Workout selection can be confusing (there are body part splits, full-body workouts, crossfit style puke-fests and upper/lower splits), so it’s tough to find the right one.
At a certain point, the question becomes: what will help me become a champion?
In that sense, it’s all about perspective.
Naturally, training splits don’t lend themselves to achievement and motivation; two crucial elements of achieving your goals.
Therefore, you should focus on one major lift at a time (curls are not major).
As an example, let’s look at the Smolov Squat Program, which I experimented with earlier this year.
For this program, a number of things matter.
Technique
There are three reasons we want to master technique first:
(1) We need to make sure we aren’t hurting ourselves when we work out or perform day-to-day tasks. Feeling better about yourself (and performing better) comes from solid technique.
(2) Proper technique will make it easier to keep loading the bar, and accelerate your results. Even as the weight goes up, you should never lose your technique. This will enable you to get stronger, rather than allow your pursuit of strength to sabotage your technique. The more weight you load, the greater challenge it presents to your system, and the more your body adapts.
(3) Having bad form makes you the butt of gym jokes and hurts your confidence. You never want to be deterred by the presence of other people. For the betterment of your psyche, spend some time learning the proper technique.
Loading The Lift
This part matters if you want to brag to friends, feel good about yourself, or impress an onlooking female.
Once your technique is sound, add five pounds a week to your main lifts. Not more. You want to handle it appropriately and with the same attention to detail. In a way, it’s like the tortoise and the hare – the person who takes time to master the lift will reap greater benefits from the training response.
By now, you’re probably wondering if doing the same lift every workout will beat you up. It’s certainly possible, so you need to approach your lifts with common sense.
Go through three days of training. Vary the level of intensity in each workout.
Intensity refers to the percentage of 1RM (1 Rep Maximum), so you can have one day around 90% representing your heavy day, a day at 70% representing a light technique day, and somewhere around 80-85% for a hypertrophy/strength combination day. Do not try to max out every day in the gym, this will only make your technique worse and will also burn you out physically and mentally.
The key to becoming a champion is having the right amount of focus.
Merely hoping a lower body fat percentage isn’t enough to continue pushing your workouts. That’s exactly why you should master one lift at a time. When you start noticing improvements in the mirror (which you will), you’ll realize it was the right decision.
Moreover, a sense of pride should accompany each lift. You’ll feel confident you’re doing it and not hurting yourself (as well as crushing some ridiculous numbers that your friends will be jealous of).
Remember, it’s about getting better.
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