The Round-Up Interviews: Charles Staley
by Nate Green

It's time to play catch-up with the Testosterone authors. Nate Green does the asking, Charles Staley does the talking.

Earlier this year, I attended a seminar in Little Rock and met Charles for the first time. After only five minutes of conversation, I was taking notes. And I wasn't the only one.

Bill Hartman, Mike Roussell, and a handful of the seminar attendees also pulled out a notepad and started scribbling. And with good reason.

Charles has coached everyone from the average guy to professional and Olympic athletes. His uncommon way of thinking has led to uncommonly remarkable results with his clients and readers who tune in to his website or pick up his book, Muscle Logic.

Hell, the guy has a squat rack in his living room.

That's reason enough to know that when Charles talks training, everybody else shuts up.

Testosterone Nation: I like the latest concept for your training facility. So tell us what's up with your new place.

Charles Staley: Yeah... we acquired this big house in Queen Creek, Arizona, which is right outside of Phoenix, and we basically turned the place into a training facility with client quarters. We call it "Bed & Barbell." So we now have the ability to provide room & board as well as training. We've got a full kitchen, laundry facilities, big screen TV, you name it. We're running about a 45% occupancy rate and are already looking to expand.

T-Nation: So in other words, clients actually live at your facility?

CS: Right, exactly... right now we're just taking individuals and couples, and we've had people stay as little as 3 days and as long as a month. And we've worked with everyday folks looking to get in better shape to very skilled athletes and coaches — it's really fun when a guest first walks in, because they've never seen anything like it before, so I get a kick out of their reaction when they see the place!

T-Nation: I've seen the pictures on your site and I definitely agree. Charles, your cornerstone program, EDT, revolves around performing more work in less time. Can you explain for all the newbies out there why you believe it's more productive than other traditional methods? Can you give us an example in terms of exercise selection, rest periods, etc.?

CS: Any time you prioritize performance in your training, you're already ahead of what most people are doing. We believe that work output (not pain, or what the work feels like) determines training effect. So in the EDT system, we hold duration and load constant while trying to accumulate more and more total repetitions.

This increases training density, or the work/rest ratio of the session. Once density has been increased significantly, we'll increase load slightly, and then wipe the slate clean and start over. So it's kind of an endless cycle of expanding your base, then putting a peak on it, then back to expanding, then peaking, and so forth. I do believe in the idea that the broader the base, the higher the peak.

But here's an example, and if you decide to try it, do all of your personal grooming, household chores, etc., beforehand, because you'll be relatively incapacitated after you do it: Take two exercises: chins, and back squats. These two exercises involve a large proportion of your total muscle mass with very little redundancy.

Before you start (as you're warming up), find a weight that's about 10RM for both exercises — that requires you to be able to do at least 10 chins, by the way.

Once you've got your weights selected, you start a timer for 15 minutes and get down to business. Start with 5 reps on your first sets of chins. Since it's a 10RM weight, you won't need much rest before your squats, so knock off 5 reps on the squat. Then back to chins... just keep going back and forth, taking each next set whenever you feel ready for it. As fatigue sets in, you'll (instinctively) start resting more between sets, but also, drop down to sets of 4 when you need to, and then 3's, 2's, and finally, you might do a few singles toward the end of the 15 minute period (which we call a "PR Zone").

When you've finished, count up your total reps, and that number is your personal record, or PR. This becomes your target on the next repeat.

Charles teaching EDT to an attendee at a Little Rock seminar earlier this year.

T-Nation: So in other words, the next time you do that PR Zone, you're trying to get more than whatever number you originally posted?

CS: Exactly.

T-Nation: So then, is there a time when you'd add weight to the bar?

CS: Yes — we call it the 20/5 rule: as soon as you're able to increase your PR by 20% or more, you'll add 5 pounds or 5% (whichever is less) to each exercise, and start over with a clean slate, so to speak.

T-Nation: You wrote an article for T-Nation titled 10 Important Lessons. It really opened up my mind and became a "must-read" for whenever I needed a reminder or kick in the pants. One of your points was: "The majority Is ALWAYS wrong, therefore DO THE OPPOSITE." This really struck a chord with me.

Can you give us a few examples on what you mean and elaborate a bit?

CS: This has been my personal "OS" (operating system) for many years now, and whenever I apply it, it never disappoints. So the idea is, if you look at the majority, and how successful they are in whatever — career, health, relationships, whatever it is — the majority of people are relatively unsuccessful.

Think about people you see day in and day out in the gym — how many of them have made significant progress? Only a few, right? So the easiest path to success is to sort of "reverse engineer" what the majority does. As an example, in the gym, the majority of people don't even go, so that's your first clue. Those that DO go tend to focus on cardio... there's your second clue. When you look at the few who've figured out that resistance training is the real key to success, most of them are using machines... there's your third clue right? Should I continue?

T-Nation: Please!

CS: Okay, so when you get to the level of people who're using free weights, most of them are doing few sets of many reps (like 3x10 or 4x8 or 2x15 or whatever). They'd be better off doing many sets of few reps, because that favors performance over pain.

I could go off in all sorts of directions with this... most people have better development in the pecs, quads, abs, and biceps, than they have in the posterior chain — they're only training the muscles they can see in the mirror. Most people use mirrors. Maybe it's better to do the opposite of that! Another example, most people train to improve appearance; I believe you should train to improve performance. Anyway, I'll end it there, but you can apply this to pretty much anything. I should market this as a secret success formula — did you ever see all the attention that book The Secret was getting recently?

T-Nation: Yes, I think it started on Oprah...

CS: Right — well, THIS is the real secret — watch what others do, and align your own behaviors in 180-degree opposition to that, and watch what happens. It's very powerful. Trust me.

T-Nation: You seem to be both for and against structure in everything from exercise programming to personal endeavors and goal setting.

How does one find the balance and know whether to use a template or wing it? What kind of understanding does a person have to have about themselves? Where's the starting point? And the end point?

CS: Well, you do need templates, or structure to put it another way, but you have to be the master of that structure, not the servant of it. Another word that might be more applicable here is "system." I really believe in systems, because if you don't use systems, you need to reinvent the wheel every time a unique situation presents itself (which in my case, is pretty much every day!). If you've got a system though, it reduces and directs your decision-making process, which frees you up to apply your creativity to the situation.

Okay, I'm realizing that what I just said will confuse everyone, so here's an example. Let's say you're a coach or a trainer, and you've planned for your client to do military presses, but he's got pain when he tried it. What do you do? Well, I've got a system for that... if a client can't perform a specified exercise, we substitute a corrective exercise to address the root problem that's preventing a pain-free performance.

So you either do the exercise, or a corrective exercise that eventually gets you to the point to where you can do it — it's one or the other. And we don't do corrective exercises unless there's something to correct — that's the other system component. Now within that system, I can apply a lot of creativity to the situation based on my knowledge and experience.

For example, if we suspect rotator cuff impingement, there are a lot of corrective exercise choices and loading parameters to select from. So the system gives me more freedom, not less. Make sense?

T-Nation: It does... I'm just wondering how you apply this to assessments. For example, what happens when someone comes to you for the first time?

CS: All coaches and trainers assess. Sometimes it's conscious, sometimes unconscious. Sometimes it's proactive, sometimes reactive. But whenever you start working with a new client, you're looking for clues about who and what you're dealing with.

My approach to assessment looks like this:

Step One: Observe. Great coaches notice things. The way someone stands, walks, lifts. Look for asymmetries. These can be motion-related and/or somatic. So for example, a client comes in and I ask them to stand naturally in front of me, and I can see more knuckles on their right hand than the left hand. That suggests greater internal rotation of the right humerus (as opposed to the left), and probably that's something I'll want to look at more closely later on, so I make a note of it (see step two below). I'll probably ask about it also: "Jim, any orthopedic issues — knees... shoulders... ?" I'll try not to "lead" him by asking if he's had a problem with his right shoulder.

Step Two: Document. What seems clear and easy to remember now has a way of becoming real fuzzy when you've got a lot of clients, and when life gets busy. So document your findings. This is also important if there are other coaches who may be working with the client — this way, anyone can pull the client's file and get quickly updated.

Step Three: Analyze. Once you've observed and documented something, you've got to corroborate it with other findings. A single, isolated finding may or may not be significant, but if it corroborates other findings, it may take on more importance. Look for patterns. In the example above, that internal rotation might take on additional meaning as the client performs various exercise patterns — presses, snatches, whatever. There may also be pain obviously.

Step Four: Solution. Staying with that example, to me, pain is a problem. So if the client can't perform a pain-free overhead press, I'll start digging. If there's already been a medical diagnosis, we're that much ahead of the game. If not, I'll suggest we get one. You can do a lot more withinformation than without it. I should also add that not all problems have solutions, so that's another thing to consider.

Anyway, I've probably spent way too much time on that, sorry!

T-Nation: Not at all! What event has recently made the most significant impact on your life and what did it teach you?

CS: I'm going to surprise myself because I actually have a relatively cogent answer for this one! When you've been doing what I've been doing for as long as I have, you tend to sometimes lose touch with the value you're providing people. I'm not sure why this happens, but recently a client was telling me how he's made so much progress that he's been accused of being on drugs, and he got a kick out of it, and it just made me think, "Wow, I guess I really am helping people."

That might sound like an odd thing to say I guess, but we're all just people trying to make a difference, so when you get confirmation of that, it's really nice, and it re-inspires me to do what I do. Because when it's all said and done, all you can hope for is to make the world a little better for having been there.

T-Nation: Well said. Thanks, Charles!

CS: You're welcome!

About Charles:

His colleagues call him an iconoclast, a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients call him "The Secret Weapon" for his ability to see what other coaches miss. Charles calls himself a "geek" who struggled in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles' methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious results. His counter-intuitive approach and self-effacing demeanor have lead to appearances on NBC's The TODAY Show and The CBS Early Show. Find Charles online at www.StaleyTraining.com.

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