If you're upper back is weak, you just outed yourself...

I'm sure that readers of my blog know that I'm generally a fan of keeping things involving my training somewhat simple.  After all, one of the whole points to my blogging is to show off to the world how much worthwhile training can be accomplished with less equipment than the rest of the world would have you believe.  This minimalist mindset often times leaks over to advice I dispense. 

So, that's probably why I find the deadlift form check videos on my facebook feed could throw me into a frothing rage if I had slightly less self control.  Simply put, deadlifting is taking shit off the floor.  Doing that properly isn't esoteric knowledge or missile-construction complex.  Still, this is weight training and people find a way to complicate things.  A few  reasons why people's deadlift sucks come up and one interests me at the moment:  upper back weakness. 

Me, doing 360 lbs for 12, not really giving a shit about getting form checked. 

Gyms, and their inhabitants, these days make me want to scratch my head...or smash their heads.  Just like collective senility set in about picking heavy things up properly off the ground has infected the houses of iron, so has the inability and lack of desire to work hard.  If anyone's wondering about how I connect the dots of lazy and bad pulling, it's simple:  if you're opining that your upper back is weak, you've just told the world you don't work hard enough. 

An upper back is made strong by a variety of movements.  You can build muscle back there with a shocking variety of rows, pull-ups, rope climbing, carrying heavy stuff, just about all deadlifting, lat pull-overs, etc.  Things that some people might consider to be THE BASICS. 

Next, most of this stuff works best if done in high volume.  Very simply put:  the upper back muscles can take a pounding.  So, to get them to grow and get strong, you've got to force them to do a lot of work.  Not only can they do a lot of work in a single session, it's possible to work them 3-4 times a week in such a fashion with  no detrimental effects.  

So, if the key to getting a strong upper back is doing the basic strength training movements with enough volume often enough, what other conclusion could be arrived at for having a weak one in the first place?  

Since I'm not in the blogging-business of mindlessly ranting about everyone's shitiness without giving solutions to the problems (to me that qualifies as being an asshole with no redeeming quality), I'll give you a few things that I like to do to keep my upper backs strong when I throw upper back work into my prayer sessions.

• I heard about this from either Chip Conrad or Matt  Kroczaleski (I can't remember who; look I can spell his last name!):  100 pull-ups.  Do 100 pull-ups, however many sets but do 100.  Try to keep the time down to do it.  Being Matt Kroczaleski, he claims 5 sets of 20.  I generally do a set of 15 and 10 until I hit 100.  It ususally takes me around 12-14 minutes. 
• I've blogged about my take on pyramid sets in the past.  I've also got a weighted pull-up take on things.  I'll normally start at 50 lbs pull-ups for 10.  Then, I'll add 10 lbs and drop off two reps until I get to 90 lbs (which would be for two reps).  Then, I'll do 90 for two until I can't do any more sets.  Then, I head back down. 
• Pedlay Rows.  I love these with an axle.  Its pretty much the most idiot-proof row that can be done without machinery.  5-8 reps...until I just can't do any more sets (generally 8-12 sets). 
• Double rope climbs.  Oh, this is a latest favorite of mine.   I've got two-1 inch ropes hanging in my garage.  Each hand has  rope.   I've got several ways I'll attack this.  Sometimes, I do just bodyweight, several trips up the rope.  Other times, I'll grab some 10 lbs chains, wrap them around m body, bandoleer style, and make trips up the rope, pyramid-style as described above with the weighted pulls.  Other times, I'll just put 20 lbs on and go up for five trips. 
• Bent Pressing.  I'm still using a 100-110 lbs (either kb or db) for accessory work for my deadlifts.  I'll do three on each side, three times.  A bent press "rep" is a lot of time under tension.  So three sets of three on each side can be killer.

So, there's my normal variety of familiar with an odd twist or just flat-out odd.  You don't need to be this strange, even if I highly recommend it.  Just pick out a movement and do as much as your body will allow you to do...and a bit more after that.  I can't guarantee that this will fix your deadlift form since using your head doesn't come from upper back strength.  At the very least, I can hopefully instill a work ethic. 

Really Hard Stuff to do with embarassingly little weight II: Anderson Squats

So, there I was, standing with Cory and his wife, Rita in Clearwater, FL, chatting about my highly theatrical side press that you see in the background as well our mutual failures in the previous Hummer Tire Squats.  Cory's failure was for a different reason than mine.  He didn't have the bar centered properly on his back.  When he hit the boxes, the uneven weight distribution got him stuck.  I explained my previous fun that resulted in my zero.  He mentioned that one guy, and one guy only, managed to get off the boxes when he got stuck...and that guy may well be the best squatter in the whole competition. 

It's difficult to imagine how good this shit tasted!

That thought stuck with me long after the competition, no doubt because the more I look back, I wanted to get that 365 lbs set-up off those boxes more than I want Island Ice Cream to bring back their Maker's Mark Bourbon flavor.  Or, more specifically, I want that kind of capability.  Cory's a seasoned competitor; the kind of guy who when he talks about what a good squatter is, I pay attention.

Squats are beloved for a number of reasons all across the fruited plane of strength training.  The build mass, make you stronger at lots of strength tests, best way to make a nice firm, muscular ass (Yes, you, there is no better way.  Deal with it), and just one of the most favored ways to move an enormous amount of weight.  

Sure, she may have wrote an e-book of butt exercises but she still squats heavy. 

That last part is likely why the subject of why the bottom-started, Anderson squat is largely forgotten in strength training.  It's enormously difficult to do and likely needs to be done with less weight than most people can squat with starting the movement at the top with a FRONT squat, say nothing of the back squat.  It just goes to show how much your body depends on bouncing yourself out of the hole.  A box doesn't even come close to showing you this (chances are, you're box squatting wrong anyway).  It's not surprising to me that Anderson is likely the greatest squatter in history if he bottom-started his squats with regularity. 

One of the earliest lessons about bottom starting this squat was that depth isn't a huge consideration here.  I made the highly unusual mistake of thinking I was starting in a much too high squat and went far too low, practically ass to grass, and couldn't even start high 200's weights.  I learned that just starting just a bit below parallel is all that's necessary for this particular variation. 

Next, this is kind of a low-reps set kind of work.  I've done these for sets of two, all the way to sets of 8.  I much prefer the lower end.  When I do this movement, it feels like a movement best suited for creating a lot of power and strength.  Keep the reps low, the weight higher, and focus on making sure the subsequent reps are started from a dead stop.  Eliminate all bounce!

Yeah, I said keep the weight higher but note I didn't say heavy.  Heavy relative to this movement and the butt-hurt nobody will likely admit to when they first try this one out will likely cause some bullshitting.  Use modest weights on this one.  Really modest.  I was a high 300-low 400 lbs squatter before the back and IT band problems kicked in mid-2014 and when I got around to doing these after Clearwater, I was using 250-275 lbs.  Modesty will pay off, I'm sure.

How sure, I'm not sure.  I'm not about to speculate about how strong my legs will get from doing these.  It's far too soon to speculate.  I can only ponder the namesake of the bottom-started squat:  Paul Anderson.  As much as I read about him, I can't speculate about how often he did these.  I can only offer up an internet-expert (which means:  NOT an expert at all) opinion based on what I've read about him:

• He was so powerful at the squat that as soon as he started lifting anything for the public, he was smashing world records. 
• He was lifting so much weight that nobody was making barbells that could take the weight he was lifting, often resulting in him improvising equipment (also improvising out of poverty)
• His squatting prowess would still make him an elite lifter even today.  This was with no absolutely no modern medicine or equipment.

In other words, Paul Anderson was able to generate ridiculous squatting power sixty years ago that, even to this day, most people can only match or beat with wraps and suits while starting out of a monolift.  that's obviously rare and unusual.  He also did it with marginal and improvised equipment.  I think that the case could be made that starting his lifts from the bottom likely contributed a large part to this. 

While I can find writing that indicates he did do squatting from the bottom position of the squat, there seems to be a lack of photography to prove it.  However, there are numerous pictures of him doing partial squats started from the bottom position.

Even if it doesn't, this has kind of become a personal goal.  It's a sort of personal redemption from Clearwater.  I'd love to be able to bottom start 365 lbs.  Best of all, It's a squat that I can do with the modest quantity of equipment and embarrassingly little weight I have to work with.  

So, How often should you train?

It's come to my attention that despite my frequent twists and turns in the nearly 8 years of blogging, I've still maintained some readers through my eccentric process of training.  One thing that has remained somewhat steady and constant is my insistence on maintaining some sort of daily training with no planned rest days. 

That's always a hand grenade waiting to be tossed into any highly important gathering of internet professional strength trainers.  Just like everyone has grime under their fingernails, everyone has an opinion about how often you must train and how many days you have to rest.  After all, this is all very serious shit and there is no room for disagreement amongst internet experts. 

I have pretty respectful and easy-going readers though, I must say.  I recently got a message that provoked the topic at hand:  how often should you train?

Hi. i'm reading all your blog when i have free time, since 2007. Even if is too mutch "no pain no gain" for me. (training everyday etc)I really appreciate the content and what you write... one thing that I did not understand is why you went from "no tools" to use the kettlebelsl (sic) and other "strongman stuff".continues to write please, it's good for my knowledge and motivation smile emoticon bye and greetings from Italy!

 Just like pretty much everything else in training, I believe in variation based personal preferences and capabilities.  I do keep up a pretty high volume, high frequency training schedule because that's what I'm capable of doing.  I view rest days much in the same light as I do rest in between sets (discussed here):  take as many as you need and no more than that. 

There's a reason why train so often and don't really plan rest days:  I don't need them nearly as much as the next guy does.  I can handle a high workload.  If you can't handle that kind of regular training, then take the rest you need to recuperate. Don't let anyone tell you how much or how little you need.  They don't walk around in your bag of bones after all. 

That's not to say that I don't take days off either.  In between my workouts, life happens.  I'm married, have a kid, a house, and a job that keeps me traveling somewhat regularly.  I would love to train every day if I could.  I just don't get the opportunity.  So, life often provides me with rest days, whether I like them or not. 

Also, take into consideration how you live your life in the other 22+ hours you're not training. Compare that to the other internet lifting gods who are about to execute you with an excessively dull butter knife for lifting so often.   Are they eating and sleeping properly, or at least doing both well enough relative to their training?  If they're doing it worse than you then it's a small wonder you can outwork them. 

The dreaded and indecisive-sounding, "it depends", answer to how often we should all be training has to be used.  In my non-expert opinion, it's far too relative to each person to answer with a boiler-plate number of sessions.  Answer it for yourself. 

 

 

I'm Interesting enough to be interviewed. WHO KNEW?

So, somewhere around a week before my competition, this guy Rock Capuano got in touch with me to do an interview for his new podcast, "A Fitness Life".  Things went great...until he realized the audio was shit. 

Take two happened in November...didn't work again. 

Luckily, I'm a soul of patience and we had good banter back and forth so I didn't mind taking three.  Here was the result...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a-fitness-life/id918458204

If you enjoyed this podcast, give his other ones a listen too.  Keep updated with what Rock has up his sleeves here:

https://www.facebook.com/fitnesslifenetwork

https://twitter.com/FitnessLifeNet

Thank again, Rock, for allowing me to spout off on your podcasts...but did you have to use a five year old picture of me holding such a light kettlebell? 

So, What's Dangerous?

So, do you want to get some people on the internet pissed off in a hurry?  I've got two, wonderful suggestions.  The first one involves buying a big ass grill, adopting as many puppies and kittens from your local shelter as possible, and posting pictures of the ensuing barbeque that you have all over Instagram.  The second involves writing an article on any popular, hack fitness site complete with a list of exercises that are dangerous and should never be done.  I'm guessing most of the English-reading and speaking followers of my blog haven't acquired the taste for house pets (even though everything tastes good on a grill) so that would leave you to spout off about the dangerous stuff that people do in the gym.

Once in a great while, I am capable of looking past the bullshit that inhabits our little subculture of strength and see some merit in these contentious issues.  This just happens to be one of those times.  Yes, exercise can be dangerous.  I just happen to think that it's not as simple as, "this will break your skeleton to dust...DON'T DO IT".   So, the reasons why certain shit is or isn't a hazard change.  Here are the reasons why.  Some are pathetically obvious.  Others more subtle. 

Pathetically Obvious:  Not Done Right!
You'll see bread-and-butter exercises like the squat and the deadlift labeled as bad for you by medical professionals with reliability that even Rolex would envy.  The answer for this is pretty simple:  they get to deal with the people who did them wrong, fucked themselves up, and came to them to be un-fucked from their ignorance. 

My physical therapist told me that squats were bad for my knees.  My chiropractor told me that deadlifting was bad for my back.  Well, babies squat naturally and sit down with extreme reluctance.  Adults change this with modern habit.  In other words, we un-learn the squat...and often don't re-learn it properly.  It's downright stunning how few people I've seen in even a hardcore strength gym can't squat properly.  While I don't agree that back squatting is dangerous, I do agree that it's not good for someone who doesn't know how to squat anymore.  There's a key difference in how bad it is for you:  lack of  knowledge.

My friend Chip had the best take on deadlifting that I've heard to date.  It goes something like this:  deadlifting is picking something off the ground.  You have know how to do that properly.  So, labeling the deadlift as dangerous and suggesting avoidance is impractical as the day is long for a human body who might actually have to move with purpose.  There's a perfectly good reason why your lumbar vertebras are the biggest of all the spine bones:  they're designed to take a lot of force from lifting stuff. 

Let me clue new readers into a simple fact that I've gone over several times over the years:  the medical community and the weight training community have had a very contentious relationship going back nearly 12 decades now.  Shockingly little information is shared between them and they both frequently bicker about what's best for a human body.  It's sad that your doctor probably has no fucking clue about proper exercise but that likely true. 

Almost as Obvious: Too Much!
Yeah, I'm sure this one has got to be neck-and-neck with doing good exercises with poor form in creating training injuries.   From kipping your way to high pull-up volume with torn labrums to deadlifting your way to bulged discs with excessive iron, gym dummies give the training naysayers plenty to complain about with dangerous exercises with their own brand of decedance .

Let me enlighten everyone here to a term in force development that few people know about and I don't mention enough to compensate for that:  absolute strength.  This is phenomenon when the brain fires 100% of the muscle fibers, rather than the roughly 33% you can consciously perceive firing.  This is held in reserve for emergency use only since it's also a tendon-shredding amount of power.  Hey, exploded connective tissue beats dying, right?

So, all of that effort to take a perfectly safe lift and turn it into an episode of social Darwinism is just flat-out pointless.  If you sense enough need, you can lift anything while breaking just about everything in your body in the process.  Doing it in a life-threatening situation is impressive.  Doing it for a PR is stupid.  If anything, it just gives ammo to those ignorant medical professionals who will have to screw and glue your body back together that real strength training is a fantastic revenue stream. 

Kind of Subtle, often ignored:  Imbalances
This is where the clear waters of what is and isn't dangerous becomes positively swampy. The fact remains that there are a lot of exercises that, done a bit too much, will lead to some sort of muscle imbalance.  That can be dangerous.  Back a few years ago, I  took up the maddening pastime of reading anatomy books to learn about the human body.  Most of this shit is memorization that's easily forgotten should you not use it on a daily basis but there were a few concepts that stuck with me.  One such example was tensegrity. 

One thing you have to keep in mind is that your skeleton is not machine-like in the sense that the bones do not directly interlock with one another at the joints.  Sure, there are some tendons that hold bone to bone but alignment is provided by tension from multiple muscles, pulling in multiple directions.   Proper muscle tension holds the body together.  Improper muscle tension breaks it down.

So, over development of the strength of certain muscles results in more tension, pulling joints in bad directions.  That's a huge reason I'm not a fan of the bench press.  This also explains why the face pull is so popular with savvy benchers.  It helps develop the shoulder muscles that the bench, even when done right, neglects.  That also explains why I like the push-up so much:  you don't need two exercises to develop healthy upper body pushing strength (aka:  inefficiency).  Still, a bench press can be okay, if you pull something to your face.

I learned this the hard way this past summer when I eschewed any lower body, posterior-chain work since it made my Frankenstein-knee hate the rest of my body.  Instead, I favored quad-dominant squatting, particularly the hip belt squat.  Over the summer, this approach helped me develop IT Band syndrome so bad that I couldn't do much at all with my legs for the final months before my Strongman Competition.  Most of this due to a movement generally considered a healthy alternative to squatting for a physically-compromised body. 

Now don't mistake this for some sort of rant from a skinny, polo-shirt-wearing, DYEL-esque personal trainer from the purple country part of the strength training world.  No, unlike them, I love to lift and otherwise train.  What I don't enjoy is...shit that inhibits my ability to train.  So, that will make me ponder the notion that there may well be shit I can do that's hurtful and therefore keeps me from hoisting.  Yes, there are dangers and they need to be identified to keep me from setting fire to things as an alternative form of stress reduction.  So, while reading such article about dangerous this-n-that on T-Nation are mostly painful, it does present an opportunity for introspection. 

Just a Few Things You Probably Don't Do But Should

There's got to be hundreds of ways to move for reasons of getting stronger.  I'll take liberty to assume that many only do a fraction of them.  The reasons are likely totally legitimate.   Maybe your half-assing trainer didn't program them for you.  I'm sure that lots of them don't help your bench. Nobody else around you does them so if you did, you'd violate that unspoken agreement of conformity.  Actually, that's a good word to describe a lot of why people do what they do in strength temple.  It's unfortunate that the answer to why to choose an exercise is, "TO GET STORNGER". 

The funny thing is, that seems to change between generations.  We don't lift the same since the test of strength have changed.  So, lifts have changed along with the times.  Being good at selected lifts doesn't necessarily make a persons strong, just strong at the lifts at hand.  There is a difference.  Some good ideas get lost like that.  Here's a list of those lifts, and things to train, that are best remembered. 

Hyperextensions
I strongly suspected my revolving door of IT Band tightness and lower back irritation was the result of my left knee not naturally hyperextending like it should back in September.  Early in my resumption of normal training, I'd lifted right-side dominant.  Even as I tired in later months, I'd still notice my right leg was still locking out faster.  I suspected I had to get my knee to move more like it should naturally. 

After looking at the glute-ham machine in the gym, I hit myself for not thinking of this sooner:  hyperextensions.  The set-up in this contraption would put some force on my knee somewhat similar to what I used to do in physical therapy and hopefully get my natural range of motion close enough to 100% back to stop the above-mentioned insanity. 

Vasily Kolotov.  That back cleavage should put to rest any arguments about the value of hyperextensions.

During research into the topic of hyperextensions, I stumbled onto this article.  Apparently, these were a Soviet favorite back in the 1970's to turn the spinal erectors into dueling telephone poles (I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that this was written long before Pavel was even potty trained so it's unlikely not THAT kind of Russian training secret.)

I didn't get too creative on this one.  The rep training scheme provided in the article was what I did (I conformed). While it did help my knee out, the training had another effect:  I haven't tweaked my back in any manner lifting since I started doing these. 

Vince Gironda's Pullups
Generally I can't stand bodybuilding. I like to confine flexing in my underwear to the privacy of my bathroom.  So, it does seem a bit odd that I generally have a highly favorable opinion of Vince Gironda since he's just about the biggest bodybuilding purist of his time.  There's just one thing:  the guy happened to be stupid-strong at the same time.  What else do you call a person who can do this?

From what I've read, the cranky, alcoholic, high-priest of bodybuilding favored doing pull-ups in which he brought his sternum, not his chin or chest, to the bar.  It kind of looks like a row combined with a pull-up.  It also looks like a ridiculously hard pull-up variation that most bar-humping, pull-up kippers will avoid like the plague.  That's unfortunate since this simple extra few inches makes the upper back want to explode.  It's the perfect example of, sometimes, a few extra inches can make all the difference in the world (ask your girlfriend). 

The best cue I've found to do pull up to the sternum is to simply throw the head all the way back.  Look straight up and pull.  Never bring your head up.  This is hard and be prepared to have a shocking, and embarrassing,  number of repetitions sliced off your sets.  That's probably why nobody does these anymore.  Don't mind that.  Just pull.  Allegedly, Gironda did four dozen of these to a set.  So, follow his lead (skip the alcohol) and get to work. 

The Bent Press
It doesn't take too long to read this blog to realize that I adore this lift.  I started doing this lift five years ago with a measly 35 lbs for one reason only:  it's fun and it looks cool.  It's a slow-grind lift that was done regularly in old strongman shows because it was visually appealing and a lot of weight can be lifted with one hand if the technique is mastered.  That's the rub right there:  it's also tricky to learn and very hard to find someone who know what they're doing with it. 

I never really assigned any practicality to doing such a lift.  It was just something that caught my attention to do and I did it because I enjoyed it.  As it turns out, there are two things that this lift has going for it.  The first would be Lat work.  Very simply put, the getting-under action of the bent press is a lot of upper back work.  Even two straight reps of this will fry the Lats.  There's a lot of time under tension with this lift. 

The second was brought to my attention by an article posted not too long ago:  thoracic mobility.  Very simply put:  we don't twist much any more when we train.  Sure, some will begrudgingly admit that's important.  Then, they will assign some sort of puny, boorish band-assisted mobility work that we'll disregard as soon as issues brought on by the lack of mobility are eradicated.  I've heard of an interesting alternative:  why not do a strength move that moves in the same manner as the rehab move you'll soon disregard?  At least we could have some fun, get strong, and stay moveable. 

In fact, that's something I can't beat my readers up with enough:  DO SOMETHING THAT YOU ENJOY DOING!  If you don't enjoy the lifts that you're performing, then don't do them.  Very, very few exercises are so important that you can't afford to not do them.  Unless you compete in a strength sport that dictates you do a specific lift, then there is no reason to follow the lead of others.  That's really why most don't know about the vast array of ways to exercise and get strong. 

Just get it overhead

Continuation of blogging about shit that, in the past, I never used to do, seems oddly intriguing to me.  I spent the past half decade smashing keys about almost all bodyweight and not giving much of anything in routines.  After all, few things annoy me about our subculture quite like people who can't comprehend training without stuff, much less how to put together something as rudimentary as programming.  Both of these could be irrefutable proof that there just isn't enough thought out there going through people's minds when they decide their muscles need stimulation. 

So, I try to put some thought into my routines.  Once in a while, I find the thoughts produce a result that's worth sharing. Such is one of the workouts I did the Sunday after my first competition.  Apparently, I broke some sort of tradition that stipulates that you should do your best to mimic a statue in the subsequent days after a strongman competition.  Since I love to train as much as I like to kick the nuts of conventional training wisdom, I took my traditional goof-off day and did some kettlebell work. 

In case I haven't said it enough recently, I adore Ironmaster's kettlebells.  Not only are they square, (which really throws people off) but they also more than pay for themselves if you tried to buy a set of conventional kettlebells (ie a 35, 53, 70 and 97 lbs).  With the right pin set-up, its possible to adjust from 22-103 lbs with a nice, tight lock-up. 

Strongman appeals to my sense of practicality because so much of it is getting stuff off the ground and getting it overhead in one way or another.  There are many ways to do that, some more conventional then others.  So, that's what I decided my break from strongman training would do, even if I wasn't going to a traditional strongman implement. 

I hadn't done a kettlebell snatch since before I borrowed a piece of knee ligament from some random, dead guy.  Prior to having such a need for spare parts, I used to do these pretty heavy, sometimes up to 100 lbs.  Since I was still barely smart enough to do these with some caution, I did them with only 85 lbs. 

Next up, I grabbed two kettlebells, stacked 70 lbs on both and threw up some clean and presses.  Since my shoulder strength could use some work,  tried my damnest to not use any leg drive off the clean to press the KB overhead. 

Since that kind of fried my shoulders up but I still had a desire to do some overhead work, I rounded things out by adding more leg drive and doing double KB squat-presses.  This one I made a concerted effort to explode out of the hole and use that drive to push the KB's overhead.   I also do this movement only with weight I cannot press overhead.  That way, I have to add lots of leg drive. This movement helped me immeasurably in the yoke press part of my medley. 

This may have been one of the best routines I've ever put together for myself off the top of my head.  I've used the last two in tandem several times to keep getting shoulder work in even after they're fatigued.  I heard a strongman bring up an interesting point about his competition preparation.  He noted that for a while, he wasn't necessarily getting stronger, he was just coming up with different ways to move the weight in an effective manner.  That's kind of what I was aiming for with this workout:  practice getting weight off the ground and overhead in as many different ways as possible.


Mr "finding different ways".  Heard of him?
 

Of course, if one were to care about such things, this would also be an effective routine to make for a bigger ass and wider shoulders. It would beat the hell out waist training to achieve an hour glass figure.

These videos weren't demonstrations. They were actual sets. Yes, those are kettlebells. No they don't have to be done in high repetitions. I do all of these in low reps and as many sets of each as I can handle. That can change depending on how much manual labor I do but mostly in the 6-10 sets range, each. So, make a conscious point to throw off any preconceived notions about strength training that you have (When to train, strongman and kettlebells, kettlebells for high reps, etc) and put some creative thought into what you do.