programming advice for my perhaps stubborn friend
I have a friend who got interested in strength training and conditioning about 16 months ago. He’s an interesting fellow. He is the quintessential all-or-nothing type of person, so when he gets interested in something, he goes all in with the gusto dialed up to 11. Over those 16 months, he has dropped his body weight from about 450 down to about 290, and intends to get down to 240-250 by next year. The changes he made to achieve this has been drastic: no more World of Warcraft marathons, no more soda, no more sweets, plus lifting weights 2 hours every morning 4 days a week, jogging or cardio for 30 minutes at least 6 times a week, plus more unscheduled exercises over the weekend.
So if my friend is doing so well, why am I typing this? Jealousy? Nope. Confusion! My friend’s success has led me to question: has he been exercising in a reckless, inefficient manner and made so much progress simply due to noob gains? Or is there truth behind the internet meme he often cites, “You don’t need a plan, bro. All you need is balls”. After all, in his article titled 5 Fitness Myths That Need to Die, Jordan Feignbaum wrote, “MORE TRAINING=MORE RESULTS”. Yet paradoxically, in another article titled General Strength Training Template for the Intermediate/Advanced, Feigenbaum recommends skipping sets 4 and/or 5 if set 3 or 4 is feeling very heavy, which directly opposes the idea that MORE TRAINING=MORE RESULTS.
I am a moderate person, and as a scientist-in-training, I try to make my decisions pragmatically, rather than emotionally. After a few years of training with Nautilus machines at my local YMCA, I had the good fortune of being introduced to barbell exercises and the Starting Strength program by another friend. Barbell training made me stronger than Nautilus ever did. Hence, I regarded the programs and rationale in the book Practical Programming for Strength Training 3rd edition as optimal. After all, Mark Rippetoe and Andy Baker have many decades of professional experience training themselves and hundreds (or thousands) of clients. These programs are simple and complete, and because there isn’t much variation, it’s easy to determine the rate (or lack) of progress.
My friend was introduced to exercise by a life-long-super-athlete who deadlifts 500 at BW 170 and mountain bikes like a maniac. They lift weights most mornings for 2 hours. My concern is that my friend was basically told to “exercise as I exercise”, rather than start with the novice linear progression. Although this “program” indeed involves the major barbell exercises, it also involves practically every exercise one can do in the gym, and the “program” shifts exercise selections and rep/set schemes every few weeks, irrespective of whether the prior workout plan has been milked till the point of stagnation. This sort of program might indeed be spot-on for a life-long-super-athlete who has become intimately familiar with their own body and how it responds to different programs. But is this sort of program optimal for a novice? Regardless, I am grateful that this third-person super-athlete inspired my friend to start working out and eating vegetables, which is probably a life-saving change for him. Evidently, my friend responded favorably to abusive workout motivation of being subjected to a variety of not-so-family-friendly insults ad-infinitum. This is probably not an effective motivational tool for most folks just coming into the gym for the first time, but it worked on him.
This post is also sort of urgent because my friend who lost all that fat is now starting to instruct another mutual friend of ours, who is inexperienced in the way of strength training. So far they have survived 3 workouts together, but our mutual friend did vomit after his first squat day (which was their second workout together). I’m not so sure that is a good thing…
Just 3 more questions to finish this post up, of which my friend insists the answers are yes, yes, and yes.
1. Is it beneficial to do 5 heavy sets of deadlifts on deadlift day, instead of just one?
2. Is not waking up sore every morning an indication that you didn’t work out hard and long enough yesterday?
3. If a food is made predominantly out of protein, is it inherently good for you?