10 Important Lessons
by Charles Staley

We
"gurus" here at T-Nation have been asked to provide our best tips– the
10 (or whatever number of) things that have made the greatest impact on
how we think and train. So this is my list.

By
the way, I've purposely not read my other colleague's lists so as to
not be influenced by their thoughts. Therefore, if what I write here
mirrors the thoughts of others, I guess it means that great minds think
alike. If any of my points below directly contradict what my other
colleagues have written, I guess you'll have some fun coming to your
own conclusions. Either way, it’s my hope that the concepts and ideas
below will enrich and improve your training experience.

Enjoy...


First, here are 5 "philosophical" paradigms for success– what I
consider to be better ways to think and to evaluate information:

1. The majority Is ALWAYS wrong, therefore DO THE OPPOSITE.
I
consider this idea to be my central operating paradigm in life, and
rarely have I found it to not be the case. Even if you apply this
concept absolutely, across the board, without critical thought, to
every aspect of your life, you'll end up better off.
Here are but a few examples:

— The majority of people have no goals. Therefore, establish goals for yourself.

— The majority of people don't train. Therefore, train.

—
The majority of people think that seeing their doctor regularly is
essential for optimal health. HAVING GOOD HEALTH HABITS is essential
for optimal health.

—The majority of people
don't plan for their future, and end up unprepared for their
retirement. Therefore, prepare for your future.

—The majority of people watch TV for several hours per day. Therefore, don't watch TV.

—The majority of people spend many hours per day in a seated position. Therefore, spend more time on your feet.

—The majority of people don't read. You're reading now—good for you.

I
could provide hundreds, even thousands of examples like this, but the
few I listed above should suffice. But let's get a bit more specific
and apply this rule to training and nutrition:

—Most
people "work out" (primarily or exclusively) to improve their
appearance. As T-Nation contributor Dan John has said, establish a
context OUTSIDE of your workouts to assess the value of your workouts,
e.g., you're training to improve your health, well-being or athletic
performance. Or, just for the sake of challenging yourself. When you
train for performance, aesthetics will always improve. The opposite is
not usually true, however.

—Most people seek
pain in their workouts. Seek PERFORMANCE in yours. Look, you know what
I'm talking about. When you're feeling sore after a workout, you have a
constant and gratifying reminder that you've actually accomplished
something. And we crave that feeling of "completion," especially in
today's "fuzzy" world where our professional tasks are often without
hard borders. David Allen speaks about the "soft edges" of today's
knowledge work—do you know why so many execs love to putt golf balls
across their office? Click. Plunk. Click. Plunk. Completion baby,
that's where it's at. It's better to use your performance as a gauge of
what you've accomplished than how much you hurt the next day, however.
Numbers don't lie—if your numbers are going up, so is your progress.
The reverse is not true however—I trashed my back a few days ago doing
something really stupid, and trust me, the fact that I can't tie my
shoes right now isn't a sign of progress.

—Most
people do what's fun. Do what's NEEDED. Once you've accepted that
performance is a better measure of progress than pain is, make sure the
underlying purpose is rational and healthy. Is your incessant desire
for a 500-pound bench press tied to any worthy context outside of just
having a huuggge bench? If you're a competitive powerlifter,
and powerlifting adds purpose to your life, your answer is yes. But for
the rest of you, maybe not. Only you can answer this question, and it's
probably worth some exploration.

2. Paretto's Principle (The 80/20 Rule).
Twenty
per cent of your actions are responsible for eighty percent of your
results. Figure out what those actions are and do more of them. Next,
figure out what the remaining eighty per cent is and do less of that. A
common example would be a workout that starts out with heavy deadlifts,
then progresses to leg extensions, leg curls, calf raises, cable
abductions and crunches. In this workout, the deadlifts are responsible
for at LEAST eighty per cent of the result. Do some self-analysis and
apply this rule to your everyday habits, relationships and so on.


3. Average people who do the right things get better results than brilliant people who do the wrong things.
It's
not about how smart or talented you are; it's about what you do,
consistently, over the long haul. I define "intelligence" as the
ability to make effective decisions. Learn the subtle distinctions
between who you are and what you do.


4. Become your own authority.
If
you're feeling not quite right and you go to the doctor, something
interesting happens. He tells you what's wrong, and now you have an
excuse to feel bad. You're off the hook. You've become a victim in a
sense. Now, don't miss sight of the point—sometimes there really IS
something wrong and you really DO need outside help. But whenever you
seek and rely upon sources of help outside of yourself, you lose just a
little bit of your power. Of course, many will disagree with me, but
this is my opinion, and adopting this thought process has enhanced my
life on every level, so I'm keeping it.


5. Understand your basic personality.
Are
you a driven "A" type, or are you a bit more laid back? Be honest. If
you can't be honest or you just don't know, ask people who know you
well. Athletes are almost always in the former category, and with these
people I almost ALWAYS reduce their overall training load right away,
and so far, this tactic has always lead to immediate (and to the
athlete) surprising performance gains.
Now using myself as
an example, I'm a bit more laid back. I'm not lazy by any means, but
I'm basically a happy person by nature, which is a double edged sword.
Wanna explore this for a bit? I have this theory that most "highly
successful" people are intrinsically unhappy—or at least discontented.
Why? Well think about it. If you're totally, perfectly happy, you have
no drive do you? If you don't have 20 inch arms, it's obviously because
you're happy with your present arm size. Otherwise, you would have done
something about it. Extreme "success" requires a strong dissatisfaction
with things as they are. This is neither good or bad, it just "is." So
if you're a happy, contented person, you need to find ways to get
yourself amped up. A training partner(s) might be a good place to start.
An
interesting corollary to the above discussion: most of us tend to
assume that "If only I could be/get/do/have _________, I'd be happy."
But then you get there and you're not any happier are you?!? Not if you
have any drive. Happiness must exist previous to and independent of
accomplishments. And high accomplishments tend to be reserved for those
who are fundamentally discontented.


Okay, with the philosophical points out of the way, let's move on to more practical issues:

1. Don't SEEK fatigue– manage it.
This
is a big one for me, and it should be for you. Let me provide an
example. You want to have a super-productive training session for lats.
You choose pullups as your core movement, which is a good choice. Now
you've got to determine loading parameters—sets, reps, rest intervals
and lifting speed. Would you agree that the more pullups you can
perform in a certain time frame, the better (assuming you don't injure
yourself)? In other words, the more work you can perform, the better,
right? So what's the best way to arrange things in order to accomplish
this goal? In other words, if you've got 15 minutes, and you want to
perform as many TOTAL pullups in that time, how would you proceed?
Would you go to failure on the first set? Would you use a 5-2-3 tempo?
Would you rest 3 minutes between sets?
In other words, would you do what MOST people would do?
Hopefully
not. And truthfully, if left to your own devices, you'd figure it out
for yourself. You'd use the fastest tempo you could. You'd only do
about 1/2 of the amount of possible reps for any given set. And you'd
probably take short rests at the beginning while you were still
relatively fresh, and longer rests later on as you became more
fatigued. Toward the very end of the 15 minute time period, you'd try
to crank out some singles in a last ditch effort to get your final
number as high as possible.
Oh, by the way, if you’re doing
what I just described, you're now a master of Escalating Density
Training (EDT). Congratulations.


2. More speed is almost always better.
As
I alluded to just a moment ago, acceleration is a fatigue management
strategy– it allows you to do more work in less time, which is the
definition of power. At any given load, more speed means more tension
on the muscle, which means a superior training effect. Accelerated
lifting also has much better transfer to athletics and almost
everything you do in life. It's also more fun. And less dangerous. And
it takes less time. I really have a hard time finding the down-side of
this approach.


3. More frequency is almost always better.
Look,
read and learn everything you can, but don't be enslaved by what you
learn. In this case, I'm asking you to forget all the stuff you've
learned about "Each muscle group requires at least 72 hours of recovery
after each workout" and anything else that even vaguely sounds like
that. It's not that simple (nothing ever is). The mastodons over at
Westside barbell often perform 12 or more workouts per week, and it's
hard to argue with their success. Most national weightlifting teams
train 6-9 times per week, and the most successful teams tend to be the
ones who train the most frequently, by the way. Professor Zatsiorsky at
Penn State said it best: "Train as hard as possible, as often as
possible, while staying as fresh as possible." Training frequency is a
fatigue management strategy—more frequent and shorter exercise bouts
generate less fatigue, and therefore, better performances, than less
frequent, longer bouts. Incidentally, two-a-days are a great strategy
for fat loss through metabolic elevation.
While we're on
the subject, a quick word about overtraining: this is a word to
describe a concept which is intended to describe a phenomenon whereby
training results decline (purportedly) because the trainee is training
too hard, too long, too intensely, too frequently, etc. HOWEVER: none
of those elements is capable of causing overtraining by itself.
Declining performance is simply an imbalance between the work you do
and your ability to recover from that work. This means it's possible to
do 100 sets per workout, 20 workouts a week and not be overtraining. It
all depends on the remaining factors.


4.
Compound free weight movements are not only more productive, they're
also safer than machine-based "isolation" exercises.
Most
people still think that machines are safer than free weights, and that
(for example) leg extensions or Smith squats are safer than barbell
squats. Too bad. Of course, anything CAN hurt you, but machines force
you into a pre-determined groove. If forces exceed your structural
capacity, you can't escape—you're injured. With free weights, you can
quickly modify your positioning to escape injury. The same idea can be
applied to single-joint versus multi-joint exercises. This is why no
one ever tests their 1RM's on things like triceps kickbacks or lateral
raises—it's dangerous because all the load is focused on a single joint.
Another
thought on safety and injury prevention: Stress isn't bad—EXCESSIVE
stress is bad. We need stress to grow. So for example, you cannot train
a muscle without placing stress on the corresponding joint. You must
bend your knee if you want to get your quads to grow—you can't have it
both ways. The trick is to find the happy middle ground where the
stress is sufficient for growth, but not more.


In The Final Analysis...
(And this is my final tip) mastery requires a patience for not knowing.
Not knowing is a good thing—it means you're a thoughtful person. You're
a seeker. I'm happy to say that I have more questions now than at any
previous point in my career. So enjoy the ride while you can, and pray
that you never learn it all, because how boring would THAT be?


CHARLES STALEY is the director of www.EDTSecrets.com.
He is known as the "secret weapon" by his Olympic and Professional
athletes for his ability to see what other coaches miss. His
proprietary training method, called Escalating Density Training (EDT),
synthesizes time-management principles with resistance training,
resulting in dramatic results from unusually brief workouts. Charles
has authored hundreds of articles, several books, and has recently
appeared on the TODAY Show in conjunction with "Men’s Health" magazine.
Sign up for Charles’ free weekly e-zine at
http://www.integratedsportsolutions.com and receive a FREE copy of "The
Unnatural Athlete," a 214-page e-book packed full of Charles’ most
politically-incorrect observations about training, nutrition and
personal productivity.

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