In another recent conversation, this time on the social medias, I offered a framework for how I think about fitness training, which for me these days is mostly weightlifting, but also includes much walking and some other cardio and mobility work. I thought it might be useful to develop those ideas a little bit more and share my goals and my approach with this audience.
My Current Fitness “Goals”
As I recently shared in the What About Happiness post, I’m not the biggest fan of goals, per se, but it works well enough as a heading.
Early last year, February 28, to be precise, I had one of those moments in which I discovered that my ongoing rationalizations were bullshit. Specifically, I had been focusing on a specific strength goal, at the expense of overall fitness for about a year. And I’d gotten FAT. Not like Chris Farley fat, but more like John Belushi fat. Of course, I had rationalized that a little fat was to be expected when chasing a strength goal. And also, one can eat one’s way into a bigger bench press – weight gain translates very well to strength on that particular lift for most people. On that day I was up in the DC area for a dinner with some friends. The afternoon before the dinner, I went to the gym with one of my friends for a deadlift workout. I pulled a solid single, given my lack of focus on that lift at the time. But my friend Jack called me out – “nice pull, fat boy.” And he was right. The pull was ok, but damn, I was way fatter than I should have been.
The next day, I stepped on the scale. 252. I’m 5 ft 10 and I’m reasonably muscular from many years of lifting. But this was not good. And I had scheduled an anniversary cruise for July 31 with my wife. Being fat for cruise would definitely not be good. It was time to reframe and get serious.
What started as “I’m going to get as close to having abs as possible before cruise” quickly evolved into “I’m turning 52 this year. I’m fat. I have one chance to get in as good of physical shape as possible and then hang on for all I’m worth.” Later in the fall, witnessing some people close to me struggle with mobility issues and an injury from a fall, the importance of being fit and resilient came into very clear focus. In my teens and 20s, I think I overvalued physical fitness and undervalued mental and moral fitness. During my 30s and 40s, I think I mostly undervalued physical fitness, but made great progress on the moral and mental. It has now become clear to me that physical fitness is now at least as important to the pursuit of Eudaemonia as the moral and mental. The circle of life has come around, carrying with it added experience and a more mature perspective.
I started March 1, managing my own nutrition and exercise plans. Then with about 10 weeks to go before cruise, I got nutrition help from an IFBB Pro Figure competitor at our gym. By the time we left for our cruise, I had lost 30 pounds of fat. I’d probably also put on about 7-8 pounds of muscle. Didn’t quite get to a 6-pack. But we’ll call getting from a keg to a 2-pack progress. And I felt bold and confident on cruise, at the spa, and on South Beach. It was good to feel like the “in shape guy” again.
After cruise, having just turned 52, I decided to test my deadlift again. I just wanted to see if I could still pull 10x my age. And it went up smoothly. So I added specific deadlift programming to my routine. If I could pull within 30 pounds of my lifetime best, 6 months after my last deadlift, well, then maybe it’s worth actually training the lift to see where I can take it. You know, one last time.
From January to July, I had been dealing with some shoulder issues in the shoulder I’d had repaired in 2016. Between the shoulder pain and the weight loss, my bench numbers collapsed. I finally saw an ortho doc in July, who helped me manage the pain so I could sleep through the night again, just in time for vacation. But his initial diagnosis of a rotator cuff tear wasn’t encouraging. Luckily, since then, I saw another ortho doc – and though there is a very minor tear, surgery isn’t required, and with a return to my rehab exercises, the shoulder feels better, and my strength is back as well. So, I added a bench press goal to my plan and started programming for that as well. You know, one last time.
So here we are on the back side of the holidays, and there was a bit of food binging and a few pounds of fat regained. Not a big deal, since it will be gone in a couple of weeks. But it’s time to recenter on goals again.
Long Term Goal: Get in as good of shape as I can this year, within the demands of the rest of my life, and build the discipline and habits to maintain/improve it for as long as possible. How I define this is roughly:
- Sub 12% bodyfat (visible abs), to me, this is a marker of strong metabolic health and nutritional discipline, both of which are preventive for metabolic disease later in life (the deadly combo of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s)
- Maintain strength within 10% of lifetime best and set new lifetime PRs on specific lifts. Maintain high lean muscle mass. For me, these are both important for maintaining the ability to participate fully in daily life as we age, and protective against falls and injuries in later life.
- Get resting heart rate back under 60. Strong cardiovascular health supports avoiding metabolic disorders and also supports maintaining an active lifestyle
- Return to running /jogging. I haven’t done these in many years, for a combination of reasons. But I used to enjoy them, and I don’t think I can be a fully capable dad and husband if I can’t run after dogs, grandkids (someday), or bad guys
Short-term Goals. Train specifically to hit lifetime strength goals in the bench press and the deadlift. Potentially compete in a master’s powerlifting meet in May. This will depend on a few factors. Not really important, but a nice to have.
Scott’s Hierarchy of Fitness Priorities. This is the real meat of the post I set out to write, despite the long pre-amble. I am frequently asked by both young gym-goers and peers how I approach training. The younger folks are usually looking for the ‘secret’; the more seasoned folks know the ‘secret’ doesn’t exist – so they ask for the ingredients. As fitness social media is full of top 3/5/10 things to do to achieve X type posts, I thought I’d take a little more general view of fitness and share what I think are the most important things to get right.
Here are what I view as the five most important ways to think about building and maintaining fitness:
1 (most important): Consistency. Don’t miss days. Even if you have to modify/scale back, don’t miss days. This isn’t to say that sometimes, due to life, illness, or injury, that wisdom won’t dictate that a day off is in order. But it does mean that discipline over long periods of time will win the game. As an example, Michael Phelps, after he became an Olympic champion, had a five-year period where he was in the pool at least once every single day. Every. Single. Day. The day after the Olympics? In the pool. Christmas day? In the pool. Every single day. This requires a certain mindset that seems to elude many people these days – discipline. One doesn’t have to want to do the work. One doesn’t have to feel motivated to go do today’s workout. One simply has to have the discipline to do what is necessary. It’s what adults do – we delay gratification because we know that the end result is better in the long run, for us and for those we care about. Be consistent.
Boatloads of progress are lost by people switching up their programs every month or two and switching up their nutrition four times a year or more (bulk/cut cycles). Once you have a program that aligns reasonably well with your goals (see below), stick with that program exactly as written for a year. After a year, you might be smart enough to make one minor change. A big part of consistency is allowing the process to work. Once the beginner gains are done, progress won’t be linear. Plateaus will happen. And you will delay or stall your progress more by changing a bunch of stuff all at once than by staying consistent and boring, doing the damn sets and reps, and letting the process do the work of breaking that plateau for you. When you become advanced enough to need advanced/elite training methods, you will know it. And it’s a lot later in the training journey than most people think. When the young guys in the gym ask, “how did you get that strong at bench press?” my answer is always the same. Five pounds at a time for many years. Be consistent. Effective training is almost always boring and repetitive.
2- Recovery. In my social media post, this was the nutrition section, but I think that was too narrow. Recovery includes sleep, nutrition, mobility, hot/cold treatment, body work, etc. Sleep – if your sleep is dysfunctional, it will severely limit your potential in every area of your life. It’s that important. Get a study and get it fixed. Nutrition. In our 20s, we could outrun the fork. In our 50s, we can’t. Good nutrition will improve progress more than anything else except fixing sleep. The beginners and intermediates in the gym talk about which program they do; the advanced guys and the big guys talk about nutrition. Mobility – have enough mobility to support good technique (see below) and prevent injury. If you don’t know where to start, go to a yoga class or google “Kelly Starrett Supple Leopard.” The others (hot/cold, body work) are mostly fine-tuning. If you discover that they help, and you have access to them, go for it!
3- Technique. Especially for people new to the weight room: let strength be a byproduct of practicing good technique. Because good technique will not happen whilst practicing strength. Be careful here. A lot of famous trainers are terrible and teach injurious techniques and exercises. Likewise, a lot of the instructional videos on the internet are terrible. See my How to Select a Personal Trainer post to increase your odds of getting good coaching. Perhaps I should consider a How to Find Good Fitness Advice on the Internet post, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go down that rabbit-hole. DM me if you want specific recommendations. There are some useful universal principles for good technique.
- In lifting, like in boxing, all power starts from the floor. Build tightness from the floor up anytime you are lifting and your feet are touching the floor.
- Likewise, learn how to brace your core – you can’t transmit force effectively through a shock absorber.
- Learn how to grip the bar properly – this fixes a multitude of downstream problems, especially in the bench press.
- Gravity acts 100% vertically – whenever possible stack the weight and your joints to apply force to the bar 100% vertically.
- Know the difference between normal lifting movements and ballistic movements and keep these separate. Don’t try to make a curl a ballistic movement; don’t try to do slow-motion kettlebell swings.
Developing technique is a continuous process of attention to detail and learning. Roughly, it follows three phases. Beginners learn how to move the weight through a desired path of motion and develop the neuro-muscular coordination to generate efficient movement. Intermediate lifters learn how to apply the principles above to move their body through the desired range of motion and generate intensity to develop strength and muscle growth. Advanced lifters learn how to use the weight as a tool to put tension on the muscles in a specific way to generate a specific training stimulus in order to cause the muscle to adapt in the desired way. For a great example of this advanced intentionality in lifting, follow Mike O’Hearn on Instagram.
Make every single rep as technically masterful as you can. Use the best technique you can achieve on every rep of every set, especially warm-up sets. You can do one thing under light loads than you can’t do effectively under loads over about 85% of max – think. When the weight gets heavy, and you can’t think about more than one technique cue, your body will do what you taught it to do during all of your other sets. If you taught it to be sloppy during warm-ups, you will get sloppy under heavy loads. When you get sloppy under heavy loads, you will get injured. When you get injured, you blow up your consistency. When you blow up your consistency, you lose months or years of progress. Make every single rep, especially your warm-ups, as technically masterful as possible.
4- Intensity. Be intentional in your training. This can be hard sometimes, because effective training is almost always boring and repetitive. Learn how to generate brief periods of great intensity when the program calls for it. And learn how to turn it back off between sets. For cardio, learn how to focus on technique while hitting your HR zone with precision. Make it a game.
5- Programming. This is the sets and reps, the miles/yards/HR/intensity/intervals. Unless you have very specific goals in a particular domain (like a national level or higher competition), it matters way less than most people think. Find or build a program that aligns reasonably well with your goals and use it as the framework for doing 1-4. There are thousands of good enough programs for free on the internet and probably also thousands of great ones. Don’t major in the minors here. And don’t switch programs or nutrition plans until it is really necessary. See consistency above.
Conclusion. If you have a clear view of the purpose behind your fitness journey, and make actionable goals that align with that purpose, this hierarchy of priorities may be useful as you do the work, with discipline and intensity, necessary to improve your fitness, your lifespan and your healthspan.
In strength – S