10 Rules of the Insanely Strong *** GREAT READ*** Heres what you need to know... You must be a little insane to get the top of the strength game. You must be able to overcome fear, self-doubt, physical pain, and push yourself to places youve never gone before. View injuries as bumps on your road to success and never as dead-ends. Do what others are not willing to do. Including crazy things. Your diet must be planned and consistent every day. Eat like its your job. There are no reasons for not getting stronger, only excuses. Injuries, your career, lack of money, poor genetics, and no time are all excuses. Successfully achieving your strength goals may be one of most rewarding things in your life. 1. You must be willing to train through pain and discomfort. Make no mistake, getting insanely strong will require you to become physically and mentally strong. Getting under big weights can be daunting and grueling. If your mental game is prone to folding like a cheap lawn chair, itll be much harder to reach your strength goals. You must be able to overcome fear, self-doubt, physical pain, and push yourself to places youve never gone before. Its your mental game that will determine your ability to negotiate these obstacles successfully. One week prior to the 2007 WPO Championships at the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic, I tore my left distal triceps tendon while taking some heavy singles in the bench press. Angry, black and blue bruises soon appeared on my upper arm confirming the damage Id done. However, it wasnt a complete tear and in my mind I knew there was no way I was pulling out this close to the biggest meet of the year. The way I looked at it, I was benching at the meet as planned and the tendon would either hold or it wouldnt, and regardless, I was probably eventually looking at surgical repair anyway. As it worked out there was some additional tearing and subsequent bruising but the tendon held together well enough to allow me to complete all three bench attempts and I ended up hitting a PR bench and PR total. 2. You must constantly strive for progress in your training. Every day you set foot in the gym, your goal should be in some way, shape, or form to surpass your previous best. It may not happen every day, but that shouldnt deter you from constantly striving to achieve it. Even if its as simple as getting one more rep on your last set of an exercise, that still represents progress and thats what matters most. Its the small successes day-to-day that lead to big results over time. 3. You must eat like its your job. You must consume the right food and enough of it to reach your goals. The further you progress, the more important this becomes. Eating is an often-overlooked key component to achieving all of your strength dreams. The easiest and most proven method to add pounds to your lifts and especially your bench and squat is to add quality body weight. You want a bigger bench? Start putting as much effort into your diet as you do the gym. A lot of people complain that they just cant gain weight. Fortunately, simple physics teaches us that if you consistently consume more calories than you burn, your body weight will increase regardless of how fast your metabolism is or how much you already weigh. And let me emphasize the consistently part. This means day in and day out. Most people who argue that they already do eat a lot dont really understand what that means. Pigging out a few times a week or even once a day doesnt equate to a proper hypertrophy-inducing diet. Your diet must be planned and consistent every day – from your first meal to your last – in order to progress quickly and efficiently. When I was in the Marines I was constantly infuriated by my inability to add significant amounts of body weight. This was due to all of the physical activity that was required and being forced to eat a limited diet (the only food available when on duty was in our chow hall). Id add quality body weight over the winter months, just to watch it be stripped away when the weather warmed up and our outdoor activity increased. I remember one winter where Id finally broken the 200-pound barrier and succeeded in pushing my bodyweight all the way up to 211 pounds (which I thought was huge at the time), only to watch it slip back down to the mid 190s by the end of the summer. I was finally fed up and promised myself that the next time I went home on leave, Id come back in three months weighing at least 225 pounds. I had a limited ability to choose how much I could eat and even less concerning what I could eat. My finances were very limited and the only place I had to store food was a small mini-fridge in my barracks room. I considered my options and resorted to drinking vast quantities of skim milk in order to gain weight. I drank three gallons of skim milk every day. At the time I was working in our security operations center and was locked in a small room watching all of the security cameras and alarms. I was alone and not allowed to leave the room on either of my two four-hour shifts each day. Id drink one gallon on each of my shifts and then another one during the rest of the day to total three gallons per day. To complicate matters more, there wasnt a bathroom in the security center so I would have to chug the gallon of milk and suffer until I finished it so I could urinate back into it the empty jug. I only share this to demonstrate the point that I wouldnt let anything stop me and one way or another Ive always been able to figure out a way to do what was necessary to achieve my goals regardless of the obstacles involved. So, how well did my plan work? I weighed in at 225 pounds on the nose one day before I flew home. I gained 30 pounds in a three-month period. 4. You must be willing to train around and/or through injuries. The stronger you get and the heavier the weights you handle, the more likely you are to become injured. The guys at the top accept this as part of the process of becoming one of the strongest. It isnt whether or not you get injured but, rather, how you deal with it when you do that ultimately determines how far you will go. If you want to reach the top of the strength game or even if you just want to break your own personal records, its important to remember that the risk of injury increases proportionately to the amount of weight youre lifting. This is because your muscles have more potential for growth and adaptation than your tendons, ligaments, and joints do. Handling heavier weights also requires improved technique. You may be able to get away with terrible form while squatting or deadlifting light weights, but when youre handling much greater weights the risk of injury substantially increases. Often what determines which people reach the top and which fall by the wayside is the ability to successfully come back from injury. You must be able to view injuries simply as bumps on your road to success and never as dead-ends. I can guarantee you that no matter what injury you can think of, I personally know someone whos overcome it. Theres a powerlifter that ruptured both patella tendons and was told by doctors that his squatting days were over and hed be lucky if he just learned to walk normally again. This man came back to squat over 1,100 pounds. I know another guy that has a steel rod in his spine and was also told by doctors hed never squat again. He came back to squat more than he ever had, breaking the 900-pound barrier. Successfully negotiating injury is more mental than physical. You can never doubt your own ability to come back stronger. Its never if you can come back from injury but rather simply how long it will take you. The fact that youll recover must be a foregone conclusion. In 2008 I tore my right quad badly while squatting 545x10 raw. It sounded like a pair of blue jeans being ripped in half. Heres the video for those of you that arent squeamish. youtube/watch?v=uk8jbVaLq7U I couldnt even walk on it initially and people on the internet forums were talking about how my powerlifting career was over. Ill never forget how one anonymous keyboard warrior even went as far as to say, Stick a fork in him, cause hes done! However, I never doubted my ability to come back. Those comments only fueled my resolve to come back better than ever. I started with bodyweight squats using a countertop to support myself. At first my arms were doing more work than my legs. But soon I was able to squat without using my arms for support and then I was back in the weight room several weeks after the injury. I started with an empty bar and slowly worked my way back up each week. The quad tear happened in January of 2008 and in July at the UPA Pro Am, I squatted a PR 1014 pounds. 5. You must be willing to do what others are not. Its quite simple, really. Do what everyone else does and youll be just like everyone else. Therefore, if you want to do extraordinary things, you must be willing to force yourself to do things others cannot. This may mean pushing yourself to places in training beyond what the average athlete is capable of. Or it may mean sacrificing things in life in order to prioritize your lifting goals. Obviously this isnt for everyone. However, if youre one of the few that have a hunger to reach a level few others have, you must accept the fact that in order for your dreams to be realized, youll have to push harder, suffer more, and make greater sacrifices than the people you wish to separate yourself from. Over the years Ive done lots of crazy things to ensure I could get my training in. In the Marines I threatened the guards on duty to allow me access to the gym in the middle of the night. I lifted in the dark with the lights off and even got caught once by the sergeant of the guard. In college Id pry open doors, climb through windows, and do whatever else was necessary to get access to our private gym after hours. But it was training prior to the USAPL Nationals in 2002 that posed the most obstacles for me. Nationals were in July and in the several months before the meet I graduated from pharmacy school, took my national pharmacy boards and law exams, purchased my first home, moved across the state, started training in a new gym with no consistent training partners, started a new career as a pharmacist, and, oh yeah, my wife and I had our third child.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 13:27:11 +0000
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