Ten Things I Would Have Done Differently (1-5)

I was really blessed to come into the training world the way I did. Fell in almost immediately with an experienced and knowledgeable set of competitive powerlifters. Although they may have been a bit wayward and I was certainly at an impressionable and tender age, I learned a lot of the smartest things you can do right of the bat. So I had little or no backtracking to break bad habits and wasted little or no time in not getting muscle and strength gains, because they taught me the immediately important things like heavy lifting, good form, progression, important exercises, etc. But as you learn more in the strength training world, you can look back and see things that you should have done that would have been even more helpful. Things that if I could create the perfect training scenario would have been included from day one instead of learned along the way.

Here are 10 things I would have started from day one and 10 things you ought to have in your workouts right now. If you don’t then fix it and get started.

1. Intense grip training. It is immeasurable how important this is in the real world. You can build all the strength in the world, but without a great grip you can’t apply it.

2. Intense conditioning focusing on intervals and both muscular and aerobic endurance. My heavy training would have been much more productive and I would have recovered much better had I focused on being in shape from day one.

3. Serious heavy abdominal work. The abdominals are like the grip. You can have all the strength in the other big muscles, but you won’t be able to use it unless your abdominals can stand the pressure. My lifts and appliable power would have been much stronger with abdominal work.

4. Joint strengthening exercises especially for the shoulders. Heavy partials, windmills, one-arm lifting would have gone a long way to keeping myself injury-free while playing football and other sports.

5. Making a habit of the above four points. I think when you begin training and learn a specific style, after a while it becomes difficult to really change or consistently change because you’ve built a habit. The earlier and more consistently you can work the above four points as a habit of your training, the greater your long-term ability and progress will be.


Tomorrow we’ll do five more.

Save yourself the time trouble and hassle and start these things right now if you don’t already do them. They’ll go a long way to keeping you functioning at a high level and turning your performance up.