Value in the Gym, Part 2

Let’s get more specific!

Mark Brown

September 28, 2022

The last 8 months have really given me an opportunity learn from both experience and second hand sources and apply that information to my current program. Some of the lessons have become hard rules that I apply to planning sessions and the lifting that gets done during them. Others are more informal in nature, so they are just information I use to get the most out of my lifting sessions. These are all a little bit more specific so I felt they deserved their own section of this essay.

First, is a lesson I learned in gym this past winter. I had decided I was going to lift Monday through Friday and had to figure out a way to do that while getting everything I wanted in. That included a day at the gym for doing a session that was about isolating triceps, biceps, lats and perhaps some rear deltoid work. Any experienced lifter reading this knows that to get the most out of a session like that all the exercises have to be done at max effort or near max effort. Some of the days that I lifted during the week put isolation sessions the day before a press day. I noticed that my pressing sessions were definitely negatively impacted by the previous days lifting. After a few times, I determined it was because I was pushing my triceps too hard over a 2 day period. I just didn’t have the juice in my arms. When I got back to the garage in March to generate what my current lifting plan is, I made sure that I didn’t press a day after I did isolation.

My solution to never violating the rule is to use all 7 days of the week more effectively. I’ve typically lifted on weekdays the last few summers to keep my weekends free for unplanned events, but I committed to lifting on the weekends this year. Sometimes getting up for lifting sessions on Saturdays has been difficult. I do much prefer to lift after work when I am still warm. My job is very good at getting me ready for strength training. There have been a few times where changes to the lifting schedule for recovery or weather reasons during the week pushed me into a position to do arms on a Saturday, which is the day before my second chest session if anyone follows my training logs. In those cases, I just rested that Saturday. It’s not worth doing at that point.

Over the last couple weeks, I have begun to understand a bit more why it is important to follow the rule. I have felt better and smoother under the bar over the last 9 or so weeks, mostly because that’s when I really recommitted to increasing tricep strength. My lifting schedule has largely been Monday Rest, Legs/Pull on Tuesday, Pressing Wednesday, and Arms Isolation Thursday, Friday Rest, Saturday Legs/Pull, and Sunday Press since March. By keeping the isolation day firmly on Thursday, I have allowed the day I prioritize muscular development to be followed by 2 days of rest before another press day. I believe what I am doing now is the correct way to develop pressing strength and tricep muscular development. By putting the isolation day 24 hours ahead of a heavy press, I interrupted the recovery process midway through. That’s why my bench press, in whatever form it took, was less effective and I felt weaker. I was essentially doing it backwards earlier in the year. I understand the value of pre-fatiguing muscle groups to force another group to work harder, but I don’t see it here at all. Doing it just gets in the way of recovery.

Second, moving from a program where I did the same lifts in relatively the same way for months at a time to one that works main lifts in 3 week waves has shown me the value of an ever changing plan. More importantly, it has shown me that value needs to be at the center of every decision that is made during strength training. There needs to be a purpose to why changes to the program happen beyond fighting the boredom it can cause. This is a dominant theme especially when the focus is raw strength development. Each lift has something specific it brings to a program. It’s easy to get lost in the process of making one lift better. A lifter can develop a dangerously high level of pride in a specific exercise. The primary danger comes from only becoming good at one lift at the expense of the whole. A good analogy for the value here is that of a rising tide. I know I’ve used it in other essays. “The rising tide effects all boats.” The waves helps all of the lifts get stronger over time. It will eventually add up when talking about sport specific lifts.

The wave has numerous other mental and physical effects. One thing I have learned recently is that the straight arm lat pulldown is more effective after doing my cambered bar press-cambered bar hold-straight bar floor press main-supplemental lift sequence. Hell, the floor press has gotten more effective since becoming more serious about pressing with the cambered bar. The straight arm lat pulldown is an example of a lift whose value increases when done after specific lifts or equipment being used. Equipment used for tricep pushdowns and pulldowns experiences similar value increase when paired with specific prior movements. A lot of this value comes from putting into practice the idea of fatiguing the muscle to force it to work harder. The lifter is just using a bigger, full body movement to do the fatiguing. With the case of the straight arm lat pulldown, the lifts done prior to it all place an emphasis on the lats, so that muscle group is quite fatigued by the time I get to the accessory movement. This is just one way thinking like a bodybuilder can be quite helpful for a lifter whose main goal is strength and power development.

It is also how lifters use a the physical part of training to help their intellectual and mental development. The wave forces lifters to constantly experiment to find out what combinations of lifts are most valuable together and how valuable variations of lifts they already do are in a general sense. The intellectual development achieved by getting the lifter to enact change consistently in this way promotes learning at a higher rate. If they do strength training long enough using this method, they will have a better understanding of programming as a whole so they can either self program or have a better understanding of programs being sold to them. Changing a lifting program out of boredom could get a lifter to that point of learning but it would take longer to get there. Every choice matters. Be thoughtful with decisions that don’t seemingly have connections with others. Becoming better at planning long term is the key point in a lifter’s trajectory.

Third, committing to a vision and an overall training structure makes a huge difference. What I just described above is an intentional act of change within a larger established structure. The vision created acts like a long term goal. It allows lifters to take sensibly sized steps towards it. That means both attaining short term goals and retaining the benefits that has been gained from them. The latter is incredibly important because they can be lost very quickly. The body doesn’t retain everything that has been gained in the gym without consistent effort to maintain it. This is true for both natural and enhanced lifters.

The main reason for commitment to a vision is that the results of any given plan won’t even begin to come into view for months, if not longer. It’s one of the things that makes strength training fulfilling and maddening at the same time. The feelings that come from a good muscle pump are easy to ride as long as the lifter knows that they are short term. Understanding that the greater goal can only be achieved by constantly successfully plowing through short term ones sometimes requires mental gymnastics to maintain discipline. Lifters may not see the results they expect to see for weeks and months on end. That isn’t easy to cope with.

This can also become a way for a lifter to become more sport specific. Powerlifters concentrate on single reps of bench press, squat and deadlift. Weightlifters do the same with clean and jerk and snatch. Strongman and CrossFit competitors work on both static power creation and conditioning. Bodybuilders seek to build a stage worthy physique. For non-competitors like myself, increasing raw strength provides a long term goal with benefits that can be felt in the short term. Committing to one of the things I listed here is extremely valuable to a lifter because it provides direction and focus. I can’t overstate that fact hard enough. To get the most out of the gym, a lifter has to pick a path and stay on it for a significant amount of time.

Fourth is something I mentioned in the main piece of the essay. Time and energy are two factors that don’t act in a lifter’s favor during lifting sessions. Lifts and movements that require more energy should be done first unless doing them in a fatigued state is part of the program’s design, which it could very well be. In 2020, I deliberately chose to do deadlifts from the floor last on squat days to really force my legs to work through them and a heavy bench press variant on pressing days. I also very intentionally put a hard bench press variation at the end of chest days. I very distinctly remember those sessions of banded bench press after I had done everything and being extremely hard. There is definitely value in this programming strategy.

Energy loss during a lifting session has a few domino effects. The first one is that each set and rep done on main and supplementary lifts should feel harder than the one prior. The second involves accessory strategy. Accessory lifts that mimic some of the movement patterns of main lifts have greater value than ones that don’t because of the technical value they have. Accessory movements are generally more effective for muscular development than anything else. The accessory movements that have technical development benefits will crazy greater value for the lifter if they are done before ones that don’t.

Fifth, I have noticed a lot of value in minimizing the amount of different exercises done in a given session. It allows for me to get more development of the lifts I am doing during a session than if I did more. Part of what allows me to do it this way is working in the 3 week waves. I could have put this section in up above but it deserves it’s own space to discuss. The main benefit of cutting down the number of exercises done during a lifting session is to get more time with the lifts for that day. The technical work done on them will pay dividends in the long run. However, a lifter needs to maintain work on all main, supplemental and variations of those lifts somehow to maintain skills on them all. This is of far greater importance to a lifter who competes than one who doesn’t. The beautiful thing about strength training is that all choices have consequences, and the lifter can never get away from that fact. So far, the best way I have learned to deal with skill acquisition and retaining is through working in waves.

Getting the most value from main and supplemental lifts requires patience. That’s the toughest thing to get through using the tactic for improvement. It’s extremely easy to do the same things every week for months at a time. The consequences of it can be felt mentally and physically. Doing it will lead the former not to develop as quickly as it could. Once again, this is more damaging to any lifter seeking a time sensitive goal, like a competition or a social gathering like a wedding or class reunion, than one who isn’t. Any delay in mental development needs to be avoided. The former can lead to a lifter becoming unintentionally sport specific or not doing what they thought they were. This also damages development by delaying progress. In time sensitive situations, this isn’t a minor error. It is something that needs to be corrected immediately. Under non-competitive circumstances, it’s just something to learn from so as to not repeat it.

Sixth is about warming up. I have always been the guy at the gym who never warms up before picking up the heavy dumbbells for a the flat press. I will do a bit of a warm up if I haven’t been at work, but I find it to be unnecessary if I have been working. My job allows me to stay pretty warm all day. As a result, I have never placed a large amount of value in warming up for any lengthy amount of time. I’m also 37 with no significant injuries. I understand why an extensive warm-up would be useful for a different lifter. I do agree with Dave Tate when he says that a lifter should be able to jump into their bench press routine without a warm up. My experience has taught me the best warm up is doing a lighter set of the lift to be done, even if that means just bodyweight, or a light accessory movement to get blood flowing to specific muscle groups. Think light tricep pushdowns or lat pulldowns. The major thing to remember about warming up is that everything being done to warm up is still an energy drain on the system. I don’t see any value in an extended warm up for that reason.

These are just 6 things that I have learned through experience have high value in the gym or wherever a lifter does their training. There are many others I’m sure I will run into in the future. The biggest takeaway from the first and second part of this essay on value in the gym is that everything is relative. Value is about finding what works best comparative to all the options that are available. It isn’t about finding what is the absolute best way of accomplishing training or lifts.