Despite the piles of crap that have a tendency to accumulate there, I still like reading articles on T-Nation. The only ones that I truly value to any degree are usually written by Dave Tate, Jim Wendler, and Dan John. In other words, if they have to post an abbreviation-ridden description of who they are, chances are pretty good that I don't find a whole lot noteworthy in what they're saying.
That rule still held solid when some guy named Martin Rooney posted an article that popped up on my Facebook wall telling me how to train like a man... for the 7th time. Apparently, training like a man involved using a shitload of furniture and machinery that was only good for one or two lifts and, of course, these are going extinct because of ellipticals, kettlebells, ropes, and spinning classes.
Okay, I like the Roman Chair. That one should stay put in every gym, as far as I (a blogger who pollutes the whole gym scene) am concerned. The rest of the real estate-wasting stuff, well, why is anyone surprised that some machine that was the latest fitness trend 40 years ago got moved out in favor of yet another trendy pile of shiny new junk?
Call me crazy but anything designed to be used for only one or two exercises isn't going to last very long. Exercises do come and go. Too many people are going to follow what the latest strength hero who bursts onto the scene does to get his strength. When someone engineers a gym toy around today's muscle idol, don't be surprised when it fades away with that lunk. It's a never ending cycle.
Something that can be used for lots of different exercises justifiably both has a better chance and deserves to survive. Call my crazy but that's the stuff worth populating a gym space with. Were I to spend my money, my time and my effort on equipment I'd much rather have ropes, kettlebells and suspension straps in my place of muscle and mind. It worked so well for building big, strong bodies many years before we were convinced that powerful bodies were built like cheap cars with machinery.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
My Thoughts on Lance Armstrong
It must be both rewarding and annoying at the same time that after so many years, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) finally skewered Lance Armstrong for doping in his Tour De France. After rising above all of the dirty athletes to become the most dominant dirty athlete the TDF has ever known, they still couldn't seem to produce the magical positive test to prove that he was a drug users all along. Still, they can use their odd power to say that he was. It seems to me like such a hollow victory.
Yes, I firmly believe that Lance Armstrong used drugs to produce his record seven straight Tour De France victories. I have less evidence than the USADA has but since I'm just a puke with a computer and a blog address, I'm not burdened with any particular requirements to prove what I think. I just have the ability to connect the dots. Ironically, this isn't too far away from what the USADA has.
We can all agree that the Tour is a bike race, the most prestigious bike race in the world. There are other titles it has. One might be the most obvious example of a doped-to-the-gills sports events there is. Another title could also be a voluntary foray into a chronic wasting disease without dying...unless you used performance enhancing drugs. The simple truth about the TDF is that the speed of which the competitors race over such a distance and for the period of time they do it in would kill even the best non-chemically enhanced endurance athletes from muscle destruction alone. These competitors couldn't possibly do it without drugs. Their bodies would give out like a cancer or HIV patient. So, a seven-time winner would have to be doing something to rise above and take the title.
Another oddity about Lance Armstrong is his height and weight. When we read that he was 5'9 and 160 lbs at his peak, we don't think anything of it because it's so extra-average for an American Man. By professional cylists' standards, he might as well be Lou Ferrigno. Most of these guys on bikes are mighty midgets, most being 5'3"-5'5" and barely over 130 lbs. The extra size should put him at a disadvantage since most smaller people with less muscle mass to deliver oxygen to should render him in the bottom of the pack rather than a record-breaking run as king. Something odd was going on...
Going back to alternative titles to give to the Tour, a third title would be the longest-running, doped-up sporting event ever. Indeed, people have been cheating by taking things to win this race almost as long as the race has existed. To my knowledge, the earliest use of arsenic as a performance enhancer in sports was used in the Tour back in the early 1900's. Apparently, before it kills you, it gives your much-beloved, muscle-moving ATP quite a kick into overdrive.
So, taken into account that Lance Armstrong produced unheard of dominance in a race ridden with PED's for nearly as long as the race has existed, it's hard not to reason that he wasn't dirty as the rest of them were. Perhaps the flagrancy of his dominance and the fact that he couldn't be caught after all of the blood n' piss samples were in after the race was just too much for the powers-that-be to tolerate. Something had to be done.
What we can take away from this is that in the world of professional sports, there are few clean miracles left out there. We shouldn't burden ourselves with dreams of being just like these people unless we're ready to scour the Earth for the best in muscle-enhancing drugs to do get there. This is just another reminder that these people take bodies that most of us don't done have and fill them with substances we probably (and hopefully) don't want to take. That's not a path worth going down.
Yes, I firmly believe that Lance Armstrong used drugs to produce his record seven straight Tour De France victories. I have less evidence than the USADA has but since I'm just a puke with a computer and a blog address, I'm not burdened with any particular requirements to prove what I think. I just have the ability to connect the dots. Ironically, this isn't too far away from what the USADA has.
We can all agree that the Tour is a bike race, the most prestigious bike race in the world. There are other titles it has. One might be the most obvious example of a doped-to-the-gills sports events there is. Another title could also be a voluntary foray into a chronic wasting disease without dying...unless you used performance enhancing drugs. The simple truth about the TDF is that the speed of which the competitors race over such a distance and for the period of time they do it in would kill even the best non-chemically enhanced endurance athletes from muscle destruction alone. These competitors couldn't possibly do it without drugs. Their bodies would give out like a cancer or HIV patient. So, a seven-time winner would have to be doing something to rise above and take the title.
Another oddity about Lance Armstrong is his height and weight. When we read that he was 5'9 and 160 lbs at his peak, we don't think anything of it because it's so extra-average for an American Man. By professional cylists' standards, he might as well be Lou Ferrigno. Most of these guys on bikes are mighty midgets, most being 5'3"-5'5" and barely over 130 lbs. The extra size should put him at a disadvantage since most smaller people with less muscle mass to deliver oxygen to should render him in the bottom of the pack rather than a record-breaking run as king. Something odd was going on...
Going back to alternative titles to give to the Tour, a third title would be the longest-running, doped-up sporting event ever. Indeed, people have been cheating by taking things to win this race almost as long as the race has existed. To my knowledge, the earliest use of arsenic as a performance enhancer in sports was used in the Tour back in the early 1900's. Apparently, before it kills you, it gives your much-beloved, muscle-moving ATP quite a kick into overdrive.
So, taken into account that Lance Armstrong produced unheard of dominance in a race ridden with PED's for nearly as long as the race has existed, it's hard not to reason that he wasn't dirty as the rest of them were. Perhaps the flagrancy of his dominance and the fact that he couldn't be caught after all of the blood n' piss samples were in after the race was just too much for the powers-that-be to tolerate. Something had to be done.
What we can take away from this is that in the world of professional sports, there are few clean miracles left out there. We shouldn't burden ourselves with dreams of being just like these people unless we're ready to scour the Earth for the best in muscle-enhancing drugs to do get there. This is just another reminder that these people take bodies that most of us don't done have and fill them with substances we probably (and hopefully) don't want to take. That's not a path worth going down.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Unilateralism
One of the greatest sins in my book is the disregard, and even contempt, that I see out there for any sort of exercises that are single-limbed in approach. I know where it comes from too: you just can't move the same amount of weight with one one limb that you can move with two. In the world of weights where the most iron moved is the sole measure of value, a unilateral move is just shit.
I take a different viewpoint. As I've said before, weight is simply a means to increasing the difficulty of the movement. If the movement needs a lot of weight to make it hard then isn't the movement itself a little too easy? A movement that requires less weight to be considered very difficult is actually a more efficient use of the weight available to you. Those of you blessed with piles of iron obviously don't see the value in this. In a way, you're kind of the strength training version of pampered house pets. Welcome to the jungle! Out here, we learn how to make the most of the least. Unilateral work is the way we can do that.
Ben Bruno wrote a pretty good article over at T-Nation where he described his year-long experiment with training his lower body, one leg at a time. Apparently, he did this in response to a back injury. The single-legged approach was more kind to his back. I've heard this approach parroted by a couple of sports-based strength trainers. I can't comment on it since I don't have an injured back and I haven't done a lot of the work he described but he obviously learned how to get some serious leg training within his limitations. Iron junkies might balk at the notion but it still worked very well.
My experience with unilateral leg training for the past few months has been pretty simple: Pistols. Honestly, I suck at them. Granted I suck a lot less now than I sucked in January when I admitted to myself that the fact that I look like a fool while attempting these was simply unacceptable to a guy who runs a "bodyweight blog." Still, I admitted it and I think that's a lot of people's problem with these: they don't want to admit that they don't do these because they can't do these. Pistols have a way of telling the mind a story of a trainee who spends too much time sitting down, getting tight and stiff and then spends their precious gym time lying to themselves that there's something wrong with muscles in and around the hips that don't impress girls too much. So, they ignore them, throwing them into the trash heap of, "they're just a trick". I decided to take a giant shit on this scenario and get my ass to the grass on one leg.
When we move to single-limb, upstairs version, we come to one of my favorite ways to train the upper body, as well as another reason why unilateral work is so awesome: it's a great, great way to strength train under time constraints. Just simply blast one limb, doing a movement until you're exhausted. All you've got to do is break long enough to catch your breath (a little) and then do the other side. It's possible to get a lot of work in a very short period of time training like this.
We began with the wonders of unilateral training's ability to make great training with a limited amount of weight to move. A deeper exploration reveals that there is a lot of other benefits to this approach to progressive strength training. They than work around injury to get stronger and expose weaknesses in need of strengthening just as well as they can serve as a means to make what's strong even stronger. That kind of approach deserves more recognition than it's currently getting. Don't make the same error of not realizing a good thing when you see it.
I take a different viewpoint. As I've said before, weight is simply a means to increasing the difficulty of the movement. If the movement needs a lot of weight to make it hard then isn't the movement itself a little too easy? A movement that requires less weight to be considered very difficult is actually a more efficient use of the weight available to you. Those of you blessed with piles of iron obviously don't see the value in this. In a way, you're kind of the strength training version of pampered house pets. Welcome to the jungle! Out here, we learn how to make the most of the least. Unilateral work is the way we can do that.
Ben Bruno wrote a pretty good article over at T-Nation where he described his year-long experiment with training his lower body, one leg at a time. Apparently, he did this in response to a back injury. The single-legged approach was more kind to his back. I've heard this approach parroted by a couple of sports-based strength trainers. I can't comment on it since I don't have an injured back and I haven't done a lot of the work he described but he obviously learned how to get some serious leg training within his limitations. Iron junkies might balk at the notion but it still worked very well.
This guy seemingly never takes the weighted vest off... allegedly not even for sex.
When we move to single-limb, upstairs version, we come to one of my favorite ways to train the upper body, as well as another reason why unilateral work is so awesome: it's a great, great way to strength train under time constraints. Just simply blast one limb, doing a movement until you're exhausted. All you've got to do is break long enough to catch your breath (a little) and then do the other side. It's possible to get a lot of work in a very short period of time training like this.
Oh, and training on one arm can be brutally difficult!
Thursday, July 26, 2012
"Modern" Gyms Stink...like third world countries
I've got an interesting question for my readers: how many times to you hear about something pathetically wrong often but never actually see it for yourself? Then, when you see it, you're still shocked in spite of knowing it was like that all along? I'm talking about that feeling you get when you hear that third world countries can be real shitholes that make you appreciate what you have but it never really sinks in until you're actually there to see and smell how bad it really sucks. Wow, it really was true all along! Learning about it doesn't replace the shock of actually seeing it, does it?
On a much less serious level, I've had that kind of shock that I still can't get over when I step into the local fitness club to take my son for infant swimming lessons. I've been to this place before and I know that they're all a sad excuse for a place to get fit. Up until this point, it's been a long, long time. I've spent far more of my time tearing through all kinds of weird BW variations, sandbag work, and truck pushing in countless sewer plants, parking lots, hotel rooms, truck stops, farmers fields and my own basement. So, when I arrive to get my son accustomed to swimming, I pretty much feel like I've landed on Mars.
As I watch the people waddle around in clothing of various levels of... FUCKING-GROSS-TIGHT... It strikes me like a Halloween party. It's a place where everyone shows up, dresses up like athletes, and play-pretends that they're getting in shape.
This isn't a criticism of playing or using a little bit of imagination when training. I think that the way lots of people train is boring as hell and could use a little creative thought. Put that into how you get into shape, not into pretending that you're getting there.
As I continue to try to breathe some artificial respiration into the oxygen-starved brain of the modern fitness industrial complex, I can't understand how so many shaved apes never notice how bad their overall posture sucks. Considering that most of these places have enough mirrors to start a fun house, and that most of the people going to the gyms spend way too much time walking around naked, I'm struck that they never notice that their bodies are starting to look like the a weeping pine tree.
The people in the cycling classes seem to be the worst culprits, for obvious reasons. The people who use the weight room aren't far behind. These people are easy to spot: rounded shoulders, perfect pecs and abs, and skinny legs. I might be dipping my toes in the dirty pond of broscience but I'm of the opinion that the mark of a good workout should result in you naturally standing and walking with good posture. Too many people wreck their bodies by sitting slouched over. That shouldn't be replicated in any place devoted to health.
Why is it ALWAYS the people you NEVER want to see naked in the gym the ones you end up seeing?
As my cranial pressure-release valve slowly begins to sputter rather than roar, I now realize that I'm probably telling everyone about things that they already know... and despise. I appreciate you bearing with me. If you're not one of those people then I urge you to take a really objective look around your McFitness make-believe health club. These places have everything backwards. Instead of doing body/soul-challenging, interesting and inventive work that gets results, most everyone there is engaged in a bad fantasy world of doing unimaginative, brain-dead motion that doesn't do jack-shit towards moving anyone closer to great health, strength, or even a half-decent looking body. You've smelled the stink of this pile of trash.
It's time to move on.
On a much less serious level, I've had that kind of shock that I still can't get over when I step into the local fitness club to take my son for infant swimming lessons. I've been to this place before and I know that they're all a sad excuse for a place to get fit. Up until this point, it's been a long, long time. I've spent far more of my time tearing through all kinds of weird BW variations, sandbag work, and truck pushing in countless sewer plants, parking lots, hotel rooms, truck stops, farmers fields and my own basement. So, when I arrive to get my son accustomed to swimming, I pretty much feel like I've landed on Mars.
As I watch the people waddle around in clothing of various levels of... FUCKING-GROSS-TIGHT... It strikes me like a Halloween party. It's a place where everyone shows up, dresses up like athletes, and play-pretends that they're getting in shape.
 |
| Let's pretend we're punching! What bullshit! Punches need to be thrown with extreme violence, even if it's just at the air!
|
As I continue to try to breathe some artificial respiration into the oxygen-starved brain of the modern fitness industrial complex, I can't understand how so many shaved apes never notice how bad their overall posture sucks. Considering that most of these places have enough mirrors to start a fun house, and that most of the people going to the gyms spend way too much time walking around naked, I'm struck that they never notice that their bodies are starting to look like the a weeping pine tree.
The people in the cycling classes seem to be the worst culprits, for obvious reasons. The people who use the weight room aren't far behind. These people are easy to spot: rounded shoulders, perfect pecs and abs, and skinny legs. I might be dipping my toes in the dirty pond of broscience but I'm of the opinion that the mark of a good workout should result in you naturally standing and walking with good posture. Too many people wreck their bodies by sitting slouched over. That shouldn't be replicated in any place devoted to health.
Why is it ALWAYS the people you NEVER want to see naked in the gym the ones you end up seeing?
As my cranial pressure-release valve slowly begins to sputter rather than roar, I now realize that I'm probably telling everyone about things that they already know... and despise. I appreciate you bearing with me. If you're not one of those people then I urge you to take a really objective look around your McFitness make-believe health club. These places have everything backwards. Instead of doing body/soul-challenging, interesting and inventive work that gets results, most everyone there is engaged in a bad fantasy world of doing unimaginative, brain-dead motion that doesn't do jack-shit towards moving anyone closer to great health, strength, or even a half-decent looking body. You've smelled the stink of this pile of trash.
It's time to move on.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Supersetting Pyramids
Between bouncing around various welfare-ravaged shithole towns in New Hampshire, raising a child, keeping a wife happy, and desperately trying to make more money than I shell out in both work and life I've realized something:
I haven't posted here in over two months.
Thank you for hanging around. As I've darted around the Northeast United States, I've managed to keep some semblance of training going. Necessity of trying to put together something that satisfies my urge for intense muscle-grinding burn in a unique manner is still alive and well. Recently, it manifested itself in a quick routine that worked so well that I thought I'd share it with the masses.
I love supersetting with the upper body. I've made that clear in the past. I've a few other ways to organize a workout in the past, including pyramids. I didn't like those so much. I know it's not right but I feel like excessive rest when training is procrastinating. Then, it hit me: why not combine supersetting with pyramids?
So, here's my idea: I picked an upper body push and an upper body pull exercise and do a superset, adding a rep to each new set until I got to the point where I couldn't add another rep of either the push or the pull. Then, I just worked my way back down. Since I didn't have much time to work out, I selected Diamond Handstand Push-ups and Thick-bar, Close-Grip Chin-ups, knowing that the rep count on these two wouldn't go very high.
I managed to get to 8 reps before my triceps just couldn't grind anymore.
So, that worked out to 64 reps of each movement, 128 reps in roughly 15 minutes. That certainly qualifies as good work in a limited amount of time in my book!
I haven't posted here in over two months.
Thank you for hanging around. As I've darted around the Northeast United States, I've managed to keep some semblance of training going. Necessity of trying to put together something that satisfies my urge for intense muscle-grinding burn in a unique manner is still alive and well. Recently, it manifested itself in a quick routine that worked so well that I thought I'd share it with the masses.
I love supersetting with the upper body. I've made that clear in the past. I've a few other ways to organize a workout in the past, including pyramids. I didn't like those so much. I know it's not right but I feel like excessive rest when training is procrastinating. Then, it hit me: why not combine supersetting with pyramids?
So, here's my idea: I picked an upper body push and an upper body pull exercise and do a superset, adding a rep to each new set until I got to the point where I couldn't add another rep of either the push or the pull. Then, I just worked my way back down. Since I didn't have much time to work out, I selected Diamond Handstand Push-ups and Thick-bar, Close-Grip Chin-ups, knowing that the rep count on these two wouldn't go very high.
I managed to get to 8 reps before my triceps just couldn't grind anymore.
So, that worked out to 64 reps of each movement, 128 reps in roughly 15 minutes. That certainly qualifies as good work in a limited amount of time in my book!
Friday, May 18, 2012
You Keep Asking. Here it is: How I put together my routine
That kind of puzzles me too. I'm not sure why people are so interested in how I put together my routines. I do have a few protocols for putting them together but it's not like I've built revolutionary quantities of muscle mass lately or done amazing things to be picked apart on a Youtube video by the ass-monkey experts using my current programming guidelines. If you want to know what I do, then get ready to be blown away. Right. Now...
UPPER/LOWER BODY SPLIT ROUTINE
Profound and innovative? Pretty much like everything else that gets written out there about strength training. I do have some things that I keep in mind when I decide how I'm going to put together my routines. There's probably considerations that we never see in any of the strength sports programming out there that I take very seriously. I'm sure they're things that you have to cope with too. Items like time constraints, being able to go work the next day and perform normally. Having limited, or even no access to a gym or specific equipment. It's easy to program strength training when you have minimal commitments to anything else but yourself. With that kind of life, you can afford to mold your life to your training. For the rest of us, life happens and it's not quite so easy and the training molds more to the rest of our life. With an infant son, my training is, more than ever, all about getting a good workout under a time constraint. 30-40 minutes to myself, when I'm at home, is a luxurious amount of workout time. I can get more than that...if I'm traveling. So, then I work with limited equipment issues. No matter what I do, I do have a labor-intensive job so whatever I do working out can't drain me to the point were I move slow and painfully the next day.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday are my upper body days. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are for the lower regions. Sunday is my goof-off day and I do whatever I feel like doing. I try to work out everyday. It doesn't always happen, but I get a B+ for effort. As long as I moderate, picking easy and hard days, training every day hasn't been a problem for me. Things get grey when I try to work out twice a day, every day. That taxes the amount of recovery I'm capable of with 4-6 hours of sleep.
When I do my upper body work on Mondays and Fridays, I superset push and pull movements, doing two or three supersets, each one with more volume than the next. I've found out that my upper body can do a lot in a short period of time without worrying about over-doing it. That's one thing that I love about supersetting: less downtime. You "rest" by switching to another set of muscles to workout. It really cuts down on the amount of time spent training. On Wednesday, I do only pushing movements. These I'll do with more of a conventional sets and reps. No supersetting here since this day usually amounts to a shoulder day. There aren't too many push movements that don't hit the shoulders. So, I allow for some extra rest on these.
Lower body days aren't done with the same kind of mad dash mentality that my upper body days have. I've done this in the past and spent a day or two limping around with sore muscles as a result. This isn't fun if you walk several miles or climb ladders all day (both of which I do a lot). I recall reading somewhere that Tom Platz used to count out the number of steps he'd have to take daily so he could minimize this walking after abusing his legs with his infamous leg training. Do you have that kind of capability? Neither do I. As it so happens, two of my (ongoing) goals are to get better at pistols and be able to do glute ham raises. This has been much of my leg training, starting with the pistols in low reps and then moving to some GHR work (lately, 5 partials plus 5 eccentric GHR's to a set, one right after another). I find that when I'm trying to master new movements, it's better to minimize the whole, "most volume in the least time", approch to training. So lately, these days aren't as rugged on my body. This is where I kind of wander off the conventional upper/lower split plantation because I also do some Two-Hands Anyhow work after I finish up with the pistols and the GHR.
Although I'm trying to master these two lower body moves, I've been known to throw in a heavy squat day once a week for a break. I like doing belt squats, zerchers, and some squat-press with two kettlebells. Regardless, I don't forget that my legs have muscles in the front, back and sides.
Sundays are my blank slate. You might catch me doing all core work, complexes, deadlifting, or whatever sounds interesting to me at that particular time.
This summary and outline is meant to be nothing more than my story about how I do what I do to stay strong with some very real world constraints. I'm still a huge advocate of getting smart enough at training to put together a routine for yourself. Nobody else's routine is going to take into consideration all of the little idiosyncrasies of my life. Maybe that's why I find the inquiries about how I do what I do odd. Still, there's always something to be learned from other people's methods and hopefully you can find a few of my pointers about routine construction useful.
A slice of my week working out...
Monday
Switch Grip Pull-ups, 8 reps
Diamond Handstand Push-up, 8 reps... repeat 4 times
Decline-fingertip push-ups, 25 reps
Sandbag (87 lbs) rows, 25 rep... repeat 4 times
Tuesday
Pistols, 6 sets 5 reps per leg
Hold bottom position of pistols for 15 seconds, twice each leg
GHR work (described above) 4 sets
Two Hands Anyhow, 3 each side
Wednesday
One-arm push-ups, feet < shoulder-width apart, 3 sets 5 reps each arm
Push-ups with sandbag on my back, 4 sets 10 reps
Handstand push-ups 3 sets 15 reps
Thursday .... somehow I got stuck watching the kid while my wife went shopping with her mother and friends. Forced day off!
Friday
Ladder Pull-ups, 8 each side
One arm push-ups on suspension rig 8 each side ...repeat 5 times
Sandbag clean and press 10 reps
sandbag rows, 20 reps... repeat 3 times
Saturday... same as Tuesday
Sunday
300 lbs deadlifts, 6 sets 6 reps
150 lbs belt squats 8 sets 8 reps
pull-ups, wide grip 10 sets 10 reps
UPPER/LOWER BODY SPLIT ROUTINE
Profound and innovative? Pretty much like everything else that gets written out there about strength training. I do have some things that I keep in mind when I decide how I'm going to put together my routines. There's probably considerations that we never see in any of the strength sports programming out there that I take very seriously. I'm sure they're things that you have to cope with too. Items like time constraints, being able to go work the next day and perform normally. Having limited, or even no access to a gym or specific equipment. It's easy to program strength training when you have minimal commitments to anything else but yourself. With that kind of life, you can afford to mold your life to your training. For the rest of us, life happens and it's not quite so easy and the training molds more to the rest of our life. With an infant son, my training is, more than ever, all about getting a good workout under a time constraint. 30-40 minutes to myself, when I'm at home, is a luxurious amount of workout time. I can get more than that...if I'm traveling. So, then I work with limited equipment issues. No matter what I do, I do have a labor-intensive job so whatever I do working out can't drain me to the point were I move slow and painfully the next day.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday are my upper body days. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are for the lower regions. Sunday is my goof-off day and I do whatever I feel like doing. I try to work out everyday. It doesn't always happen, but I get a B+ for effort. As long as I moderate, picking easy and hard days, training every day hasn't been a problem for me. Things get grey when I try to work out twice a day, every day. That taxes the amount of recovery I'm capable of with 4-6 hours of sleep.
When I do my upper body work on Mondays and Fridays, I superset push and pull movements, doing two or three supersets, each one with more volume than the next. I've found out that my upper body can do a lot in a short period of time without worrying about over-doing it. That's one thing that I love about supersetting: less downtime. You "rest" by switching to another set of muscles to workout. It really cuts down on the amount of time spent training. On Wednesday, I do only pushing movements. These I'll do with more of a conventional sets and reps. No supersetting here since this day usually amounts to a shoulder day. There aren't too many push movements that don't hit the shoulders. So, I allow for some extra rest on these.
Lower body days aren't done with the same kind of mad dash mentality that my upper body days have. I've done this in the past and spent a day or two limping around with sore muscles as a result. This isn't fun if you walk several miles or climb ladders all day (both of which I do a lot). I recall reading somewhere that Tom Platz used to count out the number of steps he'd have to take daily so he could minimize this walking after abusing his legs with his infamous leg training. Do you have that kind of capability? Neither do I. As it so happens, two of my (ongoing) goals are to get better at pistols and be able to do glute ham raises. This has been much of my leg training, starting with the pistols in low reps and then moving to some GHR work (lately, 5 partials plus 5 eccentric GHR's to a set, one right after another). I find that when I'm trying to master new movements, it's better to minimize the whole, "most volume in the least time", approch to training. So lately, these days aren't as rugged on my body. This is where I kind of wander off the conventional upper/lower split plantation because I also do some Two-Hands Anyhow work after I finish up with the pistols and the GHR.
Although I'm trying to master these two lower body moves, I've been known to throw in a heavy squat day once a week for a break. I like doing belt squats, zerchers, and some squat-press with two kettlebells. Regardless, I don't forget that my legs have muscles in the front, back and sides.
Sundays are my blank slate. You might catch me doing all core work, complexes, deadlifting, or whatever sounds interesting to me at that particular time.
This summary and outline is meant to be nothing more than my story about how I do what I do to stay strong with some very real world constraints. I'm still a huge advocate of getting smart enough at training to put together a routine for yourself. Nobody else's routine is going to take into consideration all of the little idiosyncrasies of my life. Maybe that's why I find the inquiries about how I do what I do odd. Still, there's always something to be learned from other people's methods and hopefully you can find a few of my pointers about routine construction useful.
A slice of my week working out...
Monday
Switch Grip Pull-ups, 8 reps
Diamond Handstand Push-up, 8 reps... repeat 4 times
Decline-fingertip push-ups, 25 reps
Sandbag (87 lbs) rows, 25 rep... repeat 4 times
Tuesday
Pistols, 6 sets 5 reps per leg
Hold bottom position of pistols for 15 seconds, twice each leg
GHR work (described above) 4 sets
Two Hands Anyhow, 3 each side
Wednesday
One-arm push-ups, feet < shoulder-width apart, 3 sets 5 reps each arm
Push-ups with sandbag on my back, 4 sets 10 reps
Handstand push-ups 3 sets 15 reps
Thursday .... somehow I got stuck watching the kid while my wife went shopping with her mother and friends. Forced day off!
Friday
Ladder Pull-ups, 8 each side
One arm push-ups on suspension rig 8 each side ...repeat 5 times
Sandbag clean and press 10 reps
sandbag rows, 20 reps... repeat 3 times
Saturday... same as Tuesday
Sunday
300 lbs deadlifts, 6 sets 6 reps
150 lbs belt squats 8 sets 8 reps
pull-ups, wide grip 10 sets 10 reps
Friday, May 4, 2012
So, what is practical?
A while back, I mentioned that I'd love to get rid of the hideously over-abused adjective, "functional," in relation to any kind of physical training. I still think that a far better term for the idea that everyone keeps getting at but uses this increasingly stupid term incorrectly is practical. As far as I'm concerned, that implies that there's some good sense in doing whatever it is you're doing.
That last post zeroed in on that dumb-ass Nautilus Lat machine that worked that piece of meat-real estate without using the hands (oh, GREAT IDEA THERE). Let's back that out a bit and ask ourselves what's practical to do in the gym that has some carry-over to real life? That's a huge, loaded question that I'll break down into more posts in the future. For now, I'm going to zero in on something that's crossing my grey matter at the moment: rep range.
What goes on in a gym and what goes on outside of it sometimes conflicts with each other more than it should. Then again, with many people making a living sitting down most of the time, the practicality gap is understandable. A lot of people don't make a living with physical labor.
A little while back, we hired a guy who did a few years in jail and, in my experience, demonstrated the typical jail-house look: massive upper body with modest (at best) lower body development. When there was something that needed serious, upper body horsepower/max strength, this guy was impressive, so long as you didn't need to do anything with him afterwards. He was as worthless as having a pair of tits in a gay bar afterwards. In other words, he had nothing resembling strength endurance.
Max Strength rules many places of strength as the undisputed best goal to maximize. That's a little odd considering so much of what we do outside of the gym has little to do with max strength anyway. I don't see manual labor as a total strength endurance proposition but the best workers are able to keep up something physically difficult for longer than most.
While the gym might suffer from lack of carry-over into real life, real life has some carry-over into the gym. Most of your max effort movement-arrangements are things that you might be able to do now but not later. Today, maybe, but not tomorrow. You really don't have total ownership of it if you can't readily duplicate it do you? Isn't there something satisfying about conquering something to the point of being able to do it repetitively? What's truly impressive is when you can do something really fucking hard over and over again! As far as I'm concerned, that kind of mastery of an exercise is what's impressive...
...and practical.
That last post zeroed in on that dumb-ass Nautilus Lat machine that worked that piece of meat-real estate without using the hands (oh, GREAT IDEA THERE). Let's back that out a bit and ask ourselves what's practical to do in the gym that has some carry-over to real life? That's a huge, loaded question that I'll break down into more posts in the future. For now, I'm going to zero in on something that's crossing my grey matter at the moment: rep range.
What goes on in a gym and what goes on outside of it sometimes conflicts with each other more than it should. Then again, with many people making a living sitting down most of the time, the practicality gap is understandable. A lot of people don't make a living with physical labor.
A little while back, we hired a guy who did a few years in jail and, in my experience, demonstrated the typical jail-house look: massive upper body with modest (at best) lower body development. When there was something that needed serious, upper body horsepower/max strength, this guy was impressive, so long as you didn't need to do anything with him afterwards. He was as worthless as having a pair of tits in a gay bar afterwards. In other words, he had nothing resembling strength endurance.
Max Strength rules many places of strength as the undisputed best goal to maximize. That's a little odd considering so much of what we do outside of the gym has little to do with max strength anyway. I don't see manual labor as a total strength endurance proposition but the best workers are able to keep up something physically difficult for longer than most.
While the gym might suffer from lack of carry-over into real life, real life has some carry-over into the gym. Most of your max effort movement-arrangements are things that you might be able to do now but not later. Today, maybe, but not tomorrow. You really don't have total ownership of it if you can't readily duplicate it do you? Isn't there something satisfying about conquering something to the point of being able to do it repetitively? What's truly impressive is when you can do something really fucking hard over and over again! As far as I'm concerned, that kind of mastery of an exercise is what's impressive...
...and practical.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)