Clearly, I don't like Bad Bunny
At the risk of sounding uncool, I don’t understand Bad Bunny.
And by “don’t understand” I don’t mean in the “I failed 8th grade Spanish” sense.
I mean, I don’t understand why he’s popular.
Besides the fact that I think this whole trend of mid-tempo, auto-tune hip-hop/dance music trend is the worst thing to hit music since 30 Seconds To Mars, with all due respect, I can’t figure out why Mr. Bunny is the winner of this category.
His music sounds no different than many of the other acts over the past 5 years that he has copied. Yet, for some reason, he is the one who got to be the musical guest and host on Saturday Night Live a week ago.
Now, I realize that as a 51 year-old white dude I am not the target audience for Bad Bunny or Lil Durk or Migos or any of the other bands on Spotify’s Hot List. And I completely get that the Latin market is growing and is historically underrepresented.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ears.
Speaking of Saturday Night Live, this past week the Foo Fighters were the musical guests and they kicked ass. Their straight ahead rock performance was seamless and exciting and stood in stark contrast to the previous week where Bunny stood alone in front of a mechanical horse one would typically find a toddler riding in front of a suburban Stop N Shop. I’ll put both performances here so you can see for yourself.
Speaking of the old versus the new I also realize that my latest blog posts have been a bit hit-or-miss when it comes to actual training advice.
And while I do enjoy the one-sided therapy sessions that these posts can devolve into, I also want you to know that I am always here for you as well, delivering some actual honest-to-God advice that could benefit your fitness and training.
So with that being said I am going to drop two big block pieces of training knowledge here that I really hope you apply to your own fitness. Because these will, 100% make a difference in the results you get - as long as those results include getting stronger, improving your body composition and not wasting your time.
And since I love a theme as much as Martha Stewart during the holiday season, I’m going to give you one tip that is as dyed-in-the-wool tried-and-true as they come and one newer piece that seems to be gaining a lot of traction in the science and research.
Let’s start with the oldie.
Training must get harder. You must train close to failure.
Ok, so maybe this is two tips rolled into one. Think of it as a Halloween bonus. No extra charge.
The concept of progressive overload is so critical to training success the fact that every modality doesn’t include it is baffling to me. In other, not so fancy terms, if you are training at a gym or training facility or in a group class where there is no system of things getting more challenging over time, you are wasting your time.
Progressive overload (or getting harder over time) is not just limited to increasing weights (although that is a good one). It can be more reps with the same weight. Or shorter rest periods. Or increased range of motion. Or more challenging tempos and pauses.
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As you can see, a good trainer or program can find many ways to make things more challenging over time. However, many people will perform the same reps and sets with the same weights every time they step foot in the gym. Or they will take that same 45 minute spin class and put in the same effort and wonder why nothing is happening after they had such good results the first 6 weeks.
You have to systematically make things more challenging over time in a way that is measurable. This is the number one principle in training. Unless you are just showing up for the experience (and, hey, there’s nothing wrong with doing something because you simply enjoy the practice of doing that thing) you are not maximizing the benefits of training.
Once you wrap your head and body around progressive overload it’s time for part two, training close to failure.
You can give a 50% effort and then give a 53% effort the next week and, technically, achieve progressive overload. One week was harder than the last. But that effort is so far away from challenging that you still aren’t benefiting from it.
I’ll give you a practical example. A recent study observed participants performing a set of 10 reps. The average weight chosen was one where the participants could have lifted the weight for 20 reps. These people stopped at 50% of what they are capable of. To quote Bad Bunny, that shit don’t work. (Again, I have no idea if Bad Bunny ever said that. I warned you that I don’t speak Spanish. But I’m guessing he might have).
While you do not need to go to failure with every set (and I’d argue you should go to actual failure pretty rarely) you do need to get pretty close to it for training to be effective. If none of your reps feel like a struggle, if you’ve never wondered whether or not the final rep of the set was going to get off your chest or if you had enough juice in your legs to finish that final mile you are leaving a lot (A LOT) of fitness off the table.
For sure it takes some time to figure out how to best determine this for yourself but if you are like the vast majority of people not making progress in the gym, you are probably underestimating your abilities.
Two things to note on this.
You should train at long muscle lengths.
So this is the new one. Not that it is really all that new but until recently you could see as many arguments for overloading partial ranges of motion as you would for training muscles at longer lengths.
But the recent research is so overwhelmingly positive towards training full ranges of motion that it is becoming difficult to recommend anything else.
To simplify, long muscle lengths is another way of saying “in the most stretched position”. Think the bottom of a back squat, the initial portion of a hip thrust or your arms extended in a biceps curl.
These are the positions that are going to overload the muscle for the greatest body composition outcomes. It will also help with flexibility and athleticism.
(To be fair, athleticism is a fairly generic term and can be defined several ways but I would argue that being able to move and be powerful in greater ranges of motion does help general capabilities.)
And sure, partials can have their place (for example, I’m a fan of combining long length partials with full range of motion such as a 1? back squats where you hit that lengthened position twice) but, to try to save the simplicity of this message as much as possible, perform exercises with a full range of motion making sure the targeted muscles are lengthened.
All right, there you have it. And while you can certainly argue with my musical taste, it would be very hard to poke holes in this training advice.
So go ahead and blast your favorite music into your Air Pods (I’m actually against wearing headphones while training, but that’s another post entirely) and get training. As long as you are making training tougher over time, getting close to failure and training those long ranges of motion, you can consider me your fan.
Which is more than I can say about Bad Bunny.