How many times have you gone to a doctor with an injury sustained during activity and been told to rest it for 2 weeks? It’s pretty much the instantaneous canned response you’re going to get from someone who isn’t going to take the time to physically assess you and maybe write you a prescription for some painkillers.
While I most definitely can’t tell you to ignore the advice of your doctor or other medical professional, I can most definitely tell you that it’s worth finding one that takes more care in their diagnosis, and tell you how passive recovery loses to active recovery in almost every case.
The Four Most Powerful Things That Movement Does For Injured Tissue:
• Movement brings blood and site specific growth factors to injured tissue
• Tension is an anabolic signaller – stressing the injured area within its structural tolerance sends signals to the brain to continue to heal at an accelerated rate and to grow tissue stronger
• Tissue adapts to force lines – applying tension to soft tissues helps align the new collagen (scar) tissue to handle the types of forces it will see post recovery
• Movement creates repeatable patterns – Learning how to move well and support the injured tissue is a skill, and this skill is developed by repeated practice
If right now some of those points seem like they’re written in Latin, let’s take a closer look at each point and examine how they fit into the recovery puzzle
1 – Blood and Site Specific Growth Factors:
As you start to move an area of your body, the mechanical sensors within your muscles send signals to your brain that an increased demand for oxygen is being created within that specific tissue. The brain responds by relaxing arterial muscle and “opening up the gates” for increased blood flow to that area, but it’s not just oxygen that comes with that increased blood flow: amino acids, growth hormones and other growth factors are delivered to the area at an increased rate over resting tissue. Both the building blocks and the biochemical signallers for tissue regeneration are delivered via the blood to the site of injury. This is one of the reasons why we recommend aerobic/cardiovascular work for those dealing with injuries even if *gasp* they are purely strength or anaerobic athletes. The efficiency of this blood delivery is going to be a significant factor in the rate of which you are able to repair injured tissue. Simply by moving the site of injury with enough repetition to create an oxygen deficit is enough to stimulate this process of increased blood flow, and this can be done with loads far lower than what would normally be considered an effective strength training method – more on this later!
2 – Tension is an Anabolic Signaller:
Anabolic signaller is a fancy term for “request to build tissue stronger”, and applying tension to a muscle is the most reliable way to signal to the brain to build new tissue. There is currently quite the debate about which mechanisms are responsible for anabolic signalling, but there’s not currently much debate about which one is the strongest: it’s applying tension – simply applying tension to a muscle in a passive (aka you just sit there) stretch has been shown to grow new muscle and connective tissue. Before you get all excited and think you can just stretch your way to injury recovery, it’s worthy to note that these stretching studies involve holding a forced stretch for 30+minutes at a time at around 7-8 pain threshold. Fear not, you can apply tension in a much more enjoyable and efficient manner via targeted strength training and achieve equal or greater effects, and also without having to apply a stretch to a degree that would almost undoubtedly cause further injury.
3 – Tissue Adapts to Force Lines:
Left to its own devices in a state of rest, collagen (scar tissue) will lay itself haphazardly in all directions over the site of injury, which is likely to create future problems. You’ve probably heard these two things before and perhaps wondered how both could be true: 1 – scar tissue is stronger than the tissue it heals, 2 – if a muscle or other soft tissue tears once, it’s far more likely to tear again. If scar tissue is so much stronger, why do muscles tear again so frequently?
Imagine we take a blanket and rip a hole out of it, but we keep the piece we ripped out. Now we decide to sew the piece back in with kevlar thread, but we stitch in all directions over the tear – this is very much like the way scar tissue would arrange itself at rest. Imagine after the repair we decide to pull on either end of the blanket and apply tension until it rips, where is it most likely to rip? It’s unlikely the actual stitches will rip as they are many times stronger than the blanket, but rather it will rip right beside the stitches, as the stitches have created a stiff stress point in the blanket. But what if instead of randomly stitching across the tear, we could align those kevlar stitches in the direction we were going to pull the blanket? We’d still have a section of stiffness, but those kevlar fibres would more evenly distribute the pressure into the repaired piece of the blanket in the direction of pull; this is essentially what applying tension to a muscle during the phase of collagen proliferation (scar tissue development) can do for you. Almost all tissues, including bone, adapt to the force lines they see the most, since the force lines within a muscle are fairly predictable (they pull from point A to point B in a straight line) simply choosing an exercise that applies tension to that muscle in the early phases of recovery will help to align the collagen fibres in the direction of pull, and reduce the loss of flexibility associated with tearing, as well as reduce the incidence of re-tears by more even distributing the tension along the force line of the muscle.
Once scar tissue has formed and matured it has limited to no ability to rearrange itself to force lines, meaning you have one shot at this, and it’s in the early phases of collagen formation.
4 – Movement Creates Repeatable Patterns
Although a bit chicken and egg, with injury often comes instability and poor movement patterns. Whether you’ve lost the ability to move well because of the injury, or the way you were moving created the injury, you’re going to need to relearn how to create quality movement with and around the injured tissue. Even simple movements take coordination from the brain to control contractions within the muscle and to work together as a system with other muscles around it, and the only way to get better at this is practice. If you wait until you’ve fully healed to learns these skills, you’ll have to tack on the retraining phase to the end of the tissue healing phase and lengthen the amount of time you spend not doing the activity you wish to return to
So in a nutshell, there’s the WHY to move in the early phases of injury rehab, but now we’re going to talk about why you can and should apply tension and movement FREQUENTLY, and as much possible without causing regression.
Chances are you’d like to spend as little total time in the recovery process as possible, and get back to doing the things you love. In order to return as quickly as possible we want to deliver as much blood and nutrients to the area, we want to constantly signal the brain to heal faster and stronger, and we want to develop the skills to move safely and efficiently while we’re healing so we don’t need to add an additional phase to the rehabilitation process after tissue healing has occurred. All this points towards strength training early and often, sometimes multiple times a day, which may seem absurd at first glance – you wouldn’t train a healthy muscle or tendon multiple times a day 7 days a week, how could you possibly train an injured area multiple times a day? It’s actually to do with the adaptation curves of injured tissue and the stimulus required to get a response from the body
Under normal conditions, you must create a fairly large stimulus to spur adaptation – in some way shape or form you must expose a tissue to a demand it was not adequately adapted to, but in injured tissue, it doesn’t take much stimulus at all to create a adaptive response, and because the stimulus is small, so are the recovery demands, and therefore the more repeatable the process is.
After disruption to the system (we’ve applied a small dose of repeated tension via a strengthening exercise) we get the anabolic signalling, we get the increased blood flow, we get the stimulus to align the collagen fibres in line with the force direction of the muscle, but because the dose that we can apply to the muscle is so low compared to what we would normally call strength training, these effects don’t last as long as they would with larger doses of strength training, so if we want to spend more time in the accelerated frame of healing, we need to apply tension more often.
How often should you train it? That’s a good question, ideally you should be working with a health professional who is helping you guide these types of decisions, and you have a high degree of body awareness. Different injuries and different tissues adapt at different rates, for example, muscle tissue is far more trainable than tendon tissue, but for entertainment purposes *note super lame disclaimer* I’ll give you some general guidelines that will help determine how much load and how often to apply that load. These guidelines are going to be aimed at muscle and tendon tears, and I’ll explain some modifiers for things like disc herniations and other passive joint tissues such as ligaments and capsules etc at the end
How to Choose Load:
The general guidelines for selecting the appropriate load for injured tissue is that the applied load can take pain levels up to about 3-4/10 scale during the exercise, but should return to baseline or a 1-2/10 within 30s to 1min of stopping the exercise. If you’re exceeding these thresholds, it’s likely you’re doing more harm than good by continuing to add load.
How To Determine Dose or Number of Sets Per Session:
The pain threshold can be useful for determining set count as well, you shouldn’t run into a point where either during the set or in between the sets pain threshold is moving up, but ideally, you’d use around a 20% repetition loss as a marker instead, and this should occur before the pain scale moves up. Since the load is going to be fairly low, in general, the early phases of rehab are going to use higher rep methods to be effective, so say you’re able to achieve 20 reps on your first set, you could continue sets with full recovery until your rep count fell to 16 or less. Once this 20% repetition loss has been achieved, adding more work in this session is likely to spur further adaptation and could possibly be detrimental
How to Determine How Often to Repeat the Session:
There are a lot of factors that go into this, from the severity of the injury, to the type of tissue, the size of the muscle or tendon etc. but a general rule is if you can’t progress reps or load within your acceptable pain scale, you’re still adapting to the last session and you’re not ready for another one. In general, the earlier you are in the recovery process and the less load you’re using, the more often you’ll be able to repeat the session. This is sometimes multiple sessions during the day in the early phases, and as load tolerance increases will probably drop to a session per day, and finally return to the frequency of which you were training it before
What about disc/ligament/capsule etc injuries?
Although not universally true, injuries to the passive tissues of joints are generally a failure of the muscular system to adequately control motion at the joint. More often than not these are failures of the muscular system to produce enough force or apply that force fast enough and in a co-ordinated manner to stabilize the joint in reaction to the force applied, but it also can happen when an imbalance in muscular strength exists on one side of the joint vs the other (for example, extremely strong quads, and weak hamstrings affecting the tracking of the knee joint).
In general these injuries arise from lack of stability, or repeated wear and tear from poor movement patterns. The good thing is that most passive tissues are redundant – meaning that we have muscles that provide much of the same or identical support to the joint that the ligament or disc etc was providing, but you must teach the brain the skill to apply that muscular force in the situations you need it stabilize the joint in. As with any skill the more you practice it, the better you are a performing it, and the more you repeat the pattern the more likely it is to be retained. Once again frequency becomes our friend, but with a caveat, because these passive tissues heal at much slower rates, many of the sessions should be based around skill development without the need to overload the tissue, whereas 1-3 sessions per week can be aimed at loading the muscles (so long as they are not also injured) with the largest amount of load they can tolerate without putting undue stress on the injured joint tissues.
The aim of the initial phase of recovery is actually to have the active tissue take most if not all of the load – we have several people here at Blacksmith who have failed ligament surgeries or opted not to do them who have full function and return to sport. Those people have returned to sport through rigorous and graduated skill development that allows them to learn the abilities required to handle joint torque with muscle as opposed to relying on a passive ligament that not longer exists.
The biggest difference to note here is that skills like balance and control need to be developed more than tissues need to be built – quite often athletes will already have the requisite strength in the muscles to exert more control and balance than they are currently displaying, so the need for overload and tension come backseat to development of skill.
The “how much load?” becomes more dependent on joint stability and pain tolerance than muscle capacity, but the pain scale is still a good reference tool. The “how often to apply load?” becomes more in line with standard training protocols, 2-3 overloading sessions, and although the amount of sets and exercises is well outside the scope of this article, as a general guideline 1-5 exercises for 3-12 sets per session depending on the complexity of the joint and the amount of muscle groups acting on it (more exercises for shoulders/hips/spine, less for knee/elbow etc.). But the “how often?” for skill development drills – it’s almost impossible to overdo these. Small doses of frequent practice for balance and static stability drills can be done multiple times over the day as they require virtually zero recovery. Without a doubt people who have stability related injuries who practice their balance and stability drills more often will recover faster than those who do them less frequently.
Rest is for the Weak?
Rest is indeed an important part of the process, it’s during rest that you’re going to adapt to the load and tension you’re applying, but I can tell you without a doubt, those who are obsessive about every detail of both their rest and their active rehab processes will beat expected recovery timelines often by twofold or greater. If you’re as determined in your rehab as you are in your training or sport, you’re many times more likely to have both a successful recovery and spend less time on the IR than those who simply sit around and wait to get better. Ideally you’ll include one or more health care professionals who are familiar with people who push their bodies to the limits, and then take every opportunity to work on yourself throughout the entire process
My first exposure to powerlifting came through the “golden era” articles on EliteFTS – stories of Chuck V, Dave Tate, Louie Simmons and the likes who would strap their failing bodies together to redline another training session or another meet through pretty much any means possible. This results-over-everything mentality resonated with me as it aligns with the way I’m wired – I am an all-in aggressive personality that has overcome most obstacles in my life through an almost violent will-power and unwillingness to give up.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I competed in somewhere in the neighbourhood of 12-13 different sports, often having up to 4 different practices a day; I always had a chip on my shoulder as although I was often not the most talented player, I absolutely refused to be outworked. I would work obsessively on skill development and supplemental conditioning on off days and after practices when everyone else had gone home, I’d run extra stairs after wrestling practice, and stay after practice to wrestle the coaches to have a chance to work against stronger and more experienced opponents. When it came to injuries and pain management it was always a “sweep it under the rug, suck it up, and get back out there” approach. I competed in a wrestling tournament after a 50% rupture of my Achilles tendon I sustained at wrestling practice and then made worse by jumping in a badminton tournament the same day. I refused to tell my coaches or parents about the injury or get proper rehab for fear of missing any of my upcoming lacrosse or wrestling provincial championships – a decision I still pay for to this day.
So when I first started powerlifting, I took the same work ethic and refusal to let pain or injury get in the way of applying myself 100% to every training session, and for a very long time it served me well. I tore my bicep off the bone and never missed a training session and was back in the gym the day after surgery (I considered going the same day just to really say fuck you to the injury, but we had plans with friends so instead I waited until the next afternoon to get back to training). Even as my mental approach is shifting, I am still proud of the fact that I didn’t miss a session the entire time, because I’ve seen too many people focus on what they can’t do whereas I was solely focused on what I could do and felt the need to lead by example. There’s a lot of positive that comes out of only seeing solutions and never seeing/ignoring obstacles, but it’s had its dark side, and I’ve paid for it dearly by taking this approach to the extreme.
I’ve spent the entirety of the last three years with one or more concurrent moderate to severe muscle tears, an array of various tendinopathies, joint capsule damage and separations, ligament tears and other various injuries – and they are all my fault. I set my best total of 1868 in 2019 and haven’t improved it since. Part of the reason I haven’t improved my total is because I went through massive weight cuts, got out of wraps and back into sleeves, but the reality is I had to run away from the kinds of weights that were ripping my body apart as I continually tried to smash through injury after injury. I’ve had to take a hard look in the mirror as to how the mentality that has allowed me to achieve so much with average-at-best genetics was now working against me, and how I was going to change my approach so I can get back to what matters most to me – improving my total.
The first change I had to make was to let go of timelines, I’m aware that this flies in the face of pretty much every goal setting rule on the planet, but by mentally marrying number goals and attaching them to dates on the calendar, I would blind myself to mistake after mistake trying to will those numbers into existence at a particular meet: I would constantly overshoot RPE numbers, justify weight jumps when things were moving poorly because “I was just out of position and need to execute better”, and ignore pain and injury that were worsening with every session until they became bad enough that I could no longer train no matter how much I tried to fight through it. I know this is going to come as a shock to most of you, but if you can’t train, it’s pretty hard to get better and improve your total.
My remedy has been to actually let go of all number and timeline goals but rather to focus on getting the absolute best out of myself each and every session, and simply to make good training decisions, which means sometimes *gasp* I’ve had to skip a session. There are many ways that I’ve kept myself accountable: I’ll use a velocity tracker to help me choose my training weights (I might be able to lie to myself, but I’m not able to lie to the tracker about how fast things are moving), I’m learning to dissociate from the weights but rather focus on hitting my prescribed RPEs – I can’t make everything a RPE9.5-10, scientifically I know this, but I’ve always struggled with honesty in this arena and as a coach, I know I’m cutting my coach off at the knees by taking away significant tools away from his toolbox in load management, directed adaptation and timed progression models.
I’m making the direction of my training the priority and letting go of any type of rate of progress goals; my only goal is to be better than the last session, and to be heading in the right direction week over week and month over month. I refuse to compare where I am now to any other point in my powerlifting career, I’ve even let go of mentally tracking my PRs – I couldn’t tell you what my best training 2-5 rep maxes are, and honestly I don’t care, they don’t matter, the only thing that matters is: am I doing everything in my power today to keep moving in the right direction?
So is it working? I’d say the evidence comes in both a 694lb and a 733lb deadlift and a 585×2 squat that have come in the last month; let me explain. The 694lb deadlift was about 3 weeks ago, and previously that would have been an absolutely blasphemous weight to load – just load 700! But I actually didn’t realize it was 694 until after I had done it, I was supposed to work up to RPE7,8,9 singles and as I was working up I refused to add up the weight (I’ve been around the sport long enough to know what all the intervals of 25kg plates are, but I was intentionally not counting up any of the change) when I hit my RPE7 at 606 I made the choice to jump 20kg to 650 for RPE8, the call was perfect so I made the call to make exactly the same jump to hit my RPE9, which ended up being 694 which was definitely my upper limit for a RPE9 for that day, for me to stick to my process on heavy singles marked my true commitment to this mental shift.
The 733lb deadlift came 2 weeks later when I was allowed to work to a true RPE10, my previous set was 705lbs and it moved better than it has in a long time. Both Cam and Cole were training with me at the time (the other two full time coaches at Blacksmith) and have seen my deadlift many times over the years and I trust their input often more than I trust my own when it comes to selecting weight jumps. Cam and Cole were giving me a 10-17.5kg range on the next jump and Cole had actually loaded a 15kg jump onto the bar, but I asked him to change it to 12.5kg. I was 100% positive I could make a 12.5kg and each 2.5kg beyond that up to 17.5kgs would have been a few percentage points less certain. I don’t know who needs to hear this but I probably needed it screamed at me weekly: you only get stronger from the lifts you complete not the ones you miss. So I loaded 332.5kg or 733lbs and pulled it for a new PR. This is especially significant because I can tell you with 100% confidence that I’ve been strong enough to pull this before, but haven’t simply because I was married to a 750lb deadlift or a 1900lb total, and nothing less than those numbers were acceptable – so instead of pulling the 740lbs I knew I was capable of pulling at the last meet, I made the reach for 750 to try and secure a 1900lb total when 1890 was as close to a sure thing as I can say without actually having done it.
The last mark of this mental shift is a 585×2 RPE9 squat, it’s a long way from my best, but it’s still significant. This meet prep started the way pretty much every prep since 2017 has started – with a significant tears to my left adductor magnus, and the inability to squat or deadlift. Previously I would rehab it until it was “good enough” and then limp my way to the platform and try to extract every last pound out of it. Once I got the ability to squat again, I refused to miss a session until the meet, for some twisted reason I felt like this was the best way to put up my highest competition squat, and perhaps for that particular meet it was, but it has hampered my long term development by losing at least a quarter to half the year where I can’t squat or am sputtering around at 50% capacity just trying to maintain the movement. This time I’ve dedicated myself to making the best training decisions I can for my long-term development, and if I can’t get my body prepared to squat by the time the next session has come around, I’ve actually skipped it twice in this prep. Instead of focusing on working harder and blocking out pain in a session I shouldn’t have been doing, I’m redirecting that focus to work harder on the things that are going to get me to the next session in a position to make forward progress. I don’t know if it will lead to even beating my last competition squat I posted while trying to battle through similar injuries, but I am fully confident that committing to this process will eventually lead to the best squat and total I’ve ever put on the platform, whenever that day comes.
This isn’t going to work for everyone, many people could do better by pushing themselves way harder than they are now, but I’m not one of those people, no one needs to tell me put my heart and soul into my training or to attack the bar with everything I have, but if you happen to be someone like me who has become their own worst enemy by smashing head first through every wall with reckless abandon, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror and see how you can get out the way of your own success.
Of all the powerlifts I’m a natural deadlifter: I have the two statistically biggest anthropometric advantages when it comes to conventional deadlifts – relatively long arms, and a fairly short torso. So as far as to which lift I’ve been able to use the most load it has for most of my training career been the conventional deadlift.
Don’t get me wrong I could write an entire article about how much I love deadlifts, they will always have a special place in my heart as the lift that shows you the most about the will and determination of a lifter. Conventional deadlifts especially will show you who wants it the most, it’s one of the few lifts you can force up with sheer effort even if you make a mistake and get out of position. Deadlifts reward those who can put their entire spirit into a single lift without reserve; however, deadlifts have way out, you always have the option put down or drop the bar, and to give up part way through the lift
Squats have the distinction of being the only powerlift where the bar is actually on your body, and the lift that feels the most like it could kill you at any moment, I’m sure that for those that get into the 500+lb range on bench that it can evoke similar emotions but there’s just something about the bar being on your body.
It’s a little different for everyone, but somewhere around the 600-650lb range, you actually have to start taking into consideration how much you are going to compress when choosing your rack heights, and along with this extreme pressure comes a myriad of mental battles that you have to win in order to get under the bar and succeed. I’ve written entire articles about the mental battles of powerlifting, but I truly believe squats are the greatest challenge: they come first in every meet, from the moment you unrack the bar is trying to push you into the ground, the bar being on your body is a sensation that invokes more fear and panic than the bar being in your hands, and the only way to succeed is to fully commit to the rep – anything less than 100% focus and commitment to the descent as fast as you can control is going to lead to a missed lift.
On top of all the mental battles that putting a bar that scares you directly onto your body provides, squats also have the ability to expose every mobility and stability issue you have from your shoulders to your toes. In bench and deadlift, people often get away with poor movement patterns and a “sweep it under the rug” attitude towards poor mobility and stability for quite a long time before it catches up with them, but when it comes to squats, that same sweep it under the rug mentality will lead to high squats and red lights in a hurry. For many people, and especially myself, the ability to squat well takes constant upkeep of mobility work and stability patterns, and whenever I’m getting lazy with my process, a heavy squat will happily remind me of my shortcomings and reward me with pain and poor performance.
The mental roadmaps and procedural discipline you create to deal with all the aforementioned challenges can undoubtedly be extrapolated to the other powerlifts, but far beyond into any overwhelming or fear-inducing situation you find yourself in; I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that getting under a max squat, and all the mental work that it takes to get there, can quite literally make you a better person, and for this reason – because they are so difficult and illuminating, they will always be my favourite powerlift.
I’m curious, of the three lifts, which one is your favourite and why?
This is a long ways away from the types of articles I’ve done before even when I’ve tackled the business side of selling a small market service, but I wanted to pass on what I believe was the single most clarifying and life-changing advice I’ve ever received, how I extrapolated it from business to life in general, and he cascading effect it’s had on almost every major decision I’ve made in my life since. If you’re looking for an article on how to boost your squat or grow the most muscle, there will be plenty of those but this isn’t one of them
When I was in a private business mentorship group, one of the things that came up early and often was that you needed to create a clear and concise mission statement, a raison d’être, or otherwise you could chase opportunity after opportunity and look up after 5 years and realize you’ve built a business you never wanted. I’ve seen this happen many times to people who will simply chase the most profitable avenues, succeed, only to realize the time cost isn’t worth the pay off and the money they’ve earned doesn’t fill the void, yet continue this cycle because money has now become the only measurable metric of their self-worth and value.
The whole idea behind the mission statement is that it was intended to give you clarity on how to allocate your two most important assets: your money and time. If you were spending time or money on things that didn’t fit your vision of the business you wanted to create you needed to quickly and emotionlessly redirect your assets towards ventures that did fit your vision and focus; for example, while creating Blacksmith Fitness’ Mission statement it became clear that we are training service, we are not a gym, we fix pain, sell hope and dreams, create community, build character and confidence, break records, develop athletic careers, and otherwise aim to improve people’s mental and physical health. I’ve written about this more in depth in the article Blacksmith isn’t a Gym, but the general consensus is that having gym equipment is something that we have to support the fact that we are a high end training service; however, if we are to look at the funding and time cost, most often investing into people who embody the vision of Blacksmith fitness, continuing education, and improving the delivery of the service we provide is where our resources are best spent vs buying new gym equipment.
Having a clear vision of who we are has guided many important decisions and continues to shape our direction going forward, but I wanted to take it a step further, what did I want out of entrepreneurship? Why am I in business? As Dave Tate, owner of EliteFTS has stated, he’s never made as much money running a multi-million dollar business as he did on the floor training clients out of someone else’s gym. Without a doubt the trainers that train out of Blacksmith Fitness have a higher earning potential than I do with the monetary costs of operating the facility and the time costs of running the business, and not to mention the constant barrage of the world always being on fire in some way shape or form – so why do I do it?
The first thing is control. Control of the community, control of my schedule and time, and the flexibility to live my life and have room to chase my own extremely ambitious strength goals and chase experiences (more on this later). I’ve worked in many different roles as purchaser, manager, retail service provider, company representative etc etc in the corporate world, and although I did excel in those roles, I know I’m simply not designed to work for other people. I also became distinctly aware that money is not a huge motivating factor for me – if I truly wanted to make the most profit out of the physical space that houses Blacksmith Fitness, I would run a bootcamp style program with contracted trainers and outsourced marketing; I certainly wouldn’t work on the floor as a trainer and more of my time would be directed towards streamlining the operation of marketing systems and lead generation, refining the onboarding process to be as profitable as possible etc etc. But what I enjoy about being in business and training people, the reason I continue to work on the floor on the front lines, is that I truly enjoy taking care of people, watching them develop and win, accomplish things they never thought possible, conquer demons, develop character and skills that transfer well outside the walls of the training facility, and being part of that journey with them.
It was during this time that I realized that I had been doing in life what I had been doing in my business, living somewhat aimlessly and adhering to what I call the “white picket fence ideology” this set structure for your life that is basically hammered into you from the time that you’re first conscious and able to encode memories, and it goes something like this: Go to school, get a job, find a partner, buy a house, start a family, retire, die. Anything that goes against this grain is generally considered “wrong” or “deviant” at best. Most people never question the foundations by which this process was created, but if you look at it the white picket fence mentality fundamentally, it pretty much prioritizes safety, predictability, stability, and security at the expense of experiences and adventure, and that most of your freedom should come in your old age as opposed to your youth. In my opinion, this is completely backwards.
I wanted to examine my own values, create my own definition of what a successful and fulfilling life would be, and one of the best ways I was able to find clarity in vision was to live my life backwards: If I was in my death bed looking back on my life, what would I remember? What were the defining characteristics and pivotal moments? Who was there? What became abundantly clear was that the most important things to me were people and shared experiences. So with that in mind it allows me to figure out how to best spend my time and money – for me, my house has never been a great source of joy for me, we just bought one and I’m grateful to have it, but it’s the time spent outside in nature or in the gym, or on trips etc with great people that are truly the memories I cherish. I’m really not a “things” person, so rather than buy people gifts, I vowed to take people out and do things instead – to have that shared experience. I can’t tell you what I got for my 22nd birthday from anyone, but I can tell you about the time I took a helicopter ride with my parents and girlfriend to the mountain peaks of the Rockies and free climbed that amazing territory.
I won’t wait until I’m retired to go adventure, it’s never made any sense to me, what I will need in old age will be way less than I need now, a rocking chair, a patio, and a sunset or good conversation will be plenty when my body can no longer do the extreme things it can now, and none of those things are super expensive. I won’t wait for “someday” and invest only into the period of my life where I will need the least to be satisfied, I will live now, in accordance to my values and what I want out of life. I also refuse to measure my life against anyone, you only get one chance at this and there are no winners and nothing to take with you when you go.
In no way am I saying I’m right, I think my biggest point is there is no right or wrong answer, for some the white picket fence might be the answer. This is your life and you have one shot to do what you want with it, just don’t look up when you’re 50 and realize that you’ve been living life to someone else’s standards of success or just followed the path of least resistance.
In the past we’ve talked about how one of the biggest progress killers is convincing yourself you’re doing everything right when in fact there are many opportunities still on the table, and this is somewhat in the same vein.
The basic premise of this article in a single sentence is that there are few if any effect sizes greater than your own effort – pretty much every other training variable or metric pales in comparison to how hard you push yourself in training.
The inspiration for this article actually came from overhearing a conversation between two gym members as they argued over one of the most hotly debated variables in the strength and conditioning world: what is the optimal frequency per week to train a muscle group? At the time two meta-analysis’ were published within short succession of each other, one showing a positive trend for over 2x per week, and the other concluding no additional benefits existed above 2x per week. The biggest difference between the two studies was their inclusion criteria, but the total effect for frequency sat between 0-7% difference, whereas studies that look to quantify the effects of effort on hypertrophic and strength outcomes show effect sizes as large as 30%. While these two were arguing the first thought that came through my head was “both of you are sitting here arguing over a potential 0-7% effect while neither of you have pushed yourself on a set in your entire training career”. Micromanaging all the quantifiable variables in your program is almost useless if you’re not going to overlay it over the backdrop of the constant of the hardest and most focused effort you can expend set over set. Every auto regulated system like RPE (rate of perceived exertion) and velocity based training assumes maximum effort in order to be accurate and effective. If I had to choose between someone pushing themselves hard on a stupid program vs somebody coasting on the most well designed program, I’ll take the hardest worker every time.
Simply put, if you want results, put your head down and go to fucking work, no other training variable within your control will make a larger difference in your success no matter what your goal is. Then, and only then will you be able to start assess which other training variables (exercise selection, variety, points of peak tension, volume frequency and intensity, distribution of load across compound and single joint exercises etc etc.) that work best for you. If you ever get caught in paralysis by analysis in your programming, simplify, and put your head down and hammer, it will work every time.
Yup, the title is a little alarmist and click-bait-y, I’ll take it. I want to talk about something that I haven’t seen the fitness industry really talk all that much about, or it’s just in passing as this casual disclaimer near the end of the article.
We’re going to be doing more and more articles and videos on the how’s and why’s of getting leaner, but I’d feel irresponsible if I didn’t issue this warning about a mental health cost that I have seen time and time again when people start getting truly lean/shredded for the first time ever.
The closest thing I’ve seen to anyone talking about what the cost of achieving the shredded 6-pack look, especially if you’re not genetically predisposed to carry a very small amount of body fat, was Precision Nutrition’s article “the cost of getting lean” where they basically talk about the time investment and social cost that different types of physiques take to achieve and maintain. Some other articles have whether correctly or incorrectly focused on the “metabolic damage” created by extreme diet practices, however, all these previously mentioned effects are reversible. Your metabolic rate can recover, you can recover your social life, and you can reduce the time cost that you expend on your fitness goals, but the way you see yourself may change forever.
You’ve probably heard the term “body dysmorphia” before and not thought much of it, not taken it seriously, or thought it could never happen to you. For those of you who haven’t heard of body dysmorphia, it’s a mental disorder where your own body image no longer lines up with objective reality, and an almost guaranteed way to get it is to push yourself to an unsustainable level of leanness – you are likely to view yourself as “fat” at any visibly higher body fat percentage than you were at your most shredded.
I’ve seen this plague almost every person who competes in bodybuilding/physique oriented competitions, and in professional and amateur models. I’ve seen it turn into anorexia, bulimia, and clinically disordered eating, and severe malnutrition and lasting health issues. Having had many interactions on many levels with people who have severe body dysmorphia, you can truly tell you’re dealing with someone who can no longer connect with reality in regards to their own body image. I’ve also experienced this effect myself, going sub 10% bodyfat multiple times over my training career. Anecdotally it seems the more of your self image and value that you place on your aesthetics, the more likely you are to succumb to mental health struggles and image shift that comes along with getting shredded
To give you an idea I’m currently sitting somewhere around 12-13% body fat, I have 4 abs all the time and 6 plus oblique lines if flexing, lower ab veins, and fairly high full body vascularity in good lighting; however, if I look at myself in the mirror, my mind immediately compares my physique to when I was 5-8% lower body fat, and recognizes my current physique as “fat and out of shape”. I am fortunate that I’m in a sport where my success is predicated on my performance, not on my aesthetics, and I am able to place a very low mental importance on this subconscious assessment of my own physique but I’d be remiss if I said it wasn’t there.
I’m not telling you not to pursue your physique goals, even if they are ambitious, but I am cautioning to not go into this process blindly thinking “it won’t happen to me”. It’s far better to be proactive vs reactive in this regard, to really examine your reasons why you want to push your body, and whether the pursuit of an unsustainable physique will have a net positive or negative effect on your health and happiness.
If you’re already here, meaning you’ve already succumb to the effects of body dysmorphia, and you’re starting to modify your behaviour in a self-sabotaging way, there is help, and you can overcome it. I will leave this article on a positive note that pretty much everyone I’ve seen get to the point where they can admit they have a problem, and seek professional help, have been able to reconcile their body image issues and live a healthy life.
If someone tells you there is one right foot position to bench press from, you can pretty much stop listening to anything else they’re going to say. There are a few principles that are pretty much universal, but everything else is a compromise between rib angle, leg drive force direction, and lateral stability, to the point where the same lifter at different bodyweights may need more of one quality over the other and may need to change their set up. We’re going to go over the benefits and drawbacks of different foot and knee positions and angles to tell you what you’ll be gaining and what you’ll be losing, but first we’ll start with the universal starting point
The Universal “Rule”
One of the only things we can say pretty much universally is that no matter what foot position you’re going to use in the bench press, you’re going to want to get the centre of the knee joint in-line or below the centre of the hip joint when looking at the lifter from the side. The main reason for this is the lifter’s back is going to be in extension (arched) and if the lifter is using active leg drive (they should be) then when that force is applied, the lifter will tend to lift the hips to somewhere between the apex of the arch and the centre of the knee joint – the result? Butts that lift off the bench and red lights on the platform
There are two main ways you can accomplish the knees below the centre of the hip joint in the classic feet-flat bench press, and it brings us to our first compromise. If you truly have issues with butt lift, the best way to combat this is to use a slightly wider stance, turn your toes out, and think to rotate the outside of your knee towards the floor
Feet Tucked, Toes Out, Externally Rotated Position
This position puts the adductors and hip flexors into a hard stretch and essentially creates a “tension wall” or “parking brake” that stops the hips from rising off the bench, but now some of the ability of the legs to contribute to the initial drive back off the chest is reduced via breaking the straight line of force transfer between the knee, hip, and the apex of the spinal arch. In this position you’re still able to keep a higher degree of shin angle and feet underneath the body, maintaining the ability to wedge into a high arch which keeps range of motion for the bar shorter, and the shoulder out of end range extension where it is both weaker and more vulnerable to rotator cuff pinches and wear and tear on other passive tissues surrounding the shoulder joint. This position with the externally rotated foot also creates an opposing lateral co-contraction of the muscles of the hips that essentially act as guy-wires for the entire lower body. These co-contractions stabilize the hips and create a solid foundation for the lumbar fascia and erectors to contribute to a solid arch, and reduce the side to side and rotational disconnect between the hip and shoulder complex – the net result? more stable base for the shoulder to fire from.
TLDR: Benefits of the feet tucked, toes out, externally rotated position:
Good arch and rib position (better range and shoulder mechanics)
Good stability at hips and shoulders
Butt lift eliminated
Drawbacks of the feet under, toes out, externally rotated position:
Lower leg drive to assist the shoulder and chest in the initial drive of the bench press
The other way to get the knee joint below the hip joint is to simply put the legs out further in front of you, keeping a relatively straight foot position.
This keeps the powerful muscles of the leg more in-line with the force direction of the initial press. For people who touch lower/tuck more, and use a violent leg drive and rearwards (towards the face) drive to initiate the lifting phase of their bench press, this can be a powerful set up. What the set up loses is the coil spring effect of having the entire body wedged into an arch, so rib position ends up a little flatter, requiring the bar to travel a little further, and the shoulder to go further into extension. Also because the feet are usually a little narrower to maximize leg drive, the opposing co-contraction and tension at the hips is less, making this set up a bit more laterally unstable and transferring the stability load more to the muscles of the back.
TLDR – Benefits of the feet out, straight foot position:
Most leg drive of any set up
Works will for benchers who use a lot of elbow tuck and angled bar paths
Drawbacks of the feet out, straight foot position:
lower arch, larger range of motion
Shoulder in more precarious position for soft tissues
less lateral stability
Before we leave the foot flat set ups, let’s talk about how you can compromise between leg drive and lateral stability in either the tucked under position, or the feet out position. In either set up you can bridge the gap between leg drive and lateral stability by changing the width of the feet: wider set ups equal more tension and longer more efficient levers for creating lateral stability, but you lose some of the force direction of the leg drive towards the head. The same can be said for toe angle, the more you turn your feet out, you increase your footprint laterally, and allow some of the quad force to be used as a counteracting guy-wire system to stabilize the hips and the entire bench press from side to side, again at the expense of some of that drive going towards moving the bar towards the head. As a general principle, it’s easier to find you foot width first, go as wide as you need to gain stability, but no further, then turn the feet outwards only enough to keep the hips on the bench during heavy leg drive, this will land you fairly close to the optimal position for you in that specific set up.
Once you’ve found which set up is the best compromise of shoulder stability and comfort, leg drive and lateral stability, and ultimately allows you to lift the most weight, you can start to fine adjust the width and toe angle to find your happy mid-ground between tension and leg drive.
Many federations including the IPF require the feet flat set up, so up until now we’ve only been talking about these set ups, but there is another way, using a heels up tucked approach.
Heels up Tucked Under Set-Up
This set up maximizes the coil spring effect of a full body global arch. It is the most extreme compromise between leg drive force direction and lateral stability in the name of decreased range of motion at the shoulder and arch tension. Purely looking at the biomechanics of rib posture, scapular angle, and length-tension relationships of the muscles of the glenohumeral joint it is by far the best set up, but I will caution you that many people move to this set up with sub maximal weights and immediately improve their ability to rep out a given weight and start extrapolating that performance with 1 rep calculators only to be soon disappointed when they move up to near maximal weights are realize they can no longer stabilize the load. If you’re going to attempt this set up you’ll also find that it is the least forgiving as far as leg and foot position go, there WILL be a perfect position for you specifically where you can get some leg drive, enough stability to perform the lift, and still maximize the wedged position, and the window of tolerable deviations from this position will be fairly low for most people
If you tuck too far under the bench you can exceed the ankle’s ability to dorsiflex, leaving you on your toes with an extremely small and unstable contact patch with the ground, making it almost impossible to get any leg drive or stabilize the load from side to side. You also run the risk of “pulling yourself under the bench” where the tension from the quads and hip flexors pull you into so much lumbar extension (arch) that you lack the thoracic extension range required to staple the upper back to the bench. This leaves you with an upper back that is trying to pry away from the bench and is prone to slipping up the bench during the pushing phase of your bench
If you don’t tuck under enough, you don’t maximize the global arch enough to make this set up worth it and end up in a no-man’s land of the flat foot tucked back position but with less stability because only a partial amount of your foot is contacting the ground. Somewhere between the two extremes is where you can make the clouds part with rays of sunshine and angelic harp music and really take advantage of the set up.
TLDR – Benefits of the tucked under, heels up position:
Lowest range of motion at the shoulder
Strongest pec angle – ribs position pec fibres in their strongest orientation
Tightest back set up
Drawbacks of the tucked under, heels up position:
least lateral stability
least leg drive
Smallest margin of error for foot positioning
As previously mentioned, the heels up set up isn’t legal in a few federations, so if you find the heels up tucked under set up works for you, but you’re not allowed to do it, or if you like the heels up set up but find it too unstable at higher loads, there’s yet another option
Feet Under Heels Set Up With Squat Shoes
These squat shoes are only 0.5″ heel so they don’t really show how close you can get to the heels up set up, but the higher you go, the closer you can get
Hopefully this doesn’t date itself too quickly, but as of now the IPF allows up to a 2″ heeled shoe to be worn in any of the three lifts. Standard olympic lifting shoes or “squat shoes” are between 0.5″ to 1″ with most popular models coming in at 0.75″. In this set up you’re going to tuck the heels under as far as you can while still keeping the shoe in full contact with the ground. Unfortunately to experiment with further tucked positions you’re actually going to need access to shoes with different heel heights, so hopefully you can find someone you can borrow them from that has some different heel heights and you can experiment with it, and if you need more than 1″ heel, there are a couple manufactures that make them, but you’ll actually probably find it more cost effective to have a cobbler wedge your current shoes and do it progressively until you find your perfect heel height vs buying a 2″ shoe and hoping it works for you
TLDR – benefits of the squat shoe setup:
same as heels up set up, just dialled back a bit
Drawbacks of squat shoes set up:
same as heels up set up, but dialled back a bit – full foot contact makes it a little more stable
Which Set Up is Right for Me?
It’s a hard to say without actually seeing you bench, but in the spirit of simplicity I’m going to give you some bullet points that may point you in the right direction
Who can benefit from the feet flat tucked under position:
Good tarting point for most people
people who struggle to keep their butt down during heavy benches
people who make side to side errors on heavy bench press (one shoulder high than the other, angled bar path, ribs that rock back and forth
Who can benefit from the feet out straight position:
larger lifters or lifters with round rib cages that don’t need the reduced range of motion provided by the other set ups
people who tuck their elbows more or use closer grips that really allows them to create a platform off their lats to transfer leg drive into the bar
equipped lifters who use the shirt and legs to get an explosive start to their bench press
Who can benefit from the heels under set up:
smaller lifters/flat ribcages, especially those with flexible spines who can cut a couple inches off their range of motion
people with very strong backs can stabilize high loads in this position
those who struggle with shoulder impingement or other shoulder positioning issues or injuries
People who use max or near max legal grip widths and therefore have straighter line bench presses that benefit more from reduced range than more leg drive
Who can benefit from the tucked under with squat shoes set up:
same as the heels under set up but you compete in a federation that requires flat feet
someone who gets more reps at a given weight or less pain with the heels up set up but finds it hard to stabilize heavier weights
Hopefully this gives you a starting point on which set up will work best for you, but my best advice is to try all of them and see which one feels the best to you, and tweak your width and toe angle to find your happy mediums in each set up. Just because on paper you may be suited to one over the other many things beyond the scope of this article (thoracic mobility, hip socket shape etc.) may actually make one click while you fight another.
If you’d like to come and have us take a look at your bench press, and help you find the right foot set up for your body and current strengths and weakness, Blacksmith is hosting a Bench Press Seminar April 2nd, 2022 at 11am to 5pm where we’re going to go over everything bench press related – from foot set up all the way down to proper warm ups, common technique bottlenecks and even the mental approach. We’re so confident you’ll walk away with a better bench that if you’re unsatisfied with the coaching, we’ll refund you your money and give you a $50 gift certificate to your favourite supplement store just for coming! If you’d like to learn more and sign up, check it out at http://www.benchpressbetter.com
Developing the strength and conditioning programs with the attempt to create highly skilled and effective hockey players is actually a lot harder and more limited than it might seem. Before we deep dive into what you CAN do, let’s address the elephant in the room when it comes to what strength and conditioning can and cannot do
Hockey is a Highly Skilled Sport Requiring Unique Abilities – Understanding the Limitations of Strength and Conditioning For Hockey Players
Not many of the important skills in hockey are part of our innate movement patterns – running, jumping, throwing etc are all patterns we’re designed to learn and do well as human beings, and are present in most field and popular sports, but hockey relies on none of them. We’re not designed to propel ourselves on ice as quickly as possible, stop on a dime, or be great at manipulating a 6oz piece of hardened rubber at the end of a curved stick – there just weren’t too many times in our evolutionary past that our survival depended on those skills.
If you’ve been around sports long enough, you’ll probably have seen someone labelled a “natural athlete” they seem to jump from sport to sport and excel at the lower levels almost instantaneously. Usually these athletes have solid foundational patterns, they run, throw, catch, rotate, and change direction on a level surface very efficiently, and are able to transfer these patterns to different sports almost seamlessly, but what happens when you put these so called natural athletes on the ice for the first time? More often than not you get a scene from straight from Bambi; the “natural athlete” simply doesn’t have the specific skills needed to balance and propel themselves in a totally unfamiliar environment. Simply being strong and powerful is not enough to be a good skater or puck handler
All skills exist on a continuum from gross motor skills to fine motor skills, a fine motor skill would be threading a needle, where as a gross motor skill would be something like a broad jump. In skating specifically, the ability to produce a large amount of force in a skating stride that includes the stride turnover would be considered a gross motor skill, where as the small movements of the muscles of the foot and ankle that stabilize the blade in the ice and allow that power to be transferred into propulsive force would considered a fine motor skill, as would the shifts in balance to create a smooth single-footed outside edge stop, or a quick change in blade angle to create a sharp turn.
An example of this concept applied to stick skills would be the ubiquitous term “soft hands” but to look at it more empirically, it’s usually referring to someone with excellent fine motor skill who is able to make difficult puck movement skills look otherwise effortless. The fine motor skills are the small adjustments in shoulder, elbow, and wrist that allow the player to direct the puck in a quick and precise manner, absorb the impact of hard passes, and even control the speed of their own stick handling. In relation to the shot, the fine motor skill component would be the timing of the release: reading the flex and the kick point of the stick to plan the optimal period of loading and direction of release; however, the actual loading of the stick into the ice, the violent rotation of the torso shoulders, forearms and wrists to create a powerful shot would fall further towards the gross motor pattern end of the spectrum.
So where are we going with all this? It is important to note that strength and conditioning programs will predominantly improve the speed and power of gross motor patterns, chances are you as an athlete already have the strength to make the fine movements that manage the puck required to make any type of deft Datsyuk-ian style deke, but perhaps not the skill; however, if you want to perform that same deke with a defender draped across your back and rifle an 85mph snapshot over the goalie’s shoulder, you’re going to need some serious strength and power to go with all that finesse and skill. This also marks the importance of skill development – if you suck at hockey, you will still suck at hockey no matter how much strength, power, or mobility you add to your repertoire. No amount of strength training or conditioning will give you soft hands or better touch – that has to be developed with a stick in your hand. All that being said, especially when it comes to skating, weaknesses or mobility/stability issues often become the bottleneck for skill development – athletes simply lack the ability to move powerfully in the manner required to execute the proper edge control, quick stops and starts, or powerful stride finishes just to name a few. Fixing these movement errors can make a night and day difference in the way an athlete performs on the ice and in their skill sessions. All other things equal, stronger, more powerful, highly mobile, and highly stable athletes acquire skills at a faster rate than those who lack these abilities.
If you’ve been following this series you’re going to notice a recurring theme among all the articles, this is because although the demands of different sports can vary wildly, the basics of human physiology remain the same. Repeatedly you’re going to see the following things repeated:
You train the athlete first, and the sport second
Changes in movement quality and sport specific mobility are the fastest routes to improvement in measurable sport performance
Strength is the foundation of all other athletic abilities
These themes are so important that we will be covering them in sport specific manner, using anecdotes and hockey specific examples, but you will definitely notice some crossover from articles written on other sports as well. The following is taken directly from the “Your Strength and Conditioning Program is Useless and Your Coach has no Idea What They’re Doing” modified to use only hockey specific examples and comparisons to other sports for clarity
So now that we are getting into what we CAN do from a strength and conditioning side, here is the hierarchy (order of importance) for speed and power improvement for hockey players:
Movement Competency – AKA “Do you actually know how to shoot a puck, do you have an efficient stride, Do you joints actually move though the range they are supposed to?” The more complex the movement, the more the technique involved will influence the outcome, take for instance the ability to sprint vs the ability to skate at maximal speed. Running and sprinting are both inherently natural motions for the human body – we’re designed to do them, and although there are certainly techniques for maximizing their potential, if you ask a 10 year old to “run as fast as you can” you’re probably going to see them start in a forward lean, and start to straighten up as they approach top speed, start seeing the arm swing increase, and probably very little up and down movement at the hips. Coaching these 10 year olds on their torso position, relaxing their shoulders etc isn’t likely to make monumental and immediately measurable improvements in their sprint times. The hockey stride isn’t an inherently natural movement for the human body, and involves a significant amount of technique – this is why a good power skating coach should be able to increase the speed and power output of a young hockey player even though they have will have gained very little in the way of strength or the ability to produce more more force at a given time interval. The gains in speed came from using the strength they already had in a more mechanically efficient manner. Another common situation is when coaches bang their heads against the wall trying to teach an athlete a certain skill but will fail no matter what cues they try to implement – this is often due to the athlete not having the physical capacity to produce the desired outcome (aka their body simply can’t do what you’re asking it to do – yet). I have yet to have a hockey player come in and NOT say they need to improve their first three strides, but if the player lacks the ankle mobility and stability, no amount of coaching or sport specific drills will ever get them into the forward angle required to maximize the power of those initial strides. The ankle and foot itself must be addressed before the coaching will be effective. The ankle and foot are so important in hockey that it will be addressed in its own subsection later in this article. Programming for mobility and movement competency is athlete specific, each athlete has their own set of physiological strengths and weaknesses, and the most energy and effort should be directed towards improving the athlete’s specific shortcomings vs a generic hockey mobility program or even worse “just go do some yoga”.
Strength = The Ability to Produce Force with No Time Constraints – this is our first introduction to the force/velocity curve. The most important thing to remember about the force velocity curve is that the shorter amount of time you have, the lower percentage of your strength you can display. Say we load up a leg press with an immovable amount of weight, put a device on the foot plate to measure the amount of force you can produce, and after 6 seconds of pushing as hard as you can you maxed out at 100lbs. So if given an unlimited amount of time we know you can produce 100lbs of force, but at the 0.4 second time interval you produced 40lbs of force, and at 0.2 second time interval you produced 20lbs of force. For hockey we’re most interested in improving the force produced at around 0.2s for the first three strides, and 0.4s for the stride at maximal speed; the fastest way we can improve these numbers is simply to increase the total amount of force you can produce. If we strengthen you to the point where you can produce 200lbs of force and all of a sudden you’re producing 80lbs of force at 0.4s and 40lbs at 0.2s you just got faster and more powerful. This effect continues to work until you are VERY strong – levels that almost no one except the most genetically gifted of athletes will reach in their high school or early pro years.
Improving the ability to absorb force, and use more advantageous joint angles. AKA how much time do you waste absorbing the force of contact with other players when they are trying to separate you from the puck or jockey for position? Is it too easy for someone to change your centre of gravity (centre of mass) to the point where you must waste time recovering balance before moving in the direction you want to go? If you can absorb force faster, you can stay in a higher joint angle, take less steps/strides to recover position, and will be in a better position to both impose your will on other players and change direction faster. This ability is directly tied to your overall ability to produce force, so training for it without attempting to also get stronger is assinine; however, it is a separate skill, and you can learn to absorb force faster with specific training.
Rate of Force Development and Elastic Utilization Ratio AKA how quickly can you redirect the force you absorb and apply the force you can create? This is your ability to create an explosive first three strides, to stop on a dime, and instantaneously change direction. It’s your ability to create an explosive rotation into a one timed shot after a pre-swing. It’s your ability to release a snap shot in the blink of an eye. What rate of force development drills aim to do is close the gap between the total amount of force you can produce, and the force you can produce in a given time interval. So if we were to use our hypothetical example from before, the person who produced 200lbs of force and 80lbs at 0.4s and 40lbs at 0.2s can actually do these drills so that they could produce 90lbs at 0.4s and 50lbs at 0.2s while still only being able to produce 200lbs total force. Despite what most people think, the effect size here is pretty small, it doesn’t mean it’s worthless, but it’s pointless to focus on these drills at the expense of the other more effective training methods. These methods max out pretty quickly, meaning that once you’ve made that small change in the rate of force development, you are once again limited by the total amount of force you can produce
Power EnduranceAKA how long can you sustain an effort at or near the top of your most explosive efforts? How quickly can you repeat a series of explosive efforts and have them be as explosive or near as explosive as the first round? This is essentially the conditioning component of hockey training. It is important to note that conditioning cannot in all but the most untrained/novice athletes make you faster or more explosive, it’s role in speed and power development is simply to prevent/delay LOSS of power and current abilities due to fatigue accrued over the game. Simply put, if you put your focus here before developing everything above it, all you’ve done is take a mediocre level of performance and made sure that athlete stay as close to their initial level of mediocrity as they fatigue. It is also last on the list because it is the easiest to develop, and takes the least amount of time invested in the yearly plan, and the training interferes with the development of other more important abilities. So due to it’s relatively short training window and interference effect, training vigorously for a conditioning and power endurance effect is usually reserved for the last 6-8 weeks before a season starts
The reason most “hockey conditioning camps” drive me and anyone who actually understands how to develop speed and power crazy is that they predominantly focus on rate of force development drills (think medicine balls and agility ladders etc) and power endurance (conditioning drills, repeat sprints, bag skates) without any of the prerequisite work to make those drills effective. “Coaches” who do this do it simply because they either A – don’t know any better or B – do know better but know that it’s more practical and profitable to run hockey players through a bunch of agility ladders and medicine ball drills knowing growing athletes will naturally get bigger and stronger, and can then take the credit for it with their “strength and conditioning” program.
So What Really Separates Hockey From Other Anaerobic Power Sports?
Despite what many will say, the lower body strength and power training of a football receiver, and an elite soccer player is not that much different. Both athletes are required to perform all out sprints and changes of direction on exactly the same surface; it is their conditioning requirements that differ greatly. Hockey players play on a completely difference surface, with a totally different propulsion method, which makes for some truly unique strength and conditioning considerations. The main differences between hockey players and field sport athletes are:
The Demands of The Foot and Ankle
Not only is the foot asked to balance on 3mm piece of steel vs a shoe or cleat, but the ankle joint is what truly separates the average from the elite skater
The Time the Athlete Spends Producing Force During Each Stride
In field sports where athletes are at full-on sprints, ground contact time, or the amount of time that the athlete has to act upon the ground and subsequently have the ground act upon them is 0.2s or less, in hockey the contact with the ice per stride at full speed is around 0.4s, this has large implications for how strong an athlete needs to be to in order to be fast
The Proportion of Force Generated in Lateral Directions vs Straight Forward
The hamstrings are arguably the most important sprinting muscle, and undoubtedly the most important muscle at full speed, but for hockey they mainly act as knee stabilizers and to remove the blade from the ice, this will influence the way hamstrings are trained, the amount of stimulus we direct towards quads and glutes, and the planes of motions that are emphasized in training
Using a Stick as an Implement to Propel an Object
Small but powerful movements of the wrist are incredibly important for an athlete’s ability to fire a snapshot and wrist shot with both a quick release and high velocity. Hockey demands that both wrist extension (knuckles moving towards back of forearm) and wrist flexion (palms moving towards front of forearm) be trained in dynamic fashion
Violent rotation of the torso is required for full range slapshots, one-timers, and classic wrist shots
The Demands of the Foot and Ankle
When you think of the most distinguishing feature of hockey vs most other sports it’s without a doubt that hockey is played on ice: this makes a large difference for many things, but none more so than the role of the foot and ankle complex. It’s no secret that many of the world’s elite skaters often don’t tie up the top one or two eyelets of their skates to get more range at the ankle. If you live in BC, you’ve been treated to Quinn Hughes rookie and sophomore seasons, and most likely marvelled at his almost unparalleled skating ability, especially his ability to make quick moves and changes of direction in seemingly impossibly tight areas. If you have a keen eye, pay close attention to the angles he can crank his ankles into – the extreme angles he can hold an edge, the range he can move across the back and front of his blade. His ability to exert both power and control in these extreme positions takes both a high level of strength, mobility, and fine motor skill in the foot and ankle complex.
Simply put the ability of your ankle to dorsiflex (move your toes towards your shin) is directly related to ability to shift your weight forward and affects your starting position, starting speed, and ability to quickly stop and start, and create extremely tight turns. The ability of your foot to plantar flex (point your toes) directly affects your stride length and ability finish with a powerful calf kick. Your ability to evert (turn the bottom of the foot towards your body line) and invert (the ability to turn the bottom of your foot to face away from you) are directly tied to how far over you can get onto your edges without blowing a tire or wasting valuable time by excessively widening your stance and overusing your outside foot. While you are in these extreme positions, your underfoot muscles are managing and applying pressure to deal with ice irregularities and drive the edge into ice more firmly to maintain control of these extreme ranges required to be a truly elite skater.
The fortunate thing is that these qualities are all trainable, and we can give athletes the raw materials to skate at an elite level.
To improve dorsiflexion and plantar flexion range (how much total ankle range you can use) and plantar flexion strength (how powerfully you can come out of the ankle flexed position) nothing beats calf raise variations, to improve range and stability they should be done is a slow lowering and paused at the bottom position, once you have sufficient strength and range, you can start to perform them more explosively to improve the power output at the end of your strides and improve stride turn over time
For inversion, eversion, and dorsiflexion strength, the 3 way banded ankle drill can really work wonders, and you can even add compression to the ankle if you have really tight tissues that need to be released in order to access your full range. You can do this by wrapping a long band around a solid object, and resisting all the motions that the ankle goes through except plantar flexion (you’ll need more than a single band to train the stronger muscles of the calf). You can do these drills seated or standing. The three way ankle drill works well for inversion and eversion, but eventually you’ll find that dorsiflexion requires a stronger stimulus than inversion and eversion – at this point you can train dorsiflexion with a kettlebell over your toe box and lift it towards your shin using only your ankle to continue progressing.
For the underfoot muscles, multi-position eyes closed single leg balance drills are a great place to start as they really start to develop the awareness of weight shift across the foot using the nerves in the feet as opposed to using your visual systems, as the visual systems would be better spent tracking the puck, the play, and planning your next moves. These drills are done by holding single leg skater squat positions at multiple heights with your eyes closed and trying to maintain balance. We have an entire article focused on vision and its role in the gym and in sport here if you’d like more info. Once you have developed awareness, you can start to destabilize the system using drills like the hip airplane, and really develop strength via ankle swaps and drop catches like the ones described in the next paragraph, or moving some of your smaller leg movements like split squats to supporting only the heel and ball of the foot for a period of time (4-6 weeks) – a great time to really focus on these are in season when the athletes total ability to handle load is reduced, so these act as self limiter while still allowing many important adaptations to happen to the underfoot muscles.
Ankle swaps are performed by standing on one leg with the hip and knee locked out, and passing a kettlebell from hand to hand, the key here is to swap slowly and not to bend the elbow as you pass the kettlebell back and forth. It’s very easy to hide balance issues by quickly swinging the kettlebell back and forth, and bending the elbow allows the muscles of the arm to contribute to the stability of the implement – we want the majority of the stabilization to be done at the foot/ankle
Drop catches can be applied intelligently to just about any lower body single leg movement to improve the reactive ability of the foot to stabilize the body and extra load. For example, if you are using a single leg Romanian deadlift, the drop catch version would involve starting at the top locked out position, and dropping the weight, and catching it at given heights. Usually we recommend three catch heights: end range, mid range, and a short 4-6″ range at the top to make a complete drop catch rep. These are usually done with sub maximal weights and rapid drops and catches.
The Time the Athlete Has to Produce Force Each Stride
We’ve pretty much covered this one, but, because the athlete has more time per stride to produce force than a full on sprint, this actually slightly biases the full speed hockey stride towards the strength end of the force/velocity curve than the absolute speed end. For example, picking up the heaviest rock you possibly can has no relationship to time, and your success is entirely dependent on how much strength you possess, velocity is irrelevant. On the opposite end of the spectrum, your ability to swat a fly out of mid air (taking accuracy out of the equation) is predicated on your ability to move with absolute speed; pretty much all adult humans without the presence of disease have the strength to actually kill the fly. Most athletic movements lie somewhere between these two extremes, requiring both strength and speed to be successful.
Because of the relatively longer time to produce force, the hockey stride’s success and speed is actually slightly more predicated on strength, and therefore if trying to improve an athlete’s speed, strengthening relevant patterns and musculature will have a higher return than focusing on power output drills, especially in athletes who have not reached already extremely high levels of strength. This is almost in direct contrast to what you will see in most “Strength and Conditioning” camps aimed at youth hockey players, where agility ladders and medicine balls reign supreme. We’ve touched on why this happens in our “Your Strength and Conditioning Program is Useless and Your Coach has no Idea What They’re Doing” but as I’ve said multiple times before, if you are focusing on power output drills with weak hockey players, you’re wasting your time.
The Proportion of Force Generated in Lateral Directions vs Straight Forward
Even to move forward, hockey is more of a lateral sport when compared to most field sports; therefore, a higher proportion of the lower body training should be dedicated to gaining strength and mobility in the lateral and semi-lateral planes. When using exercises that work on the hips to create strength, multiple stance widths should be present in the program (ex. Sumo deadlift, mid-stance good morning, Trap bar Deadlift). These should also be trained dynamically with drills like: Slide Lunges, multi-planar lunges (45 degree, reverse, lateral etc), Copenhagen and banded adduction drills to improve stride recovery speed – doing banded adductions on a 45 degree plane with a knee drive to finish the rep can also train the hip flexors to improve stride recovery speed and power.
Using a Stick as an Implement to Propel an Object
When training a hockey athlete’s torso to create a ton of power in a slapshot or one-time situation, the torso must not only be able to stabilize the spine, but also be able to create the forceful rotation that must occur, and it is important that the drills are trained in that order. In the early offseason, or whenever you start training an athlete, the first drills based at improving the torso function should be aimed at static drills that help the athlete stabilize the spine in multiple planes and force directions. Drills like dead bugs, pallof press variations, side planks and plank variations with moving limbs and implements etc all need to be done well before adding in flexion (sit-up motion) and rotation drills. Once the athlete has demonstrated they can create stability and rigidity in static (drills where the spine stays stable, but other things are moving around it) then you can move on to creating stronger rotation. Drills like Russian twists, cable or banded twists, wood chops etc should all come before using violent drills like rotational medicine ball throws and slams, or high velocity band work, although again beyond the scope of this article, proper care taken when choosing the load for these exercises or technique will be compromised, and you can actually make an athlete worse/slower. When in doubt, go lighter, move faster.
The forearm musculature must also be trained in a dynamic fashion. Just improving grip strength isn’t enough for athletes that need to load a carbon fibre stick and release that stored energy into a hardened piece of rubber. Drills like rolling grip trainers, forward and reverse curls with different implements are a necessary adjunct to the standard grip strength increases you’ll see simply by training with loaded implements. These wrist contractions can also be speed up through the use of drop catches and timed banded drills that force the athlete to move as quickly and violently as possible.
Now that you have the hierarchy of speed and power development, and know the areas that need to specifically focused vs other anaerobic power sports, you need to create sport specific power endurance, and you have to organize the athlete’s training so that you minimize the interference effect of conditioning on the development of speed and power. Although that’s a little beyond the scope of this article, as a general rule, try to separate strength, speed, and skill work from conditioning work by at least 6 hours as often as possible, and strength/speed/skill work should generally come before conditioning if you must complete the sessions on the same day. Even though conditioning is the easiest training effect to achieve on it’s own, it actually comes at the highest cost to the athlete’s ability to perform other important work, which is why extremely intense conditioning should be limited to certain points in the year, and only maintained or even allowed to slightly detrain in others – Conditioning and organizing an athlete’s schedule is something we will cover in an article in the future!
In sum, satisfy all the mobility requirements to meet hockey demands, focus on getting strong, learn to absorb and produce force quickly, focus on the ankle and the hips in multiple planes of motion, train the forearms dynamically, and finally train the body to sustain those efforts at the highest intensity possible for as long as possible, and you’ll start developing some pretty effective hockey players.
This article is a response to clients and a few others asking about how our facility started, it’s less of an article and more of a mini-memoir aimed to answer the question of “where did you begin?”
Before we were called Blacksmith Fitness, our “gym” was a bowflex in my parents basement, with some 1″ spin lock dumbbells and free weights we bought from Sport Chek. It actually started because I was in a total transition period in my life – If you had asked me 3 months before what I was going to do with my life it would have been a career in music, but it wasn’t a healthy situation, and much like many of my clients, I hit a point where I knew I needed to change. My original training partners were two of my good friends: Greg and Brad. We had no idea what we were doing, but we made up for it with sheer effort and enthusiasm; I had an obsession to learn everything I could about how to optimize training and nutrition, but it certainly wasn’t like it was today – quality information was much harder to find.
I bought one of those online muscle building guides, fortunately by a fairly credible author, and one of the “bonuses” was an interview with Jim Wendler, who was a huge part of EliteFTS at the time, and it opened my eyes to the world of strength training. I started reading every article EliteFTS published, buying every ebook, and bought every Westside Barbell Manual that existed at the time. Greg and Brad were my guinea pigs and although we had pretty modest equipment to say the least, we actually started getting some fairly impressive results; my very first 500lb deadlift was pulled on a 1″ spin lock barbell using football receiver’s gloves for grip, and I permanently bent the barbell. I don’t have any pictures from this era of training, but I truly wish I did.
I have that bent barbell to thank for starting me down the path that would turn Blacksmith Fitness into what it is today. At this point our training group had expanded and we decided it was time to get some real equipment that was actually designed to be used for what we were planning on doing with it. We took over my parents 264 sq ft shed, poured concrete and laid flooring, and we maximized every inch of that space. We started adding more people and charged a fee of $50 that included a customized program and 100% of the money went back into buying new equipment for the gym. Word got out pretty quick that people were getting pretty impressive results, and our shed gym kept growing to include a pretty impressive list of clients, ones that would go on to set powerlifting records, land scholarships, and play in professional sports leagues all the way up to the NFL. We still have a lot of the equipment today that we bought in the days of the shed, and a lot of the equipment from this era has a massive sentimental value to me. Adam, one of my best friends and the third person to join our training crew, built the two stainless steel pieces with his father that are still in the gym today: The Mother in Law – the massive squat rack, and the plate rack that houses the Rogue Fitness calibrated plates. Those pieces will likely outlive me.
During the shed phase, we called the gym “The Refinery” and the original plan was to keep this name as we rolled into becoming a legitimate gym and training business, but apparently a spa in Revelstoke called “The Refinery Spa” was considered to be in a related field and therefore we couldn’t register the name with the BC Names Registry. Because we still wanted to call our gym “The Refinery” I had to scramble to come up with a related name that would still allow us to at least unofficially call the gym the refinery, and keep our logo idea of a metallic silver surfer-esque figure that was working on forging himself into something better – which is now our mural on the wall.
Photos from the shed era – the original Refinery. How many pieces do you recognize that we still have today?
It was also during the “shed phase” that I decided to go back to school for Kinesiology – I still regard this as one of the worst business investments I’ve made but it helped shape my future business investment strategy and formed the beginnings of Blacksmith’s mission statement. I want to be on record that I am not inherently against formal education, and for many people I think it’s the best, or sometimes the only route to their intended goal; the reason going back to school was a mistake for me is that I didn’t assess the situation and ruthlessly evaluate whether or not going to school would improve my business model, or whether I would get return on my investment.
Training people for their goals, whether it be powerlifting, athletics, pain relief, or general fitness/physique/health is 100% a results based business. Your clients do not care whether you learned what you know from the most prestigious university or the back of a cereal box, so long as it works, and they know that you actually care. I was three years through my degree when at the time over a quarter of my clientele was comprised of kinesiologists, physiotherapists, and masters of exercise science – all of whom on paper were more qualified in the schooling system than I was, and none of them cared. I quickly came to the conclusion that a formal education was not a significant factor in someone selecting whether to train with me or not, and that I was wasting money on lower quality information where I could acquire higher quality and more specific knowledge more efficiently and at lower cost elsewhere. In short, I spent a great deal of time, effort, and money on solving a problem I didn’t have.
I was working at Sport Chek at the time while building the gym and pouring most of the money I made back into buying quality equipment and education on various topics from programming to injury management and psychology. Things were on a pretty good roll until I got a serious concussion in June 2013. This concussion would actually stop me from training for 3.5 years, despite many attempts to come back earlier. I struggled with simple tasks like walking down the street and reading. My short term memory got so bad that at one point I remember watching 22 Jump Street, and by the time the movie had finished, I couldn’t remember anything from the start or middle. I’ve written a few times about my experiences there, and maybe I’ll do an article about what that was like, how I eventually recovered (still am recovering), and the resources that made the most difference in my recovery. It was a pretty dark time, but it was during this time that I made many of the connections in the medical world that we still use today, as well as the countless lessons that being on IR for that long forced me to learn.
It was at the end of 2014, during the peak of my concussion that I actually launched Blacksmith Fitness as an official company, and we started as a sublease on the main floor of Champion Athletic Club. Steve allowed me to bring in some of my equipment from the refinery at home and train my clients out the main gym. I started my company when I had almost no short term memory, hadn’t trained in a year and half and was a skinny fat version of my former self, was averaging around 2 hours of broken sleep a night due to concussion symptoms, and was still working full time at Sport Chek – this is why when people tell me they don’t have time or they can’t be a personal trainer because of XYZ reason, I find it’s usually a self imposed barrier more than a real one. Fortunately I was able to work around most of my barriers and with the help of friends, family, and even the staff at Sport Chek at the time, Blacksmith was able to quickly grow to the point where we needed our own spot
Pictures from the first partial move from “The Refinery” to the main floor of Champion Athletic club
Our next move was upstairs in Champ’s, there was a small 1200 sq ft room that wasn’t being used by the MMA guys who were renting the upstairs, so we subleased it from Champs and we finally had our own spot. It was during this time that I bet now full-time coach Cam Bennett $100 that I could get him a squat PR in a single session, and that eventually lead to him becoming an integral part of our expansion. Part of the sublease deal we had was that when we weren’t running classes is that the members of Champs could use our equipment, which lead to some interesting stories, but one that still confuses the hell out of me – The infamous kettle bell crop circle curl dude.
Camille doing some farmer’s walks in our first spot upstairs in Champs – still didn’t have our own entrance, but we had our own spot
The famous (infamous?) kettle bell crop circle curl dude moment came during one of our later blocks of semi-private, this Asian guy with long hair who never said a word to anyone, walked up the stairs in the middle of the session, proceeded to grab every kettle bell we had, and arrange them in a circle around one of the pillars in the middle of the room. He then proceeded to take one of the 12kg kettle bells and in the weirdest contorted way, lean his back against the corner, not the flat side, of the pillar, do one set of curls with one arm, place the kettle bell in the middle of the satanic circle he had created and left without ever saying a word. I’m not sure if we were all actually cursed that day, but I’m going to blame every bad thing that happens in my life on that moment.
Despite being cursed by the random Asian mullet guy, we still managed to grow to the point where simply couldn’t play enough tetris to fit in the equipment we still needed, but to our fortune, the MMA gym was moving to a new location, and not only did that mean that we could gain an extra 800ish sq ft. but we had our own entrance and finally became our own independent gym. It still had it’s quirks, we were right over the reception staff of the main gym, so operation “quiet deadlift” protocol often boiled over in some heated moments when it became operation “not so quiet deadlift” and we shook drywall into the lunches of the employee’s downstairs
Pictures from our first gym with our own entrance. Blacksmith was now fully independent of the gym below us and we had some great memories in the spot. A lot of the members who are part of the gym today were around for this evolution of Blacksmith. I think Chris still has the biggest deadlift ever done at Blacksmith with his “speed work” at 765, although I’m pretty sure that number will fall in 2021 (it did, Cam St.A deadlifted 771 in November)
We stayed in this gym setup for about a year before we moved to our current location in Port Coquitlam in April 2018, and we kicked things off with a blast that summer bringing in Ed Coan and my personal coach Josh Bryant to run a seminar, as well as bringing the first Kabuki Strength Seminar to Canada, we have some other really cool things planned once borders open up again. A little later we poached Cole from the island to take over as a part time coach
Something some of our clients know but some may not is that we have a couple pieces of powerlifting history that we use day in and day out – we have one of the platform Kabuki Power bars from the 2018 Kern US Open, of which many world records were broken, and you can see the specific meet logo burned into the collar of the barbell, and the Eleiko bar and plate set we have is from the 2018 IPF Classic World’s held in Calgary. We also managed to purchase the first ever Kabuki Squat Bar sold to the public, and we brought it back with us in my Camry (read, it didn’t really fit) from Oregon after one of the meets and seminars we attended there.
So where are we going from here? I’m not quite sure. The last 2 years have been hard for fitness businesses – that’s almost insulting to state it that lightly – but one thing that has been solidified through everything we’ve been through is that Blacksmith was never about the equipment, or the physical location, it’s about the people and the community that we’re all a part of, and that’s always going to be our most valuable asset.
Too many guides want you to spend 25 hours a week in the kitchen eating organic-vegan-gluten free-raw food-keto food with no preservatives, sugar, sweeteners or enjoyment of life in general. Most of us live in the real world and have busy lives and jobs and kids and and and and, we’re here to show you that you can live in the real world, eat food that doesn’t suck, and still be healthy and lean. This portion is all about the food side, which is what the majority of people struggle with, but if there’s enough interest we’ll do a Lazy Man’s Guide to Fat Loss Training at some point as well.
So if this is the Lazy Man’s Guide it probably doesn’t work all that well then right? NO, the principles in this guide are what I used to make the first 30lbs of my cut from the 242 to the 181 class (238 first photo, 215 second photo) it’s the same methods my 68 year old father used to lose over 40lbs while he waits for hip surgery and can’t be as active as he wants to be, and helped my clients lose up to 100lbs and keep it off for over half a decade.
In this guide we’re going to teach you how much to eat, how to spread that food out, how to make room for times you want to eat a WHOLE pizza, how to make simple meals that actually taste good and leave you feeling full, spend as little time in the kitchen as possible, save money, make you healthier, and focus on all the stuff that matters while ignoring the stuff that doesn’t or has such a minuscule impact that it’s cost to benefit ratio just isn’t there
So Let’s Get Started
You’ve made the decision to lose some fat and eat healthier – awesome! But as you start to look into what it takes to lose the body fat you want, it can often be overwhelming.
• Where do I start?
• How many calories do I eat?
• Do I have to eat only chicken and broccoli?
• Will I have to spend countless hours in the kitchen ?
• Do I really have to eat that much protein? It’s expensive!
• Want if I want pizza? Dessert? A chocolate bar?
The good thing is we’re going to answer these questions and more in the simplest way possible
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
Where to start
How to choose how much to eat, when and how to adjust
How to eat things you want and still make progress
Manage a sweet tooth on a diet
How to feel full on lower calories
How to make lower calorie food actually taste good
How to save money while eating higher protein diets
How to save time and make progress even if you can’t make your own food
Two samples of what a 2500 calorie day with 250g of protein can look like (high carb and low carb)
One sample of what a 1500 calorie day with 135g of protein can look like
How to make your brain work for you instead of against you
Quick tips for MyFitnessPal and tracking in general
Going Beyond – MacroFactor
Setting a Simple Starting Point
1 – Download MyFitnessPal
2 – Buy a Digital Food Scale when you go shopping
3 – Buy a scale, Weigh yourself every morning and track it as a note in your phone
Yup, this is the one thing we’re going to be sticklers on. I’ve been helping people lose fat for over a decade now, using many different habit based approaches, Precision Nutrition’s hand measuring system etc etc. No other system works as well or will teach you more about your intake than tracking your food – between your scale and your tracker, you have a compass and speedometer that tells you which direction you’re going and whether it’s too fast or too slow. Once you have spent a long time tracking and have a pretty good idea of what contains what and how to build meals etc you may be able to move away from looking at the speedometer, but if you’re one of those people that starts to get “speeding tickets” the moment they stop tracking, you’re going to have to pay attention to your speedometer again. The beauty of weighing and tracking is that it works every time.
We’ve chosen MyFitnessPal because it’s free, and we give you super simple tips for determining and adjusting caloric needs, but if you want micromanage and optimize even further and to outsource all the calorie and macro decisions to a better app, we talk about MacroFactor at the end
Determining Caloricand Macro Needs
First of all, MyFitnessPal is going to make you fill out a bunch of info at the start to determine your caloric needs. You’re going to have to fill everything out, but ignore it, MyFitnessPal is a great tracker and a terrible macro coach. If you’re a male, take your bodyweight in pounds and multiply it by 14-16, higher on the scale if you are already fairly lean and active, lower on the scale if you are carrying more body fat and are less active throughout the day. If you’re female same rules apply but multiply by 10-12. This number will give you your starting number of total calories to eat daily for fat loss; there’s no need for fancy equations, you’ll know within 2 weeks whether you’re going up or down or staying the same, and we’ll adjust from there. Example: 200lbs male fairly active lean male = 200×16 = 3200 calories per day, or 150lb sedentary female with more body fat to lose = 150×10 = 1500 calories per day. Don’t get too hung up on this number or put too much thought into it! It will correct itself in a matter of weeks as you’ll see below
Go into MyFitnessPal and change your goals. Go to the bottom bar and click on the “more” setting and follow the highlighted path to get to the screen where you can change your calories carbs, protein and fats
Now that you have your calories, play with the percentage sliders until you can get your protein to around 1g per pound of bodyweight, since you’re cutting if you have to choose between too high or too low, choose too high. As for setting your carbs and fats, don’t worry about it! It’s not overly important for fat loss, if you’re more focused on performance, keep carbs as high possible as long as possible by choosing more carbohydrate based foods, but this is the Lazy Man’s guide and we’re just not going to worry about whether you’re eating a little more carb or fat daily – it doesn’t matter!
So you’re going to make sure you hit your total calories, and meet your protein goals, that’s it.
Adjusting Macros
Unless you have extremely competitive physique goals, this will be all you’ll ever need for finding adjusting your calorie and macro levels. Here it is in one sentence:
Multiply your bodyweight in pounds by a factor of 10-16 depending on body fat, sex, and activity level, set your protein to 1g per pound of bodyweight, drop calories 10% per week to achieve 0.5-2lbs of weight loss per week, repeat until you feel shitty, then take a 1-2 week break at 20% over your current level or reverse by adding 5% per week until you feel better, either stay where you are or repeat the cutting process until you’ve reached your leanness goal
Here’s a little more detail for those of you that want some clarification
So you’re weighing yourself daily, and writing it down, in the first week, take your daily weigh ins and average them. Write it in your notes. Do the same for the second week. If the second week is the same as the first week, you’ve found your current maintenance calories aka the amount of food you need to eat to maintain your current weight. If you’re going down about 0.5-2lbs per week, cool, stay here until you drop below 0.5lbs per week. If you’re gaining weight week to week, drop your calories by 10% and check again next week. If you’re staying relatively the same weight you have two options 1 – if you just increased your activity level significantly, don’t do anything, see what happens next week, if you’re already highly active and not planning on increasing activity, decrease by 10% each week until you are in the magical 0.5 to 2lbs per week weight loss. One tip, if you still feel your clothes and see the mirror changing, but the scale hasn’t changed yet, don’t make another drop, often the scale lags behind other changes, causing you to drop your calories too quickly, wait it out, you can always drop next week.
The next tip, is that as you’re starting to get leaner (muscle separation and starting to see some abdominal definition) the max you should aim to lose is 1lb per week
You can continue you this process of 10% drops until you start to feel like shit. Once you’ve felt like shit for at least a consistent week – aka poor memory, focus, low libido, motivation, moving less, intense fatigue, interrupted or changed sleep patterns etc etc you have two options:
1 – take a diet break – add about 20% total calories for 1-2 weeks, trying to get most of those calories from carbohydrate, then return to yourlast level of caloric restriction and continue from there with 10% drops until you reach your fat loss goal, or if you keep feeling like crap every time you return to your diet, move on to option 2.
2 – Reverse diet. Add 5% per week until weight loss stops and you start to notice significant fat gain (some fat gain is inevitable, that’s ok, we’re going to take 1 step back to set up another 5 steps forward) once you’re here, drop 10% and you should be able to maintain your body weight. Stay here as long as you need to feel sane, regain motivation, feel less shitty, and prepare for another cut, or if you’re happy with where you are, you can stay here forever
How to spread the meals across the day:
Every meal should have at least 20g of protein, 40g is better
2 meals is ok, 3 is better, 4 is best
That’s it
How to Eat Pizza and Chocolate Bars, or Anything You’re Craving and Make it Fit
Here’s where we’re going to start getting away from conventional advice, some people, we’ll call them “nutrition snobs” that don’t live in the real world will be quick to point out how certain things “aren’t healthy” through various mechanisms whether they’re against artificial sweeteners, certain ingredients or food groups, sugar, preservatives, you name it, someone has a problem with it. In the Lazy Man’s Guide, we live in the real world, and know that 90% of the health benefits that come from your diet come from controlling calories, and that 90% of the fat loss and physique benefits come from a combination of controlling calories and total protein.
Right now, I’m cutting to maintain a weight class for November, my current calories are 2650, and my current protein is minimum 205g per day. I want to eat an entire medium New York Deli pizza from Panago tomorrow, but I don’t want to mess with my calories or protein, or my 4 meals a day, so how am I going to do it?
Easy. The entire pizza is 2000 calories, and contains 105g of protein, that means I need 100g of protein and I have 650 calories to do it, so I’m going to use a strategy I call protein spiking, where I use whey isolate (or cricket or beef or egg isolate etc etc whatever your gut can handle) to make the rest of my meals and leave room for a pizza at the end of the day
Meal 1 = 1.5 scoops whey isolate mixed with black coffee, 1/2 red pepper, 1 apple chopped with Walden Farm’s Caramel Syrup = 40g protein, 275 calories
Meal 2 = 1.5 scoops whey isolate, 1/2 cucumber w/vinegar and salt = 40g protein 180 calories
Meal 3 = 1.5 scoop whey isolate, 50g red onion, 1/4 cucumber, 1/4 red pepper w/vinegar salt and pepper = 40g protein, 180 calories
Meal 4 = 1 Medium New York Deli Pizza, 105g protein, 2000 calories
Total Daily Calories 2635, total daily protein = 225g
I don’t do this often, but this is an extreme example, by protein spiking and using fruits and veggies, you can still feel relatively full, and eat some pretty high calorie stuff that may not be a regular part of your nutrition plan, and still reach your goals for the day. You can scale this technique and use it for one of your meals and make room for some pre or post training sugar. I’ll often have a snickers bar before or after training, or fit in a large cookie or muffin etc while never worrying about whether I was still on track
Managing a Sweet Tooth
Like above, if you can actually make some room in your diet for the real thing – do it! But what if you’re always craving something sweet and still want to eat relatively good food? Here’s a few ideas for you:
Berries and Splenda: 320g of strawberries is 100 calories, add two packs of calorie free Splenda or Stevia and sprinkle it on and you have a delicious dessert that still comes in at 100 calories. Need to make it a staple? Try mixing it into fat free greek yogurt for a protein boost, and if you need even more, mix some protein powder into your yogurt first, and now you have a vanilla/chocolate/cookies and cream/caramel/whatever your protein powder flavour is pudding and some sweetened strawberries as a meat replacement in one or two of your daily meals. They even make a lactose free version for those of you that have trouble with dairy
Tic-Tacs, Icebreakers, Other small sugar free hard candies – try these in between meals, they come in at 3-5 calories per mint/candy and couple of them savoured over 10-20mins can be all it takes to satisfy a sweet tooth between meals. Still track them, especially if a couple turns into the entire package
Diet Drinks: No matter what your friends and family try to tell you about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, they’re actually some of the most studied food additions on the planet and only show mild adverse digestion effects in quantities that you couldn’t reasonably consume in a day. This is good news, it means that if you can find a diet drink that you enjoy, you can have it, enjoy it, and not worry about affecting your waistline. I’ll usually have 1-2 monster energy drinks pre-training and usually a caffeine free Coke Zero in the evening with my last meal. Sometimes I’ll have a gatorade zero if I’m feeling like I need something with flavour in between meals
Gum: Chewing on a piece of gum between meals can really take the edge off of the sweet tooth, and sticking a mint style flavour tends to ruin the flavours of things that come directly after it, making you statistically less motivated to want to have that pack of fuzzy peaches while your breath is still minty fresh
Jello: Yup, especially the light aka no added sugar type, you essentially have water, gelatin, and some flavouring, you can eats bowls of this and barely touch your macro count
Halo Top Ice Cream: The ones that say 130 calories per serving clock in at 327 calories for the whole pint, they also have 20g of protein, so if you want to have whole pint of ice cream at a meal, go for it, if you need a bit more protein have a shake with it or some chicken breast or shrimp etc, add some veggies prepared one of the ways we outline later in this article, and you have a meal less than 500 calories that contains decent levels of protein, fibre and micronutrients. My favourite flavour personally is the salted caramel
Feeling Full on Lower Calories
One of the things most likely to derail you on a lower calorie diet is the mental frustrations of always feeling hungry. To be honest, unless you’re on extremely low calories, there’s no reason to feel hungry all the time
The easiest thing you can do is drink more water. Thirst and hunger often get confused in the brain, causing you to feel like you need to eat when really you need to hydrate yourself
The second thing you can do is eat more fruits and veggies. As alluded to before blueberries, strawberries, watermelon, raspberries all have pretty insanely low calories for their weight. If you want even further deliciousness, you can slice and add spenda or stevia. Food bulk and the resulting stomach stretching is one of the first things that signals to the brain that you’ve eaten enough food and starts to kick in the “I’m full” mechanisms. Even lower on the calorie to weight scale and chalk full of nutrient goodness is pretty much every vegetable ever, but the problem is they kind of suck so…
Making Vegetables Suck Less Without Years of Food Prep
Easiest – use yogurt or vinegar based dressings as dips or seasoning. Bolthouse makes some really good dressings (salsa ranch, creamy Caesar, etc.) that come in at 20-25 calories per tablespoon. A tablespoon or two of these can kick up the flavour of just about anything. If you want to make some veggies with an extra bit of pizzaz, but still don’t want to spend forever cooking, toss some carrots or peppers in the air fryer or a pan on the stove and add a tablespoon of reconstituted lime juice and/or lemon, a pack of Splenda, some chili flakes and garlic and or ginger powder and sauté or air fry to your heart’s content. If you feel like taking the extra 5 minutes, use fresh grated ginger or garlic, or as an in between save-on also makes pre-made wet sauces with garlic, ginger, chilli, lemongrass etc. spread some on and cook away and you actually have some pretty delicious veggies with pretty much zero prep work vs just cooking them. Usually I’ll batch cook a bunch and heat them up with my meals as needed.
Use Small Amounts of Strong Flavour Foods
You’d be surprised how little bacon you need to use to get the flavour, consider that a strip of maple leaf prepared bacon is about 35 calories, you’ll often find 1/2 a strip crumbled onto a salad is all it takes to really kick up a boring ass salad into something you actually enjoy eating. Maple syrup on oats or even toast with a bit of Splenda is almost indistinguishable from full strength maple syrup, the key is to get the darker maple syrup, it has the bolder flavour and when diluted with some Splenda, still maintains the flavour of the syrup. I’ll often use this trick on some toast pre workout, or if I need something lower calorie later on in the day, a little bit drizzled on some rice cakes is pretty damn good
Salsa and Spice Make Everything Nice
I try to add veggies and flavour to my protein in pretty much every meal. 2 cups of iceberg lettuce comes in at whopping 14 calories, add in 100g of sliced tomatoes for another 18 calories, but that’s boring, so adding 2 tablespoons salsa and as much vinegar based chipotle hot sauce as my heart desires adds another 25 calories, if I want a little saucier taste, I’ll add some mustard. This make a great Mexican style salad base for my protein that I’ll add cod, chicken, shrimp etc to for a grand total of 57 calories over the meat alone – meaning 250g of cooked cod in my salad base is almost 1.5lbs of food bulk for around 300 calories. If I want to have just a salad but still have it be awesome, you can add some chilli lime Quest tortilla style chips and make a full meal of it clocking in at over 77g of protein and around 440 calories. Turn it into a rice bowl by adding in 150g brown rice for an extra 170 calories, for a grand total of 610 calories, almost anyone can fit this massive and delicious meal into their day.
You can get these at most London Drugs now!
There are tons of shake on seasonings that are way better than you’d think but I’m going to point you towards two companies that make some pretty damn good low calorie shakers and seasonings that you’ll fall in love with. The first is Flavor God
They make Nutella and syrup substitutes and all sorts of different things that allow you to boost flavours but keep calories low. I will caution you that overeating these won’t cause any real issues, but the sugar alcohols and inulin fibres etc can cause gas and bloating in a lot of people which is unpleasant for you and probably not making you too many friends. So enjoy these but even these you probably want to have in moderation, but they are great tools to mix in with regular foods to make things fit – remember our protein spiking example? Well now you can dip some of those in calorie free ranch dressing even on a day you want to have real pizza.
A word of warning, we’re generally better at faking sweet than we are at anything else, so the chocolate syrup, maple walnut syrup, chocolate spread, caramel syrup etc are all really good, the other spreads and sauces are hit and miss and I’ve tried a couple that are downright disgusting, so you’re going to have to experiment with their products and see what you like
High Fibre Foods
There are lots to choose from, but we’re going to talk about quick oats, you can make them into just about anything, you can cook them with almond milk, add some Splenda or stevia and berries and you have a dessert like meal that keeps you full for hours, you can make them in 1-2 mins, and you can even get the little Quaker packets and keep them with you. I keep the lightly sweetened apples and cinnamon packs in and protein powder in my gym bag at 120 calories each I always have the option of having a high fibre, high food bulk meal instead of running to the convenience store and grabbing something that wouldn’t fit my nutrition plan very well or leave me hungry and trying to fight temptation later in the day
Protein Blends Instead of Whey
Around your workouts using a whey isolate or hydrolysate does have some small advantages, but most people don’t need to worry and this would fall under “shit that doesn’t really matter” for 90+% of the training population just wanting to be lean and healthy. The advantage of whey is that it digests quickly and gives a very quick boost of amino acids in the blood, the problem is that if it digests quickly, it doesn’t stay in the digestive system for very long, and won’t keep your hunger triggers at bay for very long either. My number one suggestion here is high casein protein powders, and as far as taste goes you really can’t beat Eighty/20 by Build Fast Formula, all of the flavours are actually amazing, and trust me, casein is not easy to make taste like anything other than buttered racoon asshole. The problem is the only place to currently get this shipped to Canada is straight from the Kabuki Strength Website store, and shipping and duty definitely hurts. Your best bet is to get a few people together, buy in bulk, and split the shipping and duty charges, but since once again, this is the lazy man’s guide, Magnum Quattro is a decent blend of casein, whey, milk, and egg that will occupy the digestive system a bit longer than whey alone, and you can buy it at most supplement shops as well as online Canadian retailers
Saving Money
I’ll be honest, this portion and the saving time portion are going to be in direct conflict of each other, but you can choose which camp suits you best, or realistically they’ll be times when you need to save time, but your base diet might fall in the saving money category.
The most expensive thing you’ll buy is your protein, even on low calorie diets, protein will push the grocery bill up pretty quickly. So the recommendation here is pretty simple: Costco chicken. All of Costco’s meat offerings are priced very well, but the Kirkland chicken breast is actually priced below cost, it’s their loss-leader meant to get you in the store and buying other items they make a higher profit margin on. Buying food at Costco is pretty safe bet on price, and it saves the headache of price shopping. I’ll buy most of my staples, aka the stuff I’m eating day in and day out at Costco, and freeze the meat so I don’t have to deal with the whole shopping at Costco multiple times a week. Here’s my personal list of things I regularly buy at Costco:
Kirkland Chicken Breast
Kirkland Atlantic Cod
Kirkland Tail-Off Cooked Shrimp
Kirkland Top Sirloin Cap Removed
The Potato Company Baby Potatoes
Quaker Quick Oats – Plain Bags
Quaker Quick Oats Variety Pack
Boom Chicka Pop Popcorn
Veggie Straws
Bell Pepper Variety Pack
Cucumbers
Strawberries
Raspberries
Blueberries
Apples
Coke Zero
10kg bag of White Rice
Kaizen Whey Isolate
Kirkland Beef Jerky
Quest Protein Bars
Kirkland Fat-Free Greek Yogurt
These items make up about 85% of my diet on most days, so I buy them pretty much every time I’m there, I also buy my Splenda or Stevia/monk fruit packs there, many spices and seasonings including seasoning salt, lemon pepper etc – stuff that I’m going to go through a lot and ok with buying in unreasonable quantities. Every time I price check, Costco comes out on par or ahead on price per serving vs most supermarkets sale prices, so it alleviates the headaches of running around town to 4 different stores trying to hit different sales and save an extra 5%.
This also is alluding to a pretty obvious trend, the more you buy in bulk, the more you’ll save.
For any boxed/packaged item that I want to buy in smaller quantities, Walmart is usually your best option. I’ll usually get rice cakes, puffed BBQ chips, energy drinks, quest protein chips, sugar free cranberry juice, almond milk, etc at Walmart.
Lastly if you want to save a bit more on produce, if you have access to a local Farmer’s Market, you’ll be amazed how far $50 can go on fruits and vegetables
It’s a meal prep company that makes fully cooked meals. If you’re busy, you run a business or have a high paced job, there are days you just can’t cook and you often find yourself running to the drive-thru or ordering skip the dishes. Enter meal prep companies. You don’t have to use foodiefit, you can find another one you like (there are many) but I’ve used them multiple times, and they have a meal building option
They have a ton of rotating premade meals that have the macro counts right on the main page, they are cooked fresh and delivered to you refrigerated, and you can deliver them straight to your door, or your work etc.
Most of the time this is going to be on par with what you’re spending at the drive thru and especially less than what you’re going to spend using skip the dishes. So, if for 2 weeks in a row, you keep telling yourself you’re going to prep meals, but you don’t, stop lying to yourself, order however many meals you normally eat at work, and get them delivered Monday morning or on your lunch break to your place of work.
You might need to buy a microwave or a fridge to keep at work, but seriously, these are small expenses, get a cheap ass microwave for under $100, get a mini fridge for $100-$150, or get on craigslist/marketplace etc. If you don’t have access to electricity at your work, buy a cooler and pack a meal or two every day, don’t make excuses, find solutions! If you can’t handle cold food, heat your food and put it in a thermos and bring them work with you.
Say you have really low macro counts right now and you just can’t make their pre-made meals fit anymore, no problem, they have meal builders on the basic protein meals (chicken, salmon, steak, turkey breast, tofu) where you can select exactly how much protein, whether you want a carbohydrate source or not, veggies, and whether you want sauces etc. You can make these meals in myfitnesspal and work out what you need for the day and outsource the cooking to someone else
When I started my business, if I was awake, I was working, I knew I needed a solution to still eat within my goals and I used exactly this strategy. When I compared it to eating out, it was actually much cheaper – not as cheap as what I do now with a bunch of batch cooking, but cheaper and better quality than eating out all the time, and it left me feeling full and satisfied – something that not a lot of drive thru food will do, and less likely to say fuck it and binge on whatever on the way home or at home
Deal with “oh shit” moments– Getting a meal at a convenience store
Even the best laid plans fall apart, and invariably you’ll find yourself in a time pinch, need to get a meal on the run, not even have enough time to stop at the drive-thru, but still need to eat.
Your best protein to calorie ratio option is a Core Power Elite clocking in at 42g of protein for 230 calories, or the regular one coming in second place for 26g at 170 calories
I’ve been told that Fairlife is basically the devil, so you might want to do some research here, but they are the best protein to calorie ratio that you can find at pretty much any convenience store. 7-11 and Chevron also sells fruit (apples and bananas), so you can find a decent meal in 30s or less. Worst case scenario a bag of jerky and a granola bar or two is something most people can fit, is semi-filling and works in a pinch, and can be purchased just about anywhere
What I do now to save time
Food prep companies are great, but they’re still more expensive than I’d want to use forever, if you can make the switch to batch cooking, you’ll save way more time over making each individual meal. Remember my Costco list? That’s basically what I batch cook.
First tip, get an air fryer. A lot of the items you’d normally need to add oil to, the air fryer does an amazing job just on its own, plus it sits counter top pretty much unattended while the stove and oven and counter top are free for other foods. Second is buy a food processor or even a one of those hand operated slap-chop type things, you’d be amazed how much time that can save you when preparing large batches of food. Here’s what a food prep night looks like:
Start rice cooker with chicken broth and rice
Take baby potatoes and toss some seasoning (lemon pepper or seasoning salt) and throw them in the air fryer (the Costco baby potatoes are pre-washed, no prep required)
If I’m really lazy I’ll make chicken breasts and just do a hot sauce medley, using two or three different vinegar based hot sauces and toss them in the oven, if I’m feeling like switching it up I’ll make a Thai sauce of 2tbsp reconstituted lemon juice, 2tbsp reconstituted lime juice, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, 2 packs of Splenda, chilli flakes, and crushed garlic and let the chicken sit for a few minutes while the oven preheats, then pour the rest over the chicken once it’s on the pan
now while the air fryer and oven are going, I’ll start chopping veggies. I’ll make what I call hobo pickles – sliced cucumber with salt and vinegar and put them in Tupperware, I’ll chop some peppers and put them in Tupperware and put them in the fridge, I’ll also chop some red onions and do the same
once the potatoes are done I’ll toss some baby carrots in the air fryer with some chipotle powder or the ginger/garlic/lemon or lime mentioned previously.
Once the veggies are chopped I’ll move on to washing blueberries and slicing strawberries and put them in Tupperware in the fridge as well
Now I’m freed up to use the stove top, I’ll do shrimp in the air fryer with some sesame Thai salad dressing or hot sauce medley, and then I can cook some fish on the stove top while that’s happening
By doing this large batch cooking I’ve got the base ingredients to make all sorts of different dishes by just mixing stuff together or reheating, meaning I spend 2-3 hours in the kitchen 1x per week, and every other meal takes 5mins or less of prep.
What A Sample Diet Can Look Like
We want to give you an idea of what putting it all together can look like – what a 250lb person eating 250g of protein and 2500 calories would look like, what a 135lb person eating 135g of protein and 1500 calories would look like. I’m using relatively low calories and high protein on purpose, as one of the questions we get the most is “how can you get that much protein in without going over your calories?”
The parameters are:
Hit 4 meals, each with 20g of protein, but ideally 40g (that actually puts us over 135g protein in our second example)
Hit our minimum protein goal
Be within 5% of our total calorie goal
One example higher carb and food bulk, one example higher fat
Example 1 – 250g protein and 2500 calories:High Carb
Breakfast:
2 scoops Vanilla Whey Isolate mixed with 1 cup coffee and Walden Farm’s Mocha Coffee Syrup
75g quick oats mixed with cinnamon and 1 diced apple, Splenda to taste, add Walden Farm’s Maple Walnut Syrup after cooking
1 scoop vanilla (or your choice of flavour) whey isolate
100g diced strawberries
1-2 packs Splenda to taste
Optional Flavour God Chocolate Donut Topper to Taste
150g cooked potatoes, refried stove top for extra crisp if desired
Meal 2: Sweet Thai Chili Chicken Stirfry
135g cooked chicken breast
1/2 red pepper diced
25g red onion
50g diced carrots
2 tablespoons sweet Thai chilli sauce
160g white rice cooked with chicken broth
Meal 3: Mexican Shrimp Salad
100g cooked shrimp
2 cups shredded lettuce
1 pack Quest Chili Lime Protein chips
2 tablespoons salsa
Hot sauce to taste
Meal 4: Snack
2 chopped apples with Walden Farms Caramel Syrup
2 Rice Cakes with Walden Farms Maple Walnut Syrup, Cinnamon, or Flavour God Buttery Cinnamon Roll topper
(optional) to get 4 spikes of protein 20g or more, swap one apple for a scoop of whey or Eighty/20 blend
Total without optional scoop of protein: 147g protein, 17g fat, 196g carb, 1530 calories
Total with protein swap: 174g protein, 16g fat, 171g carb, 1550 calories
Make Your Brain Work For You not Against You
Again, since this is a lazy guide, I’m going to give you some of the strongest scientifically supported habits to implement to help you adhere to your nutrition plan, in point form:
Anything that is blatantly comfort food, DO NOT keep it in the house, you can still have it, but you have to go get it when you want it
Do not eat in the kitchen
Have a meal before going grocery shopping
If you feel ravenously hungry, drink something, wait 10 minutes, then make your meal
Hunger is often boredom, if you find yourself hungry less than an hour after a meal, go do something you find engaging or exciting
If you find yourself constantly overeating, use less distinct flavours per meal. IE instead of having oats, rice cakes and peanut butter, caramel apple slices, strawberry slices with walnut syrup, cereal and a protein greek yogurt blend for breakfast and making it fit, have a protein greek yogurt blend and one of the carb options and eat more of those two items equalling the same amount of calories
Forgive yourself quickly, mistakes are just data, always frame it in a positive and move on
The first three bullet points work on managing temptation, managing temptation is actually more likely to be successful than just having bulletproof will power. If you put barriers in the way of making mistakes, and tempt yourself less with easily available food that you know you’re prone to overeating, you will be more successful in sticking to your nutrition plan. Remember everything is allowed, you can have pizza, but you have to plan for it and you have to go get it. This saves the “I accidentally ate a whole family sized bag of potato chips” moments.
The next three points have to do with the fact that our hunger systems are predominantly psychological – if you’re sticking to your plan and not ignoring the blatant signs of under-eating (loss of memory, low libido, foggy thinking, extreme lethargy, sharp sustained drops in physical performance etc) the chances of you experiencing true starvation-style hunger is pretty much zero. Most hunger is often boredom or associative (linked with other activities like popcorn and movies), so these habits help with the misattribution of boredom or association as hunger. Think about when you often feel hungry or crave comfort food – it’s usually when you’re working on something boring or unstimulating, sitting down, or otherwise not mentally engaged. Busy people often forget to eat, take advantage of the same phenomena and use it to your advantage!
The reduction of variety works on the “dessert stomach” phenomenon – you couldn’t bear to eat another bite of your meal, but somehow always magically have room for dessert. This phenomenon is actually related to boredom as well – the meal has triggered your satiety mechanisms, but the novelty of a different flavour is enough to psychologically interest you and allow you to override these mechanisms and eat more. When distinctly different flavour profiles are limited within meals, you’re statistically less likely to be tempted to eat more of one of the flavour profiles
Last point is to do with framing, beating yourself up over mistakes actually has the opposite effect of what you want it to do. You’re mad because you expect better of yourself, but really you’re destroying your mental image of yourself as someone who is in control and can accomplish their goals to someone who is a failure, worthless, and prone to always screwing up. Mistakes are part of the process, no one is perfect, mistakes are data points that allow you to figure out how to refine your process in the future and continue the success that you’ve already made. Guard your self image closely if not for any other reason than you want to succeed.
Tips For Using MyFitnessPal (and tracking in general)
Scanning or self-entering are the best options for any prepackaged foods
If searching for a food, try to stick to green check mark foods (picture example below) ones without checkmarks are often inputted by other users and prone to error, and sometimes atrociously off
Make sure you make the distinction between cooked and uncooked foods. When using the search function, if you’re looking for a cooked food literally just add “cooked” before whatever you’re searching
When in doubt, cross check with google, once you enter a food, it’s in your history, and it will always pop up first, so once you have the right one entered you can use it forever, it’s worth it to get it right
Most restaurants have their nutrition information available, and you can add it as a custom food, if you’re eating at a smaller restaurant you can either try and build the meal using single ingredients (remembering to add some butter/oil for cooking) or just try to pick the closest thing you can find in MyFitnessPal and move on with your life. So long as you’re not eating out multiple times per week it’s not going to make a big difference
Track even when you’re going over, it’s ok, it happens to everyone, but you can’t troubleshoot a problem if you don’t have the data. The absolute worst case scenario you can get into is convincing yourself you’re nailing everything and “it’s not working”. Don’t allow yourself to lie yourself into hopelessness, because there’s no reason to be there in the first place – it’s just food, it’s not your identity, you’ll figure it out. Every overage or underage is a chance to figure out the root cause, over or undereating is just the symptom/end result
If you’re a busy person, pick a quiet time and plan your most hectic meals in advance – personally the lower calories I’m on, the more likely I am to plan my next day the night before. I’ll play with some meal options with foods I already have prepped in the fridge until I get to the point where I’m like “yup that looks good, I can eat that and be satisfied” then when you’re in the middle of the busy day you can look at your tracker to guide you instead of having to make any active decisions
If you did nothing but what was outlined here up to this point, you can completely change your physique and health forever. If you just want to look better, feel better, have more confidence, even get and keep abs, stop right here, this is everything you need to know and probably more, don’t make things more complex just make mistakes and refine your process until you make less of them and are happy with where you’re at!
Invariably there are people who are going to want more, so if that’s you, I’ve added a brief outline of the next step from MyFitnessPal
Going Beyond – MacroFactor
We chose MyFitnessPal for this article because it’s free, we gave you simple equations to determine a starting point, and a simple way to adjust your calories based on how things are going – the law of averages means that eventually things like eating more carbohydrate on one day vs the other, eat more in the morning vs the evening, heavy training sessions, high stress periods, drinking more or less water etc etc – all the things that affect your weight on a daily basis – get averaged out over time, so we essentially ignore them in those calculations for simplicities sake.
Make no mistake, if you never did anything other than hit your protein and total calories, and stuck to the cut and reverse and or maintain method we outlined, you can take your physique to levels that you almost wouldn’t believe, but if you want to go even further into performance nutrition, and have a program that can actually adapt to you specifically, the best nutrition app by far is MacroFactor by the guy’s from Stronger by Science. We’ve used Avatar, RP Diet App, and Carbon, MacroFactor is by far the best in it’s power, flexibility, and the strength of its algortithm
Here are some of the things that MacroFactor does better than MyFitnessPal
As many meals per day as you want
Algorithm takes into account what you ate and at what time of the day, making daily weigh ins more accurate. It also measures and tracks hydration status if you have one of those fancy smart scales that gives you body fat percentage
Allows you to edit your activity level at any given time, taking into account all previous information – going to miss the gym for a week? No worries, it will tell you how much to drop your calories by that week
Custom weekly plans, either fully automated or collaborative – allowing you to use higher calories on higher activity days or social settings, and lower days to stay within your weekly calorie allowance
Larger database of verified foods than MyFitnessPal and no user inputted metadata, meaning that whatever you’re entering has actual tested and verified nutrition data, reducing errors. I’ve yet to run into a food I couldn’t find
Micronutrient tracking and many more ways to assess your nutrition within the app
This is just the tip of the iceberg, the more advanced you are personally with nutrition the more you can get out of the app
I have found that if you have a pretty good understanding of nutrition, I actually find the MacroFactor app easier to use, sometimes I don’t want to think about my nutrition, and I’m in a position where I still want to squeeze all the performance benefits that managing my nutrition provides. MacroFactor is the first app that I feel confident outsourcing my energy use calculations to, and is now our go to for anyone with advanced goals.
When I really need to go beyond what an app could reasonably be allowed to do (extreme weight cutting/dehydration etc for a competition, or get to low single digit body fat) I can take full control of the app but still tell it what happened so I can go back to the algorithm when I want to hit cruise control and get out of the extreme manipulation. I’ve added this as partial addendum because at some point you may want more, but realistically, most people will be fine just sticking with everything in the guide up until now!
Blacksmith Fitness 