The reality is that most people don’t train hard enough to justify the supplements they are on but they can be very useful.

Before taking any supplements you need to understand which level of training you are at and then get the appropriate stuff. You also need to make sure your basics are squared away. If your diet is crap, you don’t get enough sleep or your training program is rubbish no amount of expensive powders will make you big and strong.

So here is a guide for three basic levels of training, keep in mind that these are cumulative which means that people at the advanced/competitive level need to take everything from the levels below as well.

Before you think about supplementation check the following

1. Are you eating 3 solid meals a day + 2 – 3 snacks each containing some protein, carbs and good fats

2. Are you training at least 4 days a week with a focus on the big basics like deadlifts, squats, bench press, chinups and military press.

3. Are you getting 7- 9 hours of sleep a night.

If the answer to any of these is a no then spending big bucks on supplements is going to be a waste of time.

Level 1 – Beginners

During the first 6 months to 1 year of serious training it’s unlikely that you’ll need much more than lots of food and some hard training to make gains.

Supplements at this level are restricted to stuff that’s cheap and highly effective.

Multivitamin – Train hard and chances are that you’ll be working your bodies vitamin and mineral stores a bit harder than the average couch potato. While you may be getting enough from your diet a multivitamin is good insurance and costs bugger all.

Protein – Plain Whey Protein Concentrate mixed with whole milk 2-3 times a day. No need for fancy pants stuff that’s been bioengineered to death.

Fish oil – 3 – 6 caps a day for general heart, brain and joint health. Start now and never stop taking it.

Sports drinks – Gatorade or similar during hard training to replace electrolytes and provide energy. Avoid if your goal is fat loss.

Level 2 – Intermediate

If you have been training for at least 6 months and you are now using more advanced training methods because beginner programs stopped working then you are probably ready for some level 2 supplements.

This stuff is more expensive than the level 2 stuff and the performance gain is not generally as big you get from the basics.

Creatine – 5g a day with your recovery shake. Creatine improves performance in repeated bouts of near maximal exercise. This allows you to train harder and allows you to stress the body more for continued gains in strength. Good for strength and power programs, not so good for distance runners because you do tend to gain some fluid weight which makes you slower.

Minerals – Zinc, Magnesium etc can help you recover. I quite like “Endura” sports drink at the moment but you can also use a supplement like ZMA that may boost testosterone production.

Glutamine – The most abundant free amino acid in muscle. 3-5g once a day after workouts may speed recovery.

Level 3 – Advanced / competitive athlete

If you are 2+ years into serious training and you compete then you’ll be looking for anything that gives you the edge.

At this level it’s worth experimenting with different products and combinations as some things appear to work for one person but not another.

Some stuff to try

BCAA – Branch chain amino acids may help recovery

Vitamin D – 5000IU a day, this may turn out to be like fish oil in that it’s long term health benefits are becoming compelling but for sports performance at the moment it may help or it may not.

ZMA or GABA – Worth trying for improved sleep and growth hormone secretion but not cheap.

Anything else that takes your fancy, antioxidants, weird plant extracts, Nitric oxide supps, caffeine in high doses (be careful with this one). At this level you might get 1 or 2% from trying something new or you might get nothing but the proverbial “expensive urine” however as a competitive athlete sometimes that 1% is the difference between first place and fourth, and no one EVER remembers the guy who came fourth.

Want Supplements?

I get all my supplements from  The Edge Sports Nutrition

I’ve known the guys at The Edge since I first started training back in 1997, they’ll be able to give you advice on exactly what stuff you need.

Pulling 240kg in April

In my experience the vast majority of athletes are always on the look out for the magic program that is going to boost their performance into the stratosphere while making them 10X sexier to the opposite sex.

They are normally impatient for the performance and sexiness to arrive and try 4, 6, 8 or 12 week super cycles that promise the world but often deliver overtraining, frustration and injury instead of results.

While it may not provide instant results or sexiness (your mileage may vary) Jim Wendlers 5-3-1 system is a definite antidote to the endless skipping through radical plans.

It’s more of the slow cooker approach to strength development and if you’ve got a tiny bit of patience for the first few weeks then you’ll reap some big rewards.

I’ve been using 5-3-1 now for a few months, testing out variations of the program in my own training and want to share some observations so that you can decide if it’s a good option for your training.

Background

I first heard of 5-3-1 months ago but was already heavily into a serious strongman training program training 6 times a week for up to 2 hours at a time plus a 3 hour event training session.  On the plus side I was getting stronger at a rapid rate but on the downside my food bill was killing me, I was constantly sore from training and I was spending lots of money and time on recovery methods each week.

Overall at the time it was worth it but after two strongman competitions I decided that I needed a more sustainable plan both for the sake of my body and also because I had a lot of work coming up running a big weightlifting competition and training time was going to be cut back to 3 x 1 hour sessions a week.

Even on such a time limited program I wanted to try and make progress that would serve as a base for future strongman competitions.

After tossing up a few ideas I bought a copy of 5-3-1 from Elite FTS and got stuck into it.

The first thing that struck me about 5-3-1 was the simplicity of the program and also a degree of hesitation.  Coming from an Olympic weightlifting coaching background I’m used to programs where you squat 9 times a week, pull 9 times a week and put stuff overhead 9 times a week.  Where training is ruled by strict percentage charts and where you stop at the specified number of reps even if you feel like you could do more.

To go from this to doing each basic lift (squat, bench, deadlift and military press) once a week and only hitting one truly maximal set in each session was a massive shock at first but after a couple of cycles I discovered that there are definite positives that can be taken from such a program.

1.   If you really put your heart and soul into that one crucial set then you don’t need to do 5 sub max sets. This is very time efficient

2.   When you are time poor and under a lot of job pressure it’s far easier to psych yourself up for one death set and get it over with than it is to sustain the intensity across multiple sets and exercises.

3.   Therefore even if you are having a rotten day and are tired you can normally squeeze out that one good set and even if that’s the only thing you do in the gym that day you can walk out knowing that you’ve done the important stuff.

4.   By starting well away from your current comp 1RM and working on rep PRs you build a habit of success and getting a flying start on the more difficult work closer to your 1 Rep max.

5.   Even though I was sore after some sessions overall I was much fresher and more enthusiastic about training. I looked forward to each session and looked forward to breaking rep PRs.

On top of the basic program Jim has many recommendations for assistance work to fill in the gaps.  Overall I ended up using a few variations of the assistance work including not doing any at all! What I found was that you can either use the assistance work to add some volume if your recovery is in order or you can use the assistance work to correct deficiencies and advance your main lifts by doing complementary work.

One word of caution.  Initially it looks like a 5-3-1 program is too easy and you may be tempted to add extra workouts, tons of extra exercises etc etc.

DON’T

As prescribed 5-3-1 ain’t the fastest way to gain strength in the short term but over a period of months and even years it’s going to build a massive, solid foundation and result in steady progress toward your goals.

The beauty of the system is that you are always striving for rep PRs which give you a sense of achievement without wearing you out and then on the occasions when you do test your max you are bound to be surprised by your results and chances are over the course of a year you’ll make better progress than some streak of lightning who comes into the gym, pounds out a 4 week mega everything cycle and then gets burnt out or hurt and has to take months off!  I’m not saying that there isn’t room for the occasional focus program but unless you’ve got experience in planning training or a good coach 5-3-1 is going to be a more reliable and safe way to build long term strength for powerlifting or strongman.

Some figures from my program

Rep PRs

Bench press      95kg x 8  increased to 100 x 13, 110 x 8 and 115 x 5

Squat        155kg x 3 increased to 155 x 8 and 170kg x 5

Deadlift        195×3 to 200×7 and 215×3

These results were from the 8^th of July to the 1^st of October or just under three months.

1RM

Bench press from       120 to 130

Deadlift                         240 to 245

Squat                            200 no change but the day I tested it I felt off

So in summary

I found 5-3-1 to be well written, easy to understand, easy to implement and a very effective program that deserves a look by anyone serious about building a base of raw strength that can be applied to any strength and power sport.

Note – I have no financial arrangement or affiliate deal with Jim Wendler, I just think it’s a great product and people should know about it

The other day on one of the forums I post on the following question came up.

It’s always said not to train to failure. What I’m wondering is why?

I’ve done it a little lately to vary it up, and while it really smashes me I at least feel some progress. Learnt the hard way though to do it close to bed time, cause if I go to failure (or beyond with lowered weight) a few times with small break in between I’m absolutely wrecked till I sleep a while.

After answering the question I thought i might as well pu tthe answer up here because i’m sure other people would have the same question!

So here is what I wrote…

This is a fairly complicated subject and depending on who you talk to you’ll get lots of different opinions.

I’ll try to simplify things to the three most common scenarios.

1. Muscle mass - Training to failure is an easy way to ensure progress when trying to build muscle.

Basically a fairly high volume of work with moderately heavy weights leads to a break down in muscle fibres and the bodies response is to build more muscle to compensate.

Due to some quirks of physiology though not all the muscle is contractile fibre (the bit that lifts stuff) so you can get bigger muscles but you aren’t necessarily as strong as you look. You still get stronger but just not the same way that pure strength athletes do.

Bodybuilders who train to failure in the 8 – 12rep range are in the muscle building zone and will often experience delayed onset muscle soreness.

2. Strength and power – strength is more neurological than most people think. When aiming to develop maximal strength and power you need to lift as heavy as possible but not necessarily to the point of failure.

By avoiding failure you recover more quickly and therefore can train more often. Like all skills the more often you practice the better you get.

This is why olympic lifters favour low reps (1-5 and mostly 1-3) and often twice daily training. They never train to failure in multi rep sets and only really “fail” during one rep max attempts when the weight is too high to lift.

Olympic lifters still get DOMS sometimes and initially they often build a lot of muscle mass but then tend to plateau when they get to the body weight they want to compete at.

3. Muscular endurance - When the goal is high rep local muscular endurance (20+reps) for things like pushups you can train effectively either with multiple sets of sub maximal numbers or you can hammer away at training to failure. Either will work for a while and then it’s probably best to switch.

During long sets or circuits you end up with different types of failure if you push to the limit. You can experience metabolic failure where the muscles don;t have enough energy to contract or a build up in acid levels is inhibiting contraction. When this happens you’ll stop because you are out of breath basically. You can also get the same type of failure as doing bodybuilding type training whereby you might have the energy to do the reps but you’ve run out of nueromuscular juice.

At the end of the day you need to overload the muscles and your energy systems and try to progress every few sessions, once something stops working switch to a slightly different plan and start again!

www.nickmckinless.com

Nick is a top level stuntman, trainer and strongman and at the moment he’s been advising me on training for my first strongman comp. Nick is currently training a bunch of other stuntmen as well as one of the competitors for Worlds Strongest Man 2009.

Check out his website for some wiked videos of his stunts and strongman events! Nick is Also available for training consultations and he recently told em that he’s looking at doing some more detailed online coaching so if you need a program for strongman he’d be the guy to call!

www.mikemahler.com

Mike was one of the original Senior Kettlebell instructors in the US and way back in 2004 I got to train with him both privately in LA and then again at the RKC in Minnesota.

Mike has got some great articles on kettlebells, diet and hormonal control for maximal performance and he’s also got some excellent DVDs.

I just watched his latest 4 DVD set “Collision Course” which includes over 9 hours of footage from 7 different trainers (including grip legend John Brookfield and Pro Strongman Mark Phillipi) and there is some excellent stuff there.

If you want some new ideas to sharpen your kettlebell or strength training program then I highly recommend checking out Mike’s site.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MusclePitWA

Some great videos here of innovative strength and power training. I met Henry Day on one of my trips to Perth last year and he’s not lying when he calls the Muscle Pit “Perths Strongest Gym”

If you are in Perth i’d recommend giving them a call but even if you aren’t check out their videos.