7 Reasons You're Stuck at Medium

Hard Truths About Getting Big & Strong

by Paul Carter | 07/12/19

Tags: 
 Bodybuilding

1. You don't keep a training log, dummy.

If you don't have a logbook, get one. Here's why.

You trained chest last Monday. You did 275 for 9 reps on bench press. The
next bench press session is now here. You reference your trusty logbook just
in case you forgot what numbers you needed to beat.

It tells you,

"Here's your crappy numbers from the last training session. I really hope you
don't suck as much today as you did last time."
At least that's the theory behind a logbook and it's definitely what mine said
every time I opened it up. I knew then that I needed to suck a lot less than I
sucked last time. And that if I didn't suck less, then I sucked even more suck
than the last time I sucked.

Then I'd hit 275 for 10, and it'd say, "That's better... but you still suck."

That's how I grew. The logbook kept me accountable to do better. To get

better. To train harder and crush my previous performances.

One of the most satisfying things in the world is opening up my logbook and
trying to figure out what the damned numbers were, because when I wrote
them down my hands were trembling badly from the effort. The other most
satisfying feeling was writing down bigger numbers than I did last time.

If your logbook tells you in six months that you don't have bigger numbers,
then you're not going to look any different than you do right now.

2. You have training ADD.

One of the most unproductive things you can do is study the training of a
super-jacked dude and somehow arrive at the conclusion that his current
training style is responsible for how jacked he is.

Anyone who develops a physique or level of strength worth admiration usually

went through an evolution that molded their training into what it is today. I was
lucky in my early years because I picked up some really basic principles –
principles that got carved into my brain – about how I was going to grow.

Pick this weight up and do reps with it. Next week, do more reps with it than
you previously did. And do this with a handful of basic movements. Do this for
years on end and you'll get bigger.
 And that's what I did. I picked a weight that I could do for 8 reps. Then each
week I'd try to do more than 8 reps with it. When I could do 12 reps with it, I'd
increase the weight.

That's all I did for 90% of the time during my first decade or more of training. I
might have switched out a few things here or there, but for the most part that
was all I did. My go-to movements during those years were:

 Squat
 Deficit Stiff-Legged Deadlift
 Supinated-Grip Pulldown
 T-Bar and Barbell Row
 Incline Dumbbell Press
 Bench Press
 Overhead Press (Dumbbell and Barbell)

I threw in the usual mix of curls, triceps work, dips, chins, etc., but I really
stayed with progressive overload on those movements. I knew that if I could
go from the 80-pound dumbbells for 8 reps on the incline bench to the 100-
pound dumbbells for 12 reps, I'd get bigger. I knew that if I could go from 245
x 8 on the barbell row to 315 x 8, my back would be bigger.

That was it. A decade or longer. These days, you'd be hard pressed to get a
dude to adhere to a set program for two weeks.

If you want to grow, and I mean really grow, then you need to grok some tried
and true principles about muscle growth and select a few movements you
intend on pounding into the dirt for about the next decade. There's no magical
routine out there that's going to suddenly transform you into a beast.
3. You're married to sucky, unproductive exercises.

During my growing years I really hunkered down into a select few movements
and pounded pavement with them for a very long time. Those were the lifts
that felt natural to me and that I really enjoyed doing.

Because they felt natural to me, and because I enjoyed doing them, I made
fairly consistent progress. And because I made fairly consistent progress, I
made some sweet-ass gains.

I bring this up because I must get a thousands questions a month from guys
asking, "Can I do this? Should I do that?"
 I don't know. Can you? Should you? They're questions I can't answer. But my
question back to you is, "Why don't you try?" That's how you're going to find
out. That's how I found out what exercises were going to be the focus of my
training.

I didn't have to ask someone for permission. Hell, there wasn't even anyone to
ask. I didn't get a piece of paper after reading that issue of Flex and start
writing Dorian Yates a letter seeking his blessing for trying a movement he
recommended.

Here are two questions you should ask yourself, though, that will help you
decide – without having to ask permission:

1. Does the exercise have a high degree of potential for progressive

overload? For example, close-grip bench presses have a much higher
potential for loading than triceps kickbacks. If you're a novice or intermediate,
why on earth would you choose kickbacks as a preferred triceps builder when
your current close-grip bench press is a weak-ass 135 pounds? You've got a
lot to work with on the close grip.
2. Do I enjoy doing it? Not everyone enjoys squats. Some people have
leverages that, no matter what they change mechanically, make squats
uncomfortable and hence, no fun. But maybe Smith machine squats or hack
squats or leg presses do feel more natural, and maybe they feel those in their
quads more.

I put very little stock into the opinions of dudes on the internet that proclaim
that those aforementioned movements are "worthless," when I can't tell by
looking at them if they've ever set foot into the weight room.

Anyhow, if you throw the answers to those two questions together, then
you've got a nice cocktail for making some gains. Quit doing shit you hate or
in general isn't productive for you just because someone on the 'net tells you
that you have to.
 4. You're focused on insignificant shit.

I feel bad for many novice dudes that really want to grow. They're living in a
time where there's more information on training than ever, yet guys seem
more confused than ever about how to grow larger and get stronger.

A huge part of this is that sects of the lifting community love to present info in
a way that reads like an excerpt from a Chinese nuclear physics class. In a lot
of cases, if I didn't have a video of what they were talking about for reference,
I'd have no idea what this "coach" was explaining how to do.

Take lateral raises. Do you really think that making sure your pinky is turned
some specific way is the key to fixing your lagging delts? Probably not. I'm not
saying movement execution isn't important. It is. But it doesn't have to be so
damned complicated, either.

Here's a fairly simple way to know if your execution is pretty good:

1. When you're performing a movement, do you feel the muscle you're

trying to work... working?
2. Do you get a strong peak contraction?
3. Are you initiating the start of the movement with the target muscle?

If you answer yes to all of the above, then you're probably good to go. If you
can't feel that muscle contracting forcefully, then there's probably a reason.
Most of the time, it's one of these:

 You're going too heavy to sustain a mind/muscle connection.

 You're excessively dominant in another muscle group that's doing the
brunt of the work in that particular movement.
 You're not initiating with the target muscle, which is probably related to
the first problem.
The answer to all of this is really simple: Lighten the load or pick a different
exercise.

5. You have no idea what brutally hard training is.

"Volume is the driver for growth."

Yawn.

"Well Paul, there are studies that show..."

I know this may not sit well with some, but there are things studies can't
account for. Research rarely studies subjects who are advanced enough in
their training to make training to failure work effectively.
Training with brutally hard effort is a lost art. Not to mention, training brutally
hard is naturally going to limit volume, along with eliminating junk volume as
well. To keep beating this already beaten horse, brutally hard training has
benefits like time efficiency and metabolic benefits you just can't get from junk
volume.

Screw the studies because every study has limitations. They usually even
admit that at the end. A group of college guys with 1-2 years of experience in
the gym that train for 8 weeks literally has no relevance to advanced lifters.
Zero. Zilch.

Instead, I'll show you in-the-trenches, real world results from training programs
that don't seem to fit so neatly into any study, but nevertheless produce
muscle in heaps. Doggcrapp training, for example, has produced more
monsters than probably any other training methodology in play.