This temporary paradigm shift got me to thinking that it’d be a good idea to bring in the LHM creators, Mike Westerdal and Elliott Hulse, in for an interview to talk about whether this kind of cross-training is necessary in a strength and conditioning program.  Here goes…

EC: Whenever you see people who are successful across multiple disciplines, you look for commonalities in the way that they prepare themselves.  Mike, you’ve done well for yourself in powerlifting, and Elliott, you’re an accomplished strongman competitor.  What do you believe to be the most important factors governing one’s success in strength sports?  I figured that before we talk about what might need to be changed from time-to-time, we ought to talk about what should always stay the same.

EH: In my experience there are only a handful of tired and true principles that govern success and achievement in all areas of life.  Whether you are a strength athlete or a stay-at-home-mom, the same principles apply.  Like Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “methods are many, but principles are few.” So, instead of spouting off some of my training methods here, I will share three foundation principles that I tend to value and refer to most when taking aim towards any particular goal – strength or otherwise.

The first is CLARITY.  It is paramount that we know exactly what effect we would like our actions to produce.  You cannot hit a target that you can’t see.

The next is COMMITMENT.  Most people have a vague and fuzzy idea of what they want, but even worse is that most think of these things as “nice-to-haves,” as opposed to “I-WILL-haves.”  The difference between someone who is “trying” to win because it would be nice and the person who DOES win is commitment.  Winners commit 100% to reaching their goal.  They never have a backdoor to escape and never take “no” for an answer.

The third principle governing one’s success is DISCIPLINE!  I once heard that discipline is, “doing what you have to do, whether you feel like it or not.”  I like to think of myself as a robot.  Once I set my mind on a particular target, I must then put fickle emotion aside and continue to do everyday what I set out to do from the get-go…whether I “feel like it or not.”

MW:  Elliott is a tough act to follow when it comes to success.  A lot of people – myself included – like listening to him not only because of his strength and conditioning knowledge but also because of his general leadership when it comes to personal development in other areas of life as well.

Eric, this a great question.  I’ve actually had the privilege of interviewing hundreds of different athletes for a book I published at Critical Bench.  It included in MMA fighter, powerliftes, strongman competitors, bodybuilders, pro athletes and industry experts.  I’ve thought a lot about this and really tried to figure out the common denominators when it comes to excelling in sports.

It almost never has to do with an exact training method or style.  Guys get huge with heavy lifting and guys get huge with volume training.  Powerlifters have attained world class status having trained with  Westside as with Sheiko training.  What it really comes down to is a few other factors that I’ll list below:

-You have to surround yourself with other successful people: people that are already in a place where you want to go.  If you hang around with a bunch of lazy deadbeats you’re going to get dragged down with them.  Instead, find people that are the best at what they do and try to make them a part of your life.

-To take this a step further you have to visualize yourself or imagine yourself becoming what you want before it’s ever happened.  If you don’t already think you can bench press 600 pounds there’s no way that will ever manifest itself in real life until you brain can accept it as reality.

Now you may think this is hocus pocus talk, but when they asked Joe Montana what it felt like to win the Super Bowl.  He said it felt like the other 300 times I won it.  The reporter said, “300 times?”  “That’s right” Montana replied, “I’ve been winning the Super Bowl in my backyard since I was 12-years old.”

-The next thing I see from a lot of successful strength athletes is sacrifice.  Many things in life are possible, but you have to decide if what it takes to reach that goal is worth the sacrifice.  The energy you exert on a certain sport may affect your energy levels for other areas of your life.  During a heavy powerlifting cycle, I’m toast even when I’m not training.  I find myself resting a lot more.  So you have to ask yourself.  What exactly do you want and are you willing to do what it takes to achieve the goal?  So guys who get to the very top level often sacrifice things like certain social events, for example.

-My cousin is a successful business owner and recently gave me a valuable lesson that I believe can be applied not only to business, but also to strength sports.  He told me to just keep showing up.  It sounds pretty simple but most people don’t have the consistency to just keep showing up and stick with something until the end.  Lots of small steps over a long period of time add up. Unfortunately, it’s very rare that you’ll find a secret shortcut or magic bullet.  Just keep showing up and over time you’ll get better.

-My last point is similar to my first point.  I mentioned surrounding yourself with successful people.  You also need to eliminate negativity from your life and your training.  If people are complaining about bad luck, aches, pains, circumstances and a host of other problems, you can’t let that stuff get into your head.  I swear these things happen to these people because that’s what they think about and talk about all the time.  Why not spend your time with people who are focused on where they are going and what they want?

EC:  Great points – and definitely a lot of stuff that I’ve seen in my successful clients and training partners, too. Back to the subject at-hand, though: “cross-training” within a strength training program.  How often do you guys intentionally deviate from your “normal” programming – whether it’s to shake things up for specific physiological reasons or just to get a little mental break?

MW:  As a competitive powerlifter I trained the same way for several years straight.  This is not the fault of the sport, but I was doing the same kind of training for too long.  I believe that the lack of conditioning and doing the same strength exercises for too long eventually led to me gaining some unnecessary weight and even contributed to a lower back and shoulder injury.

Now, I love powerlifting and if your only goal is one-rep max strength, it’s the way to go. I wanted to drop a weight class, heal up some injuries, and get some of my athleticism back, though, so it felt good to try a more hybrid program.  If you compete in any specific sport you need to train for that sport.  However, at this stage of my life I have multiple goals and feel that training for them at the same time is working since I’m not trying to be the absolute best at any skill set.  I do want to compete again and when I do I’ll have to cut back on the conditioning and hypertrophy work and focus more on nervous system training again.  For now, though, I’m really enjoying the feeling of being more well rounded and athletic.

EH: As a professional strongman I had followed a pretty similar program of power-building mixed with strongman implements for about 3 years straight, never “mixing it up.”  This not only led to weaknesses in some areas of overall health and performance, but also created the muscular imbalances that caused me to tear my biceps tendon last spring.

Now, I am committed to working towards multiple performance goals within 12-24 month periods so as to avoid the lopsidedness that caused my injury.  For example, I have gone from competing as a pro strongman to running a 10 mile “psycho race” called the Tough Mudder this spring.  Next, I am going to qualify for the Crossfit games before building my lifts back up to compete in a raw power lifting meet in the winter.

This may sound crazy to most people, but I’m going to give it a try. It doesn’t mean that my new approach is the right one for everyone, but I’d like to see if it is possible to excel in multiple fitness qualities at once.  And I do recognize balance as a foundational principle as well.

EC: How long do these “cross-training” periods typically last?

EH: If you mean “periods” as in using hybrid training for only a portion of time during the year, then I would say “forever” – unless you are a professional athlete or bodybuilder who needs to excel in one fitness quality over another in order to compete in your sport.

If building a leaner, more functional and athletic physique is your goal, then I invite you to use this type of training all the time.  The beauty of hybrid training is that you can adjust your parameters in order to emphasize one quality over another. For example, if building muscle mass is your goal, then you would continue to use more strength and hypertrophy work over conditioning – but without totally ignoring the latter.

MW: That would depend on who you’re asking.  If you compete in a sport with a specific skill set like powerlifting this would be more an off-season conditioning program to do for a couple months.  I see a lot of powerlifters train 12 weeks for a meet followed by two weeks completely off.  Of course, there are deload weeks in the meet cycle as well.  I’ve seen guys throw together three of these 12-week cycles back-to-back.  After that, they usually know they need a break or their body forces them to slow down.  Adding in some cross training workouts or hybrid training could be beneficial at this time for a couple months.

Now if you don’t compete in a specialized sport I truly believe you can train “Hybrid Style” all year long.  You’ll feel good, look good and have great conditioning.  If you decide to compete in any one area of fitness you’ll need to focus more on that area, though, to be competitive.

EC: How about when you return to your “conventional” programming?  What kind of favorable adaptations (or unfavorable de-adaptations) have you seen?

MW: The biggest advantage I can see when returning to powerlifting would be injury prevention.  With the different programming, I get a chance to work on any imbalances and heal up any nagging injuries.  The health benefits are there too.  The reduction in body fat and the cardiovascular conditioning helps me perform better on dynamic training days.

The down side is that my one-rep max strength takes a bit of a hit and I have to get the nervous system re-adjusted to doing really heavy weights.  I am really glad that Lean Hybrid Muscle has powerbuilding days so that I can maintain some strength.

In my case, coming from a powerlifting style of training, strength was down a bit.  However, for someone that has never trained with triples, doubles. or singles they could absolutely increase strength while following this program.

EH: The fact is that if you are working toward excellence in one particular fitness quality and you incorporate too much training from a contradictory quality, your performance will suffer.  I make no claims otherwise and my experience tells me it’s true.

So, the leaner more conditioned Elliott Hulse no longer has the strength to log press 365 lbs over head, I can no longer front squat 455 lbs.  So, strength has been lost.

However, things are far more balanced, where now I can only front squat about 365, I can also run a mile under seven minutes and I don’t bend over panting for air after climbing a flight of stairs, like the bigger, stronger version of me did. Ha!

EC: Not a bad tradeoff at all! Thanks so much for your time, fellas.

For more information on Mike and Elliott’s strength and conditioning programs, check out Lean Hybrid Muscle – which is available at a big discount through tonight (Friday, February 11) at midnight.

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While I’ve gotten all my gym sessions in during this time, the reality is that in many cases, they were a lot more like “working out” than they were “training.”  And, although I haven’t wasted away, it’s never a good sign when someone you haven’t seen for a few months asked you if you’ve lost weight when you haven’t been trying to do so – and that happened a few weeks ago.

The end result?  I’m under 190 for the first time in over two years – and sadly, I’m not really any leaner (or stronger, for that matter).

Something clicked two weekends ago, though.  Since the gym is closed on Sundays, I find it’s the best day for me to go in refreshed and get in a good lift.  Thanks to a little rest, loud music, and a good training partner, I sumo deadlifted 500 for a set of five.  And, it felt damn good!

It also made me realize how much of a pansy I’d been in the gym for the two months prior.  With that realization, I headed home to put a program for myself on my to-do list.

The next morning, I woke up anticipating writing that strength and conditioning program (along with about a dozen others!), but before I could get to it, I found an email from Mike Westerdal waiting for me.  And that email included an advanced copy of the new product he created with Elliott Hulse: Lean Hybrid Muscle.

For those who don’t know of Mike, he’s a strong dude, with competition bests of 640 squat, 630 bench, and 600 deadlift at a body weight of 242.  And, through his website, criticalbench.com, he’s helped thousands of guys bust through their bench press plateaus, not to mention interacted with and programs for a lot of experienced lifters.  Elliott is no quack, either; he is a professional strongman and runs a hardcore gym in Tampa, FL.

I’ve often reminded me readers that that if you need a contract written, you’d go to a lawyer.  If you needed your taxes done, you’d go to an accountant. Well, I’m also here to say that if you need a program to kick you in the arse when you’ve been training like a sissy, you go to qualified lifters and coaches who have consistently helped people get strong, burn fat fast, and put on muscle.  And that’s what I did.

And, I’ve definitely received that kick in the arse.  The past 10 days of training have been some of the more challenging I’ve encountered in over a decade of lifting.  And, just as Westerdal assured me, it has been a nice change of pace from the powerlifting-oriented work I’ve done in the past.  Here’s what I like about the program:

1. Concurrent Periodization – it might be high volume, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to increase strength.  If your goal is changing body composition – and not just dropping fat or building muscle exclusively – it’s a great resource.  Anybody can get you to lose weight with a high volume program, but not everyone can help you maintain or even increase strength and build muscle mass in the process.

2. Video Demonstrations – Mike and Elliott have links to every exercise featured in this strength and conditioning program, so if you don’t recognize one, you can quickly and easily check it out.  I know my stuff in this regard, but it was helpful when I came across a few new ones that these guys must have invented themselves.

3. Versatility – I’m fortunate to have quite a few extra goodies – sledgehammers, farmer’s walks handles, tires, turf, kettlebells, sleds, slideboards, kegs – at my fingertips, and Mike and Elliott are all about incorporating what you’ve got into the strength training program.  I’ve used it to modify the interval work included in the program.  They also give you a wide variety of strength exercises from which to choose so that you can work around injuries or specialize on your weak areas.

The benefits certainly go well beyond these three points (the nutrition component/meal plans are excellent, for instance), but in the interest of brevity, I’d highly encourage you to check out Lean Hybrid Muscle, as it’s on sale at a great introductory price through this Friday at midnight.  It actually makes for a great follow-up to Show and Go, for those of you who are just wrapping up that program.

For more information, head over to the Lean Hybrid Muscle Website.

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Rotten Resolutions – I usually bring this article to light right at the beginning of January each year, but forgot in light of the busy last few weeks.  Check it out.  It might make you see your strength and conditioning program goals in a new light.

Ankle Dorsiflexion Immobility Impairs Lateral Step Down Test – This is a good post from Mike Reinold about how ankle restrictions can alter testing further up the kinetic chain and make you see “the big picture.”

The Proactive Patient – I still think that this is one of the better articles I’ve ever written at T-Nation.  What do you think?

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There’s a problem, though; most of you can do a ton of pushups, and are in need of something more challenging that can take this beyond simply a warm-up.  With that in mind, I wanted to use today’s post to highlight some pushup variations we use quite frequently at Cressey Performance.  While a few might require some of the cooler amenities (e.g., chains, slideboard) we’ve got at our fingertips, most are drills you’ll be able to perform without them.  Without further ado, here are five pushup variations to throw some variety in your strength and conditioning program.

Pushup Variations #1 and #2: Feet Elevated and Band Resisted Pushups

I combine these two not only because they were both in the same video that I’d taken for Show and Go, but also because they represent two of the most convenient solutions for the typical lifter.

Elevating the feet not only makes the movement a bit more challenging from an anti-extension core training perspective, but it also increases activity of the serratus anterior, as I wrote HERE.  Believe it or not, while this modification makes the movement harder as a whole, it can often take away symptoms completely in some folks with shoulder pain.

In the case of the band-resisted pushup variation, the resistance accommodates the strength curve.  In other words, the band deloads at the bottom of the movement where you’re the weakest, and picks up resistance as you go further up toward the top of the movement, where you’re the strongest.

Pushup Variation #3: Chain Pushups

Okay, this one will require you to have some equipment, but trust me when I say that if you do decide to get some for your home gym set-up, you’ll use them over and over again – and not just for pushup variations!  As with the bands progression above, chain pushups are a form of accommodating resistance; the load is heavier where you’re strongest.  I also like chains because they allow you to quickly and easily modify resistance on the fly for drop sets or to simply make the exercise easier as a set progresses.  And, they can be pretty challenging:

Let’s assume conservatively that you’re lifting 60% of your body weight with a pushup.  At 190 pounds, that’s 114 pounds for me.  When you combine it with 10 chains at 15 pounds each, you’re looking at about 264 pounds of resistance.  Who says you can’t load up a pushup?

Pushup Variation #4: 1-leg Pushup Variations

One quick and easy way to make any exercise harder is to reduce the number of ground contact points.  On a normal pushup, you have four (both hands and feet).  Simply taking one foot off the floor not only increases the loading on the upper body, but also imposes a subtle anti-rotation challenge to your core.  You can do it feet-elevated, too:

Of course, you can combine the 1-leg pushup with external loading, too:

Pushup Variation #5: 1-arm Push-ups

Sticking with the theme of reducing the numbers of points of stability, you can go to one-arm pushup variations as well.  You don’t have to be diesel enough to do these from the floor to get the benefits, though; you can simply press from a pin in a power rack.

As you get stronger and more comfortable with the movement, you can move the pin down to increase the challenge.

Start thinking about how you can integrate these in your strength training program, and I’ll be back soon with five more pushup variations you can use to take things even further.

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a) evaluated those patellar tendon graft subjects who received soft tissue treatments as part of their rehabilitation versus those who didn’t (my experience says that the anterior knee pain goes away sooner when manual therapy is present) .

b) evaluated those who went to effective strength and conditioning programs immediately post-rehabilitation versus those who didn’t (my hunch would be that those who continued to activation/strengthen the posterior chain would have experienced less anterior knee pain).

c) looked at performance-based outcomes at ~12-18 months in the hamstrings group, as these folks have more “intereference” with a return to normal training because of the graft site (you want to strengthen the posterior chain, but can’t do that as soon if you are missing a chunk of the hamstrings).  My experience has been that patellar tendon patients can do a lot more with their strength and conditioning program sooner than those who have hamstrings grafts.

It’s not to necessarily say that one is better than the other, as they both have their pros and cons – but I think this study potentially casts patellar tendon grafts in a less favorable light when the truth is that hamstrings grafts can have just as many complications down the road.  Above all else, the best ACL grafts are the ones that the surgeon is the most comfortable using – so pick your surgeon and defer to his expertise.

As an interesting aside to this, I remember Kevin Wilk at an October 2008 seminar saying that 85% of ACL reconstructions in the U.S. are performed by doctors that do fewer than 10 ACL reconstructions per year.  So, don’t just find a surgeon; find a surgeon that does these all the time and has built up a sample size large enough to know which ACL graft site is right for you, should you (unfortunately) ever “kneed” one (terrible pun, I know).

Related Posts

Who “Kneeds” Normal Knees?

An Intelligent Answer to a Dumb Question: A Review of “The Single-leg Solution”

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Q: I have a question about how to select weights to use within programs like yours that may fluctuate the sets and reps from week to week.  For example, if it’s 4×3 in week 1, 4×2 in week 2, 4×4 in week 3, and 3×3 in week 4, are there are certain percentages that I can use based off my one-rep max?  This would make it easier to know exactly what weight to use each week.

A: Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m going to paraphrase a bit from chapter 2 of the Show and Go main guide. Let me preface this explanation by saying that the goal of all my programs – and indeed any good strength and conditioning program – is to get stronger. And, I fully expect you to do so.

Now, if that’s the case, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to select what weight to use based on percentages of one-rep maxes that were taken before the program even began. By the time you get to phases 2, 3, and 4, you aren’t going to have sufficient overload to make optimal progress.

So, to that end, I rarely assign training percentages. All sets should be to one rep shy of failure; basically, go hard but never attempt a rep that you won’t complete on your own. Each session should be somewhat of a test of your new strength as you work up to heavier loads and listen to your body along the way.

As a frame of reference, on your first (main) exercise(s), just work up to your heaviest set of the day (in perfect form, of course), and then find 90% of it. Anything you did above that 90% number “counts” as a set. Anything done before it is a warm-up. So, imagine you had 4 set of 3 reps planned on the bench press, and you worked up to 300 on you heaviest set using the following progression:

Set 1: 45×8
Set 2: 135×5
Set 3: 185×3
Set 4: 225×3
Set 5: 275×3
Set 6: 295×3
Set 7: 300×3

That puts you at three sets (275, 295, and 300) above 90% of your heaviest load for the day (300). So, to get a fourth set in, you just need to get one more set somewhere between 270 (90%) and 300 (100%). By the next week, this 90-100% range may have shifted up by 5-10 pounds, so you have to accommodate it – and prescribing percentages on an old one-rep-max just doesn’t do the job justice.

It really doesn’t matter what rep range is in question – whether you’re doing heavy singles or sets of 8-12 reps.  You can really apply it to just about every set in every training session when you’re wondering what weight to use.

For more information, check out Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better.

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Okay, below is a transcript of the interview I did with Eric Cressey, beast of all beasts.  He’s seriously the man.  I’ve told you in another blog post how Eric and I met, and after 8 years and never less than 300 miles of distance between us, we’re still close and still learn a lot from each other.

Eric is seriously regarded as one of the Top 5 coaches in the world by just about any authority that has any authority (if you’ll pardon the redundancy) and in my view is probably the best from a standpoint of bringing things to a practical level.

His hew program, “Show and Go” has just been released, and is basically blowing the doors off of the industry.

Now, I’ll warn you that Eric works with professional athletes most of the time, so we talk about that A LOT in the interview; however, as he notes, he started in fitness-based training. The program brings it all together, and the interview very clearly explains why you should pick it up.

Check it out!

1.  Okay, right of of the gate, I want this interive to focus on your new program.  So, let’s get to it: how is Show and Go different from the other training products out there now?

Most products are written with a specific market – trainers, females, fat loss, or something else – in mind.  In the marketing world, they tell you to not try to be everything to everyone.  Well, I’m not a good marketer – so I decided to make this resource extremely versatile and a good fit for a LOT of people.

The reason is that there are a lot of things in a comprehensive strength and conditioning program that everybody needs to utilize.  From the minutia to the big picture, I could go on all day: foam rolling, mobility warm-ups, single-leg training, more horizontal pulling, fluctuation of training stress, sufficient deloading periods, extra posterior chain work, a balance of open- and closed-chain upper body pressing, glute activation, rotator cuff strength – the list goes on and on.

So, I guess you can say that the #1 thing that is different about this product is that there are easy-to-apply modifications in it that make it a versatile resource that offers something for everyone.  From the 2x/3x/4x per week training options to the supplement conditioning options, there are ways to make it the right fit for YOU.

And, the guy who created it is also extremely good looking, charming, witty, and charismatic!

2. And modest.  Or not.  But I hate modesty anyway.  Now, like me, you’re still “in the trenches” right?  I mean, you still work clients hands on, every day in your gym?

Yes, that’s for sure – and, in fact, you could say that it’s one more thing that separates this program for a lot of the other ones that are out there in the fitness landscape right now.  In this digital retail era, there are a lot of people publishing fitness information products on the net that are largely based on theory, not trends that have proven significant over and over again in the real world.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as a lot of the most sound training practices we know today were originally just theories.  However, speculative training isn’t for me.

I think it’s one reason why I thought so highly of the Final Phase Fat Loss program you created; I know you as a guy who has put in years of efforts “in the trenches” with clients and with your own training.  If you recommend something, it’s because you know it’s legitimate and you’d stake your reputation on it.

I’m in the same boat.  We generally do over 300 client sessions per week at Cressey Performance.  Taking it a step further, I’ll have over 40 professional baseball players who come from all over the country to live in snowy Hudson, MA all winter to give themselves the best possible chance to make it to the big leagues – and have a long and healthy career along the way.

Every single person that walks through the door is on an individualized program that was written by one of our staff members in accordance with the results of a one-on-one evaluation that took place.  When you write that many programs and supervise so many training sessions, you get a feel for the stuff that should be constant in just about everyone’s programs – and it makes you appreciate that there are many important principles that can be applied to make a program like Show and Go safe and effective for “the masses.”

You’ll see that in the detail that has gone into the Show and Go program.  It features the exact printable training templates we use with our clients so that people can record their progress.  The exercises and set/rep protocols have all been test-driven with our clients, too.  And, the 175+ videos in the online database that accompanies this guide were all filmed in my facility – not my mom’s basement or the park, as you often see from folks who write books, but don’t actually train anyone.

In short, I’ve got a unique frame of reference to share with people.  And, I’ve got a lot more to lose professionally if I was to put out an inferior product – so I put my heart and soul into this one.

3. Wow, that’s pretty intense.  Lets just touch on that for a sec.  You have over 40 pro baseball players from a number of different teams move into Red Sox territory to train with you.  That’s pretty telling.  Can you talk a bit more about your experiences with pro athletes?  I know this program is for “everyone” but how has working with some of the most elite athletes in the world shaped you as a coach.

Sure thing.  One of my biggest questions as we got Cressey Performance off the ground was whether or not professional baseball players would be willing to travel to the cold, snowy Northeast during all or parts of their off-season (roughly September-March) when they could be going to warmer weather climates.  To be honest, I never really waited to find the answer; we just focused on the few guys we had when we started out, and really hammered on getting great results and making people believers in our system.  The rest, I guess, is history – and I realize now that if you have a good product, it doesn’t matter where you are: people will find you.

Business stuff aside, with respect to training needs, most people are surprised when they discover just how similar the Average Joe or Jane is to a professional athlete – both socially and physically.

The lay population often sits in front of a computer for 8-10 hours a day, but many pro athletes have 4-8 hour flights or 10+ hour bus rides where they’re sitting – and because they’re taller, sitting is even more uncomfortable and problematic.  Like everyone else, they’re on the computer or in front of video games a lot.  It’s actually quite interesting to note that technology advances haven’t just brought the “Pros and the Joes” closer together via fantasy football, but also in terms of the training they need to stay healthy.

Pro athletes are also very similar to the lay population in that they want very efficient training.  There are always competing demands for their attention – whether it’s their families, charity work, marketing stuff, playing golf, or a number of other things.  These guys live at the ballpark for 12+ hours per day for over half the year, so when the off-season rolls around, they aren’t particularly interested in long, drawn-out training sessions unless it’s absolutely necessary for their success.  Most of our pro guys train six days a week for about 90 minutes in each session; four of these days are lifting, and there is movement training, medicine ball work, foam rolling, and mobility work included as well.  Once the time comes to start throwing and hitting, this 1.5 hours might become three hours a day.

4.  That’s pretty great stuff.  And as much as you love training athletes, they love training with you, too.  Every time I pick up a publication from your area, everyone from high school athletes up to Kevin Youkilis are singing your praises, and that includes other trainers.  But let’s go back to the “regular” people.

Let’s talk about my readers for a bit: they’ve done a lot of programs, but most written by trainers who don’t train pros or (in the case of myself) only a few.

So can we assume that this is a good “next step” coming from the average fitness program?  How can we take what you do with pros, what you do with absolute beginners, and apply the “middle ground” in this program?  I guess the question is: why is it that Show and Go is going be THE program for performance?

It’s absolutely a great next step.

First and foremost, I should mention that while we’re probably best known for training baseball players, we’ve actually got a very diverse clientele.  Sure, there are athletes from everything from boxing to bobsled, but we also have an awesome group of adult clients who just want to just want to be leaner, more muscular, healthier, and more functional for the challenges that life throws their way.

In fact, this was actually the fitness clientele I was dealing with the most before the “baseball thing” blew up for me – so I’m certainly not shooting from the hip on this.

To that end, there are a lot of things in a comprehensive strength and conditioning program that everybody – from the pro athlete to the soccer mom – needs to utilize.  I could go on all day: foam rolling, mobility warm-ups, single-leg training, more horizontal pulling, fluctuation of training stress, sufficient deloading periods, extra posterior chain work, glute activation, rotator cuff strength – the list goes on and on.  All that just speaks to staying healthy and moving more efficiently – but let’s be honest: most people want to get lean, muscular, and strong.

But let me ask you this: how many of the “regulars” in the typical commercial gym are actually lean, muscular, or strong?  I haven’t lifted in a commercial gym in years, but my memory definitely serves me correct when it tells me that it couldn’t be more than 10-15% of those in attendance.  The other 85-90% are rubbing their arses raw on the recumbent bike and scratching their heads about why they aren’t getting leaner when the elliptical machine told them that they were burning 28,000 calories per hour.  After all, they made great progress in the first 8-12 weeks of their exercise program doing this – and it took them from the untrained stage to the beginner stage.  What they don’t realize is progress halts unless they change things up and kick their programs up a notch by adding strength training and interval work.

Meanwhile, you have a lot of intermediate trainees who have “been there, done that” who poke fun at beginners because they haven’t discovered the same Holy Grail of strength training and interval training that enabled them to advance from beginner to intermediate.  What’s actually quite ironic (and it is irony, because it’s tragic how badly this sabotages people’s program) is that, all the while, most of these intermediate trainees are missing out on valuable training secrets that could take them to the “advanced” stage.

You talked about a lot of those secrets with respect to fat loss when you wrote Final Phase Fat Loss.  I’ve had many of the same “epiphanies” when it comes to improving strength and performance.  You had trouble losing those last few pounds of body fat to get photo-shoot-ready, and I literally spent 14 months trying to figure out how to get from a 225 bench press to a 230 bench press.  Sad, but true.

Well, I’m happy to report that I’ve now got a 365 raw bench press at ~190 pounds, and by this point, I’ve actually kissed a girl (even convinced her to marry me!).  I learned a lot of lessons along the way – almost too many to share, in fact – which is one reason why I created Show and Go.

Here’s an example…

Beginners can make strength gains on as little as 40% of their one-rep max.  Past that initial period, the number moves to 70% – which is roughly a 12-rep max for most folks.  Later, I’d say that the number creeps up to about 85% – which would be about a 5-rep max for an intermediate lifter.  This last range is where you’ll find most people who head to the internet for strength training information.

What they don’t realize is that 85% isn’t going to get the job done for very long, either.  My experience is that in advanced lifters, the fastest way to build strength is to perform singles (sets of one rep) at or above 90% of one-rep max with regularity.  As long as exercises are rotated and deloading periods are included, this is a strategy that can be employed for an extended period of time.  In fact, it was probably the single (no pun intended) most valuable discovery I made in my quest to get stronger.

I’m not saying that you should be attempting one-rep maxes each time you enter the gym, but I do think they’ll “just happen” if you employ this technique.

Like I said, there are a lot more – but the program takes all the guesswork out and includes them.

5. Most people know you for the more “mundane ” aspects of performance…the boring stuff that we should be doing by most people don’t: soft tissue work, mobility work, all that.

On the other hand, you and I have known each other for about 10 years now, and I have a “different” perspective on you than the industry at large.  I’ve seen you in your aesthetic-focused period where you wanted to get bigger, I’ve seen you get into powerlifting and pull HUGE weights.

I know that having done these gives you insight into aspects of fitness many people don’t realize you have.  That said, for the time being you’re not known as one of the go-to guys if your main goal is to look better (which I personally know is bullshit).

Do you think Show and Go will help show the world that you can get people lean and muscular? I think—actually, let me put it this way.  I’ve looked closely at the program, and WOW have you just knocked it the hell out of the park.  I guess I’m asking, have you put your heart and soul into this because you want to show the world a new side of yourself?  What are your thoughts on that?

The thing people really need to realize is that enhancing one’s performance – particularly with respect to strength gains – really sets the stage for long-term muscle mass gains.  You’re a big dude – but what people might not know is that you’re also a very metrosexual strong dude.  That strength and size are not mutually exclusive – and some of the best bodybuilders on the planet would tell you the same thing.  What I can tell you is that I have gained more muscle mass “accidentally” in years as a powerlifter than I gained “intentionally” in years as a wannabe bodybuilder.  For me, the biggest window of adaptation was in getting stronger – and that’s what I did.  My upper back, hamstrings, and glutes just weren’t going to stay small if I did what it took to get to a 660-pound deadlift.

How does this work?  Well, the stronger you are, the most “work” you’re going to be doing in classic “hypertrophy” zones.  If Lifter A can bench press 300 pounds, and he’s doing sets of 6 (call it 83% of 1RM), he’s moving about 250 pounds in that set.  If Lifter B bench presses 260 pounds, he’s working at about 215 pounds.  If both do four sets of six reps, you’ll see that Lifter A is doing a lot more total work (force times distance). Lifter B needs to get his maximal strength up – and then return to these classic hypertrophy training zones to reap the benefits anew.

As an aside, staying healthy is a nice aside to training for performance, as you’re teaching your body to move efficiently.  I always tell people that the best program is one that is sustainable – meaning that it doesn’t leave you injured or exhausted (too badly, at least) to the point that you’re missing valuable training time.  Teach your body to move efficiently, and you’ll see that the threshold at which you get “banged up” is markedly more difficult to reach.  The high volume lifting and metabolic resistance training fat loss protocols just won’t be you up as easily if you come in prepared and take care of the “boring” ancillary stuff like foam rolling and mobility work that I advocate.

6.  Random – I’ll ask you this because I know people are interested in pro athletes: what is the one thing that makes athletes different from regular people?  Like, how do they really just differ in the way they respond to training?  What can we learn from that?

I’d say that, for the most part, the most immediate difference is in how quickly the pros pick things up.  Most of them compete at high levels in their sport because they acquire new skills so well and can immediately integrate them in their “motor program.”  In that regard, learning how to deadlift or throw the medicine ball isn’t much different than mastering a change-up.

This is also very significant when it comes to relearning movements and getting one’s body back once the off-season rolls around.  They just seem to rebound faster after periods of moderate detraining.  As perhaps the most extreme example I’ve seen, I work with Chad Rodgers, a left-handed pitcher in the Atlanta Braves minor league system.  From November 2008 to March 2009, Chad went from 200 to 217 pounds while training at our facility.  Then, he went into in-season mode – and was 206 when he arrived back at our facility the following October after a long season.  Get this, though: he was 222 within two weeks – and he finished up the off-season at 235 – and hit 95mph on the radar gun for the first time in his life.  Pro athletes de-adapt like everyone else – but they seem to readapt faster than the lay population – and that sets the stage for long-term gains in spite of periods of sometimes crazy detraining during the season.

That said, there are some high level athletes who are one-trick ponies.  I’ve met some pitchers who showed up with 17-inch vertical jumps, but just so happened to have a good curve ball.  And, I’ve seen some swimmers who seem really athletic – until you get them out of their realm and learn the true meaning of “a fish out of water.”

7. When you first opened your facility, you and I spoke and you were dead-set on making Cressey Performance stand out by having the most innovative people on staff and always trying new stuff.  At the same time, you didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  In looking at Show and Go, I feel you did the same:  New science-based techniques housed comfortably alongside some of the most “common” exercises that people are familiar with; whereas a lot of programs include 80 varietals of exercises people have never heard of.  Give me your thoughts that?

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Let’s be honest: there isn’t much in this industry that’s new.  Most of the “innovations” are really just “reincarnations” of something from the past (e.g., kettlebells, strongman training) or “modifications” (e.g., accommodating resistance, modified tempo schemes, different loading parameters) of something that we already knew worked.  I wish I could say that getting people jacked was an area where earth-shattering discoveries are being made every day, but that’s just not the case; we’re repacking things and looking for the right synergy among them.

In the real world, people still squat, deadlift, lunge, push, pull, rotate, roll over, get up, get down, jump, run, frolic, prance, whatever.  My feeling is that if you stick to the basics – but at the same time expose people to a wind variety of movement patterns – you get the best of both worlds: neuromuscular efficiency for important fundamental tasks as well as a rich proprioceptive environment that keeps people healthy and “adaptable” to their surroundings.  And, when you expose them to these new exercise variations, you prevent them from getting efficient – which is exactly what we don’t want if our goal is to get bigger or leaner.

8.  Your videos on the squat were posted and re-posted all over the internet.  EVERYONE got something out of them.   Show and Go could well do the same thing for programming in general—whether you’re a trainee or a coach, you’ll learn…and in a small but real way, this could perhaps chance the way people write programs. With that in mind, if you could get people to STOP doing one thing (trainees OR coaches) and START doing one other, what would it be?

I’d tell both trainees and coaches to simply be more open-minded to learning from everyone and applying new techniques.  There are Crossfit guys, HIT guys, powerlifters, bodybuilders, kettlebell guys, speed guys, machine guys, you name it.  Lots of people have been doing lots of different stuff to get lots of different results.  If you adhere steadfastly to just one discipline, you miss out on what the others have to offer – even if it is just a few seemingly trivial things that you borrow here and there to incorporate into your philosophy.

Admittedly, I really struggled with this earlier in my career.  I hated not knowing everything – and while it was something that definitely drove me to do a ton of research, I could have saved myself a lot of frustration and energy if I’d just been open-minded enough to ask someone else about their approach – or just observe them in action.  Nowadays, I see these as opportunities to either learn something new, test my knowledge by refuting something that doesn’t fits with my philosophy, or confirm what I’m already doing.

Awesome.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Eric, thank you so much for taking the time for do this, and thank you so much for putting together an incredible program.

Oh, and hey…so sorry about the Jets dominating the Patriots last week.  That had to hurt.

Click here for more information on Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better – which is only on sale at the introductory $50 off price until Friday at midnight.

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1) Wake Up Your Muscles for Fitness

Weight lifting is metabolically intensive. No matter how strong you are, your strength will increase when you’re lifting weights. But if you are unfit to complete a workout of approximately one hour, even “No-Nonsense Muscle Building” will not help you gain much lean muscle at all. To “wake up” your muscles, you might consider working with bodyweight exercises, Swiss exercise balls, or light dumbbells. No program, not even “No-Nonsense Muscle Building” will magically cause you to explode with muscles. It takes work, and if your body is still “asleep,” you’ll be wasting your time. An alternative would be to work first with the body conditioning program, “Upside Down Training,” which will wake your muscles up with stretching, core exercise, and shoulder exercises.

2. Get a full gym experience ready

Believe it or not, this is careless to some extent on Vince DelMonte’s part. He is so excited to sell potential customers his program that he forgot to mention that you need to have some weight lifting equipment at your home if you do not have a membership to a gym. If you are an experienced weight lifter then you probably new this already. However, if you are new to the world of lifting weights then you might not have thought about this. Vince assumed that this was common sense, but many men asked for a refund because they don’t have gym access.

3) Change your diet drastically

The art of building muscle is 1% exercise and 99% recovery. The most important part of building muscle is learning how to eat differently. If you don’t want to eat differently then don’t start thinking about building muscle. Some people may find that some of the meal plans that are included with the “No-Nonsense Muscle Building” program are redundant. This is especially true for people that don’t cook at home too often. However, if you live on your own or if you live with people that don’t care about eating differently then these meal plans might work perfectly for you. You’ll just have to try it out for yourself. However, you might need to eat a couple of extra meals per day if you really want to build new muscle fibers.

Learn how to lift weight like the professionals who use No Nonsense Muscle Building.  For more information about many product reviews, visit www.feelgoodmuscle.com.

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