I haven't written any "budo philosophy" pieces of late because, well, they don't get near as many views as my essays on old-school strength training, powerlifting, and bodybuilding. But I enjoy writing them, and, to be quite honest, I think they're some of the better essays here on my blog. The idea for this one had been churning away in my mind for a few weeks, so I thought it was time to put pen to paper and see what comes of it. I hope you find it, at the very least, to be an interesting take on an "obscure" subject: The Budo That Can’t Be Seen “Do the budo that can’t be seen,” ~Morihei Ueshiba “It is bad for those who are learning Zen to become like those who are studying Zen but do not sit. After all, you must have the discipline to sit everyday.” ~Omori Sogen The first quote comes from the founder of Aikido, also known as O-Sensei, and it’s the primary thing I want to discuss in this essay: how one does the budo that can’t be seen, and
Two Training Challenges for Busting Through Plateaus and Forcing New Gains For a program to be successful, it must regulate the variables of volume, intensity, and frequency. Generally—and this is not an absolute; there are exceptions—two of the variables should be high (or one high and the other moderate) and the other variable must be low. The reason I believe many “bro splits” are popular is because they are easy to program. Many gym-goers these days, for instance, like to train one-bodypart-per-week and train with a lot of sets, a lot of intensity, but with very low frequency. Although this approach most certainly can work for a lot of lifters, I don’t think it’s the most optimal way to train. If you’ve read any of the material that I’ve written on this blog and in articles elsewhere, you will know that I’m a fan of high-frequency training. And I typically recommend a lot of high-frequency, high-intensity programs (intensity here refers to percentage of one-rep maxi