Is that who it is? Bret?
Not a fan.
Comparing squatting to walking is particularly "interesting".
"Squatting is not very difficult in terms of CNS stress and the body gets used to it very quickly, just like walking."
What the hell statistical or clinical data is that statement derived from? Rhetorical statement. The answer would be none. None statistical or clinical data.
Unless you walk each day with a heavier and heavier yoke on your shoulders, there is no comparison! Patently ridiculous statement.
Given some of the statements quoted above, to be honest, I'd feel silly debating this.
However, what I would warn against is deriving anything from hearsay. I've never seen the point of writing articles trying to summarize some body else's training philosophy. If that person were able to communicate his philosophy in a way that could be used by everyone, why hasn't he done it? And if he has done it; read that instead of an article about it. Or, read the original first and then the article.
What's ironic is that many of the statements that are attributed to the guy, at their heart, they contain a gleam of insight. With qualification, I'd agree with them. But when you wash them out into general absolute statements like "there is no such thing as overtraining" or "ignore how you feel", with no adequate qualification, I do not agree with them. Absolute statements of this type are never correct! They are, by their very nature, invalid because the premises used to derive them would not lead everyone to the same absolute conclusion. Even when using inductive reasoning, the conclusion must be very likely to be true, given the premises, not just maybe true or sorta kinda true.
Lets use the example of how you feel, say at the beginning of a session, not being the absolute arbiter or how you might be able to perform during that session. I absolutely agree with this and I (and Joe) have spoken about this in the forum on many occasions. In fact, when doing near maximal work, we encourage people to take their time a revisit weights as needed, and slowly work through it, so as to acclimate to things. Many, many times, you can start out very badly, and with patience you can end up having a great session. On the other hand you can start out feeling very strong and things can go down hill.
But should this lead me to the conclusion that the way you feel never has anything to do with it? Absolutely not. How you "feel" is a subjective thing. It changes by the moment, to some extent. How you feel can reflect your preparedness or you readiness and not necessarily both. But if you feel like complete shit for 4 days it'd be pretty damned stupid to ignore this and conclude that your body is "lying to you". Yet, "John" would conclude this whereas I would conclude that there is a difference between preparedness and readiness and how you feel is a mixture of those things and all the elements that go into them, including psychological ones. If you dumb it down to absolute statements, you're just being dumb. It's possible that how you feel does not reflect how well you will do in a workout but my observations do not back up the conclusion that how you feel is NEVER an indication of how the workout will go, only that it is not an absolutely reliable one.
Just like in the past with others that have made statements similar to these, I find that they are able to see a glimmer of things through their observations but lack the knowledge to synthesize these observations into a usable model. This is one of those things where its all experience and no "know how". If you look at some of the ideas, you'll see that they loosely coincide with some of my own wider philosophies with the only difference being that I do not ever try to derive absolute "laws"..which is always be big problem in strength training: the LAWS.
Look at the idea of training under fatigue. Same thing that is a part of my model. But compare that with this idea from the article: "Although there may be extended times where strength stagnates or even decreases, the general goal is to slowly increase your daily maxes every few months."
Now, at the end of the day, there is no difference between simply increasing your absolute max every few months and increasing your "daily maxes" if you assume that increasing your absolute max corresponds to an increase in your ability to consistently hit weights within a certain percentage of that. So it's the goals that are turned around. A sensible goal for pure strength is to increase your max max. A WAY to do that consistently is to increase your ability within a certain weight range. Notice again, the similarity with what I teach but the fact that how it is looked at spelling out different ways of attacking it.
The idea that you can max out on squats every day but should only max out on deadlifts 2 or 3 times a year is evidence of how much of this is based on personal prioirities and values.
