This is addressed as much to coach Thibs as to the other denizens of this board. Your history on this website is huge, and I’ve been reading a lot of your old articles lately as I try to put together a long term goal-oriented plan to get into and stay in the best shape I can be in. But some of them are so old, and so opposite to the newer articles that I’m somewhat confused. I understand the philosophy of different tools for different jobs, but I do wonder if I’m getting the best information.
So my questions are: Are there any theories you once espoused that you now reject? And, as much to the peanut gallery as anything, are there any older articles or programs I should really take a look at?
You have to understand how I work. The methods I experiment with (then write articles about) are either:
Selected to solve a specific problem I had at the time
An area/type of training I wanted to understand fully and take to its optimal format (not necessarily the be the best training, but the best training using that specific approach)
I’m not a one trick pony who want to specialize in one type of training. I was to understand how everything work. Not great for building my own body up, but ideal for a coach who will get to work with many different individuals.
If you take a guy like Meadows who has been a bodybuilder most of his adult life, of course his methods will stay fairly stable. But I’ve trained for football, trained and competed as an olympic lifter, trained like a powerlifter, trained and competed as a bodybuilder, trained for and did Crossfit, experimented with rings and bodyweight work for 6 months… I want to understand how every method works.
Obviously I’m very passionate and will write what I’m passionate about at the moment.
Will the old programs work? Sure. As I said, when I wrote those articles I was trying to find the best application for that type of training.
Can they be matched together into a long term plan? Maybe… but honestly that’s not how I think so I actually couldn’t help you there. Each article is its own finite thing, not something to be done after or before something else.
[quote]Winatsis wrote:
So my questions are: Are there any theories you once espoused that you now reject? And, as much to the peanut gallery as anything, are there any older articles or programs I should really take a look at?[/quote]
There are a number of articles that get referenced regularly in the Beginner’s subforum. And of course, plenty more that don’t. It might be worth peeking through some of those threads that catch your interest, and then reading any articles that are linked in them.
As far as older ideas that were espoused by various coaches, I’ve taken the approach to assume that the latest ideas are what a given coach currently considers optimal, based on the things they learned from their work with older ideas.
It’s not that the old ideas are bad or don’t work, but rather, there have been improvements to methodologies and approaches based on experience and further knowledge.
Here and there you do get to hear why a coach abandoned or changed things. That’s usually pretty insightful.
But yeah, mostly I assume for anyone’s work that “older is good, sometimes great, and newer is still better”.
EDIT: if I’d realized CT was replying at the same time I was, I’d have stayed quiet…
As far as older ideas that were espoused by various coaches, I’ve taken the approach to assume that the latest ideas are what a given coach currently considers optimal, based on the things they learned from their work with older ideas.
It’s not that the old ideas are bad or don’t work, but rather, there have been improvements to methodologies and approaches based on experience and further knowledge…[/quote]
That’s not really my case because, as I mentioned everyone of the programs I designed were a learning/experiment and the best I could come up with within a specific concept.
I’m working towards a pretty vague ‘goal’ of being generally strong and fit. I want to be strong and lift heavy weights, but naturally I want to look like a I can lift heavy things too. I don’t like cardio training as a rule, but I also want to keep enough conditioning in play that I can thrive at the Tough Mudder in my area that I want to run with some friends. I’ve always been a thin guy and I want to (and have been able to really well thus far, thanks Coach!) put on some muscle, but I also don’t want to get fat. I guess you could say I want it all.
Anyway I love a lot of your workouts and training regimens that I’ve read, and I feel like your ideal aesthetic and condition most closely mirrors what I want, so I’ve been using a lot of your stuff; now I’m looking to branch out a bit into things I feel are lagging. Mainly getting conditioning up, without losing strength over time.