My cousin, best friend, and trainee Sagar Shah gives me a run for my money asking the tough questions associated with my training methods. He summarized his constructive criticism in three, well-constructed paragraphs. I will present one of his criticisms, and try to answer it with the best of my abilities. The article Sagar is referring to is A Simple Primer to the Shah Training Methodology.
“The main idea of this article is that bodybuilding will not help the layman build cardiovascular and muscular endurance. “Work capacity” is just a buzz word used to explain the same thing. I partially agree with his thesis. Bodybuilding alone will not make you a well-rounded athlete. It might get you bigger or cut up but it won’t give you quickness on the courts or stamina when it counts. However, I do believe that bodybuilding is an important tool in the entire conditioning process. “
Work Capacity is not a “buzz word” to explain anything. In my conversation with Sagar he stated that a “9-5 job” has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. I will try to take another stab at this without repeating what I said before. I’m going to break the rules here and use the words being defined in the definition. Work Capacity is your Capacity to do Work. And so, WORK can be defined as anything from taking out the garbage to answering phone calls. In a fitness sense, WORK is defined as the type of exercise you are performing.
But Work Capacity is not simply talking about a well-rounded program. Yes, Shah Training is a program which revolves around targeting multiple quailites of fitness within the same time frame, including aesthetics, however if it were that simple, then Work Capacity would on be on the tip of everyone’s tongues.
“As Parth often emphasizes, “there is no perfect system, just hard work.” This is the best advice that anyone can get when it comes to reaching your physical goals. But, it seems as if Parth is claiming that bodybuilding is a waste of time and a half dozen compound exercises will do the trick. If this is the case, then you should be weary.”
Lets visit another principle for a moment. As an economist, Sagar, you should be familiar with the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle is a common rule of thumb in the business world. The principle was named after Vilfredo Pareto, who noticed that 80% of the income in Italy is held by 20% of the population. And so in business terms, this principle translates to 80% of your sales come from 20% of you clients. Hence, if you wish to run a successful company, your goal is to observe and figure out which of your clients consist of the 20% giving you business.
If it works so well in the business world, then why not apply it to every aspect of your life? This means that 20% of your relationships are bringing you 80% of your gratification (think about this for a second. It’s true.) This means that 20% of you marketing effort are bringing 80% of your business. This means that 20% of the exercises that you are performing are bringing you 80% of your returns.
I was explaining this to a bodybuilder friend of mind, and he asked me, “Well, what about the other 20%?” Well, the other 20% is the specialization work which is required to bring you to completion. For some people this 20% could be doing bicep curls, and for other people it could mean doing steady state cardio. However, the problem that I have with bodybuilding is that it uses a reverse principle: the 20/80 rule, in that you perform 80% of the work in order to achieve 20% of the results (namely, aesthetics).
I personally think that you’ve accomplished something profound if you can only spend 20% of the time that you previously spent achieving 80% of the results you were previously getting. For me, personally, if I have only 10 to 20 minutes to train per day because I’m a normal guy with a family and a full time career, then I’m going to choose those exercises that give me the greatest returns for my efforts. And those are full body, compound exercises. In this sense, Shah Training, or Work Capacity is actually the perfect program for the layman with limited time and equipment, not some “buzz word” I cooked up to market some product I don’t sell.
“Use shahtraining. But use conventional weightlifting as well. Why do you think basketball, football, and baseball player’s condition by hitting the weight room? Because weightlifting coupled with compound movement exercises and cardiovascular training helps them become better athletes.“
First of all, weight lifting in the traditional sense is actually all compound movements. The first programs that came out consisted of Olympic Lifts such as the Clean and Press, Push Jerk, and Snatch, all three of which are no longer present in the new “traditional” bodybuilding programs. So lets keep bodybuilding and weight lifting separate. When you talk about weight lifting, you are actually referring to exercises used in the Shah Training program.
Perhaps I used a bad example last time, making you believe that this program was only for athletes. One of the drawbacks in your particular example is that professional athletes have a lot of time to improve in their sport. And so you have to really analyze what the bulk of their training consists of.
Let me restate the fact that this program works with the element of time. The majority of the world has very little time on their hands to get to the gym. This is one of the main excuses you will hear when people talk about getting into shape. As a fitness guy, I hear this all the time. The moment people know about my website or when I flip out my business card, they say, “Oh, I used to train for hours in the gym, but when I started working and then I got married and now with two kids, I barely have time for myself, so how do you expect me to get to the gym.” This is precisely the problem that Shah Training fixes.
