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. 

This guy seemingly never takes the weighted vest off... allegedly not even for sex. 

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. 

Oh, and training on one arm can be brutally difficult!

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. 

"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. 

Let's pretend we're punching!  What bullshit!  Punches need to be thrown with extreme violence, even if it's just at the air!



 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. 

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! 

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

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. 

Sugar Needs to be Regulated Like a Drug?

Does anyone remember that scene in the Exorcist where Father Merrin tells Father that the demon in Reagan was a liar but would also blend lies with the truth. That's a rare detail from a movie that's also too true in real life. The best lies have a few elements of truth to them. The lie serves to make the truth appear to be something that it's not, like When Reagan started talking like Father Karras' dead mother in order to make him break.
Such as it is with the latest pack of manipulative, power-hungry and wanna-be policy making doctors out of San Francisco who starting the latest charge against sugar in the American Diet. The 60 Minutes Clip all about this is showing up frequently on fellow blogger's web sites. In case you missed it, here it is:


I wouldn't even begin to disagree that the amount of sugar in most people's diet is as appalling as it is dangerous. Where I start to get pissed off and call bullshit is the notion that sugar affects the brain much like cocaine does. Since it acts on the brain the same as cocaine, it should therefore be regulated like a drug. This is the lie blended with the truth.

The whole purpose of the sensation of pleasure in the brain is a measuring stick so that the brain can determine the necessity of whatever it's ingesting, sensing or experiencing. Dopamine release is measured by the brain and then based on the level of release, the brain figures out how much it needs what just triggered the release. Since every cell in the body needs sugar to function, it triggers quite a dopamine release in the brain. Makes sense, right?

We don't need cocaine, or any other drug for that matter, to survive. The problem is that all recreational drugs are fooling our brains by triggering huge releases of dopamine. Cocaine actually goes one farther. The brain normally re-absorbs dopamine. Cocaine delays that up-take, therefore increasing the sense of need in the brain. So, it's incorrect to say that sugar behaves like cocaine. It's more accurate to say that cocaine is imitating sugar (and definetly doing it TOO well!).

So, now that you realize that they're heavily distorting the truth, the question is why? Why would they distort a comparison between sugar (which we need, just not in the quantities and level of refinement that' we're getting) and quite possibly natures most perfect recreational drug? The simple answer would be that they want control. You make up and debate amongst yourselves what they want to do with that kind of regulatory power but the fact remains that they're using blow because it's as illegal as a drug gets. The government has gone to insane lengths to control it with marginal opposition from most decent people. Likening sugar to cocaine sounds like a good way to make people not question the regulation.

That, to me, is a powerful statement about what's going on here. What's also laughable about it is that this is the same medical establishment that has been horribly inadequate in determining what people shouldn't be eating to begin with. They do expensive and extensive studies on the effects of refined sugar to find out something that their ancient Nemesis Bernarr MacFadden told people back in the 1910's. He certainly didn't need to put a human in an MRI and feed them soda to prove that high fructose corn syrup royally sucks! They just weren't paying attention because they fucking hated MacFadden's guts!I think that MaFadden is in his 50's in this picture.
The simple fact is that they've based the medical practice in the USA almost solely on being reactive than proactive. It's not hard to find a doctor who can't even tell you what cholestrol does for the body but can prescribe a host of drugs to bring it down.

Ultimately, I think that half-truths make for half-ass results. Going around distorting the truth about sugar won't amount to people reducing their intakes. Most of us know that cocaine and sugar aren't related to one another because they release lots of dopamine any more than a Prius and a Hummer can both be called similar cars because they burn gasoline. This kind of half-baked thinking just cheapens the argument. Yes, the 1/3 lbs-sugar-per-day habit has got to stop but inviting in the same crooks who helped create the problem in the first place and expecting them to solve it isn't a sound strategy.

The attitude is a WASTE!

Philosophy isn't something that I've studied much in my life. I confess to know barely enough to say that I have basic, passing knowledge of the subject. After all, I wasn't planning on working at Starbucks so I didn't feel the need to go to college and major in Philosophy. Still, I do recall Aristotle jotting down some notes years ago that virtue is the middle ground between excess and deficiency.

In this subculture of huge personalities performing so regularly on the theater of excess, we get treated to some pretty outlandish behavior with alarming frequency. On any given blog entry, article, forum visit, and even a real life gym-training experience, we're bound to be treated to someone that thinks that their bad attitudes are somehow beneficial to the cause.

The most obvious, and the one that gets on everyone's nerves with predictable consistency, has got to be those arrogant poseurs. They're the one's who don't miss an opportunity to flash their perfect midsection to the camera after doing handstand push-ups, never let their chest hair grow any more than two days without shaving, and never forget to wipe their spray tan off of their fingernails. It's an overwhelming display of arrogance that can cover up any sort of decent information that such people might actually be able to lend.
Actually written as a parody of gym douchbag antics.

Along those lines of cocky displays of perceived awesomeness are those people who go out of their way to make sure you know how hardcore they really are (this was brilliantly written about here). It's slightly less annoying since there isn't so much pageantry and primping.Still, having the eyeballs treated these kinds of loud proclamations of being bad-ass or being within earshot of the paleo-addicts making an effort to talk loud enough to let everyone in the produce section know how paleo they really are wears thinner than most super models.

Meanwhile, the rest of the animals in zoo suffer from some sort of delusion that being the real deal in all things strength means that they have to be so off-the-chart rude that they make an undersexed rhino look genial. We all know that there's more black and white to this thing that we do than most people want to admit. Since when did that give the gym gorillas the cart blanche to be assholes? What does that end up helping?

Frankly, how much does all of this excessive attitude help? I always thought that most of what I'm complaining about here started out as one, minor tool that people did to motivate themselves. When I get look in a mirror, I want to like what I see. I throw up comic book pictures and listen to heavy metal music as a way to stimulate myself. It's all a shout out to me and not anyone else.

Here's a great saying that applies to all of this: greatness doesn't need to explain itself. We know powerful, motivated people when we see them. People who take the time to shout it out probably aren't either.
I just wanted to throw this out there before I close this rant down: How many women even think guy is good looking despite all of his flaunting? All the GTL and the only women he gets laid by are drunk when they're fucking him!

It's all just a waste of precious time and energy that would be far better spent with training.