 Ladies and gentlemen, silent mic back with another video. Before we hop in, be sure to give this thing a thumbs up, subscribe, we're gonna be talking about what is the most important factor, number one, number two, maybe even number three, of getting strong and why you guys are focusing on the wrong stuff. But yeah, do a favor, like this thing, appreciate all the support in the past videos. And this topic kinda came to mind as I'm Twitch streaming. Check me out on Twitch, Monday through Thursday. And a lot of guys are obviously, you guys, my Instagram, et cetera, et cetera, that come in and chill. I am playing video games, but we tend to end up talking about lifting weights. And I love answering and I love teaching and I love coaching. But I guess there's a different conversation of teaching and coaching. Coaching in a lot of ways is more direct. I'm telling you to do something and you go and do it. I'm taking into account what your goals are, who you are, and giving you the best plan to go attack it and you go attack it. Teaching is kind of the why behind all this stuff. And for the majority of people, I know you're interested and you wanna get optimal gains, whether you wanna lose fat, build muscle, gain strength. But sometimes you don't need to know the why. And so a lot of people were asking you about programming and all these details on programming. And the biggest thing, you know, the other comments I'm getting lately are that, how fast I'm coming back to strength. But what you guys don't understand is that I've been doing this for, I've been lifting weights since eighth grade, year round and focusing purely on powerlifting for 11 or 12 years, year round. Up until this last fall, again, where I took off three months or so from everything and maybe six months from bench, maybe nine months from bench and maybe six months from deadlifts, I lifted minimum four times a week, mostly five to six times a week for 11 years, not missing a session, not being hungover, not missing my protein intake, et cetera, et cetera. So for me, I'm not surprised that I just pulled 585 in the gym and I'm hitting nearly close to my front squat PRs, et cetera. It's not that surprising. And I benched this week three 25, I think for two, which not as close to my best ever, but it's in the realm. And that leads to the number one important thing is literally just consistency. Now you hear me harp on programming and obviously programming, having a plan to get somewhere is going to help, right? If you wanna go to Starbucks and you've never been there, you need a roadmap to get there. But there are multiple ways to get there. Some may be a little faster, some may be a little slower, but if you don't have that map, that programming, you may not know or need to know which way gets you there fastest. You just wanna go get your coffee, right? And that's kinda like lifting weights. I've said in the past that no programming is fully optimized. Now someone misquoted me in saying that you can't program optimally. That's a little bit different if you really think about it because what I'm saying is we don't know exactly the volume, the intensity, the variations that you can handle in a week. We'll never know exactly. Kinda like nutrition. You'll never know exactly the micronutrients and macronutrients you need weekly or that you're intaking, you're absorbing to lose the exact amount of weight you want. But what we can do, kinda using the scientific method, trial and error, stabilizing some variables and slowly progressive being as consistent as we can, find what's most optimal or may help you. That leads to the programming, right? Programming number two, I think there are a lot of ways that we know will get us stronger. And that is some type of specificity depending on what your goal is. If you wanna be a better deadlifter, you should probably be doing some kind of deadlift. If you wanna be a deadlifter, a really strong deadlifter and you're doing only box squats and front squats, you'll deadlift some weight you'll be able to and you may even hit PRs, but that's probably not an optimized training program if you wanna be the best raw conventional puller you wanna be, right? And that's where these conversations lead. Now, the detail in those is what maybe doesn't matter. If you wanna be the best deadlifter ever or your best version of a deadlifter, whether you do four weeks of two inch block pulls or against bands or three inch block pulls, probably in the 10 year span, five year span, three year span won't make or break your next PR. What will is not putting enough effort and not being consistent. Some kind of variation, right? We're trying to, when we talk about specificity, we'll just keep the deadlift example is we want the hip hinge because that's the movement we're practicing. Greatest range of motion first probably, right? So the competition deadlift is gonna be closest to what you can practice, but then something against bands is very similar. You're just changing kind of the strength curve. Blocks are close, but you're obviously cutting down the range of motion. Chains are still similar range of motion, slightly different bar path, et cetera, et cetera. There is this zone of lifts that stay within kind of the pocket. Rather than, again, if you wanna be the best deadlifter and on your deadlift day for a cycle, you're just doing lunges, not deadlifts, probably not optimal. Can you get better that way? Maybe. General strength may help. People have gotten stronger doing crazy exercises and people have gotten stronger, not lifting sometimes, the exact movement, the specific movement. This will get more specific and you'll need to get more specific the longer you've been training, right? In the beginning, you could deadlift once a month, but if you're squatting on the other days and doing like hamstring curls, you might hit a deadlift PR in four to six weeks, but if you've been deadlifting and pushing your genetic potential, your own personal potential, three, five, 10 years into the game, you're gonna need to get more specific and up the volume. And then number three, I guess, right? So we have one, just consistency. Doing the movements as often as you can, staying healthy, having fun over a long period of time. Two, having some kind of program that sits in the pocket. Again, there is directions that we need in some basic rules, right? Like that specificity rule. The other one is like sets and reps. Can you increase your one rep max deadlift by just doing sets of 10? You probably can. Is it optimal to only do sets of 10 and then just test your one rep max? Probably not as you get stronger, right? But counter to that, it probably doesn't matter if you do a block that you're doing three sets of four as opposed to three sets of five. There's no magic in five and there's no magic in four. There is some, right? We're getting closer to specificity as we get close to the single and you're training strength a little bit more, perhaps to hypertrophy and there are benefits of getting more reps in to get more practice and build volume and then there's benefits of handling heavier weight, handling the intensities that get you stronger. So there is a time and place for all this but point being four to five, five to six, probably isn't a big deal but there is a little bit more of a big deal, one to 10. So I think you need to ask yourself kind of why and if you wanna learn programming, if you really wanna help and coach people and learn these general concepts and then learn to apply them or if you just wanna become the best lifter you can then hiring a coach or following a program is probably gonna be your best option. You don't always need to know the why is my point and I wanted to learn the why. I wanna be a really good coach. I'm not as obsessive about my own lifting. I want to get stronger and I wanna be healthy and I like lifting weights and I like training but I don't wanna be the world's best power lifter. Never have really. But I do wanna help you guys as much as you can. So I guess the last pieces are troubleshooting and once you get these basic rules then you can start to troubleshoot and it could be as something as simple as I don't feel very strong or get much out of doing block pulls. So, or I feel too strong doing block pulls. So if you can pull 300 pounds over your competition lift doing a block pull maybe that's not the variation you need to throw in any of your cycles and that goes for across the board variations of exercises, et cetera. We talked about the previous video when maybe to use a belt, how to use a belt and why I think people will apply it wrong. I think that's the same with these variations. Now some variations can, I'm just throwing out general rules now to try to help you guys handle some of this. They can address certain weaknesses whether it's a motor pattern thing or a muscular strength thing. But overall I think that's a little blown out of the water too. Just cause you miss your deadlift at lockout doesn't mean you should only do block pulls or that block pulls are gonna miraculously fix your deadlift. Some of it's positioning, some of it could be just strength, you could just be weaker, right? And so if I throw a baseball 100 yards I'm making up these analogies that may not be great. If I'm throwing a baseball 100 yards and it starts to putter out at the end does that mean I just need to like practice my deep end throwing or something? Like no, I'm probably just not strong enough to throw hard enough, right? If I throw harder, the bar will go further and that's kind of like a deadlift. If you're missing 500 at the top being able to block pull 500 doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to pull it from the ground. But if I just get stronger generally through the full range I'll be able to lock out that 500 eventually. Maybe not my world's best analogy but I think it makes some sense to you guys. So again, you focus on all these little details and you're gonna drive yourself nuts and you're not gonna improve or go anywhere. Just gonna be a matter of consistency having some kind of framework or plan to get there and it doesn't have to be super exact. Remember it's not gonna, we're gonna optimize it but it's not always gonna be optimal. And last one's just the work and effort. You do have to show up. You do have to get the work done. Sometimes it's gonna be uncomfortable but if you just sit there and you're calculating sets and reps all freaking day you're not gonna get anywhere. To counter my own argument I guess you do wanna plan and you do wanna put this in you don't just wanna go in the gym and do 10 sets of 10 on every single exercise until your head explodes every day because then longevity is a big key. So staying healthy, having fun will really last you long and that's why my strength's going back easy. That's how I learned a program and once again if you wanna dive into it you'll probably just need a coach or a mentor because there's so many different things to learn along the way. It's hard to explain in one three minute YouTube video but I do appreciate you guys kicking it. We'll be on Twitch Monday through Thursday 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Links in the bio or just search Silent Mike on Twitch. New podcast, 50%. I got a bunch of really big announcements coming. Life changing announcements as these influencers say. The biggest thing the internet's ever seen as these people say. So stick around, I'm excited to share potentially life changing for me. The man behind the camera, some people around us. We got a lot of big things that'll throw a big riptide in the content and our lives. So coming at you, appreciate you. Catch you in the next one.