The Two Types of Lifters

Some Ideas for Training and Program Design Based on the Type of Lifter That You Are

     The famous fantasy and science fiction author George R.R. Martin once said that he believed there are, basically, two kinds of writers in the world.  There are the architects.  And there are the gardeners.  Architects plan every point of their novel, memoir, essay, or article down to the finest details.  Like an architect building a house, they have a blueprint and know the layout of every room along with the wiring, piping, and whatnot of the building.  Gardeners plant a seed and then watch to see what grows.  They know to plant certain seeds—you don’t plant sunflower seeds if you’re attempting to grow tomatoes—but exactly what the shape of the plant will be, what the branches and flowers look like, is up to nature.  Of course, as Martin explained, rarely is anyone a pure type—an architect might have to change plans because the building is coming out a bit different than they had originally intended and a gardener has to take care to understand the fundamentals and can’t just “wing it”—but most lean toward one style or the other.

     As a writer, I’m certainly of the “gardener” type.  I write often to just see what will happen.  I know the basic plan, the seed, but what exactly comes out as the finished product, I’m never quite sure.  You might be wondering what in the world this has to do with working out and training, but the thing is I believe you can apply these two types to more than just writing.  I realized at some point in life that I’m more gardener than architect when it comes to the physical activities that I love, both lifting and Budo training.  Basically, I’m that type, as well, in how I live my life.

     Although most lifters, like writers, are not pure types, either, I think it’s safe to say that most are either architects or gardeners.  Some lifters plan exactly what they’re going to do in their training.  Not just in a workout, but in an entire training week and throughout the course of a lifting cycle or even an entire year of training.  Like an architect, they may have to make changes depending upon how they’re responding to a certain method or if injuries rear their ugly head but, by and large, they follow a very detailed plan.  Other lifters, once they’ve mastered the basics and have built a good degree of muscle and/or strength (depending upon their goals)—once they know their bodies—train almost entirely “instinctively.”  They have a general plan, they know what it is they want out of their workouts and the goals they are hoping to achieve, but they don’t know exactly what they’re going to do in a single workout, much less several weeks down the road.

     There are benefits and drawbacks to both types.  The architect can sometimes stick with a training plan even when they would do better by making some changes but also makes fairly consistent gains because he’s actually on a training plan instead of just “working out.”  (To paraphrase the legendary “Iron Guru” Vince Gironda.)  The gardener needs to ensure that he doesn’t end up having “workout ADD” where he’s constantly jumping from one workout to another without seeing a training plan through to its end.

     Sometimes the instinctive lifter should follow a very detailed plan.  And sometimes the architect needs to spend an entire training cycle—even if it’s just 6 to 8 weeks—training “intuitively,” especially if he’s stuck in a rut.

     I was always a fairly intuitive lifter.  I followed a training plan in my early powerlifting days, but one that had a good degree of instinctive training “built” into it.  However, when I discovered Russian “Sheiko” training, I decided to try using a program that had every single detail pre-planned—the exact weights, sets, reps, everything.  Since I had never trained that regimented, I learned a good deal from it.  I decided to stick with an entire 12-week training plan, no matter what.  If I had been training in my more typically intuitive manner, I would have quit after the first week or so.  It was so hard—I felt drained and depleted after each workout and just couldn’t fathom how lifters even made it through the training cycles, much less actually gained a lot of strength from it.  However, despite my reservations, I stuck with it, my body adjusted, and I got stronger than I had ever been in my entire life.  Eventually, I settled on a kind of “in between” method, using the high-volume, high-frequency template of the Russians, but one that allowed for me to reduce or add workload based on how I felt on a particular training day or week.

     If you are one type or the other, then it would probably do your body some good to train one of the other ways on occasion.  In fact, I think it’s a good idea to spend part of the training year lifting with one of the ways and the other part training in the polar opposite manner.  First, if you’ve never followed a detailed program, then do so.  If you usually follow a so-called “bro split” where you train chest one day, legs on another, arms on another, and so forth, and each day you just go to the gym and do whatever in order to get a good pump, then try something like a Bill Starr-style full-body workout.  After 8 weeks of that, you can return to your “regular” training, but you will probably have learned a thing or two about your body.  Instead of doing 3 to 4 sets of 10-12 reps on all of your exercises, you will now do some 5x5 training in addition to some higher reps.  You will have realized that what you thought was only good for strength and power is also quite good at building some muscle mass.

     When it comes to building muscle and strength, I think that most lifters are, at the very least, misguided about what exactly produces results.  They think it’s only about training hard and/or heavy, then resting the muscle so that it recovers (and grows larger, stronger, or both in the process) before training it again.  I think that is only part of the process.  Other factors include the ability to not just get stronger and bigger but to be able to increase one’s workload and work capacity—your ability to handle more work within a workout itself and within a week of training, and then an entire training cycle itself.  Since it is about all of those factors, it’s important to understand what type you are and to then train accordingly.

     You basically have a couple of options no matter what exact training plan that you follow, whether it’s a full-body 3-days-per-week routine, a full-body “easy strength” regimen, a 2-way split of some sort (but still training frequently), or a multi-split routine that involves a lot of volume and intensity but more infrequent training.  The two options are that you can either systematically cycle your workloads (the architect’s plan) or you can follow more of an “everything moderate” approach (the gardener’s plan).

     For example, using a full-body, 3 days a week plan, you can either train on a heavy-light-medium program or you can just train “moderate” at each session.  The architect is going to prefer the former, that way he knows exactly what to do at each session.  The gardener is going to prefer to just train “enough” at each session so that he can repeat that same workout at every training session.  Either are fine.  Both work.  Just pick one and stick with it.

     No matter what program that you follow in your training—full-body workouts, HFT, easy strength, split programs, “HIT” training—it also helps if you follow a plan of cycling your workload over the course of a training cycle.  This works well whether you train intuitively or systematically.  I have found that the plan Marvin Eder used when he was dominating both bodybuilding and weightlifting competitions is a good method for all programs.  It works like this:

Week 1: hard training

Week 2: harder training

Week 3: light to moderate training

Week 4: even harder training

Week 5: light to moderate training

Week 6: hardest training week yet

Week 7: light to moderate training

Week 8: repeat the training cycle

     In the 9th week, when you start the cycle over again, you should be using heavier weights or a slightly higher workload than your first week of training.  For each week, again, you can be very systematic if you’re an architect or use the “everything moderate” approach if you’re a gardener.

     Keep in mind that none of this is set in stone and that these aren’t “hard and fast” rules.  Most lifters are going to be somewhere in between outright architect or gardener.  But knowing what type you are will make your training all the more productive.

     As always, if you have comments or questions, leave them in the “comments” section below or send me an email if you prefer private correspondence.

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