Hard Work and Challenges

Some Thoughts on Hard Training, Challenges, and Other Such Stuff

     In my last essay on “Outdoor Workout Challenges,” I mentioned the body’s need for challenges on occasion, and gave some workout ideas for loaded carries and odd lifts.  In this essay, I just want to discuss hard training in general, and give some thoughts on when—and when not—to use challenges and other hard forms of training.

     First, the body does need to be challenged constantly in some way.  But this doesn’t mean that one has to always go “all out” at each session, much less on each and every work set.  For instance, the act of working out on a regular basis is itself a challenge to the body.  Your body grows bigger and/or stronger—or fat loss occurs—through adaptation and accumulation.  Without pushing your body to do more and more on a regular basis, this won’t transpire, and results won’t happen.

     Our body doesn’t just need to be challenged through training.  It also needs to be disciplined through dietary habits, and if those are to be successful, then they must be challenging too.  In our modern society, the reason that so many people are out of shape, overweight, or suffer through various health problems, even mental and emotional ones, is because they find eating correctly to be too challenging—which is a pretty sad state of affairs.

     It’s not just our body either that needs challenges to adapt and grow.  Our mind—and I would also say our soul—needs challenges to strengthen it, make it more resolute, and even to be more compassionate and caring.  Many people don’t stick with a training or nutritional regimen because it is their mind, not their body, that is weak.

     Challenging the body and mind isn’t exactly a new concept.  Warrior societies throughout history have used challenges—ones that most modern people wouldn’t be capable of doing.  As an example, there is a well-known samurai text called the Bukyo Shigen Goden Ryu or the “Seven Hardships of Martial Training,” which lists seven austerities that a samurai should undertake.  Here’s the list:

1. Experience cold, heat, and rain by scaling high mountains and crossing deep valleys.

2. Rest in open fields and sleep in the mountains.

3. Never store money or food, and never wear warm clothes.

4. Travel everywhere to engage in contests.

5. Reside in graveyards, haunted houses, and among wild beasts.

6. Associate with dangerous criminals.

7. Live off the land among peasants.

     That’s probably the most extreme example of the advice given to the samurai, but even less austere advice can still be challenging for modern man.  Miyamato Musashi’s “The Dokkodo” lists 21 precepts that I think most modern lifters, fighters, and athletes would do well to study, reflect upon, and put into practice, for instance.  The precepts are all “doable” but can still be difficult because they are primarily “mental” and require self-denial more than anything else.

     I think that one of the main reasons intermittent fasting has become popular—even though many folks who take it up might not even realize this about it at first—is because it’s challenging to only eat within a certain time frame.  But when you do it—when you accept the challenge and beat it—you are rewarded with a certain pleasure, and this causes you to do it day in and day out.  It’s disciplining the mind to not think about food, or when thought about, to ignore the impulses.  It disciplines the mind and the body that it’s okay to be hungry.  Even if you don’t plan on taking up intermittent fasting, and even if you’re one of those guys trying to eat everything in sight in order to gain some mass, I think you still need to challenge your mind-body unit by fasting occasionally for an entire day.  That’s right, try not eating anything for 24 hours once every month or two.  You need to remember what it’s like to be hungry sometimes.  This challenge trains you mentally more than anything else.  Don’t worry.  You won’t shrivel up.  In fact, you may find that the day after it, when you start eating everything in sight once again, your muscles just seem to “volumize” and swell up in a way that feels, and looks, better than before the 24-hour fast.

     The bottom line is that we need challenges.  But the paradox worthy of a Zen koan is that, in order to achieve progress that is continual, we also can’t challenge our body constantly or we won’t make progress; so we need challenges and we don’t need challenges.  The reason this is so bewilderingly incongruous for many to wrap their heads around is because we have often been taught that training—and life in general—is an either/or world.  But it’s not.  It’s a both/and world, lifting included.  You need hard training and you need to take it easy and you need something that is often in between the two.  You need, in a word, balance.

     If you find this balance difficult, here are some suggestions.

     If you’re a regular reader of my work, then you already know I’m a big fan of full-body workouts.  I think, all things being considered, it’s probably the best form of training the average gym-goer can do, whether he or she’s after muscle mass, simply strength, or a combination of muscle and strength.  A lot of modern trainees have a “problem” with full-body workouts because it doesn’t allow them to train all-out at every session and train with enough frequency to elicit results, because the truth is that you can’t train all-out doing full-body workouts 3-days-per-week.  So to make full-body workouts effective while also taking advantage of hard, challenging training sessions, you have a couple of options.  First, you can train on a heavy-light-medium system of training ala Bill Starr.  It may be best to think of your 3 days of lifting more as hard-easy-moderate sessions.  If you train Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then feel free to “kill it” at each Monday session.

     When I used Starr’s methods for powerlifting, my heavy day workouts would often be 3 hours long, consisting of set-after-set of squats, bench presses, deadlifts of various sorts, along with plenty of assistance work.  When I came back for my light workout of the week just two days later, I was often so sore that I had trouble walking, but I could still do an active recovery workout of squats, overhead presses, some power snatches or power cleans, and maybe a set or two of light curls or dips.  Just enough work to put some blood in the muscles and to help me recover for the upcoming medium day.  And then on the 3rd training day of the week, my training would be “in between” the other two days.  That approach worked well for me, and it can work great for you, too, if you decide to utilize it.

     This is also a good approach if you can only make it to the gym a couple days per week.  Do one hard, heavy, all-out session, and then return a few days later for a 2nd workout where you do half to ⅔ of the work done on the heavy day.

     A 2nd approach is to make each of your full-body workouts “moderate,” but end each session with one—maybe two if you have the recovery capacity to handle it—set(s) of a hard finisher.  Train 3-days-per-week.  Utilize only a few exercises for 3 to 4 sets.  When you’re finished, end with a finisher of some sort.  It can be a loaded carry movement as discussed in my last essay or it can be something done with weights.  Go absolutely to your limit for one, maybe two, sets then go home, rest, recuperate, and grow bigger and stronger.

     You can also just have primarily moderate workout sessions, and not even worry about a finisher, but then, once every two or three weeks, have one balls-to-the-wall session with endless sets of squats, benches, pulls of all types, barbell curls, overhead presses, and whatever-the-heck you want to throw in.  Train until exhaustion, then take a few days off, and spend another few weeks of “reasonable” workout sessions.

     Another approach—one that can be combined in many ways with everything already discussed—is to train a few months each year all-out, and spend the rest of the year using moderate and reasonable workouts.  Bill Starr used to say that, in order to grow as big and strong as possible, you needed to practice overcompensation (his word).  He maintained that you needed to overtrain at different times during the year for a few weeks, maybe a little more, at a time then back off.  You would then really grow your biggest and strongest during the light weeks, but it was those weeks before that of hard—almost too hard—training that allowed the growth and strength to transpire.

     An effective way to implement this is to train with really hard workouts about a quarter or third of the time, with the other ¾ or ⅔ spent using more “reasonable” methods.  (Don’t discount reasonable, by the way—it’s often what is needed to make high-frequency training truly effective.)  You can do this through either micro or macro means.  On a micro-level, you can train damn hard one week out of every four.  Or, to use a more macro approach, you can spend about 4 months out of the year training with a high amount of intensity, volume, and frequency, and spend the other 8 months training reasonably.  Train with an easy strength method, or something similar for 4 months, then spend 2 months using high-volume, high-intensity workouts.  After 2 months of that, go back to another 4 months of “easy” training before repeating.  Remember, you need the challenges, but you also need to be able to give your body a break.  The two must go together.

     I hope some of these musings have given you food for thought when it comes to when and how to train hard—and when and how not to.  You really do need both.  If you haven’t challenged your body lately, then it’s time to do so.  Your body, your mind, and perhaps even your soul will be glad that you did.