PERFORMANCE TRAINING CENTRE NEWSLETTER
ISSUE # 74
MAXIMISING MINIMALISM
Nutrition is pretty simple. Every meal, make sure you have a lean protein and fibrous vegetables. Eat fruit before lunch, simple carbs after training. Add olive oil to meals. Eat every three hours.
That’s how simple it is. Sure, the amount of calories varies from lifter to lifter, just adjust quantities. If you want to take supplements, a whey protein powder and fish oil tablets.
That’s a very minimalist approach. Stock up on canned fish, skinned chicken breast, cottage cheese, steak and eggs, fourteen pieces of fruit, a stack of your favourite vegies, a bag of rice, milk. Do this every week. No need to purchase anything else. Just the food required to help you build muscle and NOT store fat.
No tempting crisps or cakes in the cupboard, no ice cream in the freezer, no icing sugar on your shirt. Don’t bitch and moan you can’t lose weight if you haven’t tried this approach. You have to go back to basics. Eliminate all the complicated stuff. Nuts are great, but have too many and you get fat. Simple, eliminate them. Minimalism works because it’s simple.
In the gym, you don’t need to hit a muscle from 15 different positions, using cables, racks and benches, 3 seconds up, 6 seconds down, squeeze at the top. Squeeze this. All you simply need to do is hit a muscle, but hit it hard. If you bench 150kg, do you really think that 7.5kg tricep kickbacks are activating muscle fibre in your triceps? They simply laugh at you. The muscle needs to be forced to change. Progressive resistance is the best way to force a muscle to change, an ever increasing workload every session. More weight means more work. Simply adding exercises is not nearly as effective.
Perform a standing overhead press, do a deep knee bend, a horizontal press, a vertical row and pick something heavy up off the floor and or a quick lift.
Military press
Squat
Bench press
Chin ups
Deadlift
Powerclean
Most refuse to believe that this minimalistic approach is all that’s required. Fact is, most can’t do that workout. They fill their routine with filler, like Chinese restaurant’s fill their dishes with onion. Press downs, leg curl, leg press, curls, flyes, laterals, leg extensions, crunches etc.
Every movement has some benefit, but if you try and do all of them, you’ll get benefit from none of them. If your squatting 180kg, benching 140kg, deadlifting 220kg, strict pressing 100kg overhead, you’re going to be a big fellow. That’s a given. You got there because you obviously worked hard on the basics to make those lifts. Why the **** would you change it now. You know it’s worked, you’re the biggest and strongest guy in your gym, unless you train at PTC, so why deviate from a minimalist program that made you so big and strong.
Because everybody likes to think that there is something better out there. They keep searching, never satisfied. Others change their program because squatting 180kg all the time is HARD GOD DAMN WORK. No shit Dorothy, I thought you wanted to get big and strong.
A minimalistic approach to lifting is always going to be best. Few exercises, done often with heavy weights. Maximise minimalism.
Cardio is another ripper. I am a strong believer in cardio, but not the absolute time wasting garbage thrown up in pleasure spas. Why use a treadmill, is the road broken outside your house. I know of people who drive to the gym to use a treadmill. Electronic cardio equipment is for soft cocks.
I have 5 cardio sessions a week at PTC. During winter, the numbers drop off. The sessions are so hard that most report flu like symptoms from doing them. I could make them easy and have more people do them, making more money for me. Those that know me understand that this isn’t going to happen.
A new kettlebell complex that I have, called FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE has been likened to a war crime. The fit can do it in 4 minutes and change, the committed may take 11 minutes, the quitters suit themselves. Come and do this complex, see if you can think of anything else that decimates your lungs and every muscle in your body more completely in 5 minutes.
If you could do this twice a week, always trying to better your time, you would become fitter than you ever thought possible. Ten minutes a week. How’s that for minimalism.
The sad fact is I don’t know anybody mentally tough enough to do FRWL twice a week.
Those skinny runts that eat “heaps” but cant gain weight. These guys make me laugh. They should have lunch with me just once, might redefine the word “heaps” for them. Nina often laughs when she puts lunch out for me, thinking there’s no way I’ll eat all that. Silly girl.
How about you try GOMAD? It’s an old tried and true approach. Keep eating the shitty little quantities that you have been eating, just simply add a gallon of milk a day. Squat 2-3 times a week, drink your milk, do this for a month, let’s see how much weight you gain.
What’s that? You can’t squat. Then click your heels Dorothy and **** off back to Oz.
All you really need to do to gain weight is consume more calories than you burn, if you want to see how simple it is, go to your local food mall at lunchtime, check out the one cheek per chair brigade, they have perfected it.
Do 5-6 basic exercises, eat wholesome food every 3 hours, do some cardio, rest. Most don’t want to believe such a minimalistic approach is all it takes.
I’m on a new forum and I read quite a few lifters are doing split routines. Why? Numerous reasons, but I think if they tried the minimalistic approach, they couldn’t get through the workout. They are so conditioned to 1-2 basic exercise and 1-2 isolation movement, that doing 5-6 basic exercises would destroy them.
Best off they live in fantasy land and keep super setting curls and press downs while weighing a buck fifty. After all, Jay Cutler does that, look how big he is. Ignore the fact his turd’s are bigger than you are.
In society today, we will always look for the simplest and quickest way to achieve anything. I have given you the path of least resistance. No bells, no whistles, no filler, no distractions, no temptations.
The last two newsletters have focused on lifters from the beginning to the 1960’s. Life was far simpler back then. No fast food chains, no games consoles, no pleasure spas, no internet, no personal trainers, no cardio equipment. Gyms filled with free weights, racks and benches. Milk and home cooked meals. No supplements or steroids. Teenagers played outside rather than sitting glued to an X Box. You stared when you saw an obese person, now it’s your mum or dad, or your friends mum and dad. It’s normal. We make celebrities out of them on television shows like Fat Bastard on Channel 10.
Let’s take minimalism one step further. Most of my clients like a drink. People should live how they want, just don’t whinge to me that your ass doesn’t fit on my bench. Instead of having 10-15 drinks at the club, try and have 3-4. Instead of eating 6 doughnuts, try having one. Get a small fries rather than a large. Have 1 disco biscuit rather than 3. Minimize the damage. If you normally go out to dinner 3 times a week, cut it back to 1-2.
People feed off progress. The better your gains and improvement, the harder you try. I witness this all the time. The sad fact is that when people “feel” they have been trying, and they see no improvement, they go the other way, and simply get fatter. They stop pushing themselves in the gym.
I honestly believe if you strip everything back to basics, uncomplicated eating and lifting, make following a program and nutrition plan as simple as possible, it takes away the distractions, the stuff that has lifters looking for the easy road.
Nothing worthwhile is achieved by taking shortcuts. One of my strongest clients has this in his sig on a forum, a constant reminder.
If you are not thrilled with your progress, why not try the minimalistic approach. What have you got to lose, but your preconceived ideas that sitting on a fit ball and flapping your arms around are going to make your chances of Olympic glory a reality? You know the routine Dorothy.
I know lifting heavy weights is hard. There will be poor sessions. There will be injuries. There may be vomit. Plenty off missed lifts as you try and get stronger every session. Frustration at a lift stalling for weeks, while others around you seem to be getting stronger every week. Keep believing and don’t abandon your approach. Look back to 12 months ago, where you lifted in your first comp and totalled 450kg. You are now 9kg heavier and totalling 600kg.
A 150kg gain and you didn’t notice because your bench sucked last session. Perspective. You lift overhead what others your age can’t pick up off the floor.
Stop concentrating on what you can’t do and focus on what you can do.
I have some freakishly strong natural unassisted lifters at PTC. I always laugh when they bitch and moan about being weak or missing a lift. I feel like chucking them all in Nina’s Odyssey and trucking them down to the Clayton Aquatic and Leisure centre for a reality check.
You know what, I just may do this. I’ll be sure to take my camera along.
You guys may notice that this newsletter has no pics and is back to its original format. Don’t fret, it’s just for this issue. I plan to post it up on a few websites. It’s also deliberately short for the same reason. We will be back to the original format next issue.
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Thanks for reading
Markos
PTC Frankston
