How’s Your Training Going?

Fallacy, Fitness, Folly

Really, how is it? Are you jumping around from program to program? Are you trying to find the way to activate the most stabilizer muscles instead of focusing on getting stronger for reps? Are you worried if what you’re doing is “primitive” or what our “ancestors” would do in a “natural” environment, never mind that we don’t live in that environment and it’s mostly contrived? Are you better this week compared to last week?

If you can’t answer in an enthusiastically positive manner, let me make a suggestion: simplify your routine to big, joint-neutral exercises and focus on adding a small amount of weight week after week. Don’t look for novelty, don’t view this as an intervention. This isn’t a 3 month event; you need to train until you die precisely so you can live until you keel over. Slow down, make steady progress, don’t hurt yourself, and find other things to do with your time rather than trying to find the perfect routine or the perfect diet. Good enough, done consistently, blows away 2 months of perfect.

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10 thoughts on “How’s Your Training Going?”

  1. KB Front Squats, Bulgarian Split Squats, KB Presses, Weighted Pullups, and TGUs are the goals and the training currently. Going heavy 1-2x a week, mostly based on feel and HRV/Tap Test measurements. Light days involve bottom up KB work unilaterally. Supplementing with swings, biking, and MovNat stuff for enjoyment and application of strength goals to athletic demands. I wanna be athletic, not just jacked and tan.

    1. Awesome. But you see my point: you took the time to get strong enough to let your athletics be improved by your training. Most don’t even get that.

      1. Yep. I had the unique experience in the last year of coaching over 1,000 people. The #1 hold-up for being able to do “stuff” was a basic lack of strength. After that it was a basic lacking of mobility. And across the board people just lacked coordination, timing, and other things I would describe as athletic. We had a lot of “strong” people, who were pretty mobile, but who just moved like shit. Now, for health and longevity and body comp, the strong and mobile component is more important, no doubt….but if we are talking actually performance in something, I don’t think we can be only in strength. Of course that’s another topic.

  2. My training is in the fucking toilet. Absolutely nothing for at least six months.

    I do mostly bodyweight stuff and a had program of doing slow or static holds with Tabata timings and it was working pretty well. Then I decided to switch to focusing on reps, how many pushups or hindu squats I could do in 1/2 hour, and got burned out. I just started back up again doing and I’m sore as hell doing the wimpiest of workouts.

    My takeaway, I think changeups are good and I’m not convinced there’s a ‘right’ way to exercise even if some methods are better than others, but don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you find yourself dreading working out because you want to top 200 pushups and actually kind of hate pushups then it’s time to back off and go back to what’s been working.

    1. In the word of a few scholars I know: that fucking sucks.

      but don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you find yourself dreading working out because you want to top 200 pushups and actually kind of hate pushups then it’s time to back off and go back to what’s been working.

      That’s the problem with doing well in a workout: the tendency to “graduate” to something less rewarding/progressive is always a risk. We learn and hopefully get a little better at shutting the damn noise up in our head that goads us along.

      At least that’s what I’m told.

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