My Philosophy

To steal from Bruce Lee, and to look as if I'm ripping off my friend Alwyn Cosgrove, my philosophy can be summed up by 'Absorb what is useful'. To my credit, I used this in a usenet post before Alwyn did.

Frankly, I am usually interested in what anybody has to say about training or nutrition because, odds are, they know something that I don't. Even if I disagree with them on 99% of what they have to say, the 1% that teaches me something new or useful is worth it. In my mind, all training tools are only that: tools. Swiss balls, machines, free weights, compound movements, the Olympic movements, HIT, it all has a potential role in training.

People often get frustrated with me because they will ask me a question and typically get an answer of 'It depends'. Because it does. In the lifting and nutrition world, it's most typical to see people get married to a single concept and defend it for all people under all circumstances. whether it's high-carb or low-carb dieting, high volume or high-intensity training, or the never ending free weights vs. machines or compound vs. isolation exercises debate, the message is the same 'There is a single correct answer in terms of how to eat or train and I have it. Now give me money.'

So I'm a little cynical but I can't look at training or diet or the myriad aspects of human physiology that simplistically. The appropriate training for a 35 year old female newbie who has never performed competitive sport before is not the same as what's appropriate for a 22 year old athlete; a beginning powerlifter (or any athlete for the matter) shouldn't be trying to copy what guys with 15-20 years of training experience behind them are doing. Whether machines or free weights or compound or isolation exercises are 'optimal' depends on the individual, their previous training, their current training, their goals and the remainder of their workout. It can all potentially fit into a given workout scheme, depending on the circumstances.

The same goes for diet. The optimal diet for competitive cyclist performing 2 hours per day or more in the saddle won't be the same as for a sedentary couch potato, or for a bodybuilder or powerlifter. Optimal can only be defined in a context dependent way: what is optimal under one situation isn't optimal under another.

At the same time, I find that a lot of folks get too wrapped up in a million and one details that they tend to miss many of the fundamental principles of training or diet.

A training program must provide progression, overload, recovery and few other things to be ideal; what approach to progression, overload, and recovery are optimal for a given individual under a given situation will depend on the circumstances.

A fat loss diet needs to meet certain requirements to be correctly set up in my mind, that includes below maintenance calorie levels, protein intake and essential fatty acid intake. Beyond that, issues of how many carbs, or how much dietary fat, meal frequency and timing all depend on the circumstances.

The same goes for mass building, the diet needs to supply sufficient calories and protein for mass gains but the composition beyond that depends on an individual's training volume and genetics (some people seem to respond better to higher carbs, others to lower).

Like I said: The answer to any training or diet question is usually "It depends." While that may not be what you want to hear and while it may not be as intuitively attractive as someone telling you they have the only correct answer, I think it happens to be the truth of the matter.