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Training tips and educational info in support of our free programs, that’s what! What’s mettle? Mettle is, “The ability to meet a challenge or persevere under demanding circumstances; determination or resolve.” Want to cultivate your rough ‘n’ tumble mettle? Complete one of our 100 Feats!
Mettle maker #462: Muscle Building the Old-School Way
[The following is an excerpt from the rough draft of Fr. Mitch’s forthcoming book, “Old-School Fitness: Get in Shape Like Your Grandad Did .”]
You may think that the guys you see on TV, on social media, or on the rare occasion training in the gym who are huge and ripped are in amazing shape. But don’t kid yourself. They are probably in pain, walking around with numerous nagging, unhealed, permanent or semi-permanent injuries, using acetaminophen and ibuprofen to continue training. They are likely taking numerous expensive supplements – legal, illegal, and/or both – up to and including human growth hormone and exogenous testosterone.
That ain’t old-school.
I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as lifting heavy weights old-school. Lifting heavy is only as old as the late 1800s. The irst international weightlifting competition wasn’t held until 1891 (The First World Weightlifting Championships in London). Most of the exercises from that period, like Bent Row, Two Hands Anyhow, and Curl-ups (a.k.a. Sit-ups) were quickly abandoned, and are no longer practiced in competition or even in gyms, for good reason.
Those whacky lifts came out of strongman competitions. They were strictly for show, and doing them repetitively and often will break your body down. And before somebody in the peanut gallery says, “But what about all of the old correspondence courses that recommend those lifts?” let me point out that, just like today, the profit motive makes people sell all sorts of things that aren’t necessarily top-of-the-line. Most of the old correspondence courses were simply made up – filled with pictures and posing and not much else – as a means of self-promotion. Some of them were cranked out by ghost writers, stamped with someone’s name and face, and quickly pushed to market for a profit. And there is a third category of material: new and innovative methods sold by true believers peddling untested methods that, although they might’ve worked for them, were not right for the average Joe, and which did not stand the test of time.
Many old-time strongmen trained by wrestling and working – on farms, in coal mines and logging camps, and so on – never training a single day with barbells. And still more protected their livelihoods by keeping their training secrets to themselves, taking their strength secrets to their graves.
In short, just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s “old-school.”
One of the old-timers who trained in a more sensible way (although some of the exercises he advocated look like joint killers), using somewhat heavier weights but still light by today’s standards, was the renowned wrestler and strongman Lionel Strongfort. See his picture below, lifting what looks to be a 5 lb. dumbbells. You can read his complete course here.
Note the tiny dumbbells. You DO NOT need to lift heavy to build muscle or get ripped.
So it is possible to add a little bit of weight, train intelligently, and increase your strength and muscle mass, and maybe look a little better with your shirt off. But, to be 100% clear, this is a hybrid method – semi-modern, but with the old-school mindset and approach.
Old School Weightlifting Rules
1. Reduced impact. If you need rest days and/or split days like Chest Day, Leg Day, etc. because you are too exhausted to continue, if you have to yell or grunt to get through your sets, if you get really sore after training sessions, and/or if you need ice, Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen, your training is too high impact to be called “old-school.” Most of the old-timers had manual labor jobs, and they couldn’t afford to be too sore to work.
2. Time under tension. Slow the pace of your lifts such that you push fast and return slow. To be more clear, the concentric phase is the pushing part of the movement during which the muscle shortens. The eccentric phase is return of the weight back to starting position, during which the muscle is generally lengthened. The isometric phases are points where the load is held stationary between the transitions from concentric to eccentric, or from eccentric to concentric. Old-school thought was generally a 4 - 5 seconds rep: ½ second concentric/up phase, hesitate ½ second, 3 seconds down/eccentric phase, pause ½ second.
3. Train your whole body every time you train. See #1 above. Entire sessions on a single zone or body part always result in a level of intensity that’s not old-school.
4. No junk volume. Be stingy with exercises and reps - less is more. Only 1 exercise per body part and about 7 exercises per session.
5. Don’t pick it up if you can’t put it down. No old-timer ever dropped a weight on purpose. You’re cheating yourself out of the eccentric phase of the exercise! Remember, pace is more important than the weight you lift, the sets, and the reps.
6. For most exercises, perform about 30 reps total at proper cadence. You can build muscle volume and strength with almost any scheme, from 1 set of 25 to 3 sets of 8. The problem is that the lower the reps the higher the weight, and the more likely the injury. And the higher the reps, the higher the wear and tear on the joints and the harder it gets to keep the intensity in the sweet spot. The ideal set/rep schemes — the ones that sits at the intersection of results, ease of use, injury prevention, and net results — seem to be 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps with at the old-school cadence of 4 - 5 seconds per rep (½ second concentric/up phase, hesitate ½ second, 3 seconds down/eccentric phase, pause ½ second). A set of 12 reps, for example, must take a minimum of 48 seconds to complete, and the 12th rep should be 1 rep short of failure (failure means you have to yell, grunt, or break form in order to get it).
7. Weight is less important than pace. Adjust weight to get the pace right and to get 1 rep short of failure on the final, target rep. The slower you go, the harder an exercise gets, and the less volume you can perform in the allotted training time. Do the math. This means you’ll experience less wear and tear because there’s less volume, less risk of injury because of lower weight and increased control, and more strength because the muscle is under tension for a longer period).
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Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity 6/15/25 – Father Mitch
Readings: Proverbs 8:22-31, Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
John 16:12-15 World English Bible
Jesus said to his disciples: “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. 13 However, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself; but whatever he hears, he will speak. He will declare to you things that are coming. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine and will declare it to you. 15 All things that the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he takes‡ of mine and will declare it to you.
Prior to his Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, as he is promising his disciples that the Spirit of Truth will always be with them, Jesus says, “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now.” This is the way it has always been. God reveals himself in a manner, and to a degree, suitable to his creation.
God enters history first as a lawgiver. God creates first the cosmos, the heavens and the earth – establishing the laws of physics, of motion, geometry, mathematics, and so on – reality itself. With the rise of human civilization, God reveals himself to us in laws of morality, of right and wrong — the Ten Commandments, and so on. Whenever there is a properly ordered set of conditions at any level, be it in ecologically, scientifically, socially, or what-have-you, there is the hand of God. And laws are good, as far as they go.
But laws without love are unfulfilled. So, in keeping with our development and his gradual disclosure to humanity, next God comes as a love-giver, entering his creation by sending his only Son, Jesus Christ. Love was here all along of course. In the same way the God is Justice itself, God is Love itself. Wherever we find agape, the love which wills the good of the other, God is present. But in his most intimate outreach of all, God enters into human suffering. Like a foreman who picks up a shovel and gets into the ditch to show his laborers how to dig, he shows us the way to love – to love generously and freely, even when we are being persecuted, betrayed, tortured, and executed, even when our suffering is at its worst.
And finally God reveals to us the Spirit of Truth. Like his Law and his Love, the Spirit of Truth has always been with us, appearing at various times and places in the Old Testament, as the burning bush for example. This is the same Spirit we call the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. But Jesus gives this Spirit a renewed mission: to be with us always, to guide and protect us, to inspire and direct us, every single day in everything we do.
These three points of contact with us are the three persons of the Holy Trinity. Bishop Robert Barron sums up the Holy Trinity best when he says,
"God is not a being in the world. The creator of the entire universe is not ingredient in the universe, is not an item among many within the universe. God is not some the reality for which there may or may not be evidence. Is there a moon around Jupiter? Well, let's go check and see -- there are or there aren't. God isn't like that – some being in the world. St. Thomas Aquinas made the decisive distinction when he said God is not ens summum, highest being, but ipsum esse – the sheer act of "to be" itself. God is the reason why there's something rather than nothing. God is the reason why there is the nexus of conditioned causality at all. What this means is that God is not a true thing, but the truth itself. That's not a good thing among many. God is goodness itself. God is not one just state of affairs, God is justice itself."¹
Let us today celebrate and praise the Holy Trinity – our Holy Father, who orders all things, who gave us structure, laws of science, math, morality, and ethics. Let us accept his son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Logos, Love itself, who reached down into our imperfection to pull us upward into eternal life. And let us burn with the fire of the Holy Ghost and embody his Truth.
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¹ "Bishop Barron on Why I Loved to Listen to Christopher Hitchens" https://youtu.be/vW8yBnpN48w
‡ 16:15 TR reads “will take” instead of “takes”