Andy Baker

Okay, yall asked for it so here it is….. My simple “Busy Dads” Muscle Building Program. Short, Simple, Focused muscle building workouts. 30 mins or less. Designed for guys 30s, 40s, 50s who are short on time but still wanna kick ass and build muscle. Check out my post from a couple days ago to get the summary. andybaker3068.gumroad.com/l/zotuw

@phil948 @sam_gzstrength Universally true

@sam_gzstrength The runners never listen

As a strength coach sometimes you have clients that will insist on doing dumb shit like trying to run The Texas Method while prepping for a marathon It's very important that you tell that client "no"

@Pointer_Chaser Yep. People are scared of being too tired from their warm ups but one last relatively heavy warm up single does wonders for the nervous system. I actually believe that not understanding the warm up process is like a top 5 reason people’s training goes nowhere for years

@BakerBarbell I made such changes to my deadlift warmups. I even started with the bar, then added a plate, did 5, etc. until I got down to ~85% x1, then ~92% x1, then rested 5 minutes and hit my work weight for reps. Work reps felt so much easier, I was shocked.

If you routinely perform poorly on the first set of an exercise, that’s usually a sign of one of two things. 1. Insufficient warm up prior to that first set. Many inexperienced lifters only think of warmups as just “warming up” - getting loose, getting blood flow to the muscle, stretching out, etc. Once they feel “warm” they think they’re ready for a heavy work set. They forget about the part where they need to acclimate their nervous system with a series of progressively heavier low rep sets prior to the first work set. I like to have the final warmup set be a single at about 8% less weight than the workset. This can be intuitive for the first lift of a day but may also apply within a workout to subsequent exercises following the main lift. For instance, a lifter moves to Incline after Flat Bench. Thinks he’s warm and goes right into his first heavy work set. He performs poorly on the first set of Incline, but the second and third set feel oddly stronger. Probably needs 1-2 low rep low fatigue acclimation sets of incline to grease the groove of that movement prior to the first workset. #2: Fatigue Poor first set performance can also be from fatigue. Either way too many warm up reps or not taking enough rest after the final warm up set prior to first workset. Even though warm ups are not hard, it’s easy to discount the amount of total reps you might perform across multiple warm ups sets. If you rush right from that final warm up set into your first workset, you can hamper performance. Likewise moving from one exercise to the next. Offer racks the bar on the bench press and walks right over to the DB rack and goes right into his first set of DB Incline presses and has a shitty first set and doesn’t know why. Takes 3-4 minutes of rest and then has a better second set. A good way to summarize is just to slow down. Take your time with warm ups and don’t rush through them or skip sets. Always be monitoring rest time between sets and between exercises

@AdrianLSanders @sam_gzstrength Must be unbearable for Sam to have to read these stupid replies

@BakerBarbell @sam_gzstrength I guess you can say he bearly survived.

Alright been in the back country for 4 days putting a hurting on bears No Poasting So I figured I'd take this opportunity to remind you that a 135 Press, 225 Bench, 315 Deadlift and 405 deadlift for 5 reps is achievable by every able bodied man in 6-18 months of training

@caseycathcart78 45x10 135x10 185x3-5 225x1 260x1 275x5x5

@BakerBarbell I 100% did this today on incline bench. Circuit was 5x5 with 275lbs… I did 135lbs x 10, 185lbs x 5, 225lbs x 5, and then jumped to 275lbs. Realized my error by rep 3, racked it, and brought it down to 255lbs for a set of 5… everything moved much better after that.

Sometimes. Personally and with clients I’ve had many final warm up singles that felt kinda shitty and then crushed the workset. That’s why I don’t like RPE based programming that’s based off warm up sets. I’d have had countless sessions where me or the client went lighter and didn’t need to

@BakerBarbell Same shows up with too much volume in the warm-up itself. Three ramping singles into the first work set beats five percentage-based warm-up sets every time. The bar speed on the second-to-last warm-up tells you whether the first work set is going to land.

@MarcLobliner Advanced programming can get really fucking weird…..

@BakerBarbell I have my moments

If Starting Strength was porn - it’s Missionary with your shirts on. Quote of the decade

@realM_Cavalier Sessions are short and fast. Focus intensity over volume

@BakerBarbell Emphasis on STARTING of Starting Strength. It’s not a forever program. But it’s great for beginners.

@Tetriandoch005 It’s hard to say exactly. Does the bar feel like a million pounds when you unrack the first workset??

@BakerBarbell When you say perform poorly how much worse than sets 2 and 3 does it need to be to qualify? 2nd set being stronger than the 1st is normal for me, but 3rd set is always the most difficult

Maybe. Would be situationally dependent. The pattern you described is extremely common in novices however. Even if the warm up protocol is on point they just haven’t yet developed good neurological efficiency on these lifts. So lifts tend to get better set to set as an artifact of “practicing” the lift. And even if that first set feels “hard” it’s less fatiguing on them than it would be for an advanced lifter. They haven’t figured out how to fatigue themselves yet. For an adavanced lifter - if they have a hard first set. Their third set is likely to be much much harder as they are generating more fatigue with every set. Novices aren’t fatiguing as much.

@BakerBarbell If a lifter consistently has this pattern of a rough first set and a strong third, is it reasonable to say they could actually be lifting heavier if they dialed in the warm up?

A lot of guys who perform poorly in powerlifting meets forget a massively important thing - TOTAL wins meets, not your own PRs on each lift. Chasing your own individual lift PRs in a meet can destroy your total if you are stupid about it. If second attempt squat is a RPE 10 at 500 lbs and you go out for 505 on 3rd attempt you’re dumb. Even if you make it - 5 lbs likely won’t win you the meet and fatigue cost can tank your deadlift. Deadlift contributed most to total so don’t destroy it chasing 5 lbs on a squat. It’s perfectly acceptable to go into a meet and not hit any individual lift PRs as long as total is up and enough to edge out competitors. Very often individual lift PRs are co-riders to a PR total but not always. Be smart.

Brand new website now up and running. Big thanks to @hobodave for rebuilding everything from the ground up. andybaker.com

@DMurrayInvests It’s a training studio. I do semi-private coaching sessions meaning I’m generally working with like 3-6 people at a time. People train together but everyone does their own program

@BakerBarbell Do you have general members or is it more of a training studio for single client coaching?

Been absent in here for a while as I’ve been pre-occupied with the relocation of my gym in Kingwood. Moved a few miles down the road. Today’s first day training clients in the new facility. Same equipment, same clients but after 16 years at the old place I feel like I’m training people on the Moon. Feels good though to be in a newer bigger facility and looking at 4 new walls. 1603 Lakeville Drive for anyone local wondering where we went.

@TroyFinley Thanks!

@BakerBarbell Congratulations, Andy! The new place looks great.

@Oxandrolonely Thank you!

@BakerBarbell Looks great! Best of luck in the new location...

I think this HAS to be true. With my advanced guys, maybe 70-80% of the work we do in a month is submaximal. ie, they are retracing steps - hitting loads / reps they’ve already hit before, likely many times. And maybe only 20-30% of their workouts across a month are really pushing hard for new personal records. And I’m talking main lifts not necessarily assistance work. We push the assistance harder and that’s part of the reason the sub max work on the main lifts works. The other variable that people don’t really talk about with all that submaximal barbell work though is BAR SPEED. It’s something I really address with guys moving into advanced programming. All that submaximal barbell work is more effective if you are moving it faster every time, even if loads/reps aren’t increasing.

I have not yet been able to quantify our systematize this, but I’d bet my right eye that the stronger you are in absolute load terms, the lower weight you can use and further you can go from failure and still have it count towards stimulative/adaptive work rather than junk volume

Get Strong AF + Practice Your Sport is generally the best formula.