Bare Minimum, Bear Maximum, and Goldilocks Training

Bare Minimum Training Information

Progressive Overload

• The most famous example of progressive overload is Milo of Croton. Milo was a Greek athlete who desired strength so he went out to a field and lifted a newborn calf on to his shoulders and carried it around. He continued to do that every day as the calf grew into a full grown bull, getting stronger as the calf/bull got heavier. The truth of this story can be debated but the truth of the principles taught cannot.

• We may not have access to livestock to train with but there are ways that we can incrementally and progressively overload the strength we currently have to get to the strength we want and or need. This is the basis of most forms of training especially strength training.

  • Even mobility training follows similar principles. If you want to access a certain range of motion you will incrementally increase the range of motion that you train in until you have access to the range of motion that is your target.

• With regards to resistance training it will look much more like Milo’s training plan. You start by going to the gym and doing some amount of work, a combination of the amount of weight lifted and how many times you lifted it, the reps and sets. Over time your goal will be to increase the total amount of work done. You can do this by doing increase any of the above variables, the reps, sets, and weight (and even range of motion, though that complicates things beyond “bare minimum”).

  • The simplest way to track this that I have done is to multiply the number of reps by the sets, which gives you the total number of lifts done in a session, and multiply that number by the weight lifted. This will give you rough approximation for work done (a physicist would disagree but it works for our purposes here).

    • In the beginning for many lifts (especially lifts for your legs) you may find that you can do the same number of reps and sets in each session while increasing the amount of weight.

    • This style of tracking progress means that if you do even one more rep you have progressed. As you continue to add reps (however they are divided in to the sets) you will eventually be able to increase the weight. At this point you will likely decrease the total amount of reps and then “restart” the progression of increasing reps at the new weight.

    • This will work for some time especially for beginners. Over time, if you want to maximize your results in the gym, you will want to use a more methodical program of progressive overload, like the ones described elsewhere in this blog.

  • Depending on your goals you will want to keep the reps done in each set in certain ranges. In general lower rep ranges favor strength gains and higher rep ranges favor hypertrophy or muscle size.

  • Time rested between sets and or the total time to complete the exercises is another variable that can be manipulated. Meaning if you did the same amount of “work” in less time, that would also be considered progress. That would also change how your muscles respond to the work. Longer rest periods are typically used for strength training and shorter rest is used when the focus is hypertrophy.

Push Pull Legs

• This is a type of programming popularized by bodybuilders, in which they work their “pushing” muscles on one day, their “pulling” muscles another, and their legs on another. I mention it because it’s a great way to discuss the “bare minimum” amount of training that I recommend.

• At a minimum I recommend training one lift for each of those categories. One push or press, one pull, and one lift for your legs.

  • A push or press will primarily work muscles on the front side of your torso, and a pull will primarily work muscles on your back. Legs speaks for itself. With this combination you will be exercising most of the muscles of your body.

  • The lifts I recommend for this are a split squat or lunge for the legs, a cable machine press, and a cable machine pull or row.

  • Over time you will likely want to increase the number of lifts and or vary them, though this will provide fairly complete total body exercise. This “bare minimum” is great for getting started and for times when you don’t have much time to dedicate to the gym and want to maintain your fitness.

• I discuss exercise selection in further detail in this blog.

Cardiorespiratory

• The bare minimum I would recommend for cardiorespiratory exercise is 30 minutes of walking per day. There are many benefits that come with taking a short walk after a meal and that can be a great way to ensure you “get your steps in”.

• Walking, hiking, and running can also be treated like any other form of exercise and progressively overloaded.

Breathing

• The bare minimum I recommend with regards to breathing is to breath through your nose. At all times. Even during exercise, and in most cases especially during exercise. There are only a few cases where mouth breathing is necessary.

• As far as “breath work” there are almost as many types of “breath work” as there are coaches. The ones I recommend mostly come from the “Oxygen Advantage” and the mostly involve reducing the amount of air you breathe for a time. In short this will make your body more efficient as you will be able to do more with less air. It does much more than that but I’m already beyond the “bare minimum”.

• I discuss breathing in more detail in this blog.

Diet and Recovery

• The bare minimum I recommend is to be taking steps, however small, to improve these areas of our lives. Much has been said elsewhere on improving diet and sleep, and we all mostly know how we can improve in our own lives so I would encourage you to make the changes you know you should, and then learn more about other ways to get healthier. You will thank yourself for it later, as will your children, and other family and friends.

• I discuss diet in more detail in this blog.

Bear Maximum Training

I’m calling this the “bear” maximum because in my mind there are parallels between this training and wrestling a bear. There’s a lot to contend with and it will require a lot of effort and planning. I’ve never wrestled a bear so I don’t know how accurate those parallels are, and I kind of doubt you can plan much for a wrestling match with a bear, the bear certainly won’t. I’m also calling it the “bear” maximum because I like word play, so there’s that too.

Bear Maximum training is more a concept I’d like to discuss than a recommendations . This type of training gets close to how I would imagine training a professional athlete or Olympian. It would include AT LEAST all of the components of exercise I mentioned in this blog here, and they would be done to the fullest extent possible. Myofascial release (MFR) would be done until there are no more “trigger points”. Corrective exercise would be done until the posture and length/tension relationships of all muscles are balanced. Breath work would be done until the breath is mastered, which is possibly a lifelong pursuit. THEN they would begin their strength training and other training protocols. This could also include other modalities of increasing recovery such sauna, and cold therapy, massage, cupping, electric stimulation, and and and more and more until the entire life revolves around physical performance.

The goals regarding MFR and corrective exercise are very achievable especially for a dedicated athlete, assuming they aren’t actively competing, as competition forces certain concessions with regards to health. They are also achievable for the dedicated gym goer especially with the guidance of a knowledgeable professional and the required time. The key words in that statement are “dedicated” and “time”. You need both. The nice part of these is that they are very accessible. Much more so than sauna, ice bath, and massage. This brings me to the last concept I’d like to discuss.

Goldilocks Training

This is finding the combination of training and other practices that are “just right” for you and your life. This will likely change over time. You could get very strong and athletic and never get in to a sauna or ice bath. Many of the other similar recovery modalities mentioned are often expensive and while they may be helpful at an elite level, apart from performance at that level, they provide only marginal benefit which may not be noticeable in the gym or in life, especially compared to dedicated practice of the other components mentioned such as MFR or corrective exercise (read the blogs related to MFR and corrective exercise by clicking the links). I have found in my personal experience that there are times when you really need to focus on myofascial release, and others where you don’t have the time. Likewise with corrective exercises. There are many who should be doing only corrective exercises, which doesn’t mean they won’t get stronger. Strengthening the muscles is a part of corrective exercise, but it’s not the emphasis. There are also times when you may need both of those but given the time constraints of where you are in life it becomes more necessary to get strong, and build muscle and bone density. This last scenario is where the bare minimum training might become the focus, or something close to it. There can also be times when all you have is your breath. Even then there are improvements to be made in maintaining conscious influence over your breathing patterns and how you react to the stimuli of life.

Finding the “Goldilocks” zone will be different for every person and change over time. It will vary from the barest of bare minimum to as much of the maximum that can fit in your day and improve your results. For most people, most of the time, I would recommend some combination of MFR, corrective exercise, and strength training. It’s tough to get much more specific than that because of how individual it is but I feel it’s reasonable to expect to get to a point where 5-10 minutes each of MFR and corrective exercises are enough to maintain the health of your muscles, joints, and all that connect them, and then the rest of your training session could be spent pursuing strength, power, endurance, and whatever else your grander goals are.