You're Not Squatting, You're Training Your Quads

Opener

For the first eight years I lifted, I wasn't training muscles. I was training lifts. Realizing that changed how I trained.

"I didn't really start training for bodybuilding or hypertrophy until about eight years into my training. I wanted to be big and muscular, but it was always that I wanted to be strong, or I liked powerlifting, or I was lifting for football. The most important thing for me was realizing that before, I was trying to get strong on a squat, or strong on a bench, or strong on a hang clean. I was just trying to move more weight. Then I realized: no, I'm not squatting, I'm training my quads. I'm no longer bench pressing, I'm training my chest."

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1. The exercise is a tool, not the goal

A powerlifter and a bodybuilder can perform the same lift for entirely different reasons. The powerlifter is judged on the lift itself, so the rules of the lift come first. The bodybuilder is judged on the muscle, so the lift is only worth what it does to the muscle. Mixing up those two jobs is how people get strong without getting bigger.

"If you're a powerlifter, you have to get really good at a movement. A bench press is defined as going from a pause at the chest to full lockout without the hips or the shoulders leaving the bench, whatever the exact rules are, and those are the rules you have to abide by. If you're working your chest, it's a totally different thing. You're using the bench press as a tool to work your chest. The movement doesn't matter. It's however you move the weight that activates the chest the most, and that's going to be different for every person."