AGAINST NOTHING

If I had a superpower, it would be spite. I have naturally heightened motivation during states of resistance. I'm not proud of this. I don't think this is the best way to develop an attribute or idea. It is just one of those things that I notice about myself that sometimes makes me cringe — even if it's a quality that has helped me thus far. Only being able to do something by activating the contrarian in me is — how the kids might say — "low frequency." I find this habit of needing opposition bites me when the spite runs dry, especially when venturing into unknown territory of my capability. But this is how I’ve been trained. I have learned to wait until something is heavy and in need of resistance to push, and then to go until I hurt it, or myself in the process. There has to be a better way, even if I have to use spite to rid myself of my spite.

Perhaps the best way to explain what I mean is to show my opposition.

I don't have anything against powerlifting, except the sport, the culture, and how preparing for it has influenced and warped what it means to be strong. So in a sense, fuck powerlifting. And because of its imprint, fuck strength training too. To hell with all of those fat fucks and their indelible war of attrition with an inanimate object.

A few ogres have altered the concept of human strength and development to be something useless and unrecognizable to nature. How can we look at these contrived "feats of strength" and think they have anything to do with real-world strength development? How accurate can our perception of strength be when who we deem the "strongest" in the world are intimidated by a flight of stairs? There is a relevant unrealism in prescribing powerlifting to the general population, and with it comes risk. How many will load an arbitrary amount of weight onto an unconditioned body and an immature mind and squat or deadlift their structure into oblivion? How many will try to get "strong” only to find themselves unable to perform the most basic human movements without pain? All because some high school S&C coaches told some kids that they wouldn't get respect until they could squat X amount of weight.

I can already feel people seething because they are devoted to the dogma of barbell training. What I am saying is not new, nor will it go away anytime soon. I remember the Mike Boyle fiasco, in which one of the most successful S&C coaches for professional team sports said he didn't prefer the back squat as a movement. That instead, he used single-leg exercises to minimize risk. The Internet Coaching Collective (ICC) lost its inherent sheep-mind like Boyle had spit a hooker's menstrual blood into the face of the pope.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't participate in a specific movement or use objects related to various sports. If you are injury-free, winning all of your competitions, and seem to find limitless progress through traditional means, then carry on. If powerlifting is your thing and you've made it this far, know that I am not encouraging you to stop. Instead, I am addressing the concept behind developing these movements, the very premise for which strength is developed, and aiming a very skeptical look at the movements themselves. If what I'm arguing is correct, it will only help someone dedicated towards strength development, should they still want to wrap themselves in neoprene and canvas and compress the soles of their Chuck Taylors.

I do not believe that powerlifting as a sport is the correct means of developing strength to support performance and longevity in the general population. We cannot ignore the importance and expression of strength as a useful guide to living a long, fulfilling life. It is worth noticing that the most popular metric (“how much do you squat?”) is contrived from a subset of people that will be crippled by the time they retire from their sport. In many aspects, powerlifting is to health and longevity as bloodletting is to medical intervention.

Using the weight of a barbell as the measuring stick for an attribute depends on the assumption that the qualities of a specific movement have general transferability to other endeavors, which I do not believe is true. It’s almost as if — without evidence — we have deified the movements themselves. "The back squat is the king of exercises." If by "king" you mean a maniacal, over-controlling tradition from an age when we didn't know how to think for ourselves, then yes, I agree with you. Why a squat? What aspect of the movement mimics, or transfers to sprinting, efficient running, or jumping—as victory is often contingent on these qualities in most sports? If one can be a world-class athlete in many sports while having no meaningful ability to back squat a heavy weight, why are we so convinced of its transferability?

There may be a few applications where using a loaded back squat to train is the best practice. I believe these to be both obvious and rare. But when spoken about generally, the reasons not to use it are plentiful. Bilateral movement has less transferability to unilateral sports than — shocker — unilateral movement. We do not locomote bilaterally in any sport worth watching (potato sack racing?) yet, success in most sports results from the speed and efficiency of locomotion. Being the fastest from point A to point B, for all time, multiple times, or over a long time is a quintessential requirement of most sports and completely ignored by the pursuit of lifting a singularly heavy weight from an arbitrary position.

Using artificial means (a gym) to prepare an athlete for real environments reduces risk and increases output. We counteract this effect by adding risk where it doesn’t need to be. Depending on your limb ratio, mobility, (and coach), the pressure of a loaded back squat often creates “tracks” in movement patterns that share similar fulcrums to hinging movements. When stress is not diversified, it compounds the risk. Aside from the barbell position, the "track" for the back squat and the deadlift among the inexperienced is essentially the same: a hinge. This is because the low back and core must be "overly-contracted" to support the load, which suggests the heavy back squat is rarely limited by actual leg strength but by structural deficiencies higher in the chain.

I am not opposed to the squatting movement. Still, I argue that back squatting with a barbell is the most dangerous and least transferable of the varieties of readily available squats. It requires the greatest load (risk) to stimulate the contraction correlated with strength expression (reward). Besides, the fulcrum (breaking point) is different for everyone so universal application remains infeasible. It is difficult to predict what is weak and limited and what intervention may transfer to real-world performance.

Aside from being unconvinced about the efficacy of powerlifting movements, I must address the subject of strength transference through contraction rate. Successful bipedal locomotion does not depend solely on the contraction rate of the stabilizing muscles of the spine (which is often the limiting factor of maximal lifts). Athletic performance in almost any context depends on dynamic force output in the feet, calves, thighs, hips, and coordination between them, what some call “triple extension.” If traditional barbell squatting and deadlifting greatly improved the force output of sprinters wouldn't we see a correlation between the world's best sprinters and the world's best back squatters or deadlifters? The highest correlation we have to transferability of powerlifting and traditional barbell strength is in Olympic style weightlifting (obviously) and throwing, and even then, throwers usually participate in Olympic lifting as a training means.

I bring up this point on contraction rate because most well-educated coaches will understand the importance of contraction potential correlation. For the layman: if my body experiences new levels of neurologically-based contraction percentages, then it is more likely that my body will be able to express those contraction rates during the actual sport. This is — to a large degree — the entire premise of Strength and Conditioning as an industry. It is to use artificial, controlled methods to elicit transferable performance characteristics and to create so-called metrics to demonstrate effectiveness. Transferable should be the bolded and underlined word here, and I think, for the most part, its importance is lost on an industry that loves to use its metrics — rather than actual sport performance — as a way to validate its means and so forth ad infinitum.

So what?

Earlier, I mentioned that I would show you my opposition so here it is. The point has nothing to do with squatting, powerlifting, or anyone training in a hoodie adorned by the logo of their favorite obscure Norwegian black metal band. Whether it is to an idea or a weight, resistance is not "creative energy" but merely criticism. My real goal is not to resist more but to concentrate a higher percentage of my ability so that I can produce, and that is power.

It is difficult for people to conceptualize force without resistance. Like our Strength Manual asserts: "We need something to push against until we can push ourselves." When the goal is to move maximal weight and maximal weight is the final, performance metric, the transferability is clear. But when a facsimile to performance or a reductionist's isolation of what they perceive to be the problem is set, it is far removed from the performance itself; the barbell becomes an abstraction of an idea, it becomes the limitation. We — I — used a barbell to teach strength because I was, and, still am bad at teaching someone how to coordinate a maximal contraction and expression of strength without something to push against. I’m getting better at it, but not good enough to do and write about it without the assistance of spite and hostility of another's practice. And this is the real resistance training, to know that you have everything inside of you, ready to produce whatever force you can imagine, but still need a way to focus it.

If I was the teacher I wished I could be, I could explain that I believe in the ability to transfer an idea to another without the resistance or need for abstraction. Unfortunately, I'm not. My intent isn't to convince people to avoid powerlifting or barbell training or even to shun specific movements. But instead, I invite you to consider the need for some form of resistance to trigger a decision or response regardless of the subject. Most traditional strength and conditioning training methods rely on a prescriptive list of to-dos and the promise of predictable results. These methods overly simplify training advice to reduce a user's ability to (mis)interpret the prescription. This "idiot-proofing" changes a theory into dogma, and advice into authority, thus removing authentic teaching,

i.e. the guiding of attention towards the necessary details, from the process and relationship entirely. Genuine learning is not about replication but about understanding reliable truths, transferable assets, and universal principles.

So here is my best attempt: strength is derived from the ability to contract and control your body maximally. Learning first to do this internally, without resistance or load, will make the external projection of your strength an original, creative power that is not contingent on the presence of external resistance.

This method requires attention, which will make it less successful among a population that wouldn’t even start reading this article unless the page loaded in less than six seconds. It demands that the practice starts with self-awareness and a desire to apply intentional force towards a task. A heavy barbell requires attention, but the attention is directed at the wrong object. The object to control is not the bar but the brain and the brain's control over the body. The traditional barbell path teaches us to resist and contract when the weight feels "heavy," which is why most will get hurt lifting weights that are not relatively heavy; because attention is not compelled by the load. The fundamental skill involved in the expression of strength is to intentionally and maximally contract in accurate relation to the performance. To do this, you must understand what "performance" means regarding the task at hand, what form your body must take to execute it, and the contraction necessary to hold these concepts together.

I am still contrarian, fueled by spite and the knee-jerk reaction of dissent. Barbell training taught me how to resist pressure and force, even to the point of self-destruction. It reinforced my natural inclination. I don't think this was a waste of time, but I believe there is a better way to learn. I'm in my infancy of understanding a different way, a way that is rooted in creative energy and internal self-awareness. Strength is harnessed from inside and expressed externally. The most significant transferability will be training that mimics natural expression and has the most relevant psychological crossover. This is a concept that makes a coach of the practitioner, it makes the movement the expression of the will, and it is true whether you choose spite or not.