by- Josh Bryant

At 16, I became the night and weekend manager of a hardcore gym. I was exposed to bodybuilders, powerlifters, ex-cons, great personal trainers, terrible personal trainers, and a cast of characters ranging from an exotic dancer who was in love with a strip-club bouncer who broke a wine bottle over her head to a dude who lived in his van and had apparently gone mad trying to solve some math equation. I still don’t know if that last part was actually true.

At 19, I got my first job as a high school strength and conditioning coach and got certified through ISSA. At 20, I moved to Louisiana to train with Garry Frank. At 23, at the urging of Dr. Sal Arria at ISSA, I headed to Los Angeles to intern under Doc Kreis at UCLA. It was unpaid, so I worked crap jobs and spent many nights at a Motel 6 in Inglewood that I affectionately called the Six in the Wood.

From there I went to Tennessee and learned under Jeff Bergholtz, then eventually landed at Metroflex. Somewhere along the way, I had the opportunity to train with and learn from guys like George Brink, Paul Leonard, and Odd Haugen.

Since then, I’ve coached world-record holders, elite athletes, tactical athletes, and people from just about every walk of life. I’ve also been fortunate enough to travel around the world teaching this stuff. Some things I believed back then I believe even more strongly today. Other things I was wrong about.

Here are 13 pieces of training wisdom I’ve developed and refined over the years. No particular order, rhyme, or reason.

1. The goal isn’t recovery. The goal is adaptation you can recover from.

I did probably 25 seminars with Dr. Fred Hatfield. Anytime somebody asked him about recovery, Fred would bring it right back to proper periodization and planning. That always stuck with me. Ice baths, massage, saunas, supplements, or whatever else you’re doing might help, but that’s icing on the cake. You need enough training stress to cause the adaptation you’re after without burying yourself in the process.

2. Every exercise has a cost.

An exercise can work and still be a crappy investment. Everything costs something in fatigue, recovery, joint stress, time, or simply taking the place of something that would have helped you more. Don’t stop at asking whether an exercise works. Ask what you’re paying for the return.

3. Variation should extend progression, not replace it.

I’m a huge believer in exercise variation. Hell, I’ve probably become known for some of the variations I’ve used over the years. But changing exercises isn’t a substitute for progressing them. If something is producing, milk it. When the return starts drying up or the cost starts climbing, change it. Variation needs a job.

4. You can’t peak what you haven’t built.

The offseason isn’t the time to spend six months pretending you’re six weeks out from a meet. Build some muscle. Build work capacity. Bring up weak links. Do some shit you’re not already incredibly efficient at. Build a bigger engine, then worry about how fast the car will go.

5. Once the quality you’re training disappears, you’re training something else.

If maximum-speed sprinting turns into tired running, you’re not training maximum speed anymore. Same thing when explosive jumps become slow jumps or dynamic strength work turns into a grind. You can keep adding reps, but don’t kid yourself that you’re still training the same quality.

6. Maximum effort and maximum output are not the same thing.

Overall, I think CrossFit has been a huge net benefit to the fitness industry. It got a hell of a lot of people lifting weights, working hard, and taking physical preparation seriously. But somewhere along the way, people got the idea that if a jump is explosive, doing 50 of them must be power training.

If you’re jumping six inches lower by rep 30, you may still be trying as hard as you can, but you’re sure as hell not producing maximum power. Same with sprinting. You can run your ass off while exhausted and still be nowhere near maximum speed. Maximum effort doesn’t guarantee maximum output.

7. Activation should be a bridge to loading, not a permanent destination.

Activation work has its place. It can teach position, awareness, and help somebody learn to use something they haven’t been using very well. But eventually you have to cross the damn bridge. At some point, quit trying to wake your glutes up and make the bastards stronger.

8. Don’t mistake an undeveloped quality for a genetic limitation.

I worked with a guy who was in good physical condition but couldn’t run a 100-yard tempo in 15 seconds because that was legitimately too fast for him. About eight years later, he ran a 4.74 forty.

He didn’t become Usain Bolt, but 4.74 is hauling ass! Most people would have looked at where he started and declared him genetically slow. Genetics absolutely matter, but they tell you a lot more about the ceiling than they do how far somebody is from it right now.

9. A training method can work and still not be worth the cost.

You could probably make athletes tougher by withholding water during summer conditioning. That doesn’t mean you should do it. Something producing a result doesn’t automatically make it good training. What’s the fatigue? What’s the risk? What does it interfere with? Could I get the same adaptation another way without paying as much for it?

But don’t take this so far that training becomes scared and sterile. If you’re so afraid of hurting a million-dollar athlete that you remove every million-dollar training method, don’t be surprised when you end up with poverty gains.

10. Strength can build athleticism, but strength isn’t athleticism.

Getting stronger might be one of the most important things an athlete needs. I’ve certainly seen enough athletes get faster and more explosive simply because they desperately needed more horsepower. But eventually I want to see the vertical, forty, acceleration, change of direction, or whatever matters in that sport improve. Nobody gets points on Friday night because his squat went up 40 pounds.

11. The place where the bar stops isn’t always where the lift was lost.

Everybody wants an exercise to fix their sticking point. But where the bar finally stops may just be where an earlier mistake catches up with you. Maybe you got soft, lost position, or didn’t create enough velocity before you got there. Sometimes the best way to fix a sticking point is to never arrive there in a shitty position.

12. The percentage can be the same while the cost is completely different.

One lifter squats 500 and another squats 1,000. Sixty percent is 300 pounds for one and 600 for the other. The spreadsheet calls them both 60 percent, but your body doesn’t recover from a percentage on a spreadsheet. As strength climbs, absolute load matters. Those hard reps get more expensive.

13. You can’t practice being strong only with weights that don’t require you to be strong.

Advanced lifters may need less total volume, but that doesn’t mean they can live in the kiddie pool. There’s a skill to bracing against a heavy weight, holding position under it, and executing when the margin for error gets small. You aren’t preparing to deadlift 900 pounds by becoming the world’s greatest 500-pound deadlifter. At some point, you have to feel the damn weight.

Put Josh’s principles into practice with one of his programs HERE.