The devil most certainly is in the details

So many people get so swallowed up in the tiniest and most insignificant details of training and diet.  It drives me nuts.  I mean nuts.

If you're a powerlifter, you need to go in and bench, squat, and deadlift pretty often.  Perfect your technique, do some "bodybuidling" here and there.

If you're a bodybuilder you need to bring up the bodyparts that keep you from winning, add mass, correct the things that caused you to fail at your last show.

If you're a strongman you need to get better at the events that kept you from taking home the gold.

And for all three, you generally just need to get bigger and stronger, overall.  This requires actually doing the lifts.  Quite a bit, and figuring out how to best use your leverages in them, and simply put..."get stronger".

There is generally not one thing that you're going to do that is going to put you "over the top".  Whether you decide to do flyes on the pec deck or db flyes is of really no consequence in your training.  I've watched threads on message boards go on and on and on about whether or not you're supposed to look down or straight ahead or up during a squat.  Who gives a shit?  You're squatting.  If I look down and I squat, I just did a squat.  If I look up and squat, I just did a squat.  I know, it's mind blowing shit isn't it?

"Don't tuck, that's for geared guys."

"No it's not, raw guys tuck too."

I feel like I'm reading a conversation between Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs and another serial killer friend he has that also likes to play hide the sausage.

"You gotta train your lockout."

"Find your weak points."

Man if you're pulling 3 or 4 plates you don't need to worry about a god damn lock out or weak points, you need to worry about the fact that you're just really fucking weak and need to get stronger.  These conversations are silly enough as is.  They are even more silly when it involves guys that benches 275 but thinks board presses will fix his shit.

I'm not saying figuring out technique nuances about training don't matter.  My video on not getting your arms under the bar in the squat has obviously helped a lot of guys that were having elbow pain from this.  But I learned that from being under the bar, not discussing how I should squat all day long with bros at the gym or on a board.  It came from trial and error.  You know, how all the guys got strong from decades ago before the interwebs took hold of what we call training and broke its spine.

So few people "just train" now because they are fixated on a method, rather than a result.

Any novice or intermediate trainee that has read articles or watched videos from every advanced guy on the planet, hears the same thing.

Time, consistency, effort, dedication....it's not a rah rah speech or Tony Robbins clinic for lifting weights.  Eventually, all of us that developed thick callouses on our hands and enough injuries to "brag" about, came to the understanding that ultimate goal we have for ourselves may take a while to reach.  That "shit...I'm really not going to be Bill Kazmaier by this time next year!  Or ever!"

Sure, there are some guys who find success faster than others, but they are also going to ceiling out faster as well.  After 25 years, I feel like I'm just entering my best years.  Also after 25 years I have figured out that there's a lot left I still have to learn.  The biggest reason that is, is because my mind is far more open now, but I have a better filter on what I'm going to allow into it.

When you think you've got everything figured out, you really don't know shit.  And when you think you don't know shit, you probably have a nugget or two of knowledge to offer.