How Arnold made and ruined bodybuilding

I was asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger began as a lifter or a bodybuilder. The answer is neither and both. Arnold's goal was always bodybuilding. But bodybuilding and strength were not considered as distinct and separate things until the late 1970s onwards.

The history is a big lengthy and many of the details argued, but basically bodybuilding competitions started in the 1930s. You got extra points if you participated in a sport, and the most common sport was weightlifting, since practicing baseball doesn't really give you big gunz. US weightlifting was basically run by Bob Hoffman out of York barbell club - yes, York weight plates, etc, the name continues to this day. He thought bodybuilding was odd, he only cared about strength. But it was popular so he got into it. 

Then Joe Weider came along, he only cared about looks, not strength. He used to publish magazines of naked bodybuilders, this appealed to women of course but also closet homosexuals (it was the 1940s and 1950s, they were all in the closet then, and most of them married). Weider didn't care since firstly he wasn't homophobic, and secondly he just wanted money and fame and didn't care where it came from. Weider started up bodybuilding competitions with no extra points for a sport. 

It was function vs looks, old conservative commie-hating red-blooded Americans vs young liberal gay-loving Americans. Weider won.

Anabolic steroids first popped up in the 1956 Olympics. Hoffman sent his weightlifting team there, the team doctor Ziegler was having dinner with the Soviet coach, who got a few drinks into him and asked Zeigler what drugs he was giving the Americans. Ziegler thus heard about steroids in sport, went home and invented Dianabol, and used Hoffman's lifters as guinea pigs. These were small doses and most tried it for several weeks, felt no difference and stopped. But they were fully into it by the 1960 Olympics. 

Weightlifting used to have snatch, clean and jerk, and clean and press. The first two are more like javelin or discus, strength is important but skill matters too. The press was more pure strength. Nowadays people ask how much you bench, they used to ask how much you press, so much so it's even given as example to illustrate the "Strength" attribute in something as unsporty as early edition Dungeons and Dragons. After 1972 they got rid of the press for various reasons. Then a few years later Pumping Iron came out, and Arnie had enormous chesticles. So the bench press became popular. 

Thus, form won over function. 

So Arnie built most of his size using basic barbell lifts and a small amount of anabolic steroids, but his career and fame has helped contribute to people doing less basic barbell lifts and using shitloads of anabolic steroids. This is how in fifty years we went from Steve Reeves to Jay Cutler.

Physical training can change how you look, feel (health) and perform. I think in order of importance they are 

1. health, 

2. performance and 

3. looks. 

But most people come into the gym with the order reversed. 

Enough patronising

We need to stop patronising women and older people in lifting

They don't want it, and they don't need it. In recent meets in different federations, I have noticed bad lifts get passed. Shallow squats, hitched deadlifts and so on. I see the same with personal trainers at commercial gyms, loading weight on the bar their clients can't handle and then congratulating them for a job well done. Crossfit has made the shitty lift followed by a backslap famous, but it was around before them. 

"Good girl!" Fuck off. She's 40 years old, not 4. Stick to, "Well done," or "good effort, now here's what you have to fix." 

People need encouragement, they don't need bullshit. We need to be strict with our lifters in training and competition. Yes, even if they're from some under-represented group like women or older lifters. 

Nobody is going to quit because you redlighted their lift, they go away and cry or swear and then come back and do it properly next time. They have to lift with good form over a full range of motion. This will make them better lifters and get better results. 

We don't need to write articles telling women or older people why they should lift. We don't need special persuasive tactics to deal with objections. They know as well anyone does. Just talk to them as people, don't assume you have to convince them because of what's in their pants or how many rings in the tree. Stronger is better. 

Yes, there are differences in where you start and how many reps you do and how quickly you progress, but as Mark Rippetoe has said, "shit's just complicated... except, you gotta squat." Fundamental human movements are fundamental. 

We need to treat EVERYONE seriously as trainees and athletes. This is what they want and deserve.

Managing Compromises

Rip has been kind enough to let me share my experiences of training people effectively in mainstream gyms.

"Managing Compromises: Intermediate and Advanced Programming Applications for Personal Trainers"

"I believe that the Starting Strength model presents an ideal to be striven for. But if your limitations of personality, gym equipment, or time prevent this ideal from being reality for you or your clients, then the above are some approaches I’ve used with success. My reasoning is quite simply that progress is progress.”

Training with joint problems

With everyone I believe the movement is more important than the load. Build quality, and the quantity will come. This is simply more true for people with relevant injuries than for entirely healthy people, especially since entirely healthy people are vanishingly rare. Almost everyone's got something wrong with them, it's merely a matter of degree. 

Getting people to begin is the first big issue. But if they do begin then at some point later on it gets hard, getting them past this is not easy. At some point come the grindy reps and the prospect of being buried under the weight. Everyone thinks about weaseling out at this point, whether they have previous injuries or not. "Kyle actually I'd like to work on cardio for a while... also I'm getting a twinge just here... and... well training is kinda expensive... and..." 

The barbell works. But it's not easy. But then, as we were told in the army: the easy way is always mined.

bulking up

Is often a good thing. "I don't want to bulk up." Maybe you should, you can be more awesome.

progress is progress

There are many ways to show progress when lifting weights.

1. better technique
2. more weight
3. more reps
4. more sets
5. all the above the same, but less pain or no pain doing it

All these things are progress. Progress is progress.

Now go progress.

the sea of wannabes

You don't need a university degree to do personal training well. You do need one to help high-risk people, those recovering from strokes and so on. But this is a tiny minority of the gym population. The best personal trainers have the following,

• Have hired a trainer themselves. They actually believe in and value PT.
• Have a background in movement - doesn't have to be weights, could be gymnastics, tennis, a martial art, etc - in which they've done moderately well over 2+ years. Having moved, they are used to watching movement, and thus understand movement better. This is the beginning of the "coaching eye."
• Have set modestly ambitious physical training goals taking 6+ months to achieve, and achieved them, eg a young woman deadlifting 100kg, a guy running 5km in under 20', either going from healthy bodyfat to sixpack abs, got a black belt in a martial art, rehabilitated an injury requiring surgery, etc. They've done something physically challenging and in which they'll have fallen back along the way (as opposed to the easy newbie gains).
• Some general life experience - other jobs they've been successful at, been married, had children, screwed a few things up, etc. This gives them perspective and empathy which helps them get and keep clients, and get them results.
• Enthusiasm for deeper or broader knowledge of health and fitness, ie they keep studying, including trying out things they think are stupid, so they can have an informed opinion on them. This is quite simply professional development, ie getting better at your job.

Not everyone will have them all, the best will though, and most can be developed over time. There are other things that matter but this will do for a blog post which few will read. 

Think of the trainers you know and ask yourself which of these traits they display. In the US, the number of personal training clients is estimated at 6.4 million; 51.4 million are gym members and 12% or 6.1 million use PT services. That's less than one client per trainer. In Australia, it's estimated that we have twice as many PTs as IT professionals entering the workforce every year. Evidently there are rather a lot of unsuccessful trainers out there. Now consider the above list again and see if you can connect the dots. 

It's easy to get the title "personal trainer". It's not easy to get a job and be good at it.

Why lift?

The question, "why lift?" is answered by doing it seriously for 6 months or so. Strength is like education, you don't realise its importance until you have it, and people who are too lazy to get it will come up with all sorts of elaborate arguments about why it doesn't matter to them. 

• "But I don't want to bulk up." I'd believe this woman if I saw her smashing herself with cardio, but she's walking on the treadmill at 4km an hour reading Woman's Day. She's just lazy. 
• "I get enough leg work playing soccer." I'd believe this guy if he were going hard on upper-body, but he's half-benching 60kg and doing one million curls with layback. He's lazy. 
• "I just need to work on my core." This person isn't doing three minute planks, either. The purpose of your "core" (which we used to call "the waist" before it got trendy) is to keep you upright. Is it harder to stay upright with a big-arsed weight on your back? Then you are working your "core" while squatting. They're lazy. 
• "I have a bad back, and bad knees." This is why you must lift, just starting easier and progressing more slowly than someone with no problems. That you don't do it means you're lazy. 

Cardio is important for good health, beyond a certain level it's not helpful. I know many people who ran for many years, and looking back said it was a waste of time. I know nobody was has lifted for many years and said it was a waste of time.

This is the difficult part about selling training, whether by "selling" we mean signing people up for PT, or simply getting someone to train themselves: you don't realise its true value until you've done it for several weeks at least. You lift because lazy is useless, and stronger is better. 

teach correct movement

Just because you don't know how to coach a movement doesn't mean the person can't do it.

Nowadays we have an entire industry created by people who confuse their inability to coach a movement with the person having some mobility or injury issues which can only be fixed by elaborate "activation" exercises and the like, completed of course with lots of pseudoscientific jargon. 

Of course, "shove your knees out" is less exciting than a book full of mobility exercises.

A personal trainer's job is to teach correct movement. If you cannot get a healthy adult under 50 to an unloaded below parallel squat in ten minutes, and if after six months you have that person deadlifting 30kg, you're incompetent. 

Competitive strength and everyday strength

In strength training we often focus on competitive strength, the "one rep maximum", the most weight we can lift once. Often all our training is focused on that. But there's also everyday strength, which is something up to around 2/3 the maximum. And this is important, too. We can't always get 100%. We can get around 67%, though. 

Everyday strength is the weight you can lift without a warmup on a day when you had a bad night’s sleep and missed breakfast and had an argument with your girlfriend or have got your period and are annoyed at your boss, and it’s a weight you could do for a few sets up to a total of 10 reps – and do it every day without any soreness etc. This is around up to 2/3 of your max lift. On a shitty day you don't have competitive strength, but you do have everyday strength. 

A few weeks back a bunch of my clients went to a powerlifting competition. James at 78kg had previously squatted 130 for a single in the gym, and was regularly doing 100 for his work sets. His first attempt 100 was no problem, and 120 came up easily. Now he tried 140, I saw him come under the bar a bit loose, step out uncertainly, then look a bit confused first to his left – the bar swung – then his right – the bar swung again, then shake his head, go down – and not come up.

The bar had clanged against a metal part of the straps, and as this was the first day he’d ever used the monolift, he didn’t know what it was, and it distracted him as he wondered. Now, when he tried 100, he could be a bit sloppy and still get the weight up. 120 he had to be tighter getting under the bar and more focused. 140 there was no way he was going to do it unless he was 100%.

A 67% lift requires 67% effort and focus. A 100% lift requires 100%. Sometimes we bash ourselves up for not getting 100%, and we forget just how much better that 67% is than it was before. While focused on competitive strength, we forget about our everyday strength. And the truth is that as we continue training, both are improving. So that our old work weight is now a warmup. My client Rosemary, being a small woman in her 60s with a back injury, took six months to be able to deadlift 60kg just once. Now she has done 80kg, and will try for 85 and 90 at a meet in December. But whether she gets 85 or 90 or not, 60 is now a warmup for her. She can just walk in and pull 60 even on a crappy day, and do it for a stack of reps. 

Anourd that's the way it goes in strength training. Your old competitve strength is now your everyday strength. The right mindset in strength training is a balance of ambition and contentment. Too much ambition and you get all depressed when your competitive strength isn't what you hoped. Too much contentment and you never improve either competitive nor everyday strength. You need to appreciate what you've achieved while realising you can achieve more. This is how progress happens. 

Of course, you can push your 100% directly, or just push your 67% and watch your 100% come up anyway. This is the premise of Dan John's Easy Strength, and will be the subject of another article. 

Kudos to Tara for her article Shut Up, Brain, which inspired this one. 

Talented athletes suck

Give me the gimpy ones. 

Whenever I get a gym member or client who is naturally physically talented, I breathe a sigh of regret. Talented athletes suck, they rarely achieve anything. When a person is talented, they're used to things being easy. As soon it gets hard they realise they're risking failure, they become nervous and quit, backing off and changing goals or making excuses. 

Many of us knew someone like this at university. They were naturally so smart that they got through most of high school without studying. But come first year university, or at the latest second year, suddenly they can't pass without studying. Generally they drop out and have an unplanned gap year. 

It's the same when it comes to athletic endeavours. The young woman who can squat 60kg for a single on her first day in the gym later gets to 75kg for work sets and starts complaining, missing workouts and so on, maybe even quits training with me. Three months later she's in the rack squatting 50kg. Meanwhile her untalented friend who started at the same time and struggled to squat the empty bar is smashing out 80kg for work sets. 

Talented people take success for granted and quit when things get hard. Untalented people always find everything hard so just assume it'll always be hard. So they stick with it and get better, and eventually surpass the talented.

If you're a talented athlete, please don't come to me for training, I don't want to waste your money and my time, you're just going to quit as soon as it gets hard. If you were the kid who was picked last, if you're old or riddled with injuries, then head on down and we'll accomplish amazing things. 

"He's not just my client, he's my friend."

Most fitness professional organisations will have a Code of Ethics which includes something like, "the trainer should ensure they do not form a personal relationship which might compromise the professional relationship." What they mean is, "keep it in your pants," but it applies to other kinds of relationships as well. This is difficult because a trainer and client will spend a lot of time with each-other, you the trainer will see the client in vulnerable moments - both failure and success - and clients will generally trust and open up to you in surprising ways. 

Some things for a trainer to think about are below. This is useful for clients as well, of course. 

You can be friends with a client, but there are limits. Essentially you don't want to be a dickhead in front of a client, nor overly familiar. They should not see you drunk and vomiting, or grinding on chicks/guys at the club. If you have problems with your husband or mother, don't talk about them to your client. Especially don't badmouth your colleagues or boss to the client-friend. Any gifts you give to your client-friend should be related to their physical training, like weightlifting shoes, a new set of cricket pads or whatever. 

As a trainer, you'll tend to find that the friendship is rather one-sided and won't last past the training. If they're sick you'll call and see how they are, you'll remember their kid's birthday, that sort of thing. They won't do the same. As well, once the training relationship is over, the friendship will fade away. It's like when you stop working at some place, and your workmates say, "hey, we gotta catch up, let's do lunch sometime." You never will. Take away the common activity and the relationship is dead. They were just friendly, not your friend. 

Since they're your client in your workplace where you spend 20-60 hours a week, they're a big part of your life. But you are only 1/2 to 3 hours a week of their life. They may spend more time each week with Simpsons repeats than they do with you. Outside training, and after the training stops, you'll be well-thought of until you're forgotten shortly afterwards. This is disappointing but there it is, you won't get your fill of social life from the gym, same as any workplace, you need to have a life outside work. 

There are exceptions of course but these are the general rules. 

Steady as she goes

I have a little team of amateur lifters, the other day a 30yo guy said to a 65yo woman as she deadlifted, "I hope I can still do that at your age."

"Keep it up from now and you will," I said, "a lot easier than starting in your 60s." 

Consistency is more important than anything else. Consistency is more difficult than anything else. 

Recently a 21yo lifter was complaining because last week she'd squatted 70kg for her work sets, and the week after I had her do 72.5kg. 

"I can do 75."

"You certainly can. But would you be able to do more next week? And the week after? And so on? Whereas if you do 72.5 today, you'll certainly do more next week, and the week after."

She still didn't like it. "Tortoise and hare," I said, "you know the story?"

"Yeah but you're not a tortoise, you're a fucking snail." 

Interestingly enough, while the first two sets were no problem, as she came to do the third set she started complaining it was heavy and she didn't want to do it.

"First set was easy, second set okay, last set hard. If they were all easy, problem. All hard, problem. But the first was easy, and the last hard. It's almost," I said, "as if I know what I'm doing."
"Bah."

This is part of the job of coaching, helping people stay the course, neither rushing ahead nor lurking behind, keeping them "steady as she goes." 

Lifting weights will make you grow up

What distinguishes a woman from a girl, a man from a boy, an adult from a child is a degree of self-reliance, of resolve, and emotional stability. Obviously all of us need other people, and all of us are volatile from time to time. But basically either a person has their shit together, or they're all over the place. Weight training helps a bit in maturing because it teaches us to survive failure. 

I used to help coach some troubled teenagers, and after pushing them up a hill run until a few of them were crying, I'd stop and tell them a story. Someone I know tried to get into a special military unit, of course he didn't get in. One of the tests was they came and got them in the mess at 0030, "Out on the parade ground in your PT gear at 0100." They got out there, 32km run, "There'll be a truck waiting for you at the other end, be there by 0600." Some time like that. 

Of course there was no truck there, just the course sergeant-major with a Rover, hot boxes and tea urn. "Truck broke down, you have to go back on foot, you have until 1600 this time, an old lady can walk it that fast, if you get there earlier your time is your own." 

Lots of the guys sat down on the spot. "Anyone else? Anyone want to wait for the truck?" A few more guys sat down. The guy was tempted, it'd been more than 24 hours without sleep and he'd never run more than 15km in one go before, let alone two lots of 32km, but he sensed something dodgy was going on. 

Most of them went back on foot, half an hour later the truck came towards them, went past. Half an hour later it came past them again, this time with the guys who'd sat down, jeering at the guys on foot from the back of the truck. Some bloke fell over in pain and was picked up by the medical vehicle. 

Got back that afternoon, the guys from the truck were gone. They'd been binned. The guy who fell over? Still in. 

The first run was a physical test, they had to make it in time. The second run was a mental test - you just had to try. In a conflict, it does happen that you go on a long patrol, are on your way back into base where you'll have your first shower in a week, hot meals, rest... then the radio sparks up and tells you that you'll come back in, resupply and then head back out. They don't mind if you go "fuck!" so long as you do it. It's alright if you're injured and can't do it, they'll look after you, they understand everyone has limits. But they don't want people who say, "No!" and stop. 

The lesson here is: it's alright to fail, it's not alright to give up. 

One of the differences between adults and children is that children give up because they're afraid they'll fail. Adults give it a go anyway. This is one of the reasons physical training is important: it teaches us it's alright to fail, we just get up and give it another go another day. Neil Diamond said, "Girl, you'll be a woman soon." I'm sure he was referring to 20 rep squats. 

Stress vs Strain

Stress your system, don't strain it. But do stress your system. On the one side we have the trainers who fancy themselves as physiotherapists endlessly fixing "muscle imbalances" without ever actually getting anyone strong, on the other we have Crossfit laughing fondly wetting yourself during workouts. 

Some stress on the joints and muscles is not actually a bad thing. Stressing the joints and muscles is the whole fucking point of resistance training. We stress them, they adapt, we get more better faster stronger. Trainers who choose to avoid stressing the systems of their clients had better at least have charming conversation, since they won't be getting their clients results.

Stress, not strain. A stress causes an adaptation, a strain causes an injury. There's a difference. Commonly timid newbies will assume any stress risks serious injury, while macho idiots assume even a strain is good for you.

If we assume that all stressors are strains, we never make our clients more better faster stronger. We peer at our clipboards as we ponder whether anyone ever gets more than a "1" on the overhead squat portion of the Functional Movement Screen, and wonder why our only remaining client is that slightly smelly guy nobody else in the gym talks to. 

If we assume that all strains are stressors, we go the Crossfit way. We end up pumping our fist saying PROGRESS HURTS!, then less than a week later say, I'm injured, how did that happen?

Both approaches, like all extremes, are wrong and stupid. Sensible middle ground, boys and girls. The truth lies in the muddy shell-cratered No-Man's Land between the two warring armies of Gray Cook and Greg Glassman, like some wounded soldier screaming in pain and waiting for any caring person to go pick him up. Let's declare a ceasefire and go rescue him. Or you could stay in your trenches.

"I want to be a personal trainer"

We get a lot of people doing their practical placement at the gym. I give them good advice, most look over my shoulder at the hot chick or guy across the room instead, or examine their nails. I've personally supervised the placements of about 30 students, there were only 3 who I trusted to do a health consult or programme showthrough, most were clueless and not very interested in what was happening around them. One of the ones who paid attention is now working at our gym, I'm not aware of any of the others being employed anywhere. This is a normal ratio, in a class of 20 you'll find 1, if you're lucky 2, actually go on to jobs in the industry. Most people doing the courses just don't know what they want to do, almost none have ever hired a trainer, etc.

In fact recently that has been my first question to the work placement students, and it will be my first question to people asking here about becoming a PT. 

"Have you ever hired a personal trainer? or even got a programme from a gym instructor?"

In most cases the answer is "No, PT is expensive, and a programme, well the instructors at my gym are idiots."

"Right... so you think it's not worth paying for personal training, yet you expect other people to pay for personal training with you? You don't trust the expertise of people who've been doing this for years, but you expect other people to trust your expertise? Do you think PT has value, or not?"

It's okay if you don't think it's worth paying for something. I know guys who never pay for a haircut, they just buy electric clippers and get a #2 all over. But these guys aren't trying to become hairdressers. If you don't value what you're offering, why should anyone else?

drugs, m'kay

Many people get upset when you point out that their favourite bodybuilder or athlete is probably taking drugs to help their performance or appearance. This is not cutting them down, it's letting people know what is naturally attainable.

It's not cutting a fitness model down to point out that at 12% bodyfat she's not likely to have big breasts, so if she does they're probably silicone implants; large breasts are not realistically attainable with a low body fat. Nor is it cutting a crossfit athlete, bodybuilder, etc down to point out that if she's gained a lot of muscle very quickly and has a high lean mass then there's a fair chance she's taking Vitamin T supplements. To those with experience of drug use and drug users, the signs of it are as obvious as breast implants. 

It's not evil to take performance- or appearance-enhancing drugs. As Stevie P points out, we have a double standard about medical assistance with appearance. Want "thigh gap"? Localised lyposuction is yours. Want a bigger penis or breasts? Surgery, no problem. Want a smaller belly? Hell, they'll cut your stomach in half for you! Want bigger arms? FUCK YOU, GET OUT OF MY OFFICE, says the doc. 

It's important to have a realistic of idea of the rate of change and end result attainable with hard work and good food. That way, people can make an informed choice about whether to have surgery, use drugs and so on. 

A large number of professional athletes are using performance-enhancing drugs. If a top performance were attainable without drugs, then drugs would be useless and nobody would take them. "Oh but genetics -" What, all of them are simply genetically talented? None of them take drugs? Who's taking the drugs, then, just the people losing the competitions? Someone needs to have a word with their dealer, then. "No, all of them take drugs except my favourite athlete who is just special." Uh-huh. 

It's not pooing on someone's hard work to suggest they're taking drugs. It didn't matter how much EPO Lance Armstrong stuck in himself, he still had to go out and bust his arse on the bike every day for years. Between gym and the track, he trained around six hours a day six hours a week. Give me 36 hours a week of your time and you'd certainly get remarkable results. Add drugs and you'll be famous. 

Some magnificent physiques and performances exist among professional bodybuilders and athletes. Few are attainable naturally. It's important to understand that there do exist physical limits, to surpass these you need Better Living Through Chemistry. However, this is irrelevant to most of us, since very very few of us come anywhere near our physical limits, basically only professional athletes do, the rest of us have day jobs, families, and so on, we just don't have time to discover our natural limits. 

Awesome physiques and great athletes, not many natural, though. Again, for most of us is not our genetics but our time. Most of us are not professional athletes, so drug use cannot be recommended, for this and many other reasons. The curlbro popping Clenbuterol for his gunz and abz is like someone faking their resume to get a dishwashing job, they're missing the point. 

Edit 2012.07.15 - Jason Blaha lays it down. Let's not bullshit ourselves: the top athletes all take drugs. If you want to be a top athlete, at some point you'll have to make that decision. Me? I wouldn't do it, and I hope my son and anyone I train wouldn't, either. But that's what it is. 

High rep squats

"20 rep squats are primarily a manhood exercise. You struggle through the reps, rack the bar with relief and a sense of achievement, and then it dawns on you: I have to do 5lbs more next week! And that one set out of your whole routine sits in the back of your mind for the next week, taunting you." - Mark Rippetoe, Seattle February 2013

High repetition squats are excellent for building strength and - in combination with stupid amounts of decent food - size in the legs. The horrible thing about high-rep squats is that if you can do 12, you literally always can do another rep - the only question is do you really want to? Once some of my clients competed on squatting 60kg for as many reps as possible. 

Navneet managed 53, and afterwards said, "After 40 reps, you can tell that squats use your whole body." 

I told this to Agatha who'd done 30, and she replied, "It took him 40 reps to realise that?!"

One of my clients Tess is going to do the Tour De France, "oh but only the mountains," thus requiring quads of doom, and so has been on a 20 rep squats and milk programme, with good effect. During a heavy set she'll clench her teeth so tightly that she chips them, so she wears a mouthguard to protect herself from her sheer badarsedness. This week she had a cold, but came along anyway. Below are her thoughts with each rep.

1. "Jesus I feel like shit, how am I going to breathe through a giant mouthguard and blocked nose?"
2. "I'm not sure if my stance is too narrow or too wide...maybe I just feel strange because I have a giant weight on my back...? This feels so much heavier than an extra 2.5 " -sad face on inside"
3. "My arms will surely break off before I get to 20"
4. "Ok, ignore the arms...Feeling.... Okay..."
5. "1/4 through...1/4 through... That's just 3 more of what you've already done"
6. "Don't look up...don't look down...don't snap your teeth!"
7. "Careful of those wrists and hands flapping back"
8. "Bottom of mirror...breathe...don't look down...breathe"
9. "Breathe dammit you're almost half way!"
10. "How many have I done? is it 9? I think it's 9....almost halfway..."
11. "Wait...is this 9...? Did I just do 9 or 10?...where am I...?"
12. "Like Kyle always says "If you can do 12....""
13. "yep...There's that one more after 12...I got this..."
14. "Come on come on come on come on up up up"
15. "1/4 to go...1/4 to go...that's so much more than halfway done..."
16. "Fak yah mudafacka"
17. "Shit...3 more after this one...not 2...Don't snap teeth!"
18. "So close...and yet...so far... get the fuck up!"
19. "One more bitchaaaayz"
20. "Must...lift...to...rack..."

Inspired by her efforts and a continuing quest for legs more like saplings than twigs, I've started on 20 rep squats myself. My own impressions:

1. "Hmm, stance too narrow, feels funny."
2. "That's better."
3. "Ho hum."
4. "Who's that over there? Not bad for a blonde."
5. "WTF? Why are your bringing a bosu over here?"
6. "A bit heavy."
7. "Yes, heavy."
8. "Maybe I need a mouthguard, too."
9. "Okay this is getting boring now."
10. "Hey! That came up easy, I could do 25."
11. "Aaaaaruuugh!" First grunt.
12. "Unk." Second grunt.
13. "25? I don't think so." 
14. "Gug." Third grunt.
15. "FAAAARK." Profanity.
16. "Gasp, gasp."
17. "Hey, milk burp."
18. "Home stretch."
19. "Unh."
20. "Phew. God." Rack.

Tess wouldn't do this on her own because it's insane. I make sure to have a colleague or friend around during my work set, otherwise I would skive off around rep 12. Rip calls it "manhood", but since there is nothing inherent in a penis which grants mental strength, I would call it "resolve". Resolve is an important part of working out, since without it we'll give up and achieve nothing much. 

My job is to help people do difficult things they thought they couldn't do. High rep squats are sometimes a part of this. They're very effective but they're fucking horrible. 

You can write it, but can they do it?

This is an important principle often forgotten by trainers and coaches, particularly online gurus. Here is one example, but there are many.

"load your body weight equivalent on a barbell and perform 100 repetitions. That is, if your scale weight is 205 pounds, load the bar with 205 pounds and go for 100. Most likely, you will not be able to get 100 repetitions in your first bout, so stop to rack the weight to garner a modest break. That's okay. Just don't rest too long - rest no longer than 2:00. Following that maximum of 2:00 between bouts, continue your journey to the 100-rep goal. It may require five to six bouts to get there, but find a way to achieve 100 total repetitions."

Really? You're unlikely to do 100 reps with your bodyweight in one go? At first I thought the guy might be in some super-hardcore gym where a young woman does 20 rep squats with 100kg and the guys in the background don't even look up from talking shit with each-other. But then I saw the other suggested workouts which were either pointlessly easy or reasonable. This told me the authour wasn't really thinking about what he was writing. This trainer had forgotten, you can write it, but can they do it? 

It's also forgotten by trainees, sitting there with their neat spreadsheets with everything planned out to the last set and rep to take them from a 40kg to a 240kg squat in six months and three days.

Online gurus have an excuse: they don't train anyone, so their wild ideas never risk being dissolved by the harsh acid of reality. Gym newbies have an excuse: they're newbies. But even experienced trainers, coaches and trainees will do this from time to time. Just last night I was fiddling about with a spreadsheet and adjusting variables and then in six months my squat will be... really? I'm going to go six months without any interruption to my training? I won't get sick, injured, won't have to take time off to look after my son while my wife visits someone interstate, won't get busy with work or just plain lazy? 

Be realistic. Let's aim for something which is challenging, but won't destroy us. A plan which is ambitious but not crazily so. 

Listen to instruction

The other day I found a scrawny young guy doing a round-backed deadlift with 80kg. I was busy with a client so left him to it, but when he went to 95kg I had to step in. I corrected it, and it was alright. 

"Stay at 80kg," I said, "do a couple of sets of 5, do that a couple of times a week, then next week add 5kg, and so on." 

He loaded the bar up to 95kg. "No really, stay at 80kg."

"I just want to -"

"Stay at 80. That's enough for now, more and you may hurt yourself."

"Could you watch while I -"

"No. If you are ignoring my instruction, there's no sense my giving you more."

He was quite offended by this, and indignant. Possibly his anxiety to add more weight had to do with the fact that the 64yo woman I was training at the time was doing 80kg. If he'd asked I could have told him, that took her 12 months, you are doing it today, don't feel bad - but he was too emotionally bruised to even ask. The male ego is a delicate thing. 

A couple of days later another scrawny young guy doing the same disc-popping deadlifts. I corrected him, he expressed wonder that it no longer hurt his back. We tried some things out and he pulled 140kg, which for him was a 30kg lifetime personal best. 

I started saying something else and he interrupted. "I better get on with the rest of my workout."

If someone got me to do an exercise pain-free for the first time in my life, and in ten minutes helped me get 30kg personal best, I'd stick around to listen to what else they had to say. 

My examples here have been young guys. It's true that adolescent males are the least likely to listen to instruction, since when a man says the words "I don't know" his penis shrinks one-sixteenth of an inch. (Women are all former men who said "I don't know a lot. True story.) But it's other people, too. I once had a woman in her 40s tell me she didn't need a gym programme. "I've been coming seven years, I'm advanced." However, she could not do a pushup, perhaps she had advanced beyond them? 

I don't know everything. In February I went to the Starting Strength Seminar in Seattle, I didn't spend $3,000 and travel halfway across the planet just to walk in and tell Rippetoe he was wrong. But I can definitely coach you to your first pushup and stop you herniating discs in your back from an 80kg deadlift. You might even get genuinely strong. 

Not everyone likes to listen to instruction. If you don't, that's alright, but you probably should not join a gym - just lift alone in your garage. Fail in private where we don't have to watch you. In the gym, listen to instruction.