I see this too and of me thinks the same as you, but then part of me also thinks if you aren’t able to listen or deal with some harsh comments online then maybe this isn’t the right past time or place for you. I think a lot of us that have been doing this years and been on here a while have just gotten tired of the same questions and the same responses to ignore general advise. Its like a parent who no longer replies to their kid because they keep asking the same damn stupid question.
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@jskrabac, Yeah I get that. It almost feels hostile at times. Guy joins wanting to learn, guy gets half a dozen people pushing their philosophies and methodologies on them, cue a 50+ post topic of people discussing all this stuff without the OP even replying once. It reminds me of the PT in my gym who sticks middle-agers straight on 5 day programs. So many of us had to slowly build ourselves into the deep end and we expect people to be as dedicated as we are straight away.
Big thumbs up to the 5/3/1 thing too. I get that it’s great, I get that it’s effective, I get that it’s versatile. A complete newbie wrapping their heads around the philosophy though is ambitious at best. I know we’re all too arrogant and evolved to suggest something with a Starting Strength-vibe, but sometimes just getting them to learn the movements 2-3x a week, or trying to get a little more protein in is more than enough to make some quality progress.
Some people come across as belittling too.
That said, to share a little of @simo74’s thoughts, some new posters can be difficult to communicate with.
One thing I’d like to add to all that. Maybe not as common but if somebody doesn’t start a log at the first time of asking one too many questions, we act like they’ve committed a deadly sin. We know the etiquette, we have little bonds with each other. They are coming in blind.
I concede that over my time here there is a chance I’ve been guilty of all of this.
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Damn @jskrabac chose violence - I love it. I agree with everything you said. We often even go the route of telling someone what their goals should be, which is weird to me.
I do kind of get what @cdep89 and @simo74 are saying about maybe this isn’t the site for them - and there is nothing we do now that’s hostile compared to the old days - but people are different now too. There’s a lot less ownership on the individual’s part to find answers or f around and find out before asking a seemingly dumb question. Just a different world.
I like the thread idea! I’ll drop some musings in between dozing off here in a few.
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I think this comes from a good place though. We have all seen so many people with a lack of a good goal just spin their wheels in the gym, work hard for moths and end up going nowhere. Sometimes a change of goal can give better focus and results and even end up delivering on a different goal at the same time. Heck if you had told me at 18 that all I needed to have good calves was to run 50km a week for 5 years I would have laughed at you. But here I am many years later.
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I hear you, but that’s more telling you a better path. It’s different than saying “calves are stupid; just get big traps” or whatever. If you want calves, get your calves. I, on the other hand, will just wear sweatpants.
I do get your point about helping folks switch their focus, and I’m probably just being a stickler, but to me it’s kind of like telling a teenager… anything: they’re not going to listen until they try it themselves anyway.
Here’s some random thoughts. I think my overarching “dogma-buster” is that it’s pretty much all the same thing.
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It’s all the same weights. We obsess over the perfect program, etc, but at the end of the day we’re all doing the same basic things.
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Similar with cardio - whether you go hard or go long (yeah, I did that), it’s just ways of getting it in (again!).
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The “right” amount of volume is somewhere in the middle. My point here is that high-volume training and HIT will pretty much both land you in a similar range of tonnage.
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I truly believe there’s an absolute amount of protein we need, vs relative-only. I don’t know the exact amount, but an example would be we all need 100g for our metabolic processes, then maybe another .5g per lbs of bodyweight over 100 lbs. or something along those lines.
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Since this is all pure nihilism - pick something you want to do and get after it; program doesn’t matter.
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The people that “prove” programs/ coaches wrong are doing so by not putting in any effort. It’s akin to sleeping at your desk 60 hours a week and tweeting about how capitalism failed you; you didn’t give it a go.
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This is a very good point. My gym has members as young as 13 which is pretty rare. When I was talking to the owner the other night about what sort of program he has them on. He said None. They won’t follow it anyway so we give them some guidance and correct their form if they are way off, but other than that we let them train what ever they want. Them training something they like is better than them sitting at home.
He had a really good point.
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It seems stupid to me that people seem to want to pick a side like it’s a political party or something. I know people who always did low volume, switched to high volume and because of their results think high volume is the only way. I’ve seen the direct opposite happen too. Volume is simply another tool we have the option to manipulate based on feedback. The way we think about switching programs if we’ve done something a certain way for a long time is exactly how we should think about volume. If it feels like it’s the perfect dose, get at it. If that shows signs of stopping, either make a slight change or do something wholesale to keep moving forward. These silly allegiances people gain comes across as ignorant to me.
Ah man, I rarely go over 150g these days. Depending on my body weight at the time of asking, it’s pretty much spot on with your maths. I have never felt like I’m missing out on any gains because of it. If high protein suits someone, that’s fine. There are lots of reasons for people to legitimately feel the need for more. If I go too high I’m struggling to get my daily calories in and my digestion just gets worse and worse. Some of the strongest guys I know don’t even track or use supplements and are confident that they are getting as much as they’d ever need. Then there are guys who are trying to get 1.5g per lb as if it was more important than the effort they put in. Protein is important, but those trying to gain could do a lot better not worrying so much about it so much as long as they are reaching around 0.7g per lb. For a 200lb man that’s 140g, yet I know people who would think it was a DISASTER that they didn’t hit a gram per pound.
I was actually going to post something similar to this. Get together a sensible exercise selection with a reasonable amount of volume and do what you can to get better at all of them over a long period of time. That alone will take people most of the distance they’ll ever want to go.
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Totally true, but because they came to the website called T-Nation you have to assume they are looking for some higher level strength training advice. If they posted the above an AskReddit then I would assume they’d get more general fitness advice (walk more, resistance bands, etc…).
This is also true. I loaned out my 531 books to others who showed interest, only to have them say they have no idea what this book was about. One friend put it like this: “I’d have absolutely no idea how to go into the gym and do any of the workout programs in this book”. I had to write out exactly what to do. But, cryptic writing and acronyms aside, I do think 531 is conducive to newbies.
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I agree, but once the newbie has mastered reasonably good, efficient technique. I don’t see most newbies getting there for at least 6 months. And many would require coaching assistance to get there.
There a plenty of gains the first 6 months regardless of the program (within reason). I would recommend 3 sets of 10 reps on all exercises for the learning process.
But I am not dogmatic about anything I wrote on this post.
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I think ‘the pump’ is massively overrated and folks who pursue nothing but the pump often miss the forest for the trees. Not that the pump isn’t beneficial, it’s just not as important as folks tend to think.
Mechanical Tension/Progressive Overload > whatever else you’re doing.
I think every lifter, regardless of goal, should start (or return from detraining/layoff) with a Primary Pattern (vertical push/pull | horizontal push/pull | squat | hinge (could include lunges, but hard pass for me)) strength proram. Personally, I like Phraks Greyskull LP for this. Every lift you will perform relies on these muscles as a foundation… I like having strong foundations.
I don’t actually have much else for dogma that I disagree with. I think most of it is actually well placed, and often times when people try to fight these conventions - it ends with the person losing out on gains. There’s obviously some outliers to this, not looking for a fact check™; simply stating that most dogma is actually well placed from my perspective.
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Exercise and program variation aren’t always the answer
Of course there are a myriad of benefits to switching things up, I’ve talked about it lots of times. However, there are many people who think if a lift doesn’t go up for a few weeks whilst everything else is moving up they always need to say bye-bye to the exercise or bye-bye to the program when that is fewer times the case than people would care to understand - especially on a movement you want to focus on. There are stipulations to this depending on goals, but sometimes you reach a point in training where you simply cannot expect to add a rep every week. Sometimes you can lose a rep, or even not add a rep or weight for a whole month… that doesn’t mean you are plateaued. Trainees just psyche themselves out and jump straight to the “plateau” thought process. The further you get in your training, the more performance can skew around day-to-day. It is very likely you could still be moving forward. It is not a plateau.
Lets take OHP for an example. Say you’re at 150lb for 5.
Week 1: 150lb x 5
Week 2: 150lb x 6
Week 3: 150lb x 6
Week 4: 150lb x 6
Week 5: 150lb x 7
+1 but it took a month to get there. THAT IS FAST PROGRESS. Adding a single rep to your OHP every month with that weight over the course of 5-6 months would be adding around 30lb to your max. That is AMAZING progress. At some point, getting that over the course of a year will be amazing progress. So many people would envy it because they’ve pissed around swapping things around too much and ended up not getting anywhere on a particular lift. I’ve spoken to guys who’ve sometimes gone 6 weeks or more before adding a rep but they are experienced enough to know it’s going to come if they keep working hard. Sometimes you gotta embrace the grind because that’s where real progress can be made. Keep fighting for the +1 and embrace the victory when you get it, we don’t always need to overcomplicate this stuff.
There needs to be a louder voice for standardizing form
We always hear “progressive overload, progressive overload”, and for sure, it’s a great message. Yet it’s a very loud one that young trainees strive for at any cost. They are told to practice good form almost as an afterthought because it’s not as exciting as “YEAH, MORE WEIGHT BABBYYYYYY”. I’m not even saying form needs to be perfect, I don’t think it ever truly can be when pushing hard. What I’m saying is letting the muscles be your guide. We can all force progression with a bigger bounce off the chest in the bench, stopping slightly higher on the squat, just a little bit of leg momentum in strict OHP, … or raising your knees on a chin-up. Every lift has this opportunity. This is where plateaus really happen. A little cheating now and then is okay, we’re all going to do it. It’s something we need to be careful of though. Your muscles should be telling you when to add weight, not your form on that given day.
It’s not anti-dogma really, just something I feel isn’t quite pushed enough.
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Amen…in 38 years of lifting I can recall a pump 4 times, and only one of those was on purpose.
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Humm…
Don’t believe a week went by that I didn’t get a pump the 3 decades that I competed. I never did biceps or triceps without trying to get a pump. At the end of every chest workout I tried to get a pec pump. And a delt pump felt good too. I never could get a back pump that I could tell.
I’m a very dogmatic type of person and that is my biggest obstacle as a personal trainer. I’m so gung ho about lifting and bodybuilding could potentially be a turn-off to potential clients. It’s hard for me to put my mind into that of a beginner or somebody who doesn’t care that much, because that’s not who I am. I’m passionate about this stuff and it can be hard for me to sympathize with someone who barely cares or barely gives effort.
Also, I was reading through this thread and found myself disagreeing with so many things said. I have to say I probably just AM dogma lol… I think to a certain degree you have to be dogmatic to be successful with this, to build a lot of muscle, to lift a lot of weight. You have to believe in yourself and what you’re doing. Steadfast in your principles. I am always trying to learn, but it takes me time to come around to trusting voices in the industry. Usually starts with experimenting with an idea I heard from somebody, giving it an honest shot and if I find it useful, I keep it. If not, I trash it. Relatively verbose contribution to the conversation here, but I believe some dogma can be important for a lifter.
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A lot of dogma is dogma for a reason, and sticking to what you’ve already made work for your clients can only be a good thing. There are a million different ways to get from point A to point B. If something is successful for you then why not keep doing it? It’s not as if anything new is ever gonna come out that makes what you do obsolete.
With that said, it’s important to keep learning things as I believe the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. The expanding circle of knowledge, much like the Dunning-Kruger effect.
As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it. - Albert Einstein
So it’s okay to be dogmatic, but we gotta stay humble.
Otherwise we just end up with people like Mark Rippetoe doing things like labeling the trap bar as trash because it doesn’t fit into his box of thinking.