As Nathan’s coach I have given you my thoughts on this amazing athlete. We have talked about some of his philosophies. We have also gone over his program, but I wanted to get a little deeper for you guys. Nathan doesn’t talk a lot unless you really get to know him. Most of his social media posts are short and to the point.
Here’s a chance for you to find out more about this young man and his thoughts on the sport - he provides some very thoughtful answers to the questions below. So here’s more about training stupid straight from the mouth of Nathan himself.
Before we pick your brain, tell us about your early days in weightlifting and what foundations you had early on.
I got started with weightlifting because I was trying to get better at wrestling and football, and one of my friends growing up invited me to work out with my first coach (Boris Urman). It started out as a summer camp. Then I realized I could be really good, so I just stuck with it. Eventually I quit wrestling and football to pursue weightlifting.
But those sports were still very beneficial to lifting. Wrestling
With Boris, I trained six days per week. His programming is very old school Soviet - lots of hangs/blocks and other assistance work. He was always trying to make us stronger but always put an emphasis on improving technique.
My success in weightlifting isn’t because I’m a better weightlifter than everyone, I’m just a lot stronger. However, starting early did allow me to get pretty good movement patterns for my lifts, so I can train very hard without injuring myself. But at the end of the day, genetics are everything, especially in drug-free weightlifting.
Should a weightlifter focus on strength, technique, or both? If both, which is more important?
A weightlifter should always be trying to get stronger. That’s how you get to be one of the top guys. The best technique in the world isn’t going to make up for a major strength deficit. But at the same time, you always need to be working on improving the skill/
technique part of weightlifting – otherwise, none of the strength is going to transfer. You need to improve both because strength is nothing without good technique and good technique is nothing without being strong.
Should a lifter focus on weaknesses or take advantage of strengths?
Working on a lifter’s weaknesses is a good idea to try to make a lifter more well-rounded, but a weakness is usually very difficult to improve - which is why it’s still a weakness. There is usually a much
faster improvement rate when working on something an athlete excels at. So in other words, you can get stronger more quickly. A lot of people say, “I don’t need to do (blank) because I’m already good at it.” That might be the reason they’re stagnating. Generally, if you improve your strength, your weakness will follow behind it.
Many people associate you with your phrase of #TrainStupid.
Where did your concept of Train Stupid come from?
It seems like everyone wants to “train smart” and figure out some perfect way to plan their training so they have guaranteed results in the end. But the same thing never really works twice - at least for me. So you don’t want to overthink your training and try to be too smart. You need to improvise and try new things.
I don’t have a set-in-stone process like, “If I do this, then this is going to happen.” I treat each training cycle slightly differently and figure things out a lot as I go along.
I have guidelines that I follow. Instead of directly planning everything out exactly, I’ll give myself a little wiggle room. And then based on a few general rules, I’ll choose my program from there.
So what are these guidelines?
With several weeks out, I’ll put a lot more emphasis on pushing my back. At that point, it’s hard to be doing the lifts then, so there’s not too much of the main lifts on those weeks. I focus more on strength and conditioning to prepare the body to be able to deal with the explosive stuff later.
Also, I think about what day of the week I’m on. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I put in more of the lifts. Then on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I will be focusing more on strength movements.
So at the beginning of the program cycle, I will have more strength work with Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays being hard days. Then as I bring in more of the main lifts as the program goes on, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays get easier - while Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays become tougher days.
Tell us more about balancing strength work and the main lifts as you progress in your program.
For the first month of the program, I don’t care what I’m snatching and clean and jerking as far as numbers go. In the first two weeks, I don’t perform the lifts at all. In the second two weeks, I start messing around with them - but I don’t take them seriously. I think about how I’m moving rather than the weight, and then I’m pushing the strength movements - so I’ll be trying to squat and pull heavy during that time period.
The next four weeks I’ll lay off on the strength stuff and start to dial in my lifts. I’ll start snatching and clean and jerking every
Friday and improve those. Then the last two weeks are basically competition prep where I switch the focus from strength to moving well in the lifts.
How would you program if you had a different amount of time before a competition. Other than 10 weeks, what if you had 16 weeks or only 5 weeks?
If I were to have a longer amount of time, I wouldn’t just have one linear progression like the 10-week program. If it were 16 weeks, I would peak myself in the first eight weeks. Then I’d back off the lifts again and perform a second strength cycle for the second eight weeks. Usually for the first eight weeks, I wouldn’t really taper at the end - I’d just train right through it.
If I had five weeks, I’d probably do a one week strength and conditioning block. I’d have squatting and pulling with no lifts.
Then, I’d have a week to do light lifts just to get myself moving again. Then I’d push myself for two weeks and end with a taper for the final week.
What’s your approach to tapering?
Tapering is tricky to determine. A lot depends on the type of lifter. I used to do a lot of big lifts in the middle of hard training and
What programming methods have you tried that didn’t work out well for you?
A lot. In 2015, I left my coach, and I didn’t really know exactly what I was doing. I was training by myself in Lifetime Fitness. I would just walk in every day and start lifting. I would try stuff, screw up, and try something else. It was a lot of trial and error with no one to answer to but myself. I found out some things worked for me, and I found out some things didn’t work at all. I tried just about everything for a couple years - I’m still figuring stuff out now.
I used to try to deadlift all the time. I’d go heavy at least once a week, and I realized my body just can’t deal with that. It’s a no-brainer when you think about it.
Something else I figured out is to cut the lifts out at times. When a lot of people are doing strength blocks, they’ll try to still do the main lifts but just go lighter or do fewer reps. But I figured out doing the lifts during strength work just tends to lead to me hurting myself.
Now I completely cut the lifts out for the first couple weeks - or I’ll try to do a different variation of the lifts. Cutting the lifts out for the first couple weeks is also a CNS reset because snatching and clean and jerking is tough on your mind and body.
For me, I also found it didn’t work to snatch and clean and jerk on the same day too often. It works better if I split the lifts up - or if I do both on the same day, I’ll pick one to be the focus and go lighter on the other.
What was the moment of discovery when you realized a strength block was so effective in your programming?
After the 2015 American Open, my shoulders were beat down.
Before that I was basically snatching and clean and jerking every day. That worked for a little while, but then my body just completely broke down.
Then I had my first strength block where I didn’t put a bunch of emphasis on the lifts but just on pulling and pressing and squatting, and that made me feel fresher and stronger than I ever had when I came back to the main lifts.
I realized that for an Olympic weightlifter you don’t really need to push your back and shoulders too hard. They’re fragile, and they can’t really handle it. If you just take some time to focus on squatting, then they’ll heal up and feel better just because they’re much fresher.
How does auto-regulation play a part in your training?
Auto-regulation usually works best if you think about it in advance. Let’s say you set your week out, you look at the days, and you want to hit something big on Friday. So maybe on Monday, you work up to a 90 or 95% effort - because you still want to get your work in but you don’t want to kill yourself early in the week. Then Tuesday, I don’t really go very hard.
Now for those days, you’re still working up to something - but you’ll
volume in. And you take smaller jumps and get your lifts feeling right. But then on days where you feel good, you just take big jumps and work up to whatever you plan on hitting that day.
A really good indicator of a good or bad day is the overall feeling of pain. Not like the pain from an injury. But if you have some nagging shoulder or knee pain, and one day it’s just extra bad - that’s usually a sign my body is feeling a little beat down. If my back is hurting, then I may realize I’ve been pushing my back pretty hard recently - so I don’t need to be going for anything heavy. It’s the same with my shoulders.
A lot of it is just figuring out the difference between feeling weak or moving poorly. If you feel slow, your body is probably just tired. Whether you feel strong or not, you’re not ready to go for a big snatch. It’ll feel light but you won’t be able to hit anything. On the other hand, if you feel fast but weak then you can push your lifts just to work on getting more efficient.
A lot of the successful coaches I’ve seen will put percentages and weights on an exercise and say, “Work up to this.” But it’s more about the exercise you’re doing.
So if you put the percentage on the bar for a set of five - and you hit the second rep and realize you can’t even do three reps - then just back off a little. But do all the reps at a weight that seems appropriate for the session.
But during the strength blocks, a lot of the exercises are slow-moving, so I like to put numbers that are going to push you. It’s almost like a challenge - like, “Just put this on the bar and try.”
Because you’re not doing the lifts during the strength phase, you’re not going to come in the next day feeling bad, try to snatch, and snap your back. You’re going to come in and do more slow-moving strength work.
You use a lot of waving with reps and weights and a lot of sets with ascending weights. Why have you found that to be effective?
At least with me and a lot of people I know, it’s a lot easier mentally to tackle a workout if you start off with the lighter sets.
It doesn’t seem too threatening. And then once you do that, you’re mentally ready to go for something heavier. It also gets your body ready for the heavy weights.
It’s like the frog in the frying pan. If you just slap on some super heavy weights and go for your first set of five, you’re going to think,
“That was terrible. I don’t want to do five more sets.” But by starting out with a lighter set, you’re thinking, “Oh, that’s not too bad.” Then another small jump isn’t too bad. Pretty soon you’ve worked up to the same point or higher, but you don’t have the shock of the super heavy weight.
What are your thoughts on rest between sets?
I tend to play it by ear. A mistake is usually waiting too long
What do you personally do for assistance work?
I’m a strong believer that accessory work should always be done to continuously strengthen the parts of your body that don’t get too much attention during your normal workouts.
I do jerk recoveries, tricep extensions, curls, forearm work, and occasionally I’ll do pushups. But that’s about as far as I’ll go for the upper body.
For my back, I like doing pulls from the hang - usually the low hang. You get a pretty good workout but you don’t jar yourself from the floor. So there’s less risk of injury and it’s lower impact - but you can still get a good amount of volume. Generally with my shoulders and back, I don’t like to push them so hard that they’re not useful for a few days. It just takes so long to recover with them. If your shoulders and your back are feeling horrible, you will start to have bad habits in your lifts. You start trying to lift around your issues and figuring out ways to lift around pain and tiredness.
You’re an experienced lifter that can go a few weeks without technique work while you’re in your strength block. But what about lifters that need the extra technique work?
In my experience if you have a coach watching you and your technique isn’t that great, you can handle more volume than an experienced lifter - because you’re not dealing with as much heavy weight relative to your strength. As you go for heavy lifts your body starts moving in more efficient ways. Also a lot of it is auto-regulation. So if you’re not feeling it, eventually you’re going to have to back off. Eventually your body won’t let you lift heavy. That will reset you, and then you’ll be able to start going again.
Is this type of program suitable for various types of weightlifters?
I don’t think this program would be good for a total beginner. But in my opinion, it would work well for plenty of lifters. It’s basically just getting your body prepared to handle heavy weights, and then you go for heavy weights often.
There’s less risk for injury if you spend your time in the beginning preparing yourself, then you go heavy in the lifts so that you can get better at them. So I think it’s fairly generic. But I think a lot of people aren’t mentally capable of it. It’s a very high intensity program compared to a lot of other ones.
That’s another reason why this is all about training stupid. Some people say, “Be smart. Back off.” And then there’s another person who isn’t going to back off. The one who kept training hard is going to be the one to win in the end.
A lot of people aren’t really sure what their bodies are capable of. If you just push yourself, eventually you’ll adapt and will be able to do it. A lot of people tell me I’m the only one who can train this way. No, I’m just the only one who’s willing to train this way. It’s more of a mental thing. It’s not easy for me - I’m just willing to do it, and they’re not. So then they come up with an excuse.
It might be genetic, but if someone asks me, “How do I get as good as you?” - all I can say is to train like me. If they say they
What advice do you have for those wanting to be better weightlifters?
The key to being a good weightlifter is a good combination of genetics, work ethic, and insanity. The best weightlifters are the ones who fully commit to the sport and make it their life.
I would advise lifters to gather all the info you can from other people but constantly be thinking about the sport. If you’re in bed at night, be thinking about what you’re doing tomorrow, why you’re doing it, and how it’s going to affect you. Just always try to break it apart and figure out why everything works and how it works. That way you’ll have a better understanding and can start making more decisions for yourself or one day eventually become a coach.
I feel like there are a lot of lifters who get told to do things a certain way or to follow a certain protocol. And they just follow along and never stop and think. They never ask why. They never try to figure out the reasoning.
What benefit do you receive from working with a coach - and what advice do you have for weightlifters as they work with coaches?
With a coach you have to have communication. It can’t just be that he speaks and you do it. Now, you should always listen and definitely take the coach’s advice - especially for the newer lifters.
I’m not saying the athlete should just do what they want to do and everything is going to work out fine. That’s not how it goes.
But don’t be afraid to speak up. If they want you to go up but you feel beat down that day, just tell them you don’t feel great. Just be sure to have communication if they’re cutting you off.
That’s where working with coaches helps me the most. In terms of auto-regulating, I always have a biased opinion. I’m always thinking I’m fine and can go up. But the coaches will tell me, “Eh, today doesn’t really look like your day.”
A coach is also huge for seeing small technical things with your lighter warmups. I don’t really feel something happening because it’s lighter weight and you can get away with it. But some days you’ll
A coach is also huge for seeing small technical things with your lighter warmups. I don’t really feel something happening because it’s lighter weight and you can get away with it. But some days you’ll