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Grow Stronger: TRAINING FREQUENCY

The Grow Stronger Method is a bare-bones template for building strength.

It truly is the simplest system for growing super strong.

I realize that one program does not fit all people and situations, but there are a handful of principles that everyone should follow to reach their goals.

This update report is one of many that I will share with you on ways that you can modify the basic GSM template to meet your specific needs while

staying.

This update is on modifying the FREQUENCY of training with the GSM. -- It is inspired by a question from one of our fellow “Strength Geeks”,

Mike who posted a comment on HulseStrength.com.

Mike asks, “Since you subscribe to the idea that ʻstrength is a skillʼ and that the patterns must be practiced often to be engrained, why do we only

practice the bend (deadlift) and push (press) patterns only once or twice per week?”

Thanks for the questions Mike. What you are referring to in this question is

the FREQUENCY of training in The GSM.

Youʼll notice that we practice our deadlift variation on Mondayʼs and our

press variation on Wednesdayʼs. We also use Fridayʼs as a “full body density” training day. We hit all movement patterns on this day but we still

keep the intensity and volume high but we drop the length of REST INTERVAL time significantly in order to build density both in the workout

and presumably, within the muscle.

So we hit our most important patterns once or twice for the week but each time using a new set of parameters in order to elicit a different physiological

response.

As per Mikeʼs question, he goes on to ask why, unlike many other coaches whom we both admire, donʼt we hit these patterns 3 to 5 times per week?

Well, first I have an admission...

When I write new books, create videos or workouts for athletes whom I

have never met in person or completed a neuromuscular assessment on, I design it with an assumption that the reader will react in a similar fashion to

the program as I and the majority of athletes I have personally trained do.

Of course this is not fair, since like I said “one program does not fit everyoneʼs needs”. -- But this is where we begin.

In my experience training a pattern with high intensity (90% +) more than

twice per week is counter-productive. And Iʼm sure that any strength coach with his weight in protein powder would agree.

When coaches like Dan John and Pavel suggest training a pattern

everyday (John is known for saying, “if its important -- do it everyday”) they are not suggesting that you lift as heavy as you can for 5 x 2 everyday.

What they are suggesting is that you include the pattern in every workout,

but at a volume and intensity that is low enough to entrain but not overtrain; Pavel calls this “greasing the groove”.

For example, as a part of your daily “warm up” you can include dead lifts

and over head presses for one or two sets of 6 - 8 reps at moderate intensity.

In this way you keep the pattern at the top of your nervous systemʼs

recognized patterns list, yet you donʼt tax the system in the same way as when you do your heavy Monday or Wednesday workout. This is good.

Other Considerations

Training Age is basically how long you have been training. If youʼve

only begun training 2 months ago, then that is your training age. If youʼve been training for 20 years, then you are a more mature trainee.

Of course, the more mature lifter is going to have a different response from

training that the younger lifter.One of the things that a more mature lifter will recognize is that his nervous

system will be taxed far faster than a younger lifter. The reason for this is that he is able to recruit more power and stimulate more muscle fibers with

each repetition than the younger lifter.

The more mature lifterʼs nervous system is more efficient, therefore it gets the job done faster and also tires out faster. This leaves him with less

energy to train with the type of high frequency that a younger lifter may be able to produce.

Here is an analogy... A mature nervous system is like a home that has a

fully equipped electrical system that is capable of lighting every single room with 100 watt light bulbs. In this case the electricity is produced by a

generator, meaning that it is limited.

When compared to a house with a less powerful electrical system, one that

can only light 75% of the rooms and with 60 watt light bulbs, the fully equipped house will “burn out” the generator faster than the lesser

equipped one. -- Get it?

New lifters are like the lesser equipped house and mature lifters are like the fully equipped house.

This would mean that the newer lifter has more energy in reserve to “turn

on all of the lights” again tomorrow while the mature lifter might have to wait several days before the energy to light the house is recovered.

Remember, this is all happening at the level of the nervous system... not

the muscle. So the lifter may or may not feel sore after the workout. But soreness is irrelevant with regards to strength development. What matters

is how much “electricity” is generated.

We can modify the GSM method to meet the needs of a newer lifter in the following way. **The reps and sets would stay the same as in the

main manual, only the frequency would be manipulated in this example.**

Monday - Heavy Bend / Squat + Gymnastics

Tuesday - Heavy Push + GymnasticsWednesday - PLAY

Thursday - Heavy Bend / Squat + GymnasticsFriday - Heavy Push + Gymnastics

Saturday & Sunday - OFF

Again, I would not suggest this template for the advanced or mature lifter. If you are a new lifter, of a training age less than 24 months, this may be a

helpful modification for you.

Iʼll always leave you with this caveat... the ONLY way that youʼll know if something works is by your own personal experience. Nothing that I or

anyone else tells you is 100% true for %100 of the people, 100% of the time.

Seek out the expertise and advice of others who have invested time,

energy and resources on this Journey Of Strength , but always consider your own instinct and experience first.

You know YOU better than anyone else. Even if your ideas turn out to be

wrong, the experience is YOURS and when you share it with others it will

come from an original and authentic place. Regurgitated, copycat “facts”

do not contribute to personal growth in the way that only experience does.

So, get off the computer... and go do the damn thing!

Grow Stronger,Elliott Hulse

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table of contentsToo Much Muscle? “Yo-Yo Muscle Building”

Electric Strength

Fibrous vs Fluid Filled Muscle

A Strong Economy

Yearly Training Cycle

Monthly Training Cycle

Weekly Training Cycle

Daily Routine

The Bulk Free Diet

The BEST Muscle Building Supplement

Fat Loss Considerations

Final Thoughts

Recommended Training Equipment

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Too Much Muscle? “Yo-Yo Muscle Building”

Back in 1994 I began weight training to become bigger and stronger for high school football, and to earn an athletic scholarship.

At 5'8" and 185 pounds, I was already big and fairly strong for my age, but as any 15 year old high school football player will tell you, I wanted to become bigger, faster, and stronger.

To be 6'6" and 270 pounds, with the strength of a powerlifter and the speed of an Olympic sprinter, is the dream of every young American football player--at least, that was my dream.

My parents bought me my first weight set, it included one barbell, about 300 pounds of plates and a power rack. Everyday after school I would go down into the basement and train for three hours with the hope of achieving my strength, size and speed goals.

I was fortunate enough to have my uncle, who was a bodybuilder, a martial artist (Kung Fu) and a former gymnast, travel to our house on Long Island , up from New Jersey, every Saturday morning to teach my little brother and I how to train for strength. He taught us how to gain muscle mass, get stronger and become more explosive with the use of exercises like squats, bench presses, dead lifts, power cleans and gymnastic exercises.

He also taught us how to eat in order to add more size to our young, scrawny little bodies. We followed the typical bodybuilder’s mass gaining meal plan, including tons of chicken breasts, egg whites, brown rice and protein shakes. We also supplemented our diets with “weight gainer shakes.” These shakes contained 3,000 calories or more, most of which came from sugar!

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Needless to say, I got BIG! I discovered I had a genetic gift for building muscle and getting stronger--fast. It only took a few months for me to add over 20 pounds of mass to my body, not all of this was muscle, but I did reach my goal of weighing 210 pounds by junior year. I got strong enough to bench press over 300 pounds and squat over 400!

By senior year I was bigger and stronger than I had ever been and earned a scholarship to play football at a Division 1AA school in New York, all thanks to my uncle, the barbell set, months of hard work and piles of food!

In college I continued to train with barbells, and I continued to get bigger, stronger AND faster. In fact, in my Sophomore season I weighted over 230 pounds and ran the fastest 40 yard dash on the team, 4.34!

After graduation I decided to make a career out of strength training. I took various jobs as a personal trainer or strength coach at different gyms in New York.

Working full time made it difficult to eat the amount of food and train as often as I did in college. Within a few short months I lost all of the weight I gained in college, I went from 230 pounds, back down to 185 in less than a year!

During the time I stayed under 200 pounds I lost a significant amount of strength, mostly due to a change in my training and lifestyle .

Instead of grinding out 500 pound barbell dead lifts and 300 pound bench presses, I experimented with so-called “functional training.” This led me into the arena of Swiss ball and rubber band workouts. The heaviest barbell I lifted during those three years wasn’t more than 275 pounds.

Instead of eating 6 cups of brown rice, a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs a day, I ate organic vegetables and grass fed beef. Instead of swallowing spoonfuls of creatine and drinking Weight Gainer 3000 I took fish oil supplements and drank green tea.

I was healthier than ever before, and I had more energy and vitality than I had ever felt in my life, but I was weak. A big part of me missed the thrill of lifting heavy weights and gaining mass. So, I shoved the part of me that wanted to grow bigger than a gorilla deep down into the recesses of my consciousness and continued along the healthy, but weak, path.

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Until, I met Tom Mitchell.

In 2007 strongman training began to gain popularity in the sports performance and fitness industry. Strongman required an athlete build strength, speed, power and endurance in order to complete exercises such as tire flips, stone loading, sled dragging and log pressing.

Strongman training, with its high demand on the nervous and muscular skeletal system, forces the participant to get bigger and stronger--even if they don’t want to!

Events such as dead lifting a 2” thick handled barbell loaded with 500 pounds for as many reps as possible within 60 seconds places such a strain on your body that adding muscle mass, in order to meet the physical demand, is inevitable.

When I met Tom Mitchell, at a Crossfit clinic in Sarasota Florida, I was still about 185 pounds and eating less food than my 7 year old daughter does. As I listened to the 310 pound man talk to me and the other 150 pounds CrossFitters about strongman training I thought that it might be fun to give these “primal” exercises a try--that’s exactly what Tom had in mind when he designed his clinic!

Tom invited us outside where he had brought along several beer kegs filled with sand and water, the heaviest weighing 250 pounds. He also happened to bring a 400 pound tire with a handle attached to it by a 4 foot chain. (Who keeps this kind of stuff in their truck anyway?)

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For the next 90 minutes we carried, dragged, pressed and flipped the random “odd objects” he carried in the back of his diesel fueled pick-up truck. To conclude one of the most sadistic workouts that I had ever been through, Tom had us put all of the kegs and tires into the back of his truck and then PUSH his truck across the parking lot.

While laying in the middle of the concrete parking lot squirming in pain... I fell in love!

Strongman was the perfect sport for me. It allowed me to use all of my God-given gifts of strength, speed, power and agility once again. And not only did I fall in love with strongman training, strongman training fell in love with me.

It didn’t take long before I competed in my first strongman show, and won.

I competed in the 200 pound weight class, but I could feel my body BEGGING me to let it grow. I knew that if I ate like I did back in high school and college I could gain back all

of the size and strength lost during my years of “functional training”.

And that is exactly what I did.

Within less than two years my bodyweight ballooned up to almost 260 pounds! I was winning every strongman show I entered and even earned my Pro Card. I finally became a professional athlete!

My training was TOUGH!-

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-workouts would often last more than two hours daily. The intensity and volume I was training with was unsustainable and as a result of training so hard, for so long, my body was always achy and sore. In order to sustain this level of training I resorted to the use of more powerful “supplements”.

These extra supplements, on top of my genetic gift of strength, literally turned me into a “super man.” I had become so strong that I was jockeying for the position of America’s Strongest 105k Man!

All of the success and excitement came crashing down before I could earn that coveted title.

I tore my biceps tendon.

One day after training with my partners my father asked me to help him remove some trees from his yard. While pulling the root of a dead tree out of the ground, I tore my left biceps muscle clean off the bone. I wish I could have said that I was surprised, but deep down I knew this outcome was inevitable.

As a result of the injury I decided to stop strongman competitions all together and let my body recover from over two years of abuse. I abruptly stopped using all supplements and didn’t touch a barbell weighing over 300 pounds for the following 24 months.

I experimented with fat loss diets and different types of “hybrid” training until my bodyweight was back down to around 200 pounds. During this time I also competed in several long distance, obstacle races. Losing weight and running races was fun, but it is NOT what I am designed to do.

My body is built for strength, not endurance. So after two years it was clear what I had to do next, I had to...

Get stronger again! At this point I’ll bet you can imagine how the story goes. Elliott starts eating like a horse, lifting like a gorilla and gains back all of his weight , plus 20 more pounds, and goes on to win The World’s Strongest Man competition--right?

Not quite.

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The injury forced me to step back and re-evaluate my training. This time I set out to gain what strength coach Dan John calls “Easy Strength”. (To learn more about “Easy Strength” CLICK HERE).

Instead of beating the crap out of my body, which produces tons of soreness and requires significant recovery time, I have set out to build as much strength as possible under the following conditions:

1. Grow Stronger...without gaining too much “puffy muscle” or bulk.

2. Grow Stronger...while staying healthy and “functional.”

3. Grow Stronger...without creating achy joints or chronic pain.

4. Grow Stronger...without spending more than 45 minutes a day training.

5. Grow Stronger...without training more than 4 times per week.

6. Grow Stronger...with the use of only a barbell and chin up bar.

7. Grow Stronger...with the “minimum effective dose” of training.

8. Grow Stronger...while maintaining a high level of conditioning.

9. Grow Stronger...without sacrificing mobility and flexibility.

10. Grow Stronger...WHILE BECOMING THE STRONGEST VERSION OF MYSELF!

That last condition, number 10, is a very important part of my mission.

After my biceps injury I came to the realization that my obsession with training heavy and hard created a severe imbalance in my life. Although I was becoming physically stronger, other areas of my life suffered tremendously.

About a year ago I coined the phrase “Becoming The Strongest Version Of Yourself” as a way to describe what happens when you take a balanced approach to strength and personal/life development.

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I have dedicated an entire website to this concept and even have a certification program for people interested in becoming the strongest version of themselves. I call this idea STRENGTHOLOGY, the science of becoming the stronger you!

You can learn more about STRENGTHOLOGY when you CLICK HERE.

This idea of “balanced training” is a major theme of this book. If you want to become stronger than ever in the gym, but also have a life that you can participate in and be proud of outside the gym...then I invite you, join me on this journey.

Let’s Grow Stronger, together.

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Electric StrengthContrary to what most people believe, more muscle does NOT equal more strength. Of course muscle plays a huge role in your body's ability to produce force, but the muscle itself is only capable of producing tension though the nervous system.

If your nervous system can supply the muscle with enough “electricity” to overcome the resistance, you become stronger; regardless of muscle size.

In my living room at home we have a dial on the wall that allows us to adjust how much light the ceiling lamp produces. If we want the room to become brighter, we turn the dial up and the room becomes brighter. If we want the room to become dimmer, we turn the dial down and the room becomes dimmer.

We do NOT go and buy a larger sized light bulb when we want the room to become brighter. Instead, we “turn up the dial” which provides more electricity though the wires and into the light bulb thereby increasing the intensity of light in the room.

This is exactly how your nervous system and muscles work together.

Think of your Central Nervous System as the dial on the wall. When you need more electricity delivered to the muscle, you need to “turn up the dial”.

When you turn up the dial, your Central Nervous System sends more “electricity” though your Peripheral Nervous System which acts like the electric wires in my living room walls.

When the increased electricity finally reaches your muscle, it “lights up” with powerful neurological electricity and produces force against a given resistance. In the same way that the light bulb lights up the room, your muscle “lights up” the resistance by overcoming it.

Now, this doesn't mean that you can become your strongest without the gain of some muscle mass, or that you can become “The Worlds Strongest Man” without adding some bulk to your frame. But what it does mean is that you can teach your nervous system to produce more force (Grow Stronger) without growing much larger.

One of the main reasons I chose to write this book is because I wanted to continue growing stronger, without too much muscle gain.

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You might ask, “Elliott, why don't you want more muscle?”

First, after years of bulking up and cutting down I had become sick and tired of the fluctuations. Buying a new wardrobe every year is not my idea of money well spent--besides, one of my least favorite places on Earth is the shopping mall.

Also, I'd like to continue competing in various strength sports. I still enjoy strongman training, power lifting and Olympic lifting. When I compete in one of the heavier weight classes, my height (5'9") often becomes a limiting factor for me. It would be best to compete in a lighter, under 200 lbs weight class, and still be competitive. This requires that I don't gain too much weight.

My final reason is you. I know there are several athletes and fitness enthusiasts who read my website and watch my videos who want to become stronger but don't want to gain mass.

Athletes such as boxers, fighters, skateboarders, gymnasts, Olympic lifters, power lifters, swimmers, jumpers, sprinters, etc.--all need to be strong, but either have to stay within a weight class, or the extra bulk hinder s their sports performance.

With the Grow Stronger system you will become stronger and build leaner, more dense and functional muscle; rather than large, fluid-filled, bulky muscles. We make this happen is by focusing on training the nervous system and creating what's called Myofibrillar Hypertrophy.

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Fibrous vs. Fluid-Filled MuscleThere is more than one type of muscle growth.

First, you have what I call “puffy muscles”. The scientific name for this type of muscle growth is Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy. Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy is achieved by increasing the fluid, or sarcoplasm, levels in the muscle. When you train like most bodybuilders, with high volume and low or moderate weight and short rest intervals – you'll get sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

This type of training will make you grow larger looking muscle, but it will NOT make you stronger. The reason why you'll look bigger but remain relatively weak is because you are simply causing your muscle to retain fluid. Since water can not be flexed, like muscle fibers can, the extra size doesn't help you produce more force.

If we use the light bulb example again, it is like increasing the size of the glass bulb, as opposed to delivering more electricity to the bulb, or more accurately, increasing the filament size inside the bulb so that it can handle more electricity.

With the second type of hypertrophy, Myofibrillar Hypertrophy, we are actually increasing the “filament” size within the light bulb so that it can handle a larger amount of the electricity being delivered from your central nervous system!

When you train using the exercises and parameters in The Grow Stronger Method you will be creating actual muscle fiber growth! In order for your muscles to produce more force your body will continuously add tiny little “filaments”, called myofibrils, to each myocyte. or muscle cell.

We call the type of hypertrophy that we're looking to gain, myofibrillar, because we want to grow more of these myofibrils. Myofibrils are a part of the muscle cell, so when they

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become stimulated by the electricity from your nervous system they contract. This is very different from the fluid, which doesn't contract, that gathers within the cells in sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

There are two main ways that we build myofibrillar hypertrophy within The Grow Stronger Method.

First, we use a series of core barbell lifts with power lifting parameters in order to produce as much tension in the muscle as possible. This means using exercises like the barbell dead lift or a press. We always train very close to our “one rep max”, with intensities that allow only 1-5 repetitions . We also keep the overall volume very low and take long rest intervals.

The idea that you'll end up a “big fat power lifter” by lifting heavy and taking long rest intervals is completely untrue. The fact is, most powerlifters have horrible diets and often add lots of “supplemental” or “accessory” exercises to their workouts, both of these factors contribute far more to their bulkiness than their heavy lifting. In fact I know first hand some very lean powerlifters who lift more weight than bodybuilders fifty pounds heavier.

Next, we aim to produce as much tension within the muscle as possible. The more electricity you drive into your muscle, the more tension is produced. Notice how much tension a gymnast produces as he holds the Iron Cross position.

In the Grow Stronger system we will add several gymnastics and bodyweight exercises to our workouts in order to teach our nervous system and muscles how to work together to produce more force. These types of exercises produce tension in all of the muscles in your body. Everything from your hand strength to your core strength will be challenged.

And that brings me to my last point. The Grow Stronger Method does not require that you spend two hours in the gym, everyday. In fact, spending too much time working out is counterproductive and may cause your results to suffer.

This is the Ultimate Minimalist Workout Plan! All you need is a barbell set, a chin up bar and thirty to forty-five minutes three times a week to Grow Stronger!

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