Ground Up Strength

Keep It Simple Stupid: Simplicity Gone Wrong

Imagine you go up to a fruit vendor and notice he only has apples for sale. You bring up the lack of variety and he says, "I believe in the KISS principle: keep it simple stupid."

Sounds ridiculous and unlikely, I know! But KISS has become nothing more than a ready answer for 'experts' who only have apples to offer you. Ask for an orange and they are at a loss. They've given you all they've got and you will likely get berated for 'overthinking' it.

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BASIC Progression and Bulgarian Split Squats

I am always bringing up, obsessively you might say, how there are many different ways to progress in strength training. And, in fact, how many different things we do and achieve represent progression that we don't even recognize.

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Strength Consolidation: An Example

All strength athletes, at certain times, must consolidate their gains and they will do this instinctually by adding reps to their present limit. As a matter of fact this is an "old-school" way of training and it is still prevalent. There is not a NEW way that is better by virtue of science or Russian periodization. The ways that work haven't changed…our attitudes and expectations have.¹

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Strength Training with Single, Double and Triple Progression

The only other person, besides myself, that I've known to speak in-depth about single, double, and triple progression is Anthony Ditillo. However, to be frank, most of what he said about it makes no sense to me and he seems to have been applying the terms to established styles of training as an alternative to what others had named their training methods, such as "the pyramid system".

When Ditillo spoke of single and double progression he seems to have meant simply allowing yourself to use more than one way to progress. Or in other words to manipulate more than one parameter. This should be common sense.

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Can't Do One Pullup? Stay Positive

Countless articles have been written about pullups. MOST of those articles are assuming one has the ability to do at least a couple of pullups already. For those that can't even do one, which are MANY, well, that room is so silent you can hear a pin drop.

And when someone does speak up…it's questionable at best.

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Strength: Simple But Difficult?

QUALIFIED.

That is a very important word. A reason I avoid using terse, oversimplified statements, which I refer to as aphorisms, is because for them to be useful they usually need to be qualified. That is, a set of conditions and explanation have to be put in place so that they fit a general audience. So that they are not taken too far.

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Misconceptions Abound: Strength, Fatloss, Skills, and Progression

This page is a blog page. That means that I am not going to provide a bunch of scholarly references at the end. I am not going to do a week of research to prepare. I might have done a little cross checking but these pages are meant to be informal reactions, opinions..me drawing on my experience, etc. And HOPEFULLY, to stimulate discussion of ANY kind.

That is my idea for this particular blog. Many others use blogs with many different models.

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Importance Of Progression

In my opinion, Progression is the key to strength training. There is no point in hammering away at an exercise without progressing on it. But this is not new knowledge. This is simply an observation – an observation made by many strength specialists and this has recently gained a lot of momentum with online mention. But, I want to highlight how each exercise you have adopted into your training should be treated – or can be treated, differently in terms of progression.

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