Strength training is so incredibly simple, it astonishes me how distracted people still are from the basics. Fitness culture has done an impressive job of overcomplicating this process to the point where we think we need to have a program custom-designed by our own sports scientist to even have a chance of benefiting from it. And this stops so many people from getting started on a practice that has brought more benefit to my life than perhaps any other. Which frustrates me.
The reason it’s so easy to confuse people is simple: results take time. A long time. It doesn’t matter how dialled in your training and nutrition and recovery is, growing muscle is going to take months. And months. And that’s if you’re unwavering in your focus and stick to a clear process with intent for that time.
And most people simply don’t do that.
(You can skip this time limit, of course, by using anabolic steroids. That’s how the large majority of your favourite social media influencers have gotten to where they are. I don’t abide by or recommend this approach, but you should be aware of its prevalence.)
I want to break down some of the myths that discourage people from even trying this incredible process for themselves, and outline a simpler approach in the hope that it might spur you to give strength training a go, and maybe just change your life, as it did for me.
Myth: We need complex, custom-tailored programming to build muscle
The infinite slew of programs out there makes it easy for us to doubt whether our own strength training is effective. Regardless of what we’re doing, there are people spruiking alternative approaches that they claim are “the real” holy grail of training methodology. How should we know who to listen to?
If you understand the basic principles of muscle growth, you will realise that 99% of all this chatter is simply noise, and be able to see straight through it.
First, realise the golden rule of muscle growth for natural (non steroid using) trainees:
strength = muscle
If the first is improving, you don’t have to worry about the second.
Programming, nutrition, etc. don’t actually matter, as long as your strength is increasing over time. If you can build up to some seriously heavy strength targets, the associated muscles will be seriously big. It’s simple biomechanics: Muscle tissue is what generates force. To be able to generate the force required to perform heavy movements, you need a lot of muscle tissue.
Second, realise that the human body’s response to training is not that complex. If you expose it to a stimulus (try and lift as heavy as possible, i.e., at your current strength limit) and give it time to recover, it will grow. It is that simple.
You don’t need scientifically formulated programs unless you’re trying to max out the volume you can handle each week. And this, in my opinion, is a terrible approach—it’s much better to do the minimum, and not have to worry about ever over-training or getting injured. Not only does this take you far less time per week (leaving you more time to do literally anything else you want to), but it keeps your training much simpler to manage, keeps it much more enjoyable (because you don’t have to battle with your body’s own internal resistance telling you to not over-work) and means you are far more likely to keep up your program consistently over the long run (which, as I have mentioned, is where insane results are found). Training can literally take you 25 minutes a week and make you look like a freak in a couple of years. Most people just don’t realise that because hardly anyone has the patience to test it for themselves.
Myth: We need a broad range of movements to work all our muscles and make sure we grow in proportion
Look at any fitness Instagram account and it will seem like there are a million possible exercises you could (and should) be doing to target a given muscle. Obviously we need to do a bunch of movements to “cover all our bases”, making sure we’ve worked all of our muscles from all different angles, hitting all the heads, all the fibres, all the functional patterns, not missing out on any potential gains. Right?
Fuck no.
Strength gain drives muscle growth. Your body isn’t designed to gain such specific strength that the muscle it builds for Bosu ball cable pec flies is somehow different to the muscle it builds for a bench press.
In truth, there are only a few basic planes of motion in which your body can generate substantial force. Build enough strength on those planes, and you’ll build all the muscle possible, in proportions very much aligned with our nature. (Rather than trying to reverse-engineer that process with a heap of varied isolation work, you simply let your body grow as a unit in order to perform the fundamental human movements at progressively higher levels.)
Just improve your strength on each major plane of motion, and you can rest assured your bases are covered.
(How can you believe this with any confidence? Again, testing. It’s worked for me, it’s worked for everyone I’ve coached. We’ve had no injuries and built impressive, proportional, highly functional physiques that surpass anything I’d hoped for when I got into strength training. We’re all pretty stoked. Make of that what you will—but to really know, ultimately you’ll have to prove it to yourself.)
Worse than just being an inefficient approach, however, there’s an insidious danger to over-saturating your training program with different movements that jeopardises many people’s hope of getting the results they want before they even start.
That is splintered focus.
Strength gain is hard. It requires immense intent in training—absolute focus on pushing progress in a specific direction every single time we step into the gym or training area. Without this focus, we are cactus.
When we cut back, we eliminate our ability to hide a lack of progress amongst all the “work” we are doing. If we have only 5 moments to train each week, then there is nothing left to do but make sure we are actually improving at them. Doing otherwise is blatantly obvious to us—there are no more excuses.
Having heaps of movements that we are working on distracts us, making us feel like we’ve worked hard without actually making meaningful progress on any one movement. It’s so much better to have just a few movements that we can actually monitor, give our all to, and make sure we’re pushing progress on.
(See specific movements suggestions below.)
Myth: We need to choose between looks and functionality (muscles vs strength)
With all the fitness and bodybuilding hype you see online, muscle gain can easily feel like a vain pursuit that’s difficult to measure progress on without flexing in the mirror every day. Are bigger muscles even worth chasing?
I couldn’t agree with this sentiment more. And that’s the beauty of strength goals.
Stupid heavy (but someday achievable) strength goals align your focus, keeping you clear and progressing in the right direction long-term.
If you know exactly where you’re headed (for example, a 1.5x bodyweight bench press), you’ll figure out how to get there eventually. There is no doubt about that, if you keep trying for long enough. But it all starts with knowing where you’re going. The one way to guarantee you don’t get there is by not setting the goal in the first place.
The beauty of strength goals is that they are purely functional goals, but they guarantee aesthetic results. In fact, they’re the only way to do so.
The challenge is to find a model for training towards those goals that’s simple enough so you can execute it every week, and know with absolute clarity that you’re getting stronger over time. If you can do that, you simply need to give it enough months, food, and sleep, and you’ll be hench. Problem solved.
Literally every other factor (protein intake, sleep, calories, rest, etc.) then becomes simply about supporting that training progress, rather than being confused (mistakenly, as they often are) for actually driving the change. All that stuff can take a back seat—it’s important for assisting your strength progress, yes, but be clear: without the strength gain, there is no muscle growth. It’s all irrelevant without that one causal factor.
Forget your muscles. Focusing on them won’t help. Instead, lock in with tunnel vision on getting insanely strong on a few basic movement patterns, by doing the minimum amount of training you can that will drive results, and you’ll wake up in a few years wondering what the fuck happened to your physique.
Okay, so how can you put this into action?
How I built 10kg of muscle with a set of gymnastics rings and 40 minutes a week
1. Set Clear Strength Targets
The first priority is to have clearly defined strength targets to work towards long-term that excite you, and that you know will result in the body that you want. These goals goals need to be crystal clear because, while it’s simple, it’s hard to build that strength. You’re going to need to consistently, doggedly work single-mindedly towards them for years if you’re going to achieve them.
But that’s the point. The result of achieving those goals is a huge slab of muscle mass added to your body. And we know that takes time, regardless of what you do. So realise that when you do finally reach these strength targets, your physique will be top percentile. I can testify to this. You simply can’t avoid it.
My strength benchmarks (which, at the time of writing, I’m largely still working towards, about 4.5 years in to doing this properly):
- straddle planche (worked via planche pushups)
- front lever (worked via front lever rows)
- handstand pushup
- one-arm chin-up
- 75% bodyweight loaded single leg squat (for me, 60kg)
These cover the five basic planes of motion: horizontal pushing, horizontal pulling, vertical pushing, vertical pulling, and squat (knee and hip extension, when the whole movement is kept at maximum intensity from start to finish), respectively; and are all impressively heavy. That’s all the boxes your goals need to check.
2. Train Each Movement Pattern Briefly Each Week With INTENT
The beauty of bodyweight movements is that the difficulty of each can be manipulated while you’re training it. This means you can work each of them at constant maximum intensity, leaving yourself barely able to move on the way up (at 99% of your maximum isometric (static hold) strength at each point in time), and unable to resist the descent on the way down (at 101% of your maximum isometric strength at each point). This is an incredibly efficient way of training, because it allows you to go as hard as possible from the very first moment of training, and stop as soon as you’re fatigued. (For me and my students, this is usually a couple of minutes (max) per movement, spread over 1-4 drawn-out reps). If you’re using weights, reverse pyramid training or a single extended drop-set (starting at your one-rep max) can get you close to this same effect, albeit slightly less conveniently.
Regardless of how you train, the key is to lift as heavy as you possibly can, at each point in time, performing only enough volume to be satisfied with the work done, before calling it quits and letting yourself recover for a week before you go again.
3. Measure Progress In Your Maximum Strength
You can check your maximum strength every single time you train, by observing how heavy you can work the first rep. The style of training suggested above involves doing what is effectively a one-rep max test every single time you train. This is what proper strength training looks like: practicing exactly what you want to improve. So it should be straightforward to know whether you’re improving. If you’re not, you know you need to fix something. (That might be more recovery time, more food/protein, or pushing harder with the intensity of your training. Whatever it is, test until you figure it out and start making gains.)
4. Make Your Goal For Training To Be Fun
You want to aim for satisfaction with your training each week, rather than pain. Realise that gains will come from doing this repeatedly for 50, 100, 200 weeks, not from slogging through any single gruelling training session that you have to go tell all your friends about to show how tough you are.
Just send the signal to your body (to grow stronger), then go chill out. The shorter and sharper and more enjoyable you make this process—so that it becomes one you look forward to every week—the more you are going to keep it up. And that’s how you win.