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The Edge
By Ox
Let's talk training. Most of you who know me know I don't go there
often in light of the fact that I typically find nutrition the more
fascinating topic of the two. But lately I've been giving a lot of
thought to my training. It's something we all have to do once in a
while to evaluate whether or not we're going down the right road.
Training can be like a road trip - one wrong turn and it could take a
while just to find your way back. You don't have time to waste. Reps
turn into sets, sets turn into workouts, workouts turn into training
splits and before you know it, a year has passed. The last place you
want to be is at the intersection of “Did I make all the progress I
could have?” and “What should I have done differently?”
I've always felt that training has got to be balls to the wall.
Otherwise, why train? Think about it; you could essentially lift
weights all day long if you waited long enough in between sets and
never went to failure. There really is no point in training if you're
not going to practice intensity and push to failure. If balls to the
wall, push to failure, kill yourself training is at one end of the
spectrum and sitting on your couch and not training at all is at the
other, to be anywhere in between is pointless. Forgive me if you simply
want to stay in shape and have some physical activity in your life; it
that is the case then it's fine. But for anyone else who actually has
aspirations for themselves, anything less than all out, Animal-style,
hardcore training will not do.
While I adamantly believe in intense training, I don't believe in
absolutes either. Nothing is right all the time. To walk into the gym
every single week and expect to have a workout better than the week
before is not only unrealistic, but I believe it could be detrimental
to your progress. How could this be? Let me put it to you this way - I
was having a conversation the other day with a guy who was trying to
tell me about some training principle where every week you go up in the
amount of weight you lift and you make notes of it in your little book.
I countered with the idea that not only is the amount of weight you
move not the be all end all, but if you went up every single week in
how much weight you lift, after 10 years you'd bench press a thousand
pounds. That's fucking stupid. There's no way you can expect every
workout to be your best one ever.
If you do expect that and if you're holding yourself to some numbers
you write down, you're going to hurt yourself, sacrifice form and/or
neglect to maintain a proper “mind-muscle” connection. Either way, the
point is you will not be doing what is necessary. There's a difference
between what is necessary and what is wanted. You might want to sit
there with your little book and play with numbers but I can tell you
right now, that isn't going to do a damn thing for you. You're a human
being, not a machine. If you were a machine you could do the same damn
thing over and over and over and get results. You're not. You won't.
Anyone who has ever given all they've got in the gym knows that it
cannot be done day after day, workout after workout without
overtraining. But didn't I say intensity and a balls deep approach must
be taken? No doubt. But when you're about to go over the edge and
spiral into an overtrained state, you've gotta pull back. If you try to
have a record breaking workout every single time you will inevitably
defeat yourself. On the other hand, if you train like a fucking wimp
you will not go anywhere.
It is my belief that bodybuilding is a sport of extremes. To elicit
extreme results, you must take extreme measures. But just the same, you
must know when to pull back from the brink. The same philosophy holds
true whether you're talking about training or dieting. I can't tell you
how many guys I've met that are so damn afraid of getting small that
they never diet hard enough to actually get in rock hard show
condition. But I know just as many guys who over-diet and end up
looking like shit. You must diet HARD and push it until you're depleted
and then pull back. If you sit there and say that it makes more sense
to just not deplete yourself in the first place and just go nice and
easy then I say you will end up like the guy who never gets in shape.
Much the same, I know guys who won't squat or deadlift because they
have some fucking excuse. I also know guys who do those movements
fairly regularly, but do 'em just so they can say they did 'em. And
then I know guys who can make a whole workout out of just deads or
squats. High reps, low reps, peel the plates, forced reps - whatever it
takes to get you dancing on that edge… That is what is necessary. But,
in order to be successful with that you need to know when enough
becomes too much and when it's time to pull back.
If you never push yourself to the limit or risk going over the edge,
you will always be mediocre. If you're that guy who wants to be the
most hardcore guy in the world and constantly beats the living shit out
of himself with his training, you too will just be mediocre. You need
the brains to define exactly what the edge is and where the edge is.
You need the balls to bring yourself right up to it and then the brains
to bring yourself back from it before you fall.
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