17 principles for getting strong and pain-free

Philosophy

1. Find something you like to train. Train what you like until you like to train.
2. Reframe movement as a non-negotiable part of your day. Daily workout is your physiological hygiene — same as brushing your teeth — you do it every day until you die.
3. Don’t focus on the progress — it will drive you crazy because it takes unimaginably long. Instead, focus on your training right here, right now, one rep at a time.
4. There is no secret to getting strong. It’s a lot of effort over a long period of time.

Training Principles

5. Don’t focus on repetitions. “How many reps can you do?” is a meaningless question because repetitions have little to do with effort.
6. Effort is the one metric you should maximize. Being honest about your effort is one of the most important skills you can develop.
7. Form doesn’t matter. There’s no single right or wrong way to do an exercise. Observe how different body positions make the movement easier or harder, how they shift the tension from one muscle group to another. Play with it.
8. Just like there’s no right or wrong way to do an exercise, there are no good or bad exercises. All exercise is made up.
9. When you see an exercise and you say to yourself: “I am too weak for this. I can never do that” — you limit yourself before you even start. Every exercise has an easier version — a regression — find it, and train it.
10. Just like every exercise has a regression, every exercise has a progression — a harder version of the same movement. When an exercise gets too easy, it’s time to find a progression.
11. There are many ways to progress: assisted to unassisted, adding weight, slower eccentric, faster concentric. But progressing range is the priority — meaning the maximum length at which the muscle has to contract. Strength at length is key to building muscle and resilience.
12. When you progress, you go from high volume, low intensity to low volume, high intesity. Intensity is relative. Once you can do higher intensity with high volume, you repeat the process.

Pain

13. Never avoid movement, even if you’re in pain. Regress to pain-free, then progress. Avoidance will only lead to more pain down the line.
14. Pain comes from imbalances. Imbalances come from injuries, lifestyle, and training itself. Your training should focus first on finding and fixing your imbalances.
15. Imbalances can be between your right and left side. Work on them by training asymmetrically — focusing on one side at a time. You can train asymetrically by shifting the weight between sides in any symmetric movement. Or by picking unilateral exercises. Start your sets with the weaker side first, match the reps with the stronger.
16. Imbalances between your muscle groups are structural imbalances. The most common one is upper-lower. You should pay at least as much attention to the lower body as you pay to the upper body. Other imbalances include: tight hamstrings and strong quads, external rotation cannot support pushing strength, weak erector spinae compared to the rest of the core. Start your workouts with the weaker muscle group first.

Sleep

17. Sleep is the foundation of everything. Good sleep makes everything easier. Bad sleep makes everything harder. If you have a problem with your sleep, fix it before you fix anything else.