Efficiency And Elite Strength Are Asymmetric Goals

To begin, this will likely be the most contentious piece of writing I've done thus far.  My personal belief in regards to "efficient training" is not a widely held precept, but that is due to the fact that every single person who disagrees with me on this subject is unequivocally wrong.  I'm not talking "mark that fucker down ten points on their SAT" wrong, either- I'm talking "Michael Jackson fingerfucking a four year old while wearing a poop helmet and singing 'I'm a Little Teapot'" wrong.  The reason for this is that efficiency is not a path to excellence, but rather the way to maximize production while minimizing cost.  As such, efficiency in the minds of most is linear growth- slow and steady incremental progress.  Becoming elite at anything, however, requires far more effort than that, and exponentially more effort than that which most modern Westerners will put into anything but consumerism, sloth, and obesity.

Legs like this don't come from 5x5 or once a week squatting.  They come from years of  doing 35-42 sets of legs twice a week.

Given that I attack lifting with the same ferocity that which a fat person employs in the pursuit of type two diabetes in a Krispy Kreme shop, incremental progression wouldn't be my style in any event.  Though my opinion might be skewed because it suits my style of lifting, I believe that a more aggressive, volume intensive, and unmodulated approach results in progression that is volatile, but will resemble a cubic progression rather than a linear progression if averaged.  The problem most people have with my approach, however, is threefold- one, they lack the necessary motivation to attack the weights with the necessary vigor; two, they are either unwilling or unable to continually alter their training to maintain forward progression, and three, they're too busy listening to the astonishing amount of negativity coming from the weak-willed and -bodied peanut gallery to take this path in the first place.

Ultimately, I think the problem lies in large part with one man- Frederick Winslow Taylor.  Before you start googling him, know this- he's got fuckall to do with lifting.  Instead, he is the evil mastermind behind one of the most insidious schemes in history, which sucked the soul out of the American working man and is currently grinding the lot of us to a bloody fucking nub: the plot to make the American workforce "efficient."

Shocked?  She is too.

Even his mother would probably have told us, Frederick Taylor was a fucking asshole.  He went everywhere with a stopwatch and notepad, timing everyone as they did everything and constantly nitpicking, henpecking, and berating them about their form, style, and execution because the wanted them to operate like robots in a factory.  Fucking Frederick Taylor, had he been capable, was likely a blazingly fast and probably unfelt affair consisting of a rapid series of pumps calibrated by stopwatch and in time with a metronome, after which he critiqued the woman for everything he could possibly think.  Though the man was utterly despised by the workers he oversaw, he was the darling of the management of corporations, and his worship of efficiency became the American religion within a century of it's adoption.

If you're wondering why I think this fucked up most lifters, consider this- the core of Taylor's work was standardization.  He studied things, averaged the results, and used that to determine what would achieve acceptable results for everyone, rather than what would achieve optimal results for individuals.  He promoted four essential principles:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task".
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks. 

This has since been applied to programming, which by my research (and that's been rather exhaustive), is a relatively new phenomenon- even in the early 20th Century each lifter essentially created their own program.  Now, however, most people dogmatically and rabidly adhere to programs they neither understand nor question who have been designed by people in a distant foreign land for a very discrete group of people.  That, or they do the same with a watered-down program designed to do exactly what Taylor sought to do- achieve acceptable goals for all, but not optimize anyone's output.  Thus, no one trains themselves, they receive "detailed instruction and supervision" in the "performance of their task", and lifters leave the management principles to strangers while they unthinkingly perform the tasks set out for them.  In short, Taylor created an environment where society not only creates robots, but it creates robots who want to be even more robotic.  This is how we've ended up with an internet full of discussions of same three powerlifting or bodybuilding programs, people who think that being fat somehow confers great physical strength (I'm talking to you, GOMAD fuckers), and endless fucking form check videos.  As such, most people are as useless as the annoying black chick from Saved By The Bell on the best of gym visits, and at worst are more likely to resemble that skinny, whiny bitch from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I haven't seen this movie in ten years and would still stab this motherfucker on sight.

"Efficient" programming seeks to provide the masses with the best results from the least effort every time they enter the gym.  People, being fucking morons, confuse "best results from the least effort" with "best results", and this is how they've started championing Mark Rippetoe as the god of all things lifting.  Because they think that "best results" also means maintaining a strength level that would get you laughed out of a supermarket in Denmark when you threw your back out trying to lift one of their giant wheels of cheese, they think that anyone doing more work than them (and thereby easily surpassing their best lifts) in the gym is a mutant, obviously using steroids, and in danger of "burning themselves out" in short order.  They'll heave excuses aloft like they're Russians blindly firing shit into space in an effort to beat the US at anything at all, and will achieve about the same amount of success as the Russians- there will be a lot of shit erased from their record books out of shame, and weeping will be about the only sound they hear each night as they go to bed.  They will never push themselves to test their limits, force themselves to go beyond what they believe possible, or even attempt something slightly out of the ordinary, because they're content with leading dull, uninteresting lives bereft of excitement and devoid of conscious thought.  They're fucking robots, basking in the pallid glow of their own mediocrity.

Cursory examination of memorable and elite lifters throughout the ages will leave you one very definitive impression thereafter- there is no one best way for everyone to train.  The very idea of such a thing is patently ridiculous, as the adoption of that theory involves a tacit admission that you're no better than anyone else- you're neither smarter, nor stronger, nor in any way better than the toothless, meth-addicted broad checking you out at Wal-Mart, nor are you better equipped to attack the weights than the special needs kid with a thyroid disorder who's eating crayons in isle 3.  If you're comfortable with that idea, then I encourage you to adopt a cookie-cutter routine on the recommendation of a faceless stranger with a total that barely exceeds his bodyweight.  If you realize that there's a chance that you might be able to rise above the level of "barely human", perhaps you should examine the routine you've been doing to see how it could best benefit you, as an individual.

Another takeaway from that examination is the fact that if you want to be great at something, lifting included, you're going to have to do more than just the bare minimum in the gym.  To wit:

Tom Platz's Leg Routine (which he did twice in 8 days):

Squats 8-12 5-20
Hack Squats 5 10-15
Leg Extensions 5-8 10-15
Lying Leg Curls 6-10 10-15
Standing Calf Raises 3-4 10-15
Seated Calf Raises 3-4 10-15
Hack Machine Calf Raises 3-4 10-15
Using this routine, Platz hit 500 for 23 reps and 635 for 8, at a bodyweight of around 220 and ripped to the fucking bone.

Bob Peoples' Full Body Routine (done 4-5 times per week)

Deadlift 1 x 15-20, 1 x 10, 1 x 8, 1 x 6, 6 x 1 (10 sets total)
Squat 5 x 5
Press 5 x 5

That's right- People maxed out on the deadlift 4-5 times a week. Because he broke his fucking ass and wasn't a bleeding vagina, People's pulled a world record 725 at 181 lbs.  Also contrary to convention, people pulled with all of the air expelled from his lungs, with a round back, and with a double overhand grip, form he determined to be best for himself after experimenting with a wide variety of forms and then actually sitting down and studying what worked best for him.  Can you imagine such a thing?  The horror!

Konstantin Konstantinovs Full Body Routine (training every other day)

Workout 1.
1. Light squat for a warm up.
2. Deadlift. I do a different variant every time I train: rack pulls – 7, 11, 15, 20, 23 cm from the knees (higher than that I never pull). I do either a set of 3 reps or 8-10 depending on how I feel.
3. Bench press. I consider bench press as rest between heavy work. I bench either with touch and go with a medium grip, or with a close grip pausing at the bottom. I might do a single set of 10 reps with touch and go, or might max out pausing at the bottom. It all depends on how I feel and my mood.
4. 2nd deadlift. I pull either from a floor or from a deficit (about 9 cm). I do a single set of 2-3 reps pausing at the bottom. Then if I have enough energy, I might do another set of 6-8 reps.
5. Box squat. Heavy box squat as described above.

Workout 2 (in two days).
1. Medium heavy squat as described above.
2. Heavy bench press for a single set of 3 reps. Once in two weeks: negatives – 1-2 set for 1 rep. Then a single set of 8-10 reps with either close or medium grip depending on how I feel.
3. Cardio – 15-20 min.

Workout 3.
1. Light squat.
2. Medium heavy bench press: a single set of 6-8 reps.
3. Speed deadlift with bands: 8x1. Bands increase weight by 130 kg at the top.
4. Pull ups with weight or bands. ONLY explosively. Very important for my deadlift.
5. GHR, hyperextensions, very heavy abs work (6 sets with emphasis on strength).

Workout 4.
The same as workout 2.
In other words, the man who's the strength freak of our time and who hold the World Record in the Raw Deadlift at 242 and 275 and the total at 308 squats every fucking training session and deadlifts twice a week.  Conventional wisdom can officially go fuck itself.

Bennie Podda, being insane per the usual.

There are myriad other examples, and all of the Baddest Motherfuckers I've chronicled threw a metaphorical fuck you to the world every single time they entered the gym.  That's because they knew, instinctively, that there is no one best way for everyone to train- there's only the best way for you to train yourself.  Just as the cookie cutter programs predominating in the strength world today should arouse the ire of the lifters using them, as they're forced from what works into what usually works for most people, Fred Taylor's methods made him a fucking wanted man in factories the world around.  Artisans and factory workers despised him, because he took away their free will and individual expression and replaced it with robotic movements and communal behavior.  Amusingly, the Soviets were some of his biggest proponents, in spite of the fact that Marx himself decried the dehumanization of the worker.  Similarly, Christian existentialist Simone Weil proffered the following, which is a pretty excellent summary of modern society's mental state:

"However tied and bound a primitive man was to routine and blind gropings, he could at least try to think things out, to combine and innovate at his own risk, a liberty which is absolutely denied to a worker engaged in a production line.... Thus, in spite of progress, man has not emerged from the servile condition in which he found himself when he was handed over weak and naked to all the blind forces that make up the universe; it is merely that the power which keeps him on his knees has been as it were transferred from inert matter to the human society of which he is a member."

I find that particularly striking due to the fact that Christianity doesn't seem well suited to individual thought and expression, by and large.  If they and the progenitor of one of the most disgusting and insidious political movements in the modern era could see the evil inherent in Taylorism, anyone on Earth should be able to do so.

But, you might be saying to yourself, those guys are fucking freaks, and while I'm not retarded and half-crippled and don't resemble a young Kuato from Total Recall, I'm hardly a strapping young KK.  He's a genetic freak, and I'm not.  Interestingly, science has addressed that theory, and they've told you to nut the fuck up.  In a meta-analysis of thousands of elite performers across a variety of disciplines ranging from hockey to violin, researchers discovered that "Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years." (Ericsson et al. 363)  I've mentioned my issues with Sir Francis Galton before, and he's the one who's got it in your mind that you simply lack the genetics to be elite (which is not surprising given that "Genetic influences are still incorrectly viewed as deterministic factors that lead to unmodifiable consequences determining the structure of the  human body and its nervous system"[Ericksson et al 364]).  Well, once again, you and Galton are about as correct as the 29% percent of American who couldn't identify the vice president of the United States.(Daily Beast)  Instead, what studies like that show "is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert" (Outliers 40)  In studying these elite performers, they found that "the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.  They work much, much harder." (Outliers 39)

Working harder already

.

They don't just work harder, either- they react, adapt and overcome, just as elite Special Forces units do as a matter of course.  In a study in the late 19th Century of Morse code operators, it was discovered that even a tremendous amount of practice and experience did not inure Morse code operators from the dreaded plateau we all know from training.  What they found was interesting for another reason, though, because it applies directly to my point- people who unthinkingly performed their tasks found themselves mired in bullshit, while those who approached their task thoughtfully and busted their asses did not- "with mere repetition, improvement of performance was often arrested at less than maximal levels, and further improvement required effortful reorganization of the skill. Even very experienced Morse Code operators could be encouraged to dramatically increase their performance through deliberate efforts when  further improvements were required for promotions and external rewards."(Ericksson 365)  Put simply- you have react and adapt if you want to overcome obstacles in your path to greatness.  You're not going to do that, however, if you're taking the easy way out, resting on your laurels, following some program designed by a person who's never met you and used (identically) by everyone you know, and never deviating from the path set out by that stranger.  You've got to identify your strengths and weaknesses and motivate yourself to overcome them through the thoughtful application of sheer, unrelenting will and brute fucking force.


To sum up- if you do the same thing everyone else is doing, you'll suck just as much as they do.  "Remember, you never want to be in a fair fight if an unfair fight is an option" (Griffin), and by doing what they're doing, you're making every competition a fair fight.  You can always push harder, lift heavier, and fight harder for what you want, and you're going to have to fucking do it if you want to rise above those around you.  Claiming that your sessions are more efficient is simply another way to say you're a fucking corner-cutting slacker, and I'm going to laugh at you when I outlift you and your lifting partner combined at a meet.

Don't be a fucking pussy.  Go do something epic.




Addendum:
I left this bit out because this post ran so long and covered so many things that I forgot to mention it explicitly, though I thought it would be more or less apparent:
Optimal training for an individual will not be "efficient" due to the fact that you will have to put more and more effort into lifting in order to transcend your previous bests.  This coincides with the "Law of Diminishing Returns", which states that "in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, will at some point yield lower per-unit returns." (Wiki)  Those lower returns, however, are necessary if progress is to continue, and is the point I was attempting to make by citing the study of the Morse code operators.

Additionally, it appears, via the comments, that many people are confusing "optimal" and "efficient"- optimal training is training in which you're maximizing your maximizing your output.  "Efficient" training, on the other hand, is achieving the best possible result form a minimum of effort.  As such, it is rare that "efficient" training will yield optimal results, due to the fact that so much more effort will eventually be necessary to continue your progress, and because of the delicate balance of man's internal systems it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what will achieve the greatest output as increased effort is required.


Sources:
     Carson, Brian.  Bob Peoples Deadlift Training.  http://ezinearticles.com/?Bob-Peoples-Deadlift-Training&id=1522211
     Kasatov, Konstantin Dmitri.  Interview with Konstantin Konstantinovs.  http://www.lift-run-bang.com/2010/04/interview-with-konstantin-konstantinovs.html
     Ericksson KA, Krampe RT, Tesch-Roemer C.  The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. 1993:  100(3) 363-406.  http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf
     Frederick Winslow Taylor.  Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor
     How Dumb Are We?  The Daily Beast.  http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/03/20/how-dumb-are-we.html
     People, Bob.  "The Training Methods of Bob Peoples".  http://pressingtostrongman.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/bob-peoples-speaks/
     Tom Platz Leg Workout – The Man Who Became Famous For His Remarkable Leg Development.  SimplyShredded.com. http://www.simplyshredded.com/tom-platz-bodybuilding.html