Dr. Bret Contreras

Well, I was always there to watch them, you know.

And so if I'm training you, Andrew, and you're like, coach, my low back feels a little off.

And then I'm like, okay, we're not deadlifting today.

Or if you're like, my knee feels weird today.

Okay, we're not going to squat today.

We're going to do this instead.

I'm there to swap it out.

But if I'm not there and you push yourself through it and you do that for a few weeks, now it becomes a chronic problem and it takes a long time to go away.

So now my clients are getting, with me not being there, they're getting injured more often.

They start developing nagging, low back pain and things like that.

So now I've learned to, I still love strong lifting.

But you can't just keep getting stronger at the main barbell lifts week in, week out.

You've got to introduce more variety.

So we now cycle things around and we stray, but it's still about progressive overload, but we incorporate more machines, more, like you said, overhead press.

It could be dumbbells.

It could be Smith machine.

It could be barbell.

It could be seated, standing.

But you can pick a lift like what Louie Simmons would do back in the day.

You can pick a lift and get stronger at it for a few weeks, you know, for a month and then recycle it.