AMA: Megan Gallagher AKA MegSquats, creator of Stronger By The Day and Before The Barbell!

[truerhema]

@susanedgar37 Hey! Happy to see you doing an AMA--I'm about to start following your plan to achieve pull-ups and amped up about it.

My question comes from the entreprenurial aspect of things and turning the thing you love into your job. I used to spend my free time working on X, but now that I do X for a living, I'm needing a new hobby to recharge, or else it's all X all the time. Is this something you went through? (I'm sure your Little One is getting your time, but is there anything non-lifting related you're into these days to separate your work identity from YOUR identity?)

 

[velez]

@susanedgar37 Hi Meg,
I'm really interested to hear more about your strongman competition! Did you have a video or blog post about it and the prep involved?

 

[question1234]

@susanedgar37 Hi Meg! I've been following your program for about 6 months and love it. Unfortunately my son started daycare this year so for the past few months we have been sick about every other week, which is limiting my progress. Some weeks I can only get 2 workouts in and I've had to entirely skip weeks twice. What is the best way to handle inconsistencies like this? Decrease weights while recovering? Just jump back in when I can? If I'm not sick I have no problem with the 4x week schedule. Thanks for doing this AMA!

 

[kentuckyblue]

@question1234 We suggest if you miss more than 3 weeks in a row, it might make sense to decrease training maxes anywhere from 2-10% so you can re-acclimate and ramp back up. You might want to do this if you're feeling like you had a few too many missed sessions over the past month or so.

No single session or week is instrumental in your progress. The biggest driver of long term progress is month over month or year-after-year progression.

 

[question1234]

@kentuckyblue Thank you very much! If I can't hit the 90% reps this week I'll decrease and see where that takes me.

 

[kentuckyblue]

@question1234 Good call! And the great thing about the app is it will suggest when to increase or decrease based on your actual training data, which should definitely point you in the right direction. You've got this!

 

[harcato]

@question1234 Great question!

 

[isoter]

@susanedgar37 Hi Meg! As someone who just got back into fitness a year and a half after giving birth, I have to ask how having a baby has impacted your routine and if your goals are different now than pre-pregnancy.

 

[kentuckyblue]

@isoter Congrats! All of my goals right now are very process focused. I have these short pockets of time without the baby and I try to fill them with a lot of intention.

Fitness wise, I'm focused on getting workouts finished and getting back before child care ends. I sometimes write out my workout on a whiteboard for Emerick (little brother) and I, and we assign times to be finished with exercise group 1, 2, 3, 4. This helps me focus on one group, set, rep, at a time. I'm pleased if I get the workout finished.

Performance wise, everything revolves around the pelvic floor, core control, and how my lifts are looking. Last week I noticed a little more 'belly breathing' in some of my lifting videos and I decided to scale it back a bit to address that form cue this week.

Before pregnancy I had very few responsibilities other than work, and felt sort of all over the place in regard to how my days were planned. It was kind of a free for all. I worked all the time, woke up when I felt like it (usually because I was working till 2AM), and had little structure to when things got done. This altogether hurt my focus and consistency with workouts. I feel like now the baby has forced me to have a routine and I'm able to time block a lot more effectively.

 

[isoter]

@kentuckyblue Thank you so much for your reply and I hear you on the routine part! It was weird going from spontaneous chaos to planning out everything around nap time lol I love your content and wish you and your family well

 

[kentuckyblue]

Goals right now are just to get the workouts in and keep ramping back up. I don't have any intention to sign up for a competition or anything. Maybe when the app and a few other work projects are in a great place I can commit - but it doesn't make sense for me right now.

 

[harcato]

@isoter I’m also curious about how your goals may have changed!

 

[wallflower1104]

@susanedgar37 What’s a hard truth you think most lifters could stand to hear?

 

[kentuckyblue]

@wallflower1104 Most lifters (especially intermediates) are not lifting as heavy or as hard as they think they are - especially on accessories. As strong proponents of fatigue management & autoregulation as we are, I think the overwhelming number of lifters are not truly pushing their accessory work to failure. When reps with high proximity to failure tend to be the most stimulating for both strength and hypertrophy goals, every rep closer to technical failure and involuntary reduction of speed will recruit more muscle fibers and drive more growth.

It's so easy to always use the same weight on curls, lunges, step ups, etc. And I get it -- it's hard to jump from 10lb DBs to 15lb DBs on Lateral Raises. But stopping at exactly 10 reps when you had 4+ more in the tank is leaving a lot of stimulus on the table, and you're better off doing 10lbs x 14 reps to failure or 15lbs x 7 reps to failure than picking a manageable weight and just doing the prescribed reps conservatively. This is also where methods like drop sets, rest-pause, clusters, etc. can be helpful, and the amount of stimulus you can get from 1 truly hard set is insane and far more efficient than 3 sets just going through the motions.

 

[thebadcatholic]

@kentuckyblue I took this advice to heart and I went hard on my accessories today. Got a new PR for the leg extension machine and B-stance RDLs. Thanks Meg! I've been doing SBTD for 2.5 years and I've learned so much and gotten super strong.

 

[scmcbride24]

@kentuckyblue To springboard from this - if we have 3 sets of 12 reps and the first one we get through - struggling on the last 1 or 2, should we be doing say 14, knowing that set 2 we are likely to struggle at 10/11 and push to 12? as in, should we just do to failure with the aim for the prescribed reps.

For example, leg curls i can do 10 with 3 negatives at 32kg, but if i go up, i might only get 9, am i better off going harder and not quite reaching my numbers?

 

[wallflower1104]

@kentuckyblue This is just what I needed to hear Thanks Meg!

 

[fillipos]

@kentuckyblue This is very helpful to hear! Changing how I approach tomorrow

 

[coolbluestar]

@kentuckyblue This this this! I've been running SBTD for nearly two years now, but your recent Instagram post on this exact topic - going hard on accessories and pushing them to failure - blew my mind. I had to totally recalibrate how I mentally and physically approach accessories, but that one change has made for a massive, near-instant increase in overall strength.

 

[noamsrai]

@coolbluestar Hey can you point me to this IG post (link or approximate date)? I can't find it!