Most advice says your training program must be balanced.
Now I’ve said it time and again, I don’t program in the sense that most do.
I go to the gym, and lift. The question of what lift is generally answered once I get out of the locker room and onto the gym floor.
I’m going to give you a piece of advice, again:
Train however you want.
As long as you don’t get injured from it, it’s perfectly alright to throw balance in training to the wind.
Recently outside of my PT, which is at the minimal amounts, my weight room work is practically all pulling.
In the past I’d generally do full body, but lately I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Olympic lifts and back work.
Is my program balanced? No.
Am I going to get injured? Also no.
Internet lifters are likely to bag on people who specialize in certain lifts or bodyparts for example the mockery made of the young men commonly known as bench and curlers. Do most not see that in powerlifting there are bench specialists?
If you want to prioritize and specialize a certain bodypart or bodyparts even to the exclusion of “well rounded” development I say have at it.
Bodybuilding is meant to be a man’s individual expression of what his ideal body looks like. It’s an individual thing, or at least meant to be.
Now many seem to lose this feeling(or have never found it in the first place), and clique up into groups that end up looking practically identical based on whether they identify as bodybuilder,powerlifter, or whatever else.
Herd behavior. Something that solo sports are not meant to have.
Be a training maverick. Throw the “rules” out the window.
Want to bench everyday? Go ahead, despite Western rules Russian powerlifting seems to swear by it.
Like squatting? I’ve squatted everyday for 7-8 months and had the best 1rm gains in my life from it.
Deadlifting can’t be done frequently? Ha, that’s a laugh. I’ve pulled 10x in a week before and once pulled about 12 days in a row.
My mind was right, so therefore the recovery was right as well. My experience says heavy 2x a week,and speed pulls for as many extra sessions as you want.
Training is meant to be individual expression. If your true individual expression lacks balance and wants to obsessionally hit the same thing over after over, again if you can stay healthy doing it, have right at it.
Throw the rulebook into the flames and do you.
Balance is bullshit. No one ever became the greatest by practicing balance in their passion,their art.
Now what lifts shall I hit today?
I’ll find out once I’m on the gym floor.
Get it!
-J