Sometimes I am stymied by the simple question “Why?”

This is usually in conjunction with someone asking a training question, or wondering about something I’ve instructed them to do during a group training class.

I think “Why?” is a great question, but not one that I’ve thought to ask often enough during my years of interest in the fitness realm.  My questions were more along the lines of “how much, how often?”

Lifting weight is not a holy endeavour, but if you hang in the training circles for long enough you will hear certain things repeated so often, that they are practically a fitness Scripture.  These things include, but are not limited to;

• Use big, compound lifts like the deadlift, press, squat, chins and row for most of your training (the squat is “the king” of lifts, the chin up is “the upper body squat”
• To squat correctly, push your hips back and your knees out
• The power clean improves rate of force development
• Use isolation movements to address weak links and for rehab
• Train mostly with a full body schedule or an upper/lower split
• Consume a gram of protein per lb. of bodyweight (which I always think is funny as it mixes the archaic and metric measurements)
• Use a full range of motion
• Take advantage of the body’s “anabolic window” by eating or drinking a meal immediately after training

These chestnuts are just examples; everyone immersed in Strength & Conditioning could contribute a line or a chapter to the big book of fitness adages.

But not everyone is “immersed” in this field.  Lots of people would just like to be in great shape to attract a mate or improve longevity.  Since they don’t see the whole process as remotely “holy” they’ve never heard of any of this stuff.  Or perhaps they are a highly advanced athlete in a field where weight training is a new development, maybe even formerly deemed unnecessary.  Some of the traditional martial artists and boxers might fall into this group.  These athletes may be hell-on-wheels in the ring, but ask them to do a power clean and they might just hit you with “Why am I doing this?”

When I hear that, I have this mental process going on something like, “well, in 1986 when I was a little boy trying to get big and strong, I read a Muscle & Fitness article (actually thousands of them) and it said the power clean was one of the best mass exercises.  Later on I discovered that M&F was a big fraud, but by then other people I trusted had vindicated much of what I’d learned, except they felt the exercise was primarily to improve explosion.  Then a bunch of other people indicated that the power clean was unnecessary; all you really needed to do was different med-ball throws and weighted jumps and so on.  But I think the movement is still a good one if you can do it, and I can’t arrange for a decent overhead throw in this low-ceilinged room, so I thought the power clean would fit the bill.  After all, picking something up off the floor and shoving it overhead is a pretty natural movement, and it might just give you a better uppercut.”

But they naturally don’t care about that.  I can’t blame them for not wanting to field the differing opinions of all the different experts who are invested in different disciplines and who will defend their point of view (and their bottom line) at all costs.

They want to hear just the last part; “this will be good for your uppercut”.  Or, “this will turn your abs into a rock wall”.  Or in the case of the group that is really not athletic and just wants to look good, feel good and potentially attract a mate, “this will make you look good naked”.

Not long ago a person dropped into our group class, and during the squat portion of the session when I told her to push her knees out, she asked “is that safe?”  This is kind of a sneaky way of asking “why?”  I mean, I would hardly recommend you do it that way if I already thought it was unsafe, right?

What I said was, and I believe this is verbatim; “Yes”.  What I wanted to say was, “Well power lifting super-coach Louie Simmons says to do it, Jim Wendler says it, Dave Tate says the same thing, all the world’s top squatters do it, your knees will work better if you do it too, and yes, it is actually safer than letting your knees cave in, and provides a greater range of motion than squatting with your knees straight ahead, which in many lifters only allows a quarter squat, and doing it this way has allowed me to train hard and heavy for years without incurring too much trauma”.

That’s “why”.  But that answer sucks almost as much as just saying “yes”.

Here is the deal.  If you really want to know why, please read the following;

Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe

The Strongest Survive, by Bill Starr

The Weightlifting Encyclopedia: A Guide to World Class Performance, by Arthur Drechsler

The 5/3/1: The Simplest and Most Effective Training System for Raw Strength, by Jim Wendler (available on elitefts.com – read all articles on this site, also read the training logs)

Core Performance Essentials, by Mark Verstegen

The New Rules of Lifting, by Alwyn Cosgrove, with Lou Schuler

The Encylopedia of Bodybuilding, by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Power To The People, by Pavel Tsatsouline

From The Ground Up, by Dan John (available free http://danjohn.net/from-the-ground-up-free-ebook/) –read everything on this site.

Advances in Functional Training, by Mike Boyle (available at http://www.davedraper.com/fitness_products/product/BMBA.html)

Now, if you don’t want to do the reading, no problem.  You are busy people, and I completely respect that.

But, then if you ask me “why” we are doing something, I think I’m going to defer to a stock answer from now on.  It will be the following:

“This will make your butt look great.”

I think that covers everything.

Ron Dykstra