Fuck The Bottom, We Belong At The Top: Hooligans Abound!

A couple of months ago, I started offering training consultations with the idea that there were some people out there who just needed a bit of help to get them out of shit and into suck.  Or out of suck and into ok.  In any event, I thought there were a few proud individuals out there who might brave my wrath and acerbic wit to get a big of training advice.  Surprisingly, there were, and the results were even better than I had anticipated- there are a couple of your brave fuckers out there who are quite good at listening to my sage advice and picking up heavy shit.

One of these courageous individuals is Joe, a dude who came to me with a physique already in pretty good stead.  Though some of you might think that this is cheating for me, I’m not sorry to report that you might be mentally retarded.  People who’ve already been training a while and who have had a reasonable amount of success are some of the hardest people to convince they’ve been fucking up.  As such, this is proof of my immense skill, as this dude went from pretty damn good to fucking awesome inside of two months.  Bear witness to the glory that is my coaching skill.

Alrighty, give the peeps a bit of a background on yourself. I know you live in the wilderness and have a longer daily commute to work than I have two and from work in a week. Beyond that, hit us with with you relevant stats- height, weight, age, years you’ve been training, etc, along with your best lifts prior to kicking this bitch off.

Yeah, I live in a small town on the Eastern Shore of MD. Mostly farm-land. Long-ass commute. Work a desk job during fairly standard hours. Recently bought my own house and assembled a home gym so I could train whenever the hell I wanted. Decided to consult with you to give me a new perspective on training and I knew I would end up learning a lot from you. Somewhat obsessed with the strict press and chasing the feats of those like Saxon and Maxick.

24y/o, 5-10”, 189lbs, 6 years training (with the obligatory first year or so being complete fucking about).

Previous Best Lifts
Strict Press– 205lb
BTN Strict Press (Klokov Press)– 185lb
Squat– 352
Bench– 253×5
Deadlift– 420×4 (single set to failure)

And what are your stats now?

Weight is hovering around 185lb, as far as composition changes, bodyfat has dropped a good bit along with some muscle gain. You’ve seen the pics. I will provide more, though.

Current Best Lifts
Strict Press– 212lb
BTN Strict Press– 200lb
Squat– 387lb
Bench– 300lb x2
Deadlift– 418lb x18 reps (singles, within 30min workout)

Also, pull-ups have increased like crazy, I can bang out sets of 20 now, whereas I was previously struggling with 10.

Not too shabby!  Those are some sick increases in a month.  To what do you attribute your rapid progress (other than my genius, of course)?

I think the major factor was that I was busting my ass in the gym basically every day (minus the 1 rest day per week). I’d never trained with that sort of frequency in the past. It was the hard work and diligence toward the goal, that your program instilled in me. I think that’s the key.

We messed with your diet a bit, as I recall.  Nothing too crazy, but just increasing the protein.  By and large, you’re doing the APD, right?  Tell the people about your diet, as with those abs they’re definitely going to ask.

My stint on the APD was rather short actually. Less than 2 week, right at the beginning of the consult. I gave it an honest shot, but I tolerate carbs rather well and made much better progress with them in the diet, so I immediately returned to the diet that has worked well for me. I actually wrote a decent article about the diet on my blog, so its probably easiest to just link that somewhere [how about right here: http://circastrength.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-biorhythm-diet_18.html.. Although im sure there will be questions regardless.

No cardio of any kind as you leaned out, correct?

No cardio whatsoever.

Good man.  You’ve made huge gains in the last couple of months- are your goals changing as you progress, or are they pretty much the same?

Goals are still exactly the same, continue getting stronger & leaner. I want to look like I eat sheet metal and shit nails. The goal is simple, become the baddest motherfucker my body will allow.

What would you say was your biggest takeaway from the training consult/program redesign?

My biggest take-away is that I can train more often and heavier than I let myself believe was possible. Most days I was sore, certain body-parts always ached, but I just went ahead and trained anyway. To my surprise, the gains kept coming quickly. It came down to trusting the plan you designed and working as hard as possible on that particular day.

Yeah, you definitely seemed to enjoy a hell of a lot of rep work, and as I recall were fairly skeptical dropping the reps would work.  Any words of wisdom to impact on the slavering beasts reading this thing?

The point I want to drive home is that more work nets more results, at least in my experience.

… Which is exactly what I’ve been saying all along.  Check out Joe’s blog here to keep up on his progress.  At the risk of divulging all of my amazing training secrets, I’m not going to give out the exact details of the program Joe used, but you can rest assured it involved six days a week of training, a lot of volume, a lot of Joe busting his ass, and a lot of weight.  Joe had been doing a fairly typical upper/lower split routine, but as he wanted to improve specifically on overhead pressing and get stronger overall, I dropped his reps very low, shifted the emphasis to overhead pressing, and cut out some of the bullshit he was doing.  That, some form tweaks on his squat, and a hell of  lot of work on Joe’s part, and his lifts improved dramatically in less than two months, as did his physique.

This shit isn’t rocket science- it’s just that some of you need a rocket scientist to fire your asses in the right direction. Go lift something.