The Fundamentals

This is a work in progress, and so these sections will be growing and evolving over time. I’m starting with what I think are the most important or common topics, but if there’s something that you have a question about or would like to see included here, just reach out!

What’s this best for?

These things will work best if you want to:

  • gain muscle.
  • get stronger.
  • do things in the gym that are useful outside the gym.
  • make the most of your time working out.
  • use the least amount of supplements and substances.

Implementing this stuff

If you’re doing the bodybuilder/bro split workouts that involve mostly machines, a lot of this might be new.

I’ve ordered them from what I consider to be most important to less (but still) important. So feel free to start with the first one, get good at that, then go to the next thing on the list.

Implement this little by little. Health, strength, and fitness should be seen as a life-long journey, taken step by step, built brick by brick. The more we rush things, the likelier we are to create problems. So, take your time.

Effort

If your goal is to maintain the same level of looks and performance that you already have, then there’s no need to put more effort in than you’ve been putting in.

But if you’re wanting to advance in some way, then you need to push your limits.

Our bodies get stronger, faster, bigger, etc as an adaptation. If they’re not challenged, they’re going to stay them same, or even regress and get weaker and smaller.

So unless it’s a recovery or “for fun” workout, it should be challenging. You should be lifting to failure. Once you think you can’t do any more reps, imagine that someone is offering you $1,000 for every rep you can do (with good form). If you can do even one more rep, it means you hadn’t actually reached failure. Can you push yourself through this discomfort? To squeeze out strength you didn’t know you had? If not, then you need to practice that more, for it’s a mental skill as much as a physical one.

In terms of making progress, it’s the last rep or two that count. Let’s say it takes you 10 reps to reach actual failure (which means it would be physically impossible to do 11). Reps 1 through 8 are done to get to reps 9 and 10. Those are where the going gets tough, and where most people don’t reach, because even though they might be doing 10 reps, they’re not doing 10 reps to failure.

However, if you’re just starting to get into fitness, ease into it. Give your body time to adapt to the new levels of activity. A mistake I’ve seen is going from doing nothing to hitting a bunch of high intensity workouts/classes per week, and guess what? They quit after a few weeks. Mentally, it’s too much reliance on will power instead of relying on slowly building the habits over time. Physically, they might get injured or start burning out because they’re not giving their body the time it needs to adapt and recover.

Consistency

Whatever program it is that you’re doing, how consistently are you following it? Do you do every workout, set, and rep?

Do you still through the whole program do you switch or stop halfway?

If you’re not doing the program as written, how will you know how well it works or the difference that it makes?

So this one is pretty simple: Maintain 90+% consistency with your program. And if you don’t have one, get one. Having any training routine that’s tracking your progress is much better than showing and doing random exercises and weights.

Frequency

If you lift/exercise too frequently and your body hasn’t recovered enough by the next workout, it will eventually (or quickly) lead to poor workouts, burnout, and higher chance of injuries.

Do it too infrequently, and the body has begun to lose gains because it’s had too much rest time.

Technique

Any exercise can be a low back exercise if you do it wrong enough.

I’m not going to get into the details of each exercise/lift here, but people are #doingitwrong all the time. Good technique is important because it positions your body at the highest advantage against the weight or movement while also reducing the chance of injury. It makes your body use the correct muscles. People who are constantly hurting their low back deadlifting or squatting are likely not using their hip/core/mid back muscles enough (or at all). People who can’t increase their pullup numbers after trying for so long are very likely using their arms too much and their lats not enough.

First, drill the technique until it feels natural. There will come a time to start adding heavier weight, destabilizing movements, weirdly shaped objects, etc, but that time is not at the beginning.

Bracing your core

Many, many people don’t brace their core when lifting, yet it’s crucial for efficiently transferring force and maintaining spine stability throughout the lift, aka lifting more weight, doing more reps, reducing injuries.

If you’re not sure how to brace, get a friend, and ask them to punch you in the stomach. Being your friend, they probably won’t punch you too hard. But notice what you’ll do when the punch is coming… you’ll (hopefully) instinctively tighten your abs. Turns out evolution has programmed us to protect our organs. That’s the gist of what to do when lifting most, if not all, things.

If you’re not used to doing it, you’ll get tired faster at first. Lower the weight/reps/sets to what feels doable and increase them as it feels easier and natural.

Range of Motion

  • Do the full range of motion
  • Film yourself if you’re not sure if you’re doing it right.
  • If you can’t do the full range, do some sets with lighter weight that allow you to pause at your end range without a chance of injuring yourself. If you’re doing this often enough and at the actual end range, you should notice your range increasing within a few weeks. Keep it up, and you should be at full range within a few months.
  • If you have serious pain or stiffness, it might be best to work with a pro like Ninja Physio.

Free weights vs Machines

  • Free weights (barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, anything not attached to something else) should be the bulk of your workouts.
  • Machines are best for bodybuilders who actually need to isolate muscles to make it easier to achieve symmetry, proportion, etc.
  • Unless you’re an actual bodybuilder that’s going to actually be on stage, skip most machines.
  • Cables can be useful for certain things in certain cases.
  • When you first transition to free weights from machines, it’ll be humbling, since you’ll find that you’ll be able to lift less weight. This is partly because you’re now forced to use your stabilizer muscles and your lifting technique probably sucks. That’s okay. Start with lighter weights to get the technique down, then increase weight as your technique gets better.

Compound vs Isolation

If you want to maximize your time in the gym, why would you work out a single muscle when you can work out several muscles in the same amount of time?

This means push ups, bench press, or dips instead of tricep extensions. Romanian or stiff-legged deadlifts instead of hamstring curls.

With tricep extensions, you pretty much just hit the triceps. But with bench press, pushups, or dips, you hit the triceps, and also the chest, shoulders, core, and stabilizer muscles in the same amount of time.

There is a time to do isolation exercises, and that’s to dial in on particular muscles that you want to develop more. But the bulk of your workout should be compound lifts and exercises.

Reps

If you’re new to lifting and still working on technique, work with 10 rep sets.

Once you’re technique is solid, work with heavier weights at 5 rep sets. Sure, it’s possible to build muscle at almost any rep range, but there are advantages to lifting heavy. Bones get stronger. You mentally become used to it. Higher testosterone levels. And more.

Unless you’re an endurance athlete or doing a cardio/HIIT session, there’s no point to going above 10 reps, since the higher in reps you go, the more it becomes about your cardio system instead of strength.

Lift Standing

Outside the gym, how often do you move or lift something from the comfort of a chair? Pretty much never.

Lifting standing not only simulates better what we’d be doing outside the gym, but it also makes us use our legs, butt, and core to stabilize the weight we’re moving.

There are some lifts that obviously need a bench like bench press, incline press, or in which you’re not on your feet, like pullups and dips, for everything else, be on your feet.

Bro split vs full body vs upper/lower vs push/pull

Any of these can work, and the results will be impacted more by the stuff above than by how you split it.

Even if you had the “perfect” program for you, if it’s executed with insufficient effort, inconsistently, poor technique, etc. It wouldn’t matter. Aside from a program, that’s actually trash you’ll get more out of an “imperfect” program executed well than by a “perfect” program executed poorly.