“Lifting weights does not build muscle.” Depending on your level of knowledge and experience, that statement is either shocking, bordering on blasphemy or you are thinking, “No sh*t Sherlock.” In terms of being shocked versus having the “Sherlock” response, maybe it’s 50/50 or perhaps 70/30. However, even if you are in the “Sherlock” response camp, it is probably more like 99/1 in terms of those who ignore that fact vs. those operate accordingly based upon that knowledge. Let me explain.
There Are Limits (Not Getting It All In One Day)
The act of weight training or resistance training functions to break down muscle tissue not to build it up. (I know the science bros will tell us that the break down concept isn’t technically correct at the muscle fiber level and its antiquated thinking,. That is fine, they should go back to their dubious studies, smelling their own farts, and continue focusing on their mental masturbation.) Then through the process of rest and recovery, the body builds itself back stronger. This is a sort of “super-recovery”… or at least that is the case if you don’t foul it up. Have you ever heard the phrase, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger”, or Nietzsche’s version, “…what doesn’t kill, me makes me stronger.” I can tell you with certainty that those phrases are absolute horse hockey. They assume that you can’t be killed a bit at a time. Which when it comes to weight training, you certainly can. Similarly there are those who believe that “there is no such thing as overtraining.” That is great, I will happily have that debate with you but first I need you to do the following: Perform 1,000 burpees with no rest tomorrow before lunch. Then following lunch, I need you to do another 2,000 burpees with no rest. When you are done with that call me and we will have that discussion.
Push Like There Are No Limits, But Be Brief
Some of us love to work out and push ourselves to new limits, i.e. progressive overload. If you don’t push yourself to new limits, you really aren’t building and growing. That is why Greg Doucette says to , “Go harder than last time.” That is a beautifully correct simplification. The problem is that if we don’t recover properly, we are actually working against our goal of building more muscle and more strength. Keep this in mind as you weight train, feed your machine, rest, and recover. Mike Mentzer held that overtraining was not sort of a bad thing for bodybuilders and weight trainers,… rather it was the absolute worst thing they could do. Your purpose in weight training is to break down muscle tissue by working as intensely as you can in a limited number of sets. So train intensely but briefly to break down your muscle tissue. A focused and intense 45 minutes in the gym is far superior to 2-3 hours working intensely or otherwise.
(Applied) Knowledge is Power
There is the old bodybuilding maxim, “You don’t grow in the gym.” So hit it extremely hard, then get out of the gym, continue to feed your machine, and do your best to rest and (super) recover. How soon do we go back and do it all over again? That is the crux of a lot training analysis, theory, studies, and hearsay. We certainly have some guidelines and estimates and we can easily overcomplicate things. In the end, you will have learn what you can, apply it the best you can, and refine it over time. How? Remember we are here to make the complex simple, so stay tuned. The intent of this article is to drive home the point that knowledge is power but only when it is applied correctly. So recognize what you are doing, why you are doing it, and operate accordingly.
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