Single progression is the gradual addition of weights over time.  Yep – that’s about as sexy as it gets.  In a single progression model, you select a fixed number of reps (or time) – say, 5 reps (or 60 seconds).  Select a weight.  Lift it.  If you can successfully lift that weight for the target number of reps or the target time, then add a little bit of weight to the bar.  You can use percentages (1% per workout, for example) or fixed weight increments (2.5 pounds), but what’s important is the gradual increase of weight over time.

What happens when you can’t increase the weight?  You get stuck at 175 lbs for 4 reps, and you can’t seem to get that fifth one? First, determine if you’re really stuck.  If you’re not making progress weight-wise after three consecutive workouts, then on the fourth, it’s time to decrease the weights slightly.  In an exercise involving multiple muscle groups (e.g., squat, pulldown, deadlift), take the weight down by 20%*.  Then work your way back up.  What should happen is that you’ll squeak a little bit past your previous plateau point, then reach a higher plateau.  At that point, you’d repeat the process (known as “cycling” the weights).

Single progression is the simplest method of improving strength and muscle.  Combining single progression and cycling will probably net you as much strength and muscle gain as you can get, provided you use a sensible program.

Single progression is largely poo-pooed by the strength sub-culture as being too simplistic:  “Only beginners use it”, “It doesn’t work”,”You plateau too quickly”, and the like.  Try it.  Worry about the plateaus when they come.

P.S. – Quitting because the weights feel too heavy to lift isn’t plateauing.

*It doesn’t have to be 20%.  I will typically lower clients’ weights by 10% first and see if that does the trick.

If you’re like most people, when it comes to exercise, you use the terms “program” and “workout” interchangeably.  But they are completely different things.

Individual workouts are important, as they’re the building blocks upon which real results are made.  But what ultimately gets you the results you want is not a single monumental workout, but a series of consistently done workouts, arranged intelligently, will. And that intelligent arrangement of workouts?  That’s a program.

Here’s a missive to you:  Stop thinking of your fitness journey in terms of individual workouts.  No, I’m not asking you to stop giving it your all during each and every exercise bout.  What I’m asking you to do is abandon the search for the miracle workout that will transform you from a milquetoast to brick house.  Get on a solid program.  Embrace single progression (the steady but gradual addition of weights over a period of time) and settle in for the long haul.  Commit to improving your lifts a pound at a time, consistently, over the course of , say, a year.  Then get back to me.

“Spend most of your time on squats; spend pretty much your balance of time on bench presses. Every now and then see what you can do on the deadlift.”  – Bradley J. Steiner.

Sounds about right to me.  How about you?  What are your thoughts?  Post to comments.

The surest way to lose focus during an exercise is to judge yourself on that exercise.   Instead, get “mechanistic.”  Focus on what you can actually do, as opposed to your emotional reactions to the exercise.

Don’t think, “Damn, this weight feels heavy.”  Instead, think, “Drive your heels through the floor; be patient; make it happen.”

Don’t think, “I’m not doing this exercise well.”  Think, “Tight on this next rep; go!”

Don’t think, “Boy, that was a tough rep.”  Think, “Breathe.  Stabilize your core.  Get ready.”

Ignore what you feel.  Think about what you can do.

Focus on the movement and not your emotions.  Remember, progress isn’t linear and you’re bound to have some bad days.  That doesn’t give you a bye.  In fact, it’s slogging through that crappy workout and getting it done that will ultimately lead to your best performances.

I’m not implying that you shouldn’t adjust your pace if you feel you’re plowing through a conditioning circuit more slowly than last time or that you should ignore all feedback from your body.  But to allow yourself to self-criticize when you’re still in the game (i.e., still exercising) is to enter into a spiral that will eventually lead to the thought, “Who am I kidding?  I can’t do this.“  And, lo and behold, you won’t.  Not motivating, not results-producing, not effective.

Stay focused.  Exercise impeccable technique.  Get your numbers down.

One good thing about the rise in popularity of bodybuilding in the 60s and 70s was that it got people interested in lifting weights.

One bad thing (”One bad thing?”, the peanut gallery asks) about bodybuilding going mainstream was that it made “bodypart mentality” a part of the training consciousness – bodypart mentality being the idea that you build your muscles by working specific muscle groups with specific exercises, i.e., Curls for biceps, flyes for chest, leg curl for hamstrings, etc.

Of course, this is utter horse sh-t.

In my formative years as an exercise physiologist, I fell hook, line, and sinker into bodypart thinking as well.  Then, while I was doing a set of ball squats one of my co-workers noted , “Hey, you’ve got a nice teardrop in your quad! You do leg extensions a lot?”

At that time, I hadn’t touched a leg extension machine in about 7 years or so.  Yet somehow I’d managed to grow that specific muscle (which is primarily grown via leg extensions as per conventional wisdom) using other means.  It was the first chink in the armor of a theory that really has no basis in reality.

Bill DeSimone said: “Take someone who’s been training his whole body for 10 years.  Do you think you’ll be able to tell whether or not he did preacher curls vs. hammer curls by the shape of his biceps?  Or if his triceps will look any different if he did rope pushdowns vs. french presses?”

The point:  Bodypart mentality is poisonous because it tricks you into thinking you have to work every single muscle with a different exercise.  Or, rather, that it makes you forget that on the main multi-joint movements, multiple muscle groups work – and develop.  In other words, it distracts you from the real work.

I’m not trying to imply Tommy Kono or Eugen Sandow never did a lateral raise or a hammer curl (although they probably didn’t).  But Kono didn’t sculpt his chest with endless sets of cable crossovers, nor did Sandow “cut up” his midsection by doing a 25-minute death circuit of abs.  They earned their muscle by getting darned strong on the basic, multi-joint (read: most productive) exercises.

The moral of the story is: Don’t waste time on detail exercises when you’ve not built enough “material” to detail.  Build muscle using the most productive exercises, and eat to lose enough bodyfat to show the results of your hard work.  A corollary example: You don’t need to do 20 sets of biceps curls for your arms to grow.  Cultivate the ability to do a weighted chinup and your biceps will be big enough (and you’ll have built a nice set of lats and abs, to boot).

Do you know what the trouble is with looking solely at performance as a method of gauging results?  It’s easy to underestimate the beneficial impact of change.

Imagine, for example, that you’re a professional-level golfer.  Your coach tells you to switch your hand position because it will help to prevent that nasty habit you have of breaking left on wedge shots.   How do you think your swing will be for the next few days/weeks/months?  Yet, if you stick through the learning curve, you’ll likely do better at this year’s Masters.

I’m not talking about variety for variety’s sake, of course.  What I’m alluding to are small changes that cause a slight, immediate dip in performance but pay off big in the end.  It’s probably worth it, for example, for you to learn to pull sumo instead of conventional if you’ve got short legs, even if you’ve been pulling conventional for years.  Similarly, while there’s nothing wrong with keeping the same routine as long as it works, why not try rearranging your workout schedule or exercise order to see if you derive any additional benefit?

How do you optimize results while avoiding the trap of the constant tinkerer?  Make one small change at a time, and give it time to work.

With anything involving a change in technique or skill, do yourself a favor and reduce the weight considerably.  Give yourself two weeks or so to allow the technique to “groove in” and to build back up to an appropriate poundage.  Accept that your results may be a little less than stellar while you work out the kinks and press on.

Of course, if anything hurts, abandon ship.

Are you sticking with the path of foolish consistency?  Or tweaking your workout so often your workout log looks like a map of Middle Earth?  Or neither?   Leave me a comment; I’d like to know.

One of my young wards has an algebra final today that he has been dreading for the better part of the last two weeks.  The obvious reason: He’s “not so good in math.”  Now, mind you, he’s a thoughtful, insightful kid to whom most things (in school, anyways) come easy.

Often, when undergoing the learning process, clients will complain to me, “I can’t do this exercise! I’m not a natural athlete.”  Well, that may be true at the moment – “yet…”

What does it mean to be a “natural?”  To the observer, the natural athlete moves with a grace and fluidity that the average person doesn’t possess.  The natural makes everything look easy.

That level of performance can be a function of natural talent and latent ability, but more often, performance is an indicator of the amount of practice put into an endeavor.  One of the more interesting notions tossed around in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” is the idea that there is a quantifiable amount of practice that is required for skill mastery, irrespective of latent talent.  In other words, if you put in the time, you can end up performing at the highest levels, despite not having so-called “natural talent”.  In fact, it’s likely that you’ll surpass those so-called “natural athletes” – unless, of course, they put in more practice time than you do (and there’s evidence that they do just that – making them look like “natural athletes”).

What does this mean for you and your exercise?  That it’s ok if you can’t squat without falling over, or that your shoulders keep popping up when you press overhead.  You just need more practice; that’s all.  Take the time to perfect your form; allow yourself the opportunity to adjust to resistances before you pile the weight on; keep at it, no matter how awkward you feel.  Eventually, not only will you look like a pro, you’ll get the results you’re looking for as well.

So what did I end up doing for Max?  You guessed it: I did my best to help him understand the concepts and made him do practice problems until his arm fell off.  Practice might not make you perfect, but it sure as heck makes you better.

Edited (6/23/09):  In case you were wondering, Max got a 92 on his algebra final.  He’s a natural.

This whole fitness and nutrition thing can be tough.  The newsstand at your local Barnes and Noble carries no less than 10 different magazines, all purporting to offer The Program for vibrant health and physical beauty; and did I mention that each magazine contains 8 or 9 different routines (all different, of course, depending on whether you want peaked biceps or a taut backside).

Assume that you cut through the bogus stuff and stick to the proven basics.  Of course, there can be endless variations on the basic themes as well: Do I do a 5 x 5, a 10 x 3, a 3 x 6, or one set to failure?  Do I work out once a week; twice a week; three times in two weeks; once every 5 days; or every day?  Lift fast, or lift slowly?  Or just let my mood dictate my rep speed?

Let me quiet down the chatter competing for the top spot in your brain and simplify things as much as I can.  But first, an analogy:

If you work a relatively normal schedule, your weekends are free.  What do you do on any given Saturday?  After all, it’s not like you have to go to work or anything, right?  Well, your schedule during your “free time” is determined by an algorithm (or system) you run on a subconscious level.  That algorithm ranks things in order of importance to you (read: priority) and you tend to do those things that are more important to you before those things that are less so.  For example, you might opt to feed your 4-month old before you shave your pet ferret, because having a live baby is more a priority to you than having a well-shaven ferret.

It’s all too easy to succumb to paralysis by analysis and end up doing nothing when it comes to exercise.  But file these guidelines (and the order they’re presented in – hierarchy, people) in your subconscious mind and remember them when you read about the next great fitness breakthrough and are tempted to completely rejigger your diet and nutrition, yet again.

Aside:  You’ll probably note that many of these priorities are intertwined – e.g., insufficient recovery prevents progression – so you could argue that every single one of these training priorities is “most important.”  Keep in mind – there’s a difference between “most important” and “required for success.”  In Texas Hold’Em, betting is required for success, but not running out of chips is “most important” (since if you run out of chips you lose):

1) Strength – In short, train for strength.  In no particular order, here are the reasons:  Form follows function, you don’t have the time to follow Arnold’s routine (warning – slightly NSFW), and (most importantly), when you’re old, you’ll be glad you’ve got that strength anyways.

2) Progression – In short, strive to do better.  Lift more weight this week than you did last week.  Do more repetitions this time than you did last time.  Be a little better on your diet today than you were yesterday.  Read differently: Don’t do the same thing every single time (not to be confused with “Don’t do the same exercises every time.”).

3) Recovery – In short, don’t overdo it.  Stress your body via exercise, then let it rest.  Performing too much exercise is detrimental to your progress; at best, you’ll impede progress, at worst, you’ll set the stage for injury.

Next: Part 2 – Nutrition.

An awful lot of money is spent on promoting the whiz-bang, glamorous image of being fit, strong, and healthy.  What you don’t see promoted is the diligence required to get there.

Here, in no particular order, are some inconvenient truths about going from looking like this to this:

1. It takes the patience of a stonecutter, the steadfastness of a zealot, and the determination of an action movie hero.

2. It’s physically uncomfortable (some clients of mine would say, “It HURTS.”).

3.  The process can’t be gamed; in other words, working out 12 hours one day doesn’t get you as far as working out for an hour consistently over the course of 12 days.

4. Consistency is key.  Consistency (particularly in proper nutrition) will get you farther than waiting until you’ve got the perfect diet and workout plan in place.

and finally,

5. Progress isn’t exciting, extraordinary, or even entertaining.  In fact, progress can be pretty darn boring (”Ok, meat and vegetables yet again.”  “Another 2 pounds on the overhead press – yippee.”).

If it were easy, comfortable, and effortless, then America would look like one big Abercrombie and Fitch ad (heaven forfend).

I had an interesting exchange with a client earlier today.  Actually, “exchange” is too polite a term; let’s call it what it was – a full-on argument.  The fundamental disagreement: We spend too much time talking about the exercises and not enough time doing them.

What my client wanted to do was to bang out exercises, full speed ahead, without having fully mastered proper form on any of them.  She felt that unless she was “feeling it”, the exercise was failing to do her any good.  What she failed to understand was not only that she would derive more benefit from performing the exercises with proper technique, but that proper technique would minimize risk of injury.

Bad form (eventually) leads to injury.  Injury means you can’t exercise, or, at best, can exercise in a limited fashion.   And exercising in a limited fashion or not exercising at all is a great method of getting diddly-squat in the way of results.

I’ve already gone on too long with this, so let me get to the point:  Exercise compounds, just like mathematics.

What do I mean by that?

Can you teach someone algebra?  I mean, just algebra?  Not if they don’t understand basic arithmetic first.  To solve (5x-7)(4x+1) = ?, you’ve got to know how to multiply and divide.  And what those funny little ciphers “5″ and “1″ mean.

When you learn math, what you’re taught at your current level builds upon what you learned at previous levels.  And as we saw in the preceding intellectual exercise, there’s no way to circumvent this process (i.e., you can’t learn calculus without prior knowledge of fractions).   In other words, math skill is compounded over time.

So is exercise.  Not only do you develop more proficiency in exercise technique the more you perform an exercise (more practice = more skill), you stand to gain more from the exercise the longer you keep at it (just ask Bill Pearl – young, and older).

What lets you ultimately realize the massive gains from compound interest are the foundational years of socking money away.

We as human beings are, in general, terrible at looking at the long-term.  We prefer the giddy pleasure from short-term gains. (This is one of the main premises of The Black Swan, BTW.  Yes, I know I’m two years behind the curve).  However, we do so at the peril of our long-term benefit.

Take Home Lessons:

1) The workout you perform today is setting the stage for the results you’ll reap later, so pay attention.

2) You can jump your workout level from 0 to 60 if you so choose; many people do.  But do so at your own risk (of injury and of short-circuiting your future gains).

3) Learn how to properly perform exercises before you ‘take it to the next level’, please.  Pretty please.