Destroy the Opposition: Programming for Powerlifting
Page 14
While strength athletics don't generally require bodybuilder levels of leanness, anyone this side of Ray Charles can see a trend emerging amongst the dominant elite in powerlifting and strongman- they're fucking lean. Take a look at the guys who are dominating these days— Matt Kroczaleski, Derek Poundstone, Mariusz Pudzianowski, Konstantin Konstantinovs, and Stan Efferding are all shredded... even perennial chubby guy Phil Pfister's gotten lean in the last few years, and the world's strongest woman, Aneta Florczyk, is lean (and hot). This means that before you even bother cutting water weight, you're going to need to drop some fat. I've outlined ways to do so on http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com and will eventually release a book about my Apex Predator Diet. If you’re unfamiliar with my dietary strategies, I've long been a fan of ketogenic diets and think they're perfect for strength sports in particular, due to the fact that they provide you with the necessary nutritional basis to maintain a good hormonal profile. Additionally, they’re excellent for powerlifting because making weight is always an issue for highly competitive lifters, and the paucity of carbs gives you a better idea of your true weight because you hold much less water when on a ketogenic diet.
Mental
I’ve caught a lot of shit since I began writing about strength training and nutrition for being “angry”, “mean”, and most amusingly a “meathead”. Clearly, the last one is pretty thoroughly off-base, though the first two are a bit closer to the mark. My writing style in indeed to be aggressive and offensive because aggressive and offensive writing are interesting. As for the anger I apparently direct at you, the reader, some of you have my intent wrong. I’m not berating you for being weak- I’m berating my readers for believing that they should be weak. The reason I make such a big deal out of my humble strength training beginnings is because I was, for years, a chubby nerd. In the fifth grade, my nickname was “The Human Dictionary”, and I was always picked for group projects but never for sports teams. As such, I was about as ill-suited for impressive physical strength as one could imagine. What I did have, however, was a contempt for the opinions of other people that bordered on sociopathy and a belief in myself that could only have been construed as psychotic by my peers. Provided you have those two things, you can quite literally achieve any goal you set for yourself.
“It you believe you can or if you believe you can’t… you’re right”
-Henry Ford
That’s right- the only thing standing in the way of your greatness is your lack of belief in yourself. Ellen Langer explained in her book Counterclockwise that the second step in the "psychology of possibility" is to try out new things without evaluating ourselves as we go along (Langer 16). The lack of evaluation of essential for exceeding who and what you are, and who you think you could be. If you push yourself to try new shit, things you thought were the sole purview of Superman and Dmitri Klokov, you could surprise yourself. The key, however, is to leave your judgment of yourself behind. You cannot walk into the gym wearing a powdered wig and swinging a gavel at every opportunity- should you do so, you remove both the possibility for experimentation and any probability of greatness, because you'll be too fucking busy talking shit to yourself, convincing yourself that you're incapable and weak and useless as everyone around you to attack the fucking weights and be the human being you never thought you could be.
It's also essential that isolate yourself from people from time to time (or as I do with my headphones), because society will tell you that you're incapable, that you're weak, that you're unable to handle the workload, or the weight, or the exercise, or tat you’ve hit your genetic limit and cannot possibly go ay further. In interdependant communities, people will turn against you if you're perceived as different- 'people who departed from the norm could be dangerous to the whole community- whether they were rich or very poor. Either way, there was a tendency to seek the center and to resent people who were misfits"(Brafman 124). If you haven't looked around the gym recently, you might want to take note of this, because gyms are thoroughly interdependant communities. Everyone's banging everyone, everyone's watching everyone, and the gossip mill has something to say about everyone. You probably know more crazy, bullshit rumors about the people in your gym than you do about your own family members, and you know more about the guys who lift on your "shift" at the gym than you do about the most prominent lifters in your sport. As such, anything you do that runs counter to the norm is being constantly evaluated, judged, and likely talked down when you're not around, because that’s human nature.
Like I stated earlier, however, you’re not going to become a Superman overnight, and it’s not going to be an easy road. Start by changing your mindset when you’re entering the gym. When you walk into the gym, you need to flip a switch in your head and decide that you feel indomitable, like an immovable object, a force that cannot possibly be opposed. I don’t mean that you necessarily need to act like Captain Kirk and throw peoples’ shit around the gym, screaming like a maniac. Instead, you just need to determine how to create a mindset in which you’re so infused with positive aggression and overall positivity that you feel invincible. You need to do this because your mind controls your body, and if you constantly proclaim to it that you're awesome, it will have no choice but to physically realize that thought. That is why I'll generally suggest that someone try harder and get more pumped up before a deadlift attempt rather than spending time dissecting their form. Form is usually not the issue on a deadlift- motivation is.
Lest you worry that we’ve ventured out of the realm of science into some esoteric, happy-go-lucky, Tim Robbins bullshit, we haven’t. It has been proven ad infinitum that one's mind is far more powerful than one's body, and that one can alter one's physiological processes simply through the power of one's mind. I'm not suggesting that meditation will enable you to levitate your next squat personal record attempt, either— I'm stating that you can actually make yourself stronger, bigger, and leaner through the use of positive thought, and have likely held yourself back in the past by obsessing over how you’re destined to be nothing but fat and weak, because your body will alter itself to match your perception of reality.
Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is that of a sect of Tibetan monks in Northern India, who are able to drastically alter their body temperature to stave off hypothermia through the utilization of intense meditation. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees Fahrenheit) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering. If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. Instead of deciding that they were all going to die as a result of their conditions, the monks utilized the power of positive thought to raise their internal temperatures to the point that the sheets dried in about an hour. These guys didn’t just do that once, either- they did it with three successive sheets in a row, to prove that there were no shenanigans afoot- these guys were just that awesome (Cromie). Similarly, monks in Sikkam, India can lower their metabolisms by 64%, and other monks in the Himalyas have been documented sleeping in sub-zero temperatures with only a thin cotton blanket as protection from the elements. Despite this fact, the monks didn't even so much as fucking shiver in response to the cold, as they simply did not believe in its effects.
At this point, you’re likely checking out mentally and coming to the conclusion tat I’m full of shit, but there is no other way I could have gone from chubby nerd to champion powerlifter without my belief in myself, and this is why I get so ripshit pissed reading the defeatism and pathetic excuse-making with which internet message boards are rife. Like me, you can literally will yourself to be awesome. This works with every segment of society, as well. Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer proved that she could induce weight loss in hotel maids by explaining to them exactly how many calories they burned while working- they had thought they burned far fewer calories, and when she convi
nced them they were incorrect, their metabolisms raised to match their beliefs (Spiegel). Similarly, studies have shown that the placebo effect is so strong that 32% of severely depressed people show marked improvements with a sugar pill, compared to only 50% who actually receive medication for their illness (Lipton 110). In most clinical trials, "fake" drugs prove just as effective as the real ones, simply because the people being tested believe in their effectiveness (Lipton108-9). This is not simply limited to drugs, either- a 2002 study at Baylor School of Medicine showed that a faked knee surgery was just as effective at reducing chronic knee pain as was the $5000 surgery, a fact that the doctors conducting the experiment found massively disconcerting (Ibid).
By the same token, you can royally fuck yourself up with negative thoughts. I've always fucking detested spotters who will call the lifter a pussy while he's lifting, or other assorted nonsense. That sort of negativity has never, and will never, fucking work. It's another thing altogether, however, to do shit out of spite. I would guess that no less than 60% of my life’s accomplishments were motivated by spite- I will do insane shit simply to prove other people wrong, and then rub their faces in their mistake. Thus, to think to yourself that "so and so thinks I'm a fucking pussy, but I've got their fucking pussy" and then crush a bunch of weights in outright defiance of their suggestion is actually the power of positive thinking at work. You’re proving what you know to be the truth (that you're a fucking badass) is in fact the case, and using spite and contempt to fuel your efforts at producing proof. It's a subtle distinction, but a vastly important one.
If you let your thoughts remain negative, however, you’re fucked. Just as the placebo effect can work in your favor (I've heard of people gaining weight and getting stronger within 24 hours of taking "oral GH", for instance), it can fuck you up royally. In 1974, a guy named Sam Londe was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, a disease for which there's little hope of recovery once it's in an advanced stage. Londe was given a couple of months to live, and he ended up dying in a few weeks- in spite of the fact that an autopsy showed that the initial diagnosis was incorrect, and he showed almost no cancerous cells in his throat (Lipton 111). The man literally died because he was supposed to. This effect, called the nocebo effect, can have just as profound an impact on your health and lifts, but in a massively negative way.
For those of you still unconvinced, I can understand your skepticism. Whether it's the effects of the mind on quantum physics (as asserted by Lipton and friends) or that reality is mere perception, and that one can change in on a whim (like the Buddhists and Hindus think), or if it's simply that we've some untapped reserve of energy that can affect our internal chemistry on an atomic level- our minds control our bodies. Thus, I implore you- stop being so fucking negative about yourself and buck the fuck up. I am living proof of the fact that you're likely more awesome than you think.
Go be awesome.
Destroy The Opposition Programs
The following programs are simply a base from which you can operate. They’re not set in stone, and they’re not gospel. I have never operated under a strict program, in the entirety of my lifting life, and have no interest in forcing others to do so. You should note that you can no more take the spreadsheet of the programs without the accompanying write-ups any more than you can make cinnamon toast without the cinnamon and the sugar, or have a drunken bear without a Russian circus. In the former example, it will taste fucking horrible, and in the latter, you’ll just be some random asshole getting eaten by a bear. Either way, it’s not going to work out in your favor. Thus, pay attention to the write-ups that go with the programs.
Destroy The Opposition For Beginners
Exercise Group
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Squat
4 x 6
4 x 6
Deadlift
5 x 6
Bench
4 x 6
4 x 6
Strict Military Press
3 x 10
3 x 6
3 x 10
Pull
4 x 6
4 x 6
Push Accessory
3 x 10
4 x 6
3 x 10
Pull Accessory
3 x 10
3 x 10
Upper Body Minor Accessory
3 x 10
3 x 10
Lower Body Minor Accessory
3 x 10
3 x 10
For the opening salvo in your infant powerlifting career, you’re going to have to get down the basics. As I stated earlier in the book, I’ve no interest in reinventing the wheel- this is a pretty basic beginner program. This program is really for people with no background in powerlfting but some experience lifting, however little. Stick with something like this for three to six months and then move on. Should you feel the volume is too low (for instance, if you’re an athlete used to a much higher level of physical exercise, add sets wherever you like. If you’re hideously sore after doing so, back it off in a subsequent workout. If you kill yourself right out of the gate adding sets and reps, you’re going to be far less likely to continue lifting. Thus, just try to get used to hitting the gym five days a week at the outset. The key at the beginning of starting a program isn’t making initial gains- it’s making going to the gym a habit that will be hard to break in the future. The gains will come, provided you’re applying yourself properly.
In this stage, you’re only going to back squat on squat days, as you need to get comfortable with the lift itself. You can monkey with the major exercises later. Same goes for the flat bench and the deadlift, though you’re going to do what I suggested in the deadlift section and alternate six weeks of sumo deadlifting with six weeks of conventional. If you so choose, you can continue doing that as you go, just to keep the lift fresh and focus on developing your overall strength rather than strength in just one of the two styles. Once you’ve been lifting for 6-12 months, you can evaluate your progress and see which style best suits you.
Exercise selection for each group:
Overhead Press- Klokov Press or military press. No push presses. At this point, you need to develop raw strength. Explosive strength can wait at this point- just get strong on overhead pressing with no leg drive for now.
Pull- For this, just use the bent over row form I mentioned in the deadlifting section.
Push Accessory- Choose from skullcrushers, pushdowns, or dips.
Pull Accessory- Choose from barbell or dumbbell curls, or chin-ups.
Upper Body Minor Accessory- This can be anything from forearms to neck, done with higher reps. If something strikes your fancy and isn’t going to totally destroy you, have at it. This should not be anything that is going to tax you significantly for subsequent workouts, however, and should be kept light.
Lower Body Minor Accessory- Same deal. Things like hamstring curls, glute-ham raises, calves, etc, would go in this group.
I’ve not included abs in the workout because they’re entirely optional. People will do them if they want and avoid them if they don’t, so adding them into a program is pointless.
A note on getting good at pull-ups and dips:
STAY AWAY FROM THE MACHINE ASSISTED FORMS OF THESE EXERCISES. They are a crutch you’ll never abandon. If you want to get good at these and cannot do them, the method for getting good at them is very simple. Every day, do whichever, or both, you want to do at the end of your workout, as a negative only. This means that for pull-ups you will jump to the top of the rep and lower yourself as slowly as possible. Same goes for dips. Start with sets of three and add repetitions as you can. Within a month, you will be doing multiple reps of each- I guarantee it.
Destroy The Opposition For Intermediate Deadlift Specialists
So, you’ve chosen to be a deadlift specialist, eh? At this point, you should have 6 months to a year of heavy lifting unde
r your belt and know your way around the gym. You’re joining the legions of beastly-backed pullers who’ve decided to make the same decision, and are in fine stead. The program I’ve outlined here is a basic template based on what has worked for me in the past. It’s not a static, dead document, but rather a living document like the government claims our Constitution is, though I hope you won’t wipe your ass with this program the way our government does with that bit of 200 year old parchment.