The Death of Gym Programming
The best part about training constantly at your maximum strength capacity is that it simplifies every other aspect of your training, making the need for programming almost obsolete.
Traditional gym programs (the effective ones) aim at target sets and reps, prescribing a weekly amount of work based on what has been shown to lead to gains in the past.
But having target sets and reps, while well intentioned, only serves to get in the way of gaining strength and muscle.
Why?
Because it’s not the thing that matters.
When we tell someone to hit a certain number of sets and reps each week, we’re taking our observations of what has appeared to work in the past, and now setting that as their goal.
But there’s a huge problem with this: It’s entirely missing the point.
Volume (the amount of “work” you do each week) is not the thing that drives strength gain.
Yes, we need to do some work to stimulate our body to grow. Volume needs to exist.
But it’s secondary to something far more important.
The Core Factor That Drives All Gains
What drives strength gain (and therefore muscle growth and therefore long term leanness and a great physique) is intentional, maximum-effort contraction of your muscles against as much resistance as you can physically handle. That is how you build strength.
And it follows that if we’re in the business of making as many gains as possible, we’d want every bit of our focus and attention to be channelled solely towards that maximum-intensity effort.
If, instead, you’re focused on meeting a certain set or rep target, then suddenly you’re no longer giving 100% effort to the intensity of your strength training. Instead you’re thinking about making sure you hit your reps, and have enough energy in the tank to carry that effort across your remaining sets.
“Better not push too hard, I’ve got 4 more sets to go!”
“Better not go too heavy, or I’ll never be able to hit my reps.”
It doesn’t matter what you consciously tell yourself. That’s how your body is going to subconsciously operate.
The result of this approach is watered-down training sessions paired with the unnecessary stress of having to meet certain workload demands.
An Alternate Approach to Training Volume
What if, instead of 3 exercises for 3 sets of 10 reps each, my volume goal was just “as much as I want to do?”
What if we removed the need to get any specific amount of work in, and just said, “Push as hard as you can.” “See if you can demonstrate more strength than you did last week on this movement.”—and just focused on that?
Our bodies are smarter than we often give them credit for. Rather than being lazy pieces of junk that don’t want us to get in shape, what if we’re often just expecting too much of them, and being impatient regarding the time it takes to adapt? (Newsflash: You can’t get ripped in a week. I might only train for 20 minutes a week and have my dream physique, but it still took me 7 years to get here. There are no shortcuts to the adaptation cycle.)
I’ve learned that my body is more than happy to exert crazy impressive efforts of force generation, and adapt and grow stronger and leaner at an impressive rate (as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone in the world who’s not using steroids), if I don’t ask it to do a crazy amount of work each week.
Do As Much (Or As Little) As You Want
My breakthrough in training happened when I took away all demands for weekly volume and just said “Fuck it, let’s do ONE effort of maximum strength, and then stop as soon as we want to.”
That’s what led to my greatest gains, my lifetime goal body, and the program I currently use and teach which require <40 minutes a week of training and gets us all the best results I’ve ever seen.
All while loving every minute of training!
If you’re currently grinding away trying to finish a gruelling weekly training program, and sometimes you find yourself thinking, “Why I am doing this, is this final session / set / rep really necessary?” then maybe you’re asking the right question.
Our bodies are trying to tell us the perfect training volume. We just need to learn to listen.
How to Hit the Perfect Training Volume Every Week
1. Define the movements you want to get stronger on. Ideally just a handful covering your basic planes of motion.
2. Commit to doing ONE maximum effort using all the strength you have, going as heavy as possible, each week, for each movement. Approach this as one continuous set.
(If you’re using weights, you’ll want to start with your 1 rep max and reduce the weight as you fatigue—i.e., use drop-sets—which I’d recommend doing with a spotter. For this reason, gymnastics rings are easier and safer for most people.)
3. When you feel you’ve done enough work, or can’t push with all your heart at 100% effort anymore… call it a day! Your body’s had enough to be stimulated to grow stronger.
For me this usually takes a couple of minutes per movement, somewhere between 1-4 reps (depending on speed of those reps, how heavy I make them at each point throughout the range of motion, etc.)
Try this approach, and I guarantee you won’t look back on traditional sets and reps any more.
They’re a crude way of trying to achieve what your body knows to a far more accurate degree.
If you can learn to listen.