Will Brink, Brinkisms And Other Stuff, Strength Training, Training Programs, 16
I’m now going to write my first “old guy” blog that’s going to start with the stereotype “darn kids today!” intro…so here goes:

Darn kids today! If there’s one thing I don’t understand about the younger generation I see in the gym – doing almost everything wrong – is, they really have no excuses. Back in the day, we had nothing to go on. We had some of the muscle mags, which were generally full of training articles written by genetically gifted drug assisted bodybuilders, and the advice of other clueless people in the gym, and that was it! There really was no solid science at the time, all that great east block training that has flooded the world was kept firmly in the east block, and there was no internet!

Hard as that is to imagine, yes, there was a time when no internet existed. Thus, we really had nothing but trial and error and a few magazines to go on. Today, there is an amazing amount of solid science based training information out there, and yet, I see the same mistakes happening in the gyms I did 20 plus years ago! All the great training information now available out there, much of it free, by the worlds best coaches and others, and yet, little has changed as far as the average kid in the gym still doing it all wrong…. I don’t get it. We had a pretty good excuse why we were clueless, but these darn kids today, really have none….

More perplexing, is the endless threads on the forums with people discussing workouts that are no better thought out or designed then the junk we were stuck with all those years go, seemingly ignoring all the great modern information out there today. No understanding of the basic concepts such as volume, intensity, TUT, periodization, muscle fiber types, etc, etc.

No, you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to make progress in strength and muscle mass in the gym, but you do need to understand the basics. More perplexing is why people continue to make up their own (usually awful) workout programs that set them years behind (read, spinning their wheels!), vs. simply following the programs of people who have spent their entire lives figuring this stuff out! Why re invent the wheel here? Everyone seems to think they are an expert when it comes to a workout program… and they are not…

There’s a ton of great coaches and programs to choose from. Choose one, follow it to the letter, then move onto others that fit your particular goals (and don’t get me started on the lack of goal setting that is so common…) and over time you will learn what you respond best to, but that takes years of hard work. If I were to summarize why the majority of peoples’ program suck, in a nut shell:

•They are Linear program designs (lack of Periodization!)

•Lack de-training/de loading periods

•Lack of planned progression

•Lack of specific goals

•Fail to match training to goals

•Fail to track specific goals

If the above reflects your approach, that’s why you fail to make any progress and why your workouts suck…

Darn kids today!

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