It Ain’t What You’re Doin’. It’s What You’ve Done.

 

On Programming, Variety, and Making Gains!

     The other day, Jason, a lifting friend of mine, called me on the phone.  He needed some advice for breaking out of the rut he was in.  Jason’s one of those guys that’s always into “powerbuilding.”  He wants to look like a bodybuilder, but also wants to have impressive strength.  He said that several months ago he had started on one of those “briefer-is-better” programs—the kind of program that would have made Ken Leistner proud—and got some of the best results he’s ever had in just a matter of a few weeks, but then it all ground to a sudden halt.  After explaining to me what he had been doing, and some of the adjustments he’d made but to no avail, he was almost at his wit’s end.  “I just don’t know what I’m doin’ wrong,” he said.  To which I replied, “It ain’t what you’re doin’.  It’s what you’ve done.”

     “Huh?” he replied in turn, bemusingly.  I then took my time to explain to him what I believe had happened, and some easy ways that he can start growing and gaining again.  Southern slang and Texan dialect aside, it was a good conversation.  I think he left our talk with the confidence that he could, indeed, turn things around.  At the very least, he knew what I would do if I were him. My reply to him is what I’m now going to write about in this essay.

     One of the most common mistakes that lifters, bodybuilders, and even just regular gym-goers make is to assume that their strength level, their current rate of hypertrophy, or their current fat loss is based upon what they’re currently doing.  It’s not—at least very little of it is.  Nope.  It’s based almost entirely on what they’ve done.

     If we think about this just a little bit, it starts to make sense.  For instance, you probably know that the workout you did today has not suddenly created the physique that you have on this day.  Your current physique—for good or ill—is, of course, based on what you’ve been doing these past few months or years.  But for some reason, we have a harder time seeing this over a few weeks of training compared to just looking at it over one day.

     Jason’s problem, for instance, was something that I sometimes write about as the “H.I.T effect.”  Often, when bodybuilders or lifters take up “high-intensity training” after months of really high-volume workouts, they get almost shockingly good results.  They may even get the best results of their life from these brief, but incredibly hard, sessions.  But this is because—in addition to it being such an entirely new stimulus, which does factor into it somewhat—of their long-term use of high-volume, often high-frequency, workouts that came before their use of H.I.T.; workouts that did work well for them in the past, sometimes for years. So it’s not what they’re doing (H.I.T. in this case), however, but what they did before (the high-volume workouts) that is producing the results.

     What happened to my friend in 2024 sort of happened en masse to a lot of us bodybuilders in the early to mid ‘90s.  When Dorian Yates, and his “blood and guts” version of high-intensity training hit the scene, the world of bodybuilding training changed in America.  Between ‘92 and ‘93, Yates probably made the most muscle gains of any pro bodybuilder that had ever come before him in just one year of training.  The bodybuilding world took notice.  Gone were the days of 3-on, 1-off or even 6-on, 1-off splits using a lot of sets, reps, not to mention exercises for each muscle group.  Suddenly, everyone was training with less sets and less exercises but with gut-busting effort, and then taking off as much as a week between training each bodypart.

     It worked.  Until it didn’t.  And it worked so well because of the training—years on end of it for a lot of bodybuilders—that had come before it.

     After a few months of using Yates-style training, most bodybuilders stopped seeing results.  And instead of alternating between H.I.T. training and more “traditional” bodybuilding workouts—which should have been the most logical approach to steady progress—a lot of these bodybuilders started doing even less or tried to find ways to make their sets even harder.  Because, so the reasoning went, if brief and hard training is what produced such phenomenal results, then surely even briefer but harder training was what was needed to gain again.

      As the sayings go: everything works but nothing works for long and the best workout program is the one you’re not doing.  Those sayings are popular because they’re 100% true.  When a training program stops working, the answer isn’t to do a more extreme version of that same program.  If your H.I.T. program grinds to a halt—which it will—the answer is not to train harder but with less sets and less frequency.  But I’m not picking on H.I.T. here (as much as I sometimes like to do that).  The same goes for high-volume workouts.  If your standard bodybuilding program of 3 exercises-per-bodypart for 3 to 4 sets of 10-12 reps stops working—which it will just as much as H.I.T. or anything else—the answer is not to start doing 5 exercises-per-bodypart for 4 to 5 sets each.  No, the answer is to do something different.

     Let me be clear about something, however, and this is important: most lifters and bodybuilders do have one method of training that is going to work better for them than other methods.  I tend to respond best to high-frequency, so-called “easy strength” methods of training.  The majority of my training, throughout the year, if I’m going after strength, should probably be that form of lifting.  But I also need to spend a few months out of the year doing things radically different, whether it’s H.I.T. training or really high-volume workouts.  The same goes if you respond well to H.I.T. Spend about 8 months of the year doing brief, but hard, preferably full-body workout sessions.  But spend about 4 months of the year doing a couple of programs that are the complete opposite.  And, of course, the same goes if you get great results with traditional, high-volume bodybuilding workouts.  Spend about 8 months out of the year doing high-volume workouts (keep in mind that these workouts should still have some variety inherently built into them), and then spend a couple of months each year using H.I.T. and maybe a couple of months on an easy-strength method.

     So if you’re typically a “high-volume” guy who is primarily after hypertrophy, a year of training could look something such as this:

     Months 1 and 2: Spend these 2 months utilizing a 3-on, 1-off “push-pull-legs” program of 3 to 4 exercises per muscle group and 3 to 4 sets per exercise.  Use moderate rep ranges, and don’t go overboard with “intensity” techniques, such as training to failure, drop sets, rest-pause training or anything similar.  Just focus on getting a good pump.

     Months 3 and 4: Spend the second 2 months of the year on a 4-on, 1-off split.  Train legs on one day, chest and shoulders on another, back on a third, and arms on the 4th day.  Utilize 4 to 5 exercises per muscle group, but keep your sets the same, 3 to 4 per exercise.  You could also try experimenting with some different rep ranges.  If, for the first couple of months, you primarily used 10-12 reps per movement, then try doing half of your sets here in the 6-8 rep range, and the other half in the 16-20 rep range.  Once again, refrain from “intensity” techniques of any sort.

     Months 5 and 6: After 4 months of “traditional” bodybuilding programs, your body will be ready for a real change.  This would be the perfect time to utilize a H.I.T style program.  Train 3-days-per-week with minimal sets, but train “balls-to-the-wall.”  You can employ all the intensity techniques your little Mentzer-inspired heart desires.

     For months 7 through 10, return to the sort of programs you did the first 4 months of the year.  You may want to experiment with new exercises, or maybe try an “antagonistic” split instead of a “push/pull” split, but keep things pretty much the same as those first 4 months.

     Months 11 and 12:  For the last two months of the year, do something completely different.  Utilize a Bill Starr-style heavy-light-medium program, or something such as my 30-rep program.  The more different it is, the better.  Even though these are strength programs, you may be surprised at the muscle you gain simply because of how radically different they are than what your body has been accustomed to for the past year.  Just remember, however, that this sudden hypertrophy is because of what you’ve been doing the previous 4 months, not these strength-oriented workouts!

     Remember that the example above is just that, an example.  Even if you’re a bodybuilder, you may find you respond best to a different sort of training.  You may be one of those aforementioned guys that does respond well to H.I.T.  If that’s the case, do 8 months of 4 different H.I.T. programs, and spend 4 months of your year on 2 different high-volume programs.

     And if your thing is strength, here’s a template for powerlifters or other strength athletes that would work well:

• 2 months of Dan John’s 40-Day Program

• 2 months of my 30-Rep Program

• 2 months of high-volume, 6-on, 1-off bodybuilding training

• 2 months of Bill Starr-style H-L-M training using Starr’s 3-day-per-week program

• 2 months of Bill Starr-style H-L-M training using Starr’s 4-day-per-week program

• 2 months of Ken Leistner-style H.I.T. training

     If all of that is too “programmed” out for you—perhaps you’re an advanced lifter who trains more “instinctually” or perhaps you’re one of those lifters that follows the same template all-year long, albeit one that has plenty of variety build into it, such as Westside training—then you can look at this on more of a micro than macro level.  If you typically train 5-days-per-week with quite a lot of sets and reps, then spend some weeks, on occasion, where you go down to just 2-days-per-week of training.  Or, if you usually train just 2-days-per-week on full-body workouts a la “Super Squats,” then spend a week here and there training 4 to 5-days-per-week on a two-way split.

     Keep in mind that this also applies to eating.  That’s right.  It’s not necessarily what you're eating.  It’s what you ate.  It’s the reason a cheat day often works well.  You may look noticeably better the morning after pigging out the day before on pizza, beer, and wings while you sat around watching football morning until night.  That cheat day works because of the 6 days of strict eating that came before it.

     I’ve written before about my success with the “anabolic diet” when I used it in the ‘90s.  Basically, the diet involves 5 days of high-fat (and I mean really high fat) and high-protein during the week, and on the weekends you can just eat as many sugary-laden carbs that you care to scarf down.  On the weekends, my training partner Dusty and I would spend two days eating and drinking as many milkshakes, donuts, slices of pizza, and beers as we could consume, only to be noticeably leaner and more “swole” on Monday morning.  It wasn’t because of our gluttonous weekend haul.  It was because of those 5 days of zero carbs that came before the weekend.

     Whether it’s eating or training, just remember, it ain’t what you’re doing.  It’s what you’ve done.