tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38977744703725657302024-02-06T18:20:48.215-08:00The Bodyweight FilesGetting the Most out of the least. I'm a hybrid strongman/Bodyweight guy/odd lifter with a flavor for unconventionality and an interest in getting strong. Welcome. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.comBlogger432125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-12202234189138272392017-06-07T12:07:00.000-07:002017-06-07T12:07:12.941-07:00Shooting My Mouth Off...the random thoughts about Strength EquipmentAs I've ventured into competitive lifting sports, I've looked back at non-competitive lifters and noticed something different that I never took notice of before: often times, they get glued to specific pieces of equipment...and that often defines who they are as a lifter. It's increasingly foreign to me as a competitor in my specific sport since I chose one that is decidedly non-specific in what we lift to begin with. <br />
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Still, it came up in a podcast that I did recently with Eric Fiorillo and I thought I'd take some time to discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of different things people use to get strong. There's not going to be any particular rhyme or reason to this except for what I don't think is frequently addressed when discussing these tools of the trade.<br />
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<u><b>BARBELLS...</b></u><br />
Barbells are the best tool for any kind of squatting or deadlifting. That probably makes them the overall best strength building tools since those two families of lifts are probably the top two best body builders. Barbells might also be the best tool for developing the biggest up strength with agonist movements. Before you ask me what the fuck I'm talking about there, I'll save you the agony of having to stop looking at IG (or pornography) to open up an anatomy book to look up what that means. When the body moves against resistance, the muscles involved break down into three categories:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Agonist muscles: initiates the movement</li>
<li>Antagonist muscles: resists the movement (braking mechanism)</li>
<li>Stabilizers: holds the rest of the body in place while the movement happens.</li>
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Barbells are generally the best for number 1. </div>
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<b>But...</b></div>
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I don't think barbells are the overall best tool for upper body development. Sure, they can have, and continue build sick strength up there but those body parts can probably be developed in a less painful and more effective manner (with less weight. I still love to use less weight in a harder manner) than a barbell. </div>
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<b><u>KETTLEBELLS...</u></b><br />
One of my favorite things in the world to do when someone asks me about kettlebell training is to tell them that anything they can do with a kettlebell can be done with a dumbbell. The blank, lost look is amazing...and humorous. That's not to say that there aren't things that kettlebells do better than dumbbells...and vice versa (I'll get to that shortly). Kettlebells are better for doing movements for the lower body than dumbells are. The signature swings and snatches are definitely safer to perform (as in: keeping the object in your hands) as well as more difficult to do with (more intense muscular effort) a kettlebell. <br />
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<b>But...</b><br />
For lower body development, kettlebells (and dumbbells, for that matter) are still notably behind barbells in developing the more max strength people crave with weights. They're mostly good for accessory movements. While kettlebells can absolutely be used for upper body movements (I use them a lot for pressing in my low ceiling basement) a dumbbell of equal weight will be noticeably harder with the same weight. <br />
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Aside from the hype, these reasons may be why kettlebells have never seriously cracked into the mainstream use of the fringe heavy lifting community: inferior to dumbbells for upper body work and inferior to barbells for lower body work. <br />
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<b><u>DUMBBELLS...</u></b><br />
Lost among the hype of kettlebells years ago seems to be the effectiveness of dumbbell training. If we really wanted to be honest with ourselves, dumbbells are probably the best tool for upper body work. That probably gets lost on most people for several reasons. Many of the lifts you can do with a dumbbell can be done with a barbell with both greater weight and less ego-crushing effects. Plus, they're probably more comfortable on the joints and safer as a result. Lastly, it's getting harder to find gyms with dumbbell sets that exceed 100 lbs. <br />
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<b>BUT...</b><br />
As discussed above, dumbbells would have to take a place behind kettlebells for lower body accessory work and a spot behind barbells for building max strength stuff for the same body parts. <br />
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<b><u>SANDBAGS...</u></b><br />
These are a personal favorite, for a lot of reasons. My reasoning for this goes back to that anatomy lesson above: Sandbags are the safest way to flip to a strength training exercise that hits the stabilizer muscles in the body harder than it hits the agonist muscles. If you think that's a detriment then you haven't tried lifting in a strongman competition...or in real life. Most of the time, when you lift an object not meant to be lifted, your stabilizers will work a lot harder than the agonist muscles ever will. I've outlifted people stronger at barbell lifting with odd objects because I'm stronger with my stabilizers. <br />
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Another reason why I love sandbags is that they can seemlessly move from static lifting to walking/carrying movements. In fact, I've done exactly this in a single lifting movement. This adds an extra level of versatility you probably won't get with other heavy objects. <br />
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<b><u>but...</u></b><br />
I'm not the biggest fan of using sandbags for upper body work. A sandbag big enough for lower body development will likely be useless for upper body stuff since it will be almost impossible to row, press, etc. Also, Sandbags can't be used as freely for accessory or isolation work. If anything, I view them as a barbell substitute when I can't barbell train...or as a strongman event. <br />
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<b><u>Now, all the Caveats to The Above statements...</u></b></div>
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Many of the perceived strengths and problems with using all of the above-mentioned objects doesn't reside in the object itself but in two factors: how they're made and how they're used. While barbells are rarely anyone outside of Crossfits go-to for conditioning work like kettlebells are, that doesn't mean they can't be used for conditioning. Kettlebells can effectively be used to train things like overhead pressing strength. Just because few do and there are better options out there doesn't mean they won't work. </div>
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Also, consider that certain pieces of strength equipment are kind of rare. As stated above, dumbbells above 100 lbs are problematic to find in many gyms. Some people have taken it upon themselves to build dumbbells that can be loaded up over 200 lbs because the utility of such heavy dumbbell rows is unmistakable. Still, someone might label a dumbell row inferior to a barbell one simply because the weights needed to make a dumbbell row difficult aren't as easy to find. That doesn't make the movement or the tool inferior, just not as practical or available to some. </div>
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So, what I've tried to do with this entry is strip all of the issues concerning use, hype and manufacture out of the equation and evaluate just based what they're inherently best for. </div>
<br />Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-48905530812263314392017-05-10T00:24:00.002-07:002017-05-10T00:24:53.188-07:00How To Stretch The Outer Limits of Adrenaline and Caffeine...Or My recap of My Experience Competing at Connecticut's Strongest Man The only thing that has been more infrequent and rare than my writing on this blog has been my ability to actually attend a strongman competition that I've paid money to do. In the 19 months, I paid for, and missed, three strongman competitions since I did Granite State 8 in New Hampshire in July, 2015. Since I don't have a job that requires me to travel, rendering my ability to compete practically impossible, I managed to actually stop donating money to strongman promoters and actually doing a competition April 28. <br />
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It was far from perfect. While I do have a stay-close-to-home job, it's a night shift, working 6 pm-6 am 3-4 nights a week. I did have a long weekend off but it proved not enough to flip my schedule around enough to be rested for this competition. So, I started competing Saturday morning when I had been up already for 15 hours. This hurt. </div>
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<b><u>Lesson Learned: Sleep is important!</u></b></div>
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I really like the look of this competition when I signed up for it in January. There wasn't a lifting event that I truly hated in the bunch: 140 lbs circus dumbbell for reps, max 13" deadlift, 250 lbs farmers walks for 60', 250 lbs keg carry for 100', and a 240 lbs stone load. As I commenced training, I learned a very painful lesson about my new work schedule: While I can get enough rest to feel refreshed in the afternoons i don't work, it's not deep enough to recover from heavy training on the nights that I do. So, I frequently ran into days where I'd be absolutely dead from training loads that normally don't have issues with. </div>
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This lead me to actually write down a plan that I mostly stuck to. Every day had a light day equivalent that I could do on nights that I worked so I could recover. I refrained from doing event training or deadlifting on work nights (except light weight carries for longer distances as finishers). </div>
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I also placed a very heavy emphasis on pressing, specifically trying to do drop sets for hypertropy work. My pressing is a particularly weak spot in my strongman acumen and the only thing I hadn't done up until this point was dedicated hypertropy work. So, I tried my best to do three pressing sessions per week. <br />
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There were issues along the way. I had a trap bar unload on me, mid rep which messed up my hip in March. Then I got a nasty flu in April that put me in bed for two days. Then, the results of not tapering down my training started getting the better of me. My deadlift stalled. I couldn't lock out 131 lbs circus dumbbells. The last straw was dropping farmer handles. By the final weekend before the competition, I came to the realization that I was fatigued and at this point, I would get no stronger. So, I shut down my training 8 days out. I slept 10-12 hours a night for the next three days. <br />
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Plus, I had to deal with flipping my schedule a bit to stay up during the days anyway. <br />
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<b><u>So, How did the Competition go?</u></b><br />
Flipping my schedule didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I was hoping to sleep until 10:00 pm the night before the competition. That didn't work out and I sprang awake at 6:30 pm. <br />
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I realized I'd be testing the outer limits of adrenaline and caffeine. <br />
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So, after a four hour drive to Connecticut, a bit of warming up and loosening things as much as possible, I was pressing a 140 lbs circus dumbbell. As it turned out, only three guys showed up to compete at 200 lbs. I managed to get three reps with the dumbbell, good for a second place finish. This was disappointing since I hoped to get 5-6. One bright-ish spot was I botched a third rep attempt with the left hand which left my shoulder and tricep feeling drained. My leg speed wasn't there. So, I switched to my right arm and got another rep. Unfortunately, I lost time because I thought I missed a rep when I actually got it and almost attempted an unnecessary extra rep. <br />
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Next up was the one event I was dreading the most: a 13" max effort, best of three attempts deadlift. Miss a lift, you're out. Deadlifting had gone, by far, the worst for me in training so Started conservatively: 450 lbs. Second attempt was 500 lbs. One guy opened with 600 lbs. Yeah, I wasn't expecting to win the event. I simply didn't want to loose too many points. My opening for that came when the other guy dropped a 535 lbs instead of lowering the bar on his second lift. I took 525 lbs on my last attempt and took second on this event too. <br />
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I was hoping my moving events would put me in the running for first place. The problem was that I was getting tired and running out of caffeine (I had two 24 ounce coffees, a protein shake with 400 mg of caffeine and my electrolyte drink spiked with 600 mg of caffeine). My farmers were uncharacteristically slow: 9.25 seconds. My pick and first two steps were too slow. Another second place finish. This really pissed me off. <br />
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Kegs actually didn't go terrible. This had been my slower moving event in training. I was actually happy with this because I used to have a tendency to take excessively long steps, make my stride too wide and therefore slower. This time, I kept it shorter and sweet, getting 100' with a turn in a bit over 20 seconds. <br />
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By this point, the first place guy had taken first in all of the events. I had taken second in the first four. I had no chance of taking first and unless the third place guy took first in the stones and I zeroed them, he could't over take me for second. I was far too drained to go all-out on the stones for no benefit in points. I took my time and gladly took third in the stones but second overall in the competition. <br />
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<b><u>What Went Right</u></b><br />
What made me most happy about my performance was that I was consistent with holding second place. I also liked that I only really made one or two errors throughout the competition (the dumbbell, and the slow pick on the farmers). I was also savvy and played against the lesser experienced third place finisher well. I found it amusing that the deadlift and the keg ware what I projected would be my weakest events and they turned out to be the two that I performed to expectations.<br />
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The biggest issue was my crazy nights schedule. My whole performance was marred by just flat-out not being rested. There wasn't a whole lot I could do about that. It was the price I was willing to pay to compete. It just made me tired and slow. <br />
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Still, I had fun, got to compete and made a lot of new, cool friends. I seemed to make myself popular by bringing homemade donut muffins and blueberry stout to share with whoever wanted them. I'm unsure about future competition at this point. I signed up for Pennsylvania's Strongest Man in Lancaster at the end of July but with my budget limited for strongman, I'm taking a wait and see approach.<br />
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In the meantime, it's back to the drawing board, working on my pressing and my deadlift, trying to get stronger and have some fun along the way. <br />
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-29113747178029415842017-04-28T22:29:00.000-07:002017-04-28T22:29:31.861-07:00Horribly Overdue Blog Post and Horribly Overdue Product Review: The Hook!<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Yes, fans, it's been far too long since I've posted anything but I've got some blog entries cued up and ready to fire off. Sorry about the Drought and I hope that you enjoy this one...</i></blockquote>
I'm sure that most people who ever write reviews of equipment do mere weeks after they receive said equipment, brand new, generally un-abused and not touched by the ravages of time. That might be a mistake. I can't speak for the rest of the shaved apes reading my blog but I would have to plead guilty to falling victim to being easily excited by new items in the mail and the novelty of something fresh to play with in the gym. No, it's probably better wait a few years to thoroughly use, and possibly abuse, the item in question to see if it will hold up and does its features add to training in a positive manner. <br />
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Well, the second part is easily proven correct. Suspension trainers seemed to have taken off since the advent of the marvelously overpriced TRX was birthed on the world almost a decade ago. In terms of sheer versatility to money spent on a piece of equipment, it's easy to justify the expenditure of <i>plata </i>on a suspension rig. If you're into general purpose, upper body strength training, you could be set for life with this. <br />
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So, the Hook, like other suspension rigs, doesn't need to prove that it's worth the money in terms of sheer utility. What it does need to do is prove it's durability, features, and price put it above the other suspension rigs. After four years of playing with it, and other suspension rigs, I can verify that it does and that it's better than the others. <br />
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I promise that I do more with these than just curls. </div>
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The Hook is a project of a semi-retired internet-aquaintance by the name Bruce Tackett. The handles were primarily designed to be used with bands (which he sells) but he eventually branched out to include an Isometric Strap and also some squat harnesses, He also sells a door attachment to use all of these on. While I have played with them using bands, my <b>REAL</b> interest was using them for bodyweight movements. So, my Hook accessories have been used with my body (which in the past several years has varied between 185 lbs and 215 lbs) dangled off of them in some manner. <br />
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What this bodyweight suspension rig has all over all other competitors is it's sheer simplicity. The Iso Strap is simply a piece of webbing with loops double stitched into it at roughly 6" increments. The Hook handles simply hook through the loops and away you go. This makes it far more secure most of the other suspension rigs that use some sort of mechanical locking mechanism to adjust the fixed handles. I've had several of these locks slip on me while using them. <br />
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Plus, there is no guess work with the positioning of the handles and if you're accidentally going to put yourself at an easier angle to train at. This is particularly helpful when I train one arm rows and one-arm pull-up training work. <br />
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<b><u>What Have I Used The Hook For?</u></b><br />
Initially, I bought the Hook, door attachment and Iso-Strap for Bodyweight movements. After all, this was what my main training modality was back in 2012 when I bought it. The majority of the training movements were Pull-ups, Dips, One and two arm push-ups, One and two arm (mostly one) rowing, and chest flyes. My use of this rig dramatically increased when I tore my ACL. I do have to note that my handles that I currently have were not the original ones I bought. I did break one of them while doing dips a few days before my surgery. Bruce was unquestionably apologetic, aghast, and promptly sent me an updated, new design handle that I've had ever since. Even after surgery, I was heavily restricted with my lower body movements and so I still trained mostly upper body, and largely with the Hook. <br />
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Eventually, I recovered from the whole ACL ordeal and I was frankly so fed up with training so much with this instrument that I stopped using it as a primary training tool. Plus, I started training at a gym where I got into strongman so I trained far less at home. I still used it once or twice a week when I didn't make it out of work on time but it was far from the primary training tool. I also took it along and used it when I traveled by airplane and used it in hotels. <br />
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My pressing accessory work on Wendesdays</div>
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Fast forward to this past summer. I ended up having lunch with my friend Jamie and he strongly suggested that I take up using it but more for bodybuilding style isolation movements as an accessory to my main lifting. This had never crossed my mind before and since he's just as stupid fucking strong as he is smart as all hell, I listened. The Hook became my primary tool for arm training ( tricep kickbacks and curls) as well as upper body accessory work (forward and reverse flyes, plus shoulder pressing). Since the Hook and the Iso-strap laughed off the staggered grip pull-ups and one arm bodyweight moves, this was no issue. The latest movement I've started using the Hook handles for is chain pressing. Using a 65 lbs chain, I hook the Hook through a link and press the chain for reps as an accessory for my circus dumbell work. It sure beats a mechanical lock on a strap that slips while you're working out. That's just dangerous.<br />
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There has been damage. The Hook is structurally sound and still usable, don't get me wrong. I have, however, torn the edge of the padding on the handle with the chain press and the hooks have a plastic hose to cover the U-bolt that forms the hook itsself. It is worth noting that these were designed to be used with some bands, isometrics, and some bodyweight work. I'm clearly pushing the limits of what this thing was designed to do with all bodyweight, no bands, no isometrics and now chain lifts.<br />
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Then, we have to talk cost. To set yourself up with what I've got will put you back around $100.00. That's quite a bit below the cost of even the most basic TRX. Plus it's a superior system anyway with more versatility than the others. This is that one time you're well-suited to support the little guy and get in touch with <a href="http://www.sierraexercise.com/index.html" target="_blank">Sierra Exercise Equipment</a> if you are in the market for a suspension rig. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-33781872521900946252016-02-13T14:11:00.000-08:002016-02-13T14:11:23.538-08:00You don't have to like it, you have to do it...The preventative Maintenance stuff!In my last blog entry I made the groundbreaking observation that we should be doing strength training work that we enjoy less we stop strength training out of boredom. Otherwise, we run the risk of descending into the gym hades known as yoga, Les Mills bullshit, and random inquisition-imitating cardio machinery. So, if you find something that makes you strong that you enjoy, you should really do that. <br />
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The intuitiveness of this blog is off-the charts I know...<br />
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Still, some amount of adulthood has to creep into strength training. If you appreciate a healthy body then eventually you have to pay the bills with some lifts that keep shit balanced out. Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I decided to read anatomy and physiology books to learn about how the body works. The unfortunate problem with this facet of medical science is that if you don't use the knowledge, you lose it. It's an enormous amount of memorization. <br />
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One such takeaway that I gleaned from this experiment in drudgery was the something called tension integrity. What that's all about is basically your joints and float on muscular tension rather than bones directly interlocking with one another. So, keeping shit in proper working order is about making sure the pull between muscles is correct. <br />
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In other words, balance. Such a word might as well be written in an obscure, foreign dialect when talking to meatheads. It doesn't have to be a call away from the extreme though. It can be something as basic as doing either pull-ups, rope climbs, or rows as a supplement to pressing. That has been the approach I've taken since I upped my overhead pressing work to three days a week. As a result, I seem to have skipped the obligatory tightness I've heard others complain about with lots of weekly pressing work.<br />
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Please don't mistake this writer as someone who read a book and became magically smart though. One thing that you realize when you read anatomy books is that underneath your skin, there are tons of different cuts of meat with bizarre Latin names which you won't give a shit about until they hurt. I'm not nearly smart enough to work out muscles that don't impress women on a regular basis either. <br />
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This happened just recently when I was working out with sandbags mostly while traveling to Wisconsin. I had some routines I built around having simply a 160 lbs and a 250 lbs sandbag. After completing the job and eventually I got home, I stopped doing the shit I had been doing for months. After all, I did those routines since I couldn't do anything else and since I had a bit more sophisticated gear at my disposal, I had no need to bother with my sandbag routines?<br />
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Life has a sense of humor in that regard. Even I should have realized that crude doesn't mean ineffective. Among the regular flavors on the sandbag exercise menu were good morning and walking lunges. Around the time I dropped these out of my weekly hoisting, I started driving for work. A lot. Everywhere. The driving was remarkably effective in turning my hip flexors into violin strings. My deadlift took a major shit.<br />
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Realizing that this pain in my hips was really making my deadlift numbers vomit, I decided to start researching ways to stretch my hips out. One stretch that almost perpetually came up was one that looked eerily similar to something I used to do at least once a week...<br />
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So, these movements aren't the sexiest lifts on earth. They're not in a competition and they don't make it easier to lift hundreds of pounds. So, they may not make in on your worlds favorite lifts any time soon. Too bad. You're an adult now. That means your body isn't young. You can't do whatever you want since you sit too fucking much. You're going to have to do some PM to even out the fact that, generally speaking, we make dumb decisions with how we chose to move...or not move. You don't have to like it but you do have to do it.Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-80775846147329818162016-01-10T05:15:00.001-08:002016-01-10T05:15:24.479-08:00Why did I Change to Strongman? <div data-reactid=".41.1.0.0.0.0.1:$mid=11422023261781=2bc707bad3c18148463.0.1.0.$right.0.0.1">
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<span data-reactid=".41.1.0.0.0.0.1:$mid=11422023261781=2bc707bad3c18148463.0.1.0.$right.0.0.1.0"><em>Hi. i'm reading all your blog when i have free time, since 2007. Even if is too mutch "no pain no gain" for me. (training everyday etc)<span data-reactid=".41.1.0.0.0.0.1:$mid=11422023261781=2bc707bad3c18148463.0.1.0.$right.0.0.1.0.$end:0:$2:0">I really appreciate the content and what you write. I'm sorry you have only 500 like here. One thing that I did not understand is why you went from "no tools" to use the kettlebelsl and other "strongman stuff".continues to write please, it's good for my knowledge and motivation... bye and greetings from Italy!</span></em></span></blockquote>
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Somewhere along the line last year I received this comment, probably on the Facebooks where I notoriously neglect to do much of anything to hype this place. I put it here so I can comment on it further in a draft. Then, like most everything that I did here last year, I completely forgot about it. <br />
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Since then, as I've felt more compelled to write I took a second look at it. The person who wrote it did bring up something that I've pondered myself since I decided to get into strongman: why do I keep writing about it on "bodyweight" blog? I've obviously strayed a long, long way from where I started this blog seven years ago. Maybe I should start another one? <br />
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Or, perhaps that my blog wasn't just about how I decided to move for purposes of getting strong. Maybe I was making points about training all along about stuff that I don't really like in this little subculture of people who like to get strong. As soon as I decided I wanted to make a conscientious effort to get stronger WAAAY back in 2002, I remember getting hit with ideas about how <strong>I had to</strong> <br />
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</span>to do certain things to accomplish that end. Indeed, there's a lot of, "do what I say and do", that goes on with lifting. <br />
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<strong><u>You have to go to a gym...</u></strong><br />
How many times have I heard how necessary going to a gym to get your body in check I cannot even begin to say. An early motivator for me to use bodyweight was with the traveling I did for work and my pinched finances from importing a Peruvian wife decimated my capability to use gyms to get strong. Never being one to look at conventionality and say, "oh shit, I'm fucked," I searched for alternatives. I stumbled down some bad alley ways for information here and there before I finally got things working properly but I managed to get stronger, even bigger, with just my body as the source of resistance. <br />
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There is a distinct possibility that I will always work out more in parking lots and garages than I ever will in gyms. </div>
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Even as I delved into strongman, I still don't regularly go to gyms to train. I've got far more equipment than I used to. I still travel a lot so I'm still largely minimalist. My bodyweight training lessons served me well in that regard. For my last competition, I trained far more in a parking garage with two sandbags than I did in the gym down the street. While didn't win, I was still competitive.<br />
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The moral of the story is that gyms are <strong>NICE. </strong>They are not <strong>NECESSARY</strong>. Yes, your life has to bend a bit to accommodate your training. That doesn't mean that your training doesn't have to bend to your life as well. You may not always be able to get to a gym. You may not always be able to use weights, or use the type of weights that you want to use. You have to figure out alternatives. These alternative can get you strong. <br />
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<strong><u>Do what you like to do </u></strong><br />
Okay, there were several points in time from 2002 to now where I could have easily joined a gym and lifted weights long before I did. I didn't have to stay in hotel parking lots or my basement and do enormous quantities of weird push-up circuits. The reason why I did was because I enjoyed doing it. That's also the same reason why I started picking up weights and I ended up getting into strongman. <br />
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<strong><u><span style="font-size: large;">IT'S FUN!!!</span></u></strong></div>
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Seriously, let that sink in for a moment. Now think about how many people just do shit because they're told to do it in a gym, regardless of whether or not they actually enjoy what they're doing. It's not surprising to me that people eventually stop training since, with weight training, you are either a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, an Olympic weight lifter, a strongman, or a crossfitter. They all have their lifts, their protocols, their clothing, their programming, and even their own gyms. They behave like idiotic, rowdy sports fans with their prodding criticisms of one another's styles of temporarily defeating the gravitational pull of an inanimate objects on a temporary basis. That has to wear thin eventually. </div>
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Believe it or not, I enjoyed this!</div>
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So, seven years ago, I enjoyed bodyweight. Now, I enjoy strongman. It's actually that simple. Both provide me with enjoyable ways of overcoming resistance and therefore, getting strong. That needs to be remembered when people do this stuff. You'll never find a definition in a dictionary that defines strength with a specific lift. That's just the creation of a click within a subculture. Never forget that. </div>
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That's been the underlying theme of this blog for a long, long time. Find a balance of working with what you have while doing what you like to do. It doesn't matter with what implements you do that with or how you choose to move. <br />
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-50218464010559355552015-12-15T14:03:00.001-08:002015-12-15T14:03:18.270-08:00The Lesser-known Advantages of Bodyweight TrainingIf readers have been stopping by and been a bit disappointed by the lack of purity in the content of my bodyweight-based blog since I jumped into the deep end of the strongman pool, I'd advise you to buy a gallon of distilled water...and shove it. <br />
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Okay, maybe there is a bit of a point there. I don't do a full-blown bodyweight blog any more than I train BW-only. As I've branched out I still don't forget my roots. Those have to be into some grounds of practicality and a strength trainer can't get any more practical than a BW training. <br />
This blog has always been about acknowledging that training has to mold around the rest of your life. Getting strong can only encroach on your job, family, sleep and porn time so much. <br />
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So, BW has a lot of advantages dealing with the pragmatism to any strength trainer. The question is what are those advantages? I do have three in mind that you may not realize. I'll start out with performance-oriented one, moving to the less obvious, life molding shit. <br />
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<strong><u>Need mid-section strength? You need BW</u></strong><br />
Filed under things I wished I'd saved a link to years ago was a video or picture of Derek Poundstone doing ab wheel rollouts (on his knees) . While those athletes will likely make mountains out of mole hills debating the usefulness of direct ab work, those who agree you need some ab work will probably end up doing something BW-oriented. <br />
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Why that is so is actually pretty simple: the best ab work is BW stuff. Even better is that pretty much the solid majority of all basic BW movements demand some sort of strong abdominal activation to complete. If reach down into the toilet bowl that is T-Nation and can stomach pulling out a Bret Contreras article, <a href="https://www.t-nation.com/training/inside-the-muscles-best-ab-exercises" target="_blank">he did an interesting test on abdominal activation</a> during popular ab exercises. The ab wheel and pull-ups topped the list. <br />
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Never one to back away from sounding like an expert that I'm not (all while never being shy about admitting that I'm not), I think that a large part of the reason why BW ab exercises are so fucking good for strength is that they're all largely about contracting the abs to hold the back in place during execution. That simple cue is the basis of using abs in just about every, single lift done. <br />
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<strong><u>Bodyweight is the most House Friendly Strength Training</u></strong><br />
Not too long ago, I crossed going to Iron Sport Gym off my bucket list of places that I wished to go in the USA. This place exceeded all of my lofty expectations of how awesome it would be with its stunningly low quantity of cardio equipment, squat cages that filled up before the few token pieces of cardio equipment, and the crotchety owner Steve Pulcinella. It's simply about as perfect of a set-up place as I'd expect any real strength sports-oriented gym to be, complete with the ability, even the expectation I daresay, of moving huge ass weights while making grunting noises and dropping shit like a fucking boss, if needs be. <br />
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That's how a gym should be. That's not the rest of the world. The rest of the world, such as your home, probably expects a bit more courtesy with the noise you make, the equipment you use, and where you use it. Few things rile a wife up more than dropping an axle loaded with plates on the basement floor, shaking the walls a bit, and making the toddler asleep above wake up abruptly. <br />
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For this reason, bodyweight is ideal. Since your weight is your body, it doesn't need to be loaded onto anything and it's not like you're going to drop it on the floor. A body doesn't have a distinct metallic clank every time its used either. This makes it well-suited for training in places where you kind of have to accommodate the peace and quiet of other people. <br />
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<strong><u>Bodyweight is More Time Efficient</u></strong><br />
Since my training became mostly weights, I'm constantly plagued with the sense that I'm just not getting very much at all done. The more you need to change weights and equipment, the longer the whole training process takes. Strongman is even worse. Most strongman gyms have an event day on a weekend, largely because it's such a pain in the ass to drag out so much equipment and train. The process goes quicker when there's a few more hands on deck. <br />
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That's the elegance of training without weights or equipment. With no weight and equipment changes, a lot more volume can be packed into a shorter time period. Lots of strength training deals with the notion of building a strong base. A fundamental of that initial base strength is the capability to do a lot of work. I can't really find a better way to get that injecting a healthy dose of bodyweight. One of my favorite BW routines involved a <a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/search?q=superset" target="_blank">simple superset</a> of pull-ups and handstand push-ups. I managed to put well over 100 of each in 40 minutes. <br />
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So, if this recently-rare entry into my blog hopefully imparts on you as you push away from you keyboard is that despite the world full of toys to get strong with, the places you have to do them, and the ways that you can use them, BW has some intensely pragmatic and useful benefits that even a n00b strongman like myself can still appreciate. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-36229591314490950372015-12-09T08:10:00.000-08:002015-12-09T08:10:02.544-08:00So-and-so said this and this is what I think again: Is Nick turning into a grumpy, old man?<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>Yes, I'm back to blogging. Apologies for the long, long layoff. Someone commented that I better have a good excuse. Well, I was lazy and I had no desire to remove my writers block. Here's one I started writing but never finished up about 8 months ago...</em></blockquote>
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For a guy who comes off as shocking well built, obviously strong as shit, and generally pretty spry, <a href="http://nickmckinless.com/" target="_blank">Nick McKinless</a> certainly came off as a grumpy, old bastard.<br />
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<em>Fuck it!</em><em> Stop listening to the gifted, young people!</em><br />
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<em> - Anyone under 35 has an advantage. <br /> - Anyone gifted has an immense advantage. <br /> - Despite body type nuances anyone under 35 can do anything and gain muscle EASIER than anyone over 35 plus. </em><br />
<em> These are truths. </em><br />
<em> If you want to get better listen to the coaches and trainers that are still gaining muscle, staying lean, keeping in shape and generally improving. These people are the real teachers. </em><br />
<em> By all means follow the 'pretty trainers' and the 'gym bunnies with nice butts etc' but for the love of god DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR ADVICE!!!</em><br />
<em> In my twenties and thirties I really thought I knew it all. After all I had a 640lbs Deadlift, a 310lbs Bench and a 440lbs Squat. And I was good at some VERY off lifts. Hah! And you thought I was gifted. Nope! The deadlift soon went away once I started hitting the ground as a stuntman. </em><br />
<em> The point is training is EASY when you are young and gifted. And so you mess your bodies up with bad form, stupid programming, showing off on social media, program hopping and bad recovery methods. Go for it! But I promise you it will catch you up. </em><br />
<em> Let's see how you all look in your 40's, 50's, 60' and beyond...AND what you can lift. </em><br />
<em> Nick</em><br />
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Theoretically, I should disregard this grouchy-sounding ol' bastard since I'm under the age of 35 (as of this writing) except the guy has done just about everything that can be done to a body in the name of fun and games. So, I shouldn't disagree with my elders. Thing is, though, I don't.<br />
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We've all watched our favorite highy-paid athletes get to around the age of 30-34 and proceed to degenerate into overpaid and hollowed out versions of their old selves. Its almost as though a light switch went off and they're just unable to turn it back on. What happened is pretty much what Nick McKinless is bitching about above. <br />
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Being a teens or twenty-something athlete is a grand time. Your body is still fresh and young, responding with aplomb to practically every stimulus in training that you throw at it with cheerful positivity. While it feels like no wrong can be done, something happens around the late 20-mid 30's. The body's new car smell wears off, so to speak. Abusive movements that a new body was able to shake off with alacrity suddenly create aches and pains. Or, as in my case, an injury happens that requires surgical repair. Once cut into, you're never really the same. <br />
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This isn't the end of the line but merely the point in an athletes' life where they are forced to accept that they just can't do anything they please without consequence. The body still has plenty of life to it but now care and consideration have to be applied to training if they wish to proceed onward at a high level. <br />
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This is why young lifters don't know shit. Chances are high that at 23, they've never had to adjust to anything in their training. When your body breaks, that's you really start learning about how to build it back up. That kind of problem solving with human muscle just can't be duplicated with a mere strength goal built towards with a fresh, young body. It requires so much more study and care. <br />
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I'm pretty sure my ACL tear was such a turning point. After reconstructive surgery and PT, I had a soda straw for a left leg. I maintained about a 180-185 lbs weight throughout the whole ordeal, most of it going to my upper body. Once I re-started training with my legs, I was partially smart. I used a lot of sled work since it didn't put to much stress on my knee outside of muscular tension. I did front squatted variations that forced me to use good squatting form (goblets, zerchers and belt squats).<br />
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I didn't do everything right though and proceeded to deadlifting (295 lbs for singles. Yes life sucked). Unfortunately, with my leg strength so imbalanced, I'd lock out the right leg first. Eventually, this caused irritation in my lumbar discs, taking me out of the deadlifting game for a while longer. <br />
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I focused mostly on squatting and quad strength. this proceeded to bite me in the ass when all of the quad-dominant work gave me IT band pains. <br />
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Then, the disc thing. Again. One week before my first strongman competition. <br />
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I eventually realized that I still lacked the natural hyperextension in my left knee. That still caused my right leg to lock first. So, I resorted to hyperextension work on a GHR to force that ligament to hyperextend a bit more naturally. Of course, the extra spinal erector strength didn't hurt either. I threw in more unilateral leg work, focusing on trying to focus on the muscular contraction each time I lifted something. <br />
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Take a look at that list of issues from one knee surgery. In one year's time, I had to figure out a way to bring my lower body strength back up, fix my back, rehabilitate my knee, and even out my leg strength. I learned about the importance of having natural joint movement back, the importance of unilateral strength training, and working with and around pain. At the end of it all, I came out stronger than I was before. That's not a learning curve that can be replicated with a simple strength goal. Dealing with a fragile body teaches someone the proper balance between strengthening without abusing. You just don't know that line when you're young, fresh, and have no wear on your body. <br />
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<em> ...off topic but you should really check this short that Nick made a while back</em></div>
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-74476503811245335152015-06-13T16:39:00.000-07:002015-06-13T16:39:16.752-07:00My List is Better: The 5 Best Exercises EverI think that a fair share of my readers will agree that T-Nation over the years has degenerated into the strength website most like your refrigerator. Sure, you'll glance at it (regardless if you'll admit to it or not) to see if there is anything interesting but you know there isn't; just the same shit as the last time you glanced in. Still, every once in a while, someone puts something interesting in there. You know, like a friend brought over some good beer and threw it in there much like Nick McKinless posted there what seems like too long ago. If, you know, you had friends that nice...which you probably don't.<br />
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Okay, T-Nation pretty much sucks. <br />
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Still, I did read Dean Somerset's article, "<a href="https://www.t-nation.com/training/5-best-exercises-ever" target="_blank">The Five Best Exercises Ever</a>." It was a reasonably well written piece. I even agree with a good chunk of the movements listed as well as enjoying the historical perspectives.I also like that the movements were less specific to a particular execution with a specific implement. Still, like any other internet fitness God, I think I have a better list and you're about to get bombarded with my rendition of the five best movements in history. <br />
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Actually, I wouldn't change too many on the list. I'm just going to give better reasoning as to why I think they're so good. I'll even do it without wearing a polo shirt. <br />
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Seriously, why do so many trainers and PT's wear polo shirts? </div>
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<u><strong>Removing the Antiquity Requirement: Squatting</strong></u><br />
From what my modest research over the years into physical culture history, the squat seems to be relatively new to hoisting for strength. It seems to show up in Germany around the time that barbells started to catch on. Somerset mandated in his inferior article that exercises had to be around for thousands of years. Generally I'd agree but the squat has too consistently shown to build strong, massive legs, even entire bodies in general, for the past century and a half.<br />
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Just because the Romans weren't quite genius enough to use it can't take away from the fact that this was probably the best, single movement to become popularized in the past 150 years of lifting. In fact, if you look at who were considered the real leaps forward in strength athletes in this period of time, most of them were also prodigious (for their times) squatters. Hackenshmidt, Steinborn, Grimek, Anderson... Name an all-time great strength guy and you'll likely also name a great squatter.<br />
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Squatting alone may be the most convincing evidence that the modern strength athletes are better than their counterparts, if you chose to pick that fight. <br />
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<strong><u>Rope Climbing</u></strong><br />
This is one I'll agree on for sure. We all know that rope climbing is regarded as more advanced BW movement. Someone usually has to be very proficient with pull-ups before even trying this. Advanced bodyweight demands a high strength to bodyweight ratio. That favors a person who is muscular and lean. <br />
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Hey, Whiffet, challenge! Top this, Mr Six Pack...</div>
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All lifting sports have their contingent who loves to be fat and strong, arguing that it gives them some sort of edge. My chosen sport of strongman loves to hold up Zydruanas as the latest piece of evidence, disregarding the fact that prior to him the most of the WSM winners were all lean. In fact, at least 3/4 of the strongmen who won that title were all lean guys. Historically, the strongest guys were usually the leanest guys. <br />
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Did the they climb ropes? Fuck if I know. Still, I've never seen a fat ass get up a rope. It's a lean, strong person's proposition all the way. That's probably why rope climbing so consistently shows up throughout history as an exercise. It builds lots of strength and promotes high strength-to-bodyweight ratio like few other movements do.<br />
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<strong><u>PCP...</u></strong><br />
Who says drugs in training aren't useful? Well, only people that like being wrong, I suppose. Still, I'm not talking about using the drug that the LAPD (circa 1990's) favorite drug to hate. I'm simply consolidating all forms of weight training-bipedalism into one acronym: Pushing, Pulling and Carrying. <br />
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People love to talk about lifting weights all the time and even though strongman has nearly half of their events involving PCP, I still don't think this shit is given nearly enough attention. PCP's are all pretty easy to learn, idiot resistant with execution and can serve dual roles of strength and conditioning. If the strength gods would bless me, I'd do some sort of PCP every single day.<br />
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I've alternated between more upper body-dominant stuff like frame carries, overhead sandbag walking, famers handles, and weighted sled pulling. Then, I've pushed trucks, dragged sleds, and used prowlers on days where I want to hit my legs. Repeat process. For weeks. That's how valuable I think they should be to the strength world. <br />
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Combining them makes good stuff even better. I've done sled/prowler combos. I've dragged sleds while carrying a sandbag on my shoulder. I've seen beardo-extroardinaie Adam Wayne Caposella do a yoke with a sled. Friend Chip Conrad did a sandbag shouldered-farmer carry. There's as much versatility with weight-walking as there is good work for the body. <br />
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<strong><u>Getting Shit off the Ground and Overhead</u></strong><br />
Another one that I agree that Dean got right. There's a reason that this combination of movements essentially is the backbone of both modern strongman sport and early physical culture alike. There really is a lot of limitations on your strength if you can't do this well. Recall my broscience theory years ago: if you have strong hips, back and grip, then you're good to go. Ground-to-overhead lifting pretty usually hits all of this pretty hard, demanding that you have all three. <br />
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A funny thing happened years ago in strength gyms. People got really, really focused on putting up insane lbs of weight. While there's nothing wrong with that inherently. What was wrong was that weights started getting less awkward. They were pre-positioned in places to make them easier to lift more. Putting them over the head was marginalized since, you know, its hard to do a lot of iron over your head in a very short timeline. <br />
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So, if you wanted to combat that asshole that said modern lifters are stronger because they squat, you could retort that old time lifters took things off the ground and put them overhead with far more regularity. While the modern gym-goers are starting to rediscover the utility of ground-to-overhead (giving birth to quaint phrases like "functional training"), the ancients knew it all along. <br />
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<strong><u>Push-ups...</u></strong><br />
Going back to what dead people you forgot all about after your tests in school, you'll see a common thread in Dean's and my list: Asid from being rooted in manual labor, the implements needed to execute these strength movements are pretty rudimentary. Chances are good that most of them you could do right now if you'd just stop fucking around on the internet, pushed away from the screen, and got moving. In that regard, there are few strength movements that are more minimalistic than the push-up. All you need is your body and the ground. <br />
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...Or a stupid-popular, crazy old motherfucka for extra weight</div>
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Just because the rest of the strength world outside bodyweight training doesn't look at push-ups as strength moves doesn't mean they can't and don't build strength. I've been pretty vocal about this lately. They can throw weight onto every other strength movement. Just throw some weight on push-ups too. It's like they forgot that there is no rule book that says push-ups can't have weigtht. <br />
Chains, vests, sandbags, other humans...they've all been used in the past. They all work. They've worked for years too, regardless if shaved apes of today forgot about that. <br />
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This list also happens to summarize my training lately since I got home from Florida. In this period of time, I've gotten bigger (10 lbs) and did my first no-zero strongman competition. While I won't say that this qualifies me as an expert yet, I will call it definitive progress using stuff that's worked for millennia. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-4921376094171696842015-05-14T16:52:00.000-07:002015-05-14T16:52:02.499-07:00Weighty Matters: Combining Weights and Calisthenics IIAbout four years ago, I wrote one of my favorite blog entries about <a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/search?q=weighted+" target="_blank">adding weight</a> to common BW movements. It's turned out to be one of my more popular entries. While I'm opinionated I'm not dogmatic or without a sense of compromise. So, I imagine that my audience is much the same. That might explain why an entry like that one, with its compromising tone, went over so well. <br />
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As my training has given more into weights and strongman, I haven't forgotten the effectiveness of BW stuff. Often times, I weigh them down with heavy stuff. Very recently, I finally got off my ass and showed off how I used a sandbag for heavy push-up work in lieu of both not having a place to bench press and despising the bench even if I did. You can find that <a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2015/04/push-ups-vs-bench-press-former-shows-up.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Although ambition got the better of me momentarily by posting that video, laziness struck when I noted that I liked adding chain to one arm-push-ups but failed to post proof that I am awesomely clever enough to undertake such a movement. <br />
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Such maneuvers are excellent ways to bring up questions of validity in training. As I've stated in the past, I don't care to enslave myself to practicality when training. If it's fun, I'll do it. Still, there are methods to the madness. One arm push-ups are a great way to hit those muscles that nobody gives a shit about because girls and gym bros don't tend to admire them. You know, the serratus and all those lower shoulder blade chunks of meat that make you care about them via injury from lack of training. In case your overpaid online coach never told you, working these muscles are why you do face pulls. </div>
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The next merger of iron and bodyweight that I've adored lately is double rope climbing with some junk chain that someone inexplicably stretched the piss out of (which should have taken tens of thousands of lbs to do) at work. </div>
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Rope climbing kicks all kind of ass. At the moment, I'm trying to goose my bodyweight up to the 215 lbs territory. Doing BW during such attempts has served me well. Things like this 30 lbs o' chain rope climb require a good strength to bodyweight ratio. That's generally obtained by having a lower bodyfat percentage. In other words, doing these while bulk generally keep getting too fat in check. That may be brocience as fuck, I admit, but it's worked for me in the past. </div>
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Note that on both of these, I've gone out of my way to use other methods to increase the difficulty. Rings and two ropes will go a long way to making less weight more difficult. I may be doing weighted BW but I'm not going to fall on the sword of only using adding weight to make stuff harder. Plus, these aren't BW movements that often get the weighted treatment. Take this as friendly reminder to not be afraid to take a different road that's slightly less traveled. </div>
Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-4728693764231601152015-04-26T11:01:00.001-07:002015-04-26T11:01:57.423-07:00Massachusetts Strongest Man...improving with improvisationDisgraceful to myself that I got so nervous about my latest strongman competition. I had so little implement training time for this and it flat-out made me nervous. I allowed my previous, luxuriously-outfitted gym to lull me into thinking that without implement time, I was going to bomb on this heavier Massachusetts Strongest Man Competition. I was so tense that I needed some lower back work by the much-appreciated chiropractor on site at the competition. <br />
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I didn't have a log and I hadn't touched a log in over a year. I had no car deadlift set-up or a 500 lbs frame. I do have sandbags, some kegs, a fire hydrant and just prior to the comp I scored an anchor chain. With no place inside to train these and a winter that just didn't want let go of the ice all over my driveway, it would seem that I was kind of screwed. <br />
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Bullshit. Such thinking was never part of my mindset prior to all of this and I was determined to not let it become that way again for this training cycle. I'd just have to get creative, like I always have. So what did I do and how did it call come out? I'll elaborate...<br />
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<strong><u>The Log Press</u></strong><br />
Of all of the events I'd have to do, this was probably the most difficult to improvise for. The log is technical and there isn't a great direct substitute. Overhead pressing in my training environment is even more fraught with issues since I have a low-ceiling basement that only really allows the use of my kettlebells over standing overhead training. I did do some overhead work outside before my driveway turned to pure ice and the frequent sub-zero temperatures made my fingers go numb. <br />
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So, heavy, double kettlebell pressing was the only play I had. I'd clean them and push-press away, doing heavy sets of 2-5 reps for as many sets as I could or had time for. Then, I'd strip off some weight in ten lbs increments and do three sets of strict presses, taking off 10 lbs each set. <br />
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My previous best on a log was 180 lbs, over a year ago when I was fresh off physical therapy restrictions but was training the log a couple of times per week. I managed only one rep with 200 lbs. This felt more like a technique issue since the one rep felt weirdly easy when I got it. I didn't attempt more because my knee made one of those disturbing pop noises and I elected to stop since I still had a whole competition to complete. Sixth place, but no zero. <br />
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<strong><u>The Car Deadlift</u></strong><br />
Without a doubt, this was by biggest success in spite of having no car deadlift frame to use. Back in Tampa, I discovered that a barbell hack squat was very similar to a car deadlift. So similar that I'm downright shocked that practically nobody uses them to train for it. I guess it's a sign of the blind hegemony of modified powerlifting routines that dominate strongman programming. Dumb shits. <br />
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I think the reason why this so closely resembles the car deadlift lies in the fact that to successfully hack squat, you have to move your hips very quickly forward so the barbell doesn't smash into your hamstrings or your ass as you hoist it upwards. That's the exact, same hip movement in the car deadlift. <br />
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This was supposed to be a heavy car lift. Unfortunately, the frame wasn't set up properly and it turned into a rep festival. I took third place in this event, getting credited with 38 reps. Carryover at its finest. <br />
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<u><strong>Keg Carry and Chain Drag</strong></u><br />
I was disappointed with this one more than any other event. I had the most implement time with this event and I didn't place well at all. I had to run 50' with a 200 lbs keg and then grab the anchor chain and run 50' backwards. <br />
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This is what I was preparing for: 550 lbs drag here!</div>
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I planned this out pretty well. Since I have stupid-long arms, I was going to use my knee to push the keg high up on my chest and grab it on both sides. In practice runs, it worked beautifully. I rigged up a tire sled with 150 lbs of chain to drag it by before I got my anchor chain. Once I got my anchor chain, which weighed around 550 lbs, I figured out that I could go two seconds faster if I grabbed both ends of the chain and dragged. <br />
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So, I figured I'd have this one sewn up. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The disgruntled face of dashed plans...</td></tr>
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I was the third slowest time. The keg we ran with had a bizarre, two inch bulged rim that ran around the middle of the keg. I didn't want to chance dropping the keg since It was obviously wider than my practice one. The anchor chain was easily 200 lbs lighter and had a cut-off link at one end that wouldn't allow me to grab both ends. So, this turned more into a test of foot speed than how much weight I could drag. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dude, where's the other 200 lbs?</td></tr>
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<strong><u>500 lbs Frame Hold </u></strong><br />
I don't want to say that I have great grip strength, but I certainly have enough to do strongman. That was definitely something I had going for me when I started the sport. I thought I had placed worse than I really had on this one. I got 31.3 seconds, coming in 4th for this event. <br />
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When it comes to grip work, I've gotten to the point where I'd rather just throw in a grip element into my training movements where it doesn't hinder the progress of the overall set too much. So, I high rep-deadlifted, hack squatted, rowed, and curled with my axle mostly. Often times, I'd hold reps on my hacks and my deads for as long as possible. I did a lot of rope climbing too. So, while I beat myself up a bit for not holding longer, in the end I didn't do too bad on this one at all. <br />
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<strong><u>Odd Object Load</u></strong><br />
This is another event that went pretty well for me too. Initially, we were supposed to pick up, carry, and load a fire hydrant, a 200 lbs sandbag, a 200 lbs keg, and a 240 lbs atlas stone onto a 54" platform. On the day of the show, the carry was eliminated (to save time) and a field stone was substituted for the hydrant (much to my chagrin). <br />
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I do this kind of stuff all the time, both for work and for fun. Plus, I also do a lot of Zercher Lifting to strengthen the muscles I'd use to load stuff. Another mystery to me is why not that many strongmen throw in stiff-legged deadlift work into their training since so much of what we do involves getting shit off the ground in a stiff-legged fashion. <br />
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While I took 4th in this event, I had some of the cleanest lifts. Except for dropping the stone because I didn't get myself situated dead-center of the stone, I had the some of the technically-sound lifting in the show, it seemed. The sandbag was left loose and that gave a lot of people fits. Another fun part for others was the rule that the keg had to be stood up. Neither bothered me. <br />
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So, overall, I had a weak event (the log) and a disappointing event (keg and chain) but the events I placed high were pretty well executed and I took 5th place out of 9. As I got to the end of the competition, I realized that at 5'10" and 205 lbs, I was probably the smallest guy in this novice class. The winner was 6'5" and 300 lbs. Fittingly enough, he looks a little bit like Thor Bjornson. <br />
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What I was happy with was this show was heavier than my first and I got no zeros. I successfully strengthened up my lower body and also put on about 20 lbs since October. At this point, I'm looking to do Granite State Strongest Man at the end of July as a Middleweight. At this point, I think I'm done with being a novice and losing events for no other reason than I'm undersized. I'd like to bump my weight up to 215ish lbs in the meantime. I tried to get to this weight for this competition but the soreness from training and growing was just becoming a pain in the ass. Clearly, bulking up should be done when I'm not in the middle of contest preparation. <br />
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In the end, I had a ton of fun and I managed to progress despite being limited by the quantity of the gear I have. That's been a goal of mine long before I took up the sport. The affirmation that I can still do so is gratifying. <br />
<u></u><br />Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-23514593549346767322015-04-08T12:17:00.001-07:002015-04-08T12:17:56.557-07:00So-and-so said and this is what I think: Alex and some anonymous personThere might be too decent of a chunk of my ego that's driven to let you know that I'm not a normal strength trainer. That variation in strength training is easily explained by the simple fact that while I get acknowledgements (which polite manners dictate that I should accept with a, "thank you") to being strong, I came about that label by unconventional means. Very simply: I very rarely trained in gyms like other people around me do. The past decade or so has been very top heavy journey of improvisation to get to where I am today. So, I don't see the same means, movements and methods as the answers to strength like everyone else does. <br />
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Still, my ego has limits. I abhor any notions that I'm an expert, even the mere thought that I might know what I'm doing. I generally don't disagree with Alex Viada either so this one has me in some very strange territory:<br />
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<em>Had an interesting conversation the other day regarding conveying information, with a certain person not "feeling" like an expert because nothing novel or earth shattering was conveyed during a training this individual gave.</em></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em> People don't go to experts to be shocked- there are very few fields I've seen where you can speak to an expert and learn something you quite frankly didn't already know. In the time I spent in consulting, I certainly never told a client anything surprisi<span class="text_exposed_show">ng... A coach, even an amazing coach, will rarely, if ever, tell you anything you didn't already "know". When's the last time you read a "10 things you need to fix about your squat" article written by a world-class squatter that told you anything you hadn't heard before?</span></em></blockquote>
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<em> What the experts will tell you, though, is what matters. They give you focus. They take those six hundred things you already know and tell you which matter the most, and in what order.</em></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCWeBQEkaJvzVXwcIKMmDMnv-228xZP_K-UV74GSMyWVZ2vjkJQs5eYVkLDmdQwHzxt_EXGqaqd8T8nI7yQp_bfJG7ANWs6HINK3EeH80w_S3Ogb3OunijDvzBf8sIW-LYjsZIy6VNWvE/s1600/alexslegs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCWeBQEkaJvzVXwcIKMmDMnv-228xZP_K-UV74GSMyWVZ2vjkJQs5eYVkLDmdQwHzxt_EXGqaqd8T8nI7yQp_bfJG7ANWs6HINK3EeH80w_S3Ogb3OunijDvzBf8sIW-LYjsZIy6VNWvE/s1600/alexslegs.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is it right to disagree with a guy whose legs look like this?</td></tr>
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I've relayed it before: when I first started training in a gym in Florida (which lasted well over a year), I really did feel like I had landed on Mars. My training was so, drastically different than what everyone else around me was doing that for the duration of my visit. What I considered very important was very, very different from those around me. <strong><u>WHAT I FOCUSED ON WAS DIFFERENT.</u></strong> Naturally, you all know I got into strongman and I did it with some of these people. So, what was so different between me and them in terms of what was and wasn't important that stuck out at me?<br />
<br />
<strong><u>Change of movements just don't happen</u></strong><br />
Bodyweight long ago taught me that to make progress, I'd have to modify the form of the movement that I was doing, sometimes drastically, to keep making strength gains. Even when I started touching weights, I usually worked with an object of limited ability to modify the weight. So, once again, I'd change how I moved with it to get progress. <br />
<br />
That just doesn't happen a lot in gyms. The moves stay pretty constant. The accessories might change. Weight just gets added. The reasons are pretty simple: competition. That narrowly defines strength into specific lifts with the most weight. Since these gyms will also have far more specially adapted environments to improving your performance in competitions, the need to change movements to make progress not necessary. <br />
<br />
up until strongman, I never competed in anything. I never defined my strength that simply. I couldn't. Still, I got strong. A friend of mine who set records in powerlifting at 20 years old in shirted benching acknowledged that the first time we trained together that I was. Even now that I do strongman, I love the variety of different lifts in the sport. So, training movements can vary and still have some success. Or at least it should...<br />
<br />
<strong><u>Powerlifting's foot print has been ENORMOUS</u></strong><br />
I said that strongman should have some variety to movements in training that I can enjoy but I was kind of surprised when I found out that training generally involved a weekend, "event day", while the rest of the training week often looks suspiciously like 5/3/1 or modified Westside. Oh, wait, it often <strong>IS </strong>5/3/1, Westside, or some other powerlifting-based programming. <br />
<br />
Even in amongst strongmen, everyone loves to talk about their total and their prowess in the three power lifts. Even the bodybuilders do this. At least with crossfit, you get a break from this comparison since they don't do them since they're not functional. <br />
<br />
Actually, their functionality in my chosen sport of strongman is questionable to a degree. Lots of people talk about how wonderful of a base powerlifting can be for strongman but the truth is that there is no real basis to say what previous physical endeavor best prepares you for strongman. Zydrunas, the consensus-best strongman at the moment, started powerlifting before doing strongman. Yet, he has traded WSM and Arnold wins with Brian Shaw, who used to play <strong>BASKETBALL, </strong>as does the heir-apparent to both in WSM, Thor Bjornson. Before the Zydrunas era, Pudzanowksi dominated strongman and he was an avid martial artist in his childhood years. Strongman has been largely dominated by guys who never really did a lifting sport before they got into it! <br />
<br />
I never bothered with powerlifting since they have yet to build a cage, barbell, bench and plates that can easily fit in the back of a pick-up. Plus, my morbid, almost-unreasonable, disgust for the bench press has been well-documented by myself. So, clearly I have no plans to compete in powerlifting any time soon. That doesn't seem to have hindered my strongman training too much.<br />
<br />
It's surprising to me that such an increasingly marginalized lifting competition continues to be exert such influence since...<br />
<br />
<strong><u>LOTS OF THESE PEOPLE DON'T EVEN COMPETE... in anything</u></strong><br />
So, when you frequent a gym, it seems like you have to be in a group. Ever notice that? For purposes of brevity, let's just look at strength training. You can do bodybuilding, powerlifting, strongman, Olympic weight lifting, or crossfit. So, they all have their training protocols and their choice movements that they do to get to their definition of strength. <br />
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Why? Because I can!</div>
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What I find comical is how many people choose a branch on this tree, <strong><u>but never compete in any of the above. </u></strong>So, riddle me this: if you're not going to compete, then why not just do whatever you like to do to lift? It's surprising to me how many empty headed dumb asses would bench religiously with powerlifters even with no intention of ever powerlifting, even if they weren't fond of benching. I know I'm not the only one. What I can't understand is if you don't like a specific lift, then why do it if there is no real need (competition)?<br />
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Yes, I will agree that some kind of squat and some kind of deadlift is important to integrate into any good strength training. Yet, it doesn't have to be a back squat or a conventional deadlift. Drew Spriggs brought this up in an excellent training <a href="http://startingstrongman.com/2014/07/03/a-guide-to-training-strongman-without-implements/" target="_blank">article here</a> about how to train for strongman without implements. Note how many times he brought up stiff-legged deadlifting. I don't see them done enough depite the obvious carryover. Odd, since this form of deadlifting is probably more relevant to normal life than the conventional one we're all commanded to do because...<strong>POWERLIFTING</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>"people try so hard to be different from everyone else that they end up being the same as everyone else. Stop trying. Just be who you are. Wtf?! "</em></blockquote>
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Yeah, those kind of people are clearly annoying, even in strength training. So, I do different shit quite a bit because what's important in my situation to get strong is very different than the rest of the well-equipped world. I enjoy odd and wacky but it usually has a point. While I may not totally disagree with such a statement that Alex makes, I do think that too many people out there wearing the expert label don't have the right focus in matters of getting strong. Their focus has a narrowed field of view. Maybe they're just like the rest of us: novices still learning. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-51140075218546580132015-04-01T03:04:00.001-07:002015-04-01T03:04:14.760-07:00Push-ups vs Bench Press: the former shows up in strongman?<h2 class="def-header">
Full Definition of <em>CULT</em></h2>
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<div class="snum">
1<span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> formal religious veneration <strong>:</strong> <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worship">worship</a> </span></div>
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2<span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> a system of religious beliefs and ritual; <em>also</em> <strong>:</strong> its body of adherents </span></div>
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3<span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; <em>also</em> <strong>:</strong> its body of adherents </span></div>
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4<span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator <span class="vi"><health em="">cult</health></span></span></div>
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<em>s</em>> <br />
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<div class="snum">
5<span class="ssens"><em class="sn">a</em> <strong>:</strong> great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); <em>especially</em> <strong>:</strong> such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad </span></div>
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<span class="ssens"><em>b</em><strong>:</strong> the object of such devotion </span><br />
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</span><span class="ssens"></span><br />
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<span class="ssens"><em class="sn">c</em> <strong>:</strong> a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion </span><br />
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<span class="ssens">The definition, copied right out of Merriam-Websters, must have been completed while in a gym. The level at which each high school click-modeled strength sports will stay glued to their respective movements would impress Jim Jones (If he were around to be impressed). One thing that they all kind of agree on the vital importance of the bench press for upper body development. While my newfound sport will at least relegate this lift to an accessory status, I still guarantee that you could send them, as much as the rest of the strength athletes, into anaphylactic shock should you dare disregard the bench. </span><br />
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There's plenty of reasons why I think that Ltrain is a fucking riot, even if all of them are formulated from a facebook interaction. One such example is this little gem.</div>
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Unlike me, a barely year-long extra-don't-know-shit about strongman athlete, Matt pretty much makes every overhead press his bitch. There's little room to doubt he's the best 175 lbs presser in the USA. While he does use bench, he's gone without the bar, leaving chest Monday to the flex-Friday crowd. Naturally, anyone who defies the cult edict about benching is going to earn my man-crush. <br />
<br />
Anyone doing push-ups in strongman is rare. If they're doing it, they're most likely most likely in a darkened room, just in front of the people watching bestiality porn. They seem almost that far off-limits. While I may have compromised and <a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2014/07/fear-and-respect-sandbag-push-up.html" target="_blank">added weight to my push-ups a while back</a>, I won't ever write them off. I refuse to agree that they are an inferior exercise. <br />
<br />
A heavily weighted push up has been firmly in my routine since that article last July. What I should have done was made a video of the whole ordeal since getting a sandbag to the back is best shown rather than described. Apologies for my laziness on this front: <br />
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Sadly, I've fallen to another form of laziness that pisses me off when working out in a group of Floridians: being too much of a slug to get out (or put back) training gear. I left that sandbag in my pick up truck after re-filling it. It subsequently got cold and all the sand froze up. I've been procrastinating about bringing it inside so it can thaw and I can start using it again. So, when I need a weighted push-up, I've been doing one-arm push-ups with chains around my neck. That's firmly in my category of "exercises to do with embarrassingly little weight" since just a 20 lbs chain with a OAPU will tax my upper body to the limit with just 5-8 reps per arm. Then, it's easy to put them away, so I can continue to be more Florida-like.<br />
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<strong>...and once again, I'm too lazy to shoot a video!</strong></div>
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Of course, I do still stay true to my BW-only, no-weights roots often. I even do some high rep push-up work as a finisher to pump some blood into my upper body push muscles. I still use an old favorite that I haven't blogged about in years: a 45 rep set of 15 wide, 15 standard, and 15 close-hand push-ups. I've always loved this one because as you get deeper into the set and move the hands closer together, the distance to move the upper body gets longer. That makes the set harder out of proportion to the number of reps I'm doing. Hello, Triceps pump!<br />
<br />
I had a friend in Florida who used to taunt me about becoming too much like a mainstream strongman, even using the word, "cult," to describe my entrance into the sport. While comical, there are a few things I don't think that I'll ever do. First, I'll never buy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rehband-Compression-Shorts-7380-Medium/dp/B003AJ7OA2/ref=sr_1_1/181-4890198-3268818?ie=UTF8&qid=1427025994&sr=8-1&keywords=rehband+shorts" target="_blank">rehband shorts</a>. Second, i'll never let the bench become a regular part of my staple movements. I just don't like it and I don't need it. I need a strong chest but I don't need to go about it just like the cult of the bench press princesses go about it. <br />
<br />Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-44022301042278015982015-03-20T08:44:00.001-07:002015-03-20T08:44:04.017-07:00If you're upper back is weak, you just outed yourself...I'm sure that readers of my blog know that I'm generally a fan of keeping things involving my training somewhat simple. After all, one of the whole points to my blogging is to show off to the world how much worthwhile training can be accomplished with less equipment than the rest of the world would have you believe. This minimalist mindset often times leaks over to advice I dispense. <br />
<br />
So, that's probably why I find the deadlift form check videos on my facebook feed could throw me into a frothing rage if I had slightly less self control. Simply put, deadlifting is taking shit off the floor. Doing that properly isn't esoteric knowledge or missile-construction complex. Still, this is weight training and people find a way to complicate things. A few reasons why people's deadlift sucks come up and one interests me at the moment: upper back weakness. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoH0G67n82VzZyOvCC1TKlnimETSdudPhCidg63Ct22nhc8FumeoUWOlBYtdcmAc4xWENOCdP43-Tirs6CQTTtcH57cw9uMNFkoKK89YUmhb1AsYlwJHiPgtqJk9a7Tyeaev_OrRtS7tg/s1600/sumo36012.mp4" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoH0G67n82VzZyOvCC1TKlnimETSdudPhCidg63Ct22nhc8FumeoUWOlBYtdcmAc4xWENOCdP43-Tirs6CQTTtcH57cw9uMNFkoKK89YUmhb1AsYlwJHiPgtqJk9a7Tyeaev_OrRtS7tg/s1600/sumo36012.mp4" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, doing 360 lbs for 12, not really giving a shit about getting form checked. </td></tr>
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Gyms, and their inhabitants, these days make me want to scratch my head...or smash their heads. Just like collective senility set in about picking heavy things up properly off the ground has infected the houses of iron, so has the inability and lack of desire to work hard. If anyone's wondering about how I connect the dots of lazy and bad pulling, it's simple: if you're opining that your upper back is weak, you've just told the world you don't work hard enough. <br />
<br />
An upper back is made strong by a variety of movements. You can build muscle back there with a shocking variety of rows, pull-ups, rope climbing, carrying heavy stuff, just about all deadlifting, lat pull-overs, etc. Things that some people might consider to be <strong>THE BASICS</strong>. <br />
<br />
Next, most of this stuff works best if done in high volume. Very simply put: the upper back muscles can take a pounding. So, to get them to grow and get strong, you've got to force them to do a lot of work. Not only can they do a lot of work in a single session, it's possible to work them 3-4 times a week in such a fashion with no detrimental effects. <br />
<br />
So, if the key to getting a strong upper back is doing the basic strength training movements with enough volume often enough, what other conclusion could be arrived at for having a weak one in the first place? <br />
<br />
Since I'm not in the blogging-business of mindlessly ranting about everyone's shitiness without giving solutions to the problems (to me that qualifies as being an asshole with no redeeming quality), I'll give you a few things that I like to do to keep my upper backs strong when I throw upper back work into my prayer sessions. <br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>I heard about this from either Chip Conrad or Matt Kroczaleski (I can't remember who; look I can spell his last name!): 100 pull-ups. Do 100 pull-ups, however many sets but do 100. Try to keep the time down to do it. Being Matt Kroczaleski, he claims 5 sets of 20. I generally do a set of 15 and 10 until I hit 100. It ususally takes me around 12-14 minutes. </li>
<li>I've blogged about my take on pyramid sets in the past. I've also got a weighted pull-up take on things. I'll normally start at 50 lbs pull-ups for 10. Then, I'll add 10 lbs and drop off two reps until I get to 90 lbs (which would be for two reps). Then, I'll do 90 for two until I can't do any more sets. Then, I head back down. </li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlRrIsoDpKg" target="_blank">Pedlay Rows</a>. I love these with an axle. Its pretty much the most idiot-proof row that can be done without machinery. 5-8 reps...until I just can't do any more sets (generally 8-12 sets). </li>
<li>Double rope climbs. Oh, this is a latest favorite of mine. I've got two-1 inch ropes hanging in my garage. Each hand has rope. I've got several ways I'll attack this. Sometimes, I do just bodyweight, several trips up the rope. Other times, I'll grab some 10 lbs chains, wrap them around m body, bandoleer style, and make trips up the rope, pyramid-style as described above with the weighted pulls. Other times, I'll just put 20 lbs on and go up for five trips. </li>
<li>Bent Pressing. I'm still using a 100-110 lbs (either kb or db) for accessory work for my deadlifts. I'll do three on each side, three times. A bent press "rep" is a lot of time under tension. So three sets of three on each side can be killer.</li>
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So, there's my normal variety of familiar with an odd twist or just flat-out odd. You don't need to be this strange, even if I highly recommend it. Just pick out a movement and do as much as your body will allow you to do...and a bit more after that. I can't guarantee that this will fix your deadlift form since using your head doesn't come from upper back strength. At the very least, I can hopefully instill a work ethic. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-75572143422040015102015-02-23T05:12:00.000-08:002015-02-23T05:12:30.039-08:00Really Hard Stuff to do with embarassingly little weight II: Anderson Squats So, there I was, standing with Cory and his wife, Rita in Clearwater, FL, chatting about my highly theatrical side press that you see in the background as well our mutual failures in the previous <a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2014/10/fall-get-up-finish-learn-something-and.html" target="_blank">Hummer Tire Squats</a>. Cory's failure was for a different reason than mine. He didn't have the bar centered properly on his back. When he hit the boxes, the uneven weight distribution got him stuck. I explained my previous fun that resulted in my zero. He mentioned that one guy, and one guy only, managed to get off the boxes when he got stuck...and that guy may well be the best squatter in the whole competition. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxeB3KyPopDLe5m2WJ25XS7e7sWZsyqPEp82Zor0zhb9Q79mRMtyHWbRHDgSYhyphenhyphenekNd6pyk0vQefRoU7fJInWhKRkCLT6wjPHrTenUJov7IFLIjA-drWCj2donRPAK_oGTO4KYHdVfmw/s1600/bourbonicecream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxeB3KyPopDLe5m2WJ25XS7e7sWZsyqPEp82Zor0zhb9Q79mRMtyHWbRHDgSYhyphenhyphenekNd6pyk0vQefRoU7fJInWhKRkCLT6wjPHrTenUJov7IFLIjA-drWCj2donRPAK_oGTO4KYHdVfmw/s1600/bourbonicecream.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's difficult to imagine how good this shit tasted!</td></tr>
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That thought stuck with me long after the competition, no doubt because the more I look back, I wanted to get that 365 lbs set-up off those boxes more than I want Island Ice Cream to bring back their Maker's Mark Bourbon flavor. Or, more specifically, I want that kind of capability. Cory's a seasoned competitor; the kind of guy who when he talks about what a good squatter is, I pay attention.<br />
<br />
Squats are beloved for a number of reasons all across the fruited plane of strength training. The build mass, make you stronger at lots of strength tests, best way to make a nice firm, muscular ass (Yes, you, there is no better way. Deal with it), and just one of the most favored ways to move an enormous amount of weight. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizQRGoaD49Oxyb5l1H9bfFY3F95-Hy-IcsrlPgjh-DI2k3UPfWIk4qjGxpWhMN4ib1O5SbEvzudUEKH69ILwe_w2dhNu2-wcJjuRRZNn2ZhzT1CFKwGS29kfAX9NT_NwF1qNCjJKmWM0k/s1600/paulinesquatting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizQRGoaD49Oxyb5l1H9bfFY3F95-Hy-IcsrlPgjh-DI2k3UPfWIk4qjGxpWhMN4ib1O5SbEvzudUEKH69ILwe_w2dhNu2-wcJjuRRZNn2ZhzT1CFKwGS29kfAX9NT_NwF1qNCjJKmWM0k/s1600/paulinesquatting.jpg" height="208" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sure, she may have wrote an e-book of butt exercises but she still squats heavy. </td></tr>
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That last part is likely why the subject of why the bottom-started, Anderson squat is largely forgotten in strength training. It's enormously difficult to do and likely needs to be done with less weight than most people can squat with starting the movement at the top with a FRONT squat, say nothing of the back squat. It just goes to show how much your body depends on bouncing yourself out of the hole. A box doesn't even come close to showing you this (chances are, you're box squatting wrong anyway). It's not surprising to me that Anderson is likely the greatest squatter in history if he bottom-started his squats with regularity. <br />
<br />
One of the earliest lessons about bottom starting this squat was that depth isn't a huge consideration here. I made the highly unusual mistake of thinking I was starting in a much too high squat and went far too low, practically ass to grass, and couldn't even start high 200's weights. I learned that just starting just a bit below parallel is all that's necessary for this particular variation. <br />
<br />
Next, this is kind of a low-reps set kind of work. I've done these for sets of two, all the way to sets of 8. I much prefer the lower end. When I do this movement, it feels like a movement best suited for creating a lot of power and strength. Keep the reps low, the weight higher, and focus on making sure the subsequent reps are started from a dead stop. Eliminate all bounce!<br />
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Yeah, I said keep the weight higher but note I didn't say heavy. Heavy relative to this movement and the butt-hurt nobody will likely admit to when they first try this one out will likely cause some bullshitting. Use modest weights on this one. Really modest. I was a high 300-low 400 lbs squatter before the back and IT band problems kicked in mid-2014 and when I got around to doing these after Clearwater, I was using 250-275 lbs. Modesty will pay off, I'm sure.<br />
<br />
How sure, I'm not sure. I'm not about to speculate about how strong my legs will get from doing these. It's far too soon to speculate. I can only ponder the namesake of the bottom-started squat: Paul Anderson. As much as I read about him, I can't speculate about how often he did these. I can only offer up an internet-expert (which means: NOT an expert at all) opinion based on what I've read about him:<br />
<ul>
<li>He was so powerful at the squat that as soon as he started lifting anything for the public, he was smashing world records. </li>
<li>He was lifting so much weight that nobody was making barbells that could take the weight he was lifting, often resulting in him improvising equipment (also improvising out of poverty)</li>
<li>His squatting prowess would still make him an elite lifter even today. This was with no absolutely no modern medicine or equipment.</li>
</ul>
<br />
In other words, Paul Anderson was able to generate ridiculous squatting power sixty years ago that, even to this day, most people can only match or beat with wraps and suits while starting out of a monolift. that's obviously rare and unusual. He also did it with marginal and improvised equipment. I think that the case could be made that starting his lifts from the bottom likely contributed a large part to this. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmVe7M3rGK5MyJHuB5wvwvleqwZ1bRav6vqmOqZk6WQs3JeiB9mTxAB6cl_4ESCDnRwlLFCJMilgmCijJ5PV4m9VAJISXH9YeUdK90grIb-BmsM_NvKNpDb5Ylr97Zjkzzez8C7c3vmKY/s1600/paulandersonquartersquat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmVe7M3rGK5MyJHuB5wvwvleqwZ1bRav6vqmOqZk6WQs3JeiB9mTxAB6cl_4ESCDnRwlLFCJMilgmCijJ5PV4m9VAJISXH9YeUdK90grIb-BmsM_NvKNpDb5Ylr97Zjkzzez8C7c3vmKY/s1600/paulandersonquartersquat.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">While I can find writing that indicates he did do squatting from the bottom position of the squat, there seems to be a lack of photography to prove it. However, there are numerous pictures of him doing partial squats started from the bottom position.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Even if it doesn't, this has kind of become a personal goal. It's a sort of personal redemption from Clearwater. I'd love to be able to bottom start 365 lbs. Best of all, It's a squat that I can do with the modest quantity of equipment and embarrassingly little weight I have to work with. <br />
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<br />Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-1836025483289780722015-02-20T04:46:00.003-08:002015-02-20T04:46:41.785-08:00So, How often should you train?It's come to my attention that despite my frequent twists and turns in the nearly 8 years of blogging, I've still maintained some readers through my eccentric process of training. One thing that has remained somewhat steady and constant is my insistence on maintaining some sort of daily training with no planned rest days. <br />
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That's always a hand grenade waiting to be tossed into any highly important gathering of internet professional strength trainers. Just like everyone has grime under their fingernails, everyone has an opinion about how often you must train and how many days you have to rest. After all, this is all very serious shit and there is no room for disagreement amongst internet experts. <br />
<br />
<span data-reactid=".41.1.0.0.0.0.1:$mid=11422023261781=2bc707bad3c18148463.0.1.0.$right.0.0.1.0">I have pretty respectful and easy-going readers though, I must say. I recently got a message that provoked the topic at hand: how often should you train?</span><br />
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<span data-reactid=".41.1.0.0.0.0.1:$mid=11422023261781=2bc707bad3c18148463.0.1.0.$right.0.0.1.0">Hi. i'm reading all your blog when i have free time, since 2007. Even if is too mutch "no pain no gain" for me. (training everyday etc)<span data-reactid=".41.1.0.0.0.0.1:$mid=11422023261781=2bc707bad3c18148463.0.1.0.$right.0.0.1.0.$end:0:$2:0">I really appreciate the content and what you write... one thing that I did not understand is why you went from "no tools" to use the kettlebelsl (sic) and other "strongman stuff".continues to write please, it's good for my knowledge and motivation <span aria-hidden="true" class="emoticon_text">smile emoticon</span><span class="emoticon emoticon_smile" title=":)"></span> bye and greetings from Italy!</span></span></blockquote>
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Just like pretty much everything else in training, I believe in variation based personal preferences and capabilities. I do keep up a pretty high volume, high frequency training schedule because that's what I'm capable of doing. I view rest days much in the same light as I do rest in between sets (<a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2014/11/got-minute-lets-talk-about-timing-and.html" target="_blank">discussed here</a>): take as many as you need and no more than that. <br />
<br />
There's a reason why train so often and don't really plan rest days: I don't need them nearly as much as the next guy does. I can handle a high workload. If you can't handle that kind of regular training, then take the rest you need to recuperate. Don't let anyone tell you how much or how little you need. They don't walk around in your bag of bones after all. <br />
<br />
That's not to say that I don't take days off either. In between my workouts, life happens. I'm married, have a kid, a house, and a job that keeps me traveling somewhat regularly. I would love to train every day if I could. I just don't get the opportunity. So, life often provides me with rest days, whether I like them or not. <br />
<br />
Also, take into consideration how you live your life in the other 22+ hours you're not training. Compare that to the other internet lifting gods who are about to execute you with an excessively dull butter knife for lifting so often. Are they eating and sleeping properly, or at least doing both well enough relative to their training? If they're doing it worse than you then it's a small wonder you can outwork them. <br />
<br />
The dreaded and indecisive-sounding, "it depends", answer to how often we should all be training has to be used. In my non-expert opinion, it's far too relative to each person to answer with a boiler-plate number of sessions. Answer it for yourself. <br />
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-30328893776597757602015-02-19T16:03:00.001-08:002015-02-19T16:03:50.438-08:00I'm Interesting enough to be interviewed. WHO KNEW?So, somewhere around a week before my competition, this guy Rock Capuano got in touch with me to do an interview for his new podcast, "A Fitness Life". Things went great...until he realized the audio was shit. <br />
<br />
Take two happened in November...didn't work again. <br />
<br />
Luckily, I'm a soul of patience and we had good banter back and forth so I didn't mind taking three. Here was the result...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a-fitness-life/id918458204">https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a-fitness-life/id918458204</a><br />
<br />
If you enjoyed this podcast, give his other ones a listen too. Keep updated with what Rock has up his sleeves here:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/fitnesslifenetwork">https://www.facebook.com/fitnesslifenetwork</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/FitnessLifeNet">https://twitter.com/FitnessLifeNet</a><br />
<br />
Thank again, Rock, for allowing me to spout off on your podcasts...but did you have to use a five year old picture of me holding such a light kettlebell? <br />
<br />Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-85922367609130792002015-02-06T03:17:00.000-08:002015-02-06T03:17:04.691-08:00So, What's Dangerous? So, do you want to get some people on the internet pissed off in a hurry? I've got two, wonderful suggestions. The first one involves buying a big ass grill, adopting as many puppies and kittens from your local shelter as possible, and posting pictures of the ensuing barbeque that you have all over Instagram. The second involves writing an article on any popular, hack fitness site complete with a list of exercises that are dangerous and should never be done. I'm guessing most of the English-reading and speaking followers of my blog haven't acquired the taste for house pets (even though everything tastes good on a grill) so that would leave you to spout off about the dangerous stuff that people do in the gym.<br />
<br />
Once in a great while, I am capable of looking past the bullshit that inhabits our little subculture of strength and see some merit in these contentious issues. This just happens to be one of those times. Yes, exercise can be dangerous. I just happen to think that it's not as simple as, "this will break your skeleton to dust...DON'T DO IT". So, the reasons why certain shit is or isn't a hazard change. Here are the reasons why. Some are pathetically obvious. Others more subtle. <br />
<br />
<strong><u>Pathetically Obvious: Not Done Right!</u></strong><br />
You'll see bread-and-butter exercises like the squat and the deadlift labeled as bad for you by medical professionals with reliability that even Rolex would envy. The answer for this is pretty simple: they get to deal with the people who did them wrong, fucked themselves up, and came to them to be un-fucked from their ignorance. <br />
<br />
My physical therapist told me that squats were bad for my knees. My chiropractor told me that deadlifting was bad for my back. Well, babies squat naturally and sit down with extreme reluctance. Adults change this with modern habit. In other words, we un-learn the squat...and often don't re-learn it properly. It's downright stunning how few people I've seen in even a hardcore strength gym can't squat properly. While I don't agree that back squatting is dangerous, I do agree that it's not good for someone who doesn't know how to squat anymore. There's a key difference in how bad it is for you: lack of knowledge.<br />
<br />
My friend Chip had the best take on deadlifting that I've heard to date. It goes something like this: <em>deadlifting is picking something off the ground. You have know how to do that properly.</em> So, labeling the deadlift as dangerous and suggesting avoidance is impractical as the day is long for a human body who might actually have to move with purpose. There's a perfectly good reason why your lumbar vertebras are the biggest of all the spine bones: they're designed to take a lot of force from lifting stuff. <br />
<br />
Let me clue new readers into a simple fact that I've gone over several times over the years: the medical community and the weight training community have had a very contentious relationship going back nearly 12 decades now. Shockingly little information is shared between them and they both frequently bicker about what's best for a human body. It's sad that your doctor probably has no fucking clue about proper exercise but that likely true. <br />
<br />
<strong><u>Almost as Obvious: Too Much!</u></strong><br />
Yeah, I'm sure this one has got to be neck-and-neck with doing good exercises with poor form in creating training injuries. From kipping your way to high pull-up volume with torn labrums to deadlifting your way to bulged discs with excessive iron, gym dummies give the training naysayers plenty to complain about with dangerous exercises with their own brand of decedance .<br />
<br />
Let me enlighten everyone here to a term in force development that few people know about and I don't mention enough to compensate for that<strong>: absolute strength</strong>. This is phenomenon when the brain fires 100% of the muscle fibers, rather than the roughly 33% you can consciously perceive firing. This is held in reserve for emergency use only since it's also a tendon-shredding amount of power. Hey, exploded connective tissue beats dying, right?<br />
<br />
So, all of that effort to take a perfectly safe lift and turn it into an episode of social Darwinism is just flat-out pointless. If you sense enough need, you can lift anything while breaking just about everything in your body in the process. Doing it in a life-threatening situation is impressive. Doing it for a PR is stupid. If anything, it just gives ammo to those ignorant medical professionals who will have to screw and glue your body back together that real strength training is a fantastic revenue stream. <br />
<br />
<strong><u>Kind of Subtle, often ignored: Imbalances</u></strong><br />
This is where the clear waters of what is and isn't dangerous becomes positively swampy. The fact remains that there are a lot of exercises that, done a bit too much, will lead to some sort of muscle imbalance. That can be dangerous. Back a few years ago, I took up the maddening pastime of reading anatomy books to learn about the human body. Most of this shit is memorization that's easily forgotten should you not use it on a daily basis but there were a few concepts that stuck with me. One such example was tensegrity. <br />
<br />
One thing you have to keep in mind is that your skeleton is not machine-like in the sense that the bones do not directly interlock with one another at the joints. Sure, there are some tendons that hold bone to bone but alignment is provided by tension from multiple muscles, pulling in multiple directions. Proper muscle tension holds the body together. Improper muscle tension breaks it down.<br />
<br />
So, over development of the strength of certain muscles results in more tension, pulling joints in bad directions. That's a huge reason I'm not a fan of the bench press. This also explains why the face pull is so popular with savvy benchers. It helps develop the shoulder muscles that the bench, even when done right, neglects. That also explains why I like the push-up so much: you don't need two exercises to develop healthy upper body pushing strength (aka: inefficiency). Still, a bench press can be okay, if you pull something to your face.<br />
<br />
I learned this the hard way this past summer when I eschewed any lower body, posterior-chain work since it made my Frankenstein-knee hate the rest of my body. Instead, I favored quad-dominant squatting, particularly the hip belt squat. Over the summer, this approach helped me develop IT Band syndrome so bad that I couldn't do much at all with my legs for the final months before my Strongman Competition. Most of this due to a movement generally considered a healthy alternative to squatting for a physically-compromised body. <br />
<br />
Now don't mistake this for some sort of rant from a skinny, polo-shirt-wearing, DYEL-esque personal trainer from the purple country part of the strength training world. No, unlike them, I love to lift and otherwise train. What I don't enjoy is...shit that inhibits my ability to train. So, that will make me ponder the notion that there may well be shit I can do that's hurtful and therefore keeps me from hoisting. Yes, there are dangers and they need to be identified to keep me from setting fire to things as an alternative form of stress reduction. So, while reading such article about dangerous this-n-that on T-Nation are mostly painful, it does present an opportunity for introspection. Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-83156360727280833932015-01-20T05:43:00.001-08:002015-01-20T05:43:42.883-08:00Just a Few Things You Probably Don't Do But ShouldThere's got to be hundreds of ways to move for reasons of getting stronger. I'll take liberty to assume that many only do a fraction of them. The reasons are likely totally legitimate. Maybe your half-assing trainer didn't program them for you. I'm sure that lots of them don't help your bench. Nobody else around you does them so if you did, you'd violate that unspoken agreement of conformity. Actually, that's a good word to describe a lot of why people do what they do in strength temple. It's unfortunate that the answer to why to choose an exercise is, "TO GET STORNGER". <br />
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The funny thing is, that seems to change between generations. We don't lift the same since the test of strength have changed. So, lifts have changed along with the times. Being good at selected lifts doesn't necessarily make a persons strong, just strong at the lifts at hand. There is a difference. Some good ideas get lost like that. Here's a list of those lifts, and things to train, that are best remembered. <br />
<br />
<strong><u>Hyperextensions</u></strong><br />
I strongly suspected my revolving door of IT Band tightness and lower back irritation was the result of my left knee not naturally hyperextending like it should back in September. Early in my resumption of normal training, I'd lifted right-side dominant. Even as I tired in later months, I'd still notice my right leg was still locking out faster. I suspected I had to get my knee to move more like it should naturally. <br />
<br />
After looking at the glute-ham machine in the gym, I hit myself for not thinking of this sooner: hyperextensions. The set-up in this contraption would put some force on my knee somewhat similar to what I used to do in physical therapy and hopefully get my natural range of motion close enough to 100% back to stop the above-mentioned insanity. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLy3sN_xDbjz7GEAcFEHbYQHPgLTZ3MX23s546q6Nh3WR5Gaj5ZPATvM6zMXMF4PTrhRz_0Fb9GXCBlO2gyqNZ7h5itTKbbSFMtw-RPRk9DaEsMdKqAXNCPhcGFEiXDhRaW5-s4aZnYI/s1600/vasilykolotov.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLy3sN_xDbjz7GEAcFEHbYQHPgLTZ3MX23s546q6Nh3WR5Gaj5ZPATvM6zMXMF4PTrhRz_0Fb9GXCBlO2gyqNZ7h5itTKbbSFMtw-RPRk9DaEsMdKqAXNCPhcGFEiXDhRaW5-s4aZnYI/s1600/vasilykolotov.jpg" height="223" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vasily Kolotov. That back cleavage should put to rest any arguments about the value of hyperextensions.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
During research into the topic of hyperextensions, I stumbled onto <a href="http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2014/06/spinal-erector-training-bill-mason-1972.html" target="_blank">this article</a>. Apparently, these were a Soviet favorite back in the 1970's to turn the spinal erectors into dueling telephone poles (I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that this was written long before Pavel was even potty trained so it's unlikely not THAT kind of Russian training secret.)<br />
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I didn't get too creative on this one. The rep training scheme provided in the article was what I did (I conformed). While it did help my knee out, the training had another effect: I haven't tweaked my back in any manner lifting since I started doing these. <br />
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<strong><u>Vince Gironda's Pullups</u></strong><br />
Generally I can't stand bodybuilding. I like to confine flexing in my underwear to the privacy of my bathroom. So, it does seem a bit odd that I generally have a highly favorable opinion of Vince Gironda since he's just about the biggest bodybuilding purist of his time. There's just one thing: the guy happened to be stupid-strong at the same time. What else do you call a person who can do this?<br />
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From what I've read, the cranky, alcoholic, high-priest of bodybuilding favored doing pull-ups in which he brought his sternum, not his chin or chest, to the bar. It kind of looks like a row combined with a pull-up. It also looks like a ridiculously hard pull-up variation that most bar-humping, pull-up kippers will avoid like the plague. That's unfortunate since this simple extra few inches makes the upper back want to explode. It's the perfect example of, sometimes, a few extra inches can make all the difference in the world (ask your girlfriend). <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtO1IPOEuSlmnlqI-RWguFA5Ut-wWYgM8rS9DJC-00zpCVAf6GYv7kXyqppdswq7SfCklZ9JvsixxIdBz6tvoX8GVTXee_ILB9xA3Lu5j1JEVVFo5oUOlaIBFpt0jMffQ80lsO9cSZK2U/s1600/girondaspullupsedited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtO1IPOEuSlmnlqI-RWguFA5Ut-wWYgM8rS9DJC-00zpCVAf6GYv7kXyqppdswq7SfCklZ9JvsixxIdBz6tvoX8GVTXee_ILB9xA3Lu5j1JEVVFo5oUOlaIBFpt0jMffQ80lsO9cSZK2U/s1600/girondaspullupsedited.jpg" /></a></div>
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The best cue I've found to do pull up to the sternum is to simply throw the head all the way back. Look straight up and pull. Never bring your head up. This is hard and be prepared to have a shocking, and embarrassing, number of repetitions sliced off your sets. That's probably why nobody does these anymore. Don't mind that. Just pull. Allegedly, Gironda did four dozen of these to a set. So, follow his lead (skip the alcohol) and get to work. <br />
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<strong><u>The Bent Press</u></strong><br />
It doesn't take too long to read this blog to realize that I adore this lift. I started doing this lift five years ago with a measly 35 lbs for one reason only: it's fun and it looks cool. It's a slow-grind lift that was done regularly in old strongman shows because it was visually appealing and a lot of weight can be lifted with one hand if the technique is mastered. That's the rub right there: it's also tricky to learn and very hard to find someone who know what they're doing with it. <br />
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I never really assigned any practicality to doing such a lift. It was just something that caught my attention to do and I did it because I enjoyed it. As it turns out, there are two things that this lift has going for it. The first would be Lat work. Very simply put, the getting-under action of the bent press is a lot of upper back work. Even two straight reps of this will fry the Lats. There's a lot of time under tension with this lift. <br />
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The second was brought to my attention by<a href="http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/3-reasons-you-should-do-the-bent-press-the-king-of-lifts" target="_blank"> an article</a> posted not too long ago: thoracic mobility. Very simply put: we don't twist much any more when we train. Sure, some will begrudgingly admit that's important. Then, they will assign some sort of puny, boorish band-assisted mobility work that we'll disregard as soon as issues brought on by the lack of mobility are eradicated. I've heard of an interesting alternative: why not do a strength move that moves in the same manner as the rehab move you'll soon disregard? At least we could have some fun, get strong, and stay moveable. <br />
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In fact, that's something I can't beat my readers up with enough: <strong>DO SOMETHING THAT YOU ENJOY DOING! </strong>If you don't enjoy the lifts that you're performing, then don't do them. Very, very few exercises are so important that you can't afford to not do them. Unless you compete in a strength sport that dictates you do a specific lift, then there is no reason to follow the lead of others. That's really why most don't know about the vast array of ways to exercise and get strong.
Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-55847254632664207112015-01-11T03:49:00.000-08:002015-01-11T03:49:00.900-08:00Just get it overheadContinuation of blogging about shit that, in the past, I never used to do, seems oddly intriguing to me. I spent the past half decade smashing keys about almost all bodyweight and not giving much of anything in routines. After all, few things annoy me about our subculture quite like people who can't comprehend training without stuff, much less how to put together something as rudimentary as programming. Both of these could be irrefutable proof that there just isn't enough thought out there going through people's minds when they decide their muscles need stimulation. <br />
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So, I try to put some thought into my routines. Once in a while, I find the thoughts produce a result that's worth sharing. Such is one of the workouts I did the Sunday after my first competition. Apparently, I broke some sort of tradition that stipulates that you should do your best to mimic a statue in the subsequent days after a strongman competition. Since I love to train as much as I like to kick the nuts of conventional training wisdom, I took my traditional goof-off day and did some kettlebell work. <br />
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In case I haven't said it enough recently, I adore <a href="http://www.ironmaster.com/Quick-Lock-Kettlebell/" target="_blank">Ironmaster's kettlebells</a>. Not only are they square, (which really throws people off) but they also more than pay for themselves if you tried to buy a set of conventional kettlebells (ie a 35, 53, 70 and 97 lbs). With the right pin set-up, its possible to adjust from 22-103 lbs with a nice, tight lock-up. <br />
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Strongman appeals to my sense of practicality because so much of it is getting stuff off the ground and getting it overhead in one way or another. There are many ways to do that, some more conventional then others. So, that's what I decided my break from strongman training would do, even if I wasn't going to a traditional strongman implement. <br />
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I hadn't done a kettlebell snatch since before I borrowed a piece of knee ligament from some random, dead guy. Prior to having such a need for spare parts, I used to do these pretty heavy, sometimes up to 100 lbs. Since I was still barely smart enough to do these with some caution, I did them with only 85 lbs. <br />
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Next up, I grabbed two kettlebells, stacked 70 lbs on both and threw up some clean and presses. Since my shoulder strength could use some work, tried my damnest to not use any leg drive off the clean to press the KB overhead. <br />
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Since that kind of fried my shoulders up but I still had a desire to do some overhead work, I rounded things out by adding more leg drive and doing double KB squat-presses. This one I made a concerted effort to explode out of the hole and use that drive to push the KB's overhead. I also do this movement only with weight I cannot press overhead. That way, I have to add lots of leg drive. This movement helped me immeasurably in the yoke press part of my medley. <br />
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This may have been one of the best routines I've ever put together for myself off the top of my head. I've used the last two in tandem several times to keep getting shoulder work in even after they're fatigued. I heard a strongman bring up an interesting point about his competition preparation. He noted that for a while, he wasn't necessarily getting stronger, he was just coming up with different ways to move the weight in an effective manner. That's kind of what I was aiming for with this workout: practice getting weight off the ground and overhead in as many different ways as possible.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mr "finding different ways". Heard of him?<br />
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Of course, if one were to care about such things, this would also be an effective routine to make for a bigger ass and wider shoulders. It would beat the hell out waist training to achieve an hour glass figure. <br />
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These videos weren't demonstrations. They were actual sets. Yes, those are kettlebells. No they don't have to be done in high repetitions. I do all of these in low reps and as many sets of each as I can handle. That can change depending on how much manual labor I do but mostly in the 6-10 sets range, each. So, make a conscious point to throw off any preconceived notions about strength training that you have (When to train, strongman and kettlebells, kettlebells for high reps, etc) and put some creative thought into what you do.
Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-29613383987390055782014-12-28T18:11:00.000-08:002014-12-28T18:11:52.989-08:00Upping My Axle DeadliftsIt's unknown to me if I got a bastardized version of the Armstrong Pull-up program or I bastardized it in my own, twisted head. Either way, that was my first exposure to the notion of a pyramid set way back in 2006-2007. Pyramid sets seem to be used in two ways. The first uses weights and involves using lighter weights for higher reps. Then, you increase the weight and drop the number of reps. The bodyweight version is simply to increase the reps in the set until you fail to hit the last number of reps in the last set. I used it back in 2007 frequently with pull-ups. While I didn't dramatically increase my single-set rep count, I did manage to maintain as I bulked up from 157 lbs to 180 lbs. <br />
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So, where did I bastardize the Armstrong thing (and pyramid setting)? I added a drop set to the fun. In other words, when I hit my max set, I would work my way back down doing the same sets that I used to work up to the max set. I've done this with weights before as well just BW. The latter formed one of my favorite, pressed-for-time and short on equipment that can be found <a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-simple-can-it-be-and-still-work.html" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
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Like I said, I don't know if this was innocent, bad recollection or my training-obsessed mind just looking to squeeze a lot of work into a bit of time. Neither would surprise me<br />
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So, the Armstrong Program has been floating around for so long that it got its own <a href="http://armstrongpullupprogram.com/" target="_blank">web site</a> not too long ago. It seems to be that popular. Other than that, pyramid setting seems to be relegated to the dust bin of the training universe, along with lat pull-overs and hyperextensions. Like these two, there doesn't seem to be a good answer as to why. <br />
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<u><strong>Florida's Strongest Man...and Deadlifts</strong></u><br />
Just like The Dungeon Spring Break Classic, Brevard, and the Bacon Beatdown strongman competitions, I had to forego doing Florida's Strongest Man. Work and my body don't cooperate very often. I suspected that this could happen but I trained for this competition as though I was going to do it just the same. Among the events was a 325 lbs axle deadlift, for most reps, in one minute. My previous deadlifting prowess was abysmal. I just don't get much opportunity to train this lift. So, I had to build up my numbers, and fast. This show was only two months after my first show, and it was a heavy one. So, I elected to pull the idea of pyramid-drop set hybrid out of my bag of tricks, turning my sunday in to my deadlift training days. <br />
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<strong><u>Am I really going to Blog about DEADLIFTING???</u></strong><br />
Yeah, I know, by blogging about what amounts to my deadlift program, I'm about to jump into such crowded, mucky swamp of vanilla-like uniformity with the rest of the mostly-shitty strength training sites. Just about all of them have a deadlift program. Plus, I've generally sworn to not be like everyone else. Still, I'm going there because:<br />
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<li>It worked.</li>
<li>I appears that nobody else did it like this</li>
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Still, with strongman competitions increasingly becoming more alike one another (god forbid), you'll likely run across an axle deadlift event for reps, if strongman competition is your fancy. After all, axle deadlift is cheap and fast to set-up. Unfortunately, poverty and time constraints don't inspire the same creativity for strength sports that the do for me. <br />
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So, the first thing I found out in those seven weeks was that the total volume worked best if kept to a total of 40-50 reps of deadlifting (excluding some warm-up sets; of which I don't do many). I don't know why that was. It just worked out ridiculously well. I made very regular progress. I don't keep records either. I do remember that the pyramid-drop sets looked something like this:<br />
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3-6-9-12-9-6-3</div>
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How well did this work? Well, as I lamented above, I didn't get a chance to do the competition. My friend, who has been competing for six years, told me 15 reps in this event would probably put me in contention to win the event. The day of the show, I had such a burning desire to figure out what I could do in a minute. So, I tested myself and this is what I came up with:</div>
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Now, keep in mind when I first started doing this after Tampa, I was only doing 315 lbs for 6 reps! I have no idea how the rest of the show would have affected my deadlift performance. This is all I have to go off of and I banged out 17 reps in a minute. That would have tied me for second place in that event. The guy who also got 17 reps, a friend of mine who I affectionately call "Rabbi," outweighs me by a very noticeable margin. </div>
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The winner of the event got 21 reps. <strong>FUCK!</strong></div>
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<strong><u>But what about accessory work?</u></strong></div>
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Fuck, do I really have go into that too??? Well, what is a deadlift program without accessory work, I guess. Yes, I did have some guidelines for that too. Even at 50 reps, give or take, this deadlifting generally fried my spinal erector muscles. So I chose two accessory lifts, one upper body and the other lower body. Neither of these lifts would hit the lower back. </div>
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For my upper body lift, I'd usually do pendalay rows with the axle. After all, I had the bar already loaded. I also did weighted pull-ups and bent presses (I can't be that normal) on occasion. rep ranges on the Pendalays were 5-7 reps. Pull-ups were 10-15 reps. The bent presses were two reps per side (lots of time under tension with just two reps). All were done 3-6 sets. </div>
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For the lower body, I grabbed two kettlebells (or a T-handle) and did swings. 15-20 reps for 4 sets. I also stumbled onto this sort of sumo deadlift-squat hybrid that I have no idea what the name of it is. It's right here, about 30 seconds in...</div>
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I'd also do that for about the same rep range as the swings. Frankly, anything that hit the hamstrings and glutes will work well; just avoid hitting the lower back muscles again. Remember, hit the upper body after the pyramid-drop set and then do the lower body stuff afterwards. </div>
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That's as close as you're ever going to get to me being conventional in a blog entry with a "program" for a long, long time hopefully. It's also the most concrete proof I've found that this rep scheme works extremely well for popping up reps in a surprisingly shot period of time. Frankly, it's so much fun for me that I'm still doing it on my deadlift Sundays. My most recent exploit was 350 lbs for 8 reps. That used to be my max three years ago when I started deadlifting. This whole rep scheme just shows that you need to keep your eyes and your mind open to many different training protocols, even if it's from the Bodyweight Crowd. </div>
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-82204999368889873872014-11-14T08:39:00.000-08:002014-11-14T08:39:51.332-08:00Building a Base<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<em>He takes his time, pondering the barbell on the rack. Stalking around with an attempt at a self-assured swagger. He pays meticulous attention to putting his belt. He checks the tension carefully as he puts on his wrist wraps. He chalks his hands up thoroughly so as to make sure that even the spaces between his fingers are dry and ready for the big lift. He sets up the camera to catch the big moment. Five minutes of preparation come down to this one, singular moment in the cage. </em></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><strong><u>ALL OF THIS WAS FOR A 120 LBS PRESS!</u></strong> </span></div>
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Since I joined a gym, for the first time in nearly 14 years, I've seen such scenarios played out constantly by 20-something kids in between these walls with stunning regularity. While I understand, and I try to keep in mind, that everyone starts somewhere, there's something missing in each of these over-suited up millenials struggling with baby-weights that I've seen grown women of average levels of fitness achieve. It's what my buddy in the gym and I both agree on as we watch the above-mentioned man-child who wraps his wrists up for stability for the big push and follows up his press workout with pinch grip training lacks: a complete lack of a base. </div>
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He's not the first veteran lifter that I've heard complain that too many aspiring gym rats have no good training base anymore. With the proliferation of the internet experts that read everything on Elite FTS and T-Nation but can't actually bring themselves to do a two-plate squat to proper depth, there's an ever-increasing pile of meat bags in nice gym clothing who are going to provide the fitness gym industry with a nice revenue stream of easy money. They just don't get it and I think my buddy and I lament that at the rate they're going, they never will. </div>
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So they need a base, but it got me thinking we chatted this up: what exactly is a good base? We threw a few ideas about the strength training horror-comedy show before us. Still, it was an abbreviated conversation before we went our separate ways for the night. </div>
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In the interest of making this constructive criticism (something tells me this person reads the blog and may be able to put together that I'm talking about him) since not trying to solve a problem while talking about it incessantly is nothing more than gossip, I decided to put my thoughts down as to what I think constitutes a good base for strength training. </div>
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<strong><u>It isn't necessarily exercise selection...</u></strong></div>
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Look up any article resembling building a good base for strength and I can almost guarantee you that you'll get some sort of list of exercises that are good for building a base of strength. The problem is that most of these lists are lifts that I've almost never done on a regular basis since starting on this path almost a decade and a half ago. Frankly, they're almost always competitive lifts for sports that I've never done and likely never will do. Just because they're the basis of a strength sport doesn't make them the best base for all efforts to build strength. There's a difference that's lost on lots of base-builders. </div>
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Rather than rattle off specific exercises, I'd just rather simply leave it at making sure that you make sure to throw in some good pushing and pulling exercises, both for the upper body and lower body first and foremost. Next, make sure there's some work for your midsection. <strong>All of it</strong> (rectus abdominals, obliques, spinal erectors, and hip muscles). Don't forget to get a dash of exercises that force your body to move rotationally. Some carrying, dragging, and pulling of weights is also a remarkably good, simple-to-learn and easy way to build strength and conditioning. </div>
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As long as you hit those categories up with some regularity, you should build a good beginner strength. Don't think because I'm doing strongman and lifting weights more regularly that I believe that a good chunk of this can't be bodyweight. I used BW-only for years and it got me to where I am now. I wasn't doing specific events, I could easily be using handstand push-ups and pull-ups for strength training and get challenges out them. </div>
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<strong><u>...But it is about doing as much of it as possible!</u></strong></div>
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I've flat-out said that people take too much rest in between sets during workouts in a past entry. That criticism also applies to our above-"lifter" taking five minutes to prepare for a tragically modest overhead press. It shouldn't take that long <strong>BECAUSE HE SHOULDN'T NEED A LIFTING BELT AND WRIST WRAPS TO DO A PRESS LIKE THAT. </strong>Since I'm too busy to determine if this was a max effort lift (I certainly hope it wasn't, this is not a small kid) I'll assume with such a modest amount of weight, it wasn't. So, this stuff isn't helping make him stronger but allowing him to stay weak. </div>
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Yes, support gear probably has it's place when approaching maximum strength lifts where the boundaries of the human body. If properly used in conjunction with the body , it does help protect and strengthen during a lift. Improperly used, it becomes a cast that does the work for the body. If someone's building a base, then these implements have no use. </div>
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While I abhor using high reps in bodyweight training in perpetuity, and I have for several years, I do admit that at the beginning, it definitely assisted in my ability to do more work. The more work I could do, the closer I could get to maximum strength efforts without issues. I have few doubts that all of my BW training helped may ability to handle large training volume, made my midsection (particularly my abdominals) powerful, bullet-proofed my shoulders and developed my grip. <br />
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Ultimately, I think it's important to cultivate the ability to do a lot of work before doing a lot of maximum-effort work. </div>
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One of my slices of broscience cake that I fed to the world years ago was that if you develop strong hips, shoulders and grip, you'll be a powerful person. While I may not have done everything right in training to transition to strongman work (who does?) I do feel that since I had those three, combined with good work capacity, I was off to a good start. </div>
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<strong><u>Combined with HAVNG THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND</u></strong></div>
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Simply put: too many people in the gym are just not comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's why modern gyms look like they've been child-proofed by an OCD mother who just stole a foam padding truck. The insistence with pristine skin isn't the only sign that people don't like to be uncomfortable in the gym. The simple fact that our strength training-grasshopper took five minutes to do a 120 lbs says it all. He had no rush to get to lifting and he had no desire to push himself to lift with any sort of purpose. Instead, bullshitting with others and playing compulsively with a phone were all so much more...comfortable. <br />
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It takes time to adjust to forcing the body to do things that are intense and uncomfortable. Still, that's what it takes to be good at training. It also doesn't hurt if you learn to enjoy the process of training. That's why I'm such a wing nut with my strength training movement selections. I enjoy lifting weird objects in different ways. As long as I do it with intensity and purpose, I still get strong. Not everything has to be deadlift, bench and squat. If you get strong while enjoying what you're doing, then who cares how you did it? That will go a long way towards doing it with conviction. <br />
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Of course, this all has to be combined with good food and rest. Base building is pointless if those two parts aren't in order. After all, at best, you may only have 45 minutes per day to devote to training. While you can get a lot done in that time frame, it will be unraveled if the other 23 hours and 15 minutes of the day don't do something to support that other 3/4-hour. <br />
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Hopefully this skull of mush gets his shit together and gets his training sorted out sooner or later. Since this initial lift, I've offered whatever advice/words that I've seen relevant to him at key training times. After all, without a solution to criticism, then it's all mean-girl-like complaining and gossip with gym clothing and body odor. With a little luck, these millenials will figure what a good base is all out. <br />
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-64236344079620411042014-11-05T08:20:00.001-08:002014-11-05T08:20:41.646-08:00Got a Minute? Let's talk about timing and your training...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No, I'm not writing an article about how he got so big, especially since he hasn't told anyone how he did it...</td></tr>
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For the readers who have seen both, "The Dark Knight," and the, "The Dark Knight Rises," I've got a question for you: which of these movies was longer? As a die-hard fan of anything that Christopher Nolan directs, I eagerly anticipated, and thoroughly adored, both movies. However, I was baffled by one, common criticism of the last one: the movie felt too long. That question was a little bit of a trick question. The Dark Knight Rises is only about ten minutes longer. Christopher Nolan simply manipulated the timeline of events in the Dark Knight much more than the Dark Knight Rises. So, since the story line wasn't being told in order, it seemed shorter than it really was. <br />
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Christopher Nolan is widely regarded as a pioneer in movie making for his ability for juggling multiple timelines on film, making him a master at manipulating the feeling of time in movies. That's a skill so few who try to build their bodies (rather than movies) seem good at. <br />
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If anything, the sense of timing in training is totally screwed up. People seem to have no idea when to rush and when to wait. Patience is horribly mis-applied. This poorly-manipulated use of rushing and patience is something that I see frequently screwing up routines in the short term and goals over a longer period of time. While I will throw an Atlas stone at any reader who dares call me an expert, I think I've got my sense of timing down when it comes to my training. I think it's about time someone sort this all out. <br />
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<strong><u>Time Between Sets</u></strong><br />
This should be pretty simple but people love sticking their faces in the mud, opening their eyes, and looking for an answer: rest as much as you need to <strong>and no more than that. </strong>Maybe it's because people try to oversimplify, trying to find a rest period that's good for all movements. The news flash for these people is that there isn't one. You'll need more rest between maximum effort lifts. You'll use less for conditioning routines. You'll want to be a bit more generous on new movements so you can learn them rather than build strength out of them. The less technical a movement usually requires less rest. <br />
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Whatever you're doing or what you're looking to achieve out of it, just get enough rest out of the time between sets so you can do your next set. No more than that. If you need more than five minutes between sets you're either doing something that is far beyond your physical capabilities or you're just plain, fucking wasting your time by being lazy or unfocused. Feelings of passing out and vomiting, or trying to make a joint work right after you did too much, are as much of a waste of time as chatting with other gym lazy-asses (like yourself) while posting selfies that nobody cares about to Instagram. You're in the gym to move. So, do whatever you can to keep yourself moving. When you look to move as much as possible, you'll need some rest. Take it since it's needed to keep yourself going. Then go. <br />
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<strong><u>Time to Reach Your Goals</u></strong><br />
In a short period of time, you're likely to hear an interview I did where I stress the overwhelming significance of being patient when reaching strength and fitness goals. While I generally walk around my gym pushing millenials to get their asses moving and, you know, maybe exercise once every five minutes, I can't stand it when people are in a huge rush to become 500 lbs deadlifters, first place strongmen-competitors, or get 18" arms. I agree that the majority of fitness and strength rules are pretty bendable. One that I firmly believe isn't is that anything worthwhile transformation with your body will take time. By time, I mean months and years. Everything from fat loss to muscle and strength gain has to be done with the same amount of time you'll do in jail if you commit a felony. <br />
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When I tried to gain some muscle mass seven years ago, it took me 9 months to put on 27 lbs of muscle. I did it again this year and it took me six months to put on 15 lbs. When I wanted to start bent pressing back in 2009, I started out with a 35 lbs kettlebell. After five years, I'm started bent pressing a 150 lbs sandbag. I had to wait nearly one year after I got it in my head to do my first strongman competition. <br />
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If you look at the majority of the people who are telling you that you can get results fast are either trying to sell you something or sell you on the notion that they are so much more awesome than you are. Both are equally full of shit. In between exercises, life is going on. That alone is going to divert attention away from your goals. You need time to learn how to do things right. You need rest that you may not always get. Then, there's the fact that a body will come up with reasons to resist changes in its current state. You'll have to force yourself through all that. <br />
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So, the takeaway from this is all pretty simple. Make haste with your workouts and patiently wait for the results. <br />
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-39259548742060444952014-10-29T09:09:00.002-07:002014-10-29T09:09:53.013-07:00Fall, get up, finish, learn something and don't forget to have some fun: Recapping my First Strongman CompetitionIf I had to join a gym, I was at least going to join one that kind of matched my sprained personality along with my disgust of cardio equipment even if an exercise bike was what I was joining the gym for in the first place. As part of my ACL physical therapy, I needed to ride an exercise bike, forwards and backwards, for 15-30 minutes a day. While that's about as fun to me as drinking gasoline, it's PT. I didn't have to like it. I just had to do it. <br />
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The Dungeon Gym had three cardio machines and the rest is weights and strength training equipment. That equipment line-up runs parallel to my training belief system. You go there to lift. Most of the crew there were getting into strongman training and that training, as I sadly peddled my knee back into use, rubbed off on me. As I progressed in PT, the notion of joining my new crew of friends in strongman became a thought and goal that propelled me along with my training. <br />
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After a year, I finally got the opportunity to achieve that goal. Last Saturday, I did my first strongman competition in Tampa, Florida, taking 6th in the Novice Division. <br />
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Over the past year, I've acquired a reputation for my unfiltered jokes and my wildly unconventional approach to strength training. My cohorts in chalk and sweat shouldn't have been surprised that I'd rolled up in Clearwater sporting these sunglasses. That guy in the middle is my dear friend Richard. He's as conventional in the gym as I am crazy. I was so overjoyed to be here with him. I was overjoyed just to be here. It's been a long, long struggle to get to a point where I felt like I could take my body to such a proving grounds. While I wanted to do well, I was also here to have some fun. In my typical, inappropriate fashion, that's what I was setting out to do.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who need steroids when you eat these kind of sandwiches?</td></tr>
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Training for this show had it's ups and downs. One of the major downsides, naturally, was my lower body training. My knee PT was generally successful save for one issue: My left knee doesn't hyperextend like it supposed to. So, my lifting with my lower body was slighty uneven, my right legs moving faster and working more than the left. This eventually led to a carousel of lumbar disc irritation and issues an IT band tightness. Plus, any movement that forced a lot of hamstring activation would leave my bad knee sore for the next day or so. Long story made short: my heavy squat work was minimal for much of the summer and I zeroed out on the Hummer Tire squat. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My friend, who was also competing, said it best: shake it off, it didn't happen. Move on!<br />
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Which I ended up doing with some success in the next event: a car deadlift hold for time, head-to-head with another competitor. That competitor turned out to be a guy named Bryan. I ended up beating him by a grand total of .06 seconds. The humor wasn't lost on either of us as we did the dude embrace after finishing. While most of my leg training was suboptimal for months at a time, the one thing that worked really well was barbell hack squatting. This movement that I regularly did was a pretty close approximation to a car deadlift. In reality, a car deadlift is more of a squat anyway. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I sprinted over to my lane. Bryan looked at me like I was nuts. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy0TXsjVFB2peIpLpT5GeALSEYeYsSdzVIelJNWG4kkXpZsIqNc9BvMuJOvlaw5KbFWJI2YZqUBNjXDkaATwD7w06Tlfq98dom5HGyGCoCORQ7Afb3py6ihhdr30T-uCQbxJFoJRoycWU/s1600/yokepress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy0TXsjVFB2peIpLpT5GeALSEYeYsSdzVIelJNWG4kkXpZsIqNc9BvMuJOvlaw5KbFWJI2YZqUBNjXDkaATwD7w06Tlfq98dom5HGyGCoCORQ7Afb3py6ihhdr30T-uCQbxJFoJRoycWU/s1600/yokepress.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I wasn't too far behind him...</td></tr>
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That .06 second difference basically turned Bryan and I into short term rivals. We went head-to-head on the medley run (225 lbs farmers handles, 180 lbs yoke, 250 lbs power stair, 125 lbs dumbbell press, chain press). Had I not been so amped up on nerve juice and anticipation for my favorite event to train, I might have taken note that one of the farmers handle kept rolling away from me. At least I would have realized that the pavement on that side that I was about to step into had a slight depression right off the starting pads. As soon as I took a step into it, I fell with the handles. Other than a scrapped elbow and jamming the tip of my thumb, I got back to my feet and managed to catch up with Bryan a little bit. <br />
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That's when inexperience and nerve juice got the better of me. I exploded off the ground with the yoke, locking it out and steadying it with surprising ease. Unfortunately, I missed the down command and kept moving. I had to go back and do it. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...Now I am</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nobody knew what to make of this. Apparently, someone wanted to have me disqualified</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5jUeyWRSaN-DYiPekVPBLLZEYWHSRAdEbZNKV0tNN0BX6cgc7Nb-IoVsTGjuXDiFZEfHLpi_btt5iwkXXICgRGEwTregqDgAtkdwTm_kwQIXpkSGnuAXy0XUKtJrCXxwsmzUhMrMONH4/s1600/finishedpress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5jUeyWRSaN-DYiPekVPBLLZEYWHSRAdEbZNKV0tNN0BX6cgc7Nb-IoVsTGjuXDiFZEfHLpi_btt5iwkXXICgRGEwTregqDgAtkdwTm_kwQIXpkSGnuAXy0XUKtJrCXxwsmzUhMrMONH4/s1600/finishedpress.jpg" height="320" width="272" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I missed one. Just not this one. The crowd went nuts!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"you're a fast little shit!" Bryan</td></tr>
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Bryan later told me that he was stunned when he saw me just behind him on the dumbbell press. He figured that my redo on the yoke press combined with the power stair would give him an advantage. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. While we both missed our first attempts with the circus Dumbbell (Bryan has some elbow issues; my jammed thumb weakened my grip on the dumbbell), I pulled ahead, throwing the Crossfit-like chain press easily and again edging him out. <br />
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The last event I figured to be my strongest event: keg tossing over a 13' bar (Four Quarter-kegs. 20, 25, 30 and 35 lbs). What I didn't figure was how good everyone else would be. I threw just before Bryan, who I didn't realize was a Highland Games thrower. He one-handed his way through those fuckers in just over 21 seconds. <br />
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I drilled the hell out of the throws. I regularly did heavy T-handle swings, double Kettlebell swings, and throws with my Alpha Strong Sandbag (40 lbs). I got off to a very hot start, throwing the first three kegs 3-4' over the bar in around 18 seconds. However, inexperience got the better of me. As I was throwing, I stopped taking the two steps backwards to get into a good position to throw the keg. By the time I got to the 35 lbs, I was throwing too far away and my last keg bounced off the pole, forcing me to redo the throw and coming away with a 26 second finish time. <br />
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Initially, I heard that I had came in 4th place. After a few days, when the scores were finally posted, I had to readjust to just missing the top three. While I told myself that I just wanted to have some fun and simply being able to do this was reward unto itself, I'm still a competitive person. I couldn't simply just go to participate. There's a part of me that wanted to win, even if I was cognizant of the fact that it may be unlikely on my first competition since I was going in knowing that my squatting practice had been marginal and thoroughly sub-par (I also had tweaked my lower back the week of the competition. I spent the entire week trying to get rid of the back pain, which I did succeed at). </div>
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What was particularly galling about the tire squats was that I previously trained for these back in April for another show that I wasn't able to do in Florida, hitting 350 lbs for two, 385 lbs for one, and narrowly missing 405 lbs. So, failing at 365 lbs proved that I lost leg strength in the course of six months. Still, I've gotten in front of the IT band syndrome and hitting the hyperextensions served the dual purpose of helping get my left knee closer to natural hyperextension and strengthening my lower back muscles. I trust that if I get my knee to do that, most of my back and IT problems will dissipate. </div>
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The rest of my errors I felt were a combination of inexperience and nerves. I will never do a moving event without checking the surface I'm walking on first. Ever. That fall cost me both on the farmers handles and the circus dumbbell. I also should have paid closer attention to my down calls. Finally, I need to make sure that I take the needed two steps back on my keg tosses. The winner of the novice division, Alex, also pointed out something I hadn't thought of: after asking me if I knew I could clear the bar with my throws (which I knew I could) why watch and see if they were going to clear? That could have shaved some time off too. </div>
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I correctly surmised that a barbell hack squat was likely to be very similar to a car deadlift. As a result, the car went up pretty easily. </div>
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Getting the farmers handles were initially a problem for me in training since I did so little heavy deadlifting due to my back. So, what I did do instead was practice lighter deficit deadlifts and deficit-deadlifts with chains. As a result, I was able to get the handles off the ground and do it reasonably quick. </div>
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Despite some problems with the yoke in training, I mastered squatting underneath it and pressing as I drove upwards. This made my two yoke presses fast. I also correctly surmised that regular squat-pressing would aid in this.</div>
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While my thumb screwed with my grip on the circus dumbbell press, I still nailed it. I'd been practicing this for over a year and this one implement in the medley finished the medley for 4 of the 10 competitors. </div>
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Inexplicably, I didn't meet anyone who used swings to training for throwing kegs. <em>Someone must have!</em> Lots of the competitors needed start the keg at eye level in order to get the extra momentum to get the keg over the bar. After months of swinging 100-150 lbs of weights, I started most of my throws at my knees. Even that may have been unnecessary. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I suppose I can only be so hard on myself. This picture is about 13 months old. </td></tr>
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So, after popping my strongman cherry after a year of conceiving of doing such a competition, I'm tentatively setting my sites on Florida's Strongest man in Davenport, FL. Overall, this day will go down as one of the best in my life and I couldn't be happier to take part. </div>
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<em>The comment about mastering the pushup will make you rival or surpass any body builder or power lifter is so stupid. If this were the case every body builder and power lifter would be doing pushups instead of lifting weights. Even Body builders and power lifters train quite differently from each other. One utilizing Rep range from 8 -15 the other rep range 1-6. This whole functional strength argument is stupid too, to say someone that lifts weights isn't functionally strong? How is a pushup any more functional? If your building a house, carrying a baby, or doing garden work dropping down and doing 20 isn't going to help any more than bench press. I'd wager that most people that workout do it to look better and feel better. If your goals are to just generally be in better shape sure go for the pushup. It's even challenging enough for most new people to build some decent size and strength, but if you want the earth to move when you walk, the ability to push trees over, and for people to make sculptures of your body you better stack on some weights. -Brent</em></blockquote>
That fateful post from nearly seven years ago now still draws views and comments to my blog...<br />
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<a href="http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2008/02/pushup-vs-bench-press.html">http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2008/02/pushup-vs-bench-press.html</a></div>
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Things have changed over those years. While I do look back on some of my old posts and sometimes find my past self outright wrong on a few occasions, this post still stands up. Much of what I think about the bench press vs. the push up hasn't really changed all of that much. There might be a very good reason for that. That reason is that, in a lot of ways, the bench press encapsulates much of what I don't like about the strength training subculture that I inhabit. </div>
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First, the bench press needs very specific stuff to perform. You have to have a bench, a barbell and plates, sometimes lots of them. In other words, you have to have a gym set-up in order to do it. So much of what I do is based on the premise that you don't need a gym to work out in the first place. Benching anchors you to the gym if you insist on doing it.</div>
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There are lots of people insist on doing it. As I've ventured into strongman training, I've noticed that lots of people migrate over to it from powerlifting. Some strongmen, in turn, seem to take a shocking amount of programming tips from powerlifting. What lots of people therefore don't get is that working the chest doesn't simply mean doing the bench press. I've said it before: the pectoral major muscles are extremely versatile. Any movement that requires moving your arms in front of your body back towards your centerline is using them. So, you don't need to be glued to one movement that, in turn, glues you to the gym. Since I have an aversion to being intentionally stuck to a physical location to train, you can bet your ass I have a problem being married to one movement, especially one that I hate that's part of a competition of have no desire to participate.</div>
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Frankly, there is NO GOOD REASON to be so glued to the bench press. It's an incomplete upper body-push movement anyway. If done by itself, it doesn't develop the shoulder and chest muscles in a balanced manner. Push-ups can and do, which is why I prefer them (weighted these days). One thing that some strongmen do get right is they move the bench press to an accessory movement to the overhead press. There are a mess of chest exercises out there any why the more incomplete ones got selected as the go-to for chest training just boggles my mind. </div>
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To top it all off, as I said above, I just don't really enjoy bench pressing. I don't really have a rhyme or reason for that other than it just isn't a compelling lift for me. So, since I don't enjoy then why should I do it? After all, it's not a lift in any competition that I'll ever do. I can do others to get complete upper body development. Plus, I don't need to be at a gym that, aside from the past two years, I have extremely limited access to. At the end of the day, there are more practical lifts for me to consume my time with. I'll just stick to those. </div>
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3897774470372565730.post-17587682441444056702014-09-10T17:12:00.000-07:002014-09-10T17:12:58.642-07:00Check your special shoes at the door and get your head rightI should have been finishing up dead-last in the group, looking like a pasty weakling. At 195 lbs, minimal direct strongman training experience, only two months of regular leg training, and a pair of totally gripless Chuck Taylor shoes I shouldn't have been doing much to write home about with a 12,000 lbs truck pull. This was my second time ever attempting one...<br />
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While my technique was as ugly as I am stunningly handsome, on my second pull I tugged out the second best time of the day out of the group. I ended up beating one of my best buddies at the gym by two seconds. With his extra 30 lbs of extra weight, more strongman training experience, and a brand new set of rock climbing shoes to that savvy strongmen competitors utilize on truck pulling he should have left buried me. <br />
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Questions about what shoes to use with what kind of lifting and training seem to come up as often as Kardashians show up in the public consciousness. Like the Kardashians, as far as I'm concerned, they pop up far, <strong>FAR</strong> too often. This has to be part of a larger marketing conspiracy that exploded way back in the 1980's when Nike teamed up with Michael Jordon and created the illusion that somehow shoes were the key to peak athletic performance. Strength training chicanery simply must have followed suit. <br />
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I mostly train with Chuck Taylors for two key reasons: they're cheap and they're what I have. With my limited funds and my near-constant traveling, I'm forced into strength training minimalism largely by necessity. That has drawbacks that I largely don't mind. Just like growing up poor teaches you more about living life than growing up privileged, training with nothing will teach force someone to make more out of less. <br />
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As we were all playing around with pulling a truck, many of the guys in the group struggled with driving with their legs because they were up too far on their toes. I explained to everyone that they need to think of their feet like their hands and get a good grip on the ground by making sure that with each step by planting as much of their foot on the ground (balls and toes of the foot) with each step.<br />
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Ever heard of chip-coated pavement? It's pretty much gravel with not enough tar to call it real asphalt. In other words, it's a little loose. That's what I was pushing this truck on. Either I get my footing right or put my teeth into the bumper when I slip!</div>
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I learned this from pushing work trucks in lousy driveways...wearing my Chucks. Push heavy weights on such an unforgivingly-loose surface with a shoe that has does you no favors will force you to plant your feet one way: the right way. What would rock climbing shoes have done to fix that? <br />
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Your work-out gear doesn't make you strong. It didn't make Michael Jordon one of the most legendary athletes of all time and it won't make you fantastically strong. Your head and your body are responsible for that. If you don't have those two things in check then the only thing that your shoes buy you is credit card debt. <br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: x-large;">SO TRAIN AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT SHIT THAT DOESN'T MATTER.</span></strong><br />
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Justin_PShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07819478474074071804noreply@blogger.com1