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HOW TO STOP BEING A CHRONIC UNDER-ACHIEVER AND
REALIZE YOUR FULL PHYSICAL POTENTIAL

Proven, “best practice” methods to take your genetic destiny by the throat and force-feed greatness upon it

Whenever you're faced with complexity, strive to uncover the common characteristics of success. Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates are about as different as three people can be, yet under the hood, they're all using a handful of powerful principles to propel them to the top of the business-mogul short-list. Similarly, all high-powered workouts, no matter how different they may seem at surface level, also have commonalities which, when uncovered, can lead you to the same level of success as the World's top performance athletes and physique heroes. I’ve identified seven tactics that have become my personal “Best Practices” for workouts that quickly transform “you” into “Super You.” Whatever your genetic ceiling happens to be, if you integrate these practices into your workouts, you'll reach your own personal upper limit.

The First “Best Practice”: Get Organized With The AB Split

The physiologic principle of adaptation guarantees that even if you managed to discover a strategy with no downsides, sooner or later that strategy will lose its teeth as your body becomes more and more efficient at handling the challenge it provides. This phenomenon is absolutely inviolate—you'll never find a way around the law of gravity, and you'll never devise the perfect training method. Having said that, I think the A-B Split comes tantalizingly close to perfect. Everyone can use it, almost all of the time, with kick-ass results. That's because the A-B split is a template: it won't lock you out of your favorite exercises, workout frequency, training method, or loading parameters. Instead, it'll just make them better. To start using the A-B Split right now, just follow these three steps:

Step One: Make a list of everything you need or want to do on a regular basis. You can think of this in terms of muscles, motor qualities, exercises, whatever. For the purposes of this article, I'll stick with party-endorsed kettlebell drills. Here's my list, in no particular order:


Snatch
Get Ups
Under The Leg Pass
Windmill
Long Cycle Clean & Jerk
Military Press


Step Two: Split your pile into two groupings: an “A Session” and a “B Session.” Each session should have a unique “theme” or common denominator. In the example below, I’ve distinguished between a “grinding” session and an “explosive” session. Once you’ve identified the salient theme of each session, simply assign each exercise in your pile to one of the two sessions, like this:


“A” Session
(Grinding)
Get Ups
Military Press
Windmill

“B” Session
(Explosive)
Snatch
Long Cycle Clean & Jerk
Under The Leg Pass


Now you’ve got two training sessions that have maximal separation. In other words, each session is maximally dissimilar to the other. This facilitates both recovery and efficiency, and allows you to train with the greatest possible frequency. Bottom line: renewed progress.

Step Three: Assign loading parameters for each session. In otherwords,what type of set/rep/rest interval arrangement do you want to use? This will depend on your training objectives, and for most of you, it'll come down to whether your goals relate mostly to strength/power/speed development, or hypertrophy/body composition. For our purposes here, and as a way of getting started, consider assigning the 3-5Method (as outlined in Power To The People!) to the “Grind” session and ladders to the “Explosive” session. Another advantage of this plan is that you've got a lot of flexibility built right in. Let's say you have a hectic week where you can only train twice. Just stick with the plan, like this:

Day Week One:

Monday: "A" Session "A" Session
Wednesday: No workout "B" Session
Friday: "B" Session "A" Session


Week Two:

Monday: "A" Session
Wednesday: "B" Session
Friday: "A" Session


Of course, it's never ideal to skip a workout, but the A-B approach minimizes the collateral damage if and when it happens.

If you're one of those twisted freaks who insists on training 5-6 days a week, the A-B split will help to minimize the downside of your obsessive-compulsive behavior, because the scheme provides maximum variability, or what I call separation—a key factor in successful recovery. The overachiever's plan looks like this:


Day Week One:
Monday: "A" Session
Tuesday: "B" Session
Wednesday: "A" Session
Thursday: "B" Session
Friday: "A" Session

Week Two:
Monday: "B" Session
Tuesday: "A" Session
Wednesday: No workout
Thursday: "B" Session
Friday: "A" Session
And so on and so forth...


The Second “Best Practice”: Distinguish Between Compulsory And Optional

When most coaches write programs for their clients, it's naturally assumed that every exercise, every set and rep is mandatory. I find this approach is often psychologically daunting. A smarter approach is to "tag" exercises as either compulsory (meaning, it must be completed) or optional. In this context, “compulsory” means: don’t even come to training unless you’re determined to finish your compulsories. The "optional" designation, on the other hand, isn’t simply a license to skip the exercise because you’re late for your weekly back waxing appointment. Instead, on days where your time, energy, focus, and or orthopedic health are truly sub-optimal, the “optimal” classification allows you to make the smart decision and live to fight another day.

The Third “Best Practice”: Live And Die By The Stopwatch

Like water, work tends to expand to whatever container you put it in. What usually takes two hours can often be performed in one hour, IF you place that demand on yourself. When I write programs, I specify a time limit for each exercise, including warm-up sets. Big core movements are allotted between 20 and 30 minutes, and auxiliary exercises receive between 10 and 15 minutes each. Also, the time limit takes precedence over workload- if the program asks for 5x5 in 20 minutes, and you can only do 4 sets, so be it- next time, try to make it to the 5th set.

Some months ago I mentioned this concept to Christian Thibaudeau and he told me that when he was an Olympic lifter under former Canadian National Weightlifting Coach Pierre Roy (who produced a host of weightlifting champions including Olympic silver medalist Jacques Demers) time limits were a significant component of Roy's methods. In each workout, Roy would specify time limits for each exercise on the menu. When the buzzer sounded, you were done with that exercise, even if you didn’t manage to complete the specified number of sets and reps. If you believe (as I do) that success leaves clues…consider yourself clued-in.

The Fourth “Best Practice”: One Thing Leads To Another.

If you can design a workout in such a way where exercise "A" becomes the warm-up for exercise "B," and exercise "B" becomes the warm-up for exercise "C" and so on, you'll have a much leaner, meaner workout. I call this practice "Exercise Stacking" and here are two examples of employing it with kettlebells:

Example One:

1st Exercise: Kettlebell Standing Press
2nd Exercise: Kettlebell Push Press
3rd Exercise: Kettlebell Jerk

Example Two:

1st Exercise: Kettlebell Swing
2nd Exercise: Kettlebell High Pull
3rd Exercise: Kettlebell Snatch

The Fifth “Best Practice”: Practice Selective Ignorance

Pop quiz: what’s the main difference between you and an Olympic athlete? Genetics? Drugs? Coaching? Facilities? Motivation?

Certainly all of these and more factor into the equation, but I’m convinced that the most significant point of difference is consistency.

Here’s a quick tutorial on human nature: When you start a new program, it’s fun initially because it’s NEW. After 3-4 weeks however, it gets old. So you Google something like: “massive size and strength training program,” which leads you to an article featuring a novel way of training, or perhaps some new training device you’ve never heard of. And compared to the hard work you’re doing now, it looks like fun. So you immediately abandon your former program for the new one. And 3-4 weeks from now, you’ll do it again. And again. And again.

The reason you never make any progress is because you never stick with something long enough for it to work. But if you visit the weightlifters (or gymnasts, or fencers, or whatever) at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, do you think they’re using plyos one month, then pilates the next, kettlebells the next, EDT, HITT, HSP, blah, blah, blah. NO! Olympic athletes do (relatively) the same thing for years on end. Obviously, trends gradually shift over the years—all training must have this type of flexibility that allows for the incorporation of better methods as they’re discovered.

Smart athletes learn to pick their battles: if you try to do everything, if you switch gears every month, you end up accomplishing nothing. Specialization is the key to progress. And the only way you can specialize is to be "OK" with ignoring a lot of exercises, training methods, and so on, no matter how promising they may seem. If you think of yourself as a professional, or at least aspire to a professional training ethic, you must adopt selective ignorance as your way of life.

The Sixth “Best Practice”: Treat Yourself To Free Exercise Time

This is the exception to the previous point. If we just accept the fact that the grass looks greener on the other side, we can admit that whatever you're not doing always looks really attractive. For example, if you're a Girevik, and you do nothing but kettlebell work for 4 months, before long you'll read an article about, say, strongman training, and you'll be tempted to “have an affair.” Which isn't very smart if you've already invested a lot of time and effort pursuing KB-related goals. Or, you might be an Olympic lifter—and like anything else, O lifting can become a grind after a while (it's a sign that you're training hard actually). So then you buy some Westside Barbell DVDs and all of the sudden, your Olympic lifting goals are in jeopardy.

Here's how to stay monogamous: Once a week, at the end of one of your workouts, build in a 15-minute "free exercise" period. Assuming you still have time and energy after you've completed the compulsory part of your workout, use this time to do whatever you like- tire flips, sprints, plyos, whatever strikes you as fun at the moment. This allows you to "get it out of your system" and will help you stay on track with your training. It's almost like having an occasional "cheat meal" to help you keep your diet on track.


The Seventh “Best Practice”: A Wider Net Catches More Fish


As you work through the process of creating and refining your goals, don't limit yourself to a single definition of success. For example, a lot of guys might find themselves frustrated with a woman who embarks upon a weight-loss campaign, only to quit after several weeks, despite having succeeded by all rational measures: she looks better, her bodyfat percentage has dropped, her clothes are loose, her energy has increased, and her blood lipids have improved. Yet, because her weight has remained the same, she considers herself a failure.

Despite this, most guys do them same thing: they limit themselves to a single definition of success (often relating to lean-mass gain or maximum strength improvements), while ignoring numerous other factors that are not only important by themselves, the also contribute to the original goal.

So if your goal is to bench 405 or to weigh 260 at less than 10% bodyfat, stay with that goal, but also consider casting a wider net: also measure indicators such as joint pain, technical proficiency, or maybe even competitive success (as measured by a national ranking in weightlifting or powerlifting for example).

When you establish and track multiple indicators—multiple definitions of success really- you stand a far better chance of succeeding. Take the time right now to establish 3-5 "Functional Indicators" for yourself.

Only you can decide the most appropriate benchmarks to track, but I’ll provide a few personal examples to spur your imagination: As a competing weightlifter, every month I keep track of how many times I snatch 90% or above, as well as how many times I clean & jerk 90% or more. My underlying assumption is that when I reach a certain threshold, a new PR should be forthcoming. I also track my best performances on assistance lifts (back squat, front squat, overhead squat, Zots press, push press, etc), again with the implicit assumption that new PRs in any of these lifts will “bleed over” into my competitive exercises.

As an experienced masters’ level lifter, new PRs in the two competition lifts are few and far between, but I’m able to sustain my progress and motivation by tracking my performances on a range of indicators. PRs are important—rig up your training so that you have a maximum number of opportunities

Charles Staley, Dragon Door’s Fall 2007 “Hard Style” Magazine/Catalogue