body to new things to master is a big factor in staying youthful and spry in your training.

Live by “The Middle Way”. This is a Buddhist saying. Push hard, but not too hard (unless you’re competing or testing). Take days off, but not too many. Eat in a structured, healthy way but don’t become obsessive or too attached to it. Let training and nutrition be a part of your life, and not seep into all aspects of your life.

11 Likes
3

Thanks @antiquity, a great way to start.

I’m both with and against you on the isolation stuff. I don’t believe in minimalism much anymore, but 4 or 5 biceps variations and won’t do a single chin-up? It seems very wrong to me. I firmly believe in the whole-body systemic response given by the bigger movements and a lot of this “sculpting” stuff should maybe be kept for when you’ve earned your stripes a little bit. Nothing wrong with doing some isolation work, but too many people are making it the 90% when it should be the 5-10%. We need the bigger movements for the body to say to itself “Hey you little piece of shit, if we’re gonna be handling stuff like this then we better grow sharpish”. 20lb cable lat raises vs a big overhead press just ain’t gonna be giving the same growth signal.

I’ve posted quite a bit about this stuff lately. It’s easy to avoid things we’re not good at, but to loosely quote myself… when you discover you’re not good at something it shouldn’t be considered an excuse not to do it, but a golden moment for something you can work on. The things you’re worse at are the things that as you say, have the most room for growth. There are so many examples of this I’m not sure it’s even worth mentioning any. In the realm of specificity and competing with each other and ourselves we often forget this. For health, longevity, weak points, balance, and everything in between it’s probably the best way to do things. It’s definitely something I need to do more.

This is something I’m coming to terms with. I became far too low after a recent self-inflicted injury. It’s embarrassing looking back even just a month or two ago. I gave too much of myself to the gym and neglected other parts of my health and well-being. We all gotta have a bit of balance. If you want to get to the top, make those sacrifices, for all of us other average folk? Check yourself now and again.

3 Likes
4

To be fair, I will throw in some curls, wrist curls, and neck work myself. You, and many here, have earned it. I think what I mean the most is the “average” gym-goer’s approach: a low intensity cardio machine for 30 minutes, then an isolation circuit. They will say to others “you’re so lucky, we both go to the gym everyday and I just don’t see the results you do”. But they are weak and flabby and care more about their preacher curls than their squat, bench, or pull ups.

I can’t remember where I read this (Pavel, Dan John, or Wendler), but if you hurt yourself training you are doing something very wrong. Your programming or intensity or form is broken. Sure, you can hurt yourself in a competition when going all out, but if you hurt yourself doing a 531 program you misunderstood something. For me, it’s always been programming, where I pound away at one thing (pull ups or bench press have both been culprits for me) and develop issues as a result. If I’m going to devote as much effort to training and “health”, I shouldn’t be more hobbled than my physically inactive coworkers.

4 Likes
5

Here’s another about nutrition:

Look at ingredients, not nutrition facts. This is basically what Michael Pollan wrote about in his In Defense of Food, and since then it’s been supported more and more by research. Eat real, whole, unadultered food and don’t worry about nutrition facts. Veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, unprocessed meats, whole eggs, plain full fat dairy, and whole grains. This is especially true as you age (the younger you are the more you can get away with). Fractionated, extruded, and highly processed foods should be almost entirely avoided. I eat protein powder for convenience (but buy grassfed with no artificial sweeteners) but otherwise don’t include processed foods as part of my normal, daily diet. The result, for me, is that my weight has been constant over the last 20 years, my blood work is excellent, my testosterone is high even at the age of 50, and I don’t have the old person look.

5 Likes
6

That or the old “genetics” chestnut. “I wish I had your frame”. No mate, I spent 2 years doing OHP 2x a week whilst you’ve been watching people talk about the EMG data on different lat raise variations.

Thankfully I’ve never injured myself in the gym other than the general wear and tear we figure out as we grow. All my injuries have come from doing stupid stuff outside the gym. I agree with whichever of those 3 said that, although staying in this game long enough, mistakes can and will almost always eventually happen.

1 Like
7

I stand firmly on the above.

And add that I never counted calories, ever. I adjusted my diet to cut for a contest by feedback analysis.

But I dropped all dairy when cutting for a contest.

4 Likes
8

I’ve never cut drastically so keep the dairy in my diet. I typically have plain full fat kefir and Greek yogurt each day. Love the stuff.

9

Upper/Lower splits are not ideal
This may cause some irritation to people because it’s been such a staple for so long for so many people. Controversial for sure. I’m not saying Upper/Lower isn’t still a great split, but I feel it pales in comparison to a Chest + Shoulders + Arms / Legs + Back split.

My main criticism is Upper workouts just go on too long. I see it all the time people ending up doing a smorgasbord of random shit just trying to fit everything in.

In its most basic terms, there are simply more muscles to hit on Upper day. For argument’s sake lets say we’re planning 12 sets per muscle group per week, that could be potentially 48 sets for upper in the week (12 each for chest, shoulders, back and arms). For leg days we usually have Quads, Hams, Calves, and Abs. How many people are doing 12 sets of calves and abs? Most people only do around 6 sets of direct hamstring work each week also. Either way, getting towards 48 sets for a lower day would be obscene, it’s much more likely you’ll be reaching only a little over half of that. Yes, I do understand the leg days take more out of you, longer rest times may be needed etc. But calves and abs work requires such little resources and can be chucked in anywhere. Why not spend your vital time adding 2 back exercises into your lower days to spread the load more equally? It also means deadlifts feel more naturally placed.

If you have a regular amount of lower volume comparable to upper, you could be overtraining your legs and having recovery issues. What we often see is the second lower day being of a lighter volume which can feel a bit underwhelming after all those hard hitters on all of the other days. (I know some people like that though).

There’s so much flexibility in planning your workouts like this and you’re more likely to stay with the big compound movements. Not just that, but people love putting emphasis on their chest shoulders, and arms, this allows that without the chance of neglecting your back and causing possible issues.

A Torso/Limbs split also fixes many of the issues with having 2 full lower days.

10

IMO, this is just a different kind of terrible.

Never would consider squatting and deadlifting the same day, ever.

If I believe both of your mentioned routines are not good, what is?
The two biggest lifting days were Legs and Back. Example of what I did in my 40’s:

  • Monday I did Back and Chest.
  • Tuesday off.
  • Wednesday I did Legs and Abs
  • Thursday off
  • Friday I did Chest and Biceps
  • Saturday I did Shoulders and Triceps
  • Sunday off.

I varied these periodically, but always separated deadlifts and squats by at least a day. That was the primary principle of any routine I did. And I did many splits. Through my 20’s I did six day splits of different groupings of body parts where each got hit twice a week. But never deadlifts combined with legs.

11

Both of these are mostly anecdotal:

Carbs aren’t esential

While this may be technically true, I think they’re more essential to us naturally skinny, marathon runner types. I’ve tried every version of low carb diet for up to six months and simply cannot make it work while weight training. Sleep gets wrecked, lifting progress stalls. (Without weight training, low carb works great for me).

I have plenty of friends that excel on high fat, low carb diets. They’re also the guys that played football, are naturally strong, and seem to bleed testosterone. Maybe us skinny guys need carbs, or the hormonal response to eating them to recover and grow from weight training?

To keep losing fat, keep cutting calories and adding LISS

While this works to a point for me, I’ve had better success burning more calories through HIIT (which I hate more than anything) in a more moderate deficit. By eating in an extreme deficit, moving more I ran into weird problems, like shivering for ten minutes after drinking a glass of water, being unable to sleep, and generally having no interest in life. Maybe somatype figures in here as well, and it’s us skinny guys that do better with relatively higher cals, more intense activity.

I think John Berardi was one of the first to challenge the idea to simply eat less, move more. I’ve hears Thibs and Thomas DeLauer challenge the idea recently, too.

2 Likes
12

I personally like full body workouts. If you’re going to do just one one push, one upper pull, and one lower movement, you better choose wisely.

This is true for most people. Some can thrive on low carb diets, but even then it’s mostly for visual/weight management and not performance. If low carb diets lead to better performance, professional athletes would be low carb.

HIIT, or any hard conditioning like met-cons or track work, will certainly get you more ripped than LISS. Look at joggers, even those that run ~5 miles per day, and you don’t see ripped individuals but slightly soft midsections. Lots of LISS is good for being a physically smaller person, but not for being lean and muscular.

2 Likes
13

Lots of LISS (cycling) has been one of the keys for me getting the leanest I have ever been. I don’t think I could have gotten where I am with HIIT, mainly because it would have detracted from my weight workouts in a way the LISS hasn’t.

This is so true. I need my carbs! But making better carb choices has made a big difference in both how I feel and how I perform. I didn’t realize how many refined carbs I was eating (mostly refined grains and wheat products) until recently. Dramatically reducing those in favor of whole grains has me feeling the best I have in a long time.

3 Likes
14

If that is your main reason for thinking it’s terrible, then you’re coming at it completely wrong. Nothing I said suggests says that Squats and Deadlifts are to be done on the same day. Legs + Back 1 can be Squat focused, Legs + Back 2 can be Hinge focused. I like to pair Squats/RDLs and Deadlifts/Leg Press myself. There’s lots of flexibility.

Besides, many people squat and deadlift on the same day and have done amazing things. I’ve argued here long ago that I don’t think it’s a great idea but it’s extremely common. It’s irrelevant anyway because this split doesn’t force you into that.

“I personally like”. That’s always the most valuable thing when it comes to splits. Ultimately, perhaps another controversial opinion but really shouldn’t be… THEY DON’T MATTER. What can you adhere to, what do you enjoy, what exercises do you like to do in conjunction with eachother? I don’t want to make out upper/lower is terrible, I just don’t understand why it’s the lion’s share of 4 day splits. On the full body thing though, I really like Thibs Whole Body 3x + GAP workout. Keeps people doing the bigger movements and you’ll still have time to do the more fluffy stuff to work on body parts you want to bring up at the end of the week.

1 Like
15

I read or listened to something recently on there being a limit to how much LISS you can do before those effects start kicking in. I wish I could find it again. People think just upping the walking, upping the slow cycling, just generally believing it’s so low intensity that the cost will always be negligible. I personally found that on a big deficit, anything more than about 7,000 steps would start to cost me. A 5,000-step walk with the dog, no problems, doing an extra lap or two around a field to reach 7-10k? All those things you mentioned. This is something that needs you to be in tune with your body to figure out. I do agree with you, but I think for the general population the message is still good.

16

You are the one that asked for dogma. I am giving it. I should have mentioned leg press along with or instead of squats. Legs meant I was working them HARD. There was nothing left to deadlift near my maximum capacity. In my competitive days, when I went to the weight room I left nothing on the table. I wanted to move the most weight that I could, and I couldn’t deadlift at my maximum effort if I trained legs first.

You must know that I was most concerned about getting my legs up above all else. PLUS, I liked pulling a bunch of weight. Both things cannot be done the same day! Now there’s some dogma for you.

Disclaimer: I know everyone is different and has different goals and preferences. I gave you mine. And I can only speak for myself.

2 Likes
17

It’s cool man. It’s exactly the kind of stuff I want in this thread.

I agree. Training a deadlift at maximum effort after demolishing legs beforehand at any sort of regular frequency could be dumb and a huge injury risk. People who do both on the same day are unlikely to do that. I feel like that is more to do with actual programming rather than the split itself though. No split confines you to anything, exercise choice does.

Fatigue management, volume, and all that other stuff are so individual. I like to push hard too, perhaps not to your level but there are certain things I’ve found I’ve had to adjust and evolve in every split I’ve used.

18

Great work! I’m more and more convinced that we’re all individuals and that there’s no
universal perfect solution for everyone. Lots of LISS and low cals led me to stagnation and life being generally terrible.

With HIIT, life is terrible, too, but only for a few minutes at a time.

What’s wild is this is pretty much exactly my experience. It took me way too long to figure this out–really, it was about a month ago. Now, once I hit 7500 steps or so, I go watch tv or read.

5 Likes
19

I can definitely see how this would make life terrible! The leanness from the cycling has been a side effect and not the goal. I’ve been eating a good bit on my rides and afterwards which is probably why life is not terrible. lol.

2 Likes
20

Going right for the jugular with this one, but I fundamentally disagree with the general approach taken in the vast majority of advice threads on this forum. It’s why I usually read the OP, read a few responses, realize it’s diverged far too much from anything that can actually help them, and ultimately bail.

Most of the members posting most of the advice are very knowledgeable and successful, but are terrible at influencing or coaching. Very often someone seeking advice will give far less than the minimal necessary info, and yet we’ll have posters recommending full programs and practically writing out full detailed diet plans for them. It just seems so many of us are unaware of the bubble we’re in, and are too eager to throw everything we’ve learned all at once at any new person trying to break into this world without taking the time to ask deeper questions and really learn where that person is at. It reminds me of the new car salesman that rattles off all the awesome new features of this sports car they’re super excited about, but didn’t even take the time to learn that the potential buyer has a kid on the way.

For example, we have a poster that casually drops that they haven’t been to the gym in 2 years, and yet someone is inevitably recommending 531. Really, them physically getting to the gym 3x a week and stretching for 5 min is an INCREDIBLE first step and gateway to more lasting lifestyle change. Or we have someone who “eats 1500 cal/day…oh btw, I don’t actually eat consistently,” and yet we’re writing out calorie and/or macro recommendations. For them, maybe just giving up fruit juice one day this week is all we need to start with. And small incremental qualitative improvements every week from there.

Last thing, it actually bothers me too how whenever a beginner or newish lifter disappears from their own thread, we always make fun of them because they “clearly weren’t cut out for this lifestyle.” We never seem willing to take accountability that maybe our approach was a little repulsive. Granted, I know there’s quite a good share of people who come on here with zero intention of getting help, but there’s no way everyone that disappears falls into that category. It bums me out to think about how many potential posters we may have scared off before they even had a chance to properly introduce themselves to the forums.

10 Likes