NUDGING YOUR WAY TO LONG-TERM GAINS

NUDGING YOUR WAY TO LONG-TERM GAINS
By Shane Robert

The world of programming is full of variety. There are so, so, so many different ways to program and find success. Sure, some have a better track record than others and the longevity that some of these programs have indicates this (I’m looking at you 5x5…). Any program, as long as it adheres to the principle of some kind of overload, can work. The appeal of crazy programs is especially great. “What’s that? 52 sets taken to failure, you say? I’m in!” 

As much as I love to go to the gym and really get after it, to “bomb” and “blitz” in the parlance of the muscle magazines, this is often not only unnecessary but can be downright counterproductive. Crawling out from under the squat rack every set may feel like a good thing but is ultimately short-term thinking. The key is to worry less about what can be accomplished in some set amount of weeks and think long term; focus instead on what can be accomplished in 6 months, a year, 2 years, 10 years. Once you find a program that is challenging but wholly repeatable, all you need to do is slowly nudge the weight up. 

Perhaps things changed with the mainstream embrace of steroids and the rapid strength that they produce. I can’t say for sure the cause, but somewhere along the line, we lost sight of the idea of nudging. Old-time lifters understood and embraced this concept better than lifters from the steroid era (about 1970) to now. I have mentioned some of these kinds of programs in the past, my favorite probably being the simple double progression where a lifter slowly increases the total amount of reps, say 5-10, with a given weight before adding weight and starting back at 5 reps. This program will work basically forever, is wholly sustainable, and involves frequent gentle nudging—exactly what we need for long-term progress. Let’s talk about another one that I really like.

David Webster is a name that everyone interested in lifting should be aware of. Mr. Webster was a Scottish physical education teacher, writer of hundreds of articles and 40 or so books, sport promoter, weightlifter, and powerlifter. He helped create the sport of strongman and acted as the Scottish national weightlifting coach many times. In addition to all of this, he was probably best known as one of the foremost historians of all things strength. This isn’t meant to be a biography of the man, so I will stop there. I think you get the idea. 

My intent in introducing Webster is to give background on the person from whom I learned a great little training progression. A little background before we get to it—this was specifically for Olympic weightlifting. In the era that this was written (probably pre-1970), a “countdown” type of training day was very common for weightlifters, going all the way back to the York Barbell programs of the 30’s. Lifters in those days advocated frequent, heavy training, often lifting 90%+ weights in their 3 weekly workouts. Indeed, the infamous Bulgarian System drew inspiration from these stone age lifters, or so the story goes. Despite being designed for weightlifters, I have made a few changes from the original to make it applicable to any strength sport or lifter. 

This is such a great example of nudging. I love it so much it makes me giddy. It’s so subtle, in fact, that I have bolded the changes that take place on each line so that you don’t miss them. Utter simplicity, yet utterly effective. Frequent, but not max practice and solidifying mastery over weights.

Keep in mind that these percentages are based on a very achievable true max, what we would call a training max in modern parlance. This is NOT a super hyped-up competitive max or the max you think you can likely—probably, almost certainly—make because you just about managed 3 reps with a certain weight on a good day and only one of the reps was questionable. That nonsense has no place here. Pick real numbers. After these 11 weeks, you can go for a new max if the 102 felt easy, which it likely will. If you look down on 2-5% increases every 12 weeks, consider someone who currently has a 300-pound 1 rep training max. Over 4 cycles (essentially a year), due to compounding gains, they will end their training year with a 365-pound training max, which is likely closer to 380-400 for a true max. 

Not too shabby for a gentle nudge.