Quality and quantity

A client recently joked, "Us old cripples are the strongest clients you've got." And she's right. This is something I noticed about a year into my personal training career: the more injuries the person has, the better their progress.

How does that happen? Well, when someone had injuries, I carefully considered their workout routine, choosing movements carefully to strengthen crucial weaknesses, work around serious issues, I resisted any demands from them for variety for its own sake, kept things focused, and made sure they had really good movements. Quality. 

With the healthy ones I just slapped weight on the bar and if they got bored I threw in whatever would make them happy. But where possible I put more weight on the bar or made them do huge numbers of reps. Quantity. 

After that first year it occurred to me, if it works for the gimpy ones, why not everyone? Thus my approach of coaching movement. Quality first, quantity second.

Now, this does not mean that we need a movement to be brilliant before we put another iron slice on on the salami. Lifting weights is not ballet. Don't overthink the movement. But it does mean take the time to make the movement good, then load it up. Remember the self-evident truth in training: consistent effort over time gets results. A good movement becomes a strong movement, this is the worth of good form. 

Gyms are schools of movement. Most people come into them movement-illiterate. This is why any effective trainer or coach will have a system of some kind. When I started, with the gimpy ones I had a system, with the healthy ones I didn't, this is why the more injuries they had the better their progress. Certainly we can argue about which is the better system, just as we do for other kinds of education. Nonetheless there must be a system of some kind. First you do this, then when you can do this well, you do that - and so on. 

Most people training on their own in the gym have no system. Two-thirds of new gym members don't take up the appointments they get with a gym instructor, and two-thirds of those who do take them don't do the workouts they're given, so at most one in nine people in the gym have any routine at all; fewer still progress the effort on these exercises over time. I see less than a dozen people of hundreds a day with a workout journal. 

For example, if I get a young guy to do barbell squats, commonly he'll be physically able to squat 70kg or so for a single. I start him on 40kg for sets of 5, and tell him, "next week, add 2.5kg, and so on. In six months you'll squat 100kg for work sets easily." Physically he can go faster than that, but I try to allow for nobody being there to watch his form, for shit food and missed workouts. He nods and smiles, and next week I see him struggling with 60kg, the following week he's quarter-squatting 80kg, after that I never see him squatting again. Two years later he's doing curls with a gym newbie and telling him, "I used to squat 140, but it hurt my knees." System vs ego, system loses. 

Rather few of us really have any pressing need to achieve this lift or that run really quickly. If you're joining a rugby team in three months and weigh 50kg, if you're hoping to conceive a child next year and weigh 150kg, then okay there is a hurry. But most of us are working out for general health, so there's no hurry. Progress is progress. 

Squat, push, pull, hip hinge, loaded carry. Take the time to master these movements. Build the quality and the quantity will come. There's a time for quality, and a time for quantity. Mostly it's quality. Sometimes you need to smash it, but not often. Progress, but there's no hurry. 

Of course, if you have too much quantity then you'll get some injuries and your progress will improve. Hurts a bit, though. Up to you. 

Why women should lift heavy weights

So they can get stronger. Same as everyone else.

Every fitness blog and magazine does articles on this, on how to trick women into lifting heavy, giving lengthy explanations of why they won't bulk up (though if they did, I ask "would that be a bad thing?") talking about the benefits to their booty, and a lot of other patronising bullshit. This article even gives 77 PTs' responses about the "question". All of these are amusing, but also wrong. That's because women, or older people, or those with several previous injuries or health conditions, these people are used to being treated differently, as members of some special class for whom the rules are different.

They're not. Lift heavy shit, get stronger. This applies to everyone, no matter their gender, sexuality, race, religion, age, favourite football team, or health condition. Treat them differently according to some group they're a member of and they will act differently. Treat them the same and they'll act the same.

As PTs, we deal with individuals. Not members of some arbitrary group, individuals. We must never forget the first word in our job title. This stuff is patronising. Nia Shanks expresses it well, she's not lifting "like a man", she's lifting effectively. 

Lift heavy shit, get stronger. Exactly which movements we use, exactly which weight, how quickly we progress you, well that's where we look at you as an individual.

"Do you want effective training?"

"Yes."

"Then you are going to lift heavy shit."

The person may question the effectiveness of this. Runners are especially bad. That's okay, if I as a trainer do not have a reason for every exercise, every set and every rep you do, then I'm an incompetent idiot. Since I'm not, I'll have good explanations for everything you do, and everything you do will involve lifting heavy shit. 

In my experience, gym members have few objections to this idea, it's other trainers who get upset about it. Typically these are trainers who don't know how to coach a squat.

Lift heavy shit, get stronger. All these articles and discussions make gender an issue. Don't make gender an issue and it won't be an issue. 

No tricks, no patronising bullshit. Lift heavy shit, get stronger. 

Progressing with debt reps

If you can't or won't do the target reps, you owe yourself those reps, plus the same again. This helps you progress.

In a progressive resistance training routine, the idea is... to progress the resistance. This is an ancient and arcane truth, hidden from the general public by a global conspiracy, and only revealed to you now by special dispensation from the secret lizard people controlling the world. In every workout, or at least every month or so, you should try to do more weight than you did before. If you can't do more weight, do more reps. If you can't do more reps, do more sets. Any of those would be progress, and you'd be stronger.

The problem is that at some point it gets bloody hard. Keep adding weight or reps, and eventually they won't come up easily, you'll be grinding them out. At this point most people wuss out, and progress stops. This is why the curlbro benching 60kg on his own and 85kg with his buddies rowing it up today will still be benching 60kg a year from now, it's why the woman pressing the 5kg dumbbell will still be pressing it a year from now, and it's why almost nobody squats and deadlifts properly.

Obviously technique is an issue - if you're doing the lift badly you won't progress for long - as are nutrition and rest. But often it's simply willpower. Do you really push yourself, or do you wuss out when it gets hard? Almost everyone wusses out eventually, whether it be with squatting the empty bar or squatting 200kg two years later.

One way around this is debt reps. Let's say you're doing a routine where the simple rule is that if you can do 5, 5 and 5 reps with a particular weight, you add weight to the bar next time, let's say 2.5kg. With any such routine, the problem arises: what if you're unable to do 5,5,5? The first thing is to figure out if you were unable to do it, or unwilling to do it. Debt reps accomplish this.

Debt Reps mean that if you don't do the target reps, you owe reps, plus the same again - a 100% interest rate, nasty I know. You get these out however you can, however long it takes. There isn't interest on the interest or you could be there forever. But you WILL get out those extra reps!

For example if your target was 5,5,5 and you managed 5,4,3, then you were short by 3 reps, so you owe 6. A reasonable way to get them out would be 5,4,3....3,3. But doing singles or doubles would be fine, too. Just get those damn reps out. Chances are you'll find that 5,5,5 comes up without trouble next time.

The Debt Reps approach really comes into its own with things like high rep squats, like the classic 20 rep squat routine.  The horrible thing is that if you can squat the weight 12 times, you literally always can do another rep, the only question is do you want to? People fail physically on the 3rd or even 7th rep, almost nobody physically fails the 18th rep, they just give up. Debt Reps are a good cure for this, since when the person hits rep 12 or so and then realises that if they stop now they'll owe 16 reps, this is a strong incentive to only stop if they really really have to.

If you're lifting weights, try progressing the resistance sometimes. If that gets hard, that's alright. Always do more, when it gets really hard try debt reps. It won't kill you unless your friend is too busy checking out the hot guy or girl in lycra to notice you're pinned by the bench press bar. Choose a training partner with bad eyesight.

The perfect workout routine

..is the one you do, as I have mentioned before. But aside from that, how do I as a trainer design a routine for you? Do I put in dozens of exercises for muscle activation, or give you an aimless session? Of course not.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, 

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

He was speaking of designing aircraft, but the same applies to workout design. People typically work with me for two half-hours each week. Paying a bit over a dollar a minute, clients want value for this money. They could be at home in bed sleeping instead of waking at 5 to come in and sweat. Every moment counts. There's no time to fuck around. I write down every movement which might benefit them, then I put a mark next to every last one to remove it. Having given them a preliminary death sentence, I make each exercise beg for clemency, prove why it is useful and worthy. Typically only 3-6 are left to survive. 

The others are discarded and dumped into a pauper's grave. In this muddy lime-covered ditch you will find rotting Mr Curl and Ms Swiss Ball Crunch, Sahib Dumbbell Flyes and Monsieur Thrusting Du Hips. Many mourn their passing, but I do not, I have my thoughts on the living. 

Some sort of squat. Leg press, split squat, goblet squat, barbell front squat, whatever the person can manage. Some sort of push, barbell overhead press, pushups, kettlebell press and the like. Some sort of pull, cable seated row, bat wings, dumbbell bent-over row, chinups if they can do them. Some sort of hip hinge, kettlebell deadlift, barbell deadlift, kettlebell swing, Ukrainian deadlifts. Planks and farmer's walks. All chosen based on what the person can do safely and effectively, with a planned progression from one exercise to the next, from leg press and planks to goblet squats, from goblet squats with a 10kg dumbbell to barbell back squats, and so on. 

It is not that these other things are entirely useless. Many a set of glistening gunz were built with the curlz, bro. Crunches and Roman chair knee lifts have made much abness, girlfriend. But when time and effort are short, we must do only the most important things. PT income more-or-less follows an 80-20 rule, and so do workouts:  80% of your results will come from 20% of your exercises. Throwing out all but the right 20% of your movements will leave you with 80% of your results; is it really worth five times as much effort again to get just 20% more results? Perhaps if you are a top athlete or bodybuilder, but not for the rest of us. If we have extra effort to spare, we can put it to that vital 20%. If after three sets of squats you have wind left for six sets of leg extension machines, why not do another set or two of squats, or add some weight to the bar instead? Focus. 

This is, I suppose, a kind of minimalism. But it works. Nia Shanks puts it in nicer words than I have. 

Chinese whispers of fitness

The best results for a personal training client come when the PT communicates directly with any medical professionals involved in the client's life. This is because things get hopelessly garbled otherwise. 

Whenever a client reports medical advice, there's a real game of Chinese whispers going on. Remember that game? 30 kids sit in a circle, the teacher gives a sentence to pass on in a whisper. By the time it comes back to the teacher it bears little or no resemblance to the original sentence. So, this is the process,

1. the client does the workout
2. the client hurts and sees someone medical
3. the client reports what they did in the workout, warping it
4. the doctor (who is probably not physically active) listens and interprets this mangled description, warping it
5. based on this the doctor gives some medical advice
6. the client listens to this advice, warping it
7. the client reports the advice to the PT, warping it again
8. the PT listens to this advice, and warps it when describing it to other PTs asking for advice

I'd add that the warping done by the client and doctor will also be affected by their personality, whether active or sedentary. There's sore and there's hurt. Hurt means injury and medical attention, sore is just part of exerting yourself. The active person will say they're sore when they're hurt, the sedentary person will say they're hurt when they're just sore. Thus the active person will make their injury worse, and the sedentary person will never get strong. 

This is why it's important for a PT to communicate directly with the medical professionals involved in their clients' lives, provided the client gives their permission. And if the client doesn't give their permission, the PT probably shouldn't work with them. 

Fitness and personality

I can guess a person's base level of fitness just by talking to them. 

We find hugely varying fitness levels among people with the same jobs and lifestyles. This is because of how much people challenge themselves physically day-to-day. Their base level of fitness depends on whether they have an active or sedentary personality; those with sedentary personalities will perceive any serious exertion as potentially injurious. 

Let's say you're going to work, it normally takes you 10 minutes to walk to the train station, however you couldn't find your house keys and now it's 7 minutes before the train. If you walk briskly or do a light jog you can make the train... or you can miss it and catch the next one and be ten minutes late to work. 

You want to put up a picture, in your garage is a jar of nails. You get to your garage and realise there's a large box of books in front of it. Do you brace yourself and move them, ask for help, or decide you didn't want to put that picture up after all? 

You're at the shops, you need some rice, your family eats it every day. It's $5 for a 2kg bag or $30 for a 20kg bag. But you'll have to haul it out to your car, only 50 metres or so but still. 

All these small decisions day-to-day affect the newbie's starting level of strength, endurance and mobility. That's why you can get two people of the same age and doing the same job, and one can do proper bodyweight squats, hold a plank for 30" and the like without trouble, and the other simply can't. 

From the mind to the body. I can take two healthy people of the same age and put them on a treadmill, raise them to a heart rate of (say) 130, and one person will look puzzled and say, "I can go harder than this, can't I?" while the other will look alarmed and say, "oh my god, do I really have to go this hard?" Physically each is exactly the same, but each reacts to exertion in a different way according to their personality, whether active or sedentary. 

Now, if I as a trainer meet a gym newbie, I have to figure out whether they have an active or sedentary personality. I don't rely on what they tell me, everyone who starts at the gym tells me they're going to work out 6 days a week for two hours a day. 

Injury history is usually a good guide, if they've torn anterior cruciate ligaments and rolled ankles, they're probably active, since they hurt themselves being active. If they've "bad knees" and "a bad back", they're sedentary, the vagueness of the description means they never sought medical advice, they just felt a bit sore one day and stopped doing that horrible physical exertion thing. 

But really I can just talk to them and figure it out from their personality, their body language. Active people lean towards me and move around more when talking, sedentary people sit back and generally cross their arms defensively. Active people look interested when I suggest various physical challenges, however ridiculous, sedentary people look frightened. Ironically, active people talk about how lazy they've been lately since they feel a gap between where they are now and where they've been in the past, sedentary people talk about how active they've been, "I'm so busy!" 

The active person the PT will actually have to hold back a bit lest they get overuse injuries. The sedentary person needs to be pushed a bit, but not too much lest they shit themselves and run - well okay, walk - away. 

I don't need a bench press, leg press, beep test or sit-and-reach test to guess your base level of fitness, I can just talk to you. Personality tells all. From the mind to the body. Only those with strong minds can get strong bodies. 

Workout motivation & habits

You don't need motivation, you need habits. 

As I've said so many times, consistent effort over time gets results. What does it mean to be consistent? It means that working out is a habit. I don't need motivation for a habit. I don't need to psych myself up to put my pants on in the morning, to drive to work, to brush my teeth before bed. It's a habit, it's something I do regularly.

Now, I might need motivation to do a particularly good job of that habit. I might need motivation to brush my teeth for three minutes instead of two, or floss as well. But brushing my teeth at all? I don't need motivation for that, I do it every day. 

The key thing is to make exercise a habit. Ideally, your exercise will be training, you're not just strolling into the gym and getting your sweat on for half an hour, you're working towards some particular goal, like losing or gaining 5kg, doing your first chinup, running 5km without stopping. But that usually doesn't take laser-like focus. Just make working out a habit. 

Sometimes it's better to choose process goals rather than end goals. Instead of saying, "I will run a marathon by the end of the year," you could say, "I will go on 144 runs this year." That adds up to 3 a week, allowing a month off across the year due to holiday, illness, injury or laziness. A "run" is a run, whether it's 1km or 50km. If you get halfway through the year and have done 100 runs already, great. If it's only 20, well then you are going to have a very active second half of the year. 

If you do 144 runs of whatever distance and time across that year, then something good is going to happen. You may or may not be able to run that marathon, or for a decent time. But you'll be a lot closer to it than you were - because you were consistent, and consistent effort over time gets results. This is the power of habits, for which we need no motivation.