Thoughts about life, crap, training, and stuff -- mid-week version (full of training shit)

Probably no podcast this week, as Jamie will be busy all week and is doing a meet this coming weekend. More than likely we will do it next Monday or Tuesday. I know, I has a sad too. However, I may be able to get a surprise podcast in........we'll see.

I am doing my no-deload deload. I need some time off for a few days as I feel beat up in my joints, and my mental wanting to be in the gym has waned. This is my usual tell-tale sign that I need to pull back.

If you have a question and have not bought Strength Life Legacy PLEASE PLEASE buy it. Everyone who is a regular here knows I am not a salesman, so I do not write this to take your money. I write this because LITERALLY, every training that has been asked of me since the books release, can be found in the book. 90%+ of the questions I get each week have an answer in there. It took me this long to write that book for a reason. I wanted you to be able to open it when you had almost any question, and find an answer.

Someone asked me about how they should set up doing a cycle of stiff legs......it's in the book (My Deadlift Sucks chapter)

Someone asked me about rehabbing their piriformis........in the Rehab Chapter.

Someone asked me about what to do if they were short on time in prep for a meet.......the Strong-15 short cycle.

As far as the paperback goes....the answer as to when you will get it is this -- I will stop taking pre-orders Monday. That night I will let my guy know how many to print. When he is done, I will ship them. So expect a couple of weeks from now.


I had a great question this week about guys who have been stuck on lifts for quite some time. Of course, I answer that in the book however let me go back over this so you can get an idea........


The majority of your year should be spent working on your BASE. This means your muscular base. NOT 1 rep max strength training.

Building your base requires reps, reps, reps, reps and reps. I don't give 2 shits what some 170 pound asshole from reddit or bodybuilding.com tells you. You need to eat carbs, and train heavy as fuck in the medium to high rep range. That's 8-12 for most upperbody movements, and 15-20+ for lower body. If you don't believe this, ask Stan Efferding or any other guy that has put in his work over the years. Reps and food = mass. Lower reps = strength. There is some carryover from one to the other, but one works better for one thing than the other.

You need to be spending all of your time training to build a bigger foundation so that your strength ceiling become as high as possible. This is done with food and "bodybuilding", i.e. reps and more reps. If you're fat, get in shape (in the book), if you're skinny, eat and train your nuts off (in the book? no way?!!?).

"Paul, I'm only a beginner......what should I..."

....it's in the book.

If you have read SLL, and still are confused, that's what I'm here for. But take advantage of the knowledge I put into that thing. It's basically my entire journey of lifting and learning. I was not an genetic mutant like a lot of guys. Everything that I have, I earned like the average joe. So the book is full of stuff for guys who struggle as I did. So if you think I'm some genetic outlier because of where I am now, you are wrong. That's over 2 decades of blood, callouses, and pain I've endured. Let it help you.

I also want to say for you guys that keep writing in to me, to tell me about your PR's and mass gains, or how you have lost weight and got into the best shape ever -- that's such a blessing to me. I write and put in all this time to help you bastards. So when you guys write in and tell me about your progress, fuck, I live for that. I know what it's like to be on that end, frustrated as hell about training and feeling like dogshit about it. Nothing makes you feel more alive than seeing progress something you feel so passionate about. So I know where you are coming from, and I feel like a god damn champion for being able to help you out.

Thanks to all you mother fuckers for making each day for me an awesome one. My only wish is that I had a million dollars so I could retire and do this as my only job.

To add, in the coming weeks I want to talk about all the ways you can use each of the cycles for different lifts, all at the same time. Sorry to sound confusing, but some of you are doing it already and that's fucking awesome. That's using your coconut to be your own lifting "Doc Brown". In other words, you can use the strong-15 for your bench in the same cycle you are using the big-15 for your squat or incline or whatever. Especially if you are a guy like me, limited to doing certain things anymore on certain movements (I can't do reps on bench except for maybe once a month).

So I want to go over some ways to setup some cycles to fix lagging areas and weak lifts. I'm stoked about it. Consider it like some extra chapters that weren't in SLL.

I am in the planning stages of doing some seminars with my buddy Phil Stevens. If you are a gym owner, or think your gym owner might be interested in having us out, give me or Phil a shout out. You can contact me at paul@lift-run-bang.com or Phil at phil@lift4hope.org. We will be doing 2 day seminars where we go over squat, bench, dead, assistance work and Olympic lifts (Phil will do that, not me, you know better). Serious inquiries only, and I will not do any gay for pay. I had to throw that in there.........

I hope everyone is having an awesome fucking week.