Powerlifting Podcasts

Man Does Not Live by Absolute Strength Training Alone

Man does not live by absolute strength training alone.

I once interviewed Bill Pearl for Muscle & Fitness magazine and he noted that “The hardest muscle for the bodybuilder / strength athlete to develop is their Mind.” Once you exhaust the contents of the box, to take your game to the next level, you must step outside the box.

Why RAW Podcast Is Not Strictly a Powerlifting Podcast

I am often asked why our podcasts are not strictly powerlifting podcasts. I have been a competitive lifter for just shy of 60 years. I am an IPF world masters champion and six-time national masters champion in three different weight classes. My closest friends are elite powerlifters. My training partners are competitive powerlifters.

While my roots are deep and long in this, the world’s strongest sport, the ultimate secret in powerlifting is, past a certain point, to optimize power potential the lifter needs to step outside the limited confines of the powerlifting box to improve power performance.

The Powerlifting Box Eventually Gets Too Small

Once all the training and periodization possibilities are exhausted, once all the classic and current strength strategies have been test-driven, once all the periodized strategies have been tried, the contents of the powerlifting box are exhausted. Further experimentation devolves into a mere rearranging of the box contents.

To unlock the stagnation logjam, the lifter needs to adopt new disciplines and new strategies. Doing powerlifting podcasts limited strictly to powerlifting athletes, power competitions and power training strategies becomes a content dead-end.

The Three Strength Types Powerlifters Should Understand

Powerlifting prowess is an invaluable attribute for any athlete. Powerlifting is the premier example of absolute strength, one of three identifiable strength types: absolute strength, explosive strength, and sustained strength.

Explosive strength examples include Olympic weightlifting, the snatch and clean and jerk, explosive kettlebell drills, sprinting, and leaping. Sustained strength, also called strength endurance, can be exemplified by running hills, MMA drills, wrestling, extended kettlebell sessions, and similar repeated-effort work.

Powerlifting is all about absolute strength. Nothing more, nothing less. Powerlifting creates power and builds muscle, two profound athletic attributes. To radically transform, i.e., create a lean, muscular, fit, healthy physique, a variety of interrelated disciplines need to be practiced.

Why Leanness, Nutrition, and Cardio Matter to Powerlifters

Man cannot live by powerlifting alone. Many an elite powerlifter can bench press 500 pounds for reps yet gets gassed walking up four flights of stairs. A powerlifting podcast is too narrow a scope if it only talks about the bench, squat, deadlift, and meet results. To optimize powerlifting prowess, the powerlifter needs to step outside the confines of the relatively small box that is powerlifting.

The great lifters have low body-fat levels within their weight class. Far better for a lifter in the 220-pound weight class to carry a 10% body-fat level, roughly 22 pounds of body fat, versus the same lifter in the same weight class carrying 20% body fat, roughly 44 pounds of fat. The leaner lifter has a potential muscular advantage over a chubby lifter in the same weight class.

No dramatic decrease in body-fat level occurs without adding a coordinated nutritional element. A man does not drop from a 20% body-fat level to a 10% body-fat level by increasing his reps from 5 to 10 and adding some ab work.

The heart, lungs and cardiovascular system need to be trained as surely as the external muscles. Cardiovascular exercise can help an athlete become leaner and fitter when coordinated with nutrition and recovery. A leaner, fitter lifter can often train harder, longer and more often than a fat, unfit lifter. Powerlifting podcasts need to include nutritional strategies, cardiovascular fitness, post-workout recovery, and the all-important psychological aspects of the transformative process.

Recovery, Brain Train, and the Complete Lifter

Broadening the pure power approach could begin by making room in the training template for all three strength types. In addition to power training, explosive lifts are woven into the resistance template. Sustained-strength drills are integrated into the overarching training template. Strength-endurance drills can do double duty as aerobic drills when they are programmed intelligently.

Underpin the intense, consistent training with a disciplined nutritional approach. Add restorative sleep. Use brain-train tactics to motivate the process. A fit, lean, muscled-up lifter moves closer to realizing genetic potential.

Those that choose to stay within the confines of the powerlift-only box will never be as good as they could have been. The serious lifter looking to take the game to the next level needs to integrate a variety of interrelated disciplines. Anything less delivers lesser results.

Why the Podcast Has to Stay Bigger Than Powerlifting

The competitive powerlifting universe is relatively small. Make no mistake: getting good at powerlifting for the sake of becoming a better competitive lifter is a wonderful and worthy pursuit. Absolute strength provides the critical muscle and raw power foundation. Atop that absolute strength foundation, the intelligent athlete layers explosive strength by practicing the quick lifts, or perhaps sprinting, leaping, or jumping.

Sustained strength and aerobic training can be combined, drilled simultaneously. Sustained-strength work can be practiced on non-powerlifting days when recovery allows. Melding strength-endurance training with cardiovascular training makes the time fly and is often a far superior mode to sitting, disengaged, riding a stationary bike in steady-state fashion as the minutes drag by like hours.

Intense and consistent training is combined with a synchronized nutritional approach and backstopped with excellent rest and recovery. Full and complete recuperation between sessions needs to be routinely attained. Results can occur with impressive speed when the component parts are in place, in balance, and executed with the requisite frequencies and intensities.

Our mission is to create complete humans: externally muscular and strong, internally strengthened, athletic, capable, healthy, energetic, and able to maintain function deep into old age. One-dimensional training creates imbalances. Comprehensive training creates balanced humans: capable, athletic, strong externally, and strong internally. Maintaining a strict powerlifting podcast format would be thin gruel.

Safety Note for Powerlifting, Conditioning, and Nutrition Changes

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on powerlifting podcasts and complete strength development. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, rehabilitation, cardiovascular, combat-sport, or programming advice.

Heavy squats, bench presses, deadlifts, Olympic lifts, sprints, hill running, wrestling, MMA drills, sustained-strength circuits, aggressive fat loss, and major nutrition changes are not automatically appropriate for every lifter. Beginners, older lifters, injured lifters, weight-class athletes, and anyone with cardiovascular, blood-pressure, metabolic, orthopedic, or medical concerns should scale training to their body and seek qualified guidance when needed.

Build gradually. Warm up thoroughly. Use suitable equipment, safe loading, spotters or safeties when needed, and enough recovery. Stop or scale back for chest pain, dizziness, faintness, unusual shortness of breath, numbness, sharp pain, uncontrolled bar path, repeated technical collapse, severe fatigue, disordered eating patterns, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Powerlifting and Complete Strength Training

Powerlifting still begins with the basics: a trustworthy bar, enough plates, secure collars, a bench, deadlift space, a belt if the lifter uses one, and a training culture that respects the squat, bench press and deadlift.

Readers and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight plates, powerlifting equipment, and barbell collars.

A serious setup might include Lock-Jaw barbell collars, IRON COMPANY premium rubber bumper plates, an IRON COMPANY all-leather lever powerlifting belt, IRON COMPANY heavy-duty deadlifting mats and a bench such as the Legend Fitness 3150 flat Olympic bench press with plate storage, when those tools match the lifter, room, floor, loading, and intended use.

The equipment does not create the complete athlete. The training template, the effort, the nutrition, the recovery, the brain train, and the willingness to step outside the box create the complete athlete.

Related Powerlifting Reading

For Marty Gallagher’s old-school powerlifting history, read When Powerlifting Giants Walked the Earth. For his origin story on strength writing and early muscle magazines, read Powerlifting Articles.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.