Get Strong First

Why doing a good general strength program first, will not only get you stronger and more jacked than trying to specialize right out of the gate - and how to do it

Author’s Note: This article first appeared in two parts in the summer and autumn editions of Renegade Health Magazine, with the cool bespoke illustrations and formatting to go along with it. My version here will be the basic version, since I still want to encourage everyone to go there and buy it.

This piece covers ground that I’ve written about many times before in various articles, but puts it all together in one place, summarized for a one-stop shop type article. You always have to simplify things a bit when doing so, but it nevertheless serves as a good introduction to the topic.

What is Strength?

The word “strength” immediately conjures up vivid images of heroism in a variety of ways: strength of character to stand up and say no when the whole world tells you to stay home scared, close your business, and wear a mask; or physical strength to do manual labor, fight off a home invader to protect your family, or carry someone out of a burning building to safety. Though we use the word strength all the time, rarely do we think about its definition in the context of physical capability.

In engineering, strength is defined as the ability of a material to resist destruction or deformation under the action of external force. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Merriam-Webster gets a little closer with its top definition: “The quality or state of being strong: capacity for exertion or endurance.”

But this still leaves needing a good, practical definition of strength for everyday use: What attribute specifically, gives one a greater capacity for exertion? Vibes?

The answer, my friends, is as follows: Strength is the ability to produce force, against an external resistance. Force being that physical quantity which causes movement or motion. Don’t worry, you don’t need a physics degree to read this article and we won’t be doing any physics problems involving F(orce), M(ass), or A(cceleration). We just need a basic working definition for what strength is, before I try to convince you why it’s important, why it’s worth focusing on as a major component of your fitness even if aesthetics is your main goal, and the best way to do so. The ability to produce force against an external resistance is a perfectly good working definition that describes the essence of what strength is, without resorting to complicated physics equations or explanations.

Why Get Strong?

Producing force against various external resistances is the very basis of how we interact with our environment. Picking up a heavy bag of mulch for your yard? Strength. Carrying your daughter or throwing her up into the air with ease? Force against an external resistance. Pushing a stalled car to the side of the road so it’s out of danger and traffic can continue to flow? Strength. In athletic contexts, a running back stiff-arming a linebacker, or an offensive tackle pancaking the defensive end are both examples of producing force against an external resistance, in this case not a passive force but an active one trying to reciprocate.

Even something we take for granted like getting up off the toilet without assistance is a function of being able to produce enough force with your feet into the ground, to create the equal and opposite reaction of lifting yourself up off the pot. Anyone who’s taken care of a frail elderly relative knows all too well how important strength is to retain independence and dignity as we age, even if they’ve never thought about it in exactly this way before.

Strength Trickles Down

Strength not only forms the basis of how we interact with the world around us in the most fundamental way, but it also has a trickle-down effect on almost every other physical and athletic capacity. This may sound like a strange and overly ambitious claim, but it holds up to scrutiny. I’ll give a few examples and leave the rest to the research of the intrepid, curious reader.

Those of you who’ve been involved with CrossFit have used Dynamax medicine balls for the infamous wall-ball exercise. Dynamax was co-invented in the 80s by Jim Cawley, who gave one of the best ever summaries of the physical skills required for fitness and athleticism. This post on the CrossFit main-site from all the way back in 2003 enshrines the list:

You can find a slightly more detailed version of the list here.

Cardiorespiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. This is a good, comprehensive list of the physical attributes that comprise fitness and athleticism. Let’s explore how strength trickles down to several of them.

Power: The ability to apply maximal force in minimal time. In other words, the ability to apply the force you have, QUICKLY. This is the attribute that really gets the crowd going. Whether it be a soaring slam dunk on the court, a leaping catch on the field, or a 200kg snatch on the platform: the ability to produce a lot of force RIGHT NOW, creates the sports highlights we love and enjoy. It might take eight seconds for a powerlifter to lock out an 800 lb deadlift, but there’s no way to make a leaping catch slowly.

And despite the time difference between the slow deadlift and the leaping catch, this is where improving your strength really shines. While the mainstream Strength and Conditioning industry is often focused on complicated training protocols to achieve small increases in RFD (rate of force development), the low hanging fruit is to simply massively increase the amount of force you can produce in the first place.

For example, if you take a guy with a 200 squat and increase his RFD by 5-10%, you’re still applying that higher RFD to a low level of force, and he won’t be very explosive. But take the same guy and get his squat from 200 to 500, and now, even with the same slightly lower RFD, the 500 lb squatter massively out-explodes his alternate universe self who can still only squat 200 lbs. If he has access to only 50% of his strength quickly, he has 100 lbs vs 250 even with 0 improvement in RFD. Whereas if he improves his RFD by 10%, to 60%, he now has access to 120 lbs. That’s still a lot lower than the 250 he gets instant access to by taking his squat from 200 to 500 even with no increase in RFD.

Speed: No doubt technique is a very important aspect to speed, and no one would suggest strength is the only factor. That said, it is a major factor. At root, driving your feet into the ground harder with stronger legs - also with increased power as per the above - gives you a harder ‘push’ for each stride. If you look at sprinters’ physiques compared to long distance runners, they are far more muscular. This isn’t a coincidence. That muscle is necessary for force production, aka strength.

Balance: The ability to keep your center of mass (COM) over your base of support (BOS). This one is a little less obvious and provides a good example of how strength trickles down in a way most people don’t consider.

Balance is partially a function of your ability to produce the force necessary to keep your COM over your BOS. To illustrate how, I often uses the example of lying on your back. This is the easiest position in which to keep your balance; you can produce virtually no force and manage to successfully lie on your back. Moving up a level, to maintain balance while seated, you need a slightly greater amount of force; there’s some tension in your legs, and some of the muscles of the trunk and back get involved to keep you sitting upright. It’s still easy, but you must produce a bit of force here. Continue on to standing, walking, running, and finally squatting. Each progressive step is a slightly more challenging one in terms of keeping balance, and each one requires more force production than the one before it. Force production is a key component of balance. Not the only component, but a key one.

I am not suggesting that training up to a 500 pound squat will automatically make you a master tightrope walker or expert snowboarder or any other balance dependent activity. Most high level balance-dependent activities have large skill components, which need to be practiced and honed to achieve competence and then mastery. The ability to produce more force will not, in and of itself, improve your skills at these activities. However, it will allow you to better express the skills you have, than if you are not strong.

Stamina: Similar to tightrope walking, I am not suggesting that becoming the strongest human on earth will mean you have the greatest stamina. Obviously top strongmen and powerlifters have intensely specialized in their domains, and do not have the same stamina as professional soccer players. That’s not the argument. The argument is that all else equal, and for someone who is not yet strong, strength will improve stamina in a trickle-down manner, even without specifically working on stamina. Why?

As an example, let’s take a recreational cyclist: every pedal stroke in a 50-mile bike ride is a repetitive, sub-maximal effort that requires a small percentage of maximal force production for Bob the cyclist. Bob has never trained before, so he can only squat 100 pounds. Just to throw out a figure for the example, we’ll say each pedal stroke represents 10% of Bob’s maximal force production capacity. If we take 2 months and get Bob’s squat strength to 200 pounds, now each pedal stroke at the same speed represents only half the previous percentage of Bob’s max effort: 5% instead of 10%. Bob can now either go further at the same speed before fatigue, or go faster (by pedaling harder/producing more force) for the same distance. It’s just math.

No one is claiming the world’s best squatter will be the world’s best cyclist. Achieving the top level in most sports requires specialization that trades off general capabilities for the specific ones needed to excel in YOUR sport. But it’s no coincidence that the legs of track cyclists look like this:

Going through all 10 items on the list would be prohibitively long. But strength has a large and clear impact on 8/10 of the list, and a small but still positive impact on the other two. The curious reader can do the remaining analysis for him or herself, or read where I’ve discussed it elsewhere.

How to Best Get Strong?

I will clarify three primary elements here: What tools to use, which movements to use, and what kind of programming to use. Each of those three topics could be a feature length article of its own. Since this is an overview article, I will necessarily over-simplify a bit so as not to get lost in the trees and miss the forest.

The Tool

This is the most controversial part, and where I get the most pushback. The pushback is usually either emotional attachment to other modalities, or comes from looking superficially at what some strong people do, without trying to understand the underlying mechanisms of how any of this works. I ask that you approach this with an open mind and consider my analysis with fresh eyes first, understand it and mull it over, before trying to argue or disprove it. I often have the same debate with people about sports-specific strength and conditioning, where the same principle applies:

Feel free to disagree, but do so by finding flaws in the analysis, not by appealing to authority or unexamined phenomenology.

That said, the only tool you need to get strong, if you’re not already strong, is a regular old barbell. Well, you also need a power rack, sturdy flat bench, plates, and a hard even surface on which to lift. But that’s really it.

I am not claiming that you can’t get strong, fit, or jacked with other tools. Plenty of people have done so. I am also not claiming that this is the only tool you’ll use forever, for the rest of your life. In fact, as an advanced lifter with more than 20 years in the gym behind me, I use all sorts of tools: dumbbells, cables, kettlebells, speciality bars like the safety bar and Swiss bar, even some machines.

I am, however, claiming that for anyone who isn’t already strong and at least an intermediate level lifter, you don’t need anything but the very basics to get strong in the first place, and the barbell will get you there more effectively than any other tool.

Why? Every other tool has limitations that simply don’t exist with a barbell, which make it the best way to build your base. Once your base is built, specializing or building further can readily be done with a variety of tools.

Unlike other tools, barbells allow:

1. Infinitely scalable loads: you can increase the overall load by as little as 1lb or less with the right equipment – microplates or some washers.

2. The maximum load to be lifted: if you are planning to increase maximum force production, you’d better use the tool that allows the most weight to be lifted. Dumbbells, atlas stones, logs, machines and every other tool out there has limits on how much you can lift. Sometimes this is due to either the equipment itself - the machine stack only goes so high. Sometimes it’s the ability to get into position with the equipment - when I dumbbell bench 155+ lb dumbbells for 10 reps, getting into position is harder than the lift itself. Sometimes it’s the awkward ergonomics of the tool - atlas stones are cool and badass, but the awkward positions required to lift them, and the unfriendly shape and size of the stones themselves, limits how much you can lift as a percentage of your actual strength.

The barbell has none of these limitations.

3. Training using only a small number of movements: with a core group of just 4-5 main movements to learn and master, which stress the entire system, barbell training causes that entire system to adapt and get stronger. Not just muscle, but tendon, bone, ligament, heart, vessels, lungs, everything. No need to learn and do 6 different complicated exercises per bodypart, at least not at first.

4. Movements that have clearly defined and reproducible ROMs, to ensure objectively that progress is being made, rather than just ‘feeling’ like you’re working harder.

The barbell is the only tool that is perfectly ergonomic and doesn’t have these limitations. Use it to build your base. Branch out afterwards.

The Movements

The “Core Four” movements are the squat, press, deadlift, and bench press. The press refers to the standing, two-hands, barbell overhead press. These four movements train the entire system, as described above, and produce both local and full body muscular and neurological improvements that exceed those which can be achieved with any other tool at this stage in your fitness and training journey.

Adding the barbell row as the fifth movement fills in the one gap that the core four don’t address - an upper body pulling movement that utilizes the posterior upper body muscles as the primary movers. Performing chin-ups, pullups, or lat pulldowns of some kind is also recommended on this program. Between the core four, barbell rows, and chin-ups, you have everything you need to go from weak or middling to strong and jacked. Nothing else is needed at this stage.

Why? These movements allow you to:

1. Train the most muscle mass

2. Over the longest effective range of motion

3. In a way that allows you to utilize the most weight

4. And thus get stronger

better than any others. These four criteria form the backbone of why we choose our core movements the way we do. This is not the sport of powerlifting, this is general strength training.

Avoid the Complexity Trap

One of the biggest mistakes people make is making things more complex before they’re ready. Just as you would not benefit from doing Usain Bolt’s sprinting program before mastering the basics, or JJ Watt’s football program, so too copying the programs of the best lifters or bodybuilders will not work for your narrow ass. At least not yet.

You need to build your base first, before any of the more complicated, advanced stuff will work well for you. Build your base using the most fundamental movements and patterns, which best fulfill the above four criteria first. Once your base is built, you’ll get more out of everything else, be it cable flyes, lunges, dumbbell curls, or hip thrusts.

Hopefully I’ve now shown how almost every aspect of fitness is enhanced by increasing your maximal force production – increasing your strength. While some activities and sports require a higher amount of absolute strength than others, there’s no doubt that every single one benefits from increased strength. And I’ve also established that for increased strength, there’s no tool as useful as the barbell, using the core four movements, plus barbell rows and chins or lat pulldowns. Now I’ll go briefly into the best way to use the barbell to increase your strength.

The Program

Keeping the theme of avoiding unnecessary complexity, the program is simple. But don’t confuse simple with easy. You can get surprisingly strong in just 3-4 months with this simple process, but it’s very hard to see through to the end. You’ll test not only your physical strength but your mental fortitude as well.

The program is called a linear progression, because you don’t change many variables other than the weight, which increases linearly. You organize your movements logically, pick a set and rep range that we know works every time it’s followed, and don’t miss a single workout for 3-4 months. You’ll be amazed at the progress that follows.

You will lift 3 days per week, on non-consecutive days. It is recommended that you limit all other exercise temporarily to get the most out of the program. You can resume everything else after you’ve taken a few months to build your strength base up.

The squat, bench, press, and barbell rows are done for 3 work sets of 5 reps, after a warmup for each lift. Deadlifts are done for 1 work set of 5 reps. Lat pulldowns for 3 sets of 8-10 reps; if you can do chin-ups or pull-ups, 3-4 sets to fatigue work just fine.

One more note: The time frames for each phase of the program that I give below are a rough average; it usually takes about 3 months to go through the program. Smaller, older, less naturally athletic people sometimes go through each phase a little quicker, completing the whole process in about 2 months. Larger, younger, more naturally athletic people may get 4-5 months out of it. The point isn’t to mindlessly follow rules, but to give general guidelines that you’ll apply with wisdom, based on your personal situation.

Likewise, those of you who ignore my dietary and recovery advice found below, will likely complete the program in 7-9 weeks, rather than the full 12+ you would have otherwise gotten out of it.

The First Day

Your job on the first workout isn’t to max out. Unlike advanced lifter programs, you don’t need to set a 1 rep max and then calculate percentages to work with based on that max. All you need to do on day 1 is find your initial working weight for one set of five reps on the Core Four lifts.

Your initial working weight should be such that you can perform the lifts with good form and control, but where the 5th rep just starts to be slightly challenging. It’s a weight you could do for 9-10 reps if you had to, but you’ll stop at 5 today.

Why? To have a brief runway period where a) your body gets used to this programming, and b) you can build a base of good technique that will become second nature, before the weight becomes so heavy that all you can focus on is “UP!” We need your technique to be solid before things get to that point in a few weeks, so start a little light and build from there.

For each of the Core Four - squat, bench, deadlift, and press - do an empty bar set or two of 5-10 reps, then continue on with sets of 5 reps. Add weight each set until you find your working weight as described above: where you could do 9-10, but the 5th rep just starts to be slightly challenging. Stop there. Try to find this weight on the 4th set of each lift, the 5th at most. Make your weight jumps accordingly.

Do this workout at the end of the week, so you can rest for 2 days and then start the true training cycle at the beginning of the next week.

The First Two Weeks

You’ll only do the Core Four movements for two weeks. Workout A is squat, bench, deadlift. Workout B is squat, press, deadlift. Start using the weights you found on the test workout, except you’ll do 3 sets of 5 on squat, bench, and press; instead of just the 1 set you did on the test workout. Deadlifts remain 1 set of 5 reps.

You’ll alternate Workouts A and B, three days per week. So week 1 is A/B/A and week two is B/A/B.

Each workout, add 5 lbs to each lift compared to what you did the last time. So at the end of 2 weeks, your squat and deadlift will be up 30 lbs, and your bench and press 15 lbs each, compared to the test workout.

The Next 3-4 Weeks: Phase 2

You’ll make two main changes here. First, you’ll switch from deadlifting every workout to twice a week, and introduce the barbell row on the middle day as a lighter pulling variant. Second, you’ll switch your weight jumps on the bench and press to 2.5 instead of 5 lbs apiece. You’ll need a gym with microplates to do this, or order your own.

So instead of the A/B/A - B/A/B repeating structure, it’s now a weekly A/B/C repeating structure.

A: Squat, Bench/Press alternating, Deadlift

B: Squat, Bench/Press alternating, Barbell Row

C: Squat, Bench/Press alternating, Deadlift

The squat and deadlift go up 5 lbs every time, and the bench and press go up 2.5. On week 1, do the same with the barbell row that you did on the test workout to find your starting weight, and do 3 sets of 5 reps, adding 5 lbs per week thereafter.

By the end of this phase, your squat and deadlift are up 60-75 lbs from where you started, and your bench and press are up about 25. Since you should have started with some running room, things should have been easy for the first week or two, but really start to get challenging as this phase goes on.

Late Game, 3-4 Weeks: Phase 3

Two more changes for Phase 3. First, you’ll take a light squat day mid-week, doing 2x5 at 70% of whatever you did your last heavy workout, instead of 3x5 with 5 more pounds all three days per week. This will facilitate recovery and keep you in the groove, so you can continue to add weight the other two squat workouts per week.

Second, you’ll switch the deadlift from twice to once a week, also to facilitate recovery. This opens up a slot for chin-ups or lat pulldowns. Exactly how to organize things now becomes a bit trickier but I’ve found great success as follows:

A: Squat heavy, Bench/Press, Barbell Row

B: Squat light, Bench/Press, Deadlift

C: Squat heavy, Bench/Press, Chins or Pulldowns

You’re still adding 5 lbs to the squat every heavy day, 2.5 to the bench and press every time, and 5 to the deadlift and row once a week each. For chins, try to add a rep a week, or if doing pulldowns, progress a little in some way by either adding a rep or adding a little weight. A great basic protocol is to find a challenging weight for 3 sets of 8. Try to add a rep to each set, or even just one set, each week. When you can do that weight for 3x10, add one more weight unit, go back to 3x8, and repeat the process.

The Home Stretch: Phase 4

You’re in the end-game now. Your body is tired, and you’re mentally fatigued from knowing that your reward for doing more than you’ve ever done before in your entire life, is to turn around and do it again 2-4 days later. You’re now at the end of your body’s ability to recover quickly enough to add weight multiple times per week. To squeeze a few more workouts or weeks out of you, we now make one major change: top set+back-offs instead of sets across.

You will still do 3 sets of 5 reps, but instead of all 3 sets being the same weight across, you’ll do one set at the new 5 or 2.5 lbs heavier load, and the other 2 as back-off sets that are 5-10% lighter. I tend to use 92-95% for bench and press, and 90-92% for squat. Deadlift is still one heavy set of 5, though if your deadlift peters out before your squat you can drop to one heavy set of 3 reps to keep it going as long as the squat is still going up.

When you fail a weight, meaning you didn’t get all 5 reps of a new top PR set, try it again the next time that lift comes up. Many people get it the next time. However, if you fail twice in a row - congrats, you’ve completed your linear progression.

When and How to do a Reset

The first time you fail any lift, try it again with that same weight the next time the lift comes up in the program. If you get it, continue on as before. If you fail again, you’ll do one re-set per lift.

To re-set, drop the weight by 20% for the next workout, then climb back up over 3-4 workouts til you’re once again at the spot where you failed. This time you should push through it. Since the lifts are intricately connected, it makes sense to re-set bench and press at the same time, and squat, deadlift and rows at the time time. So you can be on a re-set for your upper body lifts but not lower; your lower but not your upper; or theoretically both at the same time if you fail a squat and press or bench at around the same time.

Once you’re back at the weight at which you failed, drop back down to the same 5 and 2.5 lbs per workout increases you used before, respectively for the squat/deadlift/rows and bench/press.

Example 1: You’re supposed to bench 225 for 3x5. You only get 5,4,4 reps across the 3 sets. Try it again the next time bench comes up. You only get 5,4,3. Time for a re-set. Drop down 20% to 180. Your next bench workouts will be 180, 200, 215. Then do 225x5 on the next workout and push through that plateau, resuming 2.5 lb jumps thereafter.

If the re-set doesn’t happen til the home stretch phase, then switch to the top set + backoff scheme one workout before you hit the weight at which you failed. In this example, you’d do 180 and 200 for 3x5 each, then the next workout would be 215x5 and 205 for 2x5. Then the next workout 225x5 followed by 210 for 2x5, and so on.

Example 2: You’re supposed to squat 325 for 5 and 295 for 2x5 in the home stretch. You fail 325 twice in a row. Drop back down to 260, and do 260, 290, and 310 your next three heavy workouts, switching back to top set + backoffs for 310. Then go back to 325 and blast through it. Resume 5 lb jumps on heavy days, now just twice a week, thereafter.

When you fail twice in a row again, as you eventually will, your linear progression is over.

Warmups and Rest Periods

Do 1-2 empty bar sets of 5-10 reps for squat, bench, and press. Then take 3-4 weighted warmups using relatively even jumps between the empty bar (45 lbs) and the weight of your first work set. Bias it slightly so the last jump from final warmup into first work set is a little smaller.

If your first work set is at 95: 45x8, 45x8, 65x5, 75x4, 85x2, then your 95x5 work sets.

If your first work set is at 225: 45x8, 45x8, 115x5, 155x4, 195x2, then your 225x5 work sets.

If your first work set is heavy enough, add one more warmup set. For 365 work sets, do 45x5, 45x5, 135x5, 225x4, 275x2, 325x1 so the jumps between sets are manageable.

As for rest, you’ll need more than you’re used to. When you’re first starting out, the weight isn’t so heavy, so 1.5-2 minutes is enough. As you get into week 3, you’ll start to need more like 3-3.5 minutes between work sets. By the time you’re 6+ weeks in, it’s not unusual to take 5-7 minutes between work sets. This is fine - the point is to be recovered and make the next set, not to miss reps because you didn’t rest long enough.

Some of you will ignore this advice and rest 1-2 minutes between sets anyway, or do the next set as soon as your heart rate slows back down. You will soon start to miss reps doing it this way, and wish you had listened.

Eating and Recovering for Success

This is the other part that no one wants to hear. Think about what you’ll be asking your body to do for a few months: grow, change, and adapt more rapidly than its ever done before, certainly in your adult life. You’ll be building and thickening more tissue in a short amount of time, than you probably thought possible. This process can’t occur if you’re also “doing cardio” 3-4 days a week and breaking yourself down. It can’t occur unless you eat at an appropriate caloric surplus.

I am personally a big advocate of intelligently dosed conditioning for your cardiovascular and respiratory systems. But for just these 3 months, focus on strength and strength alone; you’ll thank me later. Every single person I’ve ever seen who ignores this and tries to maintain a challenging cardio regimen fails the program early, usually somewhere around week 5-6, and then blames the program for their lack of success. Don’t be that person.

To maintain decent shape, I recommend walking. A 10-15 minute walk after every meal is fantastic, and you can add other daily walks to that as well, with your dog or significant other. Don’t go overboard and walk 10 miles a day, don’t hike up the local mountain every day. The idea here is to get some good activity that will keep you in general OK shape, while you temporarily focus on strength alone for a few months. As soon as you make this too challenging, your body won’t be able to recover and adapt fast enough to keep adding weight and getting stronger at the rapid pace we’re asking it to do.

As far as eating goes: unless you’re starting off obese, you’ll need to eat at a caloric surplus to make this work. Don’t count almonds to get to a 50 calorie surplus. It must be meaningful. At the same time, many have gone overboard and gotten chubby in their quest to add just 5 more lbs to the bar, which isn’t worth it either.

A good rule of thumb for roughly normal weight men is to start with 15-18 calories per lb of bodyweight per day; for skinny men, 19-22; for overweight men, 12-13. I’m assuming normal overweight here, if you’re truly massively obese, other guidelines may apply. You may need to scale your calories up or down a bit, but this a good place to start.

Protein will be your friend, and you may need to eat A LOT more of it than you’re used to. For people who are new to this, getting 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass is generally a more realistic goal than 1 gram per pound of body weight. This is even more true if you are very heavy or have high body fat %. A 300 lb fatty never needs 300g of protein.

Estimate your body fat % at either 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30%. Doesn’t need to be more precise than that. Ex: 250 lbs at 25% BF. 250-62 lbs fat mass = 192g protein per day. 185 at 15% BF. 185-28 lbs fat mass = 157g protein per day.

If you want to do one gram per pound of bodyweight (aside from the obese), that’s great - I’ve just found practically it’s often too big a sudden change for people to comply with when new to this, and repeated failure often leads them to give up on the whole nutrition thing and just go back to their old eating habits. We need to avoid that, but there’s nothing wrong with a gram per pound in most cases and may even be some benefits over a gram per pound of lean mass, if you can do it.

Protein and carbs have 4 calories per gram, and fat has 9. For the remainder of your assigned calories per pound of bodyweight per day, get the rest of your calories with a reasonable mixture of carbs and fat. If you’re on a no-carb or low-carb diet, you can continue to adhere to it, though tons of anecdotal evidence supports that, similar to not doing cardio, getting carbs during this phase is extremely helpful and it’s hard to maximize this phase of training without them. But that’s a decision you’ll have to make on your own, possibly after failing reps earlier than you expected.

Remember this is not a permanent lifestyle change or program. You’re doing this for about 3-4 months to get MUCH stronger very quickly. Then you can resume your cardio, your specialized diet, and start training again for aesthetics or whatever else it is you like to train for. But now, with a solid base of strength underneath you, to build on.