I recently rediscovered Charles Poliquin and I can’t find enough videos and articles by him. My initial introduction to him was on the Tim Ferris Podcast titled, “Strength training, decreasing body fat, and increasing testosterone and sex drive.” (where there are two episodes now). I remember thinking to myself there’s a lot of info on this episode I need to listen to it again… That didn’t happen, but through a mutual friend his name was brought up and since then I’ve tried to dive deeper into the mind of Charles. (Sadly, Charles passed away in 2018, RIP)
While there are quite a few podcasts and youtube videos featuring Charles Poliquin and his teachings, there is also a website I like to read on occasion to study up on ideas and learn something new about the mind, body, supplementation, and peak performance.
While browsing the website today, I came across an article on functional hypertrophy by Charles featuring Les Gutches. Les Gutches, is a world champion freestyle wrestler and when I worked a camp where he was a featured clinician, I was overwhelmed by how strong he was. The word “functional” caught my eye because just the other day someone was asking me about how functional my weight training truly was. (At the moment I’ve been focusing on heavy lifting)
I like the suggested protocol he has described as an example for functional hypertrophy. Since December, I’ve been focused on 4 different lifts (front squat, deadlift, chin ups, bench press). Working in sets of 10 with 3-5 reps per set I’ve been focusing on a 5 second eccentric movement with a fast 1 second concentric movement. I do a few other different exercises to complement the same muscle groups with drop sets and negatives after the 10 sets. I really like it! But to really see results and make strength gains I need someone to do the math. You’re not on a program until you have math, otherwise you’re just pushing weights around. Which is better than sitting on the couch tho!