Get Big, Strong, and Ripped—One Goal at a Time

 

     Stop trying to do so many things at one time.  Really.  Just stop.  If you want to achieve a goal—any goal, but we’ll stick with size and strength here—then you need to focus on that one goal.  Duh, right?  Pretty obvious.  But, as I’ve written in other essays, the obvious sure does seem to get overlooked by the vast majority of our lifting population.  So, obvious though it may be, let me repeat. Focus on one goal at a time.

     I started thinking about all this, and the cognitive wheels began turning in my mind to write an essay on it, when I read these words from Dan John in an article of his on the same topic.  He wrote:

One of the most overlooked aspects of muscle-building programs is a four-letter word: STOP. Stop playing basketball. Stop jogging. Stop doing cardio. I swear, if I get one more email like this, I will do something rash: “Hey, Dan: I’m interested in doing Highland Games. I want to put on some weight, but I have MMA classes three days a week, play in two basketball leagues and I want to do a marathon. What lifts should I do to put on sixty pounds?” I tell you, that’s NOT an exaggeration. It’s not. *

     John’s not alone.  I get similar emails on a fairly regular basis.  And if we both get the same inanity, I can guarantee you that every other strength training writer does as well.  And if I’m correct on that assessment, it means there are a whole heapin’ lot of lifters who believe it’s possible to train in multiple domains and actually get results.

     Part of the issue for trainees is that they take up resistance training in the first place—or perhaps just “working out” in general—because they want to achieve several different goals from the outset.  So, it’s not as if they don’t have a goal.  They have too many goals.  To top things off, however, the modern lifter often thinks of these multiple goals as being just one goal.  They want to get big and ripped.  They want to be lean and ripped but also incredibly strong.  Or they want to be big, ripped, strong as hell, and perform better than all their teammates in their chosen sport.  Of course, and not to get ahead of ourselves here, proper training can and will grow larger muscles, get you exceedingly lean, and build up your strength to impressive levels.  But (and here’s the main takeaway) you don’t train for all those aspects at one time.  Oh, you can try.  Many a lifter has and many a lifter will continue to do so in the future.  But you will fail.  (Brief caveat: You can train for both size and strength at the same time—I have an entire book of training programs to help you achieve just that.  But that is still one goal.)

     Now, you can’t really blame the average trainee for trying to achieve multiple goals at one time.  There are plenty of articles out there—in magazines, on internet websites, in “news” stories—along with YouTube videos and the like that promote the idea of building muscle and burning fat concomitantly.  After all, since that is what a lot of lifters desire, you might as well sell them what they want, right?  But it’s disingenuous since it’s just not that achievable.  Having said that, I must add that there are lifters who have achieved this goal and there are some possible training/nutritional strategies that will allow for a combination of muscle gain and fat loss.  But even if it is possible, you will never get the maximum benefit of either muscle building or fat loss with that method.  It’s best to focus on one aspect at a time.  But you can see where this common misconception has come from.  After all, the goal of many trainees is to simply look better—most folks, if we’re honest, train for aesthetics and not performance.  And if that’s the goal, then the first thing you need is to be honest with yourself and ask yourself which aspect are you more in need of right now?  Is it muscle mass or fat loss?  Even if you need both equally, select one goal to work on for the next 2 to 3 months, then switch over to the other goal for a couple of months.  So, which one should you prioritize first?  My typical “go to” answer is whichever form of training you are more likely to stick with.  And which one are you more likely to stick with?  I think there are two possible answers to that question.  For some lifters, it will be the goal they enjoy training for the most.  For others, it will be the goal that they find the easiest to attain.  The two typically coincide.  If you find it relatively easy to gain mass but struggle to lose bodyfat, then you probably find hypertrophy training to be more enjoyable than fat loss workouts.  Or vice versa.

     Once you choose the goal that you’ll prioritize, the next thing to decide is how to go about achieving it.  You need to decide how you’re going to train and how you will eat.  Whether it’s hypertrophy or fat loss (pure strength training is a little different) you need to commit to a training plan and a nutritional regimen.

Get Big

     Once you settle upon your goal, hone in on that one goal to the exclusion of all else.  This is best done by keeping it simple.  Simple but not easy.  Keeping your training and nutritional strategies simple allows you to really focus on your one goal even more.  Highly focused, simple, minimalistic, and dedicated go together to create a seamless whole.

     Here are a few tips that may help you to achieve that seamlessness.

     Select a handful of exercises—maybe a couple more, maybe a couple less—and focus on getting stronger on those movements in a moderate rep range.  If your reps are too low, then you will get stronger but not necessarily much bigger.  (This isn’t exact, as there are lifters who gain mass with low rep ranges, but they are the exception and not the norm.)  If you get stronger in the 5-8 rep range on squats, power cleans, bench presses, overhead presses, and barbell curls, for instance, you will get bigger.  (If you utilize lower rep ranges than that, say sets of 2 to 3 reps, then be sure to do more sets.)     Train with predominately full body workouts.  If you’re a steroid user, then you can get by doing bodypart-specific workouts, such as having an arm day, a shoulder day, an exclusively abdominal day, etc.  But if you’re drug free, you need to take advantage of the “anabolic response” your body gets from doing full-body training.  When you train your entire body at one time—or at least several bodyparts at once—this stimulates full-body growth.  It’s a simple formula, I believe.  Full-body training equals full-body growth.

     Train frequently.  I know it’s seen as slightly “outdated,” as multi-split workout programs are still the most popular way for most lifters to train, but you will get better results from a full-body workout done 3 times per week than you will on most bodypart splits.

     Eat plenty of food.  You can’t get big without it.  As with the training, keep it simple.  You don’t have to spend tons of your hard-earned cash on way-too-expensive protein powders, ready-made mass-gaining drinks, or other such supplements.  Try the GOMAD plan—that means gallon-o’-milk-a-day for those of you who have never picked up the gloriously old-school book “Super Squats.”  Try eating 3 meals a day and drink your milk in between meals.  And your meals don’t have to be overcomplicated, either.  There’s no need to plan out the exact amount of carbs, protein, and fat.  Just get enough protein—at least one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily—and enough carbs and fat to sustain growth.  I’ve gotten better results from peanut butter sandwiches and a couple of bananas at each meal as I have from chicken breast, broccoli, and plain rice.

Get Ripped

     If lifters make mass-building complicated, they do even more so with their attempts to get lean.  This is compounded by the fact that the general population also wants to get lean—or, at least, “lose weight,” which isn’t the same as losing bodyfat, since muscle and water are often lost, as well, but they are seen as being the same, different though they may be in actuality.  This means that as much misinformation as there is about hypertrophy training, you can triple that faulty info when it comes to getting ripped.

     The common advice is to do cardiovascular activities to burn calories and then to make sure that you are expending more calories than you are taking in.  Calories in, calories out, as the saying goes.  On top of that, conventional wisdom also tells us to track the exact foods we are eating, do a lot of “high-intensity cardiovascular exercise,” and/or follow an “eat this, not that” sort of diet, be it vegan or Carnivore or anything in between those two.  Well, “conventional wisdom,” in case you haven’t figured it out just doesn’t work.  If it did, we wouldn’t have the obesity epidemic we’re in, and every other commercial on the local or national news wouldn’t be an attempt to sell us the latest weight loss drug.

     As with getting big, it is best to keep things simple when your one goal is getting ripped.  To get lean quick, while also maintaining muscle mass, I think there are a few very simple things—one might say that they’re even downright easy—a lifter can do.  First, stay away from sugar and simple carbohydrates, fruit excluded.  Second, ensure that each meal is protein centric.  I don’t care if it comes from chickpeas or from a hefty T-bone steak, get some good protein at every meal.  Get enough good, healthy fat—olive oil, avocado, REAL butter, and fatty fish are examples.  Finally, fast.  Whether you eat 1, 2, or 3 meals a day, don’t eat anything in between your mealtimes.  You need to actually be hungry when you eat.  I, personally, like intermittent fasting on a “20/4” or “16/8” protocol, but that’s me.  Find what works for you, though a lot of lifters other than myself have found intermittent fasting to be a real game changer.

     Train in a fasted state, then eat your first meal once your lifting session is complete.

     And as far as the actual training goes, think anaerobic until it becomes aerobic.  Challenge yourself with something such as the 10K swing kettlebell program or anything of a similar nature.

Summing it Up

     Whatever your goal may be, the bottom line is to focus on that one goal and nothing else.  Follow the example of Cortez (well, aside from the mass destruction of the entire Aztec culture) and burn the ships, telling yourself that there is NO turning back.  Do this and you will get big, strong, or ripped.  Maybe all three, just not at once.

*From the book “Before We Go: An Ongoing Philosophy of Lifting, Living, and Learning.”