Training Myths

You would think we lived in an age of strength enlightenment especially with the prevalence of the internet there’s probably 1,000 times more information available today on every type of physical training than there has ever been. That however has not brought us to a higher plane of training existence. In fact in some ways it has served to propagate myths and keep them alive longer than they should have been. So I thought we would start with a common training myth and over the course of a few newsletters work through a few more so we can do our part to help keep the water clear so-to-speak.

Here’s one that annoys me. The Athletic Stance Squat. It’s long and loudly talked about in the training world… “If you’ll just hold the position this way and squat this particular way your quads will suddenly burst the seams of your pants, you’ll turn green, you’ll be at least a foot taller, your IQ will jump at least 20 points and you’ll be exempt from income tax.”

All hogwash. When you squat all the muscles of your legs activate. The harder and heavier you squat the more development you’ll get and the more you’ll learn to activate all the muscles of the legs and whole body together. Individual builds will require slight differences in their stance and will demonstrate themselves in the way the squat looks. Some people will lean more, some will be more upright, some will use a wider or closer stance, heeled or flat shoes. Some people will be able to deeper than others because of the build of their thigh to torso ratio and the stance they choose to use. There is no magic stance. Squatting one way or the other will not make you more athletic regardless of how many times you’ve heard that said, it doesn’t make it anymore true. The best stance for you to squat in is the one that causes you the least discomfort and allows you to lift the most weight. For most people this will be a bit wider than shoulder width. So are most athletic movements.

There are only a few absolute truisms of the squat. Don’t purposely shove your knees forward. Keep your chest up. Go at least to parallel. Find the stance that gives you the greatest leverage and spreads the load to as many muscles as possible. Lift heavier and the muscles will grow. Get stronger and watch as you get magically more athletic from the hard work and progression. You want bigger quads? Squat more and you’ll get ‘em along with bigger more powerful hamstrings, hip, back, abs, arms, shoulders, lungs, heart and probably even earlobes. No one who has put in the effort and force the progression to a respectable weight has failed to get huge muscular gains. This is a long term process. You can add muscle and strength quickly, but you don’t add 100 pounds in six weeks. You can over the course of a few years become nearly mythological to the average fitness buff simply by forcing continual progression on a handful of exercises. No one will see the years of effort when they see you in the gym, they’ll think you just magically appeared one day, sent down from Olympus, Valhalla, or Cleveland… whichever fits your personal taste.

They’ll miss the simplicity of why you’ve become a superman, but you’ll know. Maybe even one day you’ll find a budding superman in training who actually has the ability to listen, learn and apply the secret of strength and you can pass it on. You can tell them stories like, “This one time… at Squat camp…” He won’t get it at first, but after a couple of years, he’ll know.

Sticking with squats and putting in the effort is the secret to them. There’s no magic stance that will suddenly make you into Hercules and conversely there’s no stance that will doom you into weakness and being crippled. Recklessness and the way you treat yourself with the exercise may do that. Over the course of your career you’ll experiment and probably should experiment with different styles and stances of squat, but you better have one that’s your old faithful, always come back to, measuring stick of progress. Switching around every 10 minutes because someone says so, without a consistent form that you practice all of the time is a sure way to spin your wheels.

I have a friend who says, “You see that groove at the bottom of your traps and the rear of your delts? God put that groove there to hold a squat bar.” When you’ve become intimate with doing squats for a long period of time and you know exactly how and where that bar should sit and feel you’ll understand the multiple levels of that statement.

Until then… find your groove, find your stance and position, be sure to keep the wandering fitness bunnies off your squat rack, for Heaven’s sake if you see someone do curls out of it disembowel him immediately and keep getting bigger and stronger.

By the way if you want to learn more about squats… we just happen to have a squat book and DVD set. If you want to really figure out how to get super-human strong and control your muscular destiny, this is one of the books you need to have. Check it out here at: http://strongerman.com/how900.html