by Jamie Lewis
If your squat is stuck, have someone look at it from the front or back, rather than the side. Nearly every time I’ve seen someone with a squat that is truly stuck, it’s the result of one thing- their weight is improperly distributed between their legs. You can see this from the front because their ass will gravitate toward one side or the other. There’s a very simple way to fix this- make a conscious effort to force your ass to the other side as you squat. It will feel incredibly unnatural at first, but if you feel like you’re forcing your ass so far to the other side that you’re in danger of falling over like a drunk chick at the aforementioned spear bar, your ass is probably dead center. Keep working that for a couple of weeks and then have someone recheck it. Within a month, your squat will be up and you won’t have to worry about your weight distribution again. This is usually a problem with new trainees and people who’ve had a lower back or lower body injury.
Fear makes you strong. If you’re not afraid of a weight you’re using for your top weight sets, you’re definitely not going heavy enough. You should be so piss-scared of the weight you use for doubles that you consider skipping the gym altogether. If you’re not, you’re definitely stronger than you think, and need to raise the weight. We’re talking Manchurian peasant fear of the Japanese Army circa 1940 kind of fright- this is not a mild discomfort sort of fear, but a fill-your-pants-with-liquid-shit-because-100,000-armed-Mongols-are-bearing-down-on-you sort of fear. Master it and you’ll master the squat. Succumb to it and your squat will forever suck.
In my opinion, the squat gives you the exact measure of a man or woman. If you’re a great squatter, you’re damn near fearless and possibly indestructible. If you’re a shit squatter, you have no work ethic and you’re likely to piss yourself at the sight of a dwarf clown holding a bouquet of posies. No matter whether or not you choose to become a squat specialist, you need to make the squat a cornerstone of your workout. Failure to do so will invariably lead to mockery from friends and family and dismal showings at meets, and will prevent you from becoming as awesome as you know you can be.
Becoming Whole
There is nothing mystical about powerlifting or developing extreme strength. There is no arcane process through which one is magically bestowed with strength, and no elixir yet created by science that can make you a champion. Despite what you may read or hear, no chemical or hormone you could possibly consume can confer upon you the great strength you desire. Instead, the secret lies within you- desire is the ultimate monkey, and you must feed and care for it. In order to achieve greatness, you must crave it. You must be filled with a burning desire to achieve it and crush anything in your path that stands between you and your goal. Any person who has greatly exceeded his or her peers in anything will attest to this. Thus, all of the knowledge in the world will not help you if you are not filled with an all-consuming desire to achieve your goals. I cannot emphasize this enough- there is no program on Earth that will make you a great lifter if it is not matched by the drive to be one. You can achieve great strength without a great program, but the obverse is unfortunately not true.
In a recent discussion with a friend, he asserted that I was a genetic freak to be so strong. I countered that I have, in fact, six and a half inch wrists. I could not possibly be less perfectly constructed for physical strength. If you’re curious as to my reasoning for using that metric, it was a commonly used metric for determining one’s genetic potential in the 19th Century, and stands as one of the best indicators for the development of great strength in my mind. Luckily, it’s not a failsafe method for predicting one’s potential. Nevertheless, I continued that I didn’t show great potential when I began lifting. Unlike Bill Kazmeier, I didn’t bench 350 the very first time I attempted the lift. Likewise, Trent Richardson (standout Alabama running back and current NFL pro) power cleaned nearly that much with little or no instruction in the lift when he entered Alabama’s program. I, on the other hand, got pinned beneath 135 the first time I tried to bench it. There is no way I am “genetically gifted”, I claimed, unless being prone to fits of wild anger and so aggressive that I will physically injure myself to win a competition for which I’m neither trained or prepared constitutes a genetic gift. That, he claimed, was my genetic gift- my inability to accept defeat. My desire to be the absolute best at everything is my genetic gift, according to him, and is the reason for my success.
I’m beginning to think he’s right.
My success in powerlifting is not the result of what I’m currently doing. Certainly, my current program has contributed to my success, but the greatest factor in my current success is my historical efforts to better myself on a daily basis. For almost 20 years, I have constantly looked for a better way to diet, a better way to train, and this desire for physical and mental improvement has become so ingrained in my persona that dieting and training are part of my daily habits. For almost twenty years, I’ve trained no fewer than four times a week and usually far more than that. In that time, I’ve never taken a full week off from the gym, had a sustained backoff period, or let my diet slip below the “pretty good” line for more than a couple of weeks. That means that in the 18 years I’ve been training, I have, at a minimum, lifted weights for about 6000 hours. The reality is that I’ve trained far more than that. For those of you bemoaning your lack of progress, consider exactly how much you train per week. I personally train 6-10 hours a week, and have for years. If you’re a 3 days a week guy, you’re lucky to train 5 hours a week. If you train 50 weeks in a year, you’re only getting 250 hours a year. Neurologists have found, however, that world class experts in any discipline must have 10,000 hours of practice under their belt before they achieve mastery (Gladwell 40). If that’s the case, even at the upper end of my average, I’m still short about 600 hours. If you’re feeling a little slow today, let me clue you in on a little secret- given that statistical fact, the reason why the Russians, Chinese, and Bulgarians are so successful in Olympic weightlifting has a lot to do with the fact that their weightlifters devote their entire lives to weightlifting and train for 6-8 hours a day, starting at a young age. At that pace, training perhaps 35 hours a week and taking two weeks off a year, it would take less than six years to become a master at their sport. Most Westerners have no such luxury, or such desire- we’re busy with the mall, Xbox, school, friends, and pretty much anything else we can think of when we’re young, and as we get older our lives are consumed by our workday. Thus, we’re at a pointed disadvantage when pitted against people who can only live a Western lifestyle if they achieve mastery in a sport and earn accolades for doing so. Thus, if you want to become a badass lifter, you’re going to have to start by clearing out a considerable portion of your schedule to do so.
If you’re part of what I consider to be my target demographic (primarily male, 18-30), you likely have plenty of time to train. You lack a family, weighty responsibilities, and probably work 30 hours a week or less. In college, I trained five or six days a week on top of wrestling practice, and in the summers lifted twice a day, played a variety of sports daily, and worked. My total physical activity level, between lifting and sports, likely topped 20 hours a week. At night, while watching movies, my buddies and I even held daily pushup and situp competitions- not because we had to, but because it was fucking fun. All of that, however, inured me to high training volume and made strength training and general physicality a normal part of my everyday life. Training was nothing special- it’s just what we did every day for fun. That is the type of mentality that will take you further than any training program will, and will lead you to success in strength sports later in life.
"In the end not only is it permitted to make this experiment; the conscience of method demands it. Not to assume several kinds of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its utmost limit (to the point of nonsense, if I may say so)"(Nietzche 36).
You should, at this point, have a fairly comprehensive idea of the massive task I’ve laid before you. Five Mi
nute Abs and P90X are all fine and dandy for your average couch potato to see their abs, and cookie-cutter programs are fine for people too lazy or committed to devote themselves fully to the task of dominating the sport of powerlifting. They’ll remain on the sidelines, watching as you dominate your competition, provided you do everything humanly possible to obtain victory and enjoy yourself while doing it. Strength training is but one aspect of a trifecta of factors that will play into your performance on the platform. The other two factors, mental preparation and diet, are equally important as the training itself, and without attention to those details you will ultimately fail.
A Word About Special Snowflake Syndrome and Srs Bros
Fans of the blog Stuff You Will Hate will recognize this moniker immediately, but for those of you who are unaware of its existence, special snowflake syndrome is a malady affecting many of the people you see around you of late, and is characterized by a belief that there is something special about you tha separates you from the rest of the pack. Generally, this leads a person to believe that they are better than others, but the defining characteristic is often, weirdly, a negative attribute. The worst culprit in strength training the persistent belief in the existence of the “hardgainer”, which is a term bandied about by the lazy to explain their lack of progress. There is no such thing as a “hardgainer”- there are only people who do not train hard enough, eat correctly, or get enough sleep. This is not an issue of who uses which drugs or supplements—this is entirely a function of who trains and diets correctly and who does not.
The other phenomenon detailed frequently by the guys at SYWH is that of the Srs Bros- people who take themselves and the shit they do way too seriously. Interestingly, people mistake me for one of them on occasion due to my emphatic writing style. I really don’t take lifting all that seriously- it’s something I do because I enjoy it, rather than because I think it’s some noble cause. I couldn’t possibly give a shit less if people around me lift. I assume they’d do it if they wanted to and if they don’t, it’s because they dislike it. There are a great many people on the internet who take themselves and strength sports incredibly seriously while 1) being generally uneducated and weak, and 2) appearing to enjoy the discussion of lifting far more than lifting itself. Don’t be one of those guys- you suck the fun out of lifting for yourself and others. Endless discussions about which training protocol are best are pointless (that much should be readily apparent) and boring, and it’s effort that would be far better spent in the gym. Don’t waste your enthusiasm pounding out vociferous missives about who’s on gear and who’s natty, or who’s doing what and who is a jackass, and just fucking lift. That’s the only way you’re going to get stronger, and really the only way to prove any point you might make in a discussion about lifting, anyway. Never forget that lifting is really just an enjoyable pastime, at the end of the day, and not a job. Oh, and be sure to tell the Srs bros to go fuck themselves at every opportunity- the question “Do you even lift, bro?” should be rhetorical when you address them. I assure you that they do not.
Diet
Diet is really a subject for an entirely separate book. It’s an incredibly complex topic, and one that deserves far more treatment than a training manual should provide. It is, however, a cornerstone of successful strength sport competition, and one that will completely hamstring you should you ignore it. Though it's not necessary that you get ripped to the fucking bone to compete in strength sports, you might as well use a competition as an excuse to bring your abs out of hiding. They're likely not Jewish, so there's no reason for them to be treating your abdominal fat like's it the fucking attic and their name is Anne Frank. For those of you who want to remain fat, go read something else and try not to burn any calories doing so- I'd hate for you to develop vascularity or some other indication that a heart attack's not your idea of a normal Saturday afternoon. If you look back over the preceding pages at the lifters I’ve highlighted, all of them look like athletes- they’re all lean, vascular, and obviously muscular. As such, you should be following a diet that enables you to look like the strength athlete you’re trying to be. Thus, it’s time to pick a diet and stick with it for a while. If you’re concerned about losing strength. Don't be, for a couple of reasons:
Dieting keeps you focused on training, and vice versa. The harder you diet, the harder you'll train. The obverse is definitely not true. If you eat sloppily, you will not care as much when you hit the gym, because you've already made a shitload of concessions about your training (in the fuel selection), so you're retreating from success before you even touch a bar. If you're entering the gym pissed off and a little hungry from dieting, you'll take out your frustration on the weights, and you'll want to break your fucking ass so that the effort of dieting isn't wasted.
Provided you're eating ample protein and not in a ridiculous caloric deficit, you'll not lose muscle or strength from dieting. Anyone who says otherwise was dieting like a bodybuilder, which is fucking retarded. Bodybuilders diet the way they do because they're mentally weak and rely on drugs to do the majority of the work. In strength sports, you do all the heavy lifting- a vial of test has never lifted a goddamned thing.
Even if you managed to lose strength, dropping fat means dropping weight, which means dropping weight classes. As such, your relative strength will likely rise. For instance, you decide to do a meet, and you currently have a 1500 lb total at 200 lbs, with 15% bodyfat. You diet your ass off, and in 5 months are 181 with 6% bodyfat, a badass set of abs, but only a 1450 total (which would be HIGHLY unlikely, but this is just for the sake of argument). Your Wilks coefficient would have increased from 432.66 to 441.909, meaning you're actually much better off in terms of getting best lifter than you would have been as a fat 198 lber.
All of this is, of course, fucking nonsense. One's primary concern when entering a strength competition is winning. As such, you should be focused entirely on what it takes to win. If you're already focused on what it would take to win, you should be focused on what you can do to fucking embarrass everyone around you for even showing up. Thus, having the highest possible relative strength should be your primary concern, rather than the greatest absolute strength. This, of course, flies in the face of the conventional online wisdom that "he who lifts the most wins", as anyone who's not a sloppy fucking mass of adipose tissue would be far more impressed with a stupendous lift by a guy with visible musculature than they would with a Louis Cyr lookalike's world-shattering lift. This is why everyone shits their pants about Stan Efferding, Joe Ladnier, and Matt Kroczaleski when there's a new record broken in the squat by a different circus fat man every 45 minutes. This is also the reason why most of you know who 170 lb Bulgarian Olympic Ivan Stoitsov is, and have seen his pic a thousand times, but have no idea who Tatiana Kashirina is, in spite of the fact that she probably clean and jerks what you deadlift.
If you're wondering why no one knows the name of the fat Russian chick who holds the world record in the clean and press and the snatch (a chick who probably outlifts the vast majority of us on just about everything), don't. Fat people aren't really people- they're placeholders where people should be. No one wants to look at them, strong or not, nor be around them long enough to locate their genitalia and fuck. They look like shit, wheeze when they breathe, and are in mortal danger of stroking out when doing anything other than doing a single repetition on one of their pet exercises or eating. This doesn't change much when a fat guy or girl picks up something heavy- we expect them to be able to do so when the object they're lifting is a fraction of their bodyweight, no matter how heavy that object is.
Thus, if really doesn't matter that a fat person is all that strong. You might be thinking, however, that you're not necessarily morbidly obese, but just have a "powerful torso" or some such. All that means is that you're leaving weight on the table by which you might be able to fuck up the competition, because you’re carrying bodyweight that serves no positive purpose. For instance, if you're competing 235 and sitting on someth
ing around 20% bodyfat, you're doing yourself a fucking disservice if you're competing at 242 because you're too fucking lazy to diet a bit. That extra bodyfat is doing nothing but holding you back from greatness, as you could ostensibly be crushing shit at 220, or dominating everyone and looking ridiculous (Chinese Olympic weightlifting style) at 198.
Getting lean is not, as some people would have it, the death knell for a lifter's total. Provided cutting is done sensibly and fairly slowly, one's strength can rather easily be maintained, and can even be increased slowly if the cut is managed correctly. The added volume you'll probably implement to cut the weight will just contribute to your total workload in the gym, and you could see random lifts jump up as you increase your mobility and strength to weight ratio. Additionally, you won't feel like you need a nap if you have to take the stairs one day when the power goes out.
Throw on top of that the fact that strength does not increase proportionally with bodyweight- the law of diminishing returns kicks in like a motherfucker. This means endless weight gains to silence the fat guys talking shit on some message board are probably pointless. At some point, you're going to hit a wall where your body's pretty much at its upper limit for maximizing strength for your bodyweight. Thereafter, your strength gains will probably be incremental, while your bodyweight increases could be exponential. There's no point in asking other people at what point that will occur, either- it's entirely individual and completely unpredictable. Thus, you should experiment with your bodyweight to find your "sweet spot".