英文原答
1.
When revising the third edition of the Muscle and Strength Pyramids, was there a training recommendation you particularly wanted longtime readers to reconsider? I primarily wanted readers to have a better understanding of the relationships of different variables, with adaptation. Understanding them conceptually, rather than rigidly as rules to follow or get overly attached to. For example, instead of thinking that a certain number of sets is right or wrong for their goals, or a certain distribution of main lift vs accessories is "allowed," I wanted the reader to see how volume, load, frequency, exercise selection, proximity to failure, and resistance profile (etc.) impact adaptation conceptually, and how they interact. How would that change the way they actually organize their training? For savvy coaches and athletes, with enough experience, understanding these relationships conceptually prevents them from being overly "locked in" to specific training programme setups, overly rigid variable prescriptions, and provides more opportunities for individualised programming options that can be responsive to athlete/self monitoring, and will still work well for unique schedules, all types of goals, time availability, and even situations that may change frequently, based on travel, for example.
2.
When applying research findings to an individual athlete, what do you think coaches most need to understand about their applicability and limitations? They need to understand that research is best used as a tool to understand the broad relationship between variables and outcomes, rather than trying to determine specific interventions. As I often say "research won't tell you what to do on Tuesday." Research is intended to help you understand all of the tools you have in your coaching toolbox, what they can and can't do, and how to use them. On one hand, it will help you rule out pseudoscience, and overly hyped fads, and on the other, it should expand, not constrain your ability to solve problems, as you better understand what is available, how effective it can be, and why, to help you make better informed decisions instead of relying on hope or hype. If an approach is supported by research but an athlete isn't responding well, how would you decide whether to adjust how it is being applied or try a different approach? The most important "approach" to learn from science, is the scientific method itself. When you do science, you start by assessing the problem/goal (in this case that's the athlete's goal, and the potential barriers to achieving it), understand the background (which in this case is the athletes training history, environment, resources, and constraints, as well as the background science on whatever relevant nutritional/training variables/interventions you are considering/using), and then you make a hypothesis about what to do and how to do it, and determine how you will assess if it worked (an educated guess based on the info you have from prior steps, and then the plan for helping the athlete achieve their goal), and then you observe what happens (you monitor and assess the outcomes of interest, ensuring you can detect and measure real changes, and understand what factors outside of what you are changing might impact the outcomes as well). Finally, based on what happened, you make a conclusion and consider what should be done in the future (in coaching, this means changing something or things, ideally not too many things at once so you can better isolate what was successful ). An example from your coaching would be very helpful. A very common example, is increasing volume/dose and not observing faster progress in an athlete. The research helps you understand that the general relationship is that higher doses of training result in faster rates of adaptation, but research can uniquely control for far more variables than you can as a coach. Thus, the coach needs to understand that the research only tells you the relationship between the training dose and adaptation when everything else is controlled for. So if you increase the dose of training substantially, and you do not observe better adaptation, you know something else that impacts adaptation probably also changed, either something related to the change in training dose, or something unrelated. For the former example, they did more sets, but could not maintain the same quality of sleep, stress management, movement quality, proximity to failure, or experienced pain or a loss of motivation that made that higher dose unsustainable. For the latter example, they might have started a new job, changed their nutrition, undergone a change in their stress, gotten sick, etc., that impacted the outcome unrelated to the change. While we wish training science could tell us exactly what to do in practice, in reality it has limitations such as study length, limited ecological validity (programmes differ substantially from what is used in real world training), and the very control of variables that helps us isolation relationships, which in the real world often change with other variables, that means we must always view research findings conceptually, not rigidly.
3.
With your own experience competing in bodybuilding and strength sports, have you had a period when building muscle and improving your powerlifting performance were difficult to balance? If so, how did you organize your training then? Yes. I was a dual physique/strength athlete from 2006 & 2007 when I did my first PL meet and bodybuilding season, respectively. In 2023 I did my last powerlifting meet, 2020 my last weightlifting meet and 2019 my last strongman meet. I committed full time to bodybuilding because I was struggling to improve my strength without it impacting bodybuilding. The time and effort needed to improve the competition lifts, and the (minor) semi-frequent injuries that occurred, constrained recovery. Also, in 2023 I turned 40, and got my WNBF Natural Bodybuilding Pro card; a goal 15+ years in the making since shortly after I started lifting. My build and all that make me a unique athlete, meant the required training to put 20-30kg on my PL total in 1-2 years (my comp best is 620kg, gym best ~640kg at 93kg), would need to be PL specialised. Accepting I have more "natural talent" as a physique athlete, I decided to specialise in bodybuilding training instead. Not needing to increase 1RM on low bar squats, sumo deadlifts, and max width bench, and being able to train in with much greater exercise, rep range, and tempo variety, allowed me to perform a much higher total training load, with less pain, injury, and better recovery. After years of only making minor physique improvements, I made my pro debut in 2025 ~2kg heavier and managed to place 6/11 in WNBF Pro Worlds, when in 2023 I barely got my pro card. Prior to that, I was able to balance the dual goals with periodised planning, such that I used the minimum effective dose of training for PL when focused on my physique, simply performing 1-3 singles at a 5-8 RPE per week, while doing 90% bodybuilding training, and likewise, when I was preparing for a meet, doing the minimum effective dose on non-PL, bodybuilding accessory work to maintain calf, delt, biceps, and other muscle-region size that wasn't being sufficiently trained by my SBD work when I focused on it as 90% of my training. For more than a decade this allowed me to make very good progress in both sports, which is a great take home for 99% of people. But eventually, if I wanted to improve further, and compete at the highest level, specialisation became necessary
