Beast over Burden powered by Barbell Logic

In the MED Toolbox and SRA episodes, Matt and Scott discussed strategies for managing stress: the good kind of stress -- training stress. Unfortunately, for most adults training stress is not the only kind of stress they have to manage. There are the many curveballs that life throws: financial stress, job stress, family stress, death of loved ones. These stressors can be grouped into the category of "unproductive stress," yet they need to be accounted for and managed in your training program all the same.

Matt and Scott are back with another round of Q&A, answering listener-submitted questions from IG, FB, and email.

In today's podcast they answer:

1.) How do you train while traveling? How do you find a good gym on the road?

2.) Who are your favorite lifters to watch?

3.) How do you learn how to be a risk-taker (in business)?

4.) What are your persistent form problems? What are your "swing thoughts" before the lift?

In the second episode of the MED Toolbox, Matt and Scott address a problem unique to intermediate trainees: what do you do when recovery becomes an issue? We know that stress must increase in order to drive continued strength adaptations. However, for most intermediate trainees, especially older trainees, recovery between individual workouts will become an issue. The challenge, then, is to design a program in which systemic stress increases over time, but strategically reduce stress in individual workouts.

By now, Matt and Scott have made a logical case, founded on the SRA model, for increasing stress in order to continue progressing beyond the novice phase of training advancement. Moreover, they have argued that incremental stress should be applied with a minimum effective dose methodology, that is, using the smallest incremental amount of stress to continue driving adaptation. In today's episode, Matt and Scott outline some of the practical tools in the coaching toolbox for making changes to your program.

They may seem trivial, but warm-ups are an important part of the strength training process. Unfortunately many people either fail to do them properly (or at all), or they overdo them, missing the point that warm-ups are, well, a warm-up. Popular slogans like "our warm-up is your workout" don't help the matter, implying that the warm-up must be an intense, drawn out matter. The warm-up serves one purpose: to prepare us for the work sets, where we will actually impart the stress necessary to drive adaptation.

Over the last few years the "discipline" movement has gained full steam. From retired special forces like Jocko Willink and David Goggins touting the benefits of waking up at 4:00am, to Mr Money Mustache calling his followers to face punch their finances, the internet is awash in discipline pep talks. However, is white-knuckle discipline really the right approach to cultivate lasting habit change?

Matt and Scott continue their discussion of the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation model with an exploration of the recovery aspect. Plenty of articles on the web tout the benefits of "active recovery," but is there really such a thing? In Starting Strength, recovery is viewed as a relatively simple process driven primarily by food and sleep. Recovery, therefore, could be defined as an absence of stress. Adding more (non-productive) stress in the name of "active recovery" doesn't make sense.

Barbell Logic will always be about training and the myriad benefits it has on our lives, but even training is sometimes about... well, not training. In other words, life detrains us over time: as we age, as major events take over our time, as our priorities change. These moments serve as opportunities for us to re-evaluate our goals and change our methods, if needed. Through it all, the barbell is constant.

What began as a conversation between podcast recordings, turned into an interesting discussion about the nature of progress during the post-novice and intermediate training phases and the limitations of the SRA model as we currently understand it. Matt and Scott explore the question of what exactly drives progress in the traditional post-novice programs such as Texas Method and Heavy Light Medium.

When Scott sold Data Storage, Inc. -- as told in episode #142 --  things didn't go perfectly smooth. As with any decent sized small business, various legal matters arise in the course of regular operations. When it's sale time, however, any outstanding legal issues come under intense scrutiny as the buyer conducts their due diligence. In these situations, you need a ringer. You need a guy like David Keesling, a veteran trial attorney and labor law expert based out of Tulsa, OK.