The Barbell Prescription - Jonathon M. Sullivan

ISBN: 0982522770
Date read: 2023-09-01
How strongly I recommend it: 3/10
(See my list of 360+ books, for more.)

Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.

Weight lifting, strength training for people over age 40. Some good tips.

my notes

See the body as a risk management system meant to handle your environment.
Pay more attention to extremes than ordinary events.

Theories of nutrition come and go.
The most robust is the one that favors occasional periodic fasts.

Strength training can slow, arrest or even reverse many of the degenerative effects of aging:
loss of muscle and strength,
brittle bones,
floppy ligaments,
dysfunctional joints,
and the decline of mobility and balance.

Every bout of strength training is a prudent deposit into a “Physiological 401K”: saving strong muscle, hard bone, and full mobility for your retirement.

Programming for strength training:
a rational, long-term plan that manipulates training variables,
and specifies the structure of every workout and training period,
to achieve specific performance goals.

Programming gives our efforts in the gym a structure, an agenda, and a rationale.
For each training session, each week, each month, and each year there is a step-by-step process to follow.
Without the blueprint, the tools are useless.
Programming is what sets training apart from exercise.
Programming is the plan that makes our time in the gym purposeful and effective.

Stress-Recovery-Adaptation:
Training progresses on an individual timeline.
If the program is working, don’t change it.
Focus on what you can do, rather than what you can’t.
When adjustment to a program is necessary, change one training variable at a time.
Patience, care, and consistency win out over greed and hurry.
You are volume-sensitive and intensity-dependent.
Programming becomes more complex, and improvements in strength become smaller over time, as you get ever closer to your performance potential.
Recovery variables are the most crucial and most frequently neglected.
Without proper rest, sleep, nutrition, and hydration, progress cannot occur.
When you are having trouble progressing in a well-designed program, the first place to look for the problem is in recovery.