The Lifter’s Journey

     One of the best known of the Desert Fathers of fourth-century Egypt, St Sarapion the Sindonite, travelled once on pilgrimage to Rome. Here he was told of a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always in one small room, never going out. Skeptical about her way of life—for he was himself a great wanderer—Sarapion called on her and asked: “Why are you sitting here?” To this she replied: “I am not sitting, I am on a journey”. 

     I am not sitting, I am on a journey. Every Christian may apply these words to himself or herself. To be a Christian is to be a traveller. Our situation, say the Greek Fathers, is like that of the Israelite people in the desert of Sinai: we live in tents, not houses, for spiritually we are always on the move. We are on a journey through the inward space of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar, for it is a journey out of time into eternity. *

     A quote on Eastern Christian spirituality might seem like an odd way to begin an essay on lifting, but bear with me, for I think there is a lot more crossover here than what people usually think about when they think about lifting, especially if they have just begun their own lifting journeys.  Long-term lifters know this.  Perhaps they can’t even express it, but in their souls they know that their lifting has been more than just a physical journey.  It has been a mental, emotional, and dare I write a spiritual one.  When you are in the gym lifting, you are not just training there.  You are on a journey.

     Before we go any further, or really get started, let me add one thing at the outset.  For the lifting journey to be true, for it to become spiritual and touch your very soul, it must be a journey to excellence.  If you want to settle for just “good” or “good enough,” then you will never really know what it is that I’m writing about.  You must have a goal to soar to the very heights.  Whatever those heights are, and pay attention here, will be ultimately determined by your genetics in many ways.  Some guys can soar all the way to a 700-pound bench press.  Some can’t.  Some guys can soar to the height of the Mr. Olympia stage.  Some can’t.  But everyone, if they set their sights on excellence, can achieve a much bigger bench press than they believe they are capable of doing.  In fact, many more are capable of greater heights than they know.   So, with excellence as our goal, let’s set out on the journey.

     Your lifting journey will be your own.  No one else can do it for you.  And what works for others may not be the thing that works for you.  Nonetheless, you should and must look towards those that have made the journey before you and learn from them.  If you want to look like some of the great bodybuilders from the ‘70s and ‘80s—the height of physical perfection in my book; I can do without bloated guts and 300-pound ripped physiques—then learn what it is they did.  They didn’t all train the same, mind you.  Arnold, Zane, Ferrigno, Columbu, Haney, Paris, Labrada, et al all had their own way of training.  But they learned from each other and they learned from the other greats that came before them.  What they did worked for them then and it can work for you now.

     There’s something else about all of those greats.  They took what they learned from their training journeys and applied it to the other areas of their lives, and the other goals that they had.  Arnold is the most obvious instance, as he used the mind that drove him toward bodybuilding greatness in order to excel at movies and then politics.

     It’s as cliche as they come, I know, but Lao Tzu was correct.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  You must have a long-term goal.  To achieve that long-term goal, you must have short-term goals in order to reach it.  And for each short-term goal, you must focus on the now of each day, each workout of each day, each movement for each workout, each set for each movement, and each repetition of each set.

     You won’t be able to do this unless you have a specific plan, which means that you also have to be on a workout program rather than just going to the gym and “working out”.  However, one of the primary reasons that lifters don’t get good results when they begin their journeys is because they utilize the wrong workout plan.  Advanced routines are for advanced lifters.  A lot of times a bodybuilder looks at a pro bodybuilder and, wanting to have the same physique, attempts to train the same way.  Instead, you need to train in the manner that bodybuilder did when he first started out.

     Strength is the same way, though it’s more obvious in that case.  Whatever the powerlifter who can squat 600 pounds is using is not the one that you should be utilizing unless you’re already that strong.  But what did he do when he started on his journey?

     Having written those last two paragraphs, let me add this.  Even when bodybuilders or strength athletes know this, they still choose the wrong “basic but brief” programs.  Even when they select the correct movements and the correct routines, they tend to go about it in the wrong way.  Full-body workouts are great, yes.  Training on a handful of big, compound movements is great, yes.  Three days per week of training is a good idea, yes.  But how you do those programs should often be a bit different than what you probably believe.

     I’m lucky, I suppose, in that I trained in martial arts for years before I picked up a barbell.  To get good at martial arts, you train every single day but with only a limited number of different movements.  But you do those few basic movements frequently, albeit for a limited number of “sets.”  You don’t (or shouldn’t if you know what you’re doing) simply do reverse punches until you can no longer lift your arms.  That kind of training in a fatigued state produces bad form and doesn’t develop any power.  Instead, you do a few strong and powerful reverse punches.  Then you rest.  Then you repeat.  Again.  And again.  The same approach would serve you well in your lifting.

     In a couple of recent articles, I have written about the need to approach your training sessions as “practice” and a “skill” that you develop rather than a tough-as-hell workout that fatigues and drains you.  Let’s look at how we might do this for developing strength and size when beginning the journey.

     We’ll use squats as an example.  Originally, I was going to use bench presses because of their popularity (when I write about bench press workouts, I always get more views), but not everyone needs to do the standard bench press.  Everyone, on the other hand, needs to start their training journey with the barbell back squat.  Anyway, let’s say that you can squat 225 for a single, hard-as-can-be rep.  I know that might not seem like much, but keep in mind that I’m talking about a real squat, deep and ass-to-the-grass, not a partial squat of any type.  So, you might think that a good program to start with would be 2 or 3 sets of a few reps with something between 180 and 205 pounds.  But you would do much better, instead, to do a workout such as this 3 days per week:

135x5

155x3

175x2

185x2

195x2

205x1

215x1

     That’s called “learning the lift” and it’s how you go about treating your workout as a skill that you develop, because that’s exactly what you’re doing.  As you get more advanced, and you progress in this strength-skill, you can start doing more top-end sets and, perhaps, though it’s not a necessity, fewer total sets.  A good 3-day-per-week workout to start, however, might look like this:

Squats

Overhead presses

Power cleans

Bench presses

One-arm dumbbell rows

Barbell curls

     You might want to do the bench presses and rows only twice per week.  If you train on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, just do them on the Monday and Friday sessions, but other than that, do it as written but using a similar set/rep scheme on each movement as I demonstrated with the squats.

     A powerlifter would do well to follow a 3 days per week regimen where he squatted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, bench pressed on Monday and Friday, and deadlifted only on Monday.  He would still take the same approach.  A beginner to intermediate lifter might simply spend 30 minutes on each lift at each workout.  Whereas a more advanced lifter would do really well by training an hour per lift, doing progressively heavier triples and doubles during the entire hour, and resting plenty between each set.

     A week of training for a powerlifter beginning his journey might look like this:

Monday

Squats - 30 minutes of training

Bench presses - 30 minutes

Deadlifts - 30 minutes

Wednesday

Squats - 30 minutes

Friday

Squats - 30 minutes

Bench presses - 30 minutes

     You might notice that this naturally makes the program a heavy-light-medium regimen because of the workload for each training day, no matter how “heavy” you train on each lift of the day.

     Training in such a manner, whatever your goals, lays the foundation for the journey, perfecting technique and teaching you a lot more about each lift, and your body in the process, than you probably even realize when starting out.  It’s a journey toward excellence where you are focused on the excellence itself of every single repetition.

     The beginning of this lifting journey, these first few steps as you embark on the ongoing adventure of training, should involve a few very important facets—the three that follow are in no concrete order of importance.  Like the Noble Eightfold Path of the Buddha, they’re circular rather than linear steps and all should be undertaken at the same time.  The first is movement over muscle.  Even if it’s muscle that you are seeking, take this advice, because if hypertrophy is your only goal, you must learn to do every rep of every set of every movement in a manner where you feel the muscle.  There’s an art to it, and that art is more natural to some than others, but all bodybuilders must cultivate it.

     The 2nd facet needed is one-pointed focus.  You must be one-pointed in the desire of what you want out of your training, and you must be one-pointed in your attention while training.  You won’t achieve your goals, and your journey won’t go very far, if you’re always taking different paths.  To reach your destination, you must follow one path (and use a map, as well, I might add).

     What is your goal?  Think about it long and hard.  And be honest with yourself.  It must be the goal that you want out of lifting.  No one else can take your journey but you!  You can’t do what your friends want you to do.  You can’t do what your training partners want you to do.  (Although you should find a training partner who is in search of the same goal—fellow travelers on the path are quite important.)  It must be the one thing that you want.  So, if you simply want to look good, that’s perfectly fine.

     Once you know your goal then you will know the kind of training that needs to be done in the gym.  At this point, be one-pointed in your training.  Don’t keep thinking about your goal without applying it daily in the gym.  Focus on each day’s workout and you’ll get there.

     The 3rd facet needed—and this might seem a bit odd at first glance for some reading this—is to slow down and be present.  We live in such a fast-paced culture, almost a society of ADD, where our attention is constantly moving from here to there and then to somewhere else.  But lifting, true lifting, requires us to be present and in the moment while training, and to do that we must slow down.

     Modern life is so fast-paced and complicated that modern people think they must move at high speed to accommodate it.  But it is because of the pace of modern life that we must do the opposite.  We have a choice.  We can go with the flow of our society or we can go against the grain.  Going against the grain is usually the correct choice in most areas and lifting is no different.  For instance, most of the programs that I write go against the grain of the modern gym mentality.  In my last article on Forgotten Secrets of Size and Strength, I mentioned using an “upside-down” approach, where you do the opposite of the average gym-goer.  In this case, I’m suggesting, however, that you go against the grain of our culture itself.

     When slowing down, focus on your body.  Be present in your body while you train.  Pay attention to your body and your breathing while you start your day’s session.  Take your time loading the plates to the barbell you are using for your movements and be present when you are setting up your area for your lift.

     You can’t just do this when you arrive at the gym.  You must intentionally live this way throughout your day, from the moment you awake until the time when you place your head on your pillow at the end of the day.

     Slowing down allows you to relax.  And here’s a secret you need to know.  Big guys know how to relax and take it easy.  They practice this art of slowing down and relaxing, saving their energy for the gym and for the big lifts.

     Slowing down helps you to rest and recover in more ways than you realize.  Sure, it’s important to get enough rest between workout sessions and to ensure that your muscles are recovering properly, and, yes, it’s important to get plenty of growth-inducing sleep, but slowing down, being present, and taking it easy throughout the day is one of the lost arts of growing really big and strong.

     To reiterate: movements over muscles, one-pointed focus, and slowing down are the keys to the journey.  The lifting journey is a lifetime one.  When starting out, this might seem almost daunting.  Maybe you are taking up lifting because you want to “get in shape” or “build your bench press” and you figure, once those goals are accomplished, you’ll be done and there will be no reason to train anymore.  If this is your thinking at the moment, that’s fine.  Perhaps you will stop once you achieve those goals.  But perhaps not.  You just might discover that lifting has way more to offer than just a better body or more strength.  But I could be wrong.  For now, slow down, be present, and focus on the lifts while training.

     If you train long enough, there will also come a time when you no longer need the map and you no longer need to follow the path.  At this point, you will train just to train.  But don’t try to reach that point.  It will come of its own accord.  In the meantime, enjoy the journey.  It’s one of life’s true joys.

     If you enjoyed this essay, then you would probably like my book “Ultimate Mass and Power Essays.”  You can find more information about it, and all of my books, at the My Books page of the blog.

     As always, if there are any questions or comments about anything discussed here, leave them in the “comments” section below.  You can also send me an email if you prefer private correspondence.

*from The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware