[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape, and in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.

[00:00:31] Welcome to episode two of Wits & Weights. This is the episode where we lay out our fitness philosophy and give you steps to take action right away. Strength training is by far the most effective way to increase muscle mass boost your metabolism and improve your health in more ways than you can imagine.

[00:00:50] From mobility, balance and flexibility to reduce risk of metabolic disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It also tests you physically and mentally, because it's hard and that's one of the best reasons for doing it. Today's about getting you moving on a training program right away. We'll definitely cover some basic principles of strength, training, and muscle building, but we're going to save a deep dive into all things, strength related for the next episode, where we'll examine in great detail, why strength and resistance training are so.

[00:01:28] But today is all about action. Getting you moving and lifting right away. No excuses. In today's episode, we cover strength, training lingo. We'll define key terms. So you can speak the language, the importance of training with a program instead of just exercising the requirements to train effectively for strength, the one category of lifting that meets all of those requirements and overview of the movements.

[00:01:55] You'll be. Choosing a program and measuring progress. And finally what to do next to get started this week. First, let's take a moment to define some terms. I'm not going to do this every episode, of course, but I think it's important to get familiar with what people mean when they say certain things in this universe, which can be kind of strange if you've never been in it before.

[00:02:23] So the first thing we're going to define is. Strength is simply the ability to exert force on an object. And for our purposes, strength can be measured by how much weight. That's it. If you're doing a squat, how much weight is on the barbell that measures your strength? The next term is hypertrophy. And I'm defining this early because I know you're going to want to hear about it.

[00:02:50] Uh, and most people getting into strain, training programs, you know, they just want to get big and muscular or they want to increase their muscle mass and hypertrophy is the increase in muscle mass due to. Muscle cell size or quantity increase, but here's a thing. Hypertrophy comes with strength. You don't need to separate the two until you're an immediate, intermediate or advanced lifter.

[00:03:16] And all you need to focus on now is to get stronger. You need to get bigger, but to get bigger, you need to get stronger. Thus, we focus on. Don't worry about hypertrophy. Worrying about hypertrophy takes you down a dark path of tons of exercise, variety, and all sorts of movements that you really don't need early on when you're just trying to build strength.

[00:03:43] The next definition is intensity intensity for our purposes is the weight or load. That's it, it's not how hard you're working or the reps you have left in the tank, or whether you're getting in a good sweat or how sore you are. It's just the weight on the bar. Let's talk about reps and sets and you're probably familiar with these concepts.

[00:04:09] Most people are, but let's just define them. A rep is a repetition or the number of times doing a complete movement. So, if you're doing deadlifts, how many times do you lift the bar off the ground and set it back down? That's a rep. Sets are the number of consecutive reps before taking a rest period. So if we go with that deadlift, if you do one deadlift, you set the bar down, you take a breath, you do another set the bar down, take a breath, and you do this five times and then you stop.

[00:04:46] That's a set of five. However, if you do a deadlift, set it down and you take 15 breaths and then do it again. I would consider those two separate sets of one rep. Now there's nomenclature. When it comes to sets and reps, that gets a little bit confusing for the most part, we're going to use the scheme of sets times reps.

[00:05:12] So if you do three sets of five reps, each we're going to say three by five and that's three X five. If you write it out. So three by five, if you see three by five, three sets of five, the next thing I wanted to find is a rest or rest period. And this is simply the time spent resting between sets. So that you can recover for the next set.

[00:05:39] So when, back to my deadlift example, if you did a set of five and you put the bar down and then you rested for one minute or three minutes or 10 minutes, that's your rest period. The next term, within the last two terms, I want to define our exercise and. Exercise can be one of two things. It can either be the movement itself.

[00:06:07] The back squat is an exercise or physical activity done for its own sake. So by just playing football, you're exercising or running, you're exercising or doing back squats, your exercise. Training on the other hand is physical activity or exercise to achieve a goal. And his goal could be strength. As in the weight on the bar keeps going up.

[00:06:35] It could be physique or aesthetics for some people, it could be performance. If you're. Regardless, you have a goal and then you have to have a plan to get there. And that's the way we are going to operate on this podcast and how I'd like you to operate in your life when you try to build muscle and get stronger and fitter as we move forward.

[00:06:56] Now, the question is, why should you follow a program or training versus random exercise? It really comes down to long-term sustainability and motivation, which is the number one reason people stick to or abandon a particular type of training or diet. If you have a structured plan to follow with specific days of the week, exercises , sets, reps and intensity, it's a lot easier to get motivated to go in the next day and execute you, preplan your workouts, you track your progress. You align all of these with your training goal, which in our case early on will simply be linear progression of weight on the bar and all of these things. They save you a ton of time and they eliminate excuses versus just randomly going to the gym.

[00:07:56] If we want to train for strength, we have to establish the requirements for our training program. What exactly are our parameters? What are our constraints? Because if we don't have those, then we're open to a whole world of possible selection. Do we use dumbbells? Do we use Bosu balls? Do we use yoga? Do we use high intensity interval training?

[00:08:24] What, what do we do exactly? So let's establish five requirements for an effective strength training program. The first is going to be intensity, as we said before, intensity is weighton the bar. So an effective training program will allow us to lift as much weight as possible. The second is efficiency.

[00:08:48] We're busy. We don't have time to go to the gym twice a day, six times a week, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding encyclopedia, or like somebody competing for a powerlifting competition. We want to maximize our time in the. Train the most amount of muscle using the fewest number of lifts. The third requirement for an effective strength training program is progression.

[00:09:16] We need to be able to measure strength and progress objectively, session to session week to week, but also continue to increase over time. There are many exercises and movements that do not allow you to increase the weight beyond a few sessions they stall out, or it just doesn't make sense based on the movement and the muscles being recruited.

[00:09:42] So it has to be scaled. You have to be able to go from extremely light for somebody who may not be very strong or an older person, somebody who's physically limited all the way to very, very heavy using the same movement without changing the movement. The fourth criteria is safety. We want to avoid extreme high impact high stress type.

[00:10:09] And we'd like to take advantage of the range of motion that is natural to our anatomy, the longest range of motion that our body permits. This is a safe way to exercise and build strength. And finally, The last criteria is recovery. We need a program that allows us to recover so that we can continue to progress.

[00:10:34] And recovery means eating enough, sleeping enough and minimizing stress, which brings us back to what is the most appropriate type of exercise type of equipment that satisfies all of these requirements. And the answer is compound. Put simply a compound lift is a lift that involves more than one joint as opposed to a single joint movement.

[00:11:02] For example, when you do a barbell curl, you're only bending at your elbow. It's a single joint movement. In contrast, when you're doing a back squat, you're bending at the knees and the hips you're bending at the ankles. So it involves multiple genes. Compound lifts like these with barbells satisfy all five criteria.

[00:11:24] We mentioned earlier, let's go through them one by one intensity barbells by far, allow you to lift the heaviest. What about efficiency compound lifts because they involve multiple joints. They recruit many different muscles. Therefore you can minimize the number of exercises, reduce the exercise, variety, keep things simple and thus get through your workout much more quickly, fewer times per week and satisfy the efficiency.

[00:11:59] Next we have progression with barbells and compound lifts. We can continue to add weight for a very long time. We're going to use something called linear progress. We're the only thing you change from session to session is the weight on the bar and barbells are highly scalable. You can go from a, an empty barbell or even an empty lighter version of a barbell all the way up till you start adding weight.

[00:12:29] And then you can continue to add weight with the simple use of plates. The fourth criteria is safety and barbells. Really stand out here because with barbells, you can move in a full range of motion when you're doing a compound lift without undue stress on your joints. If you're doing it properly and with equipment like bar collars pins in the rack spot or on.

[00:12:55] You can have additional safety in the event of a failed rep, such as on a bench press. And of course, failed reps is something we want to avoid, but if, and when they happen, you want it to be safe and finally recovery, heavy lifting. Means that you only need to work out two or three days per week as a new lifter.

[00:13:17] And it gives you plenty of time between sessions to eat and sleep enough as opposed to doing five or six days a week of lots and lots of accessory or isolation exercises. It doesn't add undue stress like running or other quote unquote intense exercise. The next thing you might be asking is what if I don't have access to barbells and power racks, you're telling me I needed to do barbell lifts, but my gym only has machines and cardio equipment.

[00:13:47] My answer would simply be, get access right away. However you can, and you have a few options for this. So this, this should not be an excuse because barbell lifts are the way to go for maximum strength, gains and efficiency and all the other criteria we talked about. Your first option is to find the closest gym that does have barbells and power racks.

[00:14:11] And we'll let you deadlift, even if it's just a commercial gym, find one. The next option is to find a more specialized gym like power powerlifting, bodybuilding style, starting strength, gym that is geared toward clients like yourself who want that equipment. The third option, and this I highly recommend.

[00:14:34] Is to just buy a power rack, barbell and plates. However you can hustle. Look for sale. Go to the Facebook marketplace or Craigslist. That's how I got my first barbell in 40 fives is from a kid who graduated college. He no longer needed his equipment. Bought it from him, met him in a parking lot. It was cheap.

[00:14:55] Good deal. Good equipment. Talk to your friends, look for gyms going out of business, man. There's CrossFit gyms going out of business left and right, unfortunately, but during COVID, that's obviously an opportunity for you to find equipment. And then the other option is to mooch off of a friend who has their own home gym and buy them a bottle of whiskey.

[00:15:16] You've got to have that basic equipment to get started, what we will not be doing. And you do not have to worry about on any of these programs. Things like kettlebells medicine or Bosu balls, fixed plane, weight machines, you know, the kind in the gym where you sit down high intensity interval training, medium intensity, cardio, like running, or really any other cardio initially, other than brisk walking, if you love to do any of these things.

[00:15:47] Sorry, you want to not do them during the novice phase here and focus just on lifting. You can incorporate them later for fun, or if you have specific goals, but any cardio you do now will likely interfere with your ability to recover. And we want to focus on one goal at a time. And then later on, we can pull in sled pushes or things like that, that you might just enjoy sports and such.

[00:16:13] Now that we've established that. The big compound lifts with barbells are the most effective way to go for a strength training program. What do we do with those? What kind of movements are we talking about? And what we're going to examine now is what we call the big four. The big four movements are the squat, the deadlift, the bench press, and the press, which some people call the overhead press or the shoulder press.

[00:16:45] And we will just call the. Now you'll find a lot of programs, leave out the press and focus only on what they call the big three squat deadlift bench press, which are found in powerlifting competitions, but the overhead press, the press is in my opinion, an elegant, beautiful, technical exercise. You can tell I'm passionate about it, and it's superb for developing upper body strength.

[00:17:14] As well as things like balance and awareness, it's not just a shoulder exercise. Like people think it recruits lots of muscle mass from head to toe, but it can be a fickle themed to progress. So it teaches you resilience, precision timing, how to tackle hard things. If you can build to a one times body weight press, you're pretty darn strong.

[00:17:43] Programs like starting strength also incorporate a fifth big lift, the power clean. This is an Olympic lift, which is an explosive dynamic pulling movement that you can alternate with deadlifts to keep progressing. And you'll learn about these lifts in greater detail. Once you dive into the program you choose to go with.

[00:18:05] Now, we have to use correct form to avoid injury and optimize. Your results and your progress. There's so much misinformation out there about whether weightlifting or lifting is safe or not. And it usually comes down to people just not using correct form. And in my opinion, you want to treat this like a skill every time you do the movement, every warmup.

[00:18:30] Treat it like a skill that you're constantly refining and getting better at. There are many ways to improve your form. And I want to focus on this just for a minute before we talk about choosing a program, because I think it's that. The first thing you can do is start to read definitive guides on each of the movements.

[00:18:49] I would recommend something like starting strength by mark Rippetoe, which in my opinion has the most exhaustive, detailed explanation of each of the lifts. The explanation of the low bar back squat itself is probably 30 or 40 pages long. And for that very reason, you should seek it out. There are other guides online.

[00:19:11] Andy Morgan's ripped body website, I think has some good definitive guides on the big three. You can watch form videos. Go to YouTube places like barbell logic. Another way to improve form as you start training is to video all of your lifts and then watch them back yourself and compare them to high quality examples, whether they're online or in a book or even a written description, and just continue to find and be your own worst critic, find where you can.

[00:19:42] You can also post your videos online and get what's called a form. Check my warning. There is just to be very careful where you post them. For example, Reddit, although an awesome place for most communities and discussions, isn't often the best source of quality feedback on a form check. So look for groups that make sense.

[00:20:02] For example, I'll mention starting strength. Again, they have an open Facebook group you can join and people get some really good form checks. The next two tips I have in terms of form and technique has to do with hiring a coach. I strongly believe hiring a coach, even for one or two sessions will help greatly accelerate your ability to do the form correctly because you'll get that second pair of eyes who can tell you immediately the 10 things you're doing wrong.

[00:20:31] Can work on, and I've done this several times where I'll just hire a coach for one session and say, I want to work on my squat today. And out of it, I learned so much way more than I would have learned from these other methods. You could also find a good power lifting type. Make friends with the other lifters, with the coaches and get feedback that way or hire an online coach, especially with the pandemic and people working remotely, everyone starting to build their own home gyms.

[00:21:00] This is an excellent option for getting feedback and working on your skill. The way it works is typically you take a video, you send it to your coach and they get back to you. I have heard of coaching where they'll do it live over. The next step is choosing a program. I suggest selecting a program that lots of people have used successfully rather than trying to write your own program, especially if you're just getting started.

[00:21:26] There's no need to do that. We're going to talk about four. Programs, you could consider, there are many, many more out there, but these are four that I would recommend you look into and choose what works best for you. And the first program we'll talk about, which is the program that really helped me make significant progress is starting strength.

[00:21:48] This is a book written by mark. Rippetoe the thing that I really like about it and why I recommend it highly is it is extremely. It focuses on just the big lifts and you will make significant progress. And that's all we're looking for. The starting training program focuses exclusively on sets of five important.

[00:22:11] Not, not for the reason. A lot of people think a lot of people say, well, the strength rep range is one to five and then the hypertrophy rep ranges, maybe six to 12. So it's more on the strength side, although it is a balance between those and maybe it's that kind of sweets. The most important thing is that it keeps you focused on going heavy.

[00:22:36] If you're doing sets of eight or 12, it disincentivizes really pushing the intensity up. Also doing sets of five keeps things simple from a numbers perspective, from an exercise and movement perspective. You're not going to do leg presses or bicep curls. If you're trying to do heavy sets of five.

[00:22:57] Starting strength also provides, I mentioned this earlier, but a definitive explanation, a guide to form and technique on the big lifts on the squat, the deadlift, the bench press the press and the power clean. And the book does go into other accessory movements. It talks about chin ups and even things like barbell.

[00:23:23] Practically speaking, what does it look like? It's extremely simple. When you are brand new, when you're a novice, there are two workouts and you alternate these two workouts over three days a week. So we'll call them workout a and work out. So week one, you'll do a, B a, then we too. It's B a B, and you continue in that fashion until you get to the next phase.

[00:23:53] Workout a is three by five squats, three by five, press one by five deadlifts, deadlifts are considered highly stressful and they don't recommend doing more than one. So it's squats, press deadlift. Workout. B is three by five squats. So notice you're doing squats again, three by five bench and one by five deadlift.

[00:24:22] So you're squatting and deadlifting every other day during the week, then you take the weekend off and you do it again. And then you're alternating the press and the bench. Again, work out a is three by five squats, three by five, press one, buy five deadlift workout. B is three by five squat, three by five bench, press one by five deadlift.

[00:24:44] So the only difference being the press and the bench press, and you want to pick the days that are convenient for you generally, this is going to be Monday, Wednesday. But you could do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And if you are extremely pressed for time, you could reduce the frequency to two days a week.

[00:25:04] You just won't make progress as quickly. It is critical that you have at least one day off between any two training days. This is key to recovery. And as the saying goes, you don't get strong under the bar. You get strong. Between workouts, you don't get strong while you're working out. You get strong while you sleep.

[00:25:25] Now, the one thing I didn't mention it is probably the most important aspect of this program that you need to add weight to the bar. Every time you do a movement, the next day you do that movement. So you're squatting every single cell. You should be adding five pounds or initially it could be as high as 10 pounds.

[00:25:43] If you're brand new and not very strong at all, it might be 10 pounds than it'll be five and it could even drop to two and a half pounds on something like the press or the bench press deadlifts might go up by 10 pounds for quite a while, till you scale them back to going up by five pounds. Now, eventually the deadlift is going to get quite hard.

[00:26:06] It's generally going to be. Far ahead of the squat. And this is pretty quickly like within a month, potentially of starting, in which case you then move to the next phase and you're going to replace the deadlift with a power clean, every other workout. And the power clean is a whole different movement that requires a special skill, and you really have to pay attention to the explanation of the.

[00:26:31] Watch videos get a coach, if you can. It's a lot of fun if you're older, like, and when I say older, I mean maybe in your sixties or higher, or for whatever reason, can't do a power clean, not everybody has to power clean. There are alternatives like doing other pole movements. Pull-ups chin-ups even barbell rows, but this is the program.

[00:26:56] Then when, after a few more weeks and you get the power of. Inc. You moved to the next phase of the novice linear progression. And in this case, you're actually going to add in chin. To get some more upper body volume. And for the guys out there who want big guns, big biceps, chin-ups, we'll do wonders for your biceps.

[00:27:16] You don't even need girls. This phase can actually go on for quite a while and you're going to start feeling it get harder and harder, especially as you push up for guys. For example, once you get into the two hundreds on the squat for the first time ever. You might start to feel it now everybody's different.

[00:27:35] Some guys are very strong naturally. So they're going to push up toward maybe the three hundreds and their novice progression, but most sits somewhere between. I want to say 2 25 and 2 75, by the time they get toward the end of their linear progression and you get to the final phase and you're backing off on frequency of the deadlifts and the power cleans because the deadlifts are just getting so heavy in terms of progression.

[00:28:04] The suggestion is that you start with an empty bar. Now, if you've been lifting for a long. You may be able to start with more weight than that. If you know, for a fact on a back squat, you could easily start at 95 pounds or 135 pounds, you know, your body, you know what you can do, do what makes sense. But the recommendation is to start with an empty bar and then start adding weight because you're doing the lifts so frequently.

[00:28:28] It won't take long to increase to a reasonable level of intense. Now the thing is here. You, you want to be proactive in terms of when you think you're starting to get to your limit, do you think you're actually going to potentially fail one of your sets in the next workout? If you go up by five pounds again, could you then instead go up by two and a half to avoid failing.

[00:28:50] We want to avoid failing the reps for as long as we can, but if you do you try it the next time you try the same weight next. Eventually you will start to plateau. And this is when you're heading towards your intermediate phase. And if you're listening to this and just getting started on this, you haven't even started training.

[00:29:09] So we're talking several months out from now, but it will happen. And at that point we have to discuss things like backing off resetting deloads moving to four day or five days, splits, changing frequency, changing to periodization, all of those kinds of advanced concepts. When you're done with linear progression, but for now, the key is to add weight to the bar, every session and get big and strong.

[00:29:37] That's all I'm going to say on that program. I could get into things like warmups and diet and so on, but go ahead and look it up. Read the book. Go to the website, startingstrength.com. I have no affiliation. I just love the program. It worked wonders for me, and I think it's great for a lot of folks that try it because it's simple and it works and you progress pretty quickly and get bigger and stronger.

[00:30:01] Let's move on to the second program you might want to check out, which is by Greg knuckles. Greg knuckles is the head of content at stronger by site. And I absolutely love their podcasts that are one of the podcasts that I've inspired me over the years. And I listened to it every time it comes out. He also is behind the new nutrition app.

[00:30:23] This is the app that I've been using since it came out not very long ago, it's called macro factor. And I will be talking more about that app in the upcoming episode about diet. But in the meantime, I think if you subscribe to the stronger by science newsletter, I'll include a link in the show notes.

[00:30:42] You'll get 28 free. Programs that he's put together. And they're very simple. What I like about his free programs is he simply splits the programs up by Lyft, the big three. In his case, he lets you choose a frequency and how to put them together. And then he gives you various combinations of how you can do this.

[00:31:03] So if you're looking for kind of a mix and match with the big three and keeping it super simple, check out Greg knuckles, 28 free program. The next program I want to mention is called the big three routine by Andy Morgan at rippedbody.com. And again, I'm not affiliated with any of these. I just think they're good programs, but again, I'll have a link in the notes.

[00:31:26] This again is focused on the big three. Five by five and it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and he has them split up in a certain way. That's explained on the website, he's got some very definitive guides, tutorials and videos that I think would be extremely helpful, even if you don't use one of his programs.

[00:31:47] And then the last resource I'll mention. The fitness.wiki, which is associated with the fitness subreddit. And I recommend checking out this site because it has a bunch of guides on muscle building, strength, training programs, and so on. And they actually have something called a beginner routine. They suggest running it for no more than three months after which you're ready to move on to intermediate.

[00:32:16] It is actually quite similar to starting strength in some ways, because it's three by fives. It's a workout, a and a workout B and three days a week. Alternating workout a is three by five barbell rows three by five bench, three by five squat. So the squat comes last and then workout B is three by five.

[00:32:38] Chin-ups, three by five press and three by five debts. And then they suggest a specific progression two and a half pounds for the upper body lifts, five pounds to the lower body lifts. And then some rules based on how many reps you get, or if you fail and so on, it's has a little more complexity. It also incorporates some specific conditioning requirements, but I think it's still a good program to check out.

[00:33:05] And that brings us to the first action for you in this podcast. And that is to choose one of these programs. Do this today, pick a program, review some of these by the books, or get the eBooks or borrow it, go to the library, whatever it takes, learn about them. There's plenty of information online and then figure out how you're going to track your.

[00:33:31] The simplest way is just use a notebook. I do love technology. So there are apps out there like strong or stacked or train heroic. If you're working with a coach to track. Now that you've chosen a program and have a way to track it. I'd like you to consider measuring progress, taking a baseline, and then measuring yourself going forward.

[00:33:54] Since you're just getting started, it'll be an excellent resource to look back on in the. And to do this first, I would suggest taking some before photos, then take some before measurements. Now I think these are a bit more important for tracking progress, and these would include your weight, your waist, your chest, your biceps, and your thoughts.

[00:34:19] You can use something like the Mio tape and I'll include a link in the show notes. And this allows you to measure yourself without the help of someone else. And I suggest taking measurements now and then every week and write them down or use a spreadsheet. Now I want to give you a couple of bonus tips that are important before we recap the episode and talk about your plan.

[00:34:43] When building muscle, you must eat enough to gain weight. If you do not eat enough, everything else we talked about will be somewhat of a waste of time. You're just not going to make gains. Yes. If you're totally new to this, you will gain initial strength through what's called neuromuscular Adams. And you'll even gain muscle and lose fat because you've never lifted heavy things before, but that will plateau quickly enough without enough food.

[00:35:15] We'll be talking about diet in episode five, but at a minimum to start, just make sure your weight every week is going up. Not down second. You must get enough sleep to recover. And don't do silly things like long distance running or other physical activities that will exhaust you and prevent you from coming into the gym.

[00:35:37] The next session, adding weight to the bar and hitting all your reps. This will only slow you way down. Let's recap. And talk about your plan of action. We talked about the requirements for an effective strength training program. Why compound lifts are the most efficient way to do. And they satisfy all of those criteria and the best programs for getting started.

[00:36:04] Here's what you'll do next first, choose a program. Second, get access to a barbell third, get a notebook or download a workout app to track. Fourth, take initial body measurements and repeat every week, fifth start training right away. Get under a barbell in our next episode, we'll talk about why we care so much about strength in episode four, we'll cover cardio fat loss and metabolism.

[00:36:36] Episode five. We'll discuss how to approach your diet without going on a. And in episode six, we talk about developing systems and habits to put your fitness on autopilot. 

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Thanks very much for joining me today. 

To view the show notes and a recap of today’s episode, head over to podcast.witsandweights.com.

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Thanks again for joining me, Philip Pape, in this episode of Wits and Weights. I’ll see you next time. Stay strong.