Protein: by any means necessary

Alaskan salmon from a can

The Key to strength training: consistency

 No doubt this is a brutal workout that I espouse.  After a couple weeks, you'll feel sore or your joints will ache.  I even from time to time experience a weird phenomenon where I get anxious accompanied with muscle soreness and then my central nervous system gets hay wired from aching all the time and I start to feel unmotivated to workout for the simple fact that my body is sore.

At this point, I like to take what I call a break from my usual brutal workouts.  I workout just to maintain muscle memory.  Usually the workout takes 30 minutes to an hour.  I might pop off a couple singles.  I may do a couple doubles.  The key is to only spend about 10-15 minutes on each set and not try to set any personal records.  Just do enough to keep the joints and muscles in tune for your next taxing workout.

When do you do these muscle memory workouts?  Do them when you experience that weird aching listlessness accompanied with having a frazzled central nervous system.  That's my usual cue.  Maybe after you've had two or three weeks of taxing workouts, you go for a muscle memory workout and give your body and mind a break. The reason for the muscle memory workout is just to maintain consistency.

I don't advocate more than 96 hours of rest or even the occasional rarity of 120 hours rest between workouts.  72 hours of break time between workouts is ideal but that can lead to mind and body fatigue after a couple weeks.  If you go to an extreme of strength training only once a week, you'll probably start losing strength after the second week so skipping workouts in the name of rest and repair is a setup to fail in your strengthening endeavors.  Just do the muscle memory workouts and you'll maintain strength so on the next workout you can start making personal gains again.

Fok the Gym: the fundamental theorem of arm pressing

If calculus can have a fundamental theorem then why can't I?  Thus, the fundamental theorem of arm pressing.

Let's clarify a few terms before I go on.  

First what do I mean by arm pressing? It could be a shoulder press, a bench press, a dip, a decline press, so on and so forth.

Second what do I mean by fundamental theorem?  Fundamental to any arm press, there are three fundamental movements.  The first is the sweeping backwards of the shoulders.  Second is the acute angle between forearm and bicep that is formed when one lowers the bar to his chest or anytime the the knuckles of the hand are in parallel or below the chest.  Third is the wrist joint.  Often overlooked in arm press training, the wrists are one small important part of the kinetic chain in the arm press movements.

Now I'm going to blow your mind.

I claim that without a strong bench press you can't have a strong shoulder press, or without a strong decline press you can't have a strong behind the neck press.  In other words, all arm pressing is interrelated and dependent on each other because of the simple fact of the fundamental theorem of arm pressing.

All the varieties of arm pressing all follow the same principle:  sweep the shoulders rearwards, form a twenty degree or less angle between forearm and bicep making them almost touch each other, and use the wrists and hands as bar stabilizers during the movement.

Now what do you do with information?

The answer is train all varieties of arm pressing even if your only goal is to get stronger in the bench press, or shoulder press, etc., because they are all linked in a symbiotic kinetic chain.

When training the bench press, your pectoral muscles and front deltoids will fatigue quickly.  Remedy that by moving onto the shoulder press.  It will still train your upper pectorals and upper deltoids, and that will have tremendous strength training carry over to your bench press but lessen the stress on the lower pectorals and front deltoids. Then move onto a behind the neck shoulder press because that will focus on the posterior deltoids and triceps and wrists and forearms.  

A side note about the dip. Dips only lead to strength carryover to other arm presses if they don't violate the fundamental theorem of arm pressing which means the shoulders sweep backwards putting a nice stretch on the pectorals and front deltoids, the wrists and forearms stabilize the movement and the acute angle between bicep and forearm closes them together almost touching each other.

Another side note.  Cable tricep pushdowns have zero strength carryover to any arm press.  For the fact the cable pushdowns violate the fundamental theorem of arm pressing.  True, the movement forces the angle between forearm and bicep closed but it completely misses the pectoral and front deltoid stretch.  That stretch is essential for any accessory movement to have strength gain carryover to any arm press.

Last but not least are the wrists and forearms.  Train the wrists by putting them close to each other in the middle of the bar while arm pressing.  This will also tax your forearms.  Then to hit the forearms, alternate on one day with underhand bicep curls and then on your next workout, do overhand bicep curls.  Overhand bicep curls will alleviate stress on your bicep tendons and will minimize the chance of bicep tendon tears.