Good at the Basics

 Some Thoughts, Tips, and Ideas on the Standard Basics of Eating and Training

     I often extol other lifters to “get back to the basics,” when it comes to both training and eating.  Sometimes you’re stuck in a rut and need to get back to the basics.  Maybe you haven’t seen any gains in either size or strength—whatever it is that you’re trying to gain—and so you need to get back to the basics.  Or maybe you’ve been following too many convoluted multi-exercise, multi-angle routines and need to get back to the basic barbell movements.

     Anytime I get confused about my own training, I do the same thing.  It’s what everyone needs to do on occasion; get back to the basics of simple, but not necessarily easy, methods of training and eating.

      Seems pretty common sense, which it is, but I realized something else the other day when I was having a conversation with a young man: not everyone understands what the basics actually are.

     It happened this way: A few days ago, I was checking out at the grocery store, and a young, athletically-built man was bagging my groceries.  “You sure are jacked for an old guy,” he said.  I didn’t even feel bad that he added the “old” part—at least I was jacked.  He was around 18, give or take a year, and when I was that age, I would have thought a man in his 50s with a long, gray beard was old too, no matter how damn muscular he might have been.

     “Thanks, “ I replied.

     “I've been trying to put on some more muscle lately, but nothing’s working anymore,” he said.  I had thought he probably wanted to discuss training.  Some guys can do it all day, and I’ve honed in on a sort of training sixth-sense that usually lets me know when a conversation is coming.

     “What’s the problem?” I asked.  It was late in the evening, and there was no one else in line, or in any of the lines around us, so I figured he had a minute.

     He then proceeded to tell me what he had been doing at the gym.  I asked him about his nutrition, and he told me about that too.  I then suggested that it was time for him to get back to the basics, and outlined a few suggestions.

     “I never heard any of that kind of stuff before,” he then said, which left me a bit perplexed, though I didn’t try to show it.  What the hell is wrong with muscle-building information these days?, I thought to myself.  It wasn’t as if this young man didn’t know anything.  I figured he’d probably watched his share of YouTube videos, and he probably listened to guys at the gym bigger and stronger than he (which isn’t always a good idea, by the way, but it can be good).  What he had been doing was just too “advanced” and complex for a man of his age and training experience, but he didn’t understand—and no one had ever told him—that there was a better way, a simpler way, a more basic way.  He didn’t just need to get back to the basics.  He needed to learn them in the first place!

     You can’t get back to the basics, no one can, unless you’re good at them to begin with.  And you can’t get good at the basics unless you understand them and spend many months practicing them.  Master the basics of eating and training, and then you can move on to fancier, shinier, and more “modern” methods, culinary or lifting wise.  Then, when all that newfangled stuff stops working, which it eventually will, you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get back on the gaining track.

Eat Like an Actual Adult

     Typically, it’s men that ask me for advice, and when it comes to nutrition I tell them to “eat like a man.”  But, of course, this advice works just as well for the females of our species.  (Though I must admit, for some reason the women seem to understand this point better than men at the outset.)

     So to start with, yes, you need to eat like an adult.  If you get a lot of your meals from a place that has a clown as mascot, or if your breakfast comes in a box with cartoon characters on the front of it, that’s not how adults should be eating.  (In fact, it’s not how anyone should be eating, but we’ll leave aside kids at this point just for the sake of the conversation.)

     To be a healthy adult, you need to eat real food.  Doubly so if you’re trying to build plenty of muscle and strength.

     When you go to the grocery store—and I know this might sound cliche, but I also thought “back to the basics” was too—shop the outside aisles on the walls of the store, where you’ll find your dairy, your fresh fruits and vegetables, and, probably most important of all for building heaping slabs of muscle, your various meats.  Stay away from most of the stuff in the center aisles.  That’s not completely true, of course.  You can find good canned items—beans should be a staple of everyone’s diet, unless you’re eating low carb—and frozen ones in the middle aisles.  But stay the hell away from all the boxed, bagged, and prepacked crap that has a buttload of ingredients.  (The less ingredients, the better.)

     If you’re at all confused, here’s my go-to grocery list:

• Chicken

• Steak

• Fish (preferably tuna or salmon), canned or fresh, doesn’t matter

• Pork chops or pork loin

• Various cheeses

• Heavy cream (I mainly use this for smoothies, though it’s great for coffee, as well)

• Eggs (I eat a minimum of 6 eggs daily, sometimes with the above heavy cream if nothing else than to honor Vince Gironda.)

• Real butter (This means no margarine or any other “buttery spread.”  The only ingredient should be, duh, butter—and maybe salt.)

• Salad kits (I personally think this is one of the best things you can get at the grocery store for ease of preparation, not to mention “tastiness.”  I throw some chicken on the grill, open up a Caesar salad kit, and I’m “good to go.”)

• Fruits (buy more berries than anything else—blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries are the correct choices, along with some occasionally “starchier” fruits such as apples, peaches, and bananas; lemons and limes are also good for adding to water, salads, and even your cooked meats)

• Fibrous vegetables (if it’s green, then it fits the bill here)

• Olive oil (Use this to coat almost any meat that you bake or grill; it’s also fantastic for salads or even as a “shot” to start your morning along with your heavy cream-filled coffee.)

• Lastly, of course, the “good” starches: oats, potatoes (the more varieties of colored spuds, the better), and rice (brown or white)

     If you need to gain weight, then you can also add some bread to your list if nothing else than to make some hearty sandwiches with.  By the way, if it’s gaining weight that you’re struggling with, here’s some advice from the original, the one-and-only Vince Gironda:  

• Drink water during your workout.  Drink at least one pint after each muscle group worked, but don't drink out of a fountain, because you swallow air.

• It's a necessity to eat three good, generous meals a day.  Even more beneficial, if time permits, is six small meals per day.  Include a lot of broiled meats, baked potatoes, stewed fruits, eggs, brown rice, thick soups, stews, nuts, and natural grains.  Be sure also to include lots of green and yellow vegetables.

• Drink a pint of certified raw milk in addition to your regular meals at 10am, 2pm, 4pm, and one hour before bedtime.

• Give your food a chance to digest thoroughly by lying or sitting with your feet propped up on a high footstool after each meal.

• If you take your lunch to work, be aware that the best sandwiches for gaining weight are made with 100 percent whole wheat, pumpernickel, or rye breads.  Ground beef patties, tuna with mayonnaise, turkey, meat loaf, avocado and bacon, peanut butter and bacon, and cream cheese all make excellent high-protein, high-calorie sandwiches.

      While we’re taking the sagely advice of the Iron Guru, here’s the diet that he also recommended for anyone who needed to pack on the mass in a short amount of time:

Breakfast – two-egg cheese omelet, buttered whole wheat toast, milk. 10 liver tablets, 1 ounce amino acid, wheat germ oil, Vitamin C.

Lunch – one-half pound hamburger, green salad, protein and milk drink. 10 liver tablets, 1 ounce amino acid, wheat germ oil, Vitamin A.

Dinner – one-half pound meat of any kind, baked potato, salad, milk. 10 liver tablets, wheat germ oil, Vitamin B, Iron tablet.

Before retiring and between meals – Protein and milk drink, which you make each morning and consists of the following:

12 oz. half & half

12 raw eggs

1/3 cup protein powder

1 banana

     Notice that none of that advice includes things such as weighing food, calculating exact macronutrients, or anything “complex.”  It’s just good, sound, fundamentally basic advice for building muscle.  The only things you really need to calculate daily are your protein intake and your caloric intake.  Make sure you’re getting a gram of protein per pound of lean muscle mass.  If you’re trying to gain weight, start off with 15 times your bodyweight in calories daily, and increase it as you start to be able to eat more, so that you’re eating 20 times your bodyweight, then 25 times, and so on and so forth.  If you get up to 30x your bodyweight in daily calories, you don’t really need any more than that.  And if you’re trying to get lean and lose some fat, then do some fasting, don’t snack in between meals, still get 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, but only eat around 10x your bodyweight in calories.

     Spend several months following the above advice.  After that, if you want to try a “new” diet, or if you want to try something more “extreme,” such as Carnivore or even vegan, then do it.  If those stop working, or don’t work at all in the first place, you’ll know what to get back to.

The Training Stuff

     The following training advice is not just for someone starting out.  Oh, it’s exactly what someone starting out should always do, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also the stuff that all lifters should return to after some time spent on other programs.  This should be, in other words, the “base” of everyone’s lifting.  I’ve been training for 35+ years, and this is how I still train a lot of the time.

     The main type of “basic” training you need to learn to utilize are full-body workouts using the, you guessed it, basic barbell and dumbbell movements.  These should be lifts that work the most muscles at one time.  The list should include squats, front squats, power cleans, power snatches, high pulls, various kinds of deadlifts, rows of all types, overhead presses of various sorts, bench pressing with barbells and dumbbells, chins, dips, barbell curls, one or two heavy ab exercises, and, finally, some loaded carries or other “odd” lifting movements such as farmer walks, sandbag carries, tire flips, et al.

     If you have time, then train 3 full-body workouts per week.  If not, then do 2-days-weekly.  Trust me, 2 days per week is plenty if you put in the hard work.

     Here’s a 2-days-per-week training program that I’m fond of prescribing to lifters who only have a couple days to train:

Day One

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps. 2 sets of 8 reps.

     Start the program with the almighty squat, the king of exercises, the mother of all quality muscle-building—and whatever other superlatives you would like to heap upon this exercise, because they are all true.  I once wrote an essay (on this blog) about how you can "squat and do what you will," the implication being that it all begins and ends with the squat.  As long as you are squatting, everything else seems to fall into place, and if you are not squatting, then it often doesn't matter what else you decide to do, none of it will work without the—yep—mother of all exercises.

     Work up over 5 progressively heavier sets until you hit your max for 5 reps.  You may not even manage 5 reps on your last set; that's fine.  Stick with that weight until you do get all 5 reps.   If you manage 5 reps on your 5th set, then add weight at the next session.

     After you perform your 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps, drop down in poundage, and perform 2 sets of 8 reps.  These should be hard but not all-out.  Leave a rep or two "in the tank," so to speak.

Power Cleans: 7 to 8 sets of 3 reps.

     For the second exercise of the day, work up over 4 or 5 sets until you hit a near max of 3 reps.  Stick with this weight for another few sets until you have completed 7 or 8 sets of 3 reps.

Cleans—and any "quick lifts," really—shouldn't be done for high reps.  And in my book, anything over 3 reps is too high for the Olympic lifts and their derivatives.  But since this keeps the workload down, I think it's good to do a few extra sets compared to the "slower" lifts.

Flat Bench Presses: 5 sets of 5 reps. 2 sets of 8 reps.

     Follow the same method as used in the squats: work up over 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps.  Once you have reached your limit set, drop down in weight and perform 2 hard but not all-out sets of 8 reps.

Barbell Curls: 5 sets of 5 reps.

     As with the squats and the bench presses, work up over 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps until you reach your maximum weight for a set of 5.  Unlike the other two exercises, don't do any additional work.   Even though you are going to only train 2-days-per-week, you will still need to recover from your training since you will be working your full-body at each session, so when in doubt, do less and NOT more.

Farmer's Walks: 2 sets for distance.

     Pick a heavy pair of dumbbells, and carry them for an allotted distance (or time, but I prefer distance).  If you're unsure if you're going heavy enough, then you probably aren't.  Work these hard for 2 sets.

Ab work of your choice.

     For your last exercise of the day, select an ab exercise of your choice.  If you're interested in being a power athlete (or a fighter) then I don't think you can go wrong with the ab wheel, but select harder rather than easier exercises.

Day Two

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps (Moderate)

     Start this session with the same exercise from Day One, but DON'T go all-out.  Work up over 5 progressively heavier sets to a weight that you used for your 3rd or 4th set from Day One.  This will help you to recover and prepare you for the remainder of the workout session.

Deadlifts: 7 sets of 5 reps.

     Work up over 4 or 5 progressively heavier sets until you reach a near max of 5 reps.  Stick with this weight for another 2 or 3 sets.  If you manage to get all 7 sets for 5 reps, add weight at the next session.

     Unlike with the squats and bench presses from Day One, your deadlifts should be trained, I believe, with lower reps in general.  You could do 5 sets of 5 reps followed by 2 sets of 8 reps, but I think better results for the deadlift are achieved with 5 reps or less.

Barbell Overhead Presses: 5 sets of 5 reps. 2 sets of 8 reps.

     Follow the same methodology as the squats and the bench presses from Day One.

Chins: 5 to 7 sets of near-max reps.

     For these, mix it up at each workout.  Some days you may want to use a wide-grip, and some days an underhand grip, or even a close "neutral" grip, depending on the sort of chin bars that you have access to.

     Stick with the same weight for each set—this could be your bodyweight or it could be with additional weight if needed.  Whatever you choose, try and leave a rep or two in the tank, at least until your 6th or 7th set, at which point it's perfectly fine to go all out.

Weighted Dips: 5 sets of 5 reps. 2 sets of 8 reps

     As with the squats and benches from Day One and the overhead presses on this day, work up over 5 progressively heavier sets until you reach your max weight for 5 reps.  Once you are finished, decrease the weight—or just remove the weight belt entirely, depending on your strength—and perform 2 additional sets of 8 reps.

Sandbag (or other "loaded") Carries: 2 sets for distance.

     When most lifters include loaded carries into their training arsenal, they typically do little other than farmer's walks, but, if you have access to other implements, variety is needed with loaded carrying and dragging movements just the same as with "regular" barbell or dumbbell exercises.

Sandbags are the easiest to find (or make), so I have included them here, but if you have access to weighted kegs or barrels, those will perfectly suffice, as well.

Ab work of your choice.

     Same as Day One.

     Train on 2 non-consecutive days weekly that are evenly spaced apart.  Monday and Thursday seem to be the most popular for the great majority of lifters since it allows them to take Friday and the weekends off.  I always liked training on the weekends, personally, and liked a Sunday/Wednesday regimen; still do.

    If you can train 3-days-per-week, then just alternate between the above workouts at each session.  This means that the first week you would do the Day One workout twice and the Day Two workout once, and the following week would see Day Two done twice and Day One once.  With 3-days-weekly, just make sure you’re recovering sufficiently.  This means that some days will need to be done with lighter weights, or cut out some of the back-off sets.

     You can also alternate between 3 days per week and 2 days per week, going back and forth in this manner on a weekly basis.

     If you don’t spend a considerable amount of time on full-body workouts such as these—learning how your body responds to the volume and the frequency, figuring out whether or not you respond best to 2-days-weekly or 3, learning whether you need to do less or more than what I have recommended—then you won’t know what back-to-the-basics entails for you, and you won’t know what you need to do when you return to the basics.  Get good at the basics and you’ll be able to train soundly for the rest of your life.