A Good Spotter is like a Good Wingman...

Maybe one of my biggest pet peeves in the gym is watching two buddies get to the bench, load it up with some asinine amount of weight, and proceed to see-saw the bar from either end. "All you, all you!" the spotter shouts as he pulls the bar up to his friend's lockout. It makes me wonder whether the goal is for the guy laying to do a bench with a spotter... Or if the guy standing is doing a Romanian Deadlift with a guy on the bench "spotting." Worse yet are those skinny little folks who have the bar loaded with 95lbs who have spotters assisting in both concentric AND eccentric portions of the lift. Why did you even go to the gym?

You see, finding a good spotter is like finding a good wingman... It's next to impossible to do unless you train them upfront. There are times when I've asked for a spot from some random, and he just stands there not doing anything. That's a good wingman. Sometimes, he'll give me a perplexed look, thinking, "Why did this guy need a spot at all?" because he didn't even know he was being a good spot. But it's not just the spotter's problem... Many lifters have no conception of what a "spot" entails.

You ask for a spotter when you're unsure whether or not you can complete the set or lift. You do not ask for a spotter when you KNOW you cannot complete the set. If you know you can't do it, then... DON'T DO IT. What good is going to come out of forcing out a set when your spotter is pulling the bar up every time? Guess what? You're not doing any real work when you do that. A spotter's job is to just make sure you keep lifting. He's insurance in case you miss the lift and get stapled. Most importantly, he's only going to be doing anything - IF anything - during the last rep. If you miss the lift before your last planned rep, that's fine. You miscalculated. But I can't tell you how many times a guy told me he was going for eight, missed at four, and kept saying, "One more, one more!" Half the time, I want to leave the guy stapled right there.

I think one of my biggest pet peeves is when I ask for a spot and the guy touches the bar on the way down. I'll rerack at that point and explain to him that I only need help at the end. I've seen far too many spotters holding onto the bar the entire time, pulling it up... and slowly letting it down. Do they even understand that they're doing? Do the lifters get that there's no way they can get stronger like this? I've seen spotters spot every rep, every set, from the very beginning. WHY!?!!?? Maybe there's some kind of secret spotter conspiracy going on to keep lifters weak.

My last point is a simple one: a spotter should watch carefully and not interfere until it is clear that the lifter is no longer making forward progress. That does not mean to start helping him when he's struggling up. If he's struggling, then start shouting, "You can get it! Lockout! Lockout!" Only spot the lift when you see it start to go the OTHER way. When no progress is being made, then help him out so he doesn't get stapled. That is your job as a spotter, not to help him when he's having a hard time. It's to save him when he's failed.

Now, get into the gym and do some real work.

Muscle-Up!

Today, for the first time in my life, I muscled-up on a bar. I not only performed the muscle-up, I FLEW over the bar. Today was a leg day, but Jordan was about doing an upper body, and as we were chatting during his chin-ups, I said, "I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a muscle-up soon." The past few times I've done explosive pulls on the bar, I was getting up pretty high with consistency, so I was becoming more confident with my explosiveness even without a kip. And so I jumped up to the bar, kipped my hips, and saw myself flying over the bar. As soon as I was up, I turned around and gave Jordan the most shocked expression I think I've ever had. I hadn't expected it to be so easy. I was so used to struggling so hard to pull up high, flapping around, and being beaten by the bar.

Maybe the shock came because I hadn't tried even a muscle-up attempt in at least a month. No, I've spent the last long while doing pull-ups with as much power as possible, not even caring about the muscle-up. So when it came time to do it, it came easily, and I was just completely surprised... But really, I think the shock was how it felt. I, like many other frustrated strength enthusiasts here, have always felt like the bar is a barrier, some kind of impassable wall. Once you're under, you're under, and you can't get back over. Sure, you see other people swing over with ease and triumph, but that isn't you. You're too weak. Too slow. Too fat. Any number of things and reasons you can muster up as to why you CAN'T do it. So when I was moving over the bar, there wasn't a thought in my mind, except for one: "What the fuck?"

It felt like flying. I say I flew over the bar, because that's exactly the sensation I had. Moreso than any vault, any drop, any leap ever felt. I had absolute control, but I was floating upward at an alarming rate. The bar, the impassable barrier and a triumphant apostle of Gravity's decree, was descending below me quicker than I could process. And then I was at the top, staring down at the people in the gym, quite rightly feeling like I had climbed atop Mt. Olympus. I was Apollo watching the Greek common men from a lofty perch. And when I descended, there was glory, pride, all wrapped up in the knowledge that the bar was no longer impassable.

Your Plate Determines Your Body

You know that old adage "You are what you eat"? Well, it's 100% true. In pretty much all cases, your sticking points are going to be determined by what you're putting into your mouth. Control what you eat, and you control what your body looks like, feels like, and performs like. Does this mean that you're not allowed to indulge? Of course not. That's absurd. But if you've been going absolutely nuts over plateaus and not making any progress, then you better believe that you shouldn't be indulging. You should be cognizant of every last calorie going into your body, every gram, every nutrient.

A lot of the time, I will say that nutrition is the most complicated aspect of fitness. Well, it is and it isn't. In reality, it's all about that classic formula: calories in vs. calories out. Are you consuming more or less than you are burning? There are three possibilities, then: deficit, maintenance, and surplus. In order to lose weight, you must be in deficit. In order to gain weight, you must be in surplus. For you "skinny bastards" out there looking for a quick fix, it doesn't exist. Adding in a protein shake or two isn't going to inflate you like a balloon. It just doesn't work that way.

But here's the thing that I've noticed that causes problems: eating is a psychological thing. We don't eat, or at least very rarely, because we're actually hungry. No, we eat because we're bored, or because it's that time of the day, or we're happy or sad, etc. For those who need to lose weight, this is an endless cycle of caloric surplus and excessive "cheat" meals. For those who need to gain weight, this normally results in a cycle or a routine, and not even thinking of the possibility that eating any more is possible. No matter who you are, what your circumstance is, eating is a psychological habit. That's why it's so difficult to turn down eating out with friends. Social eating is one hell of a fixed custom in Western society. Probably in every society.

This is important, so pay attention: You will never get to where you want to be until you learn how to eat. Forget all your excuses. Forget every little thing that makes you whimper like a child when it comes to food. If you want to lose weight, eat less. If you want to gain weight, eat more. And, almost as important as those tips: eat clean!

Whiny complaint #1: "But, Andy, I've been in caloric deficet forever, and haven't lost any weight!"

Answer A: No, you haven't.

Answer B: If you have been, then maybe you need to play around with the macronutrient profile of your meals, or maybe you've been in deficet for so long that your body has "reset" its basal metabolic rate. I don't recommend dropping even lower, but what I do suggest is eating more, at least for a few days. Refeeding is as much an integral part of dieting as cutting is.

Whiny complaint #2: "But, Andy, I eat like a rhino and still haven't gained weight!"

How often do you eat a day? How much do you eat in each meal? Chances are, you don't eat as much as you think you do. A lot of the skinny bastards out there (yes, I'm stealing Joe DeFranco's tried-and-true terminology) either eat one huge meal a day or eat a lot of little meals. Well, if it's one huge meal, count up the calories. It's probably 3-4 times the size of a meal for a normal person, but it's rarely over 2,000 calories, am I right? Go ahead, even if you eat a second meal, how much are you totaling a day? At best, 2800? For you multi-mealers, add up the calories for once. How many are you actually getting?

Now, I've run into people who need to be getting in at least 5000kcal to see any results, and while they are extreme cases, maybe you're just not eating enough still. For most of you out there, I bet, with about a 97% chance, that this is the case.

The very few of you who actually still can't gain weight (believe me or not, but gaining weight is harder than losing it), I might recommend BCAAs and checking the macronutrient profile. Most people (athletes) should be getting around a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight to ensure optimum performance and muscle recovery/maintenance. Some bodybuilders who really want to stack on some weight go up to 1.5-2g per lb of weight. Does this actually help them? Who knows, but it's worth a shot, right?

Also, I want to hone in on one final and important thing: dietary fats. For Christ's sake, just get your fats in. Fat is good for you! In fact, fat is great for you! Remember, EFAs are essential fatty acids. There's quite a few fats out there proven to decrease excess bodyfat. For the hard gainers out there, it helps a whole lot in getting those extra calories in.

Now, I know this is a powerlifting blog, so I'm going to bring this home: Optimum performance in any sport, whether it's lifting, Parkour, soccer, or whatever... is going to be dialed into three factors: training, diet, and recovery. Make sure you a flawless handle on all three. For those just going for physique (at least for now), then look again at the title of this post. Meditate on it for a second. And then reflect on what you ate for the past three days, and then what your body looks like. And not just what you ate, but when you ate it, and how much you ate.

At some point, I may have to go on a rant about how what most North Americans view as "healthy food" is actually terrible for you, but I'll save that for later, since this got long enough, and I want to give out one last tip that I guarantee - GUARANTEE - will help you see results.

The second you wake up, shower, do whatever you do... But as you're making your breakfast, whether it's scrambling eggs or making some oatmeal (by God, I hope no one reading this is eating toast or a bagel for breakfast), plan out what you're going to eat for the rest of the day. Every meal. Plan out when you're going to eat it. Plan out how much. Plan when you're going to start preparing the meal.

By the time that you finish your breakfast, you should have absolutely a solid idea of how your diet is going to play out for the whole day. Keep this going throughout your head. While you're preparing your next meal, be thinking about the rest of the day's meals. Keep doing this throughout the day. You'll probably notice, by the end of the day, you either didn't deviate from your plan at all, or you didn't as much as you normally do. This exercise is probably the most useful thing that I've come across. It's better than a diet plan, because most people will deviate from the plan eventually. This way, every day starts fresh. You eat deliberately, and that is the most key point of this entire article: eat deliberately. Think you got that? Plan out every thing, and do not stray from it.

Do this for two weeks. The think about what's been on your plate for the past two weeks. Check your progress. Weight, bodyfat percentage, the whole gamut. If you're on a diet, refeed at this point (minimally). If nothing else, you'll probably have proven ten times more self-restraint and careful assessing of your meals than you have in the past.

Movement Before Muscles

There's a tendency in the weight room for people to do a whole slew of accessory exercises before they even get around to being able to bench, squat, deadlift, or even pull-up properly. I was recently asked, "How do I build bigger lats?" and this guy, who is a good friend of mine (and is probably reading this embarassedly), probably doesn't hit the gym very often at all. Yet he's worried about an "imbalance," because he thinks he looks a little awkward. In the infamous words of Dave Tate, "Maybe you just don't know how to fuckin bench."

It took me a while to learn the lifts properly, and I'm still learning. I can squat ATG, but I noticed that I have a slight kyophotic stance in the bottom of the hole. Well... that sucks, but it can be fixed, right? Before I was ever able to notice the weaknesses in my bench, I had to learn how to bench. Before a person can build lats, they need to know how to pull-up.

Here's the big secret of the weight room: people need to learn MOVEMENT before they worry about their MUSCLES. And there are four major movements: Bench, squat, deadlift, and pull-up. Coach Mark Rippetoe believes that overhead press and the clean are in the "major 5" exercise list, but I don't entire agree. SOME kind of press is necessary... and we're in the USA, so it's going to be the bench. In Parkour, I believe in teaching movement before techniques (not many people agree with me here). If a person can't quadrupedal forward, backward, sideways, fast slow, jumping... then what chance are they going to have at moving properly in a vault? How are they going to know what I mean when I say, "You need to kip your hips up a bit better." So I bring them through a whole slew of bodyweight exercises, I make them play, run around, and just get used to their bodies. And you know what? It saves me a hell of a lot of trouble because they already understand the basic movements before I even begin to teach them anything specific.

The weight room is no different. The crazy thing is that when you focus on these primary, compound movements, your body will probably end up looking the way it needs to look without too many imbalances. The inclusion of accessory movements occurs when you notice a deficiency. I'll use myself as an example. After a good long while of training bench, with the incorporation of max effort and dynamic effort days, I began to notice a key weakness in this lift: both in max effort and ballistic bench, I could rocket the weight to lock-out fairly easily, but my biggest issue was getting off the chest. In a heavy weight, I would often need a spot in the bottom half of the lift (I could probably get it an inch or so off the chest before progress begins to stall). In a speed lift, I would be slow off the chest, and then lock out with quite a bit of explosiveness. So we could take this pretty easily and figure out where I'm strong and where I'm weak. The lock-out is mostly a product of the triceps, and the vast amount of dips and climb-ups from Parkour probably contributed to a fast and strong lock-out. Off the chest, however, is one of the few times even a powerlifting bench press is predominantly a chest exercise. So, in this instance, I want to do some accessories that hit the chest a bit more often so that I can get stronger at the bottom of the bench.

However, the key point is that I wouldn't be able to know where I'm weak in the bench without having experience with the bench in the first place. I needed to know the movement thoroughly before I focus on anything else. Do you think that I would need to give my chest extra training if I had a 95lb bench? Hell no! At that point, I need to work on the BENCH to make my bench go up.

"But Andy, I'm a bodybuilder! All I want to do is look good. I don't care about how much I lift!"

Well, the principle of mass gain is time under tension. You either increase the time or you increase the tension. If you can increase both, then all the better. What do you think will happen when you put 20lbs on your 8RM? Of course you're going to get bigger! Look, you can do these extra accessories all you want, but if you're a beginner, you're going to see incredible gains from the basic movements alone. You're going to look the way you should look and you can work on the other stuff later. If you're skinny, or chubby, then work on the MOVEMENTS first. Don't worry about looking "out of balance," because these movements will MAKE you balanced. First and foremost, get strong. Then worry about the rest.

So, please don't ask me how you can hit your lats better until you can pull-up 10 times with good form and once with at least 40lbs, or how to get your triceps or chest stronger until you can bench your bodyweight, or how to get "killer quads" (Rawr!) before you can squat 1.5x your bodyweight. Train movement before muscles.

Chicken Shit = Chicken Legs

If there's one really big issue that plagues the gyms of today, it's that people are too chickenshit to do things right. And then they wonder and cry about how they can't gain weight, can't lose weight, can't put on muscle, can't "tone" up... when all it really comes down to is that they're pussies. You wonder why your legs are the size of my arms even though you've got five plates to either side of the leg press? It's because you're using the LEG PRESS. Worse yet is the big 6'5" linebacker-type who's grunting with 135lbs on the barbell, and stopping at a quarter, no less. And you look at me, the 5'6" Asian kid who isn't even that muscular, squatting down with two plates on each end with ease, still in my warm-up, and going through my full ROM... and what? Do you snicker a little, think to yourself, "Oh, that kid's going to fuck his knees up," and somewhere deep inside think, "How the hell can that little kid move that much weight so easily?"

I'm not trying to say I'm a guru of any kind. I'm not trying to say that I'm strong. In fact, I'm weak as hell. I look up to the guys who deadlift 5-6 plates on each end, or can squat three times their bodyweight, and I'm in awe. I am, 100%, a beginner lifter. You, though, spent all your time reading Muscle & Fitness, or Men's Health, and won't ever see any progress. Why? Because you're a chickenshit, and when you're a chickenshit, you're going to have chicken legs.

This is a squat. Notice how his hips are below his knees? The worst of you think that the leg press is going to get you big and strong. Truth is, leg press will just get you good at leg pressing. Oh sure, there are ways to use it for bodybuilding, but how many of you folks go to the gym JUST to bodybuild? And how many want to look good AND be strong? The better of you do quarter squats, and the better yet go JUST to parallel. But none of you can move real weight. I see you guys. I see so many of you trying so hard to get strong and never making any progress, but when I give any bit of advice, the backlash is almost always, "But isn't that bad for your knees?" or "I'm trying to keep my knees from going past my toes" or "Leg press just seems SAFER." But I've also seen you, those same folks who deride my attempts at lending a helping hand, look to me - a rank novice - with some sort of envy or astonishment that such a little kid could move so much weight.

So this is my final advice: Don't be chickenshit, and you won't have chicken legs. Don't be afraid of the barbell. Don't be afraid of going all the way down. I mean, some of you have no place in the squat rack until you fix some postural problems or increase your mobility, but for God's sake, don't take the "easy" way out and never LEARN to squat! By all means, learn! You have no idea how much moving serious weight through a full range of motion can do for you. The fat will get smaller. The skinny will get bigger. The weak will get strong.

Start out with the empty bar, if you have to, but for God's sake, go all the way down. Get away from that leg press. Get away from the Smith machine. DON'T BE SCARED! Free yourself from the shackles of fear, and you will get strong and you WILL look good naked. Throw away that magazine that, in three years, has helped you to only stagnate over and over again, and just LIFT.

And I can guarantee you that you'll go from this:

To this:

Programming

I'm rewriting how my programming falls as far as scheduling goes. In addition to this, I've incorporated some ideas from other coaches than DeFranco, Tate, and Simmons. Ultimately, I hope to have something that I can say, for certain, is the best thing for me, personally. My warm-up routine has largely begun to follow the approach heralded by Athlete's Performance Systems, pioneered largely by Gray Cook and his Functional Movement Screen. That is to say that I begin with mobility drills, assess where my mobility is lacking as it pertains to the strength training of the day, do some corrective exercises for that purpose, and end the warm-up with some dynamic/plyometric work to fire up the CNS. In the short few days that I've been doing this, I've noticed that maximal lifts have been easier and less sketchy, and dynamic lifts have been cleaner. I'm not about to jump out of bounds just because of that, though.

My planned routine shifts maximal effort days apart and looks like this:

Monday: ME Lower Body
Tuesday: DE Upper Body/ESD
Wednesday: Swim/LI Cardio
Thursday: DE Lower Body/Parkour in evenings
Friday: ME Upper Body/ESD
Saturday: Rest/Parkour/other
Sunday: rest/Parkour/other

The weekend will either be for rest or very light work. It'll be nice to have some sport-specific training under my bag again, as well. I'm pairing up ESD with upper body days because it seems like the only time where my body will be fresh enough from the hips on down to get any of that done.

In conjunction with the conjugated periodisation of the Westside template, I may go ahead and incorporate a form of linear/classical periodisation into the program. The reason for this is because I'm not entirely sure if continued maximal strength training is a good thing in the long run. Rather, I want to take a more graduated approach. I know that Westside accounts for this by rotating the ME exercises frequently, but I still have a feeling that it takes its toll on the CNS to lift a heavier weight EVERY week, no matter if the exercise differs. For this reason, I don't intend to rotate my exercises to so many bizarre modifications of the basic and prime exercises to "keep things fresh." Rather, after this microcycle, I'll be going back to box squat/pull-up for my "ME" days... work up to a new maximum if applicable, and then HOLD that weight for all three weeks of the microcycle. Meanwhile, my DE days will increase in weight progressively so as to technically be in a "speed phase" of a linearly periodised method.

This "speed phase" will not consist of the entire 9-week mesocycle of box squat/squat/deadlift + pull-up/bench/incline that I have mapped out for myself. I think that that'd be far too long and result in a loss of maximal strength overall, due to the nature of Westside. Rather, I will only be "resting" for the three-week micro before returning to "strength phase" training. From here, I have two options.. I could go for nine weeks and have the next speed phase fall on the start of the previous strength phase... Or I could alternate strength/speed micros. I think that the latter may be the most appropriate choice, since the whole point of this was to avoid a full nine-weeks of maximal strength training.

While I am in my strength phases, I will probably still be increasing on my speed days as well, but it entirely depends on how "up to it" I feel, so the progression will be much slower. I believe that this is the best approach for now, and will measure out my progress in the fall to really make any additional modifications (though there may still be modifications along the way).

In addition to this, I've included, as a mandatory part of the program, soft tissue work as a post-workout recovery phase. This will take place after the post-workout nutrition/meal/shake as part of the recovery process.

The Beginning

I've started this blog with the intent of detailing my progress with powerlifting. This won't be updated very often, as I'll mostly be posting either just numbers or thoughts when they come. In addition, I'll be using this blog to detail my thoughts on training, science, and my philosophy to fitness on a whole. It should be interesting to see how that changes. My other blog (http://pkna-animus.blogspot.com), Animus Parkour, will remain my general training blog (which is more GPP than Parkour these days).

So, why powerlifting? Ever since being introduced to Joe DeFranco's manner of training athletes, I've been fascinated with real strength and power. The way I see it, traceurs lack this significantly. In the US, due to the influence of APK, more and more traceurs go into CrossFit with this idea of "be great at nothing, but decent at everything." I think this is absolutely the wrong way to go about things. Many of the CrossFit-focused traceurs do happen to be much stronger than I am, but it's closing into the point where their weight advantage is responsible for it more than pure strength. Suffice to say, I intend my training to be specialised, and the longer I train in this way, the further ahead I will get compared to the CFers out there. One thing I see with CFers is that they tout Olympic lifting as the absolute best way to develop explosive power, and they just might be correct! But think about this: Olympic lifts are explosive completely bilaterally (you don't explode from a split-jerk, but into it). Yes, this will transfer to Parkour, but how often do we really explode bilaterally? Traceurs make it a point to not punch the ground. Under DeFranco's program, there is both bilateral explosive exercises and unilateral (sled sprinting). From what I've seen in Toronto, I think this is by far the best way to approach power.

I still haven't really answered the question at hand. Well, I favoured the DeFranco system so much that I began to delve further and further into powerlifting culture. I read Dave Tate's articles, Louie Simmon's, etc. etc. Yes, mostly the Westsiders, but that's because I firmly believe that the Westside program is the absolute best for athletics. I've met powerlifters who don't believe it is the best for raw powerlifters, but.. suffice to say.. More elite lifters come out of Westside Barbell than any other gym in the country (and possibly world). That speaks for itself, I think.

On my quest to develop true explosive power, I became more and more intrigued by strength. After all, the development of strength is what facilitates the development of power. For my height and weight, my lower body strength became pretty impressive rather quickly. And, at some point, I said, "Just once in my life, I'd like to compete at a powerlifting meet. Just to do it." Well, I want to work toward that now.

I have started from the position of DeFranco's modified Westside program for athletes. I've already begun to tweak it to incorporate some of the original Westside stuff geared more toward powerlifting. And I'll be making tweaks along the way until I have something that I feel works best for my body. I want to develop a program, based off of the template of Westside, that is clearly my own and that shows what I believe to be the best way to develop raw strength and power for Parkour, as well as powerlifting. So this is the beginning of this journey.

As it stands, I am 5'6" and 155lbs. My lifts are 295 squat, 195 bench, and 305 deadlift for a total of 795. Paltry for now. We'll see where I go from here.