The Training Secret to End All Training Secrets

     I write a lot about lifting because I think a lot about lifting.  I am a writer after all.  Sometimes I even write about writing.  When you’re a writer, that’s what you do.  You write.  Anyway, I was thinking earlier about why I write about lifting and why in the world I continue to write about it, even when I’ve penned around 800 articles at this point, but who’s counting?  No one but me.

     I think I’ve written more articles, essays, and musings this past year than I have in any other year of my life.  That’s saying something since I’ve been writing training articles since 1993, when I sold my first articles to IronMan magazine and MuscleMag International.  Earlier this year, at some point, I remember briefly thinking something along the lines of, “What if I run out of ideas to write about?  Maybe I should slow this thing down.”  But then I realized that it’s not possible.  I seriously doubt I’ll ever stop writing about training.  I’d have to stop thinking about lifting first, and, since that’s never going to happen, I suppose this writing thing will continue as long as I have thoughts.

     I think about the things I do, the things I love.  And since I really doubt that I’ll ever stop doing training, because I’ll never stop loving it, then there’s no chance that I’ll ever stop thinking about it.  So, since I do it, since I love it, and since I think about it, I’m going to continue to write about it.

     I love other stuff too, like budo and religion.  I think about those things, so I write about those things, though not as much as lifting.  I often do wonder (to myself) why I don’t write more about Budo or Zen or Eastern Christianity as I do about lifting.  I don’t know if I have the answer for that, other than the fact that it’s easy for me to write lifting articles.  I have so many ideas about training that I always have plenty to write about.

     Sometimes I write about things like various “secrets” of training.  They’re not really secrets, mind you.  Just little known.  So I sit down at the computer, think about those secrets that aren’t really secrets and just see what comes out on the screen of my laptop when my fingers start moving across my keyboard, just like they’re moving now.  Anyway, earlier this evening, when I was finished with a set of bench presses, then sat on the edge of my bench, I was wondering if there were any “secrets” that I haven’t written about lately.  Ooh, I thought to myself.  There is one secret that I don’t think I’ve written about already.  Well, that’s probably not true.  I write about a lot of the same stuff because I keep thinking about the same stuff.  I just tackle it from a different angle here or a different one there.  So, what is this secret to end all training secrets?  (Hint: I already gave it away above.)  It’s just this.  The secret is there are no secrets.

     You can gain knowledge.  You can always learn more and new things about training that you haven’t thought about before.  I still do.  All you have to do to discover them is to read and study and then apply what you read and study to the weight room.  You make yourself your own training guinea pig and you see what happens.  Sometimes you might even be surprised about what it is that you discover.  But it’s still not a secret.  And you didn’t really discover it, anyway.  Someone else did before you.  But, that doesn’t matter, because it’s still a discovery because it’s your discovery.

     Sometimes you believe you discovered something.  You climb the steep summit of the training mountain.  But then what you “discover” is that there were already ancient sages of training who had been there for a long time, waiting to meet you, waiting to welcome you to the brethren of old-school lifters.  They’ve been at the top for years, for decades, sometimes for a century or, heck, for centuries.  After all, the Farnese Hercules didn’t just sprout from the imagination of its unknown artist.  Someone actually looked like that.  Someone actually trained to look like that.

The original Greek statue of the "Farnese Hercules" was probably carved in the 4th century BC.  That's right, muscle men have been around for a lot longer than you thought!

     Sorry if the secret is disappointing.  It shouldn’t be.  Because if there are no secrets, then, ultimately, there are no rules, either.

     The joy is in the journey, anyway.  I probably didn’t think that way at one time.  When I was young, I thought there must be an “ultimate” secret to muscle-building and outrageous strength gains.  I thought, if I could just read enough, train enough, study the training regimens of the old-time bodybuilders, weightlifters, and strongmen enough that I would find it.  What is it?  The one training plan to rule them all.  The one for me, at least.  

     In the early to mid ‘90s, I watched Dorian Yates grow muscle—a lot of muscle—in only a year even when he was already, the year before, just about the most massive bodybuilder walking the earth.  So maybe the “secret” was heavy, hard-as-hell, brief, and infrequent training.  It wasn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop me from thinking that it was out there somewhere, some place, still waiting to be discovered.

     Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that some training plans aren’t better than others.  They are.  At least, they’re better for you than other training plans.  I’ve discovered (or re-discovered) a few of them myself along the lifting way.

     Sheiko, and other “Russian” programs, was a real discovery for me personally.  Before discovering it for myself, I would have scoffed at the idea that anyone could gain muscle and strength from such frequent workouts and ultra-high volume.  2 squat sessions each week, 2 additional deadlift sessions, and 4 bench press sessions, all with a lot of sets?  Sounds like lunacy.  But then I got stronger than I had ever been in my entire life and couldn’t stop gaining muscle mass even when I wasn’t trying to gain muscle.  That made me realize something, and it’s a “something” that modern bodybuilders need to discover for themselves—perhaps, if you’re trying to gain muscle, you should look at the programs of trainees who gain muscle mass without even wanting to!  Of course, it too will just be a re-discovery, as that’s pretty much the way all bodybuilders trained in the days and years before the advent of anabolic steroid usage.

     You can learn some secrets of lifting by getting good in other domains.  Writing, believe it or not, for instance.  What’s the secret to writing?  Showing up.  I often arrive at my laptop in the morning—once I’ve taken my dogs Kenji and Kiko for a long walk—coffee in hand and simply start typing.  I may have a rough idea of what I’m going to write about.  But not all the time.  Sometimes I just write to write.  I write to see what the heck the creative power within me produces.  I don’t produce it.  Not really.  It comes from a Power beyond the self.  Lifting’s like that.  Especially once you’ve been training for years and you know your body.  Just show up.  Go to the gym, have a rough idea of what you’re going to do.  And then do it.  You may be surprised with what emerges from your muse of lifting.

     A lot of those ideas, rough though they may be, come to me while I’m on my morning walk.  It’s because I’m not thinking about writing during those times.  Or thinking about lifting or various training plans.  Or thinking about anything.  So, there’s another secret for you.  If you’re struggling with what training program you need to do, go for a walk.  Don’t think about your training.  The right plan will come to you of its own accord.  (Oh, and if you need to start walking in the first place, get a dog.  I can’t even think of the last time that I walked less than 4 miles in a day.  My pups are high energy, so it forces me to be high energy, too.)

     You can also learn a lot of secrets by training in something other than your chosen strength sport.  Powerlifters, you may not want to read this, but you could learn a lot by training with one of your fellow bodybuilders that like to do a lot of “pump” training on occasion.  No, I can’t really believe I wrote that, either, but, heck, it’s true.  You need to find a successful bodybuilder to train with, no doubt, but you may be surprised by what you learn, especially when it comes to “working” a muscle from all sorts of angles and with nuances you never really thought of before.  The flip side of that is true, as well.  Bodybuilders need to do stuff other than just bodybuilding.  If you’re on a perpetual bro-split, no wonder you haven’t gained any muscle in a couple of years.  Train like a powerlifter.  Or an Olympic lifter.  Or, heck, a fighter.  Better yet, train with some of those guys.  Once again, good ones.  Successful ones.

     There’s another domain that can teach you some secrets.  Fighters.  Boxers, judokas, BJJ players, full-contact TKD fighters—all and more of those can teach you a lot about conditioning, flexibility, and, believe it or not, strength.  The world of isometrics is a lost art among lifters, but traditional martial practitioners still know it and teach it.  Now, you have to find someone among the above who is “good.”  If you show up at your local martial arts school and it’s primarily little kids and out-of-shape middle-aged men and women, you (quite obviously) won’t learn anything in such a place.

     If you’re after muscle mass more than anything else, then you might be surprised that (of all of the above) you could probably learn the most about programming from weightlifters.  For one, if you’ve never done a proper clean and jerk or full snatch, you’ll learn more than you ever thought you needed to know about technique.  But the primary thing you’ll learn is the benefits (and the sheer joy) of high-frequency training.  You’ll learn things like “workload” and “work capacity”—a lot of the stuff that I preach more often than not in my articles.  You’ll also learn that how you feel is a lie.  It’s more, once again, about showing up and just getting the lifting session in.  You’ll be sore all the time and feel the first few weeks as if you got hit by the proverbial mack truck.  If you’ve already drank the kool-aid of “overtraining,” you’ll soon let go of that particular myth and realize that your body can handle a hell of a lot more than you previously thought.

     Heck, maybe I’m wrong about a lot of this.  Maybe there is some mythical lifting Shangri-la in the mystical clouds of another strength-training dimension.  But I doubt it.  The secret that there are no secrets is, in all probability, the truth.  The joy is in the lifting journey, so take it and see what it is you can discover for yourself.