The 80/20 Physique

This article was first published in the March 2009 issue of Alan Aragon’s Research Review. Since then I’ve cleaned it up a bit, and removed some references specific to the readership of that publication. In this article, I use the paradigm of Pareto’s 80-20 rule to outline seven steps trainees can take toward maximizing their progress in the gym.

Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.

-    Vilfredo Pareto

Meet Vilfredo Pareto; scholar, industrialist,  father of the 80/20 principle, and the progenitor of today’s topic.As a successful economist and industrialist of the late 19th and early 20th century, Pareto changed the way we look at broad circulations of income. He was the first to identify a power law curve in the patterning of wealth, income, and power.  Pareto observed that across time and space eighty percent of a given nation’s wealth would be owned by twenty percent of its population.  Later, Joseph M. Juran, an enterprising managerial consultant, would apply Pareto’s experiment to the business world where he theorized that, for a given company, eighty percent of its sales came from twenty percent of its customers.

You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with me getting ripped abs?  Like any good business your body requires a sound model for progress and a tractable approach to improving efficiency.  You should be thinking of your body as you do your investments.  Quantify, trial, and refine your practices, and the dividends – in this case, abs, guns, cannonball delts, etc. – will flow your way.

Now stick with me as we dive in; this may get a little theory-laden and heady.

A resource like the very website you’re on right now  provides you tools to improve body composition. Some tools are better than others.  Like chefs who favor a particular knife, not every tool will fit every person’s desires, whimsies, or idiosyncrasies.   As similar as we are we carry structural differences and genetic limitations.  These factors should not, however, be used as excuses for evading the application of our knowledge.

Some tools have very specific uses, some more general.  This gives us a near-infinite variety of training and nutritional protocols we can quantify, trial, and refine in our quest for an improved JQ™, or Jacktitude Quotient.

We apply these tools inside a world of constraints.  Pesky annoyances like time, energy, space, lifestyle, genetics, and other factors influence which tools we choose and how we apply them.  Using an 80/20 thought experiment on your training can reveal hereto unforeseen opportunities and usher you closer to your goals.

If you can get to the same destination with less hesitation and greater expediency, why wouldn’t you?

I want to break down the fallacious notion that bodybuilding is some masochistic pursuit exclusive for the neurotic.  I want you to abandon the notion that you have to suffer.  From today forward you will instead focus on progression.

Pareto’s principle applied to bodybuilding, weight-training, or any athletic endeavor, posits that twenty percent of your total efforts net eighty percent of your results.  Now even if we identify eighty percent of wasted effort, this doesn’t mean it can convert to productive effort.  There’s a hard limit of diminishing returns in effect.  Instead, if you can identify the twenty percent – the crucial twenty percent necessary to maximize your results – and then apply yourself fully to that twenty percent, you free up eighty percent of your ‘effort cache’ for other important things…

Like Rock Band.

Let’s look at some of the different tools involved in body recomposition and see what’s necessary, what isn’t, and how we can maximize these variables.  We’ll do this by constructing the ideal trainee, Alpha T. Bro, who, from day one, we’ll build into the ultimate bodybuilder.  He’ll work that 20% until its laden with the pungent sweat-drenched stench of his ultimate success.

1.    Maximize growth through sufficient training frequency.

Most trainees do too much work in the gym.  Bodybuilding appeals to personality types that, along with tremendous self-discipline, tend toward obsessive-compulsive and neurotic behaviors.  Trainees get sucked into a ‘more is better’ mentality, the great irony being that the human body can only grow so fast, or, conversely, lose fat so fast.

Any discussion of training frequency births immense controversy.  Every would-be guru contributes to an already divided and conflicted field.  Research wise, an academic journal literature review showed that eight total work sets per week per body part creates an ideal environment for hypertrophy. The human body doesn’t just tolerate but instead thrives on a greater frequency than once thought; a muscle group should be at minimum trained hard once every five days. Depending on an athlete’s training history, goals, genetics, this recommendation can be tailor-fit to the individual.

If you aren’t hitting this practical minimum it’s time to re-evaluate your program.   A needless increase in training volume may offer an increase in glycogen retention and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy but often at the expense of recovery.   If you’re going to manipulate or alter this recommendation, I’d suggest decreasing the total number of sets rather than increasing them.  You’ll predispose yourself toward strength gains which, time and again, win out over general fatigue in producing growth.

A few caveats; advanced trainees who have exceeded a minimum 20lb gain in LBM can benefit from higher volume training. Injuries and neural recovery hamper progress for those lifting serious loads.  Advance trainees can also benefit from specialization routines that merit increased volume for weak body parts.  A concurrent decrease in non-specialized body parts allows for adequate recovery of the central nervous system.

So Alpha T. Bro when looking at his next training program will choose either an upper/lower split (M – Upper, Tu – Lower, repeat Thu – Fri), a split that looks like DoggCrapp where the entire body is trained but muscle groups are alternated each workout, or a higher frequency routine like HST. And for a great middle of the road option, you can’t beat Lyle’s generic bulking routine.

2.    Know what makes you grow, bro – beyond frequency.

Beyond frequency, trainees can manipulate a host of variables in their programs: rest periods, sets, reps, degree to proximate failure, and the list goes on.

What we’re learning is that the body is highly adaptive but once a static threshold of stimulation is reached, further work – in this case additional sets and reps – is unnecessary.  The critical event required for muscle growth or retention is the generation of high levels of tension within the muscle.  Fatiguing the muscle is not the answer.

In lay terms, if more weight isn’t going on the bar, you aren’t growing.   Research shows that body will continue to recruit more and more muscle fibers until maximal recruitment at 80-85% of your 1RM. Put through a brief regressive equation, 80-85% correlates roughly to 5 – 8 reps.  For those in the know, this seems to be the ideal rep range for optimal hypertrophy.   Go much lower than 5 – 8 reps and lifting the load turns into a matter of neural efficiency. While this can facilitate strength gains it doesn’t put us in an ideal environment for hypertrophy.

So when pursuing a program, monitor your strength progression in this rep range.  This should be your barometer for progress, the crucial 20%.  It’s not to say other rep ranges aren’t efficient – they may indeed be beneficial – but if stuck for progress, and you’ve been using volume training for weeks, I’d switch to this in a hurry.

Alpha T. Bro reads this and after deciding on an upper/lower split will work his bench press in the 5-8 rep range.  He’ll perform two sets of bench press during his upper body workouts.  Knowing other rep ranges can be beneficial, decides to add a second exercise to assist in this compound movement – a pec fly – where he’ll work in the higher rep ranges, given its role as an isolation movement, 12 – 15, for two sets.

3.    Money-shot nutritional minimums.

The baseline requirement for any nutrition program comes down to sufficient EFAs, plenty of vegetables, and adequate protein. For someone under aggressive dieting circumstances the above will make up the majority of your diet.  So long as you consume sufficient protein and use an intelligent enough training program you can lose fat with minimal to no muscle loss.

If you’re eating for growth it’s time to ditch your low-carbohydrate diet.  Too many lifters stall in progress and in an effort to break their plateau pile on increasing amounts of protein and fat.  I know this strategy has been in vogue for some time but it’s a plodding means to an end.  For those with issues of glucose tolerance I can understand the need for such an approach, but if you’re training hard in the gym don’t fear the starch.

I chagrin the notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods, let alone ‘clean eating.’   I think the standby of minimizing the processing of your foods is as good as any. Aim for the leanest cuts of protein you can find, no need to go organic if you can’t afford it.  Additional fats should come from monounsaturated sources like olive oil, nuts, avocadoes and your fish oil.  Carbohydrate sources should be a mixture of fruits, vegetables, and starches.  Try to minimize the added sugars to 10% of your total caloric intake for the day.   You’ll be better off from a micro-nutrition standpoint eating potatoes or coarse, crushed wheat bread compared to muffins and cupcakes.

Beyond that, everything is a wash.  At a very basic level, it all comes down to calories in vs. calories out.  You can manipulate food subtypes, adjust macronutrient percentages, fuss with timing and frequency, but unless you’re eating in a surplus for muscle gain, or deficit for fat loss, your progress is going nowhere.

Putting this all together, Alpha T. Bro is training 4 – 7 hours a week.  He’ll set protein at 1.1 – 1.5g/lb of total bodyweight, fat at 0.5g/lb of total bodyweight, and carbohydrates at 2.0g/lb.  Depending on his training volume and non-exercise activity he’ll adjust his carbohydrate intake to achieve a deficit or surplus depending on his goals.  If he’s particularly overweight or dealing with insulin sensitivity problems he may, only after fussing with total calories through carbohydrate manipulation, swap out carbohydrates for fats.

4.    Nutrient Timing – What matters, what doesn’t.

GI doesn’t matter, yet people still talk about it.  Caring about the amount of fat burned during exercise doesn’t matter, yet people still talk about it.   Bodybuilders love contradictions.  Take, for example, the obsession with maximizing nutrient density, eating only the ‘cleanest,’ ‘healthiest’ foods, yet having no qualms guzzling pure sugar so long as it’s labeled  as a sports supplement.  Or the idea that not eating before a workout bout – say morning cardio – will maximize fat loss.  This sort of thinking shares more in common with football coaches of yesteryear who withheld water from their players to ‘toughen’ them up.  All these practices are wholly unsupported.

Regardless of the type of exercise you will always benefit from bracketing your training bouts with protein and carbohydrate.  For weight training this is doubly important.  As the intensity of exercise decreases so does the necessity of nutrient timing.

Alpha T. Bro, along with the majority of trainees, will benefit from undulating carbohydrate intake based on a day’s given activity.  Heavy weight training or high intensity cardio will necessitate perhaps a 400 – 800 calorie variation day to day, the majority of this coming from carbohydrate.  Heavy endurance training will require perhaps double this.   If you’re a full-time athlete training your ass off six days a week, there’s no reason to go outside of a linear intake.

5. Exercise selection and you

You should be squatting, deadlifting, bench-pressing, over-head pressing, and chinning.

A lot.

These exercises offer the greatest output per measure of input and establish the foundation for a worthy physique.

Exercise selection is too often neglected, misunderstood, overcomplicated, or oversimplified.  For beginning to intermediate trainees, their time will be best spent increasing their strength in the 5 – 8 rep range (or even 6 – 10) across a variety of compound movements.  Fussing with specialization routines should be left to advanced trainees – those who have been training for years, long past the ‘newbie’ twenty pounds.   Plenty of admirable physiques have been built in absence of isolation movements and for those on a limited time schedule (who isn’t?) you should put your efforts into the movements that count.

Taking our earlier upper/lower split, Alpha T. Bro will be shooting for four sets per body part per work out.  As mentioned, our trainee, for chest, would be hitting two sets of heavy bench followed by two sets of lighter, isolated pec flyes.  For legs, two sets of squats followed by two sets of leg extensions.  Rotating exercise selection through different training cycles can also be a source of growth as the body tends to adapt its neural processing mechanisms.

6.    Measure what needs to be measured, forget the rest.

Bodybuilders and athletes import government sponsored financial bailout-sized quantities of stress when they aim to quantify every nuance of their training.  They track every calorie, every workout, every skinfold site’s pinch measurement, keep copious excel logs, and find their lives revolving around their physiques.  These people are doing way too much work without much gain.

More lifters should aim for a goal they can reach and then maintain – a plateau.

But oh, the horror!  Plateaus occupy swathes of negative space in most peoples’ notion of progress.  Breaking its negative connotation is near impossible.  But isn’t the end goal for the non-competitor a plateau?  Achieving maintenance where musculature and leanness are well balanced, and refinement continues without much worry?

Trainees too often set goals but tend to either a. fall way short, give up, and head in the exact opposite direction toward fat fuckitude, or b. achieve their goals but find their condition so fleeting, you end up with the former anyway.  Yet even though this may be the majority’s aim, few have any idea how to balance physique development with life.

When measuring fat loss I see little reason to track every skinfold site.   For guys, measuring the trouble areas (abs, lower back), and girls, hips and legs, should suffice.   You shouldn’t have to justify progress with a number – a quick look in the mirror or commendation from the opposite sex is a far better indicator of success.   Another marker of great certitude; loosening pants.  If you’re maintaining your strength and losing around the middle, don’t do anything stupid and just ride that bad boy out.

With regard to nutrition, some people can handle counting calories ad infinum.  I’m not one of those people.  I prefer to work from a basic structure and modify from there.  Rather than thinking in calories, think in whole foods.  Every meal should contain some form of lean protein and fiber (green veggies etc.).  From there, you can add in additional fats if it’s something like skinless, boneless chicken breast, if it’s a fattier meat don’t worry about it, and then depending on your goals, manipulate your carbohydrates.

7.    Find what matters to you – the conclusion

Most trainees will never find their 20% because they don’t know what they want.  And if they know what they want, they rationalize behavior, jumping from program to program based on narcissism rather than logic.  Some of the greatest physiques have been built with the simplest routines.

I wrote this article for your average training who wants enough size to look impressive in a shirt, but at a body fat level of that could put you at or in shooting range of Abercrombie model lean (sub 10% body fat or so).  All advice should be tempered by your own experience.  I suggest to anyone who wants to seriously invest in their body and progress to consult with Alan himself.  He’s one of the unsung heroes of the industry and has produced more outstanding physiques than anyone else I’ve known.

And most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy this journey.  If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.  This gets lost so often, mired in the ego-driven posturing of message forums, of aggressive marketing tactics and outlandish promises.  Don’t forget to enjoy your physique and find the heart of your progress.  Whether it’s being comfortable looking at yourself in the mirror, achieving a particular athletic goal, or proving to yourself you have the conviction and fortitude to make a drastic transformation, all are honorable endeavors and deserve the best of your attention.

Tagged as: diet, fat loss, fitness, muscle gain, Nutrition, weight training