10 Rules for Steroid-Free Lifters

Following the advice of genetically elite lifters is misleading. Many top competitors have excellent physiques in spite of what they do, not because of what they do. There are other types of genetic freaks as well – those who respond extremely well to PEDs. Their receptors have a great affinity for steroids and they seemingly grow non-stop. Does that translate into the kind of expertise that can help the natural lifter? I’ve been on both sides. For years I coached top-level competitors who wanted to become national champions, but I walked away from that world. In the years that have passed, I realized what it’s like to be on the other side of the fence. I’m now a natural, aging bodybuilder with battle scars and training limitations from those hardcore days. This relatively new-found wisdom has allowed me to compile ten principles for the natural lifter who finds it hard to build muscle. If you apply these principles consistently, you’ll absolutely benefit. 1 – Under-training is more effective than overtraining As cool as some hardcore training tactics look, they can quickly take the natural lifter into the overtraining zone. There’s a difference between optimum work capacity and maximum work capacity. There’s often an overemphasis on methods to stimulate growth, but an under-emphasis on rest and recovery. If you leave the gym and have to sit in your car for 5-10 minutes to gather yourself before you even leave the parking lot, you’ve tapped too deeply into stimulus and you haven’t paid relative attention to recovery. It isn’t very sexy to be talking about rest and recovery, but most of the time the non-sexy details are the most relevant for producing results. Under-training allows you to keep showing up. Consistency is more important than intensity. Furthermore, consistency is the building block of intensity – not the other way around. Does this mean it’s okay to never sweat and to sit on the end of a bench scrolling through your phone between sets? Of course not. But real success is less about “giving it all you got” and more about being able to show up every training day in a performance-readiness state. 2 – Do NOT train to failure After I left the hardcore competition world, I had to revisit dozens of my training programs and write them to include fewer sets, along with removing training tactics that took muscles beyond relative failure – which no natural lifter could realistically recover from. I took out heavy negatives, forced reps, strip sets, drop sets, and extended sets. Not only did I remove these tactics, I instructed all clients to avoid training to failure on any working set. You have to pump iron, but you should always leave a good two reps in the tank on every set. This means picking a weight that challenges your target muscles for the reps indicated, but avoids taking you to failure. 3 – Emphasize both intra-workout and inter-workout recovery You have to balance adequate training stimulus with adequate recovery, both within workouts and between workouts: Not enough workouts per week = not enough stimulus. Not enough recovery within and between workouts = overtraining and not enough time to complete an adaptive response. Intra-workout recovery and inter-workout recovery need to reflect one another. “Inter” workout recovery has a lot to do with proper program design. “Intra” workout recovery has more to do with training within optimal work capacity zones and seldom pushing muscles into maximum work capacity zones. For the natural trainee, establishing a consistent training pace and natural workout flow are important. And this has as much to do with intra-workout recovery as it does with the specified training stimulus of exercise selection, sets, and reps. However, the workout pace should never be forced into specific windows of by-the-clock rest intervals. Obviously, it takes a lot more time to recover from a set of high-rep squats or lunges than it does to recover from a set of concentration curls, but using the clock to gauge intra-workout recovery just makes no sense. And neither does following some written-down instruction to rest for a specified time between sets. No coach can know how close you are in the training zone between optimum and maximum work capacity in a given workout, and neither can a coach assume your current conditioning level. Assigning rest times between sets according to the clock or timer is like throwing darts at a dartboard while blindfolded. That’s not exactly a reliable construct. So how then do you know how long to rest between sets? That’s where the next principle comes in. 4 – Determine how long to rest between sets subjectively Your rest between sets should be self-monitored according to the concept of “subjective determination of performance readiness.” After you’ve completed a working set, ask yourself this question: “Can I do my next set with equal or greater intensity than the previous set?” The answer has very little to do with timers or
Origin: 10 Rules for Steroid-Free Lifters