Blog
The Beginner’s Strength Block
In this post, I lay out the basic skeleton for the program I recommend to most beginners. But first, who is a beginner? In the world of strength training, a beginner is anyone that has not completed a 3-6 month training cycle in which they systematically increased the weight for the compound barbell lifts, even if this person has been hitting the weight room for years.
Personal Trainers vs. Strength Coaches
You’ve heard and read enough about strength training and are ready to begin your Strength Block. You want to learn the lifts, but are unsure where to go. You might be thinking of simply booking a session with a personal trainer at your local gym, but I would caution you from doing so just yet. It’s important to understand that Personal Trainers are not (usually) strength coaches, despite how impressive their physiques may be.
Strength Standards: Raising the Bar
While a 1,000 lb. deadlift is certainly beyond the genetical potential of most of us, a 400-500 lb. deadlift is quite achievable by most young males (<50) that devote 2-3 years to intelligent and purposeful training. Similarly, most young women can aspire to a 200-300 lb. deadlift. Moreover, progress in any type of physical training is never linear, but logarithmic. This means that most of the progress you make in those 2-3 years is achieved within the first four to six months, a period of time I like to refer to as The Strength Block.
Nutritional Priorities
There is a lot of talk about what constitutes a “healthy” diet, but rarely do we ever define what exactly we mean by “healthy”. And when we do define “healthy”, we often get lost focusing on things that have marginal benefit and ignoring those things that have substantial benefit. In this post, I hope to demystify nutrition and offer the framework I use when thinking about food.
The Levers of Fat Loss
We often speak of losing weight, but what most of us really want is to lose fat while retaining or even gaining muscle. In my previous post, I explained how three things must be present to make this happen: adequate protein (1g per pound of bodyweight), sufficient training volume, and a caloric deficit. In this post, I will dive a little deeper into what it means to be in a caloric deficit and how best to achieve this.
Trainee Profiles: Ahmad
Meet Ahmad (whose name isn’t actually Ahmad), a young professional in his early thirties. He recently completed his first training block, following the abridged program I detailed in a previous post title “The Beginner’s Strength Block”. On the final day of training, he hit the following numbers at a bodyweight of 185 lb:
Understanding Overload & Fatigue Management
I frequently encounter people who tell me about their failed attempts at completing a novice strength program like Starting Strength or StrongLifts. They were expecting to make progress for 4-6 months but instead hit a plateau within 4-8 weeks of training. In this post, I will explain why that is and offer some advice on how you can adjust your programming to make more sustained progress on a novice strength program.
Exercise Selection
A good strength training program will incorporate four basic movement patterns: a hinge, a squat, an upper body pull and an upper body push. Of these, priority is given to those exercises that utilize a full range of motion, admit of incremental loading, lack artificial limiters, and have the greatest carry over to daily life.
What is Programming?
Strength is an adaptation. It is the body’s response to certain stressors that we place on it. When the stress is sufficient, the body responds and adapts. When the stress is insufficient or excessive, the desired adaptation does not occur. Programming is all about identifying the appropriate dose of stress to apply to trigger the desired adaptation.
Training vs. Performance
…the stress of a one-rep max is too great to recover from. It does not constitute a good training stimulus, but a performance. In other words, it tells us how strong we are, but it does not make us stronger. The appropriate dose for strength training must be something that the body can quickly recover from and adapt to.
To Bulk or Not to Bulk
My trainees fall into one of three groups: Some are lean, others are overweight, and most fall somewhere in the middle. In this post, I would like to share how I go about making nutrition recommendations for each group.
A Guide to More Protein
The question I’m constantly asked is: how do I eat more protein without eating more calories?
In this post, I’ve put together an example of how I manage to get 150g of protein and stay under 2,000 calories:
Learn to Squat
I can’t stress the importance of learning to squat from a competent coach—if you’re unsure where to find one, start here! But if you do not have access to a coach or are still struggling with certain parts of the movement despite having met with a coach, then the following videos may help:
Learn to Overhead Press
I can’t stress the importance of learning to overhead press from a competent coach. But if you do not have access to a coach or are still struggling with certain parts of the movement despite having met with a coach, then the following videos may help:
Learn to Deadlift
I can’t stress the importance of learning to deadlift from a competent coach. But if you do not have access to a coach or are still struggling with certain parts of the movement despite having met with a coach, then the following videos may help:
Learn to Bench Press
I can’t stress the importance of learning to bench press from a competent coach—if you’re unsure where to find one, start here! But if you do not have access to a coach or are still struggling with certain parts of the movement despite having met with a coach, then the following videos may help:
Common Pitfalls
There is a lot more to training than people realize, and my goal in writing this is to help you steer clear of some of the pitfalls that many trainees encounter during their first few years in the gym.