I recently had a conversation with a coach regarding our minimalist training approach.

He had read one of my articles posted on dragondoor (more than 4 years ago) prompting the proper, albeit blunt, question: Does this really work?

My response was "yes", but with the caveat that we do less work now then 4 years ago and the results are just as good if not better.

(As a point of interest, it should be noted that one long time poster on the Dragondoor forum thought that seeing the same results after reducing the workload was not a ringing endorsement of a protocol. I have a feeling this individual has not recognised overwork as a leading cause of injury)

He asked several more questions during our lengthy conversation. Three of those questions are the most often asked:

1. Can I use squats instead of deadlifts?

2. Why skip a couple of lower weight warm lifts to go to the heaviest lift first?

3. What about power lifts, like the cleans?

Here's the short answer to all three questions: There is no workout Czar waiting to pounce on hapless lifters. Do whatever you want!

Here's the short version of the reasons for my short answers above:

Squats (and leg press) require more equipment. Squats could require spotters. If squats provide some other type of gratification...do all you want!

We do a dynamic warm-up before lifting. We lift heaviest weight first because we're already warmed up. Those who have never lifted weights until using our system don't think anything at all about the need for warm-up lifts.

Neither should you.

Power lifts are slow. In fact they are incredibly SLOW compared to competition speeds. As soon as I see professional baseball pitchers practice by throwing a 10 or 20 lb baseball as fast as they can or a champion powerlifter limit ground contact to less than 0.07s when lifting in a competition, I'll stick by my minimalism.

Barry Ross

(No Bearpowered athlete participated in any power lift while this blog was being written)

(Unless they did them very fast so that the author did not see them)