NVAudioFIT

THE DEFINITIVE
GUIDE:
• STRENGTH
TRAINING
AUTHOR: GREG NUCKOLS
TRANSLATED BY: PRESSANDPULL.COM
MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION
My name is Greg Nuckols, I am 26 years old and I graduated in Sports Sciences from Harding University, in North
Carolina (USA). I am the creator of Strengtheory, a leading strength training blog in English that recently changed its
name to Strongerbyscience. I have been weight training for over 12 years and working as a personal trainer for over 8. I
compete in natural powerlifting and I have held 3 world records: 347kg in squat with bandages, 215kg in bench press
and 333.5kg in deadlift.

This audio course is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but I've been putting off because, honestly, it's an
impressive amount of work.

In this audio course I will cover everything you need to know to reach your maximum strength potential, and how to do
it in the most efficient way possible . I'm not going to obsess over covering specific topics in depth, but rather give you
an overview of the factors that will be key in your journey from where you are now to your maximum potential.

What do you need to become as strong as you can?

1. Big muscles . Don't worry, we will discuss this in depth later.

2. Mastery of the lifts that you will use to demonstrate your strength.
Who is the strongest athlete of all time? Anatoly Pisarenko? Zydrunas Savickas? Andrey Malanichev? The fact is, there is
no definitive answer to this question, since everyone competed in different sports, and strength is defined by the lifts
you use to measure it. There is a huge skill component to mastering a lift: You have to get your muscles to work in a
precise yet powerful way to lift heavy things as effectively and efficiently as possible. This comes with practice - the
more specificity, the better.

Therefore, directing your practice toward mastering the lifts you want to use to express your strength is of great
importance. This guide will mainly talk about the squat, bench press, and deadlift, since I'm a powerlifter, and that's
what I know the most about, although these principles are applicable to any strength sport.

3. Healthy joints and connective tissue.

The less wear and tear your body has, the better able you will be to perform the lifts. Your tendons must be strong
enough to transfer force from your muscles to the bones they intend to move. Tendons have a kind of “tension
indicator” called the Golgi tendon organ, which sends a signal to your spinal cord, and this signal back to your muscles,
telling them to stop contracting so hard, in an attempt to prevent rupture. of the tendon.

The mechanoreceptors in your ligaments work in a similar way. If you damage or erode your articular cartilage, it
usually heals very slowly, or not at all (depending on the joint), and once you've worn it down completely, it no longer
regenerates. Over time, this can lead to osteoarthritis. Acute injuries to these tissues take a long time to heal (serious

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ones, at least), and prolonged, excessive stress on your tendons can lead to inflammation (tendonitis), which can lead to
degeneration (tendinosis) if left untreated.

Both types of injuries require significant recovery time. Furthermore, it is common for a connective tissue injury to
become a headache and affect your training for a long, long time after the initial injury, since collagen regenerates very
slowly, and often incompletely.

For all this, maximizing results while minimizing the risk of injury is of vital importance. A note worth highlighting: pain
and injury do not always go hand in hand. This topic goes beyond this audiocourse, but if you want to learn about it, I
suggest you start here to learn more about the biopsychosocial model of pain.

4. Age.
Being young has three key advantages:

1. Your nervous system is a little more excitable and works a little faster, which means you can reach maximum muscle
contraction faster. This is more important in sports that rely on power (like weightlifting) than in those that rely on
maximal strength (like powerlifting), but it plays a role in all of them. Additionally, your nervous system is more plastic
when you're young, making you able to learn and master lifts more quickly (and possibly to a greater degree, absolutely
speaking).

2. You have a little more of the protein elastin in your tendons, which causes you to store more elastic energy (giving
you a more powerful “bounce” when entering the concentric phase of a squat).

3. You recover faster from hard workouts. You have higher testosterone levels, sleep better, release more growth
hormone during the night, and a host of other factors that help you handle high training volumes, recover faster, and
progress at a faster rate.

None of these three advantages are extremely important, but they matter. They reach their peak in late adolescence,
but don't begin to decline greatly until age 30 (like the degree of nerve stimulation) or 50 (like tendon elasticity). The
exception is neuronal plasticity, which basically reaches its maximum at the moment of birth, and has constantly
decreased since then (which is why it is easier to learn new things when we are children).
If you can reach a competitive level in your 20s and 30s (some reach that level sooner, but it generally takes several
years of hard training to build the necessary muscle mass), you will take full advantage of these advantages. By this I
don't mean that you can't become very, very strong if you start later, but you have an advantage if you reach your
competitive level as soon as possible.

What constitutes proper training?

This question depends entirely on the context. There are certain more or less universal factors (training must be specific
according to your objectives, some type of overload must be applied, etc.), but once you get into the design of training
programs, there are several factors that determine whether A program is going to be good or not for a specific person.
Some of those factors are specific to the individual. Your history, strengths and weaknesses, levers, preferences, current
diet, lifestyle, sleep habits, etc.
However, there are some factors that apply to most people, based on their level of experience, assuming that your goal
is to reach your maximum strength potential (and be as competitive as possible, if that's what you're aiming for) as soon

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

as possible. possible. I want you to keep two things in mind as you read the rest of the article:
1. I'm assuming your main goal is to be as strong as possible and get there as fast as you can. If this does not apply to
you, then the rest of what I am going to say has no relevance to you, as it is not in line with your goals.
2. IN NO WAY am I saying that this is the only way to be strong. That would be foolish. Simple observation is enough to
see that there are many roads that lead to Rome. So, if you are thinking of telling me “Pepito became very strong, and
he achieved it in another way”, save your time. This also means that if you currently have a certain level of strength and
the way you got there differs from what I recommend, it doesn't mean you screwed up. It simply means that you chose
another path to get there, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Having clarified all this, it is time to get into the nitty-gritty. Remember, the four things we must do to be super strong:
1. Big muscles.
2. Mastery of the lifts.
3. Healthy joints.
4. Age/minimize time to get where we want.
Based on your level of experience, you can use those four characteristics as the main points to guide your training. 1
and 2 will give you your beloved gains, while 3 and 4 are overarching principles that determine how you train to achieve
those gains and get from point A (where you are now) to point B (the strongest you can get). be) as fast as possible and
as secure as possible. Needless to say, safety and speed go hand in hand; Nothing slows your progress like an injury.

Each phase of your training will be governed by a simple question: What is getting in the way between me and my goal?

This question helps clarify your training. Until you are as strong as you can be, there will always be a multitude of areas
where you can look for improvement. Asking yourself what factors are most hindering you from achieving your goal
allows you to stay away from pursuing 1,000 different goals at once (which are getting you nowhere), and helps you
make progress at the fastest possible pace. by focusing on fighting the big battles that give you the greatest profitability.

For beginners, these factors are:

1. Creation of habits.
2. Mastery of movements.
3. Body/muscle awareness.
4. Willingness to train and recover.

For intermediate lifters:

1. Muscle size.
2. Continue increasing capacity to train and recover.

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

For advanced lifters:
1. Convert mastery into mastery.
2. Maintain joint health.
3. Master the skill of competing.

MODULE 2: TRAINING FOR BEGINNERS

Convince and Formation of Habits
The first and most important factor is the creation of habits.

No, it is not a sexy and exciting topic, but it is crucial.

If you want to get somewhere as a lifter, you have to be willing to put in the years. Many years.

Right now, you may be thinking, “I'm ready! “I’m looking forward to seeing how far I can go in the next ten years.”

However, most people who start an exercise program end up quitting before the first year is over, and I'm sure many of
them had just as good intentions as you do now. It's unlikely that your initial excitement is going to get you very far.

At this point, we could veer off topic and start talking about motivation, choice architecture, identity formation, and a
bunch of other things you probably don't care about, much less in an already long course on strength training. Yeah.

Instead, let's look at the key points:

1. You have to get involved in the process . This means investing your time and money in your goals from the
beginning. Everyone values their time, and we assign value to things based on how much we are willing to spend on
them. If all you invest in your training is €30/month in gym registration, and 2 hours a week in training, if you give up
and quit, you haven't lost much. It's easier for you to give up.

If you add an extra hour a day of reading about training, and spend a little more money on books and preparation,
everything will automatically start to become more important. It is the “ sunk cost fallacy .” The more you invest in
something, the more you become convinced that that something is important to you, because you are a rational
person, after all, and rational people would not spend a lot of time/money/energy on something that was not important
or that They wouldn't be personally interested. Make your psychological tendencies work for you.

2. You must find a community . In person is better (find someone who is already a lifter and show you the ropes, or
convince a friend or two to start training with you), but online communities work too, and are still better than walking
the road alone Whichever option you choose, the keys are responsibility and support. If your training partners don't
make you feel guilty about skipping a few workouts (or if they are the lazy ones), then they are no good for you. If the
people you train with, or your online community, are filled with negativity, they are not good for you.

3. You have to have fun training . This is a key point that many miss. You stay at something when the things that make
you want to continue outweigh the things that make you want to quit (motivation > obstacles). Motivation can be
intrinsic (comes from you, from within) or extrinsic (comes from external factors).

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Many people have some degree of intrinsic motivation when they start training (they want to look better, they want to
lose weight, they want to be athletic, etc.), but it is usually not very strong. After all, it wasn't strong until you put your
foot in the gym door. It's important, but it's not what you want to depend on; This is a big mistake that many people
make.

Since you cannot rely solely on your intrinsic motivation when you start training, it is very important that you have fun
training. Plain and simple. That gives you more extrinsic motivation (a real desire to go training) to stay on track as
training becomes a habit.

I guess you've noticed that we don't usually have trouble finding time to do the things we like, even if we know we
probably shouldn't be doing them ("I should do something productive... Come on, just one more chapter... Damn
Netflix").

Many people lose sight of this important fact, and instead obsess over every detail of a beginner's training program.

When you start, you will gain muscle and strength doing almost anything; The stimulus is so novel that your body will
respond to it considerably, even if that stimulus is not “optimal.” The most important thing is that you are doing
something that you enjoy, and that you can maintain over time, and that, physiologically speaking, is “good enough.”

Trainers love to complain about newbies who jump from one routine to another , and they love to talk about how
newbies are shooting themselves in the foot by not following the sophisticated training programs they design. What
they don't realize is that when training beginners, having fun matters just as much as making progress.

If a novice (with a high need for extrinsic motivation) is not amused by his training program, he will not follow it to the
letter. And if you don't start seeing the results you're looking for, you'll become demotivated and quit. If a trainer fails in
any of those areas (designing programs that work but that people hate, or designing programs that are fun but don't
provide results), he might as well move on to something else.
The principles of what an effective yet fun program should look like vary from person to person. Some like variety (in
exercises, series/repetitions schemes, etc.) and are terrified of workouts that look like the same ones they did last
month.

Others like consistency, are wary of change, and have fun seeing steady, measurable progress from one workout to the
next, comparing their performance in one workout with what they had in the same workout yesterday, or a week ago. A
program may be good for one beginner, and terrible for another, because what “fun” means to one person may not
mean “fun” to another.

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Mastery of Movements
We continue forward. The second most important factor is to work on mastering the movements with which you are
going to express your strength.

How do you learn a new motor pattern? Practice. Specific, frequent and purposeful practice. The more times you do
something, and you do it correctly, the faster your nervous system will learn the pattern.

Some important recommendations:

1. The practice must be in-depth and specific . You can't just do the move. Practice starts before the series. Visualize
how the set should look, how the bar will feel, trying to capture as many details as possible: how the bar will feel on
your back or hands, what your starting position will be, how the load will feel when moving, etc. Initially you may not be
able to visualize so many details, it is a skill that you will develop over time. As you approach the bar, think about one
aspect of the lift. Don't try to "think of a way to complete the rep." Just focus on one aspect that helps improve your
performance. If it improves, keep it until you internalize it and can move on to something else. If it doesn't improve it,
choose another one. Be aware of how the reps feel as you do them, but don't obsess over it, you'll use that awareness
in the next step.

After the series, analyze it. How have you felt it? What does it look like (video yourself if you can)? What could you
improve, and what aspect of lifting could help you achieve that improvement? Repeat this process for each set. Simply
going through the motions helps, but to master the lifts as quickly as possible, practice must be in-depth and
purposeful, to solidify skills and prevent bad habits from developing.

2. The weights you use should be light enough to fully control the load, allowing you to focus more on executing the
movement correctly than on avoiding dying.
However, the weights should also be heavy enough so that the movement does not vary (a heavy barbell squat is quite
different from a bodyweight squat). This means using a load between approximately 60-80% of your 1RM. Of course, if
you're a beginner, you have no idea what your 1RM is. So the basic rule of thumb is that you should use something
between the heaviest load you can feel comfortable and safe with, and 15% less than that, give or take.

3. You should stay away from failure in all series, at least for now . The more you have to fight a repetition, the more
your technique will degrade, at least until you master the motor pattern. Let's say you're doing sets of five reps, and the
first three are beautiful, perfect. In the fourth the tremors begin. And the fifth is clearly different from the first three.
With this you are internalizing the appropriate motor pattern that you are trying to learn in 60% of your work, and
something completely different in the remaining 40%. This makes it take longer to master the correct technique. You
should be at least three reps away from failure while you're a beginner, and almost always stop your sets when your
technique starts to degrade.

At first, you won't be completely sure when it starts to get worse, so it will help to have partners watching your lifts, or
to record your sets (with the camera recording you in profile, at a height between the knee and the hip, if we're talking
about squats). ; at hip height, if we are talking about deadlifts; or about 15-20 cm above the height of the bench, if we
are talking about bench press), so you can see them later and compare how they feel and how they look. This will teach

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

you to identify how repetitions done with good technique feel, how hard but correct repetitions feel (sometimes you
can notice that a repetition has turned out badly, and then see on video that it has turned out perfectly), and How do
those who are a complete disaster feel?

To get enough work done while avoiding muscular and technical failure, doing multiple sets at low reps is a winning bet.
The fewer repetitions you do in each set, the less fatigue you will develop between the first and last, and the shorter the
period of time in which you must be focused on your technique.

4. Generally, training each lift 2-4 times per week will be most effective.

Because? Two reasons: 1) You need enough opportunities to practice the movements. Practice is the key to learning
something new. 2) You can simply do more! Why bother training a lift one day, when you can train it in three days in a
demanding way.

And why limit it to four? Honestly, as a beginner, you're not going to benefit from doing much more than that. You
could practice the movements a little more frequently, but the difference probably wouldn't be very big. More
importantly, muscle protein synthesis remains elevated in beginning lifters for a long time: typically 36-48 hours.

For more experienced lifters, this interval drops to 12-24 hours (or less, depending on the degree of training demand).
So, with 2-4 sessions per lift/week, you are already spending enough time building muscle.

The next key factor is the development of muscular and kinesthetic awareness.

Kinesthetic awareness is just a fancy way of saying “knowing where your body is in space.” Developing this skill helps
you achieve two things:

1. Learn to “feel” when you are performing a movement correctly or incorrectly. This feedback will help you make
adjustments to improve the execution of the movements.

2. Improve the operation of external instructions. External instructions are those that focus on how to perform the
movement (e.g., in the bench press, saying “throw the bar toward the ceiling” instead of saying “contract your pecs”),
and are very effective in in order to improve its performance. If you understand how to feel your body's movements in
space, the more sense those external instructions will make to you, the more able you will be to apply them correctly,
and the more it will help your performance.

The best way to achieve this? I have realized that the best way to acquire this type of body awareness is with
demanding exercises with your own body weight. Do I have any studies/references to support me? Well no, since that
would be almost impossible to test. But of all the people I've worked with, those who had a gymnastics or martial arts
background almost always learned the new moves faster than the rest, and "got" the external instructions the first time.
I have also observed that certain “weird” exercises also help to achieve this type of awareness.

Here are some suggestions for bodyweight exercises that might help (start with what you're able to do): push-ups
(progressing to one-handed push-ups), dips, inverted rows, pull-ups, monkey bar exercises, planks, abdominal wheel,
one-leg PMR (weighted or unweighted), lunges and split squats (at a speed you can control), one-leg balance exercises,
one-leg jumps, L-sits, farmer's walks, waiter walks, one-handed overhead press, incline press, and one-handed
overhead squat.

There are probably many more to choose from, but choosing two or three from that list per session, and doing two sets

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

of as many repetitions as you can with a controlled pace, will be enough to achieve our goal.

Mind you, I'm not saying you're going to get most of your progress from those exercises (not unless you load them and
train them more frequently, like the main lifts), but they will help you develop the kinesthetic awareness that will allow
you to learn the new movements better (achieving a high degree of mastery) and faster.

It should be noted that this type of training will not be of much use to someone who has a notable sports history
(especially if you are quite good at your sport, and have practiced it recently), since sports training typically helps
develop kinesthetic awareness. . The people who most often benefit from the exercises outlined above are people who
have not played sports in a long time (or ever) and who have not tested their kinesthetic abilities.

Body Awareness
Next, we will talk about muscle awareness. I hate the phrase “mind-muscle connection,” but it's a good way to explain
it. Developing this awareness gives you two things:

1. It helps you identify the weak link in a movement if a particular muscle group is not “doing its part of the job.” If
you don't know how to feel the contraction of a certain muscle, it will be difficult to identify that muscle as the culprit of
a bad lift.

2. Makes internal instructions more effective. Internal instructions are those that focus on what a part of your body
does during a lift (e.g., “squeeze your pecs” instead of “throw the bar toward the ceiling”). According to evidence,
external instructions are more effective in improving performance . Still, internal instructions also have their place,
especially if you're working on correcting the weak link in a lift, and you're trying to reintegrate a muscle group into a
movement pattern in which it wasn't doing its job. If a weak muscle is limiting a movement, your body finds a way to get
more use out of other muscles to compensate. When that weak muscle gets stronger, focusing on it can help re-engage
it in the lift, and fine-tune that motor pattern.

How do we achieve this? Isolation exercises, or “bodybuilding” style exercises. The tool we use does not matter. Bars,
dumbbells, machines, cables, they all work. The goal is not to move maximum weight, but to feel the contraction of the
target muscle to build that muscle awareness (or “mind-muscle connection,” if you prefer).

As with exercises to develop kinesthetic awareness, these isolation exercises won't give you the bulk of your gains
(compound exercises like squats, push-ups, deadlifts, rows, pull-ups, etc., do a great job of building muscle mass ,
especially in beginners). What they will do for you is make it easier to learn the basic exercises you want to master, and
make it easier to evaluate problems and correct your lifts over time.

Train Hard and Recover

The last key factor for beginners is developing the ability to train hard and recover from training. This is often called PFG
(General Physical Preparation), a term that most people understand by 'conditioning'. Although physical conditioning is
important, other factors come into play, so I prefer a more comprehensive term: “ work capacity .” These factors are:

1. Body composition . A high body fat percentage often goes hand in hand with poor insulin sensitivity , and for every
pound of tissue gained, a small percentage will be muscle, and a large percentage will be fat . This occurs for several

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

reasons.High levels of body fat are generally accompanied by low levels of testosterone and high levels of estrogen (in
men). Fat tissue contains the enzyme aromatase, which converts testosterone to estrogen. With low testosterone, it is
easier to gain fat, and by storing more fat, the more aromatase will act, and the more testosterone levels will decrease.

Having low insulin sensitivity, especially in muscle, means that most of the energy you consume is stored as adipose
tissue, and there is growing evidence that the low-grade inflammation associated with obesity can decrease anabolic
pathways (muscle building) and increase catabolic pathways (muscle loss) in your muscles (here's a second study ) .

Simply put, you will respond better to training and recover better from it if you are defined. If you are a man above 20%
body fat, or a woman above 30% body fat, getting down to a range of 12-15%/20-25%, respectively, will make it easier
for you to train hard, recover properly , and build more muscle and strength.

2. Aerobic conditioning. I've already written an in-depth article talking about the importance of aerobic conditioning
for strength athletes, so instead of reproducing it here, I encourage you to read it . The appropriate level of conditioning
work will vary from person to person (some people are naturally highly aerobic), but as a general rule, if your resting
heart rate is in the high 50s to low 60s and you weigh less than 90 kilos, or if it is around 65 and you weigh more than 90
kilos, you probably have enough aerobic base to practice powerlifting.

3. Nutrition. This is also a topic that is impossible to address in a single paragraph. I highly suggest reading the book “
The Renaissance Diet ” by my friend Dr. Mike Israetel for a more in-depth treatment.

4. Lifestyle . Mainly sleeping habits and psychological stress management. Lack of sleep and high stress can reduce
your ability to burn fat, build muscle, and recover from training. I will address this topic in more detail later.
How you focus your work toward the goal of being able to train harder and recover better depends largely on where
you are now. If you are a little overweight, you should try to lose fat as soon as possible; and if you are already defined,
you should not try to lose more weight. If you already have your nutrition optimized, but your aerobic base is poor, you
should work on improving your conditioning. If your conditioning is good, but your sleeping habits are horrible, then you
would benefit most from getting a quality night's rest.

A few words of comfort for those of you who are overweight and just starting out: Don't worry about whether losing
weight will negatively impact your initial progress in strength and muscle. Although new muscle is built more easily
while being in caloric surplus, it is entirely possible to gain muscle and strength while losing fat. This especially applies to
overweight people starting out in weight training. If you adjust your calories so that you lose 1% of body weight per
week, consume enough protein (approximately 1.8 g/kg), and train hard, you should have no problem gaining muscle
and strength while losing weight.

How long does this phase last?

A serious mistake beginner lifters make is continuing too long with their novice programs. Your two most important
goals are to make training a habit, and to master the movements. The third goal (developing kinesthetic and muscular

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

awareness) helps with the second goal, and the fourth (ability to train hard and recover correctly) paves the way for
future training to be more productive.

Once you've gained proficiency with the lifts, there's no point in wasting time on beginner programs. A lot of people will
stick with their beginner program too long until they plateau a few times and end up frustrated.

Most of the strength gains you make following a beginner program come from neurological adaptations - your nervous
system learning the lifts. When you start training, you may already have enough muscle to squat 150kg, but you can
only lift 75kg because your nervous system doesn't "get" the lift yet; You haven't developed that skill yet.

Over several months, you should be able to add weight to the bar at least weekly, and your squat may shoot up to 300
pounds. Maybe your muscle mass has only increased by 10-20%, but your squat has increased so quickly because your
nervous system adapts to external stimuli long before your muscles do. When you hit a plateau and your lifts stop going
up as fast, it's because you're finally reaching the limits of how much you can lift with your current muscle mass.
To continue getting stronger, you have to gain more muscle mass. And simply put, a beginner routine geared toward
learning the lifts is not optimized for gaining a ton of muscle mass. Hypertrophy training generally involves training with
accumulated fatigue, since the biggest driver of muscle growth is training volume . But the movements are best learned
when your muscular and nervous systems are fresh (another reason why your volume per session should not be too
high, and the sets of your main lifts should not be to failure).

When you first get stuck in a beginner routine, it's time to change your training style. Otherwise, you can only continue
to get strong if you gain muscle, and you're stuck in a training routine that's good for gaining muscle, but not optimized
for it.

So how long should you maintain a beginner routine before moving on to an intermediate one? Again, it depends on
the person. Just keep at it until you find it too difficult to add weight to the bar from week to week. This will make you
realize that the strength gains you get from gaining skill with the lifts are starting to wear off, and it's time for a change.
In general, this phase can last from 2 to 6 months.

By the way, stagnation can come in different lifts at different times. Is your bench progress slowing down, while your
squat and deadlift are still progressing? Then change your bench training, but keep your squat and deadlift training as
before, until you stop progressing on them too.

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

 ■ STRONGER
BY SCIENCE

THE JOURNEY. PART 1: A COMMON GUIDE TO

PROGRESS FROM BEGINNER TO ADVANCED

NOVICE LIFTER'S GUIDE

CONVICTION DEVELOP SKILL

The weights should be light
Invest serious time enough for you to be in
and money in your contact with troll, but
results enough mentally heavy so
that it remains the same
basic movement.

Find a

«m
Stay well away from failure
community
in your being, at least at
nity - in
first. Focus on ingraining
person or
The perfect technique.
online

Enjoy your training.

Training each exercise 2-4
Find something you
times a week is what will
really like to do
perform best for you.

MUSCULAR AND KINESthetic AWARENESS

Developing anesthesia awareness helps you do

HOWTO two things: -------------------------------------------------

EITHER
Better understand when movements 'feel' right or not

EITHER
Developing muscle awareness helps you
do two things: HOWTO

EITHER
Identify your weak links and muscles in a
movement

WORKING CAPACITY

Body composition : You will respond better to training

and recover better if you are leaner -12-15% body fat
for men men, 20-25% for women.

Aerobic conditioning : An adequate aerobic base for

powerlifting is a resting heart rate in the high 50s/low
60s for <gokg, mid 60s for >90 kg.

Nutrition: Caloric intake aligned with your goals,

and approximately 1.8 grams of protein per kilo of
body weight.

Lifestyle factors: Lack of sleep and increased stress

decrease how well you can burn fat, build muscle, and
recover from training.

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MODULE 3: TRAINING FOR INTERMEDIATE

You've already passed the easy part. You have gained skill with the lifts, and you see the neural
adaptations in the rearview mirror. It's time to grow up. You have two main objectives in this phase of
your training.

1. Increase your muscle mass.

2. Continue increasing your work capacity.

I will deal with the second point first. Everything explained above about being able to train hard and
recover properly still applies here. If you're not defined yet, keep losing fat. If your conditioning is still
poor, continue to improve it. If your sleep and diet are still mediocre and your psychological stress level is
still high, keep working on improving them.

Increasing your work capacity is vitally important since, as I said before, training volume is the main
determinant of muscle hypertrophy. You have to handle a high training volume to grow, so you must be
able to recover from that training volume. With proper nutrition, adequate sleep, low stress, and
favorable body composition, increasing your training volume over time will help you build that work
capacity.

Now it's time to talk about gaining muscle mass. Before I get into exactly HOW to do it, I must first explain
WHY training to gain muscle mass is so important for strength athletes, as I tend to encounter quite a bit
of opposition to this.

Why do some people lift more and others less?

There are mainly six factors that determine how much weight you can lift right now:

· Muscle size.

· Types of muscle fiber.

· Length of segments (height, limb length, torso length, etc.)

· Motor learning.

· Motivation/activation/fatigue.

· Muscle origins and insertions.

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muscle size
A larger muscle, other things being equal, is a stronger muscle. There is no choice; Past a certain point, you
have to keep growing. I will not insist on this point much further, as I will talk about it later and in more
detail.

Types of muscle fibers

I wanted to get this factor out of the way as soon as possible, because it usually leads to
misunderstandings. Most people assume that you will lift more weight if you have a higher proportion of
type II (fast twitch) muscle fibers. However, this belief is based on a misunderstanding of the terms.

Type I and type II muscle fibers differ greatly from each other. Type I muscle fibers are less fatigueable
(making them great for resistance training) and take longer to reach maximum strength when stimulated.
Type II fibers, on the other hand, are more fatigueable, but reach maximum force much faster when
stimulated (making them excellent for power-related exercises).

However, the maximum force production for a given area of type I fibers is very similar to the maximum
force production for a given area of type II fibers. Depending on the study or book you consult, there may
be up to 10% difference. Still, this difference has almost no importance in the real world, since all your
muscles have a combination of both types of fibers.

If you compared someone with 70% type II fibers to someone with 70% type I fibers (both would be
outliers), the difference in maximum force production would only be about 4%. Type II fibers simply reach
maximum strength sooner, making them better for power activities like sprinting or jumping. Powerlifting,
however (contrary to what the name may lead you to think), is NOT a power sport. Power production
peaks around 30-60% of 1RM, and is quite low at maximum loads.

All this means that the distribution of fiber types has virtually no influence on how much weight you can
lift.
Two warnings:

1) Type II fibers are more sensitive to strength training and grow larger than type I fibers, so fiber
distribution may somewhat limit long-term strength potential. However, that statement is purely
theoretical, as research has shown that elite powerlifters (average squat/deadlift of 285 kg, and average
bench press of 170 kg) actually have the same ratio of type I/type II fibers. than untrained people , which
leads us to believe that the sport itself does not select people with a fiber ratio inclined towards type II. It
might be a concern for someone with an unusually high proportion of type I fibers, but not for the vast
majority of people.

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2) Since type II fibers reach peak strength faster than type I fibers, there is a small possibility that they will
allow you to develop more speed when raising the bar from the chest on the bench, when beginning the
concentric phase of the squat, or when taking off the bar. bar off the floor in deadlift, and that speed can
help break through the sticking point more effectively when handling maximum loads.

However, that's a bit far-fetched for the squat and bench press because the muscles are already
contracting pretty hard to control the weight on the way down; At maximum loads, all of your slow-twitch
fibers have probably already been recruited (since they are the ones that are recruited first – Henneman's
Size Principle ) before you begin the concentric phase. So, regardless of your fiber distribution, the extra
fibers activated at the beginning of the uphill phase are primarily fast twitch.

There is a similar proportion of type I and II fibers (IIa and IIb combined) in very strong powerlifters and
untrained subjects (“Controls”). Extracted from Fry and collaborators (2003).

And for the deadlift, most people's weak point is lifting the bar off the floor. Needing more time to reach
maximum force production would only affect how long it takes for the bar to leave the ground, not the
speed of the lift itself. For someone who is weak in another phase of the lift, being able to develop more
speed beforehand may give them a small advantage, but not enough to make this an extremely important
issue.

Remember, I'm just saying that fiber distribution is unimportant for powerlifting. For other sports, it
definitely matters. More type I fibers are beneficial for endurance events, and more type II fibers are
beneficial for power sports.

Segment length
Until now, we have been talking about the force with which a muscle can contract. Now we will talk about

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the moment of force necessary to produce movement in a joint.

The moment of force takes into account the force applied and the length of the lever (or moment arm)
against which said force is applied. Basic Application: If you are sitting on a seesaw and someone much
larger than you is sitting in front of you, if you are both sitting on the ends of your respective sides, the
other person will be sitting on the ground, and you will be in the air. If they both move toward the middle
(the fulcrum, or pivot point), they can balance the seesaw, even if their sizes are different.

The man on the right would literally have to be sitting on the end of the seesaw.

Now, let's say two people are doing squats, and everything is the same about them (same technique, same
level of training, same amount of muscle mass, etc.), except that one of them has longer femurs.

That means the moment arm against which the quads are working to extend the knees (the distance
between the knee and the center of mass - about half the foot), the moment arm against which the
glutes/adductors /hamstrings are working to extend the hip, or both, will be greater for the person with
longer femurs. This means that your muscles will have to contract harder (produce more force) to
generate the moment of force needed to perform the squat with a given weight.

The lengths of the femur and torso thus affect the squat and deadlift . Additionally, height must be taken
into account; Since the length of virtually all segments will be greater, more muscle force will be necessary
to produce the moment of force required to lift the load. Lastly, arm length is important for both the
deadlift (reduces the range of motion, making lifting easier) and the bench press (increases the total range
of motion).

However, taken as a whole, segment lengths don't really matter too much for OVERALL powerlifting

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performance. Beginners, you probably aren't as unique and special as you think. Although there is some
variability in the relative length of the segments, it is normally less than 10% except in extreme and
atypical cases (so that guy who squats twice as much weight as you does not do it because you have long
femurs. If yours were the same length, maybe I could lift 1.8 times what you lift, instead of 2 times).
As height increases, the necessary moment of force increases, although muscle mass also increases. The
scale is allometric , not linear, so shorter people have a certain advantage, although this is taken into
account with the Wilks formula , a formula by which short/light lifters and tall/heavy lifters can compete
on equal terms. .

Finally, the advantage that different segment lengths provide in one survey is negated by a disadvantage in
another. Long femurs may be bad for squatting, but they are usually good for deadlifting (since long arms
and long legs usually go hand in hand). Long arms may be good for deadlifting, but they are often bad for
bench pressing.

In short, segment length affects the performance of each lift a little, but not as much as people who use it
as an excuse would like. Additionally, a disadvantage in one lift usually becomes an advantage in another.

Motor learning/Neuromuscular efficiency

We've already talked a bit about this, and we'll come back to it later, so we'll skip this point for now.

Motivation/Activation/Fatigue
These are all related to how much you can lift today. If you are motivated to train, you are less fatigued
(basic application of Banister's Impulse-Response model, also known as the fitness-fatigue paradigm), and
if you are with optimal activation (both too little and too much being harmful - Yerkes' Law) Dodson), you
will be able to lift more.

Muscle origins and insertions

This is an important factor that few people talk about. The human body is not designed to lift very heavy
objects. When you compare humans to animals of similar size, we tend to be significantly weaker.
The main reason for this is the difference in muscle insertions. A muscle that inserts further from the joint
is capable of producing a greater moment of force at that joint. Our muscles, most of them, are inserted
very close to the joints they move.

This is good for allowing large ranges of motion (because a given amount of motion at the joint requires
less tissue extensibility), but it means that the (linear) force our muscles produce is not efficiently
translated into moment of force (angular) in our joints.

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 Grab from point B if you really want to get the job done. Grab from point A if you're trying to get a
brutal forearm congestion

In the illustration above, if you grab the wrench at point A, you will have to pull much harder to turn the
screw than if you grabbed it at point B.

For the most part, human muscles insert in a manner similar to point A, and in other animals they insert in
a manner similar to point B.

Here you will see what I am talking about: Let's compare the hamstrings of a human being and a cat.
Observe how the cat's hamstrings insert into the mid-lower part of the tibia and fibula (marks 17 and 18),
and compare with the human hamstrings, which insert near the knee. This means that if a human and a
cat contract their hamstrings with the same amount of force, the cat will generate MUCH MORE moment
of force at the knee.

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Inefficient inserts

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit

 Efficient hamstring insertions

Muscle insertion points have some variability in humans, and this variability matters much more than
segment length, because a small change can create a big difference.

Just to illustrate: Let's say you're comparing the hip extension moment of force for two people doing 'good
morning' with their torsos parallel to the ground. The torso of one of them is 10% longer than that of the
other. This means that the moment arm (basically the distance between the bar and the hip joint) is 10%
longer for the person with the longer torso, so it must produce 10% more moment of force than hip
extension to lift a given load.

Now let's say you're comparing two people with the same torso length, but one of them's ischial
tuberosity (the point of origin of the hamstrings) sticks out 2.5 centimeters more, or their hamstrings
originate a little lower on the back. ischial tuberosity - which is entirely possible. Pelvises come in many
shapes and sizes.

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 Extracted from Mediotips.com
Let's say that the average distance between the hip joint and the origin of the hamstrings is 7.5
centimeters. Those extra 2.5 centimeters from before translate into 33% more hip extension moment if
the hamstrings are contracted with the same force.

As muscles attach very close to joints (usually no further than 5-10 centimeters), small variations can make
big differences.

If your pecs insert lower into your humerus, you are more likely to be a great bench presser. If your lats
insert lower into your humerus, you're more likely to be able to do really heavy pull-ups. If your patellar
tendon inserts a little lower into your tibia, you'll probably be able to squat more. You know that guy who
can do a really heavy curl without having impressive biceps? I bet his biceps insert under his radius.

And what do we do with all this?

Let's take a look back at each of these factors to see where we should direct our training efforts.

Origins and insertions : They can affect the type of technique that will allow you to lift the maximum
weight possible (another reason why the idea of a universal “ perfect technique ” is ridiculous), but you
can't really change them, except with surgery.

Motivation/activation/fatigue : These are all acute factors. Learning to mitigate fatigue and manage
activation are good skills to learn, but they have more to do with how much you can lift today than long-
term strength potential.
Motor learning/neuromuscular efficiency : Skill comes with practice. The progressive increase in
neuromuscular efficiency that is obtained with continuous practice after the initial improvements when
you start training is not enough to explain the differences in strength between individuals.

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Length of segments : Similar to what happens with muscle origins and insertions, the length of segments
can affect technique to a certain degree, but you have no choice but to play with the cards you have been
dealt.

Types of muscle fiber : The same. Furthermore, I have already said that they do not matter much for the
practice of powerlifting.

Muscle size : Ding ding ding! We have a winner.

Of the factors we've looked at, muscle size is the only one you're able to change significantly over the long
term, except for motor learning/neuromuscular efficiency (however, the differences between people in
this area are quite small after rapid initial progress when starting training).

Before going any further, I would like to point out that focusing training towards mass gain for powerlifting
is directly supported by the literature.One study revealed that in elite powerlifters , performance on all
three lifts had a strong correlation (r=0.8-0.9 for some) with the thickness of the primary/agonist muscles
(although strangely, the greatest correlation was with the thickness of the subscapularis muscle for all
three lifts).Another study , recently published, once again revealed that one of the strongest indicators of
performance in national-level powerlifters was muscle mass per unit of height. Bigger equals stronger.

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 Some of the world's best powerlifters suspiciously huge…

Here are some quotes from these studies:

“Squat, bench press, and deadlift performance had a strong correlation with fat-
free mass (FFM) and lean mass relative to height (r= 0.86 to 0.95, P < or = 0.001).”
– Extracted from Brechue and Abe (2002)

“…the most successful powerlifters typically possess greater degrees of muscle

mass expressed per unit of height and/or bone mass, but similar segment lengths
and segment length ratios to their less successful colleagues.” – Excerpted from
Lovera and Keogh (2015)
And again, both studies found that the key issue was muscle mass per unit height, meaning that since you
can't get taller or shorter, gaining more muscle is almost always an advantage. Think of muscle mass as
potential strength. If you gain mass, you may not get stronger immediately (for example, if you trained
with low weights and lost a little technical efficiency with high weights), but you have the potential to get
stronger.
If you stay the same size, you are limiting how strong you can be. Comparing two individuals, the one with
the most muscle may not necessarily be the strongest (due to the factors we have discussed before -

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muscle insertions, segment length, technique, etc.), although it probably will be. However, comparing the
small you to the muscular you, all other things being identical, the muscular you will be stronger.

All other factors (except muscle size), and particularly segment length and muscle attachment points,
largely explain why relatively small people who do not look strong can lift enormous weights. It's not that
his little muscles contract harder than yours; is that they either have body segment lengths that are
advantageous for a certain lift, needing less moment of force for a given lift or weight; or they have muscle
insertion points that allow them to produce a greater moment of force in a joint with the same muscle
contraction force. It's not a matter of special training that allows them to lift heavy weights with a
relatively small body weight, the reason simply has to do with how they are built.

Therefore, the main objective of training for intermediates is to achieve the highest possible weight
category, as quickly as possible, while maintaining an acceptable definition (less than 15% body fat for
men, and less than 25% for men. women) and protect the joints as much as possible.

Some people are opposed to the idea of moving up in weight classes, since people lift more in higher
weight classes. So they think it will benefit them to be in a lower weight class. But remember what we
talked about levers and moments of force. If you are taller than another lifter, you have to produce more
muscle force to generate enough moment of force to allow you to lift the same amount of weight. Being
taller than other competitors in your weight class automatically puts you at a disadvantage.

On the other hand, if you can get super strong and be one of the shortest lifters in your weight class (while
staying pretty ripped), you'll have an advantage over your rivals. While you may be more competitive in a
lower weight class now, that probably won't be where you'll be most competitive in the long run.

Some of my weightlifting friends love to say, “Weight classes are height categories in disguise.” Of course,
if you don't plan on competing and are just trying to get strong because you want to, obviously gaining as
much muscle as possible is definitely an advantage.
Implementation
Therefore, you have three main objectives:

1. Gain muscle mass.

2. Accumulate the least possible deterioration in your joints.
3. Maintain or increase your lifting skill.

Steps to achieve these three objectives:

1. Increase the intensity a little on the main lifts (doing most of your training at 75-85% of your RM, with

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very little work below 70% and very little work above 90%, unless you prepare to a competition) to
continue improving your technique and skill lifting heavy weights.

2. Include more variations of your main lifts. This will allow you to push harder on your lifts, while
avoiding monotony and injuries from overusing the same movements all the time. Squat with pause, front
squat, close grip bench press, bench press from stops, different styles of deadlifts (if you do conventional,
use sumo as accessory work, and vice versa), deficit deadlifts, etc.

3. Keep the volume of your main lifts low to moderate, and always stay within 1-2 reps of failure (avoiding
technical failure). You don't need a ton of high-quality heavy lifting to maintain and improve neural
factors. In fact, filling the majority of your training volume with the main lifts will overwhelm you, and limit
how much total training volume you are able to handle per session and per week.

4. The bulk of your training volume should be made up of accessory exercises that hit all the major muscle
groups. Sets of 6-15 repetitions, training each muscle/movement 2-3 times per week, with about 4-6 sets (
or 40-70 total repetitions ) per session. I recommend accessory exercises over light sets of squats, bench
presses, and deadlifts, to reduce the risk of overuse injuries, and to keep specificity high with the main lifts
(since lifting heavy at low reps and lifting light at high reps They are different skills, you don't want to
"dilute" the motor learning you are doing with your main lifts, unless you are breaking your training into
several different phases, as we will see later).

5. Plan weight gains and record attempts for big lifts on a realistic time scale. At first, use 4-week training
blocks, aiming for small records every 4 weeks. When you stop setting records consistently in those time
periods, move to 8-week cycles, then 12. You should be able to achieve records every 12 weeks (during
bulking phases) throughout your entire hypertrophy-focused phase of intermediate training.

6. Periodization is not overly important for hypertrophy , but varying your training a little helps keep your
workouts fresh.

7. Divide your training between volume and definition phases. This generally helps you gain muscle at a
faster rate than if you tried to gain it with minimal changes to your body fat percentage. Try to gain about
250 grams of weight per week until your body fat percentage reaches 20-22% for men, and 28-30% for
women. Then start slowly losing weight up to 10-15% for men, and 20-25% for women, losing
approximately 1% of your body weight per week. I highly recommend reading this article for more details.

8. Don't spend too much time preparing to compete. A simple 3-4 week preparation will be enough to get
very solid lifts on the platform, since you will be training the main lifts at quite an intensity during this
phase.

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 study Sport Injury rate per 1,000 hours Most common regions

winwood Strongman 5.50 Low back

Keogh (2006) Powerlifting 4.40 Shoulder

Quinney (1997) Power rl if ting 3.70 Low back

Calhoun (1999) Olympic weightlifting 3.30 Low back

Kak(2013) CrossFit 3.10 Shoulder

Raske and Norlin (2000) Olympic weightlifting 2.60 Low back

Raske and Norlin (2000) Powerlifting 2.60 Shoulder

Haykowsky (1999) Power rl if ting 1.10 Low back and shoulder

Siewe (2011) Powerlifting 1.00 Shoulder

Eberhardt (2007) bodybuilding 1.00 Not specified

Brown (1986) Powerlifting 0.84 Shoulder

Siewe (2014) bodybuilding 0.24 Shoulder

Summary table of existing studies on the rate of injuries in sports that involve work
with loads and the most commonly injured areas. Retrieved from strengthandconditioningresearch.com.
On top of all the reasons discussed above, a big reason to make your training very similar to that of a
bodybuilder during this phase is that this style of training has a surprisingly low injury rate. When you look
at injury rates in different strength sports, bodybuilding fares considerably better than powerlifting,
weightlifting, or strongman.

Remember the importance of maintaining joint health along the way. Yes, of course you can build a ton of
muscle by doing heavy, powerlifting-specific training, as long as you do enough sets .

However, the goal of this phase is to build muscle while minimizing any risks that could jeopardize your
long-term success, and even the best study to date that compared (for equal volume) “powerlifting-style”
training ”vs. “bodybuilding style” revealed that, while both types of training produced similar hypertrophy,
achieving volume from heavier training caused more pain and a greater feeling of wear and tear in the
participants.

How long does this phase usually last? Again, it depends on the person and how quickly they gain muscle
(which is largely determined by training level and genetics). Generally it is a period of about 3-8 years. The
first time you gain less than 1.25-2.25 kilos of muscle in a year of consistent training and diet, it will be
time to move on to advanced training.

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 Training volume is the #1 trigger for hypertrophy.

You have to handle a high training volume to grow, so you have to be able to recover from that training volume.

In addition to proper nutrition, adequate sleep, low stress, and com favorable body position, simply gradually increase the
vol umen of your training will help build that work capacity
Muscle size is the only factor you can change in the long run, except for motor learning/efficiency.

Implementation
Your mission: Get big, accumulate as little as possible
joint wear, maintain or increase skill with exercises,

Make climb The intensity of your training for The main exercises,
Performing most of your training at 75-85% of your max.

Include more variation for your main exercises: Squat with pause,
front squat, narrow grip bench, deficit takeoff, etc.
 Keep the volume for your main exercises low to moderate, and
stay at least 1-2 reps from failure at all times.

Get the majority of your training volume from active exercises.

cessory for all major muscle groups .

MODULE 4: TRAINING FOR ADVANCED

At this point, you already have the most muscle you'll ever have (unless you've stayed natural up until now
and decide to start taking vitamin S), so your job now is to squeeze the most out of it. This requires going
from mastering the lifts to being a master at them. Although by now you have reaped all the rewards in
terms of neuromuscular adaptations, there is still room for improvement. There is actually a surprising
amount of neural coordination associated with lifting really heavy loads. You have to activate the vast
majority of the fibers of the main muscles, you have to coordinate their contractions so that the
sequencing of the lift is perfect (intramuscular and intermuscular coordination), those muscle fibers
contract and relax very quickly (activation frequency), and The faster they do it, the more muscle force
they can produce. With submaximal weights (about 80-85% of your maximum) you can learn to activate
muscle fibers and coordinate movement. However, there are slight changes in technique that only occur
with maximum loads (not degeneration of technique - just the extra weight slightly changes the
distribution of force throughout the system), which means that coordination can be refined even more.
Additionally, activation frequency (the speed at which fibers contract and relax) does not begin to factor
into muscle strength gains until the muscle is contracting at 80-85% of its maximum force, which is which
means it will train better with even higher loads, and can still be improved once you reach the advanced
level. Periodization also plays an important role in advanced training focused strictly on strength, as it
contributes more to strength development than muscle hypertrophy.

Here are some general guidelines on how advanced training should be designed:

1. The off-season period is dedicated to building specific work capacity for the main lifts, which means a
lot of submaximal training using variants of the main lifts (high frequency, high volume, relatively low
intensity, and high variation to decrease the risk of injury due to overuse). This prepares your body to
handle the heavy loads necessary to master lifting with maximum weights.

2. In the off-season, accessory work should be primarily focused on correcting specific muscle weaknesses
that hinder performance on your main lifts. Cut back on the amount of “bodybuilding-style” work you do
so you can devote more energy to the main lifts. It's difficult to combine high volumes of squats, bench
presses, and deadlifts with equally high volumes of accessory exercises, making the latter a poor use of
your time and energy since you're not going to get much more hypertrophy anyway. from them.
3. As the competition gets closer, decrease the frequency of training
and the volume of each lift so you can increase the intensity.

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4. In the last 6 weeks before a competition, be very conservative with accessory work. There's not enough
time to add more muscle, and the more energy you use on accessories, the less you can devote to the
main lifts.

5. Try to maximize the number of quality lifts you can do with 85-95% of your 1RM while minimizing
fatigue in the 4-6 weeks before competition. You want to be as fresh as possible in each of your heavy
sessions so that your work comes as close as possible to maximum performance (very high specificity
necessary to achieve mastery). Your goal is to practice the lifts as much as possible and in a very specific
way, which is achieved with very high loads and very low accumulated fatigue.

6. Try to compete about twice a year. You want enough time between competitions to be able to
significantly increase your total each time you get on the platform, but you also want to practice
competing to learn how to manage the nerves of the day, choose your attempts, cut weight, etc. Of
course, you can compete before you reach the advanced level, but this is when competing ability matters
most.

How long can you continue improving once you have reached this level? As in each of the other phases, it
depends. There is no reason why you can't continue to improve until injuries start to appear, or until aging
limits you. You will never achieve a 100% perfect technique, so there will always be room for
improvement. You will also be able to continue to gain a little muscle each year. Not much, but enough to
make a small difference.

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The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit
MODULE 5: CONCLUSIONS

I want to point out something that I have not stated explicitly. Beginner, intermediate, or advanced have
been defined in this audio course by the main factors that limit performance, NOT by arbitrary strength
values. How much you can lift at the end of each of these phases will depend largely on how well you have
chosen your parents (your genetic makeup). This is not a guide to breaking world records. It is a guide to
reaching your own strength potential.

This audio course is mainly focused on training. However, I want to reiterate that training does not take
place in a vacuum. Proper nutrition, sufficient quality and nightly rest time and excellent stress
management play a role at least as important as training.

You don't get stronger in the gym.

Many people do not stop to consider this very basic fact. By the end of your training session, you have
built up fatigue and are weaker than when you walked in the door.

You get stronger outside of the gym.

And what do we do with this information?

It should make you look at training from a slightly different perspective.

Instead of looking at training from a perspective of, “I'm going to do this because I'll get big and strong,”
you should look at training by thinking, “I'm sending a message to my body, and I'd like it to respond to
that message by getting stronger and stronger.” growing."

It may seem like just a semantic difference, but it is an important difference, because it helps you put the
entire training process in perspective.
It's not the training itself that makes you bigger and stronger. It's how your body RESPONDS to training
that makes you bigger and stronger.

Your body adapts by responding to what it perceives as a threat. When you train, you are sending your
body the message that being forced to lift heavy weights is a “threat” (via stress to your muscles, bones

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and connective tissue), to which it needs to respond and adapt.

When training is the only major threat your body perceives, it will generally have no problem adapting to
it.

But what happens when the body receives more threats? And what threats are those? Well, anything that
your body perceives as a stressor.

When your body is trying to respond to several threats at the same time, it doesn't respond equally well to
any of them. You can think of it as multitasking. If you're trying to read a book, play a video game, and
work on a college project all at once, you'll remember almost nothing of what you've read, your kill rate
will be horrible, and your job will definitely be The project will be very bad.

Two of the biggest things that prevent your body from responding properly to training are lack of sleep
and chronic stress, such as from a stressful job, a bad relationship, financial problems, etc.

Without going into the details of how your body responds to stress, it basically deals with these threats by
ensuring that you have enough energy circulating in your bloodstream, available to keep you alert, and by
ensuring that you would be able to fight or flee if the situation required it ( For most of human history, we
responded to most threats in these two ways, hence the popular term “fight-flight response”).

Ensuring you have enough energy to cope with these stressors is your body's primary adaptive response.
More importantly in the context of training, there is an inherent catabolic process (“tissue breakdown”).
Your body breaks down stored glycogen and protein to ensure you have enough energy available to
respond to the threat.
That's bad news for the lifter. Getting bigger and stronger is fundamentally an anabolic process (“tissue
synthesis”).

So when everyday stress and lack of sleep tell your body to remain in a catabolic state, you're going to
have a hard time carrying out the anabolic process necessary for building muscle.

If you want more information on the topic, there are articles on Strongerbyscience about how lack of sleep
hinders fat loss and muscle gain , and how chronic stress literally doubles the time it takes to recover from
training .

But right now, let's keep it simple. Training is like having a conversation with your body. You send it the

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message it needs to get bigger and stronger via stress on the muscles, bones, and connective tissue. You
hope he responds to that message appropriately. But when stress builds up and you're not getting enough
sleep (which is a stressor in itself, and compounds the effects of any other chronic stress you're under),
you're sending your body mixed messages, telling it that it should “ be demolished” and “rebuilt” at the
same time.

The end result is something similar to the multitasking assumption that I mentioned before. You struggle
to get big and strong, and the stress of training reduces your ability to cope with everyday stressors and
lack of sleep, until eventually your body suffers such wear and tear that you end up completely burned
out, which often results in to some type of disease or infection. When your body's ability to respond to
threats is overwhelmed, viruses or bacteria that would normally be destroyed by your immune system
manage to multiply enough to give you a cold, flu, or respiratory infection.

So remember, when you're trying to tell your body that it needs to get stronger, you'll need to make sure
you're managing your daily stress correctly and getting enough sleep, otherwise you won't get anywhere.

If you have any questions or criticism after listening to this audiocourse, please send me an email. I want it
to be as thorough, understandable, and accurate as possible, so if you didn't understand something or
think I've screwed up somewhere, please email me at greg@strengtheory.com to tell me how I can
improve it.

The Ultimate Guide to Strength Training – AudioFit