Sean Hyson

It seems like the more experienced you get with training and dieting, the more sophisticated and scientific you’d become with your approach. But that’s not what happens at all. Instead, you start paring down more, until you’re just following the absolute basics. I used to weigh out ingredients for shakes and count the seconds it took to complete each set. Not anymore. Maybe I’m burned out on all the details, but I think they just don’t matter that much. Here are some cases in point.

“Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight each day.” I don’t know many people who really do this. In fact, I don’t know many people who really count protein at all. They eyeball their portions and try to eat a lot of it, but they don’t break out the calculator. There is some research that shows that a gram per pound builds muscle. There’s also research that shows that less than a gram builds muscle. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence for eating less as well. Most nutrition professors I know recommend between 0.6 and 0.8 of a gram per pound for strength training athletes. New Jersey strength coach John Alvino has experimented with much less and noticed no difference. You can certainly eat more than that, but research shows that consuming much more than a gram per pound of body weight isn’t useful. Not harmful (except maybe to your wallet), but not useful.

See what happens when you stop eating a gram of protein per pound? (Just kidding!)

What’s the right amount? Damned if I know. I try to get a gram per pound but I very frequently miss it. It’s freaking hard to get that much protein when you’re over 200 pounds. Think about it

If you’re a 220-pound guy like me trying to get a gram per pound, you’re looking at a day of:

3 whole eggs (about 18 grams)

2 chicken breasts (about 50 grams)

8 oz sirloin steak (about 70 grams)

5 oz salmon fillet (about 30 grams)

2 scoops whey protein shake (about 50 grams)

Imagine eating all that with a comparable amount of vegetables to push it all through your system and carbs and healthy fats on top of that. In addition, notice that I tried to keep the protein coming from a variety of healthy sources and not rely too much on supplements. You better be committed to a complete bodybuilding lifestyle, setting aside several hours per week to cook, or you’ll never be able to take in that much protein consistently. Not if you’re a normal guy with a typical busy schedule.

Forget giving the digestive system a break. You’d have to eat quite frequently to consume all that, and I bet you’d develop digestive problems. Granted, I’ve done this for years, and many others have too, and it works. But it’s a lousy way to live. And honestly, I was never sure if it was the protein that was packing on the muscle. It may well have just been that I was eating a lot more calories on that plan—where they came from probably didn’t matter much.

It may interest some people to know that I was at my biggest and overall strongest three years ago when I was following a mostly VEGAN diet. I say mostly because I had the occasional burger and chicken sandwich when I was out with friends and couldn’t get decent vegan options, but most of my diet was quinoa, beans, rice, and pea protein shakes. In other words, a lot of carbs. I got up to 240 pounds and was pressing 200 overhead. Protein wasn’t a concern to me at all, and most of the sources I was taking in were incomplete anyway.

Point is, I don’t think you need to be too concerned with protein. Personally, I’ve really never seen it make a difference. If you’re dieting hard for a show or doing a transformation like I did and are extra paranoid about your appearance, then I think a more scientific tally of your protein is appropriate. For the rest of us, the rest of the time, just aim for around a gram and let the chips fall where they may.

Lifting legend Paul Anderson. No creatine required.

Creatine. I used to take it when I first started. I remember the first time I used it—I  did dumbbell bench presses with 55 pounds for 8 reps where as the week before I had gotten 6. That was all the validation I needed at the time to believe it worked, but I realize now it was the placebo effect. It had to be. This was 2000 and the muscle mags had me convinced that creatine was the best performance enhancer since the invention of… I don’t know… the shoe.

Over years of continued experimentation, I found it helped me gain a little weight. But it was water weight. Bloat. When I stopped taking creatine, I peed it all out. Nowadays I’m almost certain it does NOTHING for me. I used it for 8 weeks this past spring and felt and saw no difference compared to before and after. I made gains at the same rate and my body weight really didn’t fluctuate at all. I did the loading, then the 5 grams a day maintenance dose, mixed it with carbs... the whole deal. Nothing.

But hold on. All I’m saying is it doesn’t work for me. Creatine MAY work for you. There is a mountain of research that says it does. Lots of it is credible, and almost every big-time coach I know recommends it and believes in it. Where it has application in your lifetime or training cycle, if any, is a big question mark. But I’m pretty sure that it’s not going to make an enormous difference either way. I’d recommend trying some, but when it runs out, don’t race to replace it out of terror. Maybe you’ll feel like you’ve lost a step when you cycle off, but if you do I’ll bet you it’s mental.

Suspension training. Look, it’s great. Most people don’t do enough, and it’s a great way to bring up your core and get more out of each exercise. But as with anything that gets really trendy, I’m starting to hate it. Here are a few reasons why.

It’s a pain in the ass to carry around. The TRX is light weight, yeah yeah… it’s also long and prone to get tangled in my gym bag. Every time I pull it out, it takes half a dozen other things with it and spills all over the gym floor. If you go to a gym that has a suspension device hanging up already, you don’t have this problem, but carrying one around can be a hassle.

It’s a pain in the ass to adjust. I’m not talking about the sliding buckle and all that. Yes, it’s easy to move the handles to the right length, but determining the right length isn’t so easy. I’ve mastered moves like rows, pushups, and face pulls at one level, but when I try to progress to the next level, it’s immediately too hard. A one-inch adjustment takes me from easy to suicide level. Eventually, I just want to throw it back in the bag and grab a weight again.

Working out, or auditions for the next Superman movie?

And for all the talk about how suspension training builds all this muscle… it’s a bit of a put on. Not one bodybuilder will touch it. It makes you activate TOO much core and other muscles so you don’t get much of an overload to the main muscles you’re trying to work.

I’m just being bitchy right now. I do like the TRX and have recommended it in stories. I have used it and will continue to. But for the sake of argument, suspension training isn’t quite the revolution it’s being hyped as now. It’s helpful, but won’t make or break your physique or strength goals. People have gotten into great shape without it.

And if you’re leery about getting one over the price or lack of knowledge for how to use it, just forget about it.

It’s not that important.

What is important (and this goes in hand with the message of my recent “Defend Your Life” post) is that you don’t let trends and hype scare you in or out of doing anything. Stress and paralyzing yourself while you weigh your options will always be more detrimental than just committing to something, no matter how flawed an approach it is.

What have you found matters or doesn’t matter?