There are things about lifting which are so overgeneralized that they are obviously wrong, but at the same time they are absolutely true. Sometimes our scientific view would suggest that there should be counterexamples, but there are not.

Most of these things are obvious and can be observed by anyone who ever set foot in a gym. But people are usually either not observant or not at the gym, which is why they suck.

Some of these things would fit into a post titled "things I wish I knew when I was starting lifting" but this would be kind of clickbait and the title should probably read along the lines "things I am glad I already knew when I was starting lifting because I actually read things" and that's longer than eighty characters.

As the internet is dying and half the stuff I have read has already disappeared into the void, here is my feeble attempt to conserve some of these divine truths, which were once imprinted into the being of everyone who was willing to squat enough weight to please the gods.

You have to squat

Technically, you do not have to squat. Yet I have to see anyone who has obtained a modicum of muscularity and did not squat. Is it a rite of passage? Is it because it trains so much musculature on the front and backside of your body at once and nobody has the time to replicate that effect with dozens of machines? Is it just the buy in and putting in the effort to learn an uncomfortable movement, where the bar is resting on your back and it feels like it's crushing you? It is the complete movement which gives you sufficient body awareness to also make other leg exercises work and generally improve athleticism?

The only thing we know is that it is so important that people even tried to find mechanisms like growth hormone secretion to explain why only people who squat grow. These mechanisms are of course bullshit, but still, you need to squat.

Do you need to squat every block once you are advanced? Maybe not. But until you are somewhat strong, you have to squat.

Also. No, you do not have strong legs, not naturally, not from other sports. Go squat.

You have to squat to depth, below parallel

The only population which has any business in cutting their depth are powerlifters, because they only need to go just below parallel and that's it. Incidentally, those with big squats usually have leverages such that just below parallel for them is already a good stimulus, and it's sufficient for them.

The rest of us, who have femurs with actual length to them, usually need to squat deeper. I guess it's about reaching some relative elongation of the muscle, which absolutely needs more angle if the muscle is longer, but research is barely figuring out that longer muscle lengths help more, so I guess we need to wait a few more years to see an answer here.

No, conjugate method and squatting to a high box are no excuse. No, it's not more specific to your running. No, you knee is probably not happier about using three times the weight through 10% of the ROM. Yes, please do think depth will come in comp. Keep believing.

You have to get somewhat strong

I think for male specimen the numbers are around a double bodyweight deadlift, around a bodyweight bench and squat somewhere in between one and a half bodyweight to double bodyweight depending on leverages. For female specimen one probably would shoot for slightly lower numbers. The above mentioned standards are still very achievable, but in the absence of testicles there is a significant protraction of time frames and things just take longer to play out. So maybe something like 1.2x bodyweight squat, 1.7x bodyweight deadlift and 0.8x bodyweight bench might match that in terms of effort per value, but there is still the disclaimer that I lack first person insight here.

Furthermore, benching one plate for reps and deadlifting two plates for reps is something any non-tiny female assigned at birth should strive for, just to mock weak dudes at the gym. It is not ego lifting, it is punishing male fragility.

Note that these are minimums. Most people think that you're pretty far down the road once you hit those numbers, whereas in fact, that's where lifting actually starts. Most progress will happen after these numbers, not before these. And coincidentally it's usually the first plateau after you exhausted linear progression on beginner and intermediate programs. Until then, it was more about learning the lifts and get to a baseline of muscularity, and now it is time to put them to work.

If your main sport is something different, like running or climbing, well, hit these numbers and then keep lifting to keep your joints healthy and build some quality mass, but you probably don't need to push it as hard anymore. The quicker you get it over with, the quicker you can focus on your main sport without being held back by your pitiful weakness.

If your main sport is not lifting, you still have to get somewhat strong

You know how in school sports always the dumb kids are the best at literally everything because they repeated a grade and are just bigger and stronger than everyone else?

Well, by just getting somewhat strong as outlined as above, you can turn yourself in a dumb kid. In a good way.

Most of the "first milestones" people find so difficult to attain, like running a 10k or other arbitrary metrics, evaporate if you are just slightly trained.

It takes only six to 24 months of solid barbell training to get a lot of strength, power and speed. Can you get the same benefits from non-barbell training? Sure. But then it takes years, if not decades to reach the same level, which you could have spent getting actually better at your main sport, or, even if you are only in for the health benefits, living healthier. Don't be a scrub. ¹ Time is not on your side. Barbells are.

Obviously there are diminishing returns at some point. But they definitely do not begin at a double bodyweight deadlift.

Get on a beginner linear progression, milk that out, follow up with some intermediate linear progression, milk that out and at that point you can probably just never set a foot in a gym again and still profit from this invested effort, by being stronger, faster and more durable than anyone else in your sport.

Also. No, you do not have strong legs, not naturally, not from other sports. Go squat.

You have to get stronger for reps

Your one rep max does not matter out of powerlifting, but getting stronger for multiple repetitions over multiple sets is what really drives muscular progress, work capacity and general usefulness.

In contrast to what Rippetoe says, it's beneficial to be a volume warrior. At least to become one over time.

Your 5RM is a good proxy, if it goes up, you are sure as hell getting stronger and bigger, and any training that drives your 5RM in a reliable matter will yield benefits. Fewer reps are more dependent on neuronal adaptations, technical stability and the ability to display strength, so they are not that good of a proxy for progress overall, and anything beyond ten reps will be too light to really gauge any progress and be dependent more on other short lived factors like local substrates or just pain tolerance.

Be aware that any rep scheme will fluctuate with your fitness and your periodization, so compare apples to apples and do not think you have stalled, because your 10RM on the squat did not move for a year, when you did not squat for more than 3 reps for a year, or the other way around.

Bodyweight exercises as a whole suck

In general bodyweight exercises suck. Nevertheless, small people are often enamored with them, which usually boils down to some naturalistic fallacy or just being scared of weights, having anxiety to go to the gym or factors. Which are serious issues and should be adressed, to allow for proper training and possibly generally a better life. Don't let avoidant behaviour keep you from growing.

Push-ups, unweighted squats, whatever you can think of, you are not getting much progress out of them.

Going from 0 to 10 push-ups or bodyweight squats? OK, that's some solid progress preparing you for the gym. Going from 10 to 20 or 100 push-ups or bodyweight squats or crunches? That's just a waste of time. Moreover, most people's form does not warrant spamming these exercises and will set them up for overuse injury.

Every boy who watched Dragon Ball did that and none of us got any visible progress or even transferable strength from that.

On a historical note, Indian ringers did and do live on a steady regiment of thousands of push-ups and bodyweight squats a day, and they look like shit. I did a thousand push-ups and two thousand bodyweight squats a day and I looked like shit and still had to start with the empty bar on the squat and bench.

Unless your main sport is gymnastics or calisthenics, bodyweight exercises beyond the bare minimum are a waste of time. You can manipulate the upper body movements to harder levers, but that's just adding weight to the bar with extra steps. As for lower body, nothing comes close to moving weight.

Experienced lifters can make them work in the context of a strength program involving barbell lifts as the main driver, but for everyone else they are usually a waste of time.

Dips and chin-ups are the exception to the rule, but guess what? At some point you do them weighted and not just with your bodyweight. And if you are really into it, you can move into the leveraged versions, but that's once you already know what you are doing, know where you want to end up and have developed a taste for exercises that goes beyond the children's palate of curls and chest flies.

Also. No, you do not have strong legs, not naturally, not from other sports. Go squat.

More is more

The answer has always been more weight for more reps, not less weight for more reps or more weight for less reps

The research is slow on this one and this is essentially an artifact of the scientific process. The first studies on a topic usually give you the protocols used for a long time and there is a selection bias to studies which are an statistical outlier, because otherwise people would not assume an effect in the first place.

Which is why we were stuck with protocols of three sets of eight for decades, until finally people who actually lifted started to perform studies. Three sets of eight works well for almost nobody but the best responders, and even if you see bodybuilders living on a diet of 3x8, they usually do multiple exercises for the same body part with this rep scheme, and at that point one could raise the question if it would not be just easier to do more sets of the same exercise and save the variation for further mesocycles.

If you are getting good results with whatever you are doing right now, good. Keep doing that. But if not, try doing more. Very rarely doing less is the right answer, at least outside the scope of peaking and periodization.

There are constraints to doing more: time, energy, structural integrity, work capacity. Be aware of them. Work with your body, not against it.

If you make progress, there is very little need to change. But when progress stalls, the answer is usually more.

If you train hard, you need to deload

Unless you are being coached by some very competent coach who manages your load masterfully throughot the year, it is very likely that you need to deload, and probably it will be something around every four to six weeks.

Deloading not only gives you a break, but actually allows you to train harder: One, after the deload (or the very least, after the second week in the cycle) you will be much fresher than before, so you can train much harder. Two, just before the deload, there is very little reaon to hold back and you can train otherwise unsustainably hard.

There are multiple ways to structure a deload. For me I found it to be a good opportunity to do a little test run of the next cycle, just working up and stopping just before the working sets, so I can get a feel for what the next cycle will be like and possibly change some things up I did not notice when only writing the plan.