This is a guide to strength training for tactical athletes, such as soldiers, police officers, firefighters, and MMA fighters, who need a way to develop strength that works even if they spend many hours each week working on other aspects of fitness (especially endurance), don’t always have time for perfect recovery (sleep & diet), can’t afford to be sore for days after a workout, can’t add useless bodyweight, and so on. Typical bodybuilding and powerlifting routines are a poor fit for these sorts situations (the “operational lifestyle”). This is where Tactical Barbell shines: it gives you a way to make steady progress in maximal strength, while also being able to train other fitness attributes.
The book gets straight to the point, with no fluff or filler content (the same can be said about the routine). It’s just a bunch of insights, followed by a routine that is well-thought-out, and highly adaptable to a variety of situations, from special ops to endurance athlete to office worker who is into many types of fitness. Here are some of my key takeaways from this book:
Practice strength
This book recommends an “Eastern Bloc” approach:
- Training must be frequent. Do the same exercises multiple times per week. 3x ideally, 2x at a minimum.
- Loads must trigger maximal-strength adaptations. This typically means training in the 1-5 rep range.
- Leave enough time for recovery. This typically means at least 1 day between repeating the same exercises.
The idea here is to practice strength, similar to how you might practice other skills (e.g., juggling): do the same lifts frequently and repeat the same weights again and again until your body has fully adapted to them. The routine in the book is not some 8-week get-ripped-quick BS, and it’s not a beginner program where you increase the weight every workout and are always working at the absolute edge of what your body can handle. It’s a routine that you should be able to do for the next 30 years.
Avoid muscle failure
A key lesson from this book is that you must avoid muscle failure in your workouts. That is, don’t keep pushing to the point where you can’t possibly do another rep. Always leave some reps in reserve. Here’s why:
- Going to failure is good for hypertrophy. The main benefit of training to failure is sacroplasmic hypertrophy, where you gain muscle mass, but without much increase in strength. This is useful for a bodybuilder, but completely counterproductive for a tactical athlete.
- Going to failure is bad for recovery. Going to failure makes workouts take longer, makes you more sore, takes longer to recover from, and interferes more with your other activities. This is bad for maximal strength development, and counterproductive for a tactical athlete.
You should use loads that are heavy enough to trigger maximal-strength adaptations, but are sub-maximal to ensure you do not go to failure: i.e., a heavy set of 5, but not a true 5-rep max.
Sufficient rest between sets
The rest between sets is essential. You should rest at least 2 minutes between sets to ensure you’re fully recovered between sets. Never less than 2 minutes, no matter how “ready” you feel. Here’s why:
- It’s good for maximal strength. Being fully recovered for each set is the best way to develop maximal strength. When doing heavy work sets, this takes at least 2 minutes.
- It avoids unnecessary hypertrophy. If your rest periods are too short, you get closer to failure, which again brings on hypertrophy that, for a tactical athlete, is undesirable.
Note: if you do things where bodyweight is extremely important (e.g., MMA fighter, endurance athlete), give yourself even more time between sets (3-5 minutes) to minimize (unwanted) hypertrophy even further.
Focus on a small number of compound barbell lifts
- Use just 2-5 core lifts. Whereas many bodybuilding routines have you do dozens of different exercises, this book has you pick just a very small number—as low as 2—and to do these lifts over and over again.
- Use compound lifts. Use compound lifts like the squat, deadlift, and bench press, so that each one trains multiple joints and muscles at the same time. This ensures that as you get stronger in a small number of lifts, your strength carries over to everything you do.
- Use barbells. Barbells work very well with compound lifts, they are widely available, allow heavy loads, and allow you to precisely increment the load over a long period of time.
- Do the small number of compound barbell lifts frequently. Ideally 3x per week, but no less than 2x.
- Do NOT do any other lifts. Any other lifts will just get in the way of recovery and take time away from your other activities (e.g., endurance training). Whereas you may need a dozen exercises for hypertrophy, a handful of compound barbell lifts done frequently is sufficient for maximal strength.
Here’s an example: imagine that the only strength training you did was squat, bench press, and pull-ups. That’s it. Sounds ridiculous right? But if you did just those three lifts, 3x per week, with heavy loads (sets of 5), but never to failure, then after a while, you would get very, very strong at those exercises. You could conceivably take your squat from, say, 200 lbs to 500 lbs, your bench from 150 lbs to 300 lbs, and your pull-ups from 3 (bodyweight only) to 10 with bodyweight plus 50 lbs. Not only will you be strong at those exercises, but because they are compound lifts, you’ll be much stronger at other exercises you didn’t do (e.g., your deadlift, overhead press, and bicep curls would undoubtedly be much stronger, even though you didn’t spend time on them).
Strength vs Strength-Endurance
- Strength is your ability to move a heavy load a small number of times (e.g., lifting a huge stone).
- Strength-Endurance (SE) is your ability to move lighter loads a large number of times (e.g., punching over and over again).
Note that strength contributes to SE: if your max squat is 100 lbs, then you won’t be able to do that many reps with 75lbs. If your max squat is 500 lbs, you’ll be able to do many reps with 75 lbs. The inverse is not true (improving SE doesn’t help strength all that much). So the best strategy is to:
- Focus mostly on strength. Strength takes a long time to build, so you’re better off spending most of your time and energy focused on it.
- Occasionally, train SE. Periodically, toss in some SE circuits to “convert” your strength to SE. E.g., add a 3-6 week block that focuses on SE once every 12 weeks or so. If you have strength, it doesn’t take much to get SE, so don’t overdo it (and never at the cost of max strength).
I must say that this part of the book felt like a bit of a condemnation of Crossfit (without mentioning it by name), or at least the Crossfit mainsite workouts, which typically spend way more time on SE than strength.
Three templates
The book includes three workout templates, each optimized for a different use case, and each allowing a lot of further customization:
- Operator: You do strength training 3x per week, repeating the same 3-4 main lifts every workout. This is a good balance between making steady progress with maximal strength, while still having plenty of time for other training (e.g., endurance).
- Zulu: You do strength training 4x per week, doing 2 main lifts 2x per week and 2 other main 2x per week, plus a handful of accessory movements. This tilts the balance more towards strength work.
- Fighter: You do strength training 2x per week, repeating the same 4-5 main lifts in each workout. This tilts the balance more towards other training (e.g., endurance), which is an especially good fit for MMA fighters and endurance athletes.
For each template, the book goes through several example personas, with actual routines they used. This makes everything clear, helps put the whole picture together, and gives you easy starting points for adapting the routines to your own life.
Weaknesses of the book
For the most part, it’s a superb book, but there are a few weaknesses:
- Maximal strength with no endpoint. The routines in this book push you to pursue “maximal strength,” with no clear goal defined. If you compete in strength sports (e.g., powerlifting), getting stronger forever is a reasonable goal. However, that’s not the target audience of this book, and for everyone else, the goal is typically to get strong enough. At some point, pursuing more strength requires more time, a more complicated routine, a more honed-in diet, and it exposes you to a higher risk of injury (and more severe injuries). For example, for most military personnel or MMA fighters, I’m guessing there are relatively few additional benefits of having a 900 lb deadlift over a 600 lb deadlift, but there would be many additional costs and risks.
- Overly focused on barbell lifts. The book briefly talks about the advantages of barbells, but doesn’t give enough consideration to other types of resistance training, such as dumbbells, bodyweight, machines, and so on. Don’t get me wrong: barbells are a great choice in many cases, and I use them myself extensively, but they are a tool, and all tools offer a set of trade-offs (no one tool is uniformly better than all the other options).
- Self-published? It looks like the book is self-published, so the editing, typography, and cover design are all subpar. None of it impacts the value of this book, so this is a pretty minor point.
Overall
This book is a must-read for anyone who is a “hybrid athlete”: that is, you aren’t purely a bodybuilder or powerlifter, but someone who wants to know how to effectively combine strength with other aspects of fitness (especially endurance). It serves as a great contrast to books such as Starting Strength, Practical Programming for Strength Training, and Convict Conditioning.
