The muscles come free

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The Frame, Part 2 of 4

I got back in the weight room this week for the first time since wisdom teeth surgery and a week at the beach with my family. Two weeks off. It felt good to train again.

Edyn started pre-K this week too. He didn't want to go. That was hard on him and it was hard on us, watching him not want to walk in. He finished the week strong and I'm proud of him for it. Bittersweet in a way I didn't expect.

My wife, Yesica, does the impossible. She's intentional about raising our kids in the ways of the Lord in a way I couldn't replicate if I tried, and she loves and nurtures them in ways I'm still learning from. Proverbs says he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. I know exactly what that means.

Two weeks off. Worth every minute.

A while back the two of us were at a restaurant trying to keep our kids from taking the place apart. An older woman leaned over from the next table. She told us we were doing a great job, and then she said something I've carried since: the days are long, but the years are short. One day you'll miss this chaos.

She was right about parenting. She's also right about your body.

"As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble."
— Harrington Emerson

Movement first, muscle second. Go muscles first, show muscles second.

THE DEEP DIVE

First, the question I get most.

People ask me all the time what the best program is.

The best program is the one you'll still be doing in three years. That's it. Not the one that looked good in January.

So we build around what a busy guy can actually keep. Two full body days a week is the non-negotiable. Three is the sweet spot. If you want a fourth, make it upper or lower, or make it conditioning.

Six days a week of body part splits is the old way. It was built for guys with nothing else going on.

Most guys don't quit because they didn't work hard enough. They quit because they can't recover from how they're training.

The other half of it is they walk into the gym without a plan. So they do mindless workouts, pile on filler work they don't need, and never build anything. Effort with no blueprint feels like training. It just doesn't add up to much.

Then, the six patterns.

Here's what full body means in our gym.

Squat. Hinge. Lunge. Push. Row. Carry.

That's the system. Train two days a week and you hit all six twice. Train three days and you hit them three times. Compare that to touching your legs once on Tuesday and not again for a week.

We add power on top of that. Jumps, sprints, med ball throws, swings. Because if you don't use it, you lose it, and power goes before strength does.

Train movements and you'll never miss the muscles. Train muscles and you'll miss the movements.

You'll see some coaches split push into vertical and horizontal. I keep it as one. Pressing overhead is great if your shoulders are healthy and your mobility is there. A lot of guys past forty force it anyway because it's on the list. For most of the men I work with, push means horizontal push, and that's the right method for that body.

That's the difference between a principle and a method. The pattern is push. Whether you press overhead or press flat is a decision we make about you.

Then, who this is for.

Most of the men I work with aren't obsessed with training the way I am. They don't want to be. They want this part of their life handled so they can go put their attention somewhere else.

What they care about is golf. Racquet sports. Basketball. Skiing. Getting on the water. Keeping up with their kids.

That's why we train you like an everyday athlete. Stay ready and you never have to get ready.

The patterns are our principles. The methods change all the time, based on your goals, your age, what hurts. It's also why we can train you when something's bothering you. We train around pain.

James Clear said you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Same thing, said a different way.

QUICK HITS

FUEL — Protein is the one nutrition variable worth getting right before anything else. Aim for a gram per pound of your goal bodyweight, spread across three or four meals instead of loaded into dinner. Training gives your body the signal to build. Protein is what it builds with.

TRAINING — Here's a two day week you can run on your own. Both days hit all six patterns, so you're training every movement and every muscle twice a week.

Day 1: goblet squat, dumbbell bench, dumbbell row, hamstring curl, walking lunge, farmer carry.

Day 2: dumbbell RDL, dumbbell incline press, pull-up, dumbbell side lunge, landmine front squat, cable rope chop.

Three or four sets each, stopping a rep or two short. There are a lot of variations that could replace any of these depending on your equipment, your goals, and how much time you have. The principles stay the same. The methods change.

FAMILY — This is the real reason to train like an athlete. So you can get on the floor and roll around, pick them up, throw them in the air, and chase them across the yard. Not just now. When they're fifteen. When they're thirty and they've got their own.

MIND — Get comfortable and obsessed with the boring stuff. Every great athlete and every operator I've studied says the same thing in different words: they got great at the fundamentals and then did them for years. Novelty feels like progress and almost never is.

ON THE WALL

One of my long term clients hit a lifetime PR on the Romanian deadlift this week. 355 pounds for 4 reps. Best he's ever done.

What I loved about it wasn't the number. A couple of years ago he was dealing with chronic hip and back pain, the kind you collect from years of sports and a body that's taken some wear. So we stayed away from what irritated it and got him stronger everywhere else. His back got stronger as a result of the work we could do, not the work we couldn't.

We just kept showing up and adding load slowly and appropriately. Now he's pulling numbers he never touched before.

He's not the only one. A lot of my guys will tell you they're stronger and more athletic today than they were in their glory days.

It's never too late. You just have to commit to showing up, even on the days you don't want to and the motivation isn't there. That's where it happens. In the showing up.

If you have a friend, brother, father, son, uncle, or grandfather who would get value out of this, forward it to them.

And if someone forwarded this to you, you can get it every Saturday morning right here.

Your body is worth stewarding. Go become 1% better. 🔧
—Coach Joshua

P.S. Last week we covered why muscle is an organ and not a mirror. You can read it here, and the full archive lives here.

Educational content, not medical advice. Partner with your physician, ideally one who believes in proactive care.