Intensity: You Control It

You will not always be able to control some training variables.

Frequency. Every once in a while you’ll get sick. Every once in a while you’ll have to stay at work late. Things like these could prevent you from getting to the gym as frequently as you would like.

Duration. Some days you get caught in traffic on your way to the gym. Some days you have to pick your child up from school. These are things that could cause your workout to be cut shorter than you had planned.

Load. Maybe it snowed a lot today and your gym is closed due to the weather. Maybe you are traveling and your hotel gym only has a treadmill and a set of 5lb and 10lb dumbbells. These are times when you may not have access to the equipment and the amount of weight you are accustomed to training with.

But one thing you can always control is intensity.

(Training) Intensity refers to how hard your body is working during an activity.

If you were unable to work out some days this week, make sure to push the intensity on the days you are able to.

If your workout has to be shortened tomorrow, make sure to be as efficient as possible for the time you will be working out to keep the intensity higher.

If you aren’t at your regular gym and have to make do with lighter weights, use pauses or tempo, or extend sets for more reps to increase the intensity.

It shouldn’t matter how often you’re able to work out, how much time you have to work out, or what equipment you have at your disposal - you should always be able to find a way to push yourself to a proper intensity level.

One One One

The weight is loaded.

You approach the bar, tasked with a set of three squats.

You barely finished your previous set, with a lighter weight, and because of that, you have already convinced yourself that these next thirty seconds of your life are really going to suck.

How are you going to make it out of this set alive?

Don’t frame the set as for “three reps.”

Not only is doing so daunting, it is also inefficient.

When you begin a set and respect its entirety, you end up pacing yourself to make it to the end. This typically leads to reps being done at lower quality and with sub-maximal force, which negatively affects the subsequent rep. Because of this, the set is more difficult than it needs to be.

Optimize

Instead, break the set up mentally and conceive it as three singles instead of a set of three.

Do one rep with maximal force. Collect yourself, then do another rep with the same level of concentration and intent. Then do the same thing one more time.

Although the math all worked out to be the same, using this method got you to your target of three reps in a more efficient way:

• Bar speed was better preserved.

• Grinding/straining was reduced.

• Less fatigue was perceived.

• Fewer distractions (fewer reps at a time) led to a better focus on movement quality.

Whenever you come to a grueling set in training, go ahead and mentally break it into smaller parts. Your hard sets will feel less miserable and your strength and conditioning levels will improve faster.

Better Than Consistency

Consistency is important.

We all know that a specific fitness goal cannot be reached without it.

But a sitting rock is consistent, yet the rock doesn’t do anything other than stay put.

And doing the same exercises, at the same weights, for the same number of sets week after week is consistent, but one will only get better at doing those exercises, at those weights, for those number of sets.

So we need to take consistency a step further.

We must build momentum.

Momentum is consistent, and it is also on the move. It works to move you from where you are toward where you want to be.

The good news is that momentum is quite easy to initiate.

Start with something, and do more of it, or do it better the next time.

It doesn’t matter at what point you start, so long as you strive for more than just consistency.

It Came Quickly

It is a new year, and if three days ago you planned to establish new and healthier lifestyle habits in 2023, hopefully, things are off to a good start for you.

But it’s possible that despite your good intentions, life got in the way and you got distracted, so things are off to a less-than-ideal start.

Instead of having your meals prepped for the week, you skipped lunch, and right now you are pulling out of the drive-through with your mid-afternoon snack. As you turn around to toss your Burger King wrapper in the back seat, you astonishingly realize that you forgot to pack your gym clothes!! 😱😱😱

Should you give up altogether on eating healthier and trying to make regular gym-going a part of your life?

Of course not.

Just make sure that your next meal is a better choice than the Double Whopper you just devoured. Try to improve each meal from your previous one until you stumble upon the type of meal that is sustainable and that aligns with your goals.

People join gyms every day of the year. Why did you think you needed to join one on January 1st or on the first Monday of the year?

If you cannot get to a gym to work out today, see if you can make it tomorrow.

As for today, here is something active you can do from home that will take you less time than you spend getting through your IG feed…

Do 20 squats, then hold a :30 plank. Then do 19 squats, then hold a :30 plank. Then 18 squats followed by a :30 plank. Continue this pattern down to 1 or whenever you need to stop.

Happy New Year!

Creatine: Not Just For Your Muscles

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that is found in the body and in certain foods, such as meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. It is also available as a dietary supplement and is often used by athletes, lifters, and even everyday gym-goers to improve performance, strength, and muscle mass.

For decades, only people who played sports or lifted weights were believed to benefit from creatine.

In recent years, there has been emerging evidence to suggest that creatine may have cognitive benefits as well, making creatine useful for a wider population.

Research has shown that creatine may improve memory and cognitive function, including processing speed, attention, and problem-solving abilities. This is thought to be due to the role that creatine plays in providing energy to brain cells, which may also help to improve overall brain health.

Some studies have even found that creatine supplementation may help to improve symptoms of depression and reduce feelings of anxiety.

It is important to note that more research is needed to fully understand the cognitive benefits of creatine.

Personally, I have taken creatine daily for years and also recommend it to many of my clients.

If you are a healthy individual over the age of 18 and interested in supplementing with creatine, I recommend creatine monohydrate, as it is the form of creatine that has been most widely studied and tested.

The exact product I use and recommend

⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄⌄

Adapt

Eventually,

Your body would adapt to squatting heavy every single day.

Your body would adapt to only 700 calories a day.

Your body would adapt to just 5 hours of sleep per day.

Are these my recommendations?

No.

But you could squat every day on 700 calories and 5 hours of sleep if you wanted or needed to.

Would this produce the best results for you?

Probably not.

But it would get you better results than the person who isn’t squatting

because they’re too busy reading 19,000 articles every day about what is

the correct squat variation, stance, and tempo, and how many sets and

reps to do, at what intensity, and at what frequency.

Better results than the person who starts the Carnivore Diet on a Monday

and is a vegan by Friday.

Better results than the person who lays down intending to get 8-10 hours of sleep

but distracts and stresses themself with a 12-step sleep optimization

schedule to the point they only get 3.5 hours.

Just pick something to do, I don’t really care what it is, and don’t spend much

time trying to figure out if it’s the perfect thing to be doing.

That’s where you start to waste time and create an unnecessary barrier to your

goals.

Is this my recommendation?

Yes.

Because eventually, you will adapt to the thing(s) you continually do even if it’s far from perfect.

The Simplest Day

Day one.

Day one of working out. Day one of eating better. Day one of a new training program.

Day one can come in many forms.

I recently had a day one.

In the months prior to my day one, I was inconsistent with my health and fitness. My workouts were sporadic and I wasn’t watching what I ate.

I decided I needed to have a day one.

Things were heavy that day.

The weights were.

My breathing was.

But despite my out-of-shape-ness, on day one I felt calm and focused.

I knew it was a simple day.

There was no pressure to outperform myself from days in the past.

There was no pressure to rush and get through a menu of items for the day.

Instead, I was able to concentrate on the simple task at hand - lay down some habits I could continue with, and some numbers that I could improve upon in the coming days, weeks, and months.

On day one, we don’t have to do anything extraordinary, we just have to do something. After day one is when we work on doing things more and more extraordinarily.

Don’t complicate a simple day.

You're Not In Control

Your body will change when it is ready to.

You don’t have a say in when your goal weight is reached.

You don’t get to determine on which Monday you will hit your next bench PR.

So don’t get upset when you weigh in .7 pounds heavier than you did last week.

Don’t become frustrated when you can barely hit 6 reps with a weight that just last week you took to 8.

Your body doesn’t make sense.

And even worse, your body is the one in control.

So be prepared to be confused with what’s going on with your fitness.

Be prepared to be disappointed, often.

That is - if you’re too wrapped up in the results you are being presented.

If you’re putting in more effort tracking your daily weigh-ins than you are figuring out how you can continue compiling more and more days of what you have been doing, you’re focused on the wrong thing.

Because chances are, what you have been doing - are the right things.

You just have to do those ‘right things’ for longer.

(PLOT TWIST)

It should bring you comfort to know that you actually are in control. You’re just not in control the way you’d like to be.

You indirectly are in control of the results you desire.

You can’t walk into the gym on any random day and add 20lbs to your bench.

But you can walk into the gym, day after day, and put in the work that is necessary to add 20lbs to your bench.

Focus on your daily habits and actions, not the results.

What you do day after day is what brings the results along for the ride.

Be disciplined to not feed off of results, feed off the process.

Rare Golden Owl

Stop worrying about not being where you want to be right now.

The only people who have been entirely unaffected by gym closures over the past 3-6 months are those of us who have a gym set up at home. If this is you, gyms shutting down never mattered to you - your gym is at home.

For the rest of us, we have had to adapt our training.

Some of us have enjoyed the luxury of having equipment to train with at home. Some of us have had to do bodyweight only workouts. Some of us have not worked out at all.

All of these scenarios are okay, and they are all examples of us doing what we can to get by until our gym can reopen again.

Understand what you are working with and be realistic about where you are.

You haven’t had the things you typically rely upon to produce your desired training results.

You haven’t had weights.

You haven’t had your trainer/coach.

You haven’t had your training partners.

You haven’t had a gym atmosphere to motivate you.

If you’ve gone backward, it’s okay. So have I and many others. That’s just temporary.

If you’ve done enough just to minimize the amount that you’ve gone backward, you’ve done better than me and many others.

If you’ve maintained your level of fitness, you’re in a great spot, right in position to get back to pushing ahead again once things become a bit more normal.

If you’ve made any kind of progress at all, you’re a rare golden owl.

Wherever you’re at today, don’t be so hard on yourself. This will all be a blink of an eye over the course of your training career.

Busy Getting Out of Shape

How have the past five months of your 2020 been?

From a fitness standpoint, mine have been dreadful.

It wasn’t until recently,

(when I found myself fighting for air

as I sprinted at 5.5mph

to the end of my 50 yard long street

to meet the food delivery service driver who had trouble finding our address

to retrieve my order consisting of pizza + dessert pizza + cheese balls + mozzarella sticks)

that I realized how out of shape I had become.

A week earlier when I experienced physical struggles lifting boards and climbing ladders while building an extension to our deck could have also been a hint, but I must have just blamed that day on the heat.

Over the last five months, it seems I have only been motivated to do two things…

1. Break all of my old good habits

2. Develop new bad habits

Since mid-March, I relapsed on soda - something I had very proudly not had a drip of for over 5 years prior to that. I went periods of up to 3 weeks of no working out at all. 80% of my meals have been junk.

Up until last Thursday, I have not been worthy of considering myself a promoter of health/personal trainer/coach/member of society.

But since then, I have worked out 6 out of 7 days (matching, maybe even exceeding the # of times I worked out in July). My eating has not been perfect, but under control.

This has been the most consistent 7 days I’ve had since the virus hit.

I’ve got some momentum built up.

You’ll hear more from me moving forward now that I am busy getting in shape.

Should I Use a Belt When Lifting Weights?

Is there point where I should consider getting a belt for squats/deadlifts? Does wearing a belt inhibit any stabilizing muscles? -Alex

Although I am tempted to break this question down to cover more of the thoughts I have pertaining to belted vs. beltless lifting, I’ll answer it more concisely than I’d like, but less concisely than to just tell you “Yes”.

If your goal is to build a stronger squat and/or deadlift, then you should be implementing the use of a lifting belt. If you haven’t been using one, start using one right away. To develop higher levels of absolute strength, the ultimate priority must be to move heavier and heavier weights. A belt will not only help you lift heavier, it will also help you rack up more reps at any given weight, both of which are important for pushing your strength up over time. Not using a belt (unnecessarily) limits the rate at which strength can be built.

The main reason you should consider a belt your friend is that it provides a surface for your body to brace against, which in doing allows for high amounts of trunk rigidity to be generated. It doesn’t matter how much force you can produce with your legs if you cannot create a solid enough midsection to transmit that force into the weight you’re attempting. A decent amount of tightness is required to squat or deadlift any amount of weight. When you lose tightness, some of the force you have worked hard to produce “leaks out” and never reaches the weight you’re trying to move. This makes for a highly inefficient rep. You may be able to muscle through such reps to a certain extent, but at some point you will need to optimize your conditions to keep chasing higher weights. The more reps you complete in your training that are optimal and efficient, the better off you will be. A belt presents area for your abdominal muscles to contract against, improving lifting efficiency and bettering your chances of moving a higher weight and/or extending a set for more repetitions.

As for stabilizing muscles, not only will a belt not inhibit them, a belt will promote the opposite effect. Since a belt poses an environment for our primary (superficial) muscles to contract harder, our (deeper) stabilizing muscles must accommodate for those muscles that are producing higher levels of force by working harder to anchor down and maintain skeletal and joint structure.

The amount of muscle fibers required to lift 300 pounds is greater than the amount required to lift 275 pounds. Recruiting more muscle fibers leads to more strength gain. You will get more benefit from lifting 300 with a belt than you would lifting a lesser amount without one.

Comment below with your thoughts on lifting with a belt...

I’m looking to answer more of your questions in 2020. If you have any, please contact me through social media or email with the links below! (Someone please ask me about when to not use a belt. 🤞🏼🤞🏼)

Getting Toned

A goal that many trainees have is to “get more toned”.

They want their arms and legs to have better shape.

They want a flatter stomach.

They want to look lean and athletic, but they don’t want to look too bulky.

While there is nothing wrong with having this type of goal, most people who desire this kind of physique do not understand what it takes to get there.

They think they do.

They read online and in numerous fitness magazines that “higher reps with lighter weight will make you more toned, and lower weight with heavier weight will make you bigger”.

Both of these claims sound sensible, but neither of them are true.

“Toning up” is simply the building of muscle tissue combined with simultaneous body fat reduction.

In order to satisfy your goal of toning up, you need to have both of these things, not just one or neither of them.

Tricep pressdowns done with light weight for sets of 30 reps will do neither of them for you. They won’t build muscle and they will do nothing to help you lose body fat.

“But Drew, I see all kinds of in-shape people (people who look how I want to look) doing tricep pressdowns with light weight for sets of 30 reps!”

If a person is already in shape, they can train this way. They are already lean enough and built in a way that showcases their toned features. They could even make you believe that doing tricep pressdowns with light weight for sets of 30 reps is what is responsible for their appearance. It’s not.

If you want to look more toned, you really must understand energy expenditure.

If you aren’t as toned as you want to be, you have more body fat than you want to have. You have a surplus of energy. That’s all body fat really is.

In order to get rid of some of that body fat, you need to create a deficit of energy.

To do this, you will probably want to eat less (fewer calories in), and you most definitely need to expend more energy during your workouts (more calories used).

Tricep pressdowns done with light weight for sets of 30 reps isn’t going to increase your energy expenditure.

Squats, presses, and deadlifts done for 6-12 reps will.

Tricep pressdowns done with light weight for sets of 30 reps will keep you stagnant and free of results.

Squats, presses, and deadlifts done for 6-12 reps will get you the toned body you crave.

An Uncommon, Yet Effective Way To PR

I recently wrote about three ways you can set new PRs: 1RM, Rep PRs, and Volume PRs.

It is important to PR.

It is indicative of progress.

If you are never reaching higher weights, not pushing to do the same weights for more reps, or never adding more sets to accumulate more total poundage, you’re not making progress.

A good mentality is to try to PR (in some way) every single session.

For a while you will be able to do this, but you will notice that the longer you lift for, the harder PRs are to come by.

An experienced lifter won’t see PRs as frequently as a novice lifter.

Some days you won’t be able to hit higher weights. Some days you won’t be able to do more reps. Some days you will be too beat up to crank out more volume.

Pre-Exhausted PRs

Pre-exhaustion is a method that is most commonly used in bodybuilding to induce more muscle growth. This is where we intentionally fatigue smaller muscle groups first, which will then require the bigger and stronger muscle groups to work harder during compound exercises.

An example of this is to do bicep curls before doing pull-ups. The biceps would fatigue to the point they could not contribute to the pull-up as much as if the curls were done after the pull-ups. The pre-exhaustion of the biceps forces the lats to work harder to perform the exercise.

PR attempts are conventionally taken when a lifter is fresh, but we can utilize pre-exhaustion to push the body in a different way, and to boost PR numbers when we return to a fresh state.

Don’t be afraid to push your numbers later in your workout when you are fatigued.

The fatigue makes you work at a disadvantage. When a disadvantage is introduced, there becomes more room to build up.

Then, when you take that disadvantage away, you be left stronger.

Push to lift heavier and heavier weight in a state of fatigue.

Push to do more reps of a certain weight in a state of fatigue.

If you can hit a 600x1 deadlift at the end of your deadlift workout, how easy will it be to hit 600+ at the beginning of it?

Types of PR

When lifting weights, there are 3 main ways to PR.*

“PR” means to set a new personal record.

1RM

For the majority of lifters, the most sought after PR is the 1RM (1 Rep-Max). This is the maximum amount of weight that can be lifted a single time for a given exercise. If you take your max bench press from 80lb to 95lb - your PR bench used to be 80, but is now 95.

Repetition

You don’t necessarily have to push a higher weight to PR. You can set new repetition, or rep PRs. This is the number of repetitions that can be completed at any given weight, for any given exercise. If during your last training cycle you could squat 275 for 8 reps, and your current cycle has you squatting 275 for 10, you have established a new rep PR (for 275lb). The convenient thing about rep PRs is that they can be set for every single weight. This gives you more opportunities to set new ones.

Volume

The type of PR that is most overlooked, yet the easiest to make is a volume PR.

Volume = Sets x Reps x Load (weight).

Calculating and tracking your volume can be complicated if you want it to be. Because of this, I typically only consider the total volume for the main lift of each training session.

Here is a very simple way to ramp up volume over a relatively short period of time…

Let’s say that today you deadlifted for 5 sets of 5 using 135lb for all five sets. That would put you at 3,375lb worth of volume. The next time you deadlift, you could increase your volume by doing everything the same, except for bumping up the weight to 145lb on only your fifth set. That would give you 3,425lb worth of volume. The next time you deadlift after that, you could boost your volume again by using 135 for your first three sets, then 145 for your remaining two. That would be 3,475lb worth of volume, and you would have volume PR’d three deadlift sessions in a row. Continuing to fill your working sets with heavier and heavier weights will get you stronger over time.

As you see in the above example, it is very feasible to set new volume PRs and it is something you can do pretty quickly and regularly.

*There is another “type” of PR that I use. It opens up your PR setting possibilities even further, and I will write about it in another post (once I can come up with a name for it, or figure out if there is already a name for it).

How Important Is Variety?

Not as important as many people think.

I rarely train a person who I think needs more variety in their training.

It is almost always the opposite.

I usually find myself stripping away the (mostly) pointless exercises a trainee thinks they need, and instead spend the majority of time building up the basics.

I understand that switching up and tweaking exercises keeps things fun and interesting, but nothing is more exciting than adding weight your lifts.

Many people wouldn’t believe or understand this because they have not stayed with an exercise long enough for this type of progression to take place.

I am not all the way against exercise variety, I just want you to get closer to reaching your limits on foundational exercises before you start getting too fancy.

Before you start doing the Side Step Squat Jumps and Spinny Kick Lunges you saw your favorite fitness model doing on Instagram, prioritize working toward squatting 2x bodyweight.

You're Doing The Right Things, You Just Need More Time

What are you trying to accomplish?

Are you trying to lose weight?

Are you trying to lift heavier weights?

Whatever it is, accomplishment is not difficult to understand.

You have to do the right things.

You know that in order to lose weight you will need to clean up your eating and you should probably exercise.

You know that in order to lift heavier weight you will need to lift heavy things, recover, then lift heavy things again.

Understanding the right things to do is only the first step.

It is the easiest step.

Everyone is willing to go this far, but few are willing to go further than this.

The hard part is doing the right things for long enough.

This is the part that is most time-consuming.

This is the most crucial part.

You don’t need me to tell you what you should be doing. You already know, and hopefully are already doing what you should be doing. You just need to give the things you need to do more time.

Preparation Is Most Important

For the three of you who read my stuff, you know that I have written a lot about preparation. It’s very key. Things like consistency and hard work are obviously extremely important when it comes to pursuing any goal, but in order to be consistent, you first have to be prepared to start, then stay consistent. In order to work hard, you have to prepare yourself (mentally and physically) for it.

Some of you know that I am giving up desserts for the month of April. I know that I will be successful in doing it because I am willing to think ahead and prepare myself for the moments that I will have cravings for desserts. Even though I only allow for these cravings to hit on the weekend, I will be ready with a pre-made protein/banana/peanut butter/oats shake (that tastes almost as good as many desserts) when they do.

It’s all about being prepared - to give yourself the opportunity to stay on track with where you are going.

Foundations

So you’ve been going to the gym a few times a week for the last couple of weeks. You’ve been eating better each day over that same course of time.

Why aren’t you seeing faster results?

Why aren’t you much stronger, and why do you not look much better when you take a look at the mirror?

The short and cliche answer is that “it takes time”, but what that really means is you haven’t built enough of a foundation yet.

The lifts you can or cannot make are a result of the time you spent or did not spend in the gym over the last several months and several years.

A person does not become obese by eating pizza and cake a few times a week for a couple of weeks. It takes years of poor eating habits and low activity levels to do that.

Most things you are doing today will not affect your health (whether that be positively or negatively) until months and years down the road.

It’s great that you’re getting to the gym a lot right now.

Keep doing that.

You’ll be stronger and look better in July.

A Daily Goal That Led To A Finding

At the start of February, I set a goal for myself to begin each of my workouts with at least a couple sets of dumbbell rows. I planned to do this for a month, and was hoping to strengthen my upper back to help boost my deadlift.

Also, I wasn’t planning on doing ordinary DB Rows - I was using a very heavy dumbbell (one that was so heavy that it required some body english to hoist around).

I started doing these rows at the beginning of each workout without much focus on the movement or much planning. Some days I would do sets of 5, some days sets of 8-10. Some days I would do a ton of sets of just one or two at a time. I didn’t really care about set and rep structure, I just wanted to pull some reps on a heavy weight.

For most of the month I was consistent and stayed true to my goal. Toward the end of the month though, I got lazy a couple of days and skipped the rows at the beginning of the day.

And on the days that I skipped my rows, I noticed a surprising correlation…my lifts were lousy on those same days and my workout in general was not good.

When I first devised the idea to start each session with heavy rows I figured that my performance would go down a little bit due to pre-exaustion from the rows. I never really noticed that to be true, but I certainly didn’t expect the rows to enhance my performance every session.

It wasn’t until I linked my bad workouts to the skipping of rows that I actually did believe they helped my lifts that same day.

Here is what I now believe…

Starting your lifting session with a few sets of heavy rows activates your upper back and helps familiarize a “set” shoulder position.

You need a strong upper back and “set shoulders” to support the weight you are trying to squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, etc.

Any compound movement you can train will heavily involve the upper back.

Starting your workout with heavy rows warms you up in a hurry.

If you are using heavy enough weight, your whole body will be stimulated making the exercise a potent energizer.

My theory is that the weight you are rowing should be very heavy - nothing you can do in strict fashion - and done at relatively low volumes (I would say 25 or less total repetitions each side).

If you’re rowing a weight that doesn’t require use of straps, the weight isn’t heavy enough.

I do predict that if you performed rows at higher volumes to begin each workout, say 30-60+ reps per side, that a pre-exhaustive effect would set in and your performance would in fact suffer for that session.

That’s just a guess though. Maybe I’ll try that in the future.

As for now I’m going to keep doing my heavy rows at the beginning of each day. I like how they make me feel and I like what they do for my lifts.

Try them for yourself and let me know what you think…

Working Out: Similar To Bedtime

This post is inspired by a conversation my wife and I had this morning. Perhaps you can relate to what we talked about.

Bedtime is one of our favorite parts to our day.

But only the part that we are actually in bed and ready to go to sleep.

Getting ready for bed is one of our least favorite parts to our day.

Even though we can’t wait to go to sleep, the process of getting to that point (going upstairs, taking a shower, brushing teeth, etc.) always seems like a chore.

We usually find ourselves stalling to go to bed, and often end up making it to bed later than we should.

It is interesting how we let something we loathe delay something we love.

Working out can be the same way.

There’s not a person on earth who doesn’t feel great after a workout, yet it is easy to never make it to your workout because the things that must precede a workout can seem like a hassle.

Who wants to plan to go to the gym and pack the necessary gear the night before? Who wants to drive to the gym, when it’s just as far (or shorter) to just go home? Who wants to push them self during a workout, when they would be more comfortable not?

Give yourself the chance to feel great about working out.

Don’t let small obstacles prevent you from getting to the gym.