Workout Philosophies

 

          I was watching a documentary one time about the Revolutionary War where George Washington brought over a Hungarian general to train the troops. The general noted that European soldiers were told to do something and they did it. American soldiers wanted to know why they had to do something and then once explained, they performed their tasks amazingly.  I want you to understand my philosophies so you can understand how things are built and how you can modify this program to better fit your schedule and your abilities.

 

Zero Wheel Reinvention  

          I am not on here promising to present you with brand new concepts when it comes to working out. This is not some incredible breakthrough that is going to revolutionize the fitness world. What I have done for my program is filter through multiple articles, medical facts, theories, and custom designed a program through massive amounts of trial and error that works for me. As you can see in the header, I am not claiming to reinvent the wheel here.

          Most of what I am going to tell you is going to look very simple and obvious in retrospect once you get in and start lifting. But remember, everyone is starting from somewhere and my goal is to reach out to that guy who knows what the bench press is but doesn’t know the next step to elevate his game.

          Eventually, you are going to get to a point where it makes completely logical sense to perform kneeling lateral pulldowns rotating your grip from pronated to neutral after you perform a seated overhead dumbbell press… but for those that are just getting started, you might have no idea what I am talking about.

          Perfect. You, my good sir, are my target audience. And I promise after you spend some time with me, you are going to start understanding all of it. But we are going to have to take baby steps to get started. Everyone starts somewhere. I could make an obligatory Drake comment about “starting from the bottom” but I am too classy and sophisticated for all that. Now we are here. So let’s get you educated and get you started on this road.

 

“Ryan, How Much Should I Lift?”

          This is the age old question and it is one of those things that inspired this blog because when I first got started, I didn’t really know until I started researching. So in order to answer it, we first have to describe what your goal is and there are three possible answers to this question.

          Scenario 1) I want to get strong. If that is the case, then you need to be doing reps between 3 and 5 with significant rest time between sets. (This is the exercise routine I mentioned I was doing in high school.) You are pushing yourself to the max with every lift and lifting a weight that is close to your One Rep Max. When you see powerlifters and football players train, they are less concerned with aesthetics and more concerned with brute strength. Thus, higher weight, lower reps, and longer rest times. Longer rests let you dump lactic acid out of your muscles so you are less fatigued and can lift more in your next set.

          Scenario 2) I want to get toned but I don’t want to be bulky. In that case, I would say look at basketball players. Their body fat is miniscule at that comes from lots and lots of cardio. Think of how many times they run up and down the court. And then you combine this with weight work. This is not my regular approach but it does work. In that case, you need to be doing reps of 15 to 20 with enough weight to keep tension on your muscles. It should be difficult but your goal is aiming for a rep range of 15 to 20.

          Scenario 3) I want to be big and strong. Ah, the best of both worlds. This is my goal too. So welcome to Hypertrophy (pronounced high-per-truh-fee). Your goal with hypertrophy is to average between 8 to 10 reps per set with an average of 20 to 36 reps over the course of all your sets. I typically do 3 sets of each exercise. Rather than increasing or decreasing the weight, I always try to keep my weight consistent throughout all sets. My goal is to get 8 but I try to push to 10. If I cannot get 10, I don’t consider it a failure but if I can get 12 reps, it is time to increase the weight up to the next level by the smallest increment possible (typically 5 pounds).

          For Example: If I am going Hammer Curls with 35-pound dumbbells, my minimum goal is 8. I have to achieve that as a minimum but I am going to go for 10. It is important that I get those first 8 reps with perfect, surgical form. If my form is slipping, I am doing myself a disservice and I need to cut back on the weight. Once I have achieved my 8 reps using perfect form, if there is still fuel in the tank, my goal is to get 10. I may have to cheat a little bit to get there but it should be extremely hard for me to get 10 reps. I like 10 because it is a nice, round number. However, if I can achieve 12 reps, well, then it is time to advance up to 40-pound dumbbells. Then my goal shifts back to 8 reps with good clean form.

          I know it sounds strange but there is this strange mathematical/physiological clockwork that comes with this formula. Going back to the hammer curls, if I can perform 12 reps with a certain weight (let’s say 35 lbs.) and I increase the weight by five pounds (the next size up with dumbbells), it seems like the most I can achieve is 8 reps. Then I start working on that 10 rep goal. Now, that may take weeks but once that is achieved and I can achieve 12 reps across all three sets, it will be time to go up 5 more pounds. 

          This process gets repeated over and over again as you continue to build experience and form. It is important to make the distinction. Do you want to be a powerlifter or a bodybuilder? If you are like me and want to be a bodybuilder, you are not grunting and straining with all your might to lift the weight. The muscles should be under tension and it should be difficult but you should not be holding your breath to complete every rep. This is where we are talking about precision reps.

          You have to embrace the concept of being a bodybuilder and while this is going to sound a little counter intuitive, it actually means lifting less weight. More accurately, it involves lifting less weight but you are lifting it more times and that is where you start to see those aesthetic results.

          By performing this way with less weight, your muscles are contracting and are under tension for a longer amount of time (which means more calories burned) and it also means that you are not straining and struggling with every lift. This significantly lessens the chance of injury provided you maintain focus and form. You want it to be heavy. You want it to hurt. But you don’t want to be straining and having to hold your breath to lift every time. By having more body control, you can lift the weight at a slower rate, which keeps the muscles under tension longer.

          As of this writing, I typically do 3 sets of 10, which is on the higher end of the 20 to 36 rep scale. Schwarzenegger says that if you really want to stimulate the muscles, you need complete 4 sets of an exercise and when he was trying to get in competition shape he was doing 5 sets per exercise. My hope is to increase my sets to four as I get deeper into Year 2 of training.

          My goal when lifting is to not allow my heart rate to drop too low so I am burning calories at almost an aerobic rate. This is why I have developed my exercises in circuit rotations. After I have completed the A & B circuit, I then rest for as little time as possible before I repeat the pair of exercises. (As a beginner, try to make your rest times between circuits less than one minute.)

          On average, in an hour gym session, I can achieve a burn of 800 calories. I know some people just do this by doing cardio on a treadmill or a Stairmaster. But I want to get something out of that energy burn and the difference between a straight cardio workout and my workout is pretty significant (in my humble opinion).  Straight cardio is just walking. I get to flex my muscles after my workout and see real change.
 

8 Reps Will Change Your Life

          Give me eight reps to the maximum of your ability. That is all I ask.

          If you are a C student and you get Cs that is absolutely fine. Play up to the maxim of your ability. If you are a B student and you get B’s that is fine too. But if you are an A student and you get C’s, that is just sheer laziness on your part and you are cheating the world of your gifts.

          As you move forward on this journey, I want you to throw out the numbers. (By all means, track but don’t obsess over your numbers.) I don’t want you to worry about how much weight you’re doing. All I ask is that you get 8 reps. Give me eight clean reps with precision lifts. Do not worry about what the guy next to you is doing because there is only one person you have to be better than and that is the person you were yesterday.

          I want you to imagine a guy who picks up 30 lb. dumbbells and hammer curls to eight reps. He has performed with slow, steady lifts, using great form and has pushed his muscles to failure. He physically cannot do a ninth rep.

          Now imagine a guy who lackadaisically saunters up to the dumbbell rack, curls 50-pound dumbbells ten times and puts the weight back. But he could have ripped out five more reps.

          Who is working harder? To me, that first guy is giving it everything he has and he is playing up to the maximum of his ability. The second guy is just a meathead who is cheating himself or is just trying to show off to everyone else in the gym.

          The only person you have to be better than is the person you were yesterday. Your success is dependent solely upon you because no one can do the work for you. All I ask is that you play up to the maximum of your potential. That is the heart of a champion.  That is Furyan Strength.

Burn Protocols & The Law of Diminishing Returns

           

          There is an effect called The Law of Diminishing Returns which basically means you can make leaps and bounds in weight initially but the more you do it, the less rapid you will see yourself increase. Simply put, it is very easy to elevate from 15-pound dumbbells to 35-pound dumbbells but once you get to 45-pound dumbbells, getting to 50-pound dumbbells is much more difficult. It will seem like it will take as much work to increase those 5 pounds as it did to elevate your game from 15 to 35.

          Because of this adaptability, you have to keep finding new and different things to work into the rotation. Your body is highly adaptive and you need to change things up on a regular basis to shock your muscles and keep them guessing. Sometimes this involves changing your exercises or shifting your weight either up and down.

          Let’s say you stick with my hypertrophy goals for four weeks. Then for Week 5 (before resetting your workout), you switch up to a Heavy Week where you increase the weight and decrease your reps. This is more about building raw strength which can carry over to your next week.

          The other option is to go the other way and I recently experimented with what I called my “Burn Protocols.” Rather than a goal of 10 reps, my goal is to perform 20. This involves dropping the weight but it doesn’t involve cutting the weight in half. If I was working with 50 lb. dumbbells before, I would cut the weight down to 35 lb. dumbbells. My theory is that while this is not stimulation for great size or strength improvement, the muscles are under tension longer and that means more calories burned.

          When I would first start lifting, it seemed too easy. But then I got to around Rep 12, this is where my body would start screaming. “Hey, he usually does 10. He never goes beyond 12! What is he doing?”

          This is where you have to mentally power through. And then when you get to about Rep 18, things are on fire. Now, if you are doing dumbbell work (say with an overhead press) and you are alternating your lifts, you are technically getting 40 reps on the secondary muscles like your core and in your back because you are doing 20 reps on each arm. Again, you are burning more calories because you are not just lifting with your shoulders. You are engaging your core, your chest, and your back for longer times.

          An additional benefit of this is that people are less likely to sustain injury lifting lighter weight for more reps. However if you want to get stronger you cannot wuss out on the weight. This is why I would not recommend the Burn Protocols for much longer than two weeks at the most. What I found in these Burn Protocol weeks is that when it was time to get back to heavy lifting and my hypertrophy rotations, my rep totals actually slid backward.

The Furyan Secret: Now, It’s All Up To You…

           When you breakdown Furyan Strength to the basic core principles, it is remarkably simplistic yet it took extensive research to develop the strategy. Granted, I stood on the shoulders of geniuses to develop this program and now I am going to encourage you to do the same.

           As I have established already, I have my workout splits that revolve around training the entire body over the course of four days. After one year of training, my workouts average an hour and a half. I like to warm up with about five minutes of cardio and stretching before we get to work. My theories are centered on antagonistic sets which offset pushing exercises with pulling ones. The minimum rep count should be 8, strive for 10, and if you can get 12 reps, increase your weight by five pounds. Fuel your body with clean protein, avoid sugar and unnecessary carbohydrates. Fill in your nutritional gaps with a few supplements. Use the right gear. And finally, take baby steps and then inch towards your goal. 

           That is it. That’s Furyan Strength in a nutshell. Now it is time to make your workout your own. Your calendar is not going to synch up with mine. You may have medical problems that make certain exercises difficult to perform. And all of this is no problem. So I encourage you to tweak and rework these exercises to best fit you, as long as you stay true to the philosophy behind it.

           Maybe you like the Landmine Squats better than Barbell Front Squats. Perhaps you cannot do Hanging Leg Raises yet. That is fine. Don’t carbon copy everything I am telling you here. Make it your own. And most importantly, HAVE FUN!