The focused approach to health, fitness, and strength.
Lately if you follow any “science backed” fitness coach or influencer they’re all saying that time under tension for muscle hypertrophy is outdated and you’re an idiot if you still believe in it.
But is it really fake? No. But, yeah it kind of is. It’s a bit complicated but since no one actually explains anything past their condescending POVs, I’ll do it here.
If you prefer to watch and listen to a video, here is everything in this article in this YouTube video:
Getting better at anything usually requires you to do more of the thing. I wanted to test out this theory and see how many pounds I can add to my squat if I squatted every training session for 100 days.
To be clear, I’m not squatting everyday for 100 days. I’m squatting every time I train, which is typically 3 or 4 days per week depending on the program.
Getting strong typically requires 3 things:
I don’t know when it became the norm to do dozens of exercises each time you go to the gym. Back day has you doing 6 different variations of rows, leg day has you doing 8 kinds of lunges… What on earth is the point? Let’s take a moment to learn from minimalism. You don’t need to do that many different exercises.
You should only need 1-2 exercises per muscle group/plane of movement per workout.
“But that’s not enough! How am I going to get enough volume??”
It’s simple. You do more volume.
Continue reading “Minimalism in Fitness: Do Less to Do More”My wife and I often let friends and budding gym goers lift with us. I don’t mind. I enjoy having a good community of lifters and I love teaching others about lifting. One friend got into lifting about a year ago and loves it. He is still a relative novice but you can’t beat his enthusiasm.
He tends to come over on leg days. He’s obsessed with the squat.
“I hit 295 on the squat a two days ago. I’m going to try and hit that again today,” he said.
Continue reading “I Forbid You To Max Out During Every Workout”Here are the top 10 research articles, blog posts, or books on strength and fitness that I’ve found value in recently. (All links open in a new tab).
If you have any blogs or articles you enjoy reading, please let me know in the comments! Let’s gather some good information!
Progressive overload is the foundational basis of strength training. It means that you need to gradually increase the intensity of your training over time. Essentially, make sure that you’re doing more now than you did in the past.
The most common strategy to achieve progressive overload is to increase the weight that you are lifting by a few pounds. The problem is that most advice ends there. If it was that simple, the world will be filled with 1000 pound squatters and 500 pound bench pressers.
Simply adding weight to the bar is a finite strategy. Since we tend to grow muscle and increase strength at a relatively slow rate, just adding weight to the bar will cause us to progress too quickly and hit a plateau.
We must expand our strategies to achieve progressive overload. Here are 3 ways to progressively overload your training that does not involve adding weight.
Training volume is essentially the total amount of work you are doing. While there are multiple ways to determine training volume, it is often calculated by looking at the total number of sets and reps you are performing.
For example, if you are doing 5 sets of 5 reps of a particular exercise (5×5), your total volume will be 25 reps.
If you wanted to calculate the total work of a particular exercise, you will determine how many times you are lifting a particular weight. This is often unnecessary but provides insight about the intensities that are being achieved with certain exercises.
For example, if you lift 200 pounds on the squat for 5×5, you will calculate 5x5x200. This is 5000 pounds of total work.
Increasing your total training volume or work performed is one of the best ways to achieve progressive overload. Simply adding a rep to each set will drastically increase training volume.
In our first example, if you did one extra rep per set, your training volume will be 5×6=30 total reps.
In the second example, your total work will be 200x5x6=6000 pounds of total work.
To implement this strategy, aim to increase your reps per set by one rep for a few weeks. Depending on the set/rep scheme, you may need to climb up to 8 or 10 reps per set. Once you can do the prescribed number of reps for all sets, then you will add some weight to the bar and begin the progression all over again.
Remember that adding weight isn’t the only way to become stronger. Doing more total work is more important. The added benefit is this will force you to slow down your progress to prevent hitting plateaus.
Training density is how much time it takes to perform a certain amount of work.
Imagine your typical leg workout session. How long does it take to perform? 45 minutes? 60 minutes? Now imagine if you deliberately took 3 hours to perform the same exact workout. No extra sets or exercises. How easy would that be? This is very LOW training density. Same workout, just performed over a very long period of time.
Now take the same exact workout and imagine trying to do it 10 minutes faster than before. You will be hustling and probably straining hard to get through all of the work. This is an example of HIGH training density.
If you are able to perform the same amount of work in less time, something about your fitness has to have improved.
Of course, this is another finite strategy to implement before it becomes impractical and possibly dangerous, but the point is to perform your training at a challenging pace.
One of the critical principles of strength training is something called time under tension. It is essentially the total amount of time that a muscle is activated and creating tension. Muscle growth and strength is a direct consequence of time under tension. In general, longer bouts of time under tension tend to yield greater gains in muscle and strength (although this is a great generalization).
One overlooked part of time under tension is the amount of tension being produced. Lifting a heavier weight will naturally cause a muscle to create more tension. However, we can deliberately create more tension during an exercise by consciously tightening the working and stabilizing muscles.
Imagine performing a biceps curl with 20 pound dumbbells. Imagine casually curling them up and trying to expend as little energy on the movement as possible.
Now imagine curling the same 20 pound dumbbell but now brace your abs, squeeze your glutes, and stand tall. Pull your shoulders back. Grip the weights as hard as you can. Slow down the movement and try and actively flex the muscles harder as you lift the weights. In essence, try and make 20 pounds feel as difficult as possible.
This is a technique often employed by bodybuilders to maximize the amount of tension they are creating during any given exercise. Usually when we do this, we need to use impeccable technique to properly control the weights.
When we are intensionally increasing the amount of tension and improving technique, we naturally work harder during the exercise. This is another variation of progressive overload.
Never rely on just a single parameter to force progressive overload. The three strategies discussed here are simple to implement during every workout.
The pursuit of strength is a long journey. Slow but consistent progress is always favorable to rapid and unsustainable progress. Just focus on doing a little more each time you go into the gym.
I love minimalism. Less is more. Have less stuff. Embrace simplicity. So how do minimalists approach fitness?
Some people don’t want to think too hard about things. They want to get as much out of as little as possible, and I admire that. Work smarter, not harder. In fitness, there are some things that will yield greater results than others.
Let’s apply some lessons from minimalism to fitness. Here are 3 strategies to approach fitness as a minimalist.
Your body has a limited amount of resources to perform and recover from a workout. This is the basis of training economy. It bodes well to spend your time and energy intelligently.
The first thing you need to do is to establish some goals of your training. What are you trying to achieve with your program? Once you establish your goal, make sure that everything you do while you’re in the gym serves that goal and get rid of everything that doesn’t.
For example, if you are trying to increase your max squat, everything you do during a squat, lower body, or leg workout should somehow support your goal. Ask yourself if each of the exercises you do serves the goal of increasing your squat.
Will jumping and doing power exercises improve your squat? Yes. This stays.
Will squatting improve your squat? Yes, of course. This stays.
Will having a stronger posterior chain (low back, glutes, hamstrings) improve your squat? Yes. RDLs, back raises, good mornings, hip thrusts, glute ham raises, etc all stay.
Will having stronger quads improve the squat? Yes. Bulgarian split squats, lunges, step ups, etc all stay.
Will doing 20 sets of calf raises improve your squat? Probably not. Get rid of it. Plus, isolation work for the calf only improves aesthetics and not performance (unless it’s for rehab purposes).
Will doing those awkward glute kick backs in a leotard with 2 pound ankle weights while climbing up a stair master improve your squat? Nope. Get rid of it. But make sure you do it for the ‘Gram.
When you start auditing your training methods in this way, it’s easy to cut out a ton of useless fluff. Only the important things will remain.
Louie Simmons always said it best. You don’t train minimally. You don’t train maximally. You train optimally.
May he lift in peace.
You should not be using absolute maximal intensities every training session. This will lead to burnout, overtraining, injuries, and just isn’t strategic and optimal.
The minimum effective dose is the least amount of exercise that is required to elicit a training effect. Any amount of stimulus under this will not elicit an adaptation or training effect. Any amount of stimulus past this may or may not elicit a greater training effect. There will be a point of diminishing returns for increasing your given intensity past the minimum effective dose.
All of this to say: don’t progress too quickly. If you’re squatting 225 for sets today, do 230 or 235 next time. Don’t make unnecessarily large jumps. Get as much out of 225, 230, and 235 as you can. You’ll be regretting that you didn’t when you inevitably hit a wall in a few weeks.
Many coaches will advocate for a slow but steady progression over the long term. This will not only help to minimize plateaus but ensure that you are getting the most out of any given combination of weight, sets, and reps.
I’ve said this many times and I’ll say it again: Supplements don’t do jack s*** if you don’t have your basic nutrition dialed in.
Trying to make up for a bad diet with supplements is like using duct tape to save a sinking ship (Unless it’s that flex tape stuff. That stuff is magic).
Supplements should be accounting for less than 5% of your total progress coming from your diet. The other 95% comes from an educated approach to nutrition. Real food will always be superior to supplements, so put forth your effort into the items that are going to yield the majority of results and stop worrying about the rest. The supplement industry is honestly way too big for what it actually offers.
Let me repeat a sentence to make sure I made my point. Real food will ALWAYS be superior to supplements!
If you are adamant about having some supplements to either supplement your nutrition or to have a pre-training ritual, look into creatine, vitamin D, EPA/DHA, and good quality protein. The only supplement companies I really buy from these days are Thorne and Boba Tea Protein. Both companies are incredible.
Minimalism is all about cutting out the unnecessary fluff from your life. When you apply the three of these strategies, you are eliminating unnecessary exercises, volume, and supplements from your fitness journey. When you have less to distract you, you will be able to put forth your energy and effort into the things that truly yield the greatest results.
So here’s my permission for you to do less to get more.
The best way to treat a hamstring injury is to prevent it from happening. Once they happen, they become a real b**ch to rehabilitate. The best way to prevent injury is to make the muscle as strong as possible but adequately loading the hamstrings can be cumbersome and challenging if you don’t have regular access to a gym. This is where Nordic Hamstring Curls save the day. By their nature, they’re tremendously difficult and require no equipment.
Study after study has shown the value of Nordic hamstring curls in decreasing injury to the hamstrings.
This is exercise is so good that it’s consistently been shown to decrease the incidence of hamstring and knee injuries in populations particularly vulnerable to these by half. That is a hugely significant amount!
The exercise is predominantly an eccentric muscle contraction, which is where most muscle damage and overload takes place.
You will need a partner or a solid place to wedge your foot.
Set up the exercise by kneeling on both knees. Your hips and torso will be upright. Your partner is going to hold down your feet with their hands on the back of your ankles/heels. Your partner should have their shoulders over your feet to make sure enough weight is applied.
Initiate the exercise by slowly lowering yourself to the floor by using your hamstrings. Try to approach the floor as slowly as possible. You will use your hands like a push up to absorb the impact at the floor. You can return to the starting position by either resetting the exercise or doing an explosive push up to hamstring curl your way back up.
Perform 3-5 sets of 5-10 repetitions.
Taking clues from weightlifting and sports medicine, they best way to make a muscle resilient and resistant to injury is to make it as strong as you can and train it with the greatest amount of tension as possible. Then you replicate game time scenarios with various drills.
The studies that showed the value of Nordic hamstring curls used the exercise in isolation with no other exercise program, but of course including the Nordic hamstring curl in a fully comprehensive program is the most optimal approach. However, if you for some reason had to choose just one exercise to do, this is it.
Vianna KB, Rodrigues LG, Oliveira NT, Ribeiro-Alvares JB, Baroni BM. A Preseason Training Program With the Nordic Hamstring Exercise Increases Eccentric Knee Flexor Strength and Fascicle Length in Professional Female Soccer Players. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2021;16(2):459-467. Published 2021 Apr 1. doi:10.26603/001c.19452
van Dyk N, Behan FP, Whiteley R. Including the Nordic hamstring exercise in injury prevention programmes halves the rate of hamstring injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 8459 athletes. Br J Sports Med. 2019;53(21):1362-1370. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2018-100045
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30808663/
Cuthbert M, Ripley N, McMahon JJ, Evans M, Haff GG, Comfort P. The Effect of Nordic Hamstring Exercise Intervention Volume on Eccentric Strength and Muscle Architecture Adaptations: A Systematic Review and Meta-analyses [published correction appears in Sports Med. 2019 Nov 7;:]. Sports Med. 2020;50(1):83-99. doi:10.1007/s40279-019-01178-7
It’s easy to fall victim to comparison. In a world governed by metrics, everyone will compare themselves to someone else at the gym. It’s easy to let the negativity derail your motivation. No matter how strong, fit, and competent you become, there will always be someone with a bigger bench, bigger squat, and better body composition. There will always be someone bigger, fitter, faster, and stronger.
So why bother?
First of all, if you fall into this nihilistic belief, you started this whole journey for the wrong reason. Unless you’re a competitive athlete, the whole point is to improve yourself and your health, not to outdo others in comparison.
Comparison is truly the killer of happiness, and it’s especially apparent in the world of health and fitness. Someone will always have larger pecs or a better looking ass than you but who cares? Don’t let that get to you. The whole purpose of the fitness and strength journey is self-betterment.
The only person to whom you should be comparing yourself is who you were yesterday.
That’s it. Don’t mind the people who’ve been training for years longer than you or the dude who seems to get strong and jacked no matter what kind of jackassery he does. What matters is if you are progressing forward and learning along the way.
When the sole purpose of training is to be better than others, the pursuit becomes a pathetic and egotistical race on a rat wheel. It’s sad how small their world is. No one gives a shit about these dudes except for themselves, so don’t become one of them.
Let me ask you this.
If you do one thing each day to improve yourself, where will you be next week? Next month? In a year? In 5 years? Each milestone you cross is a victory to be celebrated in the context of your personal life. If you finally squat 100 pounds for the first time, that is a great personal achievement!
The victories of others don’t diminish your own. I am always more impressed by individuals who consistently outdo their previous bests, no matter how small, than the strong and arrogant showboats who become complacent in their training.
Don’t compare yourself to others. Are you growing? Growth is the most important victory in the gym and in life.
The chaos of your life is already enough without having to deal with the arbitrary standards set by other people’s accomplishments. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Workout splits are essentially how you divide and organize a strength training program. What are you going to do each time you go to the gym? How often are you training each muscle group? What’s the best workout split?
There is a lot to consider.
There are an endless number of workout splits from bodybuilding-style splits that emphasize a specific muscle group per day to those that emphasize movements such as push, pull, squat, and hinge. Trainers and coaches will swear by one while slandering others.
Each split has its merits and advantages but there is anything you take from this post, it’s to just stick with one for long enough to make progress instead of hopping from one program to the next every week.
But let’s get to the one favored by athletes.
Continue reading “The Best Workout Split Used By Most Athletes”
