The Bodyweight Files

If you're cheating, you're not trying

2012-01-29T08:59:00.000-08:00

I heard an interesting, pseudoscentific term a week ago: Blue Monday Using a mathematical equation, someone figured out a way to determine the most miserable day of the year. Certainly January 16, 2012 was a really shitty day for me. Part of this calculation is the elapsed time after failing to meet New Years Resolutions.

You mean, like trying to lose weight? Around this time of year, questions start flying about when it's permissible to eat "cheat meals". The good intentions allegedly reaches it's end with the Super Bowl. It's been alleged that the junk food tradition accompanying the game is a conspiracy to permanently break the most popular New Years Resolution, keeping everyone fat.

So, what do I think about cheat meals?

This topic is getting as stale as asking about the best workout music. The problem is that people turn it into a question of cheating or not cheating. Then, once if becomes affirmed, then it's when and how often. I yawn just thinking about it.

This is actually simpler math than the Blue Monday calculation: addition and subtraction. What should we add? Well, we're going to add junk food. Have you ever considered that there are junk foods that should never be eaten? There's a huge difference between a cheeseburger from here and this...

I've done my best to make a policy of not eating things that contain ingredients that I can't pronounce or identify. When I make a pizza for dinner, I can tell you what's in the crust, the sauce, and even the bacon(yes, I make my own bacon. Pancetta, technically). I can usually drive to the farm where the cheese was made. That's a far cry from pizza like this...I'm too lazy to do a Google search. Can someone tell me what Sodium Erytho...um...yeah, that stuff.

So, when we add pizza, cheeseburgers, and similar unhealthy fare to our diets on our designated special days, does that mean that we absolutely have to subtract everything resembling healthy food from our diet for the day as well? Is it a crime against humanity to have a salad with the pizza? Could you bring yourself to throw some diced jalapenos (which have more Vitamin C, by weight, than oranges.) and serve the whole thing on a whole wheat bun? Last time I checked, this was all permissible.

Let's cut the bullshit though. If you did resolve to lose some weight and you're already asking about when you can cheat, you're just setting yourself up for a failure. I could spout off about tips to eat better but the reality is that you need to get stubborn with yourself. Those of us committed to keeping a healthy weight get urges like the rest of humanity. We're just disciplined enough to fight off enough of them to stay healthy. At this point, don't even fucking think about when you can cheat and eat if your resolution is to lean out. You might have to skip the wings at Super Bowl but you'll feel, and look, better for it.

Replace Functional. Right idea, wrong word

2012-01-27T04:50:00.000-08:00

If you wandered over here from my Facebook page, then you know that I enthusiastically bought "Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors vol II" as soon as I heard it was available for sale. It's been an oddly enthralling read. I've never been interested in bodybuilding but I've deeply enjoyed reading all of the goings-on in the transitional 1970's. Those years are the nearly-sole focus of this 700-plus page book.

You can't talk about those years without bringing up Arthur Jones. The Nautilus story takes up a significant chunk of the book. So, as I was reading about this "sport" that I don't have much interest in during years I wasn't born, I came across a part about how Arthur Jones lamented that his lats were too small. As he saw it, the problem was his hands were holding back his quest to get his Lattisimus Dorsi bigger. So, he set out to make a machine to take his hands out of the equation.

He felt as though he succeeded wildly, proudly proclaiming in all his brashness that he could put "lats on a rake" ... all that was necessary was a machine to take the hands out of the process.

That kind of thinking leaves me with one though...

Maybe, in addition to being a borderline maniac, Arthur Jones was an engineering genius. I run into that all of the time with work. There's lots of civil engineers that are really smart... and impractical as the day is long.

A while back when I decided to start reading about human anatomy, a very common way to describe the Lats was, "the climbing muscle," due to how heavily we all use the lat when we climb shit. So, riddle me this: how on earth do you climb anything if you don't use your hands? Forget the climbing for a second. How much can we do with the lats without the hands?
and this helps with what exactly?

I used a word a minute ago that we don't see too often in muscle training: impractical. I don't think that we use this term enough. Instead, we see exercises referred to as either, "functional," or not. Maybe that's a piss-poor label. Functional exercise is something that helps you achieve a goal. So, any exercise is functional. That's not what we're referring to and lots of people make themselves look silly by using this phrase, even if they're getting at something they're not properly defining.

Impractical is what we're getting at. There are lots of stuff you can do to make big, strong muscles but it's an open question as to whether it's worth doing in the first place. Like I said before, what can you do with your lats with in real life that doesn't require the use of your hands? So, what the hell good is a machine that sets you up to work out in ways you'll never move outside of a gym?

So, it's worth thinking about the way you're moving when you're in your respective gym. A little practicality would be a nice change of pace in people's methods of working out. While you're trying to be practical, dump the mislabeling phenomenon known as "functional training."Owner of some of the best Lats in history. So, maybe there is something practical about building big lats: it drives the babes nuts!

The Time and The Place Part III: Joys of Wintertime Training!

2012-01-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

I've got a nifty farmer's walk variation I started doing a few months ago. I load up my Ironmaster KB with 100 lbs (or more) of weight. I shoulder a sandbag on one side, grab the kettlebell with the opposite hand and march. Obviously, I've got to alternate sides. So, in between walking around awkwardly, I clean and press the sandbag.

There's just one problem. The only place I can do this GPP is outside. I don't have enough ceiling indoors to put the sandbag overhead and my wife won't let me walk around the house with 190 lbs of weight that I have a tendency to violently drop when throughly exhausted.

She's weird.

So, I go outside... In the blowing snow and rapidly dropping temperatures. Welcome to a traditional Northeastern weather. Then again, it's only a problem if you make it a problem. The fact is that I had no choice and I just had to make things work with the environment that I live. It may be bordering inhospitable but there's upsides to this climate. That is, if you're not weird enough look at the upside of the situation.

One thing that became rapidly apparent when I was walking with big weights in snow is that this is noticeably more difficult. Even six inches made things a lot harder. We all know snow makes a great way to increase resistance to training that requires walking. I never thought to do other stuff beyond snow sprints. I'm now intrigued...Dan John's got something here...

Yeah, it's cold now, and that can be uncomfortable. It can also be best fat-burning environment to train in. One discovery that have fat-fighting doctors and scientists abuzz is the somewhat recent discover of brown fat (brown adipose tissue) in adult human bodies. The quick and dirty explanation of brown fat is that it's a form of tissue that stores and burns calories for no other reason than to regulate body temperature. Normal fat (white adipose tissue) simply stores fat. Muscle tissue gives off heat as a bi-product. Brown fat's product is heat. It's arranged near major veins and it's designed to heat up blood going back to the heart, near the base of the neck and around the kidneys.
Science has known for years that babies have considerable deposits of this stuff because they can't move enough to generate their own heat from their muscles. It was always assumed that it goes away as a human ages into adulthood. In reality, the cells stay there. They never replicate and they never change to anything else. Some dim-witted exPURTS want to come up with a way to chemically stimulate brown fat to burn more fat. I guess they're not terribly worried about the effects of hyperthermia on the heart.

Instead, why not just force brown fat to warm up a cooler body by-YOU GUESSED IT-doing some of your training outdoors in the cold? Don't take this opportunity be be a fucking frozen retard . I like to wear enough clothing so that I feel cold as soon as I step outside but I feel warm after a few minutes. Moisture-wicking clothing, as well as stuff to keep the snow out, is important. If I work out with lots of intensity, I won't stay outside much longer than 40 minutes.

One major consideration when working out, or otherwise living, in the cold climates is hydration. It's very easy to dry out because drinking fluids makes you piss every other second. It's still necessary to drink water. I just do small amounts more often. That way, I don't look like I'm trying to mark my territory.

Yeah, winter time isn't the most comfortable time of year. Yes, training indoors is more comfortable but then again when was strength training about being comfortable? Intelligent strength training happens when you work hard and smart. Doing our thing outdoors can fit into that equation, even if the rest of the world thinks we look nuts while doing it in the snow. We just end up being tougher than the rest and as far as I'm concerned, that's what it's all about.

Working out When Sick

2012-01-12T18:32:00.000-08:00

The shots are being administered. The cold remedies are moved front and center of the drug stores. Some of us are coughing and sneezing. Others are wearing masks and running around like SARS just broke out. It's flu season and sooner or later, someone's going to bring up the second-most pointlessly asked question...

"Is it okay to work out when you're sick?"

If you asked me, I'd say...

It depends

You couldn't ask for a more intuitive and though provoking answer, could you? While these people are at it, they might as well ask about the best workout music (that being the most pointless question).

I'll read any book that has words in it. That even includes British Survival Guides. I recall in that book about making sure that if you're in a group survival situation that it's important that every person has a job, no matter how ill or injured they are. The reason for that is to keep boredom at bay. An idle mind with a sick body will kill rapidly and any little thing that can keep someone stimulated and feeling important could be a life saver.

Face the facts: if you sit around and think about how sick you are, chances are good you'll be sick longer. I know that I can only tolerate the monotony of watching TV in my bed clothes while I try desperately to get the taste of cough drops out of my mouth with fizzy, sludgy mixtures of Airborne and orange juice for so long.

Yes, this blog entry came to mind when I thought I might have a cold. I usually go to the doctors just to make sure it's not strep throat (which I used to get a lot when I was a kid). Just being at the doctor's office made me feel sicker even though
the only thing that was bothersome was my throat. Other than that, I was fine. It's one of those times where the more I thought about being sick, the more sick I felt.

If I can work, then I'll work out. I'm not trying to set any records here. Working out is, after all, a controlled breakdown of the body. I'll just do something to keep busy but not bust balls. I'll keep the reps low, rest more between each set, and drink more water than I usually would. I followed this advice with a work out after going to the doctor's office. I felt fine the next day.

The scale of mental health versus physical health need to be carefully evaluated on more serious things than the flu. I'll never forget the sensation of trying to use my CoC's when I had the shingles earlier last year. Sensation is too gentle of a word. For those who've never had them, this is the best description of the pain: Life-threatening electrocution! So, that time, I had to deal with being one with the couch. Use some good sense on more extreme cases of illness.

Sickness and exercise is one of those moments where you need to be honest with yourself. A very modest amount of self reflection should give you the answer to your questions on this one. It doesn't require a key stroke ride to your favorite forum of internet-strength Gods. Chances are, you already know the answer to this question. Act accordingly.

Training Wheels for Real Training

2012-01-09T05:14:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of reasons why we all keep strength training. The most universal reasons that we all do it is the soul-moving qualities that come with overcoming hard, physical challenges. We also learn to appreciate the importance of being physically capable. Life just sucks when we're weak and that fact can only be avoided for so long. I could keep going on and on about why it's awesome to pursue physical strength for reasons beyond just the physical realm but smarter, more insightful people have poured over that in countless blog entries all over all of the internets. I do have a question though. It's one that a few of my Friends have taken up the keyboard for answers and action on the question at hand:

Why does real strength training have to be so gender-specific?

Indeed, there are no good answers to this question outside of a really fucked up notion of beauty that claims that any sort of real strength builder strike down the mere identity of women and render them men at the slightest touch of a pull-up bar or a barbbell. Anyone who cares to do some honest research into the topic, beyond Traci Anderson and women's fitness magazines, will realize this.

Now, I freely admit that my opening paragraph should apply equally to both sexes should be free from judgement about how someone will look when they train to excel. It shouldn't matter how a person looks nearly as much as it does...but that's the way that the cards have been dealt. It's the somewhat unfortunate fact of life.

The last time I wrote on this topic, I said the following:

Maybe that's what we should be doing to begin with here: promoting real strength training for real health for the sake of being able to do real-life movement. Then, after we've got that mastered, maybe we can all learn to appreciate a healthy, strong body and learn to find it desirable, maybe even attractive.

So, that leaves me with one thought. If the notion of promoting a look that looks like strong-health as attractive, then what would someone use? The thought that crossed my mind is: do most people even know what that looks like anymore?

I freely admit that there isn't usually a dramatic difference in how a strong woman and an ordinary woman look. There are tell-tale signs. There are things that you don't usually see on women who do some sort of real strength training. These are things that I don't think most people probably wouldn't find attractive. Using the notion that what's attractive is what's strong and healthy, I think that these are points that we can all agree on.

Let's start easy: the muffin top. While I'll freely admit that this is more diet-related than exercise-related, I've always maintained that good training is the ultimate feedback on how good your diet is. Five rounds of The Magic 50, Girondas 8x8, some a nice super-set of pull-ups and push-ups will tell you that your binge eating the day before was really stupid far faster than walking on any contraption ever would. That ultimately translates to a far better body. Besides, doing workouts like this for a sustained period of time won't allow for lots of body fat. To succeed at this stuff, you have to lean out!

Moving onto an actual show of muscle on a woman, I'd have to single out the skinny thighs. I think that men instinctively show off their upper bodies because they know that's what defines them as powerful men. Women have the power in the legs on a pound-for-pound basis more then men do. It's one of the few places where women can have some muscle definition and show it off without the "man" label. First image found on Google when I typed, "model legs".

So, there's no reason for women's legs to only meet at the knees. It could be said that it's actually incredibly feminine to have this display of strength on a woman!

Another, more subtle problem area that bothers me about women is the winged shouldler blades. How many times do we see this look on women...For some reason, ribs poking out the sides is prime tabloid material for actresses who are to skinny but this one somehow gets a pass. It's still bones sticking out of the skin where they shouldn't be sticking out! Furthermore, it's an unhealthy posture issue that begs for some stronger muscles in the right places.

I cringe to even bring up using attraction as a method of selling strength training to the other sex. Ever-changing notions of beauty have lead generations of women to do some very bizarre, and dangerously unhealthy things to their bodies. The reason why even mention it is that it worked so well for men 120 years ago.

I believe it was Lionel Strongfort who commented that for every person who wanted to be strong like Eugen Sandow, 20 just wanted to look like him. Indeed, if you do a Google Image search of Sandow, you'll find that most of the pictures of him out that exist have him showing off his body more than his lifting prowess. We can argue about the limitations of how much sex appeal should sell strength training all day but it's hard to deny that it works and it certainly has it's place. If anything, it's like training wheels: Something that gets you started on the road to better things. Things like the stuff I described at the beginning of this entry.

The Time and Place, Part 2

2011-12-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

I can tell that it's one of those days when I haven't drank enough water throughout the day. I'm tiring more quickly than usual and my sweat is unusually salty. It's already made it to my eyes and they're starting to sting. I'm on set number 5 of hip belt squats and I figured I'd use my 30 second break to grab a towel and wipe off my face.

The only problem is the fucking mice made their way into my house for the winter, leaving mouse shit all over my gym towels. Things like this happen when you turn half-finished basement room into a gym. It works but it's hardly perfect. It's certainly not the cleanest until I can get rid of the mice. My ceiling is too low to put any weight, other than kettlebells, overhead. At least I can just barely do pull-ups without my knees touching the floor. To top it off, I had to cram my desk and books into the same area when my son Henry was born.
OOPS! Sorry, kids...
So, I move outside when I need some serious overhead space to work with. A good example is my rope climbing work. I'm still plucking away at my goal to climb my 3" thick rope. It's not getting any more fun though. The temperature's seriously starting to drop and keeping my fingers warm dictates that I move through most of my pulling and pushing sets with some haste, disregarding that my lungs feel like they're a barely-contained explosion.

Thing is, I don't do this work at home. I have to go to our company's shop to use a forklift to get the 15' of overhead space. Finding a clean patch of ground is, well, I gave up trying. It all smells like some variation of shit, antifreeze, dust, gas, and god-knows what else! I just suck it up, throw the chains on my neck, and keep doing my push-ups.

Why not just join a gym? If you're asking this then you're new here or you're just not paying attention. I travel and lately, I don't have any money. You'll find out if you don't have a wife and a kid. Soon enough. Those two reasons make a gym membership impractical. Besides, I hate most gyms. They're fluffy and not very serious. I can get the work done in them, sure, but they're distraction-filled. At least with the cold, smelly ground and the mouse-bordello basement gym, there's no TV, bad posing routines, and people asking me if I'm doing something from P90X.

I decided to do this two-part blog entry for a simple purpose: to demonstrate that there is no perfect time and place. In point of fact, there are times when there isn't even a GOOD time and place. Yeah, you have to mold your life around training your body to some degree but your training is going to have to do the same. This isn't a bad thing unless you make it that way.
Good example of less-than ideal settings to train.

This is all about getting your mind right. If you do that, and not get stuck on the specifics and circumstances, then you'll find that you can overcome any shortcomings in environment and timing.

Weights vs. Bodyweight, Part 2

2011-12-16T08:04:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, attention spans are restored and clear minds are brought to the table because it's time to get back to comparing Weights vs. BW again. In the first entry, I decided to lay out what I considered the advantages of training with iron in the hands. This time, it's time to turn the tables and look at the disadvantages of iron and when it's a better idea to look around for different methods of making strength training harder.

The most obvious, clear-cut, and convincing advantage of BW has over weights is the convenience factor. Weights are stuff. Stuff costs money. Stuff takes up space. A lot of us don't have a lot of money...or space. Some of us travel and can't take a lot of stuff along. The majority of BW exercises can be done with bare minimum of extra apparatus outside of our own body. The importance of this advantage isn't stated nearly enough.

Getting strong and healthy gets determined by how well we can maintain a strong and healthy lifestyle. Right now, you could probably shove away from your computer and start doing a very productive BW-only routine. You can go on a vacation and do the same thing. If you went broke, you still have the ability to work out. Very little of this applies if your strength training heavily relies on adding ever-increasing amount of weight to make it a challenge. That can hurt the ability to keep that strong-healthy lifestyle thing going.

Now, we have to venture into more murky territory. I have to freely admit that a lot of what happens with weights isn't always the problem of the weights but what people do with them. Too many of weight trainings most popular shortcomings really have more to do with what's in between the trainee's ears than in the palms of their hands.

That being said, I really do think that BW training is better for overall health.
No, this isn't going to be the normal, "weights will bust you up," rant. I never believed that and I still don't, especially after the weight training that I've done. Furthermore, I am fully aware that it's possible to injure yourself with BW (worst thing I've done to myself training in recent memory was hyperextending my left thumb on a 5 finger, one-arm push-up) if not done properly.

Although I feel that I've had more of the wrong kind of aches from weights than I have from BW, that's not my reasoning for tipping the healthy factor in favor of going the non-metallic approach.

The first one has to do with the whole notion of strength-to-Bodyweight ratio(S-2-BW). There's a lot of pseudo-science out there about this but I still think that there are some very convincing reasons that maximizing this ratio is important for maintaining your health. The most obvious it's very difficult to have a high S-2-BW if you're fat. There are numerous BW moves that are impossible to do if that ratio isn't off the charts because you're carrying around too much extra blubber. When was the last time you saw someone who was 50 lbs overweight pull off One-Arm push-ups, a flag, pistol, or climb a 15' rope? On the other hand, you can find plenty of fat guys lifting huge piles of weight.

Now it's time to bring up those other, even more murky reasons for giving BW an edge over iron. As moving iron become easy, what do we do? DUH! We start lifting more. and more. AND MORE! I think that it's hard to dispute that it's very easy to lift more than we should. That makes it easier to hurt yourself while doing it. Yes, this can be negated by checking your ego at the gym entrance, making sure that we control the lift and not add so much that we let the lift control us. Still, the temptation is there. Every iron game revolves around moving more and more iron so the urge to move more than we should is always there.

Another temptation of moving iron is to shorten the movements so we can lift even more. Weight training happily embraces partials of a lot of the lifts for the sake of moving more weight. BW, on the other hand, really frowns on partials. We don't like partial pull-ups, pistols that aren't ass-to-grass, and the jury is still out on dips to parallel. I've always looked at range of motion as a use-it-or-loose it proposition. I don't see reducing ROM for the sake of moving more metal as a healthy trade-off.

Getting back to getting stronger, I gave weights the advantage for the lower body. I'd have to give BW the advantage for the upper body, and for the opposite reasons. The upper body isn't built to take the work load that the legs and hips can easily handle. They're built to move around in lots of cool ways and so there are lots of ways to make them really, REALLY strong without really needing to add weight to the movement that you do them with. Most of my readers could probably work the upper body extremely effectively with no iron at all for a long, long time with little else than a few scraps of rope, some pipe, and some towels. If that.

I do have a mental advantage to give to BW. I recall that Eric Cressey commented that the human body, when sufficiently motivated by necessity, will move weight regardless of proper mechanics, personal safety, or perceived lack of strength. I don't bring this up to comment on the safety or practicality of such a lift. It's simply that the resistance is always there. Gravity never takes a rest. When doing a BW movement, chances are there that effect isn't there. That's not a bad thing. In fact, that can be a huge advantage. If doing the move heavily relies on you focusing on the move and forcing it to become more difficult, then there has to be a more intense mental focus. Without it, you get no work out of it. This might be why many BW guys feel that there's a meditative element to certain BW moves.

So, the somewhat logical conclusion to this would be to try to determine whether BW training beats weight training. I'm not sure of the answer. When you figure it out, if you could kindly let me know if Flint and Snake Eyes would beat The Cobra and Copperhead in a fight to the death and if the Marvel Universe is really superior to DC, please?

In the meantime, I'm going to point out something else that doesn't get mentioned a whole lot in the weight vs. BW fisticuffs. The choice of which one and which one is better to use over the other is highly personal and subject to what you're looking to do and what you have to work with. This varies so much that it's hard to nail down a favored method of strength training. By reading this Blog, you already know my answer. That's my personal choice. A little bit of analyzing on your life and goals has to go into your consideration for working out prior to selecting your tools. Choose your favorite accordingly.

The Time and the Place, Part 1

2011-12-07T06:12:00.000-08:00

I've grown a severe aversion to people who run on at the mouth, or punching keys and creating piles worthless words, discussing things that they have no clue what it is they're talking about. There are places all over the internet that overflow with such mindless shit. I've grown up around too many people like that much of my life.

I've never claimed to be an expert on anything up until now. Today will be the day that I declare myself to be an expert on working out on the road. After several internet explorations, I've discovered people who think that a piece of exercise equipment that fits into a duffel bag is portable and others who think that it's feasible to check a doorway pull-up bar in their luggage. I wonder if these are the same bone bag metrosexuals who travel with no less than 5 shirts no matter if they're taking a three day weekend to a nudist colony.

Well, they could be halfway right if they were traveling by car, or especially by truck. Most of last years business travel for me was done by car. That makes things a lot easier since you can bring a modest amount of gear. Kettlebells tuck neatly behind the seats of most pickup trucks and my much-worn, much-loved sandbag doesn't mind the ride in the bed. A set-up like this provides a very-wide variety of training, no matter where traveling may take you. Within reason, you're only limited by your desire to bother loading it into your respective automobile.
Traveling by car is easy enough. Where things get really tricky is the airplane. Thanks to fat bastards all over the USA, your bag weight is down to 50 lbs each. Things get exacerbated when you have to travel in the winter time. The 50 lbs bag weight is very easy to exceed when you need jackets and sweaters. There's not a lot of room for exercise gear.

You're probably back to BW-only. We're all here reading because we love BW. Chances are good that part of that devotion is precisely because we can do it anywhere with marginal amounts of equipment. Well, air travel combined with hotel living will put that to the test.

Still, some stuff helps out a lot. Near the top of the list is something for pull-ups. Too often, a collection of running machines are what passes for a gym in most hotels, if you find anything at all. In spite of how simple the needs for pulling up in a gym are, they're just not common. That doesn't make you too down and out if you stay in one of those multi-story hotels where all of the rooms' doors are outside. They usually have railings and stairways that you can attach a suspension trainer to. Easy.

Not so if the hotel room entrances are inside of the building. This quickly renders a suspension trainer less useful. What I've used through the years (until I lost my pair. SHIT!)are doorway pull-up handles. As long as you're not too heavy and you're using them on a solid-core door with durable hinges and a good lock (which, if your room doesn't have that, I suggest you find another hotel) they work great. You can also use them for ab leg raise work as well if you place them at the bottom of the door.
Both of these options are very lightweight and don't take up much space in a bag. While you're at it, it might be helpful to pack something to make push-ups more interesting. To popular candidates are either some sort of push-up spikes or a travel Perfect Push-up. If you topped off your travel kit with a jump rope and some sort of gym timer (preferably a Gymboss), you're good to go.

Now, if you're difficult and you have to have some weight, then go back to the sandbag. I packed my Alpha Strong Sandbag on a trip to the beach in Peru. When I finished up, I washed, dried and re-packed it in my suitcase. If you're not going to the beach, then take a discreet walk through your hotel's landscaping. Chances are good you'll find a stone that you can build a workout around. Did you rent a car? That could make a good piece of workout gear if the hotel isn't too crowded.

I've done all of the above when I'm traveling. I can vouch that with enough imagination you can see a source of a good workout if you're willing to look at things in that light. Yeah, it's helpful to bring some of your own stuff when the opportunity presents itself. The best advice I can possibly give is not to let yourself fall victim to thinking that your workouts are made and broke by your access to stuff.

Weights vs. BW

2011-11-26T06:41:00.000-08:00

Of all of the things I have blogged about over the past three-plus years, there's one, glaring blog topic that I've actually never directly touched on: a post directly comparing Bodyweight-based strength training to the weight-based stuff. Sure, it's been an underlying theme here since the very beginning but I've never felt the like I should do a direct, head-to-head comparison. I've been accused of being cocky, or even arrogant, before but in reality I do my best to not speak about what I don't know about first-hand. Since I didn't really start doing some weighted stuff in mid-2008 (and even then, I did it very sparsely) I didn't feel qualified to write such an article.

Now fast-forward to summer, 2009 and that's when I started throwing the weights into my workouts with any sort of regularity. I won't claim to be anything but a novice with weights now but I've worked and studied with them enough to notice some distinct advantages and disadvantages that BW and weights have.

One thing I also noticed when I decided to write this entry was how difficult it would be to make a comparison in the first place. A lot of people who train with weights fall into certain, somewhat distinct, types of weight trainers, depending on the strength sport that they do. Which one do you use for comparison? BW, on the other hand, doesn't really have competitive events and it just recently started breaking down into distinct styles much like weight training did years before.

Another difficulty that arises from such distinct styles of strength training is that one mistake or shortcoming of one strength sport may not exist in another. Plus, each one has different goals. Each person has a different take on the merit of, for examples, doing an iron cross or deadlifting 700 lbs.

These reasons alone are enough to make many say that a pitting weights against BW is pointless bickering.
Thing is, I don't really see it that way. Something gets lost in the thousands of wasted words spewed on this usually-pointless debate. As far as I'm concerned, the BW vs. Weights fight revolves around is the near-hegemonious domination of adding weight as the single-best method of making a movement harder in strength training. When you work exclusively with BW, and the weight moved doesn't change, it becomes a search for variations on the exercise and using other methods to make the exercise harder.

So, the debate really isn't strictly BW-Weights but more along the lines of where does adding extra weight have its advantages and when you should look for another way to increase the difficulty. If the debate were looked at from this standpoint, we might actually arrive at some valuable insight.

So What distinct advantages does BW and weights have over another?

Initially, I planned on one blog entry on this subject but the size of the article quickly shot up in size. I don't know about you but my attention span for blogs is limited and I decided that it was best broken into two parts. For now, I thought I'd do the heretical thing and start discussing what I perceive to be the advantages of the old add-iron approach to getting stronger.

What lept out at me the first couple of weeks of picking up a barbell-for-for strength was the legs. I think that when it comes to training below the belt line, weights take it over BW. The legs are made to manipulate the weight of the body for an entire day, if necessary. That might not be a problem if it weren't for the simple fact that motion that the hips, knees, and ankles have to use for strengthening purposes is more limited that the shoulders, elbows and wrists. So, I'd have to admit that adding weight to lower body exercises makes a lot of sense since your options for progression are more limited down there.

While I haven't made any more attempts to bulk up lately (I'm thinking about doing that more and more.) and it pains me a bit more to admit this, I'd have to say that it's probably easier to bulk with weight training. After all, some of the biggest muscles in the body are down south. If adding weight for lower body has the advantage over not adding, then you'd have to give a slight advantage to weights for gaining muscular weight.

I also give a couple of mental advantages to adding weight. The first one is that I feel most acutely is when you have a weight in front of you that you want to move, you have a tangible goal in front of you. You can see it with your eyes rather than just simply imagining it. There's something to focus your aggression on. I do have times where I find this very helpful in training.

A second, slight edge I give to the iron is measuring and keeping track of progress. Since you can see the weight you're moving and how much it weighs, it's very simple to make a note (mentally or physically) of where you are in relation to where you were before. When you're trying to do the same with BW, it gets more tricky. Most of us who use BW exercises often times have to mark down three different variations from one time to the next. When you bench press and move from, say 200 lbs to 220 lbs, well, that's easy enough. On the other hand, if you wanted to account for one-arm push-up progress, it's entirely possible that you've manipulated hand positioning, foot positioning, and/or the an incline or decline...plus the height difference on the incline/decline. There's clearly a convenience factor in measuring the progress with weight moved.

Since I'm beginning to push 1,000 words on this entry almost as bad as I'm beginning to push the limits of my limited expertise on strength training. Like I mentioned earlier, I'll be discussing BW's advantages over weights in another topic. In the meantime, I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this often-times tense subject. In the meantime, regardless of which side of the debate you fall on, train hard!

So, What Really is Strength?

2011-11-25T03:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I have to marvel at the ability of people to pile up mounds of words so worthlessly. That ability to ramble on and on about nothing just staggers my imagination. I inadvertently subjected myself to such a discussion mere moments ago without realizing it. I wouldn't have thought that people who usually have so much worthwhile to say about the pursuit of strength could waste so much neural electricity trying to define strength.

Geeze, how many times has that utterly simple question been chewed on with dull teeth of nearly dead horses waiting to be beaten after they exhale their last? It shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Just go to a fucking dictionary for fucks sake...

STRONG

STRENGTH

Okay, so terms in a dictionary certain don't don't always give us the answers that we're looking for. Numbers certainly don't either but somehow people, including those I mentioned above, didn't get that memo. Instead they launched into a full-blown numerical assault on what strength was, throwing x number of sets and y number of reps at z bodyweight defines strength.

What's with the numbers? We're strength trainees, NOT ACCOUNTANTS! The funny thing that accounting and strength training have in common is both can manipulate numbers to give a false impression. Number can look impressive without meaning jack shit. I had a friend who told me that when he (briefly) worked out, he deliberately avoided squatting because his leg press numbers were way more impressive.

So we might all have our own definition of strength. I have one that I like. After giving it some thought, strength is the ability to overcome great challenges. That certainly would answer another element to what that previous conversation was nibbling around but, for some reason, just couldn't eat the whole cake.

When trying to use numbers to define strength, there comes a point where we start talking about single-rep max strength or relative strength/strength endurance/strength-to bodyweight ratio, etc. Is it more impressive to one huge rep or several reps with lesser gravitational pull? Obviously there are body types more adapted to one than another. Big guys are far more impressive at moving huge piles of weight fewer times. Smaller souls are better at repetitive demonstrations of strength.

I've run across this before. To apply my definition of strength being the ability to overcome great challenges, what would be most impressive is to take on and defeat a challenge that pushes a body past it's comfort zone, or what's it's not used to doing well. While I appreciate the human gorilla's ability to move hundreds of pounds in a Lat Pull machine a few times, I'm far more blown away by shows of strength such as konstantinov's 55 pull-up set. THAT'S SOME SERIOUS STRENGTH!

On the other end of the spectrum, I watched an acquaintance work up to a 300 lbs deadlift through pictures on Facebook. The number might seem unimpressive to the legions of internet strongmen out there except for one thing. This was done by a woman who, by my guess, clocks in at 5'7", pretty light (I'm not going there) , and, if memory serves me correctly, is an avid runner.

We have to get this whole thing figured out. Otherwise, how can we hope to obtain something when we don't even know what it is? It's odd and unfortunate that after so long, there are still so many that can't really define what strength really is.

To me, strength is about shoring up your weak links, whatever they might be. Your weaknesses are the best source of great challenges. If you note that I didn't include any references to physical challenges in my definition of strength. That wasn't an accident since no great physical challenge can happen without an equal amount of hard, mental work. It's certainly a strain just to admit to ourselves what we suck at and then face it down, day after day, until that weakness can be counted as strength. After all, the less weaknesses you have, the stronger you really are.

Behind the 8 Ball a Little but What the Hell: My Review of the Convict Conditioning Books

2011-11-03T09:49:00.001-07:00

I've noticed that in the past few weeks, I've got some new readers. You may have found out about my blog from Paul Wade's newest book, "Convict Conditioning 2" where my super-sexy finger strength was on full display. So, that might color be as bias to others if I gave my dos centavos about the the series that I've given modest contribution to. If that's what you're thinking then FUCK YOU. I try to be honest and I wouldn't put myself in a book series if I felt that it was shit. I was very happy for the invitation to be in the book and I think both are awesome books.

It's always struck me as strange but as I've been approached about BW strength training, I've noted that people seem to break down into two dramatically different groups. First are those who don't strength train at all and couldn't do one rep of even the most basic pull-up and push-up so they don't bother since they're that weak. The next group are the people who looked at the basics as just that: basics. Once they got good at them they abandoned them for the weights since they figured that there was no worthwhile strength progression afterwards.

Convict Conditioning (CC1) is excellent because it covers both types of strength trainers with variations on six Bodyweight movements, ranging from very easy to very advanced. I'd go so far as to say that this is the best, pure BW book out there. If you had to buy just one BW book to get you started in BW training and sustain you with a very bare minimum of stuff for a few years, then this is the book to get. The most elaborate equipment in this book are baseballs, basketballs, and towels. The only references to weights I recall are car pushing, carrying another person, plates for twisting exercises, and using jugs of water for balance while doing pistols.

I'm sure that a lot of us (Paul Wade included) know the criticisms regarding CC1. Compared to something like Ross Enamait's masterpiece, "Never Gymless", CC1 is decidedly different. Much of the written material about strength training are about training for the sake of becoming stronger at some sort of sport (in Ross' case, it's boxing). CC1 is about learning to use and become stronger with BW movements rather than simply becoming stronger soley for bettering another activity.

There may be some people underwhelmed by the first book because more than half of the movements in CC1 are child's play to them. If that's you, then Convict Conditioning 2(CC2) is your book. There are no basic or beginners moves here. There are simply beginner moves to some very difficult exercises. A lot of people complain about buying books about BW since the written know-how can be found on the internet with a couple of key strokes on Google. Indeed, I've seen plenty of tutorials on pistols and pull-ups. Ah wheel roll-out are down to a nickel a dozen. Flag holds are much more rare and not nearly as well-taught as it is in this book. As before in CC1, the progressions are laid out very clearly and logically. If you thought that the layout of progression in CC1 was awesome in it's simple brutality, then you won't be disappointed with CC2.

It also touches on other topics beyond the argument for BW training and the moves not that he didn't bring up in CC1. There's discussions on nutrition, active stretching, keeping your joints in running order, getting the mind right and clean living. This gives the book a more vintage feel, sort of like reading, "The Way to Live" by George Hackenschmidt.

Once again, very minimum amount of equipment is used in any of these exercises. In my opinion, the genius of both books is that it shows you the dizzying levels of physical power you can really generate with such a bare-bones setting! The books cost a little more than most other books on the subject but if you want to measure the price up to what you can do with the information contained within, these books earn their keep.

In other words, I highly recommend them.

It Never Stops Coming! Bullshit III!

2011-11-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

Shouldn't certain things be obvious? Maybe I haven't been subjected to enough brainwashing going on in our modURN society to have most of my objectivity removed. As I glanced at Wild Gorillaman's Facebook page, one such example popped into my mind.
I pretty sure that he posted this pic of Marilyn Monroe because she's hot. I hope it wasn't for her brain. I've never really understood the amount of respect that she gets. Let's add up a few things that are definitely, or probably true, about her. First, she got famous for shucking her clothes for Playboy. She was married and divorced three times. She did JFK, and then possibly his brother when she wasn't doing mobsters or miscellaneous other married celebrities.

In other words, SHE WAS A SLUT!

People look at me funny when I say this to them. Now, why can't more people put two-and-two together on this one? What does this have to do with exercise? I don't know. Here, let me throw this picture up and it might be more on topic...
Okay, the point of the rant-n'-ramble above is to point out that there is BULLSHIT! that should be pretty self evident if all of the facts were laid out there and a conclusion was drawn based on the facts. You can make up your own reason why this doesn't happen. I've got two examples in mind of this. So, here two BULLSHIT! ideas that I think ought to be more evident than they are.

Anyone else seen this one on Facebook too?We know where this one is coming from too, just like the kipping pull-up phenomenon. To start off with some common ground, I fully admit that there are people whose fat-making arsenal is equipped with too much bread. To go to this extreme, declaring that bread is the death of the human body, well, doesn't this fly in the face of roughly 30,000 years of human history?

Bread's been eaten that long, long-since declared, "the staff of life". Wheat farming is one of the crops that allowed humans to make the jump to living in a civil-organized society. Along the way, people managed to figure out that certain (but not all) bitter almonds, fly agaric mushrooms, and horse shoe crabs were deadly poisonous to eat yet somehow bread slipped by for all of these years.

Special thanks to Art De Vaney and Loren Cordain for showing humankind the error of its ways?

Okay, bread 30,000 years ago is probably much different than bread today. It would be a major improvement if we didn't eat so much of it in pre-digested, white form. We'd probably do ourselves a great service by eating more vegetable and less wheat. Still, I'm not about to abandon my grilled cheese sandwiches in fear of being slowly choked of life from something that civil societies have thrived on eating for millennium.

Here's a chunk of BULLSHIT! That's creeped into mainstream western society with increased speed lately...

This is one we as fellow fitness fanatics can all agree on. The whole fat-is-beautiful has got to be a classic case of mob rule. With 60% (or more) of the population sandwiched between Mexico and Canada waddling around life with a surplus of white andipose tissue, it was only a matter of time before they tried to convince the everyone that being "fluffy" was a mark of beauty.

I mentioned this in a previous blog: Is the end result of gluttonous eating and slothful living become something that we should be emulate? Is bad, over-the-top living sexy? Is promoting fat as something good really something that we want to teach our children? Or are these people hiding from these questions by changing the concept of beauty to cover their collectively humongous asses?

Besides, are many of these fat beauty queens pretty because they're fat or pretty in spite of being fat? Furthermore, why is fat being held as something sexy for women? If we're being fair then perhaps CK should start a ad campaign for their undies featuring fat guys!

Both of these BULLSHIT! have in common that they're bad ideas spread around by minority divisions of our greater culture. It's shitty group-think, devoid of analysis. We can come up with more rants about how cultish Paleo dieters and fat activists have become another time but for now I think that we can end this rant against BULLSHIT! by agreeing that it's a good idea to be a critical thinker and to be careful about who we tune into for our ideas and opinions.

Grip Crazy!

2011-10-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

Generally speaking, lifting straps make as much sense to me as thumbless pull-ups: they don't. Yeah, I'm aware that there are beginners with weak hands or trainees compromised hands out there. I've been one of those on a rare occasion when I forgot that my thumbs go forwards only and not backwards. Sometimes, there's a need to make things easy on the hands.

Then we see people who we know could use their full grip- but don't. I don't get deprioritization of the grip. Maybe it's a part of the gaps in strength training. There's a gap that exists between the look of being strong and actually being strong. There's another gap where strength is defined by game and strength to finish real work. Two gaps, like the holes in the middle of whatever you're grabbing without your damn thumb! Strength, perceived and demonstrated, comes from the hard shit that we grab and how well we manipulate it when it's in our hands.

Maybe that standpoint has something to do with my heritage. Living in Northern Vermont and having a healthy dose of French-Canadian descent, I've got a great deal of respect for the old-time strongmen of the turn of the 20th century. Quebec was quite the hotbed of that time, producing some very notable strongmen.
The most obvious, big-daddy of all Quebec Strongmen: Louis Cyr!

It kind of makes sense if you live in the area. If you hang out on the east side of Vermont, you'll see logs constantly heading south from Quebec. If you enter Quebec from North-Western Vermont, you'll note that most of the old houses are made out of field stones. Those stones didn't move themselves any more than the trees cut themselves down 130 years ago. It was a harsh land of hard work that made powerful men.

The kind of work that you don't get done with half of a grip!
Were I to pick a favorite French-Canadian strongman of yore, I'd have to go with Arthur Dandurand. If forearm power is your thing, how could you not be impressed with a guy who had 15.5" forearms on a 5'8", 180 lbs frame? Apparently, the guy put them to good use by pushing a wheel borrow with 4300 pounds 23 feet. That's got to be one of the most uniquely insane feats of strength I've ever heard of!

So, this all means that I'm beginning to morph into something of a grip strength junkie. I consider it an affront to both my reputation as a strong man and my strongmen-laden ancestry to not be. With few exceptions, I look at nearly everything I do and wonder if I can use it to enhance my grip.

Grip training is really the only thing that I do that comes close to isolation exercising. I started using CoC grippers early April, barely able to close a Number 1. Now, I'm within striking distance of closing the Number 2. Getting closer...

I don't consider doing pull-ups unless they are hell on my grip. Thick bars, towels, lifting straps, uneven "ladders", and most especially using my 3" thick rope.
Yes, I haven't forgotten or disregarded my 3" climbing rope.

It's not too uncommon to see lifting straps used for deadlifts. Not only do I not own them, I look for deadlift variations that require more grip work than usual. My latest favorite has been the Steve Reeves style deadlift. More on that later.FYI, I do use my thumb on these.

I'm sure that a few of my readers are new to my blog, finding out about me from Paul Wade's newest book, "Convict Conditioning 2." I still use fingertip push-ups on a regular basis. A week doesn't go by without me adding some 5 finger (one hand, 5 finger) and handstand-fingertip push-ups. To add insult to injury, they're usually super-setted with either rope climbing or pull-ups!
This is where one of the pics in CC2 came from!

Maybe the grip is a limiting factor in doing a lot of moves that we do. Maybe I could deadlift more weight and do more pull-ups if I could try to use less grip. Well, I'm not a powerlifter and there's no pull-up rep count contests. As a freelancer strength trainer, I can do whatever I want to do and I choose to make my hands as close to vices as I possibly can.

Mermaids or Whales?

2011-10-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

The damnest things bounce around Facebook with amazing speed. I swear, I've seen this show up on at least seven friends' status updates. I had advanced warning before this latest round of basura hit my ocular rods and cones. The cookiemonster Christine posted her barrage against this latest piece of fluff that too many are falling for. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm going to subject you to the same piece of unfortunate, incoherent piece of writing that I did. Unlike Christine, I was nice enough to include the picture of the naked french girl that went along with the "story":

A while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

The story goes, a woman (of clothing size unknown) answered the following way:

"Dear people, whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, seals, curious humans), they are sexually active and raise their children with great tenderness.
They entertain like crazy with dolphins and eat lots of prawns. They swim all day and travel to fantastic places like Patagonia, the Barents Sea or the coral reefs of Polynesia.
They sing incredibly well and sometimes even are on cds. They are impressive and dearly loved animals, which everyone defend and admires.

Mermaids do not exist.

But if they existed, they would line up to see a psychologist because of a problem of split personality: woman or fish?
They would have no sex life and could not bear children.
Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad.
And, who wants a girl that smells like fish by his side?

Without a doubt, I'd rather be a whale.

At a time when the media tells us that only thin is beautiful, I prefer to eat ice cream with my kids, to have dinner with my husband, to eat and drink and have fun with my friends.

We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn't enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies.
We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.
Every time I see my curves in the mirror, I tell myself: "How amazing am I ?! "

(The girl on the picture is French model Tara Lynn)

Now, you're up to speed.

This chunk of words struck me as bizarre but it did make me think. Most specifically, it made me think about how poor to non-existent the the amount of thought that goes into body image amongst human beings. Maybe that's a lot to ask on something that most people react emotionally to rather than thinking about. Maybe that's part of the problem.

Maybe it's just coincidental that mermaids were brought up in a gym setting but it is fitting in one respect: mermaids don't exist any more than fitness models exist, or at least as we see them in the pictures. What we see is a tribute to someone's ability to pose, light, airbrush, and photoshop an image for people to chase after.
This isn't here just to show off muscle gals. I'll get to why in a minute...

It seems sadly fitting that many of those people seduced into believing that they can look like those models are running on machinery but going nowhere since they're chasing something that they'll never get. Most of us would agree that the whole senario is a poor and cruel way to shame people into a gym to work out.
Pauline, same woman as above, in real life. I have to hand it to her: she's honest!

As bad as that imagery is, the rest of the story is worse. I came across a fancy term in a book that I read earlier this year that seems to adequately describe that: cognitive dissonance. I'm sure that since you're reading this blog that you agree with me that being fat isn't any good and no amount of fantasizing that your wisdom will accumulate on your hips will ever change that. It's just an elaborate excuse.

Rather than coming up with some bullshit story/excuse, wouldn't the person writing this have better served her readers by challenging them to think about how healthy their bodies are and how well they perform? Now that I have a kid, I think about things differently. It's fun to eat ice cream with kids. It's far more fun to be able to play with them and not be worn out by trying to keep up with them. Playing with my nephew, as much as he wants. Henry's dad is good to go!

Another, very important consideration for me is being a good example. Muffin tops and beer guts aren't made of wisdom. They're made out of gluttony and sloth. Neither of these are good traits to pass onto children as normal or okay.
Oh, and while that model is a good looking, bigger woman, let's not kid ourselves. For every Tara Lynn out there, there's at least 50 Rosie O'Donnells and Kathy Bates. Fat rarely looks that good!

Maybe I'm taking this viral garbage too seriously. It really is a pretty stupid glob of words. It would have been too easy to dismiss had it not shown up over and over again on my wall. It's unfortunate when agreements can be made on problems but the solutions to them are so far apart. In the end, there's no good justification for obesity.

What Charmed Times!

2011-10-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

Ranting dominates lots of blogs. I try fake originality to the best of my ability and so I generally don't try to turn my blog entries into masses of angry words that give people the impression that Pantera enters my earholes too many times a day. Last time I checked, I'm a human living in a bizarre society that I understand but just don't get. I get mad, and I guess rants are inevitable.

We do live in some charmed times. Our consumption habits and our ideas behind their justification are just too rich. They're as overwhelming in the sheer volume of silliness as their justifications are flat-out stupid. My pressure-cooker of a mind needs a release, right about now...

We stopped lots of smoking (tobacco)because it causes cancer. That was a good step... but now we have smoking (marijuana)that HELPS with cancer. To your health?

Somewhere in a natural market near me...and possibly you... you can find cookies and brownies that are good for you, so long as they're vegan and organic. No, wait, they can be good for you if they're gluten free and organic too.

Hey, wait a minute... if we come up with a cookie that's gluten free AND vegan (plus organic), would that mean that we invented a SUPERFOOD? Yeah, like that $5.00 juice in the produce section that's supposed to convince us that drinking juice is the same as eating fruit. Yes, that's the key to being healthy!

That might be a topic of discussion on the next episode of Dr Oz. You know, the guy that said that the top three best foods to have on a deserted island are broccoli, walnuts... AND BEER!

Oh, and exercise may not be good for that whole fat-loss thing. After all, doctors have been telling people to exercise for 50 years (while doctors 50 years before that told our ancestors that exercise would bind up their joints and use up their heartbeats) and we just get fatter and fatter. Besides, exercise makes us hungry, and therefore we eat more. Remember this gem of an article (and my reflection on it)?

Of course, it's not because some expURTS told people in rag-mag's that eating cookies was a good post-recovery snack... Hey, just make sure you get the cookies from one of those "Healthy Vending Machines" full of candies and cookies that must be healthy because they're ORGANIC!

As the steam finishes rolling out of my ears and my fingers begin to stop violently smashing the keyboard, I'm left wondering how we could live in a time where so much information is more available to us than at any other time in human history and we still seem as dumb as ever. It's as though we decided to use our leaps in technology, our discoveries about health, our revelations about diet cherry-picked the data that would give us the best ammunition to excuse our obviously bad consumption habits.

Organic methods of food production are groovy. Vegan is leaps and bounds better than the common Western diet. Gluten-free helps a lot of people regain their health. They all have their limits though and if it what you're eating would be considered junk food before getting the organic-vegan-deglutenated treatment, then chances are it's STILL junk food afterwards.

I really think that after you read this fine piece of writing, you should devote 20-30 minutes of research into the liver. Next to the brain, it's probably the most impressive organ in your body. Yes, some alcoholic beverages have some health benefits but most of them are heavily washed out by the damage that they do to this, most special organ.

If you have any doubt about how healthy alcohol, or any other food item that you eat is really good for you or not, I have the perfect way to find out. First, consume the item in question. Next, wait one or two hours. Then, pick your favorite above-average level of difficulty workout. If you feel like shit midway through, you shouldn't have ate the questionable food-like item to begin with. Training is the ultimate form of figuring out what does and doesn't belong in your body.

Finally, could we please, PLEASE...PLEASE!!!!!... start showing even an inkling of good sense about recreational drug use? Most of the Western World has been locked in a 130 year cycle of dumb-ass when it comes to them. It all began when a young Sigmund Freud thought he could cure his ailing friend, Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, of his chronic pain and crippling morphine addiction with a new and safe drug: Cocaine. Care to guess how that turn out?Ever since then, the same history has repeated itself. We find a drug, abuse it, find a new drug that's considered safe (even declare it healthy) and we find out that it's just as bad (or worse) than the last popular drug that the previous generation ditched.

Seen in this light, doesn't the whole, "tobacco smoking is bad but marijuana smoking is good," look repetitively stupid?

Let's not confuse me as a 1000.1625% clean-living-all-the-time guy here. I like cigars, wine, whiskey, ice cream, etc and lots of other stuff that's not good for me. I'm just not here trying to explain away the fact that they are bad for me with the latest health and fitness buzz words and concepts. These are REALLY good though!

I know that the more of them I consume, the worse my health will get. I'm just tired of this film of willful ignorance that our culture keeps stretching over all of this stuff. I'm tired of the pretending and the sooner it stops, the less my blood pressure will spike for such foolish reasoning.

Tendon Strength II: the pull ups

2011-09-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

Every faction of strength training has a blacklist of exercises that you shouldn't do. They're labeled everything from pointless and useless to dangerous. Often times, the reasoning trends towards dangerous. They're bad for the joints. They cause tendonitis, or something along these lines. I just knew that when I posted this entry about tendon strength I'd get someone bringing up the pull up.

I'm a little surprised that the pull up doesn't get blacklisted more often. If there is any chance that what is said on the internet happens in real life, I'd be lead to believe that pull ups are responsible for a lot of elbow tendinitis out there.

I read a very good description of the state of pull ups on T-Nation: they're like vegetables. Just like we know we should be eating more vegetables but we don't, we all know we should be doing more pull ups... and we're not. Well, maybe some people got the memo. Maybe they're just like that 'roided out gorilla that I upstaged on Miami Beach years ago by more than doubling the number of pull ups that he could do on the bars set up around Ocean Drive. In other words, they sucked at pull ups, realized how much more awesome they could be if they started eschewing the lat machine in favor of the pull up bar, and got to work pull themselves up.

And screwed up their elbow(s) in the process.

Well, what's going on here?

Before I go further, I need to liberate myself from the responsibilities of being considered an expert again. I'm not going to claim to be anything resembling one so confuse me with one of those. I'm just a few steps above a keyboard kumanndo with a blog here. At the end of the day, you've always been the one who determines whether I'm writing anything worth reading. If something in your mind is telling you that I'm full of shit, then feel free to leave....

Pull-ups are a closed kinetic chain exercise. That is, the hands don't move. We all know that closed chain also applies to the feet, right? Well, the feet differ from the hands in many ways, namely that they're set up to handle our BW for most, if not all of the day. Our hands, on the other hand, struggle to maintain it for much more than 30-60 seconds at a time. In the outright beast category, Konstantinovs managed to do do pull-ups for nearly a minute and a half. Still, It's easy to see that the feet, and the knees, are designed more for hard use and shock than the hands and elbows ever were.

What difference does that make?

Form and Execution. I'm not here to be a form-nazi. I never will be either. When it comes to the form you do the movement with and how you move your body, I've always felt that both serve two purposes. First, to get the most out of the exercise. The second is to keep the body safe during execution. The first allows some flexibility in how you do things. The second doesn't. Frankly, I've ID'ed just about everyone who has asked me about elbow pain with pull-ups by asking if the control the rate that they descend down from the bar. Most of the time, they don't. I've said it several times before: Speed-Control=injury!

Another recent phenomenon, and most of us know where this comes from, is adding momentum to pull-ups from the beginning of the set, trying to drive the body upwards toward the bar. This is something else that generally find strange and avoid. I'm from the old school and as far as I'm concerned, kipping pull-ups are something that you do when you can't do normal pull-ups anymore. More specifically, you do that when you're failing and you can't do anymore without a boost.

I think that both bouncing up to the bar and falling down from it both come from the drive to increase pull-up rep count for no other reason than for the sake of having a high rep count. Let me remind my readers of one basic fact: THERE ARE NO PULL-UP COMPETITIONS TO SEE HOW MANY YOU CAN DO! Since no formal contests exist, then the strength that you gain from doing pull-ups should be the focus. There's no game to validate pumping up your rep count with cut corners.

This is the closest thing to a pull-up contest I know of. Marine Recruiters give you a T-shirt if you can do more than 20 pull-ups or chin-ups

Besides, since we've established that the upper extremities aren't made to take a beating quite like the lower ones, why subject them to all kinds of bouncing and shock? Lots of momentum with pull-ups really are more of an advanced movement. That's probably why you didn't use to see kipping pull-ups frequently taught to beginners.

I'm glad I got this one. My son puked on the shirt I was wearing at the time!

Still, when it really comes down to strength AND health, I'm much more of a fan of doing pull-ups the old school way. All of the biceps, grip, and lat strength don't amount to shit if the elbows are riddled with pain. I regard them best used for max strength and strength endurance work and used for explosive strength more sparingly. Above all, CONTROL THE MOVEMENT, DON'T LET THE MOVEMENT CONTROL YOU!

My collection, proof my tendons are awesome!

Most Gyms Suck...And My Son is AWESOME!

2011-09-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

Multi-tasking perfected. The genesis of what I'm about to write about occurred when I was eating breakfast, rocking my son to sleep, and reading a web site about a gym that just opened up nearby. I was kind of struck with the juxtaposition. My intuition tells me that Henry's a future athlete. He's top 98% percentile in height...wait... length and weight, he's extremely strong, and he doesn't stop moving when awake ( he's furiously fighting sleep by bicycling legs right now, giving a fine demonstration of explosive leg strength). He's so amazingly alive and brimming with this amazing vitality. It's just great.

This new gym, on the other hand, is neither. It seems dead. Then again, the be dead, it would have had to be alive at some point. It doesn't even look like that ever happened it's so sterile. Unfortunately, this is par for the course in the world of recreational fitness.

I always thought that fitness is about life. It's about how much life do you have and for how long you have it. We strive to get fit so we can have higher quantities of quality life. So, the (rhetorical) question that pops into my mind is why on earth do people go to such an inert place looking for ways to make them feel more alive?

It brings up interesting questions about how much does the environment that you choose to move for fitness in contributes to how well you succeed at getting fit. I've typically been critical of having a hyper-specific focus about the right workout location, or what most simply say: "I need a gym to work out at." I'll still stick by that. I think that being married to a gym stifles creativity to a degree and creates a groove for the practitioner to get stuck in. "I didn't work out because I couldn't get to the gym"... or something like that. When we look at the world as our gym, then we never have an excuse for not working out.

Still, I'll admit that there's some requirements of a space for a decent chance of succeeding at making working out regularly and getting into some sort of version of good shape.

I mentioned creativity. Clearly, a room full of machines dedicated to making you move in one, very specific manner after another doesn't inspire an open minded approach to working out. Maybe my strange mind is getting the better of me but I think that some of these bizarre objects passing off as training equipment are starting to look like medieval torture devices. Maybe that's partly because they're mimicking them by putting the user in one position, allowing only a predesigned movement, and breaking a body to pieces in the process.

Another thing that I've always appreciated about a decent area to work out is that it is a little imperfect, even a tad dirty. Life, at it's best, is often messy and dirty. Are our best memories of growing up the ones where we were freshly-showered and in our dress clothes? Isn't part of having some fun the ability to cut loose a little? What difference does everything being clean amount to when I'm working out? I'm just getting sweaty anyway. Perhaps that compulsive obsessively cleaned look of too many Mchealth clubs reeks of lack of focus on what's important: the moves! It's not necessary for the place to look like the place was bleached white with an atomic bomb to be a good workout location!

As far as I'm concerned, it's downright counter-productive. It would be hard to deduce that from many of the chosen places of sweat and strength, including the above-mentioned health club.

Then again, whenever I step into our society's idea of a health club, I feel like an alien getting off of a space ship. I've barely ever worked out in them in comparision to how long I've been doing this stuff regularly. So, perhaps my strange looks as I examine the places like this new gym are nothing more than a feeling of awkwardness. I'm simply out of place.

Something tells me that I'm not though. People herd, and get herded, into these places all of the time, thinking that they're going to get in shape. It happens all too rarely. Something needs to change, and the way that we arrange the surroundings just might be a sort of catalyst. So, I'm just going to leave you with some adorable pics of my new bundle of joy and I along these thoughts to ponder.

Really hard stuff to do with embarassingly little weight

2011-09-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

So, now that I've got a barbell set, and presumably the keys to the ultimate in strength training so I can finally look like a strong guy, I can pile on some massive weight and get to work, right?

By now, you've got to know that I don't work like that. Even as I collect more stuff, I still keep my minimalistic mindset about things (even if it's not needed anymore) and ask myself how I can do more with less stuff? I do this for two reasons. First, It's always easier to work with more than less. That mentality has served me well over the years as I've moved to places that put restrictions on training. Second, I find some very interesting stuff stuff to do.

Disclaimer time: once again, I didn't come up with any of this stuff. I'm just passing along information. again.

Besides, in a subculture so constantly obsessed with how much iron they can make defy gravity, it's kind of fun to take a bitchy amount of weight and struggle like it was 500 lbs. I find that it's a good reminder not to rely on one method of progression...as my face winces in pain.

Saxon Bend
This one doesn't use the bar, only a plate. It's pretty simple to explain: put the weight overhead and bend at the spine. The trick is to keep thyself from shortening the movement... REALLY BEND TO THE SIDE. I do this with a 22.5 plate from my Ironmaster KB or a 25 lbs olympic plate. Either way, that long lever really makes that measly, little piece of iron really hurt muscle and ego alike. A nice combination with the Saxon bend is to squat with that plate arms-straight length away from the body, followed by a Saxon bend in each direction. You'll never be so happy to drop a single plate!

One Arm Barbell Curl(OABBC)
I would have never conceived that I would ever enjoy doing what is probably the most vain exercise in existence. I just wasn't trying the right variation. Lots of people do barbell curls with two hands. I got the idea from T-nation to try it with only one. All single-arm barbell stuff is kind of funky and this one is no exception. What's humbling about OABBC that the bar alone is plenty hard!

What makes this so nasty is the same thing that makes a lot of unilateral work suck so hard: everything's got to be tight. There's a lot of muscles that work with your arm in order to curl a weight, namely your Traps, upper-rear shoulder muscles, abs and glutes. Cheating is simply a way of moving the body so you don't have to use these supports as they fatigue.

You can kiss that goodbye on this one. You can't cheat it nearly as much as the two handed version. If you do, chances are good one end of the bar will hit the floor. At the very least, it will torque the shit out of the grip. Either option should be avoided. Stay tight and curl. Oh, and do I need to mention that this variant is hell on your forearms? Also, chalk is very, VERY helpful with this one!

Squatting Press
I saw this one a while ago, back when I started bent pressing. Anthony DiLuglio from Art of Strength put out the best tutorial (<---That's a hint, BTW) on how to do that lift that I've seen on Youtube. In that video, he showed how to do the squatting press too. It's a weird-ass thing to try. Start out with the bar at your chest and squat underneath it until your arms are straight. From that point, you've got two options: stand up with the weight overhead or keep the weight stationary while standing back up.

Have you been using the mirror to admire all of the muscles that attach to bottom of your scapula, obsessing over how to make them sexier so you can get girls? Well, if you haven't, and you try this one out, you're definitely going to regret that decision. While I can do more weight with this one than I can the other two, bitch-making movements, this one makes me feel like a complete loser. It's just really, fucking hard! I don't even dare to embarrass myself by putting out a picture of myself doing it with shitty form and such a small amount of weight I squat press with! This is along the lines of exercising in the nude: best kept to yourself until you look really good! Even then, it's not a great idea anyway.

So, if you've been walking around, flexing in front of mirrors excessively, thinking about how awesome you are because you can do 20 crossfit pull-ups and can bench press...whatever... lbs of iron then I've got news for you: YOU'RE NOT AWESOME! In fact, you probably downright suck!

What you need to do is cleanse the douchbag out of yourself and give one, or all, of these lifts a try!

A pull-up that's like a rope climb

2011-08-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

Pull-ups are like rope climbing right? Is there a pull-up that I can do that's like a rope climb?

Occasionally, and invariably, I get questions like this. Rope climbing could lay claim to being the ultimate in upper-body, BW pulling training. It's just brutally hard in all kinds of awesome ways. Frankly, these ways aren't shared with just about every pull-up variation you can do. You can't make a pull-up effectively simulate a rope climb just because you do it while gripping ropes. It doesn't matter that they're working the same muscle groups. That's like saying that dips and push-ups are the same, and equally good for chest development.

So what are those awesome ways that make rope work more of an upper body strengthener than most pull-ups ever thought of being?

1. Remember a while back where I talked about most exercises being one concentric movement followed by an eccentric movement? Well, the rope turns that one on its ear. You're doing one concentric contraction after another until you get to the top of the rope. Then, it's all eccentric on the way down. In other words, there's no way to cheat on this one by rescinding control of the eccentric part of the exercise.

2. Why is that? Well, DUH! You're on a rope, probably 10-25 feet off the ground! The power of your muscles is the only thing that stands between you and a shattered tailbone and busted knees. There is a life-or-death quality to rope climbing that forces you to get every last bit of strength out of your upper body pull muscles.

3. With most pull-ups(except one-handed, of course), there's two hands in contact with whatever it is you're grabbing. Sure, there are plyo versions but when you're done exploding, you're back to two hands. With ropes, you alternate between two hands and one hand.

Okay, while all of this is awesomeness makes for a brutal method of training, it's not available to everyone, or even for everyone. It's not for people afraid of heights or weak on pull-ups to begin with. Most of us probably don't have the ability to set up a rope either. So, in the spirit of my blog, we won't cry about what we don't have. We'll just find ways to make do.

So, how do we get reasonably close to a rope climb with a pull-up? While the First two points about rope climbing don't lend themselves to easy and obvious substitutes in the pull-up arena, the last point does. People have been switching grips during pull-up for a while. Here's a video from a fellow Vermonter, Matt, doing one such variation...

Yes, he's spending some time hanging one-handed from the bars but it's all from a dead hang. If we want to get closer to the rope, then we need to hang one handed like we would on the rope. That means hanging one handed at the top of the bar. Now, we're getting somewhere. I've tried this variation on the switching grip theme a few times and as far as I'm concerned, this is as close as a pull-up can get to replicating the rope climb experience.

I'm getting that superhuman-wannabe bug and becoming increasingly unable to do things simple or easy, even on my first time. I started out using a thick bar (aka the frame of my monkey bars) with two towels. Switching between thick grip and towel pull-ups proved to be all kinds of brutal on the grip and the biceps... and the calluses too. For anyone who follows the Facebook page, this is how I tore my calluses off my hand.

With this style of pull-ups, I don't get too concerned with form. Switching grip at the top of the movement makes things get a bit sloppy. Even four pull-ups to a set of these are pretty brutal. Besides, nobody critiques form on rope climbing, right?

This modest adjustment to this old pull-up theme should make for a nice progression between pull-ups and rope work. It also makes for a decent substitute if you don't have rope climbing capabilities. Just do your hands and elbows a favor and don't do what I did. Start modestly and work up to the harder stuff. It's always easier to fix undertraining than it is to fix overtraining.

...and check out Matt's place sometime!

Heat

2011-08-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, I know. Life's moving fast and hard lately, taking up precious time and brain power where frivolities of writing things that don't make money have taken a back seat. Still, there are times in the weekend where Henry doesn't have colic that needs to be soothed and the drains in the yard don't need to be dug up and I can enjoy life.

One of those times was last weekend where I attended a wedding reception for some friends who got married in Peru. For those of us unfortunate who couldn't make the trek south to attend, they threw another party for us here. The groom is one of my periodic readers and he ambushed me at the buffet line to tell me about how he wants to work out but the damn heat in Miami (where he was living) was so brutal that he just couldn't bring himself to keep doing it.

Not at my most thought-provoking, I came up with the pretty boiler-plate, hardcore answer. Since I don't approach training with a soft touch, I let him know that I'm not the guy to come to and say that you can't deal with the heat. He must have expected that and said something like, "So, I should stop being a pussy and suck it up?" My reply? YES!

While there is a lot of truth in such an exchange, on reflecting on it there's more to it than a sophomoric and tough-guy answer. Yes, dealing with heat is largely mental. Most of us aren't football players wearing north of a dozen pounds of gear in the searing heat. So, we don't really need to worry about dying from heat stroke like the news tries to scare us into worrying about every time the thermometer hits 90 degrees. So, a large part of working out in the heat is just accepting that we're going to be hot and sweaty. It's just another factor that we have to learn to overcome, just like we learned to accept the intensity of real strength training.

There are other mental elements in play however. Most of us deal better with things when we plan for them. Physically, there is a possibility that the heat might make us sick. Our mind knows this. If we plan for the rigor of working out, then we'll be a lot more adept to accepting them. Hydration is absolutely paramount to training at the top end of the mercury. That doesn't just mean that we have water handy when we're working out. You need to keep water in your system all of the time. Its true that you can be dehydrated without even knowing it. You'll figure this out when you go to work out and you just can't move like you did if you were adequately hydrated before even starting.

Notice that I said WATER and didn't mention any other form of beverages. People drink way too many other things than water and most of them don't help you stay hydrated any better than water does. Frankly, some of them are far worse. I make one exception to this rule: coconut water. This is a soft drink that I'm glad to see catching on. I've been a fan for three years. A little sip (and by sip, I mean around 4 ounces) here and there during some extended periods of time in the heat really helps deal with the electrolyte loss.

Another piece of the mind games of training that might have skipped a turn is what many of us decide to do in that heat. I hope that most of my readers would be just as repulsed as I am about running on a treadmill while watching TV. If that's not the case, and we crap out from doing such an activity then I'm hardly surprised. I recall hearing a theory put out by (I think) Pavel that doing sets of 20 reps is inferior to doing sets of 5 because the heavier weight (or more intense move) encourages more intense concentration. While I totally disagree with this rendition of using the exercise to focus the mind, I do agree that certain forms of training demand so much focus that the mind will not have the luxury of thinking about other things, including the heat. Let's face it: there are too many methods of exercise that are distracted by design and when additional stresses are introduced, failure is inevitable. Choose your exercises wisely.

Mankind has used heat to cook for millenia. Cooking is a good way to get rid of the things in food that shouldn't be there (attention raw foodies: this is a metaphor, so bear with me). It's funny that heat does the same thing with training too. You're going to find out what you should be doing and what you need to drop by working out in the heat. You're also going to discover if you're treating your body right by getting into the human pressure cooker known as your respective gym more often. As far as I'm concerned, there is an awful lot of good that can come out of training in the heat. It's form of stress that teaches a lot of good lessons, if we all can get around to suppressing our inner pussy and do it.

Tendon Strength? Maybe Just Slow Down a Little!

2011-07-09T04:57:00.000-07:00

It should have been here yesterday, right? We're a subculture within a larger culture that can't stand things that don't happen right now, if not earlier. Waiting for a stubborn body to meet the goal that we set for it is the strength training equivalent of Dial-up AOL. It's got to happen and it better happen sooner rather than later, right?

As I walked through Dicks Sporting goods, I notice an effort to bring tools formerly reserved for our out-of-mainstream, semi-underground movement percolating to the surface. It's not just our tools either but also some of our ideas and beliefs around training. One such idea I've seen and heard passed around lately revolves around tendons and ligaments, particularly around strengthening them.

That's a good thing, I guess. These are just as much a part of the strength picture as the meat that we use to propel our bones. They're attached to tendons, so that makes sense to give them some consideration when we train.

The question then becomes what kind of consideration? How do we strengthen our connective tissue? That's where I break from the old school. I've never given an ounce of thought concerning the strength of my tendons or my ligaments. I've never done any special exercises for them. Yet, I've had no problems with them when training.

So, the idea of doing tendon-strengthening exercises never appealed to me and after cracking open some books on the topic, the reason became very clear to me. Tendons (and ligaments) are made up mostly of collagen that's arranged in a fiber-like and parallel manner. What lept out at me is that, unlike muscle, they're poorly vascularized and innervated. Without these, they recover much more slowly since they depend on absorbing nutrients from things surrounding them.

It appears to me that answer to keeping these bone connectors and organic springs in decent shape was to buck the urge to force the muscles to do things faster than the blessed meat strings can keep up with. I've never had a problem with waiting months to see a goal come to fruition and I think that's why I have never had an issue with anything resembling tendinitis. From what I've heard, that's a nasty, NASTY problem that only has one solution: time to heal. No exercise. Does that really sound good to anyone?

So, from where I'm standing, patience is what these rarely thought of chunks of protein really need to get strong. Not only do they need it, but they demand it... and they will get it! Either we will take the time to let them get strong or we will take the time to let them heal. Think about it this way: our tendons are the little brother/sister of our muscles. Many of us were obliged, or otherwise forced, to take our smaller siblings along for play time even if they slowed us down. It's the same sort of scenario here.

Weighty Matters: Combining Weights and Calisthenics

2011-07-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

It doesn't matter where you strike up the conversation. It could be in the internet or in real life. Either way, whenever the subject of weights vs bodyweight comes up, someone eventually takes the middle ground and says something to the effect of, "why not do weighted calisthenics? There's no need to argue when you can combine the best of both worlds. There's no rule book that says it's not BW if there's added weight."

Okay, let's compromise! There's been enough bickering about the whole weights vs. BW. Let's all be friends and talk about weighted Calisthenics. Generally, two exercises get the call when it comes to adding weight: Dips and pull-ups. There are others you can do, of course, but these two are the most accepting of using a wider array of weighted material to do the exercise since you hang to execute them, thus creating lots of open space around you.

So, we've got our base exercises to weigh down. The question now is: with what? There are a lot of different things that you can use to add weight to calisthenics. the most common are:

Weighted Vests

Dip Belts

Chains

Backpacks

Dumbbells

Over the past year and a half, I've had the opportunity...wait, not the right choice of words...I've been forced to improvise and use all but the weighted vest. They're not all the same and each one has its benefits and drawbacks, so I'll go over them one at a time, based on my experiences.

Backpacks
This is, without a doubt, the cheapest way to get into weighted calisthenics, if you already have a pretty durable backpack. You can throw weight plates or bags of sand (whichever you have handy) into the bag and get going. Backpacks are an easier weight to pull or dip with. I'm tempted to talk about leverage in relation to weight distributions but since I always seem to stick at least half of my foot in my mouth with such talk, I'll just say this: Something about the weight placed on the back feels easier to me. So, if you're looking to progress with more weight, you're probably going to hit a wall. For most backpacks, it's going to be difficult to get much more than 75 lbs in the bag and still have the bag hold up to the load. Of course, that just means that you need to find another way to make the exercise harder. I did a lot of my famous towel pull-ups with my 40 lbs tool backpack. I didn't miss not having an extra 15-20 lbs back there!

Dip Belts
Probably the most common tool to do weighed dips and pull-ups and for good reason. If putting lots and lots of weight on your dips,pulls and chins is your game, then you need a dip belt. You just can't get as much weight onto your pulls and dips with any other tool as you can with a dip belt. Reasonably inexpensive (if you already have the weights), cheap and easy to make one of your own and capable of using several different pieces of weight (plates and kettlebells being the most common), this would make the most sense for weighted calisthenics. I also notice that the weight dangling between the legs makes the exercise harder than loading it on the back. So, you get more work out of the weight this way. Plus, this method is also reasonably comfortable, even with a lot of weight.

Chains
For sheer versatility, chains completely blow everything else out of the water. You can use them so many different ways (make necklaces, bandoleers, or make a dip belt out of it, if you have the right fasteners) in addition to using them on barbells for squat, deadlift and overhead work. If you make a chain bandoleer, push-ups become an option for weighted calisthenic work too! I don't know how much self-image plays into your training but if you want to look like the most hardcore, Metallica-blaring, raw-meat eating muthafucka' in your gym, then chained calisthenics are the way to go! It just looks flat-out cool to work with them!

As cool as they look, chains were made to tie machinery down and lift machinery up. They weren't made to be worn and there's the rub (literally) with chains: they're not comfortable to work with. You might want to add towels for padding and keep your shirt on. It's not like anyone wanted to see your chest that badly anyway (unless you happen to be a young woman). Strike two with chains is that they are expensive. If you're one of those people who figures out the cost per lbs of your weights, then chains will give your cheap bastard heart an attack. While it's cheaper to buy smaller diameter chain, it's also easier to tangle up. NOT FUN! The big stuff can be purchased at rigging or trailer supply stores but like I said, it's expensive! I personally like the 1/2" chain the most. It's a good blend of weight, price, and ease of use. If you go this route, go for what's called Grade 30 or Grade 40 (sometimes called grade 3 or 4 as well). It's a lot cheaper than the higher grades (Grade 80, used for lifting tens of thousands of pounds overhead. You obviously don't need to pay extra for this kind of durability if all you're using it for is weight).

Dumbbells
I've used dumbbells (and dumbbell-like objects) with dips, pulls and chins quite a bit. All you've got to do is pinch the handle in between your legs, either just below the knees or the ankles. Then, pull or dip.
I made it sound easy, didn't I? While this is very simple, and accessible if you have dumbbells already, it's also very hard to do. In fact, putting a dumbbell between the legs while pulling or dipping is probably the hardest position I've found when adding weight. So, it doesn't take a lot of weight to add some serious challenge to the movement. It'll also throw some leg work into these primarily upper body movements. Talk about confusing muscles!

Is the downside that you need a partner to put the dumbbell in between your legs? Not necessarily so. A few nights ago, I was playing around with dips with a flanged piece of 8" ductile iron pipe. Standing this chunk of iron on the ground, I'd lower myself down, grab the pipe in between my legs, and proceed on with the dips. When I finished, I'd lower myself back down and put the pipe back on the ground. I imagine that alternating between weighted and unweighted dips could be fun too!

What about the weighted vest? Eh. I've got a dip belt, my tool backpack, chains and a couple of dumbbells so I don't see the point. Besides, I've never really been impressed by them. Most weighted vests with any decent amount of weight cost a small fortune, even when compared to big-ass chain. In my not-humble and non-expert opinion, if one had a dip belt and some chain, there's no good reason to invest in the vest. The only advantage I see in them is that, unlike most of the others, they're actually made to be used with calisthenics. So, it's more comfortable but when do most of us care about comfort when we're training?

I recall a while back reading that sometime after he made his hundreds of millions of dollars convincing people that they needed a barrage of machines to make a strong body, Arthur Jones admitted that most people could take themselves to their absolute peak of upper body strength with just weighted dips and weighted pull-ups. Considering the source of the weight machine craze said this, it certainly carries some real weight. Had I just pulled a fast-one on the strength training public and made a fortune that my great-grandchildren couldn't possibly blow while doing it, I'd be very tempted to tell the truth too. You know, just to rub it in everyone's face!

Or, it shows that there really is room for compromise in our often-times uncompromising sub-culture.

Looking Back at the Back: More on The Traps

2011-06-28T05:33:00.000-07:00

In keeping up with my cyber-narcissism, I watch the stats to see what's popular here at my blog. Yes, the whole bench press-push-up thing dominates my page view counter but another interesting post shows up as a perenneal favorite: Traps without Weights

How does that happen, just out of curiosity? I'm hardly the neckless, cobra-like trap-monster required to give out any advice about them in the first place. I won't say that mine are huge, but I guess they're good enough for people to accept my advice about them. So, if you're hungry for my advice and you think I show enough in the Trap department to make a comment on how to make them tough, then let's chat...

This glorious cut of meat is one of those things that lots of BW fanatics, or maybe just strength training fanatics in general, love so very much but whine about not having them while wondering how to get them. I have to bring up the dirty word around here first and foremost: genetics. Some people just hit the lottery with their fiber count and attachment points. My sister's fiance is a great example. He can barely find the motivation to hit the weights but he sports a pair of super-high, almost 300-monster-immortal-like upper trap muscle. BASTARD!

So, let's talk about us, less-gifted mortals. I could launch into some sort of anatomy lesson here like I did the last time I posted about the Trap but I'll spare you this. After all, I'm not a doctor, or an accredited anything, so I probably don't have any business lecturing about it. I think I have a practical mind though and when I look at the trapezius muscle and read about its actions that I come up with my own conclusion about what the traps are stuck on our back to do: they keep our shoulder blades in their proper place, relative to the spine. Sure, they assist in the rotation of the shoulder blades and they also shrug them but those are minor roles. The former is the action that we need to intitiat in our training.

Another, lesser-known fact about the traps is that they're made of more, slower twitch fibers. After all, keeping the shoulder blades in their proper place is a full-time job, not a fast-strong burst action. So, to make them strong, we probably need sets of reps that keep them working for 30-60 seconds. Both of these ideas explain why farmers walking with weight in the hands works so much better than more isolating shoulder shrugging. If there's a force shoving the shoulder blades downward or upward (overhead pressing or farmers walking), the trap has to kick in to keep those shoulders where they need to be.

These are weighted exercises of course. BW also has something to offer, it's just not as obvious. In my past entry, I noted that pull-ups activate the trap and I gave an isometric exercise as well. Extending the range of handstand push-ups can also call up the trap muscle in a big way. If this isn't feasible, then try doing it with pike push-ups. Either way, just get your head below your hands as much as possible!

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier. It's probably more important than the exercises for the trap in the first place: posture! Nothing you do in an hour at the gym will come close to making up for 8 hours a day spent like this:
This would also explain why the better trainers are so adamant about fixing posture problems before looking to make the muscles more powerful.

Like I mentioned above, maybe I have no business talking about any of this. We choose this subculture where our body sells our message. No, I don't have humongous muscles behind my ears but of all of the aches, injuries and pains I've inflcited on myself, my shoulders have remained sound and strong. My trapezius muscle may not be as flashy but they sure as shit get the job done with minimal issues. What more could anyone ask for?

Crushing the CoC's

2011-06-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure you, or they, need a review of their flagship product by now. The Captains of Crush grippers are pretty well-known to a lot of subculturists. It's not like I need to tell you that they rock or that they're a first-class product. Still, if you come to my blog to see what I've been doing or what I think works or not, then this is what I think about the CoC's.

THEY DO ROCK!

I have no idea about the history of these style of grippers. Some random memory neuron in my mind recalls seeing one of these from the 1950s. Since a lot of fitness equipment follows the same trajectory into the mainstream, I guess that somewhere along the line, someone took this formerly-awesome gripper and then mass-produced it down to the plastic-handled jobby that my 3 week old son Henry could probably squeeze shut for 5 reps. We went from something that could make a strong grip to something that our girlfriends, terrified of having real muscle, could use to tone their forearms.

So, I never gave much thought to this tool. All it was to me was a junk-style exercise thing that showed up in the sporting goods department at K-mart.

Then, I had a change of heart. I decided to buy the Trainer and the #1 for the plane ride out to Sacramento. I had to get my work stuff and I figured that they might be something I could do when I'm driving back across the fruited plains as well. These things, when you count the shipping, run around $20-$25 each. There isn't much to them. They're an aluminum handle with a steel spring. There isn't much to screw up and make poorly and Ironmind doesn't screw them up. They are very nicely made! As you move up in difficulty, the springs stock increases in diameter. You might not even notice unless you put them side-to-side.

You will when you grip them! This was immediately fun! After burning into my mind that this genre of gripper was garbage, I was taken back. I even went overboard using things. Ironmind recommends using these things two or three times a week, treating this as seriously as any other workout you'd do. That's good advice to heed. By the time I hit Wyoming, my hands were ACHING.

That is the downside of this style of training, I guess. Furthermore, it's good to balance this out with some extension exercises. Ironmind knows how to sell stuff. They include in their instructions a plug for their glorified rubber bands. I prefer some sort of fingertip push-ups.

On the plus side, after I got rid of that new toy enthusiasm and started getting serious about using the CoC, I couldn't believe how well that these work. After two weeks of using these, I tacked on two more reps to my 3.5" thick bar pull-ups and three reps back onto my fingertip HSPU's and OAP's. I haven't had such a quick increase in grip strength since I took up rope climbing.

I started out being able to close the trainer but struggled with the #1. Now, I can close both reasonably easy so I bumped up to the #2. I'm not closing that one yet. I'm stuck at a partial close for time. I'll just enjoy the journey like I'm enjoying the CoC's.

Ironmind

Generation ROT!

2011-06-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

40 Horsepower Electric Motor

The repair man and I stood before it in front of my truck. He looked at it nervously, asking me how we were going to get it into my pick-up truck. His face seemed to tighten up in a combination of what looked like equal parts fear and question. As he started to bend over to grab this sucker, I squatted down and rapidly scooped it up and gently placed it in my truck.

I lifted a 382 lbs electric motor???

Actually... no. I lifted the Variable Frequency Drive that controls the speed of the motor. For those of you not familiar with a VFD, it's basically a computer that runs Tesla's greatest gift to mankind, and it barely weighs 60 lbs. So, why in the hell was this kid, who has to be about my age, twisting himself up, questioning how the hell two men, supposedly at their physical peak, going to handle such a modest piece of equipment?

Welcome to Generation ROT!

This kid, physically speaking, was a tribute to our epoch of degeneration: Corn Syrup fattened with shoulders and a neck custom-destroyed to make out the slightest detail on any 1080p screen put in front of his face. All around me, I'm watching my peers wreck themselves at a rate that has some predicting my generation will be the first to live shorter lives than their parents in a long time. While we try to figure out how to enjoy the less time we have on earth, we're guaranteed to have a shit-storm of ailments brought on by this eat-shit-don't-do-shit way of life. No wonder everyone's treating 30 like it's old. How many of us 30 year olds are looking at ourselves in the mirror, knowing that our physical peak has gone by when in the back of our head, we know it should still be going on?

Seriously, professional athletes in most sports are at their absolute best between the ages of 27-32. There should be no fucking reason to treat this like the gateway of old age!

Nothing's getting better either. My wife had me watch Jamie Oliver's food revolution. It's downright fucking horrid how little people know, or even care, about what they eat anymore. With all due respect to Oliver's work (which I appreciate very much) if anyone gave a fuck, they'd figure out how to eat right on their own regardless if school taught them to or not. Never before in the history of humankind has more information been available on such a vast scale to even the youngest of our physically-degraded population. If they wanted to know, they'd could figure it out. It's all just a google search away!

Speaking of Google, I did a little experiment, typing in the following words and recording the number of hits. Maybe we can draw some conclusions about what information people most want to know about...

Eating right...39,300,000 results
Strength training: 54,300,000 results
Justin Bieber: 445,000,000 results
Free Porn: 394,000,000 results
Lady GaGa: 549,000,000 results
Selena Gomez: 194,000,000 results
Jersey Shore: 72,500,000 results
OWN: 4,080,000,000 results
Fat and sexy: 162,000,000 results

It's nice to see where our priorities lay...

It seems to me that what we care about most is being indifferent and lazy. People don't want to know and they don't even care that they're rotting on the inside. Hell, I see and hear the healthy and strong mocked as much as their messages are even given half-attention to. When you think about it, the extreme popularity of the plague driven, flesh-rotted zombie makes for a great mascot of generation ROT! This generation has descended into degraded bodies moving around with no sense of direction or control over themselves... they just want to eat!
Some suggest that it's someone else's responsibility to wake up this pile of fatties and make them get into shape. Who exactly is supposed to do that? Maybe our pack-a-day, hen-pecked president who can't seem to stop face-fucking every fast food restaurant he can whenever he's away from Michelle? Or, maybe congress can do something about it. Then again maybe not. It doesn't seem like they know what the gym is supposed to be used for these days, do they?

Is this one too many cheap shots? Well, don't forget, this is the same bunch of clowns who subsidize the very crops that get our peeps fat, gave us that atrocious food pyramid guide to eat "healthy", and say that giving the kiddies chicken nuggets at school is perfectly alright. You know that's a short list too but let's face facts: no government anywhere has shown either the good judgement or the qualifications to feed a fucking sewer rat properly, say nothing about the future generation of degenerates expected to take their place!

If this is ever going to get better, then people need to WANT to do it for themselves... or be forced into it by necessity. That first option is hard but I can guarantee that the second one will suck even more. I don't expect one, angry blog rant to make any difference but at least I got this off of my chest. For now.

Joining the Strength Training Mainstream?

2011-06-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've always stated in the past that I don't have anything against weights except that they cost money and they're not easy (sometimes impossible) travel with. I've picked up on Kettlebells in the past two years since they're reasonably easy to throw behind the seat of pick-up trucks. Those I deemed them worth investing some money. On the other hand, I refused to buy a barbell set-up. Even those are a major stretch to drag in a pick-up truck. So, I held off buying that. I won't deny that there was an anti-establishment slant that factored into that decision too. Still, it was bulky and not easy to travel with. That was the major problem with them. If it's going to sit at home, where I'm rarely at, then why make the investment?

Then again, if you don't have to BUY a barbell, the plates and a squat rack, then it's suddenly a good investment, right?

Well, that's what transpired before Henry showed up. My aunt and uncle had a squat rack along with the usual 300 lbs Olympic barbell+plates set-up that they weren't using anymore so they ended up giving it to me. I've got a nice family, don't I?

Now that I've started training with a barbell, I've got a lot to experiment with and reflect upon. Since commencing barbell battles, I'm less apt to skip over much of what people write about them. I find a lot of oddities though. The barbell is consistently held up as the gold standard of getting strong, the best way of getting strong.

I heard a good one the other day...

kettlebells are great for people too weak to lift real weights

Steve Pulcinella
While reading an old Pavel book while on the toilet, I came across this one...

The more I do with kettlebells, the more I think of abandoning every other form of training. The workouts simultaneously train everything... there is a great deal of truth to the axiom that all training is a matter of trade-offs, but if anything out there threatens that wisdom, it's got to be KB's."

Rob Lawrence
I guess we can add these senseless statements to the list of best hits like weight training will bust up joints, make you muscle-bound and inflexible. Or that BW is good for endurance only, incapable of building any REAL strength?

Seriously, has anyone considered how they use the tools that they train with makes more of a difference rather than the tools themselves? Most people train KB's and BW in high reps. That's not the only way to use them though. There's things that can be done in low reps that are so ridiculously hard that they couldn't help but not build max strength on planets Bodyweight and Kettlebell. On the flip side of that equation, things like my 100 rep, 1/2 BW squat challenge was definitely more of an endurance builder than it was a max lift enhancer. To top this all off, try doing a windmill without a weight. This is actually harder! The weight helps you get down there. So, you could call the windmill an instance where weights help you increase flexibility! This is far from the only instance.

That's just one part of why I've got no real burning urge to join anything resembling a fitness mainstream. Too often a materialistic urge, whipped along by clever marketing shit, molds people's outlook on how to get in shape. The tools alone don't make the strength. What you decide to do with what you've elected to work with is what's going to get the job done. This varies from one method of training to the next. As far as I'm concerned, one doesn't have a dramatic edge either.

Off-topic a bit... someone asked me a while ago about my max deadlift. Unable to provide an answer since I had no barbell to deadlift, I figured it out after writing this. I guess I, like most other junkies, had to know. I stopped at 345 lbs since I was indoors with no bumper plates or proper flooring. Funny, this was my first BB-DL attempt!

MY SON!

2011-06-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get a little irritated with some of your favorite bloggers when they go way too long without posting anything? I certainly get that way with Sally, Chip, and Jamie when nothing new shows up for weeks at a time.

If you get that way with me, please have some patience. I'm learning to be patient. After all, I my wife just gave birth to our first child: Henry Emilo...

He's already showing positive signs of being a natural-born athlete! He's got a really strong heartbeat that never dropped below 130 bpm during birth. An hour after birth, he was already holding his head up a little on his own Plus, when he's awake, he never stops moving! He can already use his legs to push himself around in his stroller!

I might reduce my self-imposed workload at my blog a little but keep in touch. I will be posting new stuff in the near future!

Towels and Pullups

2011-05-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

Refreshers never hurt anyone, right? For anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows that I'm a huge-BEYOND HUGE- fan of pull-ups. Since I'm also a fan of BW progressions beyond simplistic increases in repetitions, I don't regularly grab a normal pull-up bar. There's always a twist to make the pull-up harder.

Most often, that twist is a towel.

Regular readers also know that I use towels when doing pull-ups a lot too. In a way, using towels with pull-ups put my blog on a lot of people's radar. In the past 18 months, I've picked up a lot of new readers so I figured it wouldn't hurt to go over what to do with towels when executing pull-ups.

For most of the towel pull-up crew, the standard method of doing them looks something like what Ross Enemait's doing here:

Always a great way to get things started. I had a slightly different approach. Instead, I decided to use one towel and go with a close grip. I can't imagine why nobody ever thought to add a supination of the wrist into towel pull-ups but I had never heard of anyone doing it before me:

Three years fly by! I did this video around the time the Perfect Pull-up hit the market. By this point, I had been doing this pull-up regularly for a year and while I knew that the PP was a good idea, I thought it was madness to pay that much money to get that extra movement. A towel does the job well enough. These also lend themselves very well to added weight too!

The towel-pull-up relationship doesn't end there...

A while back, I started playing with what I ended up dubbing ladder pull ups. I saw the idea from Ross Enemait's book, "Never Gymless". It's presented as a progression towards the one arm pull up and it's bad-ass as hell!

Of course, you need to work both sides. A year ago, I used to do a ton of these, supersetting with one-arm push-ups. It's a brutal combination!

The fun doesn't stop there. There is the most basic way to take the towel and make the pull-up way harder: just wrap it around the bar. Simple, just not easy. This is my favorite pull up lately and I typically like to thicken my bar up to 3-3.5 inches thick.

Oh, if you're also looking at a way to make chin-ups harder than pull-ups, doing them on a 3+ inch-thick bar is actually harder than doing a pull-up!

That's the beauty of the pull-up: progressing with it is literally as simple as a modification of the grip. Just something that simple completely changes the level of difficulty, often times dropping the total reps by half! There are all kinds of ornate pull-up bars out there in McFitness centers, doing nothing more than pulling towel-hanger duty. Little does anyone realize that a whole other dimension of pulling and chinning up to a bar is waiting for them to try out. Don't make the same mistake.

Push-up Cocktails

2011-05-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

So, I'm still laying down with ice all over my left side and doped up on Vicodin in an attempt to control the pain from this bout of shingles. All the while, I'm thinking about all of the things I should be doing, such as planting all of the fruit bushes that came in the mail this week and installing my new hard water softener. I'm also thinking about the things that I could be doing, things that I enjoy, such as push-up cocktails.

That's a good name for them since I can't drink cocktails while on Vicodin (or, SHOULDN'T drink. The thought has crossed my mind!) and I can't do push-ups since holding an electric toothbrush can cause pain if I hold it too long. Plus, a well-made cocktail always takes a couple of simple ingredients and makes them into something really awesome, far more awesome than the individual ingredients could ever dream of being.

I don't claim to come up with a lot of the ideas that I write about here and I'm not going to claim credit for this one either. Matt Furey gave me this idea a long time ago. Yeah, Matt overcharges for the information that he provides but still, he does give out some sound advice. Taking similar push-ups and doing them in a single set was definitely one of them.

My favorite cocktail starts with the wide hand-stance, normal, and diamond push-ups, in that order. 10-20 reps is all that's needed. I just go from one to the next, without stopping. Or, I'll do one set, walk my with my hands three steps over while keeping my feet in place. The former works the shoulders a lot more. The latter, which I've dubbed clock push-ups, hits the abs more.

My second choice cocktail comes from all of the (pointless) arguments that pop up on forums. Every once in a while, the dive-bomber vs. hindu push-up is one of those sticking points. The reason why people debate which is better than the other eludes me and frankly, why not do both? Alternate between them in the same set, doing 10 hindus and then 10 dive bombers, working up to 40 to 60 push-ups. This is an awesome combination of mobility and strength all in one set of push-ups.

Now, how do you use these push-up cocktails? Well, I promised RJ in SAC that I'd plug kettlebells more often and here's a golden opportunity. When I drove to and from California, I was partial to doing some KB snatches followed immediately by a set of clock push-ups. 4 or 5 rounds of that was enough to shake off any lethargic feelings left in my body from being stuck behind the wheel of a truck for 11 hours. I've kept the kettlebell-push-up cocktail thing going by doing some heavy lateral swings(34 seconds in) followed by a dive-bomber/hindu push-up set. Once again, 4 or 5 rounds of that will get your attention.

I love them both. I'd be doing either of these workouts right now, if I only I had a healthy body that would cooperate...

One Goal Down For The Year...

2011-05-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

I really need something to do right about now. It's been three days since I broke out with the shingles and it's starting to really bother me. My pain meter often gets pegged in the 7-9 range if I so much as dare to lift a basket of laundry. I had to get unlucky enough to have the rash flare up on my left side of my body, my dominant side. I can't even crush a CoC Trainer without feeling some sort of discomfort. I'm sure this will pass, and I'll be able to get back to doing all the stuff I like doing...

...like doing my 100 rep, 1/2 BW squat set!

That was the news of the end of last week before this unholy virus decided to pop out of my nerve gaglions. I managed to make the jump from two sets of 70 & 30 up to one set of 100 with 88 lbs of sand on my back on Thursday. Just for the hell of it, I managed to do it again on Saturday. That was a good feeling for sure. I'd have to say that of the little goals that I throw up for myself to meet in training, this might have proven to be the most beneficial for me in the bigger picture.

After doing hundreds of squats per week, I feel much better acquainted with this exercise now than I ever have before. Alongside deadlifting, this might be one of the most basic, fundamental movement that the human being is capable of but in spite of the simplicity of it, there are still lots of questions.

A couple of people here and there questioned this goal, from a few perspectives. The issues of the knees, specifically the safety for them came from a couple of family members. That's not uncommon since there's always been questions about how safe the squat is for the knees. A lot of people claimed that they've hurt their knees doing squats, something that I have never experienced.

In my NON-EXPERT opinion, the sheer thought of the squat as a knee exercise is the root of the problem. Years ago, this exercise was called the deep knee bend. When I started doing this Steeve Reeve challenge, I made it a point to think of the squat as more of a hip movement that takes the knees along for the ride. I really think that this is a more accurate way to visualize how a squat is supposed to work.

Another, far more controversial question about the squat is how far down. Whenever I squatted, I did my damnest to get below parallel every, single time of those 100 squats. I tried, but that doesn't mean that I succeeded. An Ass To Grass (ATG) is a harder squat to perform since it's more distance to travel. I think that's why it's avoided by many. It's certainly the reason I would only go parallel. As long as I did the squat all the way down properly, I had no problems with pain anywhere going ATG.

I did a lot of this Steeve Reeve Challenge when I was down in Peru, under the watchful eye of my 2 year-old nephew. While he was fascinated with watching me exercise, I was equally intrigued by his squatting technique. Seriously, have you ever watched a 2 year-old squat? 9 times out of 10, IT'S PERFECT! Their feet are the right distance apart, they keep their chest and shoulders proud, and they ATG effortlessly! Watching him made me realize that squatting isn't something that we need to learn but re-learn! I think we lose the basics of this movement with our sedentary lives.

I think that's why I found this whole challenge so beneficial: I re-claimed a lot of movement lost to the chairs, sofas, and lazy-boys. Now, I find myself squatting down to pick up things far more often. My wife finds it amusing. My nephew would be proud though!

I started out doing this challenge by doing goblet squats, 5 sets of 20 reps. It turned out to be a great way to program myself to doing good quality (no-joint pain) squatting. We all know that this is the best way to teach squats, right? It's not right to forget about them once the squat meets the bar. Dan John confirmed what I figured was an awesome idea: use some triple-digit weight to goblet squat! He wrote a great article here. Should anyone feel inclined to try this challenge, I'd start with goblet squatting for sure.

Eventually, the shingles will go away and my body will return to normal. I've got my ropes back from California too. So, I can move onto climbing that cursed 3" thick rope. Patience is always a virtue, no matter if the suffering is self-induced or an act of nature. Patience is eventually rewarded.

Does the hardgainer exist?

2011-05-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

Since I became a fan of the CoC grippers, I figured it would be neat to join up at the Ironmind Forum. There was some good conversations going on there, included one semi-heated debate ignited by Dave Lemanczyk about the existence of "hardgainers." I really wanted to add my thoughts on the matter but my application hasn't been approved yet.

Then I realized that I have a blog. I can write about it whenever I feel like it.

So, I've talked about this in the past. As a wiry guy who struggled to get myself up to a weight and build that would qualify me as appearing to be somewhat strong, I absolutely believe that this exists. Anyone who has read or listened to anything that Dave L has said knows he's a stand-up guy who knows what he's talking about. He doesn't believe that hardgainers exist. It's just a person who doesn't train right, train hard enough, eat properly, and/or get the rest that they need to grow.

In a sense, he's right. In theory, there is should be no such thing as a hardgainer. If you get enough rest and eat enough of the right foods while doing some good, hard time in your respective gym, then the gains will come. I won't dispute that gains are a result of having the right programming, even the crazier levels of training.

The reason why I disagree with Dave, and many other strength athletes, and believe that the hardgainer definitely exists is that we don't all live the same lives. Dave was a pro basketball player who transitioned into a strength and conditioning coach. His opinion is probably based on his life experiences. He's lived his life, in one way or another, as a professional strength trainer. People like that live a life where being athletically strong as a job. If they have to train for hours a day, eat thousands of calories in a single meal, and sleep 12 hours a day, then that's what they do because it's their job! Physical growth and progress determines whether people like this have a living or not.

It's a different world than the rest of us where our strength training becomes a hybrid of a hobby and hygiene. We have jobs that don't involve the stuff we do in the gym. Since it's not probably not necessary to have the best, most heaviest squat in the world, we don't have the luxury to adjust our entire life to make that goal happen since it doesn't pay bills.

Tom Platz's leg training is a great example of what I'm talking about. I read somewhere that the training that build arguably the greatest legs in bodybuilding history required so much intensity and work that he would count out how many steps he'd have to take in his day-to-day life, taking care not to walk anymore than necessary so he wouldn't hinder his recovery. How many of us can intentionally cut back on how much we walk so we can recover from such a routine? I can't speak for everyone but for work, I often walk several miles every day. My leg training has to accommodate that part of my job.

Furthermore, there is no denying that some of us are more physically blessed than others. Some people are born with the ability to do crazy strength training for long periods of time far easier than others. There's certainly a genetic factor. Then there's also evidence to support that environment and diet as a youth greatly affect how strong a body becomes later in life.

The belief or denial of the hardgainer phenomenon reminds me of the whole labratory/school vs. real life arguments that happen in so many other facets of life. I hate to degrade the brave efforts of our subculture's gym rats by comparing them to book-smart-street stupid places of learning but there are a lot of things that they do that are inaccessible to the average trainer who doesn't have the luxury of molding their life completely around the efforts in the gym. In a sense, their strength training rituals are a completely different animal than what most of us end up doing. In their lives, hardgaining doesn't...no, CAN'T exist. For the rest us, we need a more measured approach.

Now, can someone kindly approve my application already?

The Pink Floyd Path

2011-05-05T00:57:00.000-07:00

His name fails me but in the third Kettlebell workshop that I attended at Bodytribe, I ended up chatting with one of the other, fellow KB-lifters, discussing what we did for training. Like I've commented earlier, I'm "the Bodyweight Guy", in those parts. He said something that struck me as kind of interesting. For a long time, BW was the most reliably-available method of strength training that I could do. I had to make it work. Since I had so little contact with anyone else, in this guys words, "I wasn't told it couldn't work so I made it work"... or something to that effect.

That sort of reminds me of Pink Floyd. I watched a super-rare interview and documentary about them. According to David Gilmore (I think it was he who mentioned this), they were a bunch of guys who wanted to start a band but they had one problem: they didn't really know how to play any musical instruments. Obviously they learned. Gilmore said it wasn't easy but it did have a distinct advantage: when someone else teaches you to play an instrument, you'll always sound like someone else. It was a totally out-of-order way to become one of the greatest rock bands of all-time but they made it work. In a sense, they didn't know any other way to do it, so they did it the only way they knew how.

It's too common to omit the fact that strength is the same way these days. There are a multitude of instruments that can be used in very different ways to create great amounts of force. Furthermore, we all tailor it just a little bit differently to suit our needs and wants. I don't think that strength can be fully understood if this isn't accepted. There aren't as many unmovable rules to strength training as people out there (who really want your money at all costs) would have you believe.

It was bad enough that I decided to get strong without using the traditional strength training apparatus (as of the this draft of this entry, I have worked out with a barbell twice in my life). I also didn't organize my movements properly. I didn't even use weights for a while. There was a time when I didn't know the meaning of circuit training, even though that was basically what I was doing. I was never told that I couldn't get strong training like that. I never heard that it was just for beginners or it was only good for endurance. Still, I made it work well, presumably moving past what could be considered, "a beginner."

Sure, there are better ways than others to arrive at strong than others. It's obvious that it's way easier to learn how to play a musical instrument than on your own. Improvising as you go usually means that you'll make more mistakes before you get it right. A teacher is, in part, someone who has screwed it up before and can effectively tell you where the mistakes happen. Still, if you're smart about things, you'll find a way to make it work even if someone isn't showing you the way. Too often, teachers are people who benefit from you doing it THEIR way. Forcing you down that way while telling you that's the only way to do it should always raise red flags. Ultimately, it's your body and your strength. The journey and the destintion should suit you.

What's Wrong with McGymnasium, in a single-serving conversation

2011-04-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

Henry Emilio, you need to stay inside of mother for a couple of more weeks. Dad's got a a week of traveling to do!

So, as of the first draft of this entry, I'm on an airplane over to Sacramento, which will be followed up by a week-long drive back across the United States. We've all got the same, three options when we jump on an airplane. We could:
1. Sleep
2. Read
3. Find a single-serving friend

Any Fight Club fans out there? Remember that reference? Single Serving friends (SSF) are those people that you meet on an airplane who are your friends for as long as you're on the flight. That's your time. So, I opted to order a single serving friend rather than bust out the scary book that makes people leave me alone. If only you could get away with reading books like this on an airplane these days...

Oh, and don't look stuff like this up at the airport either. It makes your computer act screwy. I can't imagine why...

Apparently, I have big muscles, according to my SSF. Naturally, we started talking about training. By my admission, as most of you know, I'm a very unconventional strength trainer. I'm not much of fan of the McGym world as it's (de)evolved in the past 40 years. Naturally, this perked said-SSF's interest. What was wrong?

Well, if you're a fan of my blog then chances are you agree with me that there's way too much wrong with the whole gym picture. Still, I had to think for a second. How do you prioritize, in a 20 minute conversation, what's all wrong with LA Planet GoldBally's-World-McGymnasium? Well, this conversation wrapped and moved onto another topic and I felt confident, even a little proud, that I felt like I had made a serious breakthrough in this woman's mind.

First of all, SSF was a woman, and like any other woman who enters a gym, was bombarded with the notion that anything resembling the weight of a tomato can is all women should ever lift. Apparently, this is the huge difference between men and women exercising.

Okay, breathe, Justin_P. Now answer...

I've got a pretty boiler-plate answer for this one: I told her, just like I tell every other woman, that doing real, so-called men's, strength training, won't make a woman big. To get big, it's necessary to combine big lifting with big eating. Unless anyone, man or woman, adds 1,000-3,000 calories to their diet, they won't get big.

Exhibit A, Friend Allyson: Typical bulked-up female weightlifter.

So, SSF was big into flexibility. I've been asked this a lot about what I do for flexibility. My masseuse certainly did, especially since while I had the usual calcium build-up in my muscles of guy who likes to strength train, I lacked the tell-tale inflexibility. The answer is: not too much. I'd much prefer to do lots of multi-jointed exercises through a full range of motion. I've never been a fan of stretching. I just never got anything out of it. I'm of the opinion that if you don't move in a lot of different ways, it's not long before you can't move in a lot of different ways. Use it or lose it!

While we were on the topic, I told her I was a huge fan of the notion of training movements, not muscles too.

To top it all off, probably to her biggest astonishment, I told her about how the bulk of my training was BW-only. I mentioned my traveling schedule and how I even managed to get big on BW-strength training only. That's always good for a dropped jaw. I explained, using the pull-up, how just a simple grip change can dramatically alter how difficult a pull-up becomes while the weight never changes. The love affair with the iron isn't the only option to get strong!

We moved on to talking about more important things, like my son who should be arriving at any moment now. Still, it felt good to pull back a few bullshit blinders that too many people wear about getting and staying fit.

So, let me ask you: if you had 20 or less minutes to explain what's screwed up about training as the world knows it, what would be on your list of stuff to bring up?

Because I want to make sense of functionality

2011-04-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

It has to be the most annoying adjective posted to training out there, sure to roll eyeballs and ignite flame wars about how stupid the users of such a foolish description of a noun ever applied to strength training: F-U-C-T-I-O-N-A-L. There's a standard line parroted in response to such insolence and it goes something like this: There's no such thing as un-functional training. All training serve a function because it helps you reach a goal.
func·tion·al adj \ˈfəŋ(k)-shnəl, -shə-nəl\ Definition of FUNCTIONAL 1a : of, connected with, or being a function b : affecting physiological or psychological functions but not organic structure 2: used to contribute to the development or maintenance of a larger whole ; also : designed or developed chiefly from the point of view of use 3: performing or able to perform a regular function
It's spelled out right there. Functional is doing something towards a goal. If you're functional training, and you're training to do something, then the training is functional. Fabricated solution to a problem that didn't exist, right? I'M FUNCTIONAL, MOTHERFUCKER!
Or is this a case of bad wording? Is it kind of like calling skin cancer a blemish? Or, more to the point, is the outcome of the training, the goal of the training, good for anything other than the goal itself? I think that most of us can agree that too much of the training going on out there is too narrowly focused on achieving one facet of strength that it cuts into the body's ability to perform other tasks of differing strengths. It's all for the game that it's practiced for. It's been said before: strength is ability. The more able you are, the stronger you are. Heavily-myopic focus eventually makes a weaker person.

So, what is, um, functional training, so-to-say? Okay, I'll start using another term... when I think of something else to use. Just bear with me in the meantime. Back to training talk...

First of all, since I've supplemented BW training with lifting objects a year or so ago, I've lifted strange stuff, lifted stuff strange, and done strange lifts. I could give you a list of lifts that I use in real life but honestly, not a huge amount of what I do really imitates any lift by the numbers. Sure, I do a lot of deadlifting-like movement but it's usually odd-shaped object with an uneven-stance on uneven ground, sometimes back-rounded (I know, I know...) and nothing remotely nice to grab as a bar made for me to grip in the first place. Actually, since I spend a lot of time in water (of various stages of not-sewer-anymore) up to my knees, I lift stuff in a manner that looks more like a Goodmorning than it does a deadlift. I don't want to get my ass wet or water in my waders after all.

I've lost count of how many time's I've lifted stuff (sort of) like this!

If you're one of those that gets a little hairy about that round-back lift thing, sorry, sometimes there really isn't any other way. The other reason why some stuff in real life isn't duplicated in the gym is because it shouldn't be. Manual labor and sports alike have one thing in common: a lot of the shit that's done will, to varying degrees of speed, destroy the body. Training should focus on strengthening the body to withstand the abuse. It shouldn't be trained to do abusive stuff even more abusively.

I got a chuckle a while back when I first came in contact with the concept of eccentric lifting. That's yet another example of bad wording because that doesn't exist. Lifting is a concentric movement. eccentric movement puts something down under control. THAT'S NOT LIFTING! This is one of those training concepts that exists without a little bit of good sense. As far as I'm concerned, had most people been as concerned with putting whatever they're lifting down as they were about getting it up in the first place (and not dropping it), there would be no issue with eccentric training. In real life, the chances that you have to carefully put down whatever you lift are pretty high. If you pick up two or three bags of concrete (doesn't everybody?) you carefully place them on the ground! Nobody appreciates you dropping their boxes when you help them move either!

Oh, and about the max strength thing: it's nice but it's not always where it's at. More often than not, it's far more important to be strong over a long period of time than it is to be insanely strong for only 15-20 seconds. That doesn't get the snow shoveled faster any more than it gets all 10 bags of that concrete I mentioned above out of the pick-up truck that you're going to put down nicely. Hey, what about those 20 boxes of tiles?

That brings me to another point that I should have reiterated earlier: Most stuff gets picked up off the ground. Get good at doing that!

What I'm probably getting at is getting a body strong for doing more manual labor. Those of us who do a lot of it get a chuckle at watching those who train for strength games fail at being able to sustain any kind of any kind of serious, physical job for any longer than a few, fleeting moments. It seems wrong because it is wrong. We know imbalanced strength when we see it and once seen, it's hard to deny that it's a method of training that's flat-out wrong.

Then again, with the proliferation of desk work and people who hire others do to their dirty jobs for them, most people will never realize any of what I'm talking about. They'll probably be perfectly happy fractionalizing their strength, treating it like a game or a hobby with little or no bearing or carry-over into a physical life. As far as they're concerned, "functonality" will just be a marketing pitch with no other meaning beyond that. Yes, it's horribly mislabeled but I'd like to think that what people are taking about when they misuse the word is that they're trying to be as physically capable for anything as possible.

Come a little closer and I'll tell you the secret behind Kettlebells

2011-04-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

Kettlebells are a great tool, but since the explosion of the kettlebell cults, dumbbells have taken a backseat in training. Funny, but no one ever takes a picture with a dumbbell, yet I see more shots every day of people carrying a kettlebell like it was his or her first-born.

I have nothing against kettlebells and use them in my training. I just wonder if the KB explosion would've ever happened without the Internet? Kettlebell shirts, kettlebell necklaces...

Poor dumbbells, I'll miss them.

Martin Rooney

You won't miss them for long, Martin. Pretty soon, someone, 15 years from now, will resurrect dumbbells as a long-lost training secret! Then, you'll feel even cooler knowing that you were ahead of the curve, doing DB's before they were cool! Hell, you'll have one even better: you'll have the training secrets behind dumbbells! Then, you're a millionaire!

Yeah, I jumped on the KB bandwagon almost two years ago myself, working out with them pretty steadily since. I have a practical consideration for my choice since I work out in low ceilings that really put a pinch on what I can press overhead with. Otherwise, I like working out with them.

They're kind of awkward.

Actually, that might be a significant and that might be a practical reason, outside of some legendary marketing, why they caught on. I've heard a lot about their history and a few explanations as to why they died out. Since that part is a little vague, I'm going to take the liberty of assuming that they died out because they were awkward, and therefore limited the amount of weight that could be lifted. If you could say one thing about strength training equipment, or fitness equipment in general, is that for a while (and in a way), it evolved to make training with it easier. Easier, that is, to move more weight. Most everything that's come out was geared to make it as easy as possible to move the most amount of metal.

Kettlebells turned out to be the first major reversal of that trend in the past half-century. If anything, equipment seems to have gone from high tech and machine- oriented to simple and odd.

Now, the one thing that kind of annoys me isn't the tool itself but the insanely cultish methodology that's caked up around them. As far as I'm concerned, there is no "kettlebell training." Just about everything that can be done with one can be done with a dumbbell. Maybe it's not the same feel, but frankly people need to stop being so damn picky. There's still a workout to be done there!

So, I understand the irritation surrounding the KB but that doesn't mean that the cult's methodology taints the tool irrepairably. Just because they don't go much over 100 lbs and everyone's doing strength-endurance style workouts doesn't mean that other, more sexy strength can't be built. After all, it's an odd-shaped object. It doesn't need to be heavy to make you strong! Find a different way to lift it, that's all!

So, yeah, they're awkward. That's cool. They might be your thing. If they are, then have fun with them and get some good work done! It's like every other tool that you can use to get into shape: it's what you put into it that gets the work done.

The magic potions never stop coming

2011-04-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know that I'm no fan of supplements. In fact, for the most part, I downright despise them. It's often a comforting thought to assume that our training has evolved way past the ancient Greeks in the sense that we don't believe that some magic potion mixed up by a crackpot pseudo-religious oracle-shyster will make you bigger, stronger and faster than the next guy. The reality is that we haven't and the snake-oil carbetbagging of the American Reconstructionist period probably settled in Utah and became the modern supplement industry as we know it.

There might be a pattern to the supplement industry. In fact, you could call it the unofficial business model. Ready for it? Here it is, in a nutshell:

1. Find a semi-edible waste product from somewhere.
2. Turn it into a supplement
3. Find a quack doctor or scientist to come up with a bunch of half-bullshit claims about it.
4. Hand it over to the bodybuilding world...

Seriously, some of the most popular supplements out there right now came to us from WASTE PRODUCTS!

Let's start with the most flagrant, possibly the most dangerous: soy protein products. The modern soy protein supplements came to us compliments of the peeps (namely Henry Ford, one of the biggest advocates of the American Eugenics movement, I might add) who used soybean oil for industrial lubricants and paints. Someone must have realized that the defatted soy meal could be sold as a food product, maybe after finding out that people in Asia ate a lot of soy. They live a long time... maybe we can feed this stuff we just soaked in solvents to people! Now, all that was needed was to find some doctors, scientists, and studies to back it up...

Okay, so much of soy ends up, somehow, as a food product, including the oil. Still, a lot of that oil is extracted with Hexane. Yum.

Well, at least whey is a bit less dubious in terms of its origins and safety. If you look up whey in Wikipedia, it doesn't take long to figure out where the idea of whey supplements came from...

Whey or milk plasma is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It is a by-product of the manufacture of cheese or casein and has several commercial uses. Sweet whey is manufactured during the making of rennet types of hard cheese like Cheddar or Swiss. Acid whey (also known as "sour whey") is obtained during the making of acid types of cheese such as cottage cheese.

Hey, look on the bright side: you may have been suckered into buying the left-overs of Velveta or cheese-whizz, but at least it came from food manufacturing rather than paint manufacturing. Okay, maybe it's not Velveta. Maybe you could pretend your Whey protein was left over from a more dignified cheese. Maybe it's Cabot Extra sharp, which is a really good cheese, I might add. Not Paleo, mind you but still very good!

The biggest joke of all might be fish oil supplements. If you want to pull your hair out, try finding out what fish they use to make most of these Omega-3 supplements (Did you REALLY think it was coming from tuna and salmon? ). I found out, years ago in a magazine. I'm sure whoever wrote that article got bitch-slapped pretty hard by the supplement makers because I can't find the name of that damned, little fish. I do remember this: IT'S A FUCKING GARBAGE FISH! Maybe it's this little guy!

Seriously, it's a tiny, little bony fish that's completely inedible because there's so little meat on it it's barely any good for bait! It does have one thing going for it though: it's oily as hell! So, these little shit-fish are rounded up, put in a screw press, and squeezed for all their worth: their oil. Then, they filter out the little bits of bone, eyeball and scale, put it in a capsule, and VOILA! Fish oil supplement! Pay your $15.00 a bottle now...

All of this crap brings back shades of the early 20th century's thought process that food is, somehow inadequate on it's own and that science is desperately needed to make it perfect, or at least better. Even with the explosion of the organic food market, there's still a healthy number of unhealthy people who think that health comes from pills. Even if that were true, it's NOT coming from these concoctions that I just described. Supplement makers don't have to prove to anyone that what they're making and selling will do anything that they say that it will. They even go one step farther in the intelligence-insult-assault by getting people who didn't build their bodies with these things to say that they did. I could keep going on but that should tell you all you need to know about the state of the supplement industry these days.

Where was the, "old" line? Did I cross it yet?

2011-03-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

A lot of my readers come from Facebook. If you're one of them, then you know that I just turned 30 a month and a half ago. Most people tend to divide time into eras that don't really seem to exist except in retrospect. How much did music really change from December 1989 to February 1990? How different was bodybuilding from 1960 to 1965? The reason I bring this all up is that somehow, in the span of one, simple day, to most people, I became OLD! Now, many of my FB updates talking about some of my screw-ups or down days are lumped into the, "you're getting old," category.

I can't imagine what 40 will be like.

Out of curiosity, I've asked random people (that I know and don't know, usually around my age) at what age do we become old. I was kind of surprised by the results of my wandering, informal poll. I've heard ages as low as 21 as the drop-off point of old age. It almost seems like we've backpeddled to the 1800's where you were married in your teens because you'd probably be dead by 45. I don't see or fell any difference from my 20's to my 30's, even if I'm just a month into it. I barely have any wrinkles, I can't really grow facial hair, I get carded for alcohol, and most people still guess that I'm 23 when I ask.

Physically, I don't feel that that much different. Were I to think about it, I'd say that my best year, so far, was 2007 (26 years old). I managed to successfully bulk up over 157 lbs and stay above (going as high as 187) and I brought my pull-up numbers comfortably above 20 (depending on what kind I do). That was followed by possibly my worst two, 27 and 28. 2010 was an awesome year and so far, I see no reason to think that 30 will be any different. In other words, I don't see any age-induced drop-off of strength.

Generally, inanimate objects' strength is defined as their ability to resist more than something alive. Getting old implies that a sense of degeneration and decay set in. So, as we get old we become more aware that we're starting to break down and weaken. That might be the defining line to getting old. I'm sure that seeing newer, younger model of humans only help to drive the point of that dagger into the chest and twist it a few times, for good measure.

If that's all true, then I take issue with the notion that numerical age is the indication of old age. Believing that we're old just because we've racked up a certain amount of years implies that we have no control over the loss of ability and toughness. Yes, we can't control the fact that the body declines with age but that doesn't mean that it can't be slowed down considerably. Maybe, just maybe, it can be slowed down far more than a lot of us even think possible. Dave Draper, age sixty...what difference does it make? He's over 60 and he's got that much muscle!

When told yet again that thirty is old on Facebook I quipped that everyone else can get old but I choose not to. Yes, a certain amount of aging inevitable but it's a hell of a lot less than most people think and I'm not going to sit back and let time do it's damage.

Everything you say to me...TAKES ME ONE STEP CLOSER TO THE EDGE AND I'M ABOUT TO BREAK!

2011-03-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

As far as I'm concerned, this might have been Linkin Park's only good song, and it's been a while. Since then they've sold out, peddling god-awful songs to the equally god-awful Transformer movies. They haven't said anything worth saying since this song. At least that's saying more than a lot of members on strength training forums have ever said. Fittingly enough, that Linkin Park song kind of sums up how I'm starting to feel about a lot of these fucking pukes. I'm sure all of you know, I think that Sally, aka Gubernatrix, is all kinds of awesome! Somewhere she lamented about looney tunes that inhabit pretty much every strength training forum. Someone asked her why she even bothers going there in the first place. I don't recall if she answered, but I can certainly can answer that one...

It's where, as many of us call it, "the underground" communicate.

I don't know if we're a cohesive movement yet but what I'm referring to are a bunch of us strength trainers who look at the state of things in our subculture and realize that there's a lot wrong with strength training. Too many gyms have become too sterile, over-mechanized, and fluffy (As BT'er Amanda calls them). The training protocols are too narrow or closed-minded around their particular cultish strength following of partially. To top it off, they're followed mindlessly by unfocused and undisciplined dopes. So, there's a few of us here and there, looking for a more independent approach to strength training and more serious, less pretenous places to train in. Underground. Minority. Kind of one and the same thing. We're pretty scattered around. On the upside, we have the internet to stay in touch. On the downside, it's still the internet. The faceless internet. So, you can say whatever you want and be everything you want to be... or at least pretend you are. Flame away and sculpt a story that you're God's gift to training... like we won't see through you! Fuck it, it's the internet, right? So, somewhere in the book of being phony-awesome, it's written that puffing thyself up must entail making everyone else's stuff look not nearly as hard. On my 100 rep-1/2 BW Squat goal...

100 squats with 1/2 bodyweight doesnt seem all that to me.... anyone else think that?

They probably didn't. I know what I think: I think you should try 100 reps, BW-only first! That's not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do (except to the more hardcore, High-rep BW junkies). It wouldn't surprise me if said dip-shit has even done that menial piece of physical training, say nothing of tacking on an extra 70-100 lbs (or, in this person's case, more like 50 lbs)When you choose to be an asshole, you'll have an idea of what to criticize so as to not look like an IGNORANT asshole too!

The mark of the "never-been." Then, every once in a while there's the has-been that shows up...

OOOOOH, I must have hit a nerve, little Justine is foaming at the mouth ....Actually no, I'm your height or a little bit taller plus approx 85-90 pounds, didn't you say you were 175 ?...That's what I weighed when I got out of High School and didn't have anywhere near the development that I have now. Regardless of what you blather about in your holy 'Blog', your knowledge in this stuff is VERY limited, so don't be angry that at age (near) 47 I'm still waaaaay bigger than you, with a ton more muscle, can still eat and drink basically anything that ... Not too bad for a guy my age that couldn't give a rats ass about looking like some "in shape" poofter Go back and look again. Could you imagine if I actually trained the area and cleaned up my diet a little??? Say, lost about 30 pounds and carved it all up with some 'contest' type training?...I'd still weigh 50 pounds MORE than you ...

Actually, I don't want to imagine. Who the fuck cares about what what anyone was when they were teenagers or what they could look like if they actually had, um, I don't know... DISCIPLINE? No doubt about it, when it comes to the bulk thing, I didn't win the genetic lottery like fatso here did. Winning that lottery is much like every other lottery that people win: they piss it all away because they're fucking stupid and unfocused. Blowing the fortunes of this lottery is just as pathetic as blowing any of the other ones. Besides, credibility and respect in this subculture is built more on accomplishing what's deemed unobtainable to you rather than maximizing your blessings. If anything, squandering away your gifts, or not developing them to their fullest, is repugnant!

People like this are wasting valuable time, typing up their worthless bullshit stuff. Time that they could use to actually train enough be as great as they pretend to be. If they actually took just 30 serious minutes of training then, who knows, they might not have to waste those keystrokes and every one's time, pretending to be awesome.

You might have something worthwhile to contribute!

Don't follow the leader

2011-03-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

Oh, how many times have my poor eyes and cognitive abilities been subject to the evils of written and typed words about how to look good naked and get better at the same 3-5 lifts that every, fucking human in the crowded pasture of our subculture wants to improve. I'm one of those guys whose mind goes blank when I see too many numbers. By now, I swear I have Alzheimer's-like spots of missing space in my mind from all the reps and sets and plans that I've seen recommend by the experts who've sprung up to show the herd how to get awesome at those lifts and get babes...

I like the comparison of art and strength training for a lot of reasons. It applies, even demands, a sense of personal expression and some originality. Thinking about it like that, maybe that's why people are so intrigued by the old-timers like Paul Anderson, Arthur Saxon and Joseph Greenstein: they were trail-blazers. They started lifting, or otherwise expressing strength, in ways that were very unique. I find it far more fascinating to see a guy squatting 55 gallon drums of dirt while standing in a hole that it came from than seeing which McStrength athlete just deadpress-squatted 5,000 lbs.
As you can see, it also gets the chicks too!

Asshole-blogger Jamie Lewis as the inspiration behind me writing this post, especially when he threw this quote up from Fritz Perls: "I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine." So, why do too many people go out to the gym, or their respective place of muscle-worship, trying to be like someone else, taking their goals as their own? Real training is about fusing the body and spirit with intense, severe movements. Your soul and your body combined are as different from the next person are as snowflakes falling from the sky. How could the same, exact exercise glue even begin to work the same? Why do we wonder how people can quit on their goals so easily when they get to a certain point? It's the body-soul equivalent of putting aluminum foil in place of a fuse! Stop looking, wishing, and wanting to be something that you're not and find a set of goals that moves you. Optimize yourself and quit molding your routine to make you like someone else. Find things that few, if any, dare to try. Most of all, do it for yourself. Don't turn the whole experience into a repetitive game of follow the leader. ...This might seem hypocritical coming from a guy who took up a challenge named after a famous bodybuilder but like I said, there's not a whole lot left to innovate and in a world dry of originality. It doesn't take much to stand apart. My 100-rep, 1/2 BW squat set (Steve Reeves challenge) is moving along quite well. I'm down to three sets, two-25 rep sets and one-50 rep set. I decided to give myself a break and switch to back-squatting half my BW (which would be about 87 lbs) rather than front-squat it. It's a bit easier on the shoulders but still plenty difficult to blow me away as a finisher.

My more-original 3" rope climb is on the shelf. Actually, it's in the truck, in Sacramento. I won't get it back until mid-April. In the meantime, I'm just plugging away on the grip training stuff. HARD! I don't do a pull-up or a chin-up that doesn't require me to grip anything less than 2" thick. I even cooked up a single-hand deadlift with my sandbag that's pretty fun. My fingers told me that trying to grip the bag was a bad idea so after some trial-and-error, I found a good fit for me: I attach a softball to my sandbag with an eye-bolt and a carabiner. Five reps on each hand make me happy, in a hard way!

You've been reading long enough now. Go find something cool and different to make yourself sweat!

My Sandbag Get Up

2011-03-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

So, I escaped from Sacramento, leaving part of my Kettlebell setup behind. When I got back to Vermont, I was kettlebell-less. That kind of sucked since I really was starting to get attached to doing get-ups. Low ceilings in my basement require weight that I can put overhead that doesn't go over the top of my hand, which rules out dumbbells.

So, what do I do?

Okay, this is all build-up. I've done sandbag get up work for quite a while before I bought my latest bag. I've modified my form a few times. Actually, I took the words of a semi-wise man to heart and not gotten terribly stuck on the form of the get-up. Why complicate things? Put a weight in your hand(s) and get up. So, after screwing around with this a little, keeping in mind the low ceiling thing, I came up with my way to do them and to the best of my knowledge, HIGHLY UNIQUE

No, really! I liked it enough to share here.

I start out with the bag laying on me, half of the weight on my stomach, the other half over my shoulder (don't get too fussy and precise here) . I wrap an arm around the bag and hug it close to my body. Like this...

Since the ceiling is just barely 7', I don't have the clearance to do the get-up with the weight overhead. Oh well, there's some other fun stuff ahead on this one. After all, this is the BWF's and here we don't dwell on what we don't have. We just find ways to work around that kind of stuff.

Here's part of that fun: hug that fucker close tight enough so none of the sand can slide down to the bottom of the bag. Now, start getting up. Chances are, you'll need to thrust the hips upward to get up.

When I get up, I try to stand up STRAIGHT. Sometimes I do, sometimes I get tired...

Now, I may have sounded like a form nazi with bag placement when I got started but this is where I gets fun. If you squeezed hard enough and got up smoothly, then that sand is still over the shoulder. Good bicep work isn't it? Now, as you reverse and lay back down, that weight is going to sit on the neck. So, you'll have to keep the neck really stiff to hold it in place. When you lay down, chances are you'll eventually be breathing hard and that other half of the sand on your stomach is going to get heavy as you try to breathe. It's just more incentive to get your ass moving.

That's the way that I like to do get-ups with the sandbag. Like I said earlier, there's no wrong or right way. This just happens to be my way. Don't ever get stuck on specifics. Find a way to work around and get a good workout!

Shooting My Mouth Off... again

2011-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was in high school doing essay writing. The basic idea was to make a point and then spend the rest of the writing to prove it. So, I've written like that for a long time out of a combination of necessity, habit and enjoyment. So, once a in a while, it's nice to just say stuff without having to spend hundreds of words making my point.

So, here goes another edition of shooting my mouth off...

-I'm sick of hearing about "Soviet Training Secrets!" You want to really know what their secret for making some of the most powerful humans alive? They looted the most, and the most useful, steroid information from the Germans in the aftermath of WWII. That's it! It sure as hell wasn't Kettlebells!

-Speaking of Kettlebells, here I am at one of the Bodytribe Kettlebell workshops...That's a shitty smile because it's fake. Holding this thing in a rack position was really, fucking uncomfortable. The handle's too damn short! Were KB handles always this short or are they getting that way so you can do more reps? If so, I take this as yet another sign that kettlebells are starting to get hopelessly "gamey" Why swing endlessly five minutes on end? This is the same high-rep bullshit that dogs BW training.

-Find a strength training fanatic blog. Read it often. I don't think that I'm a fanatic, but I find fantatics' writing highly motivating!Fanatic? Possibly... she's still awesome!

-The perception of lack of stature from being short often times gets filed under the reasons that men turn to building muscle. I wonder if women do the same. I've noticed that a lot of the women that I know of who take strength training seriously are pretty short...I think I'm just looking for reasons to post pics of buff women at this point...

-Superfood is bullshit! It's a marketing term. Superfoods don't exist!!!! Look it up... apples and cherries have as much nutritional value as pomegranate and acai! Hello marketing!

-Along the same lines, I'm sick of hearing about plant foods that are "loaded with protein." "PACKED FULL OF PROTEIN!" Compare most of them to 4-6 ounces of chicken or steak. Some will come close. A couple might surpass. Then again, look at the PER (protein efficiency ratio)...

-Anyone who talks about mass-gaining and barely ever mentions diet is utterly ignorant. Eating counts for more than the movements. It's better to screw it up in the gym a little now and then and get it right in the kitchen. Frankly, mass-gain should alway start with what you're eating and not how you're exercising!

-Ever think of training, in part, as preventative maintenance? I think the few that dare to use the term "funk-SHUN-al strength" anymore screw up. Sports and and manual labor have the potential to be abusive on the body. Training ought to strengthen us up not just to do our thing but to withstand the rigors of that thing. Best exercise I found for heavy shoveling work? Ab wheel roll-outs. I never have a sore back from shoveling since I started doing ab wheel roll-outs.

-You can't buy fitness! How many people go out there and buy tons of shit to work out with and the only thing they lose is money and the only thing that they build is a pile of junk in their basement or garage that they never, fucking use? Getting a good workout is as much mental as it is physical so it's not about what you can lay your hands on.

Reflecting back on International Women's Day, from a training perspective

2011-03-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Allyson's kewl. There's just no other way to put it. She put up with my phallic Shake-Weight jokes and is always there to make sure I don't blow my vertebrae up in the air while doing upright rows. Another thing that makes her kewl is this article that she wrote last year for Sally's Synopsisum for Women's Day (Oh, and Sally's kewl too!). She reposted it on Facebook the other day for International Women's Day, 2011 and it got me thinking again...

Well, that wasn't the only thing that got me thinking. While probably not planned, it still coincided with an article from Wild Gorillaman. Like Allyson, Gorilla and others, I'm a big fan of the ladies that do real strength training. I don't view it as a man's thing and I'm (just barely) smart enough about training to know that the whole, "heavy weight lifting makes women bulky , manly, and ugly," is the zombie-like myth of the physical culture world: It's a blood-spewing, puss-covered thing that just won't die!

As a quick refresher as to why that's false, I'll spell it out yet again. To get huge muscles, someone has to eat large quantities of the right food along with some very intense strength training. By large quantities, I mean doubling, or even tripling, your caloric intake, most likely into and beyond the 3,000 calorie per day range. FOR. MONTHS. ON .END. Even if a women did that, it's still very hard to reach man-bulk territory without anabolic steroids. So, it's not just a simple matter of picking up a weight that approaches the triple-digit poundage. It's a complete lifestyle overhaul!

So, is that it? Do we just need to tell the scared gym gals that paragraph I just wrote? End of blog entry?

If that was all that there was to it, then I would have ceased typing by now. I see something else going on though. I still see a problem. This is the article that The Ape-Man wrote. The first two paragraphs really deserve repeating:

Today's Update is spite-fueled, and inspired by The Gorilla's trip through the supermarket checkout last night, where he was confronted by a celebrity gossip magazine with a sickening picture of Gwyneth Paltrow in a bikini on the cover. Thirty seconds of Googling didn't dig up the exact picture, but take The Gorilla's word for it, it was substantially ickier than this one from TMZ.

Ladies, aside from the fact that no one in the real world that you're trying to impress is attracted to or impressed by such an appearance the reality is that, contrary to what fad trainers like Tracy Anderson who are cashing in on their 15 minutes will tell you, going after that look doesn't require training a certain way or eating a certain diet. If you want to look that way, just have sex in exchange for heroin and don't eat anything at all. That would be cheaper and less time consuming.

The last line may have a touch too much coarseness but it got my wheels turning: how much drug addicts have influenced what is considered attractive in women. Yes, I'm being serious. At the tail-end of the Victorian Period, the ashen-white skin complexion and heavily-dilated pupils were considered highly attractive. That would explain why prostitution was so popular back then: most soiled doves were drug addicts. Things haven't changed too much, unfortunately. We all know that too many models are the products of a champagne and cocaine diet.

If you read Allyson's article thoroughly, you'd have come across a link containing some information that indicated that women would rather too fat than too muscular. Unlike the origins of the waifish look, I don't need to explain how to make a woman fat.So, the problem that I see with all of this is that we (men AND women) still strive for aesthetic standards that discourages women from any kind of meaningful movements. A woman could look drugged-out skinny or cupcake-"curvy", or anything in the middle, as long as they don't look like they are physically capable of doing, well, anything really.

Now, on a day were women worldwide celebrated the notion of equality, that kind of thinking about the feminine physique is troubling. Those of us who sacrifice sweat at the altar of getting strong know that strength is ultimately about ability. We find out that the stronger that we get, the more capable we feel and better off our lives are. It's easy to understand why women 140 or so years ago weren't encouraged to look physically strong: it was a sign that they worked, and that usually wasn't fashionable. Some of the looks contorted and modified the body to the point where they couldn't do much of anything. That was the point! Probably the most disturbing example of I'm talking about above!

In a world were we're supposed to accept that women are capable and able, why do we only find them good looking if they drain themselves of any obvious signs of either?

No, I'm not talking' about women having big biceps and back muscles here. Many of us know that the those aren't really good signs of strength anyway. How about training that gives someone good, strong posture? Or, doing some upper body exercises that get rid of the all-too-common winged scapula? Perhaps even the ability to squat down, below parallel, to pick something (or someone) off the ground without serious effort?

Wait, this is starting to sound like promoting healthy bodies. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe that's what we should be doing to begin with here: promoting real strength training for real health for the sake of being able to do real-life movement. Then, after we've got that mastered, maybe we can all learn to appreciate a healthy, strong body and learn to find it desirable, maybe even attractive.

Yes, I'm going to Review Bodytribe Stuff...

2011-03-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

So, I've got my Bodytribe T-Shirt, my Bodytribe DVD's, my Bodytribe book, and I'm waiting for my Bodytribe G-string. Wait a second, is this place starting to control my mind? Maybe I've turned into some kind of BTer-roadie hybrid. Or, was this place that I, with a heavy heart, had to leave behind as I bounce around from state to state, even country to country, just that much of an awesome fit for my way of doing things?

You can make the call...

So, I've become a collector of Bodytribe paraphernalia, and for good reason. It's awesome! The first acquisition was, "Lift With Your Head," along with the T-shirt. The T-shirts awesome too. I swear that I'm at least three times more sexy when I wear it (You're still the only one, Melissa!). The take-out girl at Outback in Sacramento seemed to dig it...

The book might not have made me sexier to women that I can't/won't touch but it did something that we all need to do before we go to our prospective places of body worship: THINK! This book really made me think about what I'm doing, why I do it, and how I go about doing it. The first part alone could be it's own book, worth the asking price of $22. This kind of thought provocation shouldn't be missed. The second section deals with the lifts. Some are pretty standard. Others are more elderly, lesser-used, and pretty damn funky. All are well-explained. One thing that I have to give kudos to Chip on is the Bent Press. I've read a lot of descriptions on how to do a bent press. None of them described it with enough clarity for me to feel confident trying it on my own. His does, along with the enough of the right pictures to show how it's done.

The Brutal Recess DVD's are pretty easy to sum up. It's done early on in the production: it's Bodytribe's concept that calls for adding both mobility and a sense of creative playfulness into training. Sure, it does that in the two-set DVD's but to leave it at that is like saying a Mercedes is simply a car. Or Earnest Hemingway is simply a writer. This set is a real rarity: a fitness DVD that's actually fun to watch! The level of training creativity is simply off-the charts! Much of the demonstrations of Brutal Recess are done outdoors in very cool locations with some even cooler music! A good way to describe some of what you'll see would be strength music videos! Don't take this as a way of saying that there isn't some good information here. This has some seriously-solid training information. If you're smart, you'll start doing some of this stuff. NOW! It doesn't take very much of this in your workout(by, not very much, I mean less than a week!) to realize that the Brutal Recess concept will make you a stronger, more physically-capable human being.

Oh, and no mullets spandex, or high tops! Here...

If you're reading this blog on a regular basis, then you probably agree with me that that there are a lot of things that are seriously wrong with our subculture. It's one thing to drone on and on about the problems without providing any good alternatives. That's the beauty of Bodytribe's stuff: They provide their customers with great alternatives to the modern gym culture.

Now, I realize that a significant portion of my readers are from Bodytribe and therefore, they live in California. If you're one of those people and you're complaining about how out-of-control your states' debt is and how expensive things like your water bill are, I have a simple explanation as to why it is that way:

SO I CAN BUY MORE STRENGTH TRAINING STUFF!

I made enough money working in California for two months that I was able to buy that Alpha-Strong sandbag I mentioned a few weeks back as well as two more Ironmaster Kettlebell handle and another 128 lbs of weights along with the pins to use them. I haven't been shy about confessing my love for their Kettlebells and the love affair continues. The KB handle starts out at 22.5 lbs. The first weight set brings it up to 57.5 lbs, the second 80 lbs and the final (special order) brings it up to 103 lbs. After playing around with other KB's, I really began to appreciate the the Ironmaster's adjustability even more. Most solid KB's graduate upwards in roughly 5-7 lbs increments, until you get to 53. Then, it abruptly jumps to 70 lbs. With a lot of exercises, it's a pretty big difference.

That's where the Ironmaster really shines. It's allows a far more gradual ascent. I can strict press two-53 lbs pretty easily. 70 lbs is a bit too much (although I can do it). 62 lbs is just right!

Any downsides that I've discovered? Well, kind of. The upside to these KB's is that they're adjustable. The downside is they're adjustable. Anything with moving parts requires some work. After traveling in back of a truck, they do get some dirt in the mechanism. Every once in a while I have to take an old toothbrush and some WD-40 and clean it out or the screw won't tighten properly. That's minor though.

.and these KB's are awesome!

For Love of the Bent Press II: The Two Hands Anyhow!

2011-03-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the original Christmas Carolers were bums simply looking for a new, innovative way to beg for money? That's right, they were no different than those annoying bastards that clean your windshield for you without asking and get pissed when you don't give them money. They weren't a welcomed sight outside the windows of Victorian England. They weren't any more welcomed than the loosely termed "underground" strength training's "singing" about more holistic and comprehensive training outside the doors of the equally snotty Victorian-equivalent modern gym world today.

Ironically, we look back to the tail-end of the Victorian era for sources of training information. This was the dawn of weight training in the Western world. Most of us who read training manuals from that era know what most enduring image of strength is...

Arthur Saxon's Two-Hands Anyhow lift(herein known as THA). He set a record of doing a 448 lbs THA at a bodyweight of about 210 lbs. Back in 1900, this was probably the most common challenge to prove your strength. For those of you who don't know what this entailed, it was pretty simple: get as much weight in both hands overhead as possible. The most common way to do this was to bent press a barbell overhead. At the bottom of the bent press, the lifter would grab a kettlebell and curl, or clean, and press the kettlebell overhead, completing the THA. It's a crying-ass shame that this series of lifts got dumped in the trash can of history back in the 1930's, along with prohibition and corsets.

The latter were bad ideas from their inception. The bent press is as good as it ever was. I know because after I picked up my second kettlebell set-up from Ironmaster, I've been playing around with this more and more. It's so much fun because there really isn't anything else out there quite like it. It's all about slow, steady control the whole time that you perform it. Nothing can be rushed. Everything must be smooth. It's almost like ballet... with iron and sweat.
It's also murder on just about every muscle that you've got. This is definitely a full-body experience!

I just started doing this very recently so my level of expertise isn't any more grand than the 130 lbs of weight that I'm putting overhead. I started with a 75 lbs kettlebell (At the first draft of this article, I was using two KB's. Currently, I'm using a sandbag and kettlebell combination since I left one KB back in CA) cleaning it up to a rack position. Once I've done that, I bent press it, reaching down to grab a 55 lbs kettlebell waiting near my foot. That's really important: make sure you put the weight near the inside of your foot. You don't want to be searching around with that much weight above your head, unless you like testing your Lat-tension!

Low ceiling. Sucks!

Anyway, I've done both curling the second kettlebell and cleaning it before pressing overhead. I think that both have their advantages and disadvantages. Curling feels a little smoother with the first, heavier weight overhead, but it definitely is harder to get up to a racked position. It's far easier to clean it there but like I said, that makes it harder to control the big guy overhead! Experiment: do it both ways. Just for fun, I like to throw in a windmill action to put one of the weights down too.

I'd like it if someone, somewhere, would start throwing this back into a lifting competitions again. Some ideas are too good to forget in the sands of time. In the meantime, try this one out sometime. We may not be able to achieve Arthur Saxon-like poundages but there's still lots of good work to be had in this old lift.

See it here first: Spring Straps!

2011-03-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

A lot of my long-time readers know that I don't claim to be the first at anything exercise-related. It doesn't take a whole lot of research to realize that every good and bad idea in training has been tried at least twice, lost, rediscovered, and tried twice more. So, claiming to be an original in this sub-culture tends to make you look foolish, poorly-read, or a hype-happy con man.

However, I'm going to do just that!

I thought of something a while ago. Something that I've never seen, heard or even remotely alluded to ever with strength training. It happened as I read through John Jesse's book, "Encyclopedia of Wrestling and Physical Conditioning." I saw exercises for, among other things, rings and chest expanders. Then, it hit me: what if these two had a baby? What would it look like?

Well, it might look like this...

I'm getting to the point in my training where I can spread my rings out quite a ways apart and still knock out 15 dips without much of a problem. That's usually my cue to look for ways to increase the difficulty. The ring dips (or any other suspension rig) make the dip much harder for several reasons, chiefly the extra work that the pectoralis majors have to do. A quick run down of of the action of the Pec-major...

...has four actions which are primarily responsible for movement of the shoulder joint[2]. The first action is flexion of the humerus[upper arm bone], as in throwing a ball side-arm, and in lifting a child. Secondly, it adducts[moving towards the center line] the humerus, as when flapping the arms. Thirdly, it rotates the humerus medially[rotation towards the mid-line of the body], as occurs when arm-wrestling. Finally it aids in deep inspiration[3], as in taking a deep breath before jumping in a pool. The pectoralis major is also responsible for keeping the arm attached to the trunk of the body[4].

Fixed bar dips don't require the pec-major muscle to keep adducting the arm bone nearly as much as the suspension trainer will since they don't move. By adding the spring into the suspension trainer, the spring pulls the arms away from the center line. Now, the pecs have to work harder still. I've tried these a few times and they cut my reps down by a third! More specifically, I struggled (and sometimes failed) to get 10 reps on this set-up.

The key to making these work properly is the placement of the rig. They have to be farther than shoulder-width apart. If they're not, then the weight of the body compresses the springs and there is no pulling-away action for the pecs to resist. Another important key is to find a very strong, extension-type spring. After some searching I found these springs at Lowes (I saw them at Home Depot as well) used for porch swings. They're rated for 300 lbs. If they're too light, then your BW will simply stretch the spring without offering resistance. To sweeten the deal, these springs only cost about $10.00, well worth the investment as far as I'm concerned.
I haven't tried this out yet with push-ups but I'm sure that they'll also make push-ups a lot harder too.

I thought I'd pass this along in case anyone out there is looking for a cheap way to make pushing exercises on suspension gear harder.

Sun, Sand and Alpha-Strong

2011-02-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

...or, another heretical post since this is, in name, a Bodyweight Blog!

The mere sight of the Alpha Strong, Thy Beast, on the web site might make a lot of fans of improvised, underground strength training puke a little in the back of their throat. A $150 sandbag that can only be loaded to 80 lbs and has a bunch of handles? That stamps on some major sandbag traditions..

1. Its a cheap way to lift a lot of weight. By a lot, I mean 100-200 lbs.
2. Grabbing the bag is a great grip strength tool.
3. Did I mention its supposed to be cheap?

Or, maybe thats the way I viewed sandbags. Better still, thats the way that I viewed sandbag training before I actually got a chance to hold one in the flesh, work with it a little, and actually had the money in hand to buy one after trying it out. I guess poverty breeds pig-headedness!

Customer service is a major plus with Alpha Strong. My wife and I planned a trip to Peru after I finished up in Sacramento. At the last moment, her family decided to rent a beach house. I figured that sandbag training would be a great way to work out at the beach. So, at the last minute (and I mean the THE LAST MINUTE) I called Alpha Strong, got Cathy on the phone, and arranged to get one shipped to me ASAP so I could fly with it down to Peru. She came through for me and that was much appreciated.

The first impression about this bag (not to mention all of their other bags) is that it's seriously tough! Actually, there's the outer bag that you hold onto and an inner bag that holds the sand. Either way, this isn't yet another overpriced and underbuilt piece of exercise equipment. It's built like a piece of Samsonite luggage! Everything about it screams heavy duty, hard use, and throw-me-around-for-all-you're-worth!! This could easily pull duty at any commerical gym. Let me put it this way: I would have no problem checking this thing as luggage at the airport!

So, I threw it in my bags, along with two-1 1/4" ropes (I'll get to in a second) into my luggage and headed to Peru. A few days later, I hit the beach for a week, training with it pretty much every day for a week, sometimes twice a day. Since I was on vacaction, I freed myself from set routines and goals for a bit. Whatever seemed like a good idea to do that day, I just went ahead and did it.
Cards on the table time: I really beat the shit out of this bag. If I blew it apart, called Cathy back demanding a replacement after explaining what I did with it, I wouldn't blame her if she said something to the effect of:

Justin, you stupid shit! What the fuck were you thinking? Why don't you
just stick to bodyweight because you obviously don't know how to
treat your equipment?

The first thing I did was overload it. According to the paperwork, this bag is designed for 40-80 lbs. I didn't ask if that was how much they estimated it could hold or how much they designed it to hold. Not all sand is the same coarseness, and the hills surrounding Punta Hermosa, Peru are nothing but super-fine, dust-like sand favored for cement-making all over Lima. The bottom line is that the first time I loaded and used this bag, it probably weighed well over 100 lbs. Still, no problems with the bag.

The beach house was constructed in a terrace-like manner into the side of the hills. The stairways are narrow and I found that it was easier to toss the bag from the upper deck to the lower deck if I wanted to bring it down to the beach for some improvised-sled dragging work.

That's what the ropes were for. The reenforced handles looked plenty tough enough for the task. So, I tied the ropes to the handles and did several types of drags and still the bag laughed this off too, much like the overloading and the floor-to-floor throwing. I'm not saying that you should do any of this with this bag. I'm just saying that I did and it survived without issue.

In addition to dragging the bag high pull, face pull and standard dragging, I did clean and presses, military presses, Sotts presses, Zercher squats, Cossack Squats, bear hug and behind the neck good mornings, bent over rows, and half-moon snatches (I adjusted the weight of the bag as necessary). The addition of the handles does take away from the grip training somewhat but it does add a lot of versatility to the bag. Plus, you don't have to be as consciencious about nail-trimming. If you're that much of a grip junkie, you could just grab the bag, old-school style.

In short, I could find absolutely nothing to complain about with this bag. It was a a great companion to the sun, sand and waves. Yes, it's a bit pricey but just like you wouldn't expect to pay less than $100 for a good suitcase, you probably shouldn't expect to pay less for a bag that's this well-built. Suggestions? I'd buy a bigger bag if they decided to make one. In the meantime, I think I may have found the ideal travel companion if I want to do some weighted training on the road.

I should have taken some pics of me using this bag. Sorry about that! After all, I am on vacation...

As you can see, in spite of the obvious drinking I did while at the beach house, I managed to stay in good shape. Thanks, Alpha Strong!

Not strength training, just gloating. MY SON, HENRY EMILIO!!! First picture...

Is unilateral good? Is this unilateral? Two Ropes One Climb and some Cossack Squatting...

2011-02-20T05:39:00.000-08:00

Being disconnected from the industrial gym complex has numerous perks. I don't know what's going on there, sure. Then again, I'm not burdened by people telling me that what I'm doing is wrong, even when it probably isn't. Take "unilateral" training. I never knew that there was any debate on it's usefulness. Apparently, it's not all it's cracked up to be, for reasons that I couldn't quite grasp. Explanations left me with a typical, intuitive yet highly intelligent response: SO WHAT?
Okay, a lot of the stuff I'm going to mention isn't strict unilateral work. I know this. I call it that because the load isn't spread evenly on both limbs. I don't want to confuse things further by coming up with yet another term.
I like unilateral srength work. In the bare-bones world of broke, traveling and/or otherwise cramped for space/stuff strength training, working out out one side/limb/whatever disproportionately at a time works out nicely. It lessens the demand for more stuff. Take my friend Fred's Facebook page profile pic. He's doing (I think) a 100 lbs Cossack squat. That's bad ass! When I saw that, I slapped myself for not thinking of it sooner. Squatting 100 lbs with my sandbag is getting pretty easy for me, even in Zercher format. So that was a nice way to use the same amount of weight to make for 20-30 seconds of "OH SHIT THAT'S HARD!" muscular tension. Hey, I'm not training for a competitive lifting sport so what difference does it make if it doesn't help out any competitive lifting? I just want to get that special feeling that I love so much!

That was the weighted side of things...

So, yeah, I escaped from California, and rain and snow and cold and work, for a couple of weeks down in Peru. On the downside, I had to leave all my big-ass ropes, along with my work equipment, in Sacramento to pick up later. All I had for rope back home was my old 1 1/4" rope (25' long) thate I don't use a whole lot anymore. Too thin, but I had an idea. Cut and eye spliced it into two pieces and dragged it to Peru (for reasons you'll read about later, in another blog entry). It was just blind luck that I found out that the beach house my in-laws and I rented had a spot to hang these ropes for climbing. So, hung them both up and started climbing them.

It's important to give credit where it's due. I know Ross Enemait didn't invent this idea but I got it from him so kudos anyway, Ross! It was in his awesome book, "Never Gymless." This is an idea that doesn't get used a lot, or enough as far as I'm concerned. Each side of the body has to work a lot more than if they were grabbing onto the same one rope. It's a lot more unstable and it really hits the biceps hard! Finding that out was really a case of making lemonade out of lemons since I started realizing that my biceps seem to be my weak point for rope climbing work.

Eventually, all my ropes will make their way back from California and I'll get back on track for the 3" rope climb. I made it halfway up not too long ago. In the meantime, I can make happy time with two ropes after finding out how hard this really can be. If you've been getting into ropes as much as I have lately and you've left behind a smaller-diameter rope in favor of the big stuff, this is a good way to squeeze some more life out of those old ropes.

Some Strength Trainers That Move me

2011-02-11T05:13:00.000-08:00

I'm one of those crazies that actually likes American airports. Yes, they're glorified cattle stockyards with overpriced, bad food and worse coffee but they offer endless opportunities to people watch. For avid people watchers, there's just no shortage of highly interesting individuals in an airport. It can, and has, kept me occupied for hours.

The same can be said about our little subculture. There are some unique characters in the culture of the perpetually strength-starved persons. So, in no particular order, I decided to throw out there some of the guys in the history (and present) of physical culture that I find as interesting as they are motivating.

John Grimek
There are but a few people out there who pick up stuff to get strong and no matter what they pick up, they excel at it. It's almost as though they have a limitless control over their body. It's natural to think that they're genetically blessed. They may well be but that can't explain how they seem to do really well at everything that they try strength related. What kind of drive and ambition they must harbor in their mind is equally amazing and mind-boggling to me. John Grimek seemed to be just that kind of man. It almost seemed like he could do anything!

Even back in Grimek's day, there was already some very distinct separation between the weightlifters and the bodybuilders. You were either good at one or the other. I'm sure it helped just a tad that Bob Hoffman controlled a lot of the events that Grimek competed in. Sure,it's possible a man can control judging, he can't control the awe that someone like Grimek inspires.

He could build the big shapely awe-inspiring muscles that could win Olympic lifting contests. He could bulk up to 250 lbs and drop back down to 195 lbs if he pleased. He could eat 2 lbs Hersheys chocolate bars without getting fat. He squatted 400 lbs for 20 reps well into his sunset years. He pressed the 270 lbs "Cyr" Dumbbell in his younger years.
Maybe this man had limits to what he could do. It sure didn't seem so. It seems like if Grimek wanted to do it, he eventually did!

Steve Justa
My buddy Chip Conrad said it best in his book, "Lift with your Head": strength training is pretty funny, if you think about it. There we all are, lifting big heavy stuff, only to put it down and pick it up again while wearing dumpy-looking clothes, making contorted faces in a puddle of our own sweat. All the while, we're throwing around words like jerk, snatch and rack.

YOU SAID... RACK!

When it's not funny, it's downright crazy. Our primal minds are designed to avoid stress, pain and fatigue. It thinks that these are cues of imminent death. Instead of heeding the call to stop doing them, or not even doing them in the first place, we push onward anyway. Most of the time, this stuff could hurt or kill us, if we're not careful. Still we do it anyway. It's part of the process of getting strong.

Put in that light, it shouldn't be a surprise that people like Steve Justa exist. Silly and crazy aren't strong enough descriptions for this guy. Look at his Youtube channel! You'd swear that he must have walked out of a Rob Zombie movie and came to life (credit to Wild Gorillaman for that line). He might be a Grade a whack-job but, for our purposes, who fucking cares! He's every bit as strong as he his eccentric! Get past his bizarre music videos and you'll see him doing some equally crazy lifts! Embrace the bizarre when you're training, because the whole process is nuts, in it's own cute way. Few embody and prove that better than Steve Justa.

Vince Gironda
Given how I've evolved in a non-bodybuilding direction with strength training, away from barbells and machines, and in a somewhat-free form manner, I find it kind of odd that I'm caught up in the post-mortem fanfare that surrounds Vince Gironda. Still, I find him pretty interesting and highly motivational.

I have to say that some of the best information that I found about how to eat to gain mass was stuff that I gleaned here and there that he either wrote or said. I still think he's among the best source about how to eat to get big out there. He hated steroids and by the standards of today, he didn't use a lot of supplements (although that whole dessicated liver fetish of his was kind of gross).

It doesn't take much reading about the man to figure out that he had a major attitude and no tolerance for things not being done the right way. Which, incidentally, he would say is his way. In spite of being that hard-nosed about how to train, I find his raw pugnacious drive extremely motivating. That highly driven approach can move mountains and make up for possible and/or perceived lack of genetic perfection.

Plus, he pulled off what I consider to be the most insanely bad-ass chin-up feat I've ever heard of: a single-arm chin-up while holding a 45 lbs dumbbell! Somewhat off the topic, but ever notice how unique their footware is too? In our present day, too many people suffer under the illusion that we've got to wear some sort of highly specialized shoe in order to get in shape. Here I've collected some of the luminaries of the iron-tugging world and there isn't a swoosh to be seen on any of their feet! I like it!

Hang Yourself... and get some Abs!

2011-02-04T03:33:00.000-08:00

Misleading title. Yes, the elusive ab definition isn't made in the gym so much as it's made in the kitchen. What we're talking about is getting strong abs. It used to be that if we tried to strengthen our abs, we'd lay on the floor. Most of us know that if you're laying on the floor, you're probably not a strong ab muscle (In case you don't know, the six-pack Abs are actually one muscle). Kettlebell-ISM could probably take a large amount of credit for getting us off the floor. While ab-training off the floor is a very good idea, I think that there's a strong possibility that the best way to get your abs strong is to reach up... and hang off something!
NO, NOT THAT WAY!

I mean your pull-up bar, or whatever you use for pull & chin work. Some of the highest ab activation exercises are actually the one's where you're hanging. As we've discussed in the past: properly done, the pull-up is an awesome ab exercise. You can make it even better by doing them with your legs in an L-sit.

For more direct ab work on the bar, then we could turn to the hanging leg raises (HLR). Most of us are familiar with this one...My reception to ab slings is kind of cold. Yeah, if you don't have the grip and arm strength to execute these then I understand. If you can do pull-ups without an issue, then you should have no issue grabbing the bar directly to do HLR. You'll save some money too because these things, like most strength training equipment, are ridiculously overpriced.

When I do HLR's, my preference is to touch my feet, or even my knees, to the bar. The important part of doing HLR's like this is descent: do so slowly, and under control. This isn't a speed-demon exercise. Control the movement! Besides, most of the good ab work is on the descent anyway. Rushing this risks hurting the lower back.

While you're up there, there's another ab exercise you could do called the windshield wiper. This one generally starts at the top of the hanging leg raise movement. From there, you move the legs in a semi-circle... like windshield wipers! The level of difficulty can be adjusted two ways: smaller circles or bent legs. Both make the movement easier. This is a nice and easy, controlled exercise too. Remember what I said about fighting gravity a while back? Well, gravity wants to pull your legs down. RESIST!

Then, there's always the possibility of combing hanging leg raises with windshield wipers. Start from a hanging position. Then, pick your knees up to the bar but don't lower yourself just yet. Now, do a windshield wiper. Bring your feet back to the middle and lower yourself.

You could throw this in after doing one, or more, pull-ups too. Start by doing the pull-up(s), then bring your feet up to the bar and then do a windshield wiper set, then slowly come back down. This combination is pure hell on your grip and your abs! Even 5 "reps" of this can be very brutal! It's kind of like burpees but for the bar.

Those of us who follow BW training know this guy, HIT Richards. While his insanely bad-ass training videos are well known, I wish that even more people saw what he's capable of. There'd be a whole lot less doubt about the legitimacy of BW training left to argue about. Much of his work revolves around pull-up bar work. Between his obvious power and his carved physique, he proves pretty decisively how well hanging exercises work the mid-section of the body. Even Pavel Tsatouline commented on the how well pull-up and chin-up work the abs: find a guy good at either with a weak rectus abdominis. It just goes to show how valuable this very simple set-up can be.

Eat this/Not that... after a workout

2011-02-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

A little bit of personal background for my readers: I was born to teenage parents. I didn't have any cousins at all until I turned 11. Most of my cousins are quite a bit younger than I am. So, I have more of an uncle-niece/nephew relationship with them. One such case is my 16 year old cousin Guy, who's still under a grand delusion that he can, someday soon, kick my ass in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He's big into the MMA and boxing and like everyone else who takes up either (or both), he's realizing the importance of strength training and conditioning.

Keep Dreaming, punk!

I have a sneaking suspicion that he (and a couple of his friends who train with him) might be hitting this site more regularly. He was curious about what he could eat to help recover from his workouts, which are leaving him feeling a bit worn-down. Hey, even adding a little muscle would be a nice bonus! He got in touch with me and I realized that it would be a very good topic for blog entry.

Post-workout, there are two things that the body needs, and pretty damn quick: protein and some high glycemic carbs. A hard session of training is going to leave the body with a lot of "torn down" muscles and not much glycogen (sugar that the muscles use to move) left. The protein part is easy to understand: that's what you make muscle out of. The high glycemic carbs need an explanation (this is very simplified, BTW).

Glucose is what you really want here. Glucose is the fastest-absorbing, insuling-spiking sugar. After a workout, the muscles love a good insulin spike! Glycemic index (GI)is the measure of how fast a carb will trigger the release of insulin.

So, what's high on the GI that we can take to trigger that insulin release? Well, read enough muscle-comic magazines and they'll tell you things like white bread, white rice, oreo cookies and even chocolate milk. Highly processed foods drive up insulin levels fast, sure but they're still junk food. There are better ways to do this.

Although, I have experimented with chocolate milk and the results can be
okay, with a few conditions. You really have to be jonesing for some sugar
by the time you're done your workout to make the most of Chocolate
milk. Second, you need to be really fussy about which
chocolate milk you use. Some brands, no matter how much your brain and
muscles are screaming, crying and begging for sugar, they simply have too
much. Moral here: be as careful as you are picky!

My two favorite candidates are ripe bananas and dates. The bananas have to be ripe, or even over-ripe. Bananas have a lot of starch that convert to sugar as they ripen. So, a barely ripe banana comes in around the mid-40s, which is kind of low. Let them get some brown on them and they sky-rocket up into the mid-to-high 70's, which is pretty high. Dates are REALLY HIGH on the GI, usually coming in the high-90's. Just two or three will do the trick here. Another major plus that I like about both of these is that they're both very high in potassium. Since you've probably sweat like a bulldog in the desert, some electrolytes could be very, very helpful to avoid muscle cramps!

So, we get done the workout, threw down either a mushy banana or 2-3 dates. Now, for the protein part. Most readers will know that I'm not a huge fan of any supplements, including protein powders. I don't consider whey a food. It's a food extract that comes from milk. So, why not just drink the damn milk? It's cheaper and it tastes a whole lot better! Besides, do you really know what's in your protein supplement? Do a quick search! A lot of these snot-mixers have been caught with conaminants from heavy metals to some "fairy dusting" of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED's).

There's always cattle blood too! This Surma kid is on his way to being a bad-ass stick fighter! Hey, Jack Lalanne drank a lot of this in his earlier years...

How much of either to consume after a workout varies. If weight gain is the goal, drink and eat more. After a workout during my bulking days, I would drink a quart of milk and eat two bananas. If simple muscle recovery is in the order, consume less.

There are a few other things that can help out for muscle pains. Earlier I mentioned potassium consumption to avoid muscle cramps. Coconut water is gaining popularity as a natural, low sugar-calorie sports drink, partly because it's loaded with potassium. It's expensive but you don't need to drink much to get a lot of electrolyte out of it. 8 ounces will do. Another fruit that's good to consume after a workout, if they're available, is cherries. Studies have found that they have a natural muscle-relaxing chemical in them, which makes them a good dessert before bedtime.

Of course, this is all second to making sure that you don't push it too hard during the workout and that you're getting enough sleep! These two are paramount to making strong, happy and healthy muscles.

Does Strength Training Need a Church?

2011-01-29T11:02:00.000-08:00

Paul Anderson is a bit of an anomaly in the strength training world. No, it's not just because equipment manufacturers couldn't make barbell sets heavy enough to give him a challenge. It's also because he was one of the few truly elite lifters in physical culture history that was also extremely religious. A very devout christian, after his he retired from competition, he founded a very successful home for troubled youth.

Historically, that kind of devotion to a religion hasn't been immensely popular in Western Physical Culture. We can all speculate as to why that is but I think that the answer is simple and much the same reason many others shun religion: they don't like to be told that what they're doing might be wrong. For example, Sandow could, and pretty much did, nail every available (and married) woman that attended his encore, look AND touch private show that he wanted. Depending on who you chose to believe, that list might have included a few men here and there too. The last thing he or any other good-looking muscular guy wants to hear is some bible-thumping holy man preaching the evils of promiscuous sex and adultery to them.

Anyway, strength trainers have a tendancy to be self-indulgent and self-absorbed. So, they avoid the divine wagging finger (for now?). Oddly enough, they kind of do have a religion and a church. Regardless of how they decide to tug on iron and to what end they hope to accomplish by doing it, I think that the case could be made that training has been turned into a religion.

Think about it for a moment. It doesn't take much of a stretch. They have their very narrow beliefs (their strength training protocol) that revolve around certain rituals and rites of passage (their competitions). They have their sacraments and/or magic potions that guarantee them divinity and enlightenment(supplements and PED's). They have their sacred relics (the iron and the machines they work out on). They also are very rigid in their whole outlook on things and will bitterly argue and deride any other differing views(Functional Strength Training vs. Oly vs. Bodybuilding vs Crossfit vs Powerlifting vs Bodyweight vs Strongman vs whateverthefuck) other than their own.

Above all, the salvation of strength must come from a gym. While they'd prefer it to come from their gym, they all agree that it has to come from working out in a gym. Otherwise, it's not possible to get strong. You don't have the relics, after all! That's the one that I challenge the most. Being told that I couldn't get strong without weights or a gym by my wife's ex-trainer lit a fire under my ass that burns pretty bright to this day, long after I accomplished what set out to do.

Although I'm known as a Bodyweight guy, I'm truly non-denominational. I've never had anything against weights, just that they cost money and they're not quite as easy to travel with. I look at the Earth as my gym. All I have to do is look at it with some imagination and I see my strength training relics. For example, take a look at this pic I just snapped at work on my phone...

What do you see?

A set of stairs, some railing and a doorway?

Geeze, you're boring! It's an exercise station where I can do the following stuff:

1. Pull-ups
2. Chin-ups
3. Hanging Leg Raises
4. Hanging Windshield wipers
5. L-Sits
6. Dips
7. Feet-elevated Push-ups
8. Plyometric stair jumping

I'm guessing that you could easily make up two workouts based on this short list of exercises!

Wait just a minute...How can you get strong from that? How can you possibly make that work with a 5/3/1 or a 5x5 or an 8x6x7x5x3x0x9 routine? How could that help my bench? None of this is functional! Really? How horrid!

While I choose not to comment the need of a religion and/or a church for the spirit at the moment, I will say that I don't think one is needed for the body. Like religion for the spirit, I do think that it would suit people to take a step back and realize that they don't need to be so rigid and unforgiving in their strength belief systems. Why not focus on what they all have in common and in reality, what they have in common is more important than the differences. Those are lots of minor things that don't really amount to much. We all agree that doing really difficult movements with lots of intensity and/or speed will make us really strong. Why do we need to bicker about specific means to the end?

A quick walk around most religions also yields a conclusion that most of them aren't big on idolatry. It seems to have fallen out of style everywhere except strength training religions. Strength isn't dependent on having stuff. It's how you use what you have on hand (within reason) that makes the difference. Hell, I've spent the past three years talking about how I get strong with no implements at all (most of the time)!

Closed minds never solve anything. Not in the matters of the soul or the body. Strength is plastic. Malleable. So, the ways it's developed are much the same. So, the place that it's built isn't that important. The end does justify the means in this case. Get it however and where-ever you can.

What's Reps Got to Do With it?

2011-01-28T04:35:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of small details that people get way too caught up in when they decide to induce muscle hypertropy. One of them are reps, specifically how many to for muscle growth. Generally, you'll hear people toss out things like 3-5 for strength, 8-12 for muscle growth, and anything beyond that is just endurance.

I'd love to know where that all came from. If anyone knows, please drop me a line. Or, is this a case that proves the point, "success has many parents and failure is an orphan?"

For as long as I've trained, I've never bought into that. Back in 2007, i grew my upper back and arms (in addition to my entire body) by doing pull-ups and chin-ups in 15-20 rep ranges. How did that happen? I discussed this a while back, in this post.

I don't see the point in regurgitating old posts yet again. Besides, like any other form of regurgitation, people don't generally have positive reaction to it. I do have something to add to it, to further get the mind off of the strict importance of rep ranges.

Lately, I've been doing quite a few exercises that render it impossible to fit into the normal, pretty category of one rep. When we think of an exercise, we're kind of accustomed to a movement that has a definitive concentric (muscle shortens) movement followed by an eccentric (muscle lengthens) movement... or sometimes the other way around. Either way, put them together, and you've got A REP!

What about rope climbing? Going up is nothing but concentric movement. Going down is nothing but eccentric movement. What do you consider one rep on that? What's the rep range for building size and strength on that one? I can certainly vouch that it can! Or, what about any kind of carrying or farmers walk work? Does it even have concentric and eccentric movement? Better still, how about pushing a car? Most people that do car pushing do a lot more than just 20 "pushes" in the scheme of doing so. Is that just endurance? Try it and get back to me...and don't be a smart ass and use a SmartCar!

Definitely Strength-Endurance!

What's also very interesting about these three is that if you ask anyone who has done them with any kind of frequency, they'll tell you that you can, and will, get brutally strong with them.

Hey! There's a workout for you: Rope climb, truck push, and farmers walks. PhunSHUNcTal too!

This kind of brings up another angle to muscle confusion. By destroying the typical eccentric+concentric=one rep movement that makes up most exercises, we have another angle to building some awesome strength. Let's level with each other: after a while, if we get tired enough, our body instinctively finds ways to make the rep easier, usually by dropping out the controlled, eccentric movement. You can't do that when you're hanging 12' off the ground anymore (unless you love sore elbows, or the the sensation of hitting the ground from the top of the rope).

That's why I'd rather think in terms of amount of time under contraction rather than reps. I will say that for a beginner, giving rep ranges have their place. They make for a good starting point. Besides, a lot of the exercises (maybe the concept of scrambling concentric+eccentric=rep isn't for beginners anyway) I described aren't exactly beginner's movements. It just goes to show that there isn't this carved-in-stone rulebook to getting big, buff, powerful and sexy.

Jack Lalanne... and what his death is saying about us

2011-01-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

You don't see this picture very often in my very humble basement gym but it's my favorite picture that I've hung up. Several years ago, my wife wrote to and called Jack Lalanne, asking for an autograph (and possibly a phone call) for me. His agent arranged the former. I was so thrilled that I had it professionally laminated so it would, hopefully, last as long as the man himself did. Now we know how long it has to last to live up to the man himself: 96 years.

I was positively crushed when George "HIT" Richards reported on his Facebook profile on Sunday night that Jack Lalanne passed away. I have no illusions that he was going to live forever. We all owe a death at some point. It hurts to lose such great people though. There's a real shortage of them left in this world. Having him for as long as we did was a unique gift: he might have been the last of the original "Muscle Beach" crowd. He was part of the second wave of physical culturists who formed strength training world as we now know it.
His posse of iron men and women established California as a mecca for health and fitness that it is to this day. They made gyms and health spas popular in the USA. They brought fitness to the new media. It wasn't just Jack Lalanne's TV show. These guys trained most of the actors and stuntmen in Hollywood. Everything that we do now can be traced back to Jack and his friends. He was the bridge between the early Sandow years and the modern world of strength training as we know it.

In my opinion, this was also the greatest generation of strength trainers. We could go on about his physical feats, his Television show, and his juice machine but that really misses the real greatness of Jack Lalanne. This man can lay a solid claim to being the greatest example of how to nurture a body for the purpose of serving a greater purpose...EVER. Inner light can't shine through dirty windows and showed us, by example, how to let that light through. It's hard to put that kind of inspiration into words. It's something that anyone who has ever turned themselves from physically weak to physically strong can understand.

that transformation must be unpopular these days because I'm very underwhelmed, and frankly pretty pissed, at some of the coverage of his death. I detected a grain of mockery coming from people I hear on the news regarding his death. I've heard more references to his drunk driving arrest back in 1991 than I ever heard about Ted Kennedy's drinking binges when he died. I heard quips about his strict anti-sugar, quasi-vegetarian diet..."and he still died!" Or, about how he preached health and fitness as America got more and more unhealthy?

This evening turned into one of those, "what has America become?" moments. We lost someone who was an outrageously productive human being who we could trust to be an honest and good example to our children and we find reasons to point out how he wasn't perfect? Are we only happy if we see trashy excuses of human life shoved into our eyeballs on the tube?
Seriously though, what have we become? Can't we hold virtuous life with high regard? Why do we think it's okay to glorify how mediocre and internally filthy we've become? Is it funny that most of us eat about 160 lbs of refined sugar a year that we know is going to slowly kills us? Who is really insane here: most of us for doing this or Jack Lalanne for telling us for the past 60 years that this is suicidal?

What do you think? Enough sugar for a medium-sized American Town?
I think it comes down to judgement. Simply put: nobody wants to be told that what they're doing just plain sucks, even when it's so lately fucking stupid that it shouldn't even be a debate. Another mark of a great man is that they'll tell you the truth, no matter how badly it hurts. Jack told it to us straight, right up to the very end.

His example of lifelong clean, health, and strong living was the best idea for a goal that he gave his audience. We all love to set goals for ourselves. It's a tangible way of seeing progress. Those are all groovy things, don't get me wrong, but keeping ourselves healthy and strong for a lifetime could be the best goal to make. A healthy life makes all time spent training, regardless of how fun or how obligatory, a step in the right direction to fulfilling. Jack Lalanne said it best:

"People don’t die of old age, they die of inactivity."

"Better to wear out than rust out"

With that as a goal, every ounce of activity becomes meaningful; a middle finger given to the notion of a diseased life and dampened spirit. I thank you, Jack Lalanne, for that. We all do.

Why Didn't I think of this before?

2011-01-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Calves are, without a doubt, Just about everyone's hardest body part to build any kind of muscle on as well as that one part of the body that just about everyone doesn't like on themselves. I can certainly count myself as part of that group. I admit that I have thin calves. Some of you may recall that I wanted to focus more on exercises for my lower body, trying to improve on them, particularly the harder pistols and Glute-Ham raises (GHR). The GHR got moved to the top of that list.

I've barely been working at these for two weeks and I'm dumbfounded and stunned as to how fast my calves responded to my GHR work. I'm not doing full-blown GHR's at the moment. I can get about halfway down before I drop and I can push myself up off the ground with my hands. Either way, My calves are really starting to respond. What's going on here? I thought that this was supposed to be the most stubborn muscle to grow?

Well, I was walking around, thinking about my achy calves when it hit me what's going on here...

We all know that the heel raise is the standard method to getting the calves bigger. The trouble is, it works for some people and seemingly not at all for others. The common answer is to add more weight. It's the same situation: for some it works, for others it still doesn't. This is what hit me: it's not that some people aren't adding enough weight. The problem is that their feet have the wrong leverage to make the move work for them!

Note that I didn't say bad leverage. I said WRONG LEVERAGE. Open up any anatomy book and there will be a section discussing the three classes of levers. The heel raising up off the ground is a classic, class 2 lever...

This may not makes sense from here on out unless you do a little reading.

***Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on leverage in relation to the body. I only understand this if I read it and study it enough, over and over and over. I only get what I'm talking about because I experimented and read about it!***

Class 2 levers are more efficient at moving a load if the lever itself is longer. A good example is nail clippers. They're class 2, just like a heel raise. We use toe nail clippers because they are bigger and apply more force to cut through the much-thicker toenail. So, if a person has long feet, relative to their ankles, then the lever is more efficient.

The trouble with that relative to strength training is that the gastrocnemius (calf muscle), in turn, doesn't have to work harder. Remember, muscles only get bigger only when forced to do something really hard. So, good second class lever/long foot equals small calves! This is why women often have more muscular calves than men: smaller feet!

SHOW-OFF!!

Are you with me so far?

So, unless a person with long feet has the capability to pack on some ungodly amounts of weight on a bar, a calf raise is probably not a good exercise for them. So, where do we turn? You guessed it: Change the leverage... ENTER THE GLUTE-HAM RAISE!

We get so caught up in the heel-raising experience of the calf that we neglect it's other job: It also helps flex our knee. Take a look at this picture of the calf muscle...

See how it connects to the femur, above the knee? By doing a GHR, it's not working as a class 2 lever anymore. Now, it's working as the much less efficient class 3 lever (did you read that page like I told you to?) Since it's functioning in a more inefficient manner, it really has to work. More work=more strain=bigger muscle!

The knee joint is the fulcrum, the force comes from the calf muscle's origin at the femur, and the load is the body. Get it?

That isn't to say that the GHR is the only exercise that forces the calf to work as a class 3 lever. Anything that forces it to flex the knee helps. This is why hikers and bicyclists have such muscular calves too!

Sure, it takes some technical reading to understand all of this stuff and I hope I've done a decent job of simplifying it enough for the masses to understand. What I don't get is why on earth this isn't mentioned more often by the people we (half) expect to know this (our trainers, books, etc). Is it ignorance or willfully holding back quality information? I leave it to you to speculate.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep plugging away at the GHR's. It's always nice to see results!

The Strong Image

2011-01-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

Pop Quiz(for those who know nothing about MMA): Which of these guys has the highest win percentage?

OR...

Answer: The guy at the top is Phil Baroni, the brash and trash-talking MMA punching bag with a 13-13 record. The guy at the bottom is Anderson Silva, a fighter who could lay a solid claim to being one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time, who has a 27-4 record.

Obviously, for those more knowledgeable in all matters of MMA, Silva is a far more technically sound fighter than Baroni will ever hope to be. Fighting has little to do with how a body looks and it's all about the skills it can perform. Just the same, those of us who watch him know that Anderson Silva is a powerful striker. On the other side of the coin, the body-beautiful Baroni, a guy who's graced the cover of Muscle and Fitness, makes a most basic mistake: a body isn't strong and powerful just because it looks strong and powerful. It looks good though!

This is hardly a new phenomenon. After Eugen Sandow realized (courtesy of Arthur Saxon) that he wasn't the strongest guy out on the Vaudeville Circuit anymore, his shows changed. It became more of a display of his body first and a strongman act second. That played into the bigger scheme of things anyway because most of his shows' attendees were more interested in how he looked anyway. That may have marked the beginning of the slow, but sure, separation between looking strong and being strong. Sandow was perfectly fine with looking part of "the world's strongest man" the part rather than being the part. The former was far easier to pull off.

It's hard to completely cut down the imagery of strength though. Although there were other contemporaries of Sandow operating, the the mere image of muscular strength, for all of its benefits, was a sure indicator that the owner of the hyper-developed muscles was a low-class laborer. The ideal male image, for a long time, alternated between being extremely thin (proof they didn't do any manual labor)or extremely fat(Proof they had enough money to eat as much as they cared to and did move/labor much).

The funny thing that eventually emerged after Sandow was, of course, aethetic bodybuilding. They carried on the tradition of the look of strength being more important than the ownership (that's not to say they weren't strong, it just means that it was secondary). The illusion began to shape their reality: train for shape and strength will follow.

It's also interesting to note who shaped that image. A Google Image search of any name bodybuilder (Take your pick: Jack Lalanne, Dan Lurie, Earle Liederman, John Grimek, Tony Samsone, Arnold, etc) from the 1920's to the 1970's will, in all likelihood, turn up some sort of gay erotica. An unknown, but probably very large, portion of the early bodybuilding fans were gay men. It could be said that that image of strength for most of the 20th century was tailored to be homoerotic. Nearly all of the major bodybuilding photographers were gay. Joe Weider knew what he was doing when he started his shirt-pocket sized "Adonis" magazine.
I wonder what Phil Baroni would say to that.

Shots never fired always miss. The ideal about the relationship between men's physical ability and physical appearance has fired several shots and missed more than a few times. It's a better track record than the opposite sex. Generally speaking, any display of anything remotely resembling muscular power has been strictly off-limits in the feminine image for as long as the names, "physical culture", "strength training", or "bodybuilding" have existed. The awe that this ad inspired kind of annoyed me. I recall this ad with Jennifer Anniston being some sort of pinnacle of the fit female. Forgive me for saying this but she looks like a stick figure! Would it actually hurt to lift something meaningful other than a pekinese-esqe dumbbell? Real weight, and real strength training, doesn't turn women into men!

See me in the background? I may have been looking for a 53 lbs kettlebell that they ended up hogging! How rude!

So, what's the solution to the strong image problem? Well, I think that a good starting point would be if everyone could collectively hold up the physical ideal of people that look like they can do strong things because they ACTUALLY DO things that make them strong! Would that be too much of a leap?

I hope you're not going to ask me (or yourself) what does that look like? If you insist, then here's an idea: go out and do stuff that makes you strong. Do it with other people. Repeat this over and over. Stop looking to E! and trash-magazines for the answer. You'll start to see for yourself. These activities don't have to be anything specific, although I think that we could all use a break from the cardio-workout-saturation. Strength is platic in nature. So, its presentation is going to vary. Don't get too hung up on that. Just learn to appreciate a strong performance first and what it looks like second. That's when we'll get this whole thing straightened out.

Push-up vs Bench Press, revisited

2011-01-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't blog, or don't use blogger, they've got this cool feature that tracks all of you. I know how many readers I have, what they're reading, and where they're from... among other things. It's getting kind of addictive, even morphing into a form of cyber-narcissism.

What's kind of interesting to me is my most popular blog entry, going all the way back to 2008: The Push-up vs The Bench Press. The picture I had of things was that the strength training world was pretty much united behind this exercise as the greatest, most awesomest prover of strength. Apparently, there are more cracks in the ol' fresco than I imagined. Is some of the paint flecking off too?

I recall finding that T-Nation article a few years ago that I linked to in the original post. I admit that my mind functions in ways that don't quite allow me to catch onto medical information with haste. My understanding and retention of such intelligence comes from the sheer will to read it over and over again. What I've managed to keep glued in my mind is the problem with the bench press is the bench. The exercise doesn't lend itself well to exercising the muscles on the shoulder blade that rotate the shoulders upward because you're lying on a bench. What too many end up with if they practice lots of benching is winged scapula and shoulder problems.

Now, I fully understand and agree that many, if not most, exercises, if done to excess, can result in other muscle imbalances. What gets me about the bench press is twofold. First, it seems just a little too easy with this exercise. Secondly, I find it just a little fucked up that this exercise can cause the same problems in the shoulders that affects people who sit in front of computers with bad posture or drive truck for a living! In other words, it could cause the same problem that NOT EXERCISING could cause!

I think that a lot of weight trainers, in the back of their minds, know this already. The just ignore it, pretending it's all a part of the, "no pain, no gain" mentality. Some admit it though. For Example...

Jamie Lewis isn't a fan of the Bench Press either...

Jamie: What, you’re not going to express horror at the fact that my program is bereft of the bench press?

MG: No, the dips and shoulder presses would take care of them for a long time.

Jamie: Look at you. I’m proud of you. I have an ongoing argument with a friend over my hatred of incline bp, which he thinks is essential. Meanwhile, his upper chest looks like shit, and his shoulders hurt. I’ve got a decent upper chest, and no shoulder pain, and he just won’t accept the fact that the log press is far better for upper chest development than incline bp, and better for your entire shoulder girdle.

I guess he just likes laying down when he should be lifting.

MG: Well, any shoulder pressing will hit the upper chest to some degree not to mention the dips.

Jamie: Exactly...

And I caught this one a while back from Matthieu Hertilus

But even though I wanted bigger, stronger shoulders, I realized that I needed healthier, more flexible ones even more. I might not have problems now, but given the amount of benching I already admitted to doing, the writing was on the wall...

To top off my severe dislike and almost non-existent desire to do anything resembling a bench press, I find it funny that this became the go-to exercise to build up the chest muscles to begin with. Okay, the aesthetic ideal for the chest comes almost-exclusively from bench pressing. Let's talk function. It's not like it's the ONLY way to build the pecs. Here's a brief run-down of the pectoral-major's actions:

1. Flexion of the humerus, as in throwing a ball side-arm, and in lifting a child
2. Adducts the humerus, as when flapping the arms.
3. It rotates the humerus medially, as occurs when arm-wrestling.
4. Deep inspiration (breathing)

Or, to put it another way...

Do you see where the three planes meet together, at the upper and front of the body? Well, If your arms move in any direction in front, your pec-maj is there to help them. So, with so many different ways of moving, why limit to just one exercise? There are several exercises that can work the chest...

Double Plate Press

Dips with Chains (a recent favorite of mine)

Face Pulls

I know, I know, you're starting to wonder when I'm going to mention the push-ups. In a way, I'm saving the most obvious, and maybe the best, for last. The push-ups may not give the most currently-aesthetically pleasing chest but they might be the overall best for balanced chest development that you can get into one exercise. No, I'm not going to say that it's the cure-all but I think it's closer than any other exercise that I've named. The descent down to the ground (when done right, no dropping. CONTROLLED!) give some good work to those muscles that don't get worked with the bench there. Of course, the ascent is awesome for the pec-major.

I know that a lot of you are well past the point of using the plain-vanilla push-up and need something else to make the push-up harder. So, if you're regular readers, then you also know that I've covered how to make the push-up harder many, many times in the past three and a half years. A couple of ideas...

Try 5 of those, with each arm
Whoa, even I haven't done that with the Perfect Push-up!

I'm not going to lie and say that with the right exercises to balance it out, bench pressing couldn't be done without any long term problems. Upper body pushing and pulling work will help out in that respect. It's entirely possible that people can, and they do, bench press without shoulder issues. Like I said earlier, on it's own, I think it sucks worse than a lot of other exercises because it's so incomplete on it's own. If it's that incomplete, then I also find it's popularity so completely asinine. I recall a conversation I had with a friend who told me that in his father's time (who is in his mid 80's) the standard measure of a man's strength with a barbell was the military press I like that idea.

But I'm a bodyweight guy, remember? I like push-ups better.

So, if Michelle Obama's full of it, then how do we eat then?

2011-01-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I wrote a somewhat critical entry about Michelle Obama’s crusade to make our kids eat right. While I’d support any effort to get any American (especially children) to eat properly healthy, I was skeptical of her probable means to make that end. If you recall (and if you don’t, click here), I started out with a picture of our esteemed first lady walking up a flight of stairs with two other wives of foreign leaders. She’s very obviously larger than the other two.

Is that a problem, really? Well… If there’s one thing that I’ve noticed as I kick around this sub-culture of ours is that your body sells your message. It’s definitely a lead by example kind of world. It’s difficult to be taken seriously if you don’t look the role. Sure, I’m sure it’s possible to have the knowledge of how to be strong and healthy without actually being either but without the body to sell the method, the message reeks from lack of authenticity. So, our thunder-thighed first lady trying to get our next generation to eat more fruits and vegetables smacks of hypocrisy.

So, we’re greeted (yet again) by a good message delivered by a bad messenger. Obviously, we need to eat right but this messenger doesn’t know how to do it. Even if she did, would we really believe her?

With so many people fat in the United States, we have to ask some questions. Is this a case of willful ignorance of not knowing how to eat right? Or, do people genuinely not have a clue? Well, if I assumed the former, I’d be forced to write yet another angry, rant-style blog entry… which I’m in no mood to do. So, we’ll assume that the situation is this: people want to eat right, don’t trust the over-fed, “eat right messenger”, and are left in a diet limbo, not knowing which direction to turn.

So, I’m going to try to make it easy. Yes, you read that right: I’m going to try to simplify the healthy diet. Most of us who are knowledgeable (or pretend to be) about such things know that this is not an easy topic to simplify. There are so many different diets competing for your faith (and your money) in them. Still, I think that this is doable and I’m going to take a stab at it. Right here. Right now.

First list; stuff you should be eating (in order of highest quantity and most important):
1. Vegetables
2. Meat (not processed)
3. Fruit
4. Eggs
5. Nuts and seeds
6. Whole Grains
7. Milk (okay, it’s a drink, sue me!) and cheese
8. Legumes

How you should prepare these foods (in order of priority or relevance to the food)
1. Raw
2. Baked
3. Broiled and/or grilled
4. Steamed
5. Dried
6. Boiled and/or poached

What you should drink:
1. Water
2. Water
3. Water
4. Water

This list should pretty much sum of 6/7th or 85.71% of your dietary intake for the week. In other words, you eat right six days out of seven, letting it all hang out one day of the week. Your daily caloric intake shouldn’t really swing much higher or lower than 2000 calories. You should also be preparing the overwhelming majority of this food yourself.

Is this “diet plan” the best? I’ll fully admit it’s not. It’s not even a diet, really. It’s a guideline on how to eat right. It’s also a far better description of how most Americans dine. We can split hairs about whether or not dairy is the worst thing to consume, how legumes shouldn’t be consumed at all, or how I didn’t mention the word organic at all but let’s be honest: there are several cultures who have ate the two formers in profusion and lived long, mostly degenerate disease-free lives. Furthermore, many of us don’t have the ability to eat the most perfectly farmed foods ever but the next best thing is still far better than resorting to McDonalds. Those of us fortunate enough to be both (supposedly) knowledgeable on the topic and honest with our audience will admit that there is no perfect diet anyway.

They drink milk. Lots and lots of it!

This list also is a good description of my diet...well, most of the time. I’d like to think that I’m in much better shape than the average American. My Life Insurance agent gave me a rate that roughly 7 out of his 800-or-so clients don’t get so I assume that I know what I’m talking about. I think I can prove that I know more than the First Lady does. So, if you’re feeling ignorant about how to eat right, and assuming that you didn’t skip over vast swaths of this entry, consider yourself informed. Now, it’s time to follow through.

300... and a trip to a real gym!

2011-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

Yeah, boys and girls, this is my 300Th post! I'll hold off on the self-congratulatory stuff though (for now) and talk about something else. I'm marking this massive achievement on my blog by doing something that I haven't done in 13-or-so years: I actually went to a gym! With weights. And trainers. And cats...

In other words, I got went toBodytribe Fitness in Sacramento, CA. I first heard about the place several years ago by correspondence with Ed Pierini. He often mentioned that he trained at this place that was, "a little different." A subsequent, several-year investigation of their stuff online left me with the following feeling: I'd love to train here.

The first opportunity back in June, 2010 fell through. That would not happen again this time. My body and my job cooperated so I decided to attend their first January Kettlebell class. At the moment, the gym is under the knife, getting bigger and better. It has the same feel that I liked about it before the surgery began: it's a nice balance of serious and fun. There's useful knowledge and hard work here performed by people that take their strength training (and not themselves)seriously. It's nice to be at a gym that's barren of pretense. I'm moments away from accidentally using a dog for box squatting!
Allyson and Chip taught the class. For a dude that never works out more than 40 minutes, I was wondering how fast a 2 hour work shop could go by. The answer: VERY fast! Remember that fun-serious-balanced blend thing I mentioned above? That carried over into the class too! I learned a lot and I had a lot of fun while doing it. I got to hang around with a bunch of cool people ("Hey, you're the Bodyweight Guy!") while we picked on the Shake weight (sorry, Allyson!), Paleo Dieting, and Russell. What more could you ask?
How about a book and a T-shirt? Chip generously reduced the price of his book "Lift With Your Head" from $100 down to $22 for me. I'm sure he'll cut you the same deal. The Bodytribe crew's been making the rounds across the United States. If they bounce into your neighborhood, you might be making a physical culture-crime, punishable by death, for not attending. If you're one of my UK, German, or Australian readers, be patient and make do with the book.

Now, back to the whole 300 Thing...

This was one of the more thought-provoking items that I read on the way out to Sacramento. I'm sure that you know where this is going. It's time for a little bit of public, yet personal, introspection on what I'm doing with this piece of Internet real estate. Lot's of people peck away at keyboards about strength training. Do they have something useful to say? Does their routine hold the key to your fitness goals? Are we all dying to hear about the things that piss them off?

Well, I find my blog useful to me. I enjoy writing. I enjoy training. I enjoy thinking too. Writing takes thought, right? How many times to we use our computer as a way of turning off our minds? Do we do that too often? I fall prey to that, I admit. So I write so I can get my brain worked-out. Just like training the rest of the meat.

The next question though is my muscle musings useful to anyone else? How to judge that...HMMM Maybe such judgement should be reserved for the individual reader to decide. I'm left looking at my "stats" page trying to decipher if the data there equates to my blogs usefulness. The number would suggest they are.

When I think of running, I usually think of a tedious form of nearly-worthless (for me, anyway) exercise that I don't have the time or the desire to do. I have to say this about running though: for cheap exercise, it's hard to beat. There's an industry out there devoted to selling you, as comedian Jackie Mason put it, "a floor...ON A FLOOR," when really, you only need three things:

1. The Earth
2. Shoes
3. Clothes
Even the last two are kind of optional!

What if someone wants to do some strength training? That requires stuff. Lots of stuff. By stuff, I mean things like massive wads of iron in differing shapes and sizes held onto rods, bars, and handles attached to machines. Wait a second, are we building cars or our bodies here?

We know that we don't need all of that shit to get strong. In fact, there isn't much at all that's needed. I don't think that message gets out enough. Even when it does, the message is flawed. Advocating of endlessly-higher reps of calisthenics doesn't amount to a whole lot except: the ability to do high reps. BW can be very effective, it just needs to be used properly. I do my best to show to do that.

I use iron these days. In the old days, I didn't mostly because I couldn't. When I could use weight, I held off, satisfying the curiosity about whether or not I even needed it. I got really strong without it. I could still continue to get strong without iron if I so chose. Strength training really isn't that dependant on what you can lay your hands on.

I've had other messages in the past 299 posts but keeping focused on minimalist strength training has been the underlying theme the whole time. By reading, I can only assume that you've found what I have to type useful.

I thank you for your time.

The Perfect Push-up should be in your posession. Here's why...

2011-01-09T12:40:00.000-08:00

Ubiquity, more often than not, is a curse in the fitness world. If it's everywhere, chances are that it's also over-hyped. That can only mean on thing: it's also a piece of shit if it's being pushed that hard! Only a few legitimate pieces of training equipment manage to elude this fate: most notably, barbells and dumbbells. Stuff like the Perfect Push-up get about as much respect as the 5 lbs, plastic-coated kettlebell and workout DVD set it's placed next to on clearance at your local Wal-Mart.
WHAT A SAD, LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT!

That's just too bad. I'm not going to go so far as to elevate it to the same pantheon of all-time great training gear as the ancient barbell or dumbbell but I'm quick to defend this often-maligned piece of gear. I've actually got the original and the travel version. I started out like everyone else about this thing: I was very skeptical. Rather than pay good money for something that might turn out to be complete junk, I did the next best thing: I put it out there as a suggestion to anyone looking for a gift for me for Christmas. My wife took the bait, and I got to work on trying it out.

How do these work? They provide the shoulders with more work. Why they do this is pretty simple to understand once you get an info dump on the Deltoid muscle. The Delt is a classic example of multipennate muscle fiber. What that means is the fibers of the muscle are laid in a feather-like arrangement. So, when they contract, they move in a somewhat circular manner. This creates a lot of tension and power in a short movement... or so the creater of the PP, Alden Mills, says, and who am I to disagree with a former platoon commander of SEAL Team Two?

So the Perfect Push-up, by adding rotation to the movement in addition to moving the body up and down, creates more Delt recruitment. So, this dual-action helps make the push-up harder, often reducing the number of reps by 1/3 to 1/2, depending on the push-up variation. That's why I think that they rock so much!

So, if you're doing 50 push-ups without the PP, now you're doing 33...

Wait a second...

This is bullshit, right? It's still well within the realm of the dreaded, muscular-bulk-choking strength endurance! So, what the hell's the point of shelling out the $30 or $40 that these things are going for if there's no "real, serious" strength training benefit?

Think beyond the possibilities of little instruction cards and posters included with the PP. Remember that push-ups are a family of exercises, not just one exercise. So, you just have to look to other push-up variations. So, do other push-ups with them than just the standard push-ups!

Candidate number one for PP's is one of my favorite exercises of all: the handstand push-up. The PP is plenty rugged enough to handle my entire bodyweight bearing down on them and will easily slice off 1/2 of your reps that you're capable of doing due to the rotation and the extra 4 inches of extra height you can lower yourself.

Still not enough? What about one arm push-ups? Did you ever consider those because you can do those on the PP's as well! I started doing those late, last year. Since the handles elevate the body, they make the OAP a little easier on the abs and obliques. That overall ease rapidly disappears as the body dips down, below the handle. Coming back up also becomes more difficult too. Once again, expect at least a 50% drop in reps.

On both push-ups, start out with the handles parallel to your body, rotating them to perpendicular as you drop down.

One thing that anyone who decides to use BW as a part of strength training will quickly realize is that this style of training requires the user to look past the obvious two methods of making an exercise harder: add more reps and/or add more weight. The former only works for so long and the latter costs money and demands more and more stuff. Maybe the perpetual demand for more of the ferrous stuff isn't a problem for you. Others aren't so well endowed. So, I like the PP because it introduced something me to a new, yet simple, way to make an exercise family that is so ubiquitous in the fitness world harder.

2012

2011-01-08T05:13:00.000-08:00

Statistically speaking, most everyone walking around on this rock couldn't wait for 2011 to end. Just about everyone and everything got force-fed various platter of steaming suck. Were I to look back on the year, from my individual training goals for 2011, I certainly ate my portion of what everyone else was eating.

I didn't climb my 3" rope. I just didn't have enough places to work with it.

I haven't done a GHR. I just felt like I started getting the exercise.

I'm still shaky on Pistols. I was just too proud to be humbled by trying to do these regularly.

I lost interest in this year's Demolition Day

It's about time that I uttered what is now the most cliche statement to sooth the indignance of 2011: focus on the good things that happened this year. In spite of not hitting my goals, there was still lots good look back fondly on. The 30 Minute Challenge came up again on Rosstraining.com. I went with the Handstand Push-ups and beat last year's total of 155 reps, doing 165 reps in 30 minutes. I fell in love with Bent Pressing at the beginning of the year, particularly Doing Two Hands Anyhow. I started out this year just barely doing 65 lbs and 50 lbs Kettlebells. I'm up to doing 111 lbs and 60 lbs. Most of all, looking back on it, I feel awesome this year. Overall, I haven't felt this good since 2007. I can hang my hat on that.

The rest will fall into place soon enough. In the meantime, there's work to be done and it doesn't get finished up by thinking about a shitty year that we left behind.

Happy, 2012!

2011

2011-01-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

Someone posted this as part of their status on Facebook the other day. I can't recall who did it or where the quote originated... or if I'm even getting the quote right. Either way, it went something like this: May your New Year motivation last the entire year.

Fitness dominates people's resolutions. Mine aren't much different. Maybe through the rain and fog of binge eating and drinking from Thanksgiving onward we see the fallacy of our self-abuse. Perhaps that's why maintaining our body better becomes a priority. For the dedicated (fanatics?) among us, that's a year-long devotion rather than a fleeting, two week flirtation.

So, To rededicate myself for the New Year, I marched my ass, and my hang-over, down to the Old Rough-Red Gym to accept a simple challenge: 30 minutes, do the most handstand push-ups in that time period. Inverted training and hang-over headaches don't really mix but I still popped out 155 reps in 18 sets.

A good start to the New Year.

So, I've got goals for 2011. I still have a goal left-over and unaccomplished from 2010: the 3" rope climb. Lack of proper set-up, back and hand problems hindered conquering this one. I tell myself that but I function on the basis that there's always a way. I just didn't try hard enough to find it. Either way, that will be finished off. Soon.

I think that I've spent too much time being upper body and core-oriented. I'd like to shift some attention downstairs, to my legs. One goal for this year would be to complete the Steve Reeves Challenges. It's been brought to my attention that Steve Reeves could squat half his bodyweight for 100 reps straight. I'd like to accomplish the same. I've never gotten into Glute-Ham raises due to lack of proper set-up. I'd like become proficient in them. Also, for a "Bodyweight Guy", I consider my single leg squat capacity pathetic and embarrassing. I'd like to get myself better at those.

Then, there's always Demolition Day. How do I let Mike and Andy talk me into this shit?

So, that's my 2011 plans. I hope you've got some good ones lined up for yourself. Always remember that you're capable of more than you think that you can. Don't let the motivation that you have now fade away faster than your New Years hangover. As Zach Even Esh says: KILL IT!

Happy Year Year!

We Have Seen The Enemy...or... should we train fast or slow?

2010-12-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

As a heavily fractured community, us strength trainers find plenty of shit to bicker about. We've got our studies, our experiences, and our training methods that we all use as pawns in the (almost-totally pointless) chess game of deciding who is the biggest, the best, and the strongest. Along the way, we can pad our wallets and stroke our egos by saying that we're in possession of the greatest way on the planet to train.

Among the things we (pretty-much mindlessly) bicker about revolves around the speed at which we execute the sacred dances (our exercises) that we do. Some want it fast... even plyometrically fast. Others want to focus on our eccentric lifting (seriously, that doesn't even fucking exist!). The swords get drawn over which makes the biggest strongest muscles and both have their reasoning... and their studies!
My study is the best! He did it! I'm right! Listen to me!

The pointlessness of this arguement comes from the fact that we fight about it ourselves by fogetting that we all have a common enemy: Gravity!
That's more like it!

When you think about it, strength training is both our individual and collective defiance of gravity. We all hate gravity because we all hate being told what to do. We, as a species, are mother nature's spoiled, little brats who won't take no for an answer. How else could you explain why we love flying, levitation, and space travel? They are all ways to tell gravity to, "FUCK OFF!" Unfortunately, those are all varying degrees of expensive or impossible. Strength training is the poor person's way to do the same thing.
ASSHOLE!

So, why is it pointless to argue about how fast to do an exercise? How does that relate to that dark force that we hate so much? Well, it's pretty simple: there are more ways than to defy gravity than just one way! Certain exercises lend themselves better to deliberate fast motion than they do deliberate slow motion. Gravity always pulls us downward, towards the earth. We all know that. Some exercises work best by slowing the rate at which you or the weight descends, such as with hanging leg raises. Others work better by getting something up against gravity as fast as possible, like doing olympic lifts. Isometrics like the L-sit are great because you completely resist gravity's call to hit the floor, period.

What this really boils down to is concentric vs eccentric movement of the muscles. It's stupid to argue which builds muscle better because neither is more important than the other. There are exercises where the sheer difficulty of the exercise lies more in the concentric (shortening) movement of the muscles than in the eccentric (lengthening) movement. Usually, concentric is best done fast while eccentric is best done slow. Yes, there are exceptions.

Ultimately, we become stronger by resisting what gravity tells us to do. Yes, we'll succumb to that fucking-bitch mother nature but how fast we do our exercises dictates the method of resistance. The fight that makes us stronger changes. Adjust accordingly... and quit the bullshit arguing!

Routines

2010-12-20T07:15:00.000-08:00

I don't know what everyone else calls this. I've always called them clock push-ups. I'm sure we've all seen it: you assume the push-up position and you walk your hands around in a circle while keeping your feet in place. If there is a more commonly-known name, please let me know. I don't want to confuse everyone more than needs be by re-naming common exercises.

Anyway, That's it's a part of one routine that I've been using lately. Sundays are the training day where I'll just come up with stuff just for the hell of it. Routines of things that seem like they might be fun. Sometimes, my best and favorite ones have come out of this. The last one I came up with was the following:

-8 KB snatches, each arm, with a 57 lbs KB
-Clock push-ups... 15 push-ups hands wide, walk 3 paces, 15 hands push-ups shoulder-width, 3 more paces, 15 diamond push-ups.

Rest? As always, as little as needed to keep going!!! Besides, I did this outside in Nebraska one night and it was 11 degrees! Movement is warmth, boys and girls!

At first, I did this for only two or three rounds depending on how much time I had or how much wine and whiskey my father-in-law and I drank the night before. Like I said, this routine proved to be a fast favorite of mine and I used it a lot on the drive from Vermont to Sacramento, CA. Since I could only drive 11 hours, I had plenty of free time so I pushed it to four rounds.

How'd I design and build this routine? What's it good for? Well, like I said, it's fun. I think I used it on the trip over because it was a pretty full-body workout. That's nice after sitting for hours and hours. Ross Enamait's Magic 50 (a favorite of mine) provided some inspiration. I like the combination of a more explosive, lower volume exercise with a higher volume conditioning-oriented one. I've always been big about working one part of the body, resting very little, and moving to another part of the body that wasn't worked by the previous exercise.

So, I do have some general guidelines for my own personal program design. Frankly, I've never understood why on Earth people get so worried about how to put together a workout. I realize that some people are new to all of this and have absolutely no basis in how to begin but there are also a lot of people out there who are plenty knowledgable to come up with their own routine. Instead, they fuss and worry about getting their routine perfect, jump from method-to-method, and flood message boards with questions about Wendler's, Rippletoe's, or Thibs' training protocol.

Maybe that's why I like to read Jamie Lewis' blog so much: I can't help but laugh, bitch, or rant about people's paralysis by analysis about routine construction. First of all, there is no perfect routine! Every, single routine is flawed. You're not missing out on the perfect routine because your weight lifting god is doing something different! Secondly, you're different than Wendler, Rippletoe, Thibs, Lewis, Enamait or Justin_P. What works for all of us may not work for you. It will need modification. We don't all train for the same shit. We don't have the same goals. So, we have to train differently.

That's another thing that pisses me off too. I'm sick and tired of hearing about how if you want to get strong, you have to bench press, squat and deadlift... powerlifting, in other words. Yeah, powerlifters are really strong but are they strong just because of these lifts? FUCK NO! Three lifts don't define strength. I recall a guy I used to roll with in BJJ who told me that his strength training revolved around powerlifts. He was 30 lbs heavier than me and although he'd eventually submit me, I make him work for it. That wasn't because I was more skilled than he was. He was, and still is, an amazing BJJ technician! It was because I was so much stronger than him and despite his size advantages on me, I could manhandle him like a child! I don't do anything resembling powerlifts in my training.

So, if you're starting out and you want to extract some tips based on how I train, I can sum it up for you. That is, if you're aiming for similar goals that I am. What are my goals? Well, I need to be able to lift and drag objects that weight up to 200 lbs (mostly water pumps of varying size) from time-to-time. I need to be able to drag and roll up long hoses. I need to be able to carry them for several dozen yards and throw them into a pick-up truck. I also need some grip strength for hammering stuff and working with wrenches. I have the occasional shoveling work to do. I need to be strong in a lot of weird, contorted positions too. While I'm not doing it a lot lately, I want to stay in good enough shape to be ready to get back into BJJ when I'm close to home again. To top it off, I want to keep myself looking hot enough to make girls pissed off when they see my wedding ring.

In other words, what I need out of my training is a mixed bag of everything. If that's what you're looking for, then here's how I do it...

-Keep the breaks down to a minimum in between exercises.

-Chose exercises that alternate between body parts or different muscle groups (Supersetting is good).

-Alternate between low-reps and high reps and/or different strength attributes.

-Most of all, do things that you enjoy doing!

Michelle Obama Will Make the Kids Eat Right...

2010-12-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

Agreeing to the problem but not to the solution is something that comes up in the political mud pit. Yes, this is a "fitness" blog but fitness and politics merge together when it comes to health care. Those of us reading can't deny that Michelle Obama's doing the right thing by trying to get fat kids thinner. It's only a matter of time before the current crop of obese kids hit their 30's and we see the motherlode shit-storm of type-2 diabetes like this country has never seen before. Most of us know that's a gateway disease to a host of other issues that need to be treated... and paid for. You've heard the percentages before but have you actually LOOKED at the NUMBER of fat kids that is? Well, here it is...23,629,000 That's a number that would take you about 3,800 hours to count out. No wonder they put it down as a percentage!

So, obviously we need to get a handle on this. The question becomes how, and that's where I diverge from Mrs. Obama on. She's taking a lot of criticism from my side of the fence and, as far as I'm concerned, for good reason. Apparently, we just can't do this by ourselves. We know what that means when it comes from people like her: government trying to regulate our behavior through taxes, funding and regulation. Things like a soft drink tax, which is gaining an increasing amount of traction. It really irritates me when people throw around this notion that the government is part of the solution to fat America. If anything, it's been been a long-standing part of the problem all along, never really getting the full-share of the blame.

Nearly 100 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson often opined that the US Federal Government lacked the transformative power to shape and form the nation socially and economically. This was also around the time where the government essentially allowed a certain, powerful medical trust to regulate and control pretty much medical care in the USA. It was bigger than that. They began to mold how the American thought about medicine and health. They began to espouse such brilliant ideas that drug therapies were best, Chiropractors where basically quacks, and that strength training was very unhealthy (you know, it would use up your heartbeats and make you muscle-bound)... just to name a few... in those early years.

That was passively allowing bad decisions to happen. There's also the US government's brilliant call about hydrogenated oils. Right around the 1950's, they started telling us that we should be eating margarine rather than butter. After all, a food that Americans had been eating for a century and a half with a marginal rate of heart attacks was now public enemy number one. So, we stopped eating that and eventually began following government guidelines that told us to eat lots and lots of grains. How's our heart attack problem now?

Oops.

Things are different now. We know better now. Besides, you can trust this rendition of the federal government, we're not like the other guys and gals from the past 100 years. You know... "Change we can believe in!"

Seriously, how much longer are we going to continue to look outward and upward to other entities to fix problems like the fact that we're all fat? Study the history of "modern" medicine and industrialized food manufacturing enough and you'll see that the abominations that occurred in food and health coincide with the government becoming a more integral part of our lives. Why is it that the first two, justifiably so, get shit for the bad things they've done but the latter is always exonerated and seen as a part of the solution? They were helping the former two do their thing all along!

Dear Michelle Obama,

When my kids are old enough to go to school, I'll be sending them with their lunches already packed, thank you very much. I won't be needing your assistance, or the government's assistance either, to feed my kids healthy food.

Thank you,
Justin_P

This whole feed the kids right is just part of the bigger problem of Fat America. The solution isn't going to come from having the same idiots with the same ideas about how the culture should function telling us how to fix it. We need to get back to the notion that responsibility is personal and individual. We need to fix it by ourselves and stop blaming others for it and expecting others to solve it for us.

The Two Hardest Parts of Any Good Workout

2010-12-15T05:02:00.000-08:00

Moderation is good. I'll never deny that. For a while, I felt a strong urge to moderate... MODERATION. Ever since I got my last adjustment at the Chiro (I'm still pissed about having to take the "look but don't touch" tour at Bodytribe!), things have been good. I'm healthy, feeling good and have been in the right frame of mind to push the pace, doing some nasty-tough work in my training. Everything's good and I don't have any interest in backing off at this point.

I learn a lot when I train. Aside from the task at hand, I notice things about myself as I'm training. As I've made things harder for myself, I'm reminded that there are two, key points in every, difficult workout. They're the two most difficult times in the whole experience.

GETTING STARTED
Sally made a great point in a tongue-n'-cheek look at what, in part, makes a strength addict: being nervous about the hard days. He says a lot of goofy things but Matt Furey was right about this: getting started is 50% of the workout. This isn't too hard to figure out why: it's the act of taking a body that's in a comfy, cushy, wussy mode and forcing it into a brutal, painful place... VOLUNTARILY! It's not natural for most humans to do that by choice. Beginners have trouble accepting this. More advanced trainees hesitate to do what they know has to be done. Still, out of habit and willpower, they do it anyway.

THE WALL
This point in the workout has a lot of names and I'm just deciding to use the marathoner's term for this experience. It's the point in any workout where you realize that you're getting tired and you may not be able to do much more. You probably feel like stopping. You know that this is bullshit, of course. Now, it's not enough to rely on what you've got in the tank. Now you've got to use your mind and push it. This is where the REAL work gets done. This is where progress is made. It might feel like you're going to die but KEEP FUCKING MOVING DAMMIT!!!! You won't, trust me. The body is capable of handling a lot of stress. Chances are good you're no exception. Stay focused and work through it.

I may be preaching to the congregation on this one and for hanging with me on that, I thank you. It's come to my attention recently that there are some newbies out there looking for advice and direction. I don't want to leave anyone behind and refreshers never hurt anyone.

Obstacles, Barriers, Goals... and Age

2010-12-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Obstacles. They're inherent in training, regardless of where they came from. We place them in our paths as a means of pushing ourselves to become better. Sure, most people call them goals. They're still something that gets in our way of our journey. The journey is about getting physically better. To get better, we have to become more than the obstacle.

There are other obstacles though. There are the unwelcomed and unexpected ones that pop up here and there. Work, travel, or injury are different than our goals because they slow down the process of making the journey. It's all just something else that has to be conquered. Still, there's one huge obstacle that we all have to deal with someday: aging.

Things on our body don't seem to work nearly as well as we start to get older. We're a collection of a several trillion cells that make copies of themselves over and over again. Just like a piece of paper on the xerox, the copies of the copies get duller, weaker, and lesser quality as you keep going. Old age is the lead-up to the ultimate barrier to all of our physical endeavors: death.

Even as I enjoy what is presumably my physical peak, I'm not deaf, dumb and blind to the fact that at some point, age will join the list of obstacles that impair my ability to reach goals. Lord knows I've heard from everyone I meet over the age of 40 that I just won't be able to do the things I do know when I'm their age. I get sick of it too. What I refuse to accept is the idea that age-related breakdown is a barrier.

ob·sta·cle \ˈäb-sti-kəl, -ˌsti-\: something that impedes progress or achievement

bar·ri·er\ˈber-ē-ər, ˈba-rē-\: something material that blocks or is intended to block passage

Do we have to stop the strength journey just because we get older and become a less-sharp copy of ourselves? Someone forgot to tell this 66 year old woman...

Yes, I fully realize that there is a lot that's wrong with this picture but there's even more that's right about it. Strange would be a gentle way to describe a grandmother in that kind of condition wearing a bikini and a wig. Amazing might be another. Grannies in bikinis should be something seen in a "Girls Gone Saggy" video. Instead, she decided to give old age the middle finger and not go down to degeneration without a fight.

The might be the key point to the journey: keeping the right outlook... a positive outlook. Assuming aging is a barrier to movement is the negative way to look at things. Treating it like an obstacle to overcome is a better outlook. Bob Delmonteque even goes so far as to declare that it's possible to get younger as you get older.
While I have questions about how long that can be maintained through natural means, I don't doubt that it's possible to do such a thing to some degree. Take Sally's recent blog entry regarding aging and muscle for example. In it, she said...

I’m 35 years old and I’m stronger, slimmer, with less body fat and more muscle than 10 years ago. In other words, I’ve been able to reverse that trend by taking action.

I’ve not done it through ‘cardio’ or by starving myself. I’ve done it through regular weight training and a good diet.

This is not about how great I am or what sacrifices I made. I’m not a professional athlete or bodybuilder, just a regular person who has committed to being in good shape for as long as possible.

I don't know how long I can keep up what I'm doing. I don't really care. I'm going to keep at it and simply work around my limitations, hopeful to exceed them or just happy that I can keep going despite them. Either way, I'll keep moving. Hopefully, I can surprise myself and others with how well I can do it.

What exercises could we NOT live without?

2010-12-10T18:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, 3,000 miles of driving, one hyper-extended thumb, and too many days of not making any money have come to an end and I can do some blogging...

If strength were an element, I'd think it would be safe to say that it would have to be carbon. I've said it in previous posts: strength is such a raw product, capable of being molded into so many different ways. Well, look at how many different variations that carbon can take on...

The allotropes (look it up... it might be a nice break from porn) of carbon are positively dizzying. It can form the hardest and softest materials. It can abrade as well as lubricate. Its found in solids, liquids and gasses alike. It's just like human strength. Think about the number of very different athletes that, for a brief period of time, have been considered the strongest people alive, for one reason or another, or that I can remember in my lifetime...

Isn't it kind of amusing to read or listen to people insisting that there are things (ie: certain exercises) that must be done to be the strongest? If strength can be refined in so many different directions, how can one set of exercises possibly satisfy so many differing takes on strength?

Or, are there really exercises that we all should be doing, regardless of what we're training for? Are there really exercises that have that much of a universal training effect of making you strong for, well, pretty much everything? In other words, I'm asking a variation of the old, "if you could only do ___ exercises, what would they be?"

First of all, I'd have to point out that most exercise species as we know them have so many variations that they've become their own genus. So, what we may be really asking is which physical culture taxonomic rank is the most valuable to all of our needs.

We'd have to take into consideration is how unique of a training benefit that it provides. Many joints are capable of quite a few action. So, trying to pin down one or two exercises that are so unique and universal in their benefits doesn't seem doable to me. The Pec-Major jumps to mind. There are a myriad of ways to stimulate this piece of meat and saying that only one exercise is too important to not do since it can move (and therefore be trained) in so many ways.

Contrast this to the legs. The movements of the legs are far more limited. So, are the number of exercises that they can do. Therefore, if I had to name my first genus of exercise that pretty much every strength training couldn't live without, I'd have to go with the squat.

Paul Anderson thought so and I see no reason to argue with someone coronated by many as the strongest man in recorded history. There are a lot of variations on this one, weighted and unweighted alike. Whichever you choose to kill the goals you aim at is your business. Taken as a whole, I don't think that there is a good enough substitute for the ol' fashioned "knee bend."

The second exercise not to be lived without has got to be the pull-up/chin-up. What do you have for pulling muscles in your upper body? What do you use for upper body climbing work? It doesn't really matter. The pull-up works it. Really. Hard. Really! Fucking! Good! Plus, it does it all in one movement.
Even the most basic pull-up and chin-up variations can be practiced by the majority of strength trainers for a long time before they get to the point that they need to search out harder variations. To top it off, a lot of them don't even require extra weight to increase the difficulty.
If memory serves me correctly, I think that my friend Ed Pierini threw up a routine on his now-retired blog about a routine consisting of just squat and pull-up work. I didn't follow it to the letter but I took the idea of the pull-up/squat combo to heart and I've used it several times in the past year. It's a fitting way to train with what I'd consider the two most valuable exercises that can be done.

What do you think? What are the exercises we couldn't live without?

Why I train... and why I'm not writing as much

2010-11-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

The header on this blog reads that I post two new entries a week. I don't know if my regular readers have noticed but for the past month or so, I haven't met my self-imposed goal for blog entries. Longer-term readers probably also notice that around this time of year, my blog output starts to drop off. This is my really busy time at work. This year, it's exacerbated by a key employee walking out at pretty much the worst possible time: right now. So, my life just got more chaotic, my free time shaved down, and my overall stress level elevated.

We all have these kind of times in our lives and especially in our training goals. A lot of strength trainers build their training around sports. Even those who don't do sports model their training around those who do. After all, goals are inherent in sports. Routines get crafted, equipment is acquired, training environment is established and modified to suit the goals.

I put up two goals for myself this year. The first one was to climb a 3" thick rope. The second was to complete Andy Patterson's and Michael Rideout's Magic 200 challenge. I finished off that one but the rope climb has been elusive. Basically, my ability to train with rope hinges on availability of finding someplace where I can hang a rope at least 14' off the ground. Or, more specifically, do I have a forklift available to hang my rope? That hasn't been a given this year.

I like challenges as much as any of us, don't get me wrong. Thing is, I can't afford to revolve my training around a fixed goal. If I hinged my ability to train towards a goal as the whole reason why I train in the first place...well... I might not be doing much of anything in the way of regimented, intense movement.

Still, there's a goal that I always keep in mind and I train towards: I want to keep the aging process away for as long as possible. Okay, I haven't even gotten to 30 yet but I'm still keeping it in mind. Looking ahead, I don't want to be that person who has the long, painful decline into death. I don't subscribe to the notion that such a life is an impossibility. That's why I look up to people like Jack Lalanne so much.

Oh... good article...along the same lines as what I'm talking about!

The nice thing about this goal is that I can always train towards it and keep it in sight, no matter how little I have to train with or how much my training environment is altered.

In the meantime, I'll try to get some more stuff posted soon. If you'll excuse me, I've got to get ready to head west to Sacramento...

You, the Caveman

2010-11-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

Much of modern humanity has done something that's presumably unique in Earth's history. There are enclaves on this planet that have managed to bend nature to their will rather than the other way around. If you're reading this, then chances are good that you don't have to worry about killing, catching, digging up, or gathering your food. Chances are also good that many, many generations of your family tree haven't had to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The notion of living off the land is merely fodder for dreary, post-apocalyptic movies as far as you're concerned.
There's just one problem: our bodies haven't adapted to this new reality of this environment nearly as fast as we've managed to shape it. While the thoughts and worries of day-to-day survival drifts farther out of our minds, our body still operates on that premise. Where that becomes problematic is our lack of realization of this and how it relates to how we take care of our bodies. That's why I don't think that articles about how cavemen function are hype. If we're going figure out how to live, we need to understand the "why's" of how our body works.

We may not eat like him, but we still function like him!

I've read several articles in the past year and a half about how our we get fat. I've forgotten most of what I read but I didn't miss the bigger picture: our bodies have a lot of different ways to get fat. There's easily a half-dozen hormones that could be released that trigger the growth of blubber. Maybe more. The take-away lesson: Every body loves fat and it does anything it can to get it! That's why arguing about low calorie vs. low carb dieting is pointless. High calorie diets will make you fat. So will high carb diets. Fat is the body's energy bank account when the food runs away or dies off for the season. Look around outside if the leaves are falling off the trees where you live: every animal's doing everything it can to get fat! We used to have to do that too. Our body hasn't gotten the memo. It's still trying to do everything it can to get fat.

This also dispels another, bullshit notion: being fat is genetic. Well, not exactly. It might be genetic, yes. Thing is: WE'RE ALL DESIGNED TO GET FAT!

We can't leave out movement either. Face it: too many of us don't move enough. I guess the modern world assumed that after working ourselves to death (which we don't do these days... NOT BY A LONGSHOT!) by our mid 40's for the first 10,000 years of our existence, life would be heaven... if. we. barely. moved. at. all. We move so little that we seemed to have forgotten how to move properly. So, when the sedentary decide that it's a damn-good time to start moving, they turn to... I can understand why most people turn to some kind of long-slow distance running as a means of re-igniting the desire to move. It's one of the few activities that you don't really need anything to do. You don't need a machine or gear (although "they" have convinced a lot of people that they do!) to do it. There's just one problem: that's not what we were built to do! We've got two basic types of muscle: fast twitch and slow twitch. Many of us know this, and we know what they're all about. In case you don't...

Fast Twitch=powerful, intense, contractions. last no longer than 60 seconds
Slow Twitch=much less intense and powerful contractions. lasts for a long time.

There is no such thing as a medium twitch muscle fiber. When we were troglydtes, we journeyed over massive swaths of land over a period of days or weeks or we moved with great intensity for very brief periods of time. We weren't designed to move kinda fast for sort-of long periods of time. The first Marathon runner died after he finished. So, if you're new (again) to moving remember this when you exercise: move in a strong, intense manner or move very, very slowly. Forget the in-between shit!

While you're strength training keep this in mind too: if you're trying to get as strong as possible, you're failing. No, really... you're probably not even using a fraction of your muscle power. That's what you don't hear about much when discussing different types of strength: absolute strength. We only contract our muscles with a fraction of it's full-force potential. The mind only releases this extra power when it senses a life-or-death need to do so. Releasing this kind of power usually injures tendons and ligaments. This explains the mom picking up the car stories... or The Mighty Atom. Or, as so wonderfully chronicled in the Discovery Channel in The Human Body: Pushing the Limits(<----THIS IS A HINT...BUY THIS!!! ),the story of the guy who pushed a 1,000 lbs rock off his chest to avoid being simultaneously crushed and thrown off a cliff...

Let's just play devil's advocate for a moment: what if you could? When the mind senses a need, it will force the body to do it's bidding. That guy who threw the boulder off his chest tore some muscles up and gave himself the mother lode of tendinitis doing so. Compared to dying, that's a fair trade-off. Is getting a too-big weight off the ground, with the same results, for the sake of pride a worthwhile trade-off?

We can verify a lot of conclusions about how our body works by examining why it would need to work that way. Even as we advance our technology and modify the relationship between ourselves and our environment, we need to keep in mind that our past is still alive and well within our bodies, regardless of whether or not these adaptations serve a purpose or not anymore. One thing that we haven't been able to bend to our will is our body's function and regardless of what many say, science doesn't hold any promise of changing that. We still have to adapt our behavior to our bodies.

The Death Walk

2010-11-17T04:03:00.000-08:00

Is it called a duck walk or an elephant walk? Since I'm out here in the world, strength training usually not in a gym and almost always alone, I don't know what some people may have dubbed certain exercise moves. I figured someone must have grabbed onto the ends of a sandbag, picked it up, and walked with the bag at knee-level before I thought of it. I just had never heard of anyone doing it, or what they might call it. So, I figured that the elephant walk would be as good of a name as any. David Lemanczyk informed me that, in Strongman, it's referred to as the duck walk. He did agree with my thought that "elephant," sounded much more cool and tough tough than, "duck."

Dave's one of those guys you just don't want to believe when he shows up on a forum board. 6'3", 200-whatever pound guy who works out with a 170 lbs sandbag, can partially squat 1,000 lbs, and can do a one mile, 100 lbs sandbag carry in about 15 minutes? Yeah, WHATEVER... JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER, LYING, FUCKING GEEK 17 YEAR OLD WUSSY ON THE FORUMS! A closer review of his web site and his youtube page reveals...

Dave lemanczyk is a 6'3" 200-whatever-lbs guy who works out with a 170 lbs sand bag, can partially squat 1,000 lbs, and can carry a 100 lbs sandbag one mile in about 15 minutes. No keyboard-warrior here!

Anyway, Dave reported doing this on Rosstraining about a week ago and it really inspired me. As you've probably noticed, I've really gotten into working out with sandbags lately. I've done a lot of carry work with them but usually preceded by some sort of squat work, usually a Zercher squat to zercher carry. By the time I'm getting to walking with the sandbag, my upper back and arms are half-gone from holding the bag, cutting back on how far I can carry the sandbag. I usually only go 50-60 paces.

Dave put the idea in my head to do some sort of longer-distance carry work-only. If you haven't figured it out, I'm kind of opinionated and I'm a strong individualist who likes to do things my way. Besides, I couldn't decide HOW I wanted to do a long-distance sandbag, farmer's walk. There are a lot of ways to hold a sandbag. I have the problem with choosing ice cream flavors too. I decided to take the same route that I do with ice cream: all of them.

That's how I came up with this workout that decided to give an even-cooler appellation: the death walk. I do this workout on weekends when I'm killing time at work. The job site that I'm working on has a circular driveway that measures in at 210 paces, one time around. So, every time I went around, I did a different walk with the sandbag, alternating between the easier ones and the harder ones. This isn't too hard to determine: farmer's walks that place the weight over the spine, closer to the body, and don't use the arms and grip as much are easier. Here's the batting order:

Across the Shoulders
Overhead
left shoulder
Elephant Walk
Right shoulder
Zercher
Across the Shoulders
Bear Hug

Obviously, the three easier carries are pretty self-explanatory. In the event that I'm double-labeling some of these, I'll explain further...

Overhead
This is probably the hardest of the bunch. Carrying a bag overhead really does a number on probably every muscle originating or inserting into the scapula. What's less obvious is the the incredible need for wrist and forearms stability while doing this. Plus, you can't get this one over with fast. Walk too fast and that bag gets harder to hold steady! No, you have to suck up the pain on this one and walk more deliberately.

Elephant Walk
While the Overhead might be the hardest, the Elephant is the most annoying. Trying to hold that bag at, or slightly above, the knee fries the biceps and the grip. Letting it fall below the knee dramatically shortens the length of your stride. Either way, the constant slam of your legs into the bag makes the bag move a lot, making your core work over-time. Did I say it was annoying? Too gentle of a description...IT'S FLAT-OUT MISERABLE!

Zercher
I'm going to keep up the tradition of calling any exercise with this arm positioning the Zercher. That way, I'm pretty certain everyone will know what I'm talking about. Either way, this is a good one for the biceps and the Traps, UPPER, MID, AND LOWER!

Regardless of the way that the sandbag is carried, I find that I get the most out of any of them by trying my damnest to maintain proper posture as much as possible. This detail makes every sandbag walk, no matter how "easy"... hard work! No sagging shoulders, bent wrists, or slouching under the weight! It's also probably a good idea for your overall health. If posture can't be maintained, then a lightened sandbag might be in the order. In my not-humble, not-professional opinion, You should use a sandbag that's borderline-really-fucking-difficult to carry for two minutes.

This is the kind of conditioning work that I like doing the most. Carrying a heavy, awkward object has got to be the epitome of the often abused-misused term, "real world functional strength." I have to take my hat of to Dave-L for giving me the kick in the ass to realize that carry work with the sandbag can be an awesome workout, all on it's own.