Monday, 6/23/08

On any given day, in a private gym above Malibu’s Paradise Cove, a handful of men show up to attempt a workout known as the Circuit, more than three thousand repetitions of weight lifting and balancing and abdominal exercises. If you’re thinking that three thousand is a huge number of times to lift or pull or curl some heavy object, you are right.

What a challenge it would be to train with the appropriately named Don Wildman! This is a man who knows how to live life!

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If deadlifting is your thing, and it should be if you lift weights, Christian Thibaudeau has some good information on the subject in “Dissecting the Deadlift“.

Thibaudeau says, “If you select the variation(s) that best suits your needs, it’s one of the fastest ways to get results when it comes to muscular development and fat loss”.

Isn’t that what most of us are after when it is all said and done?

How about that! She lifted over 3x her bodyweight (103#) using the Sumo style; number 6 in the Thibaudeau article.

(Congratulations to Torri Lehman who after deadlifting for only the second time, pulled 200# and made it look easy).

Also known as the “Devil’s Staircase” these famous stairs at 4th and Adelaide in Santa Monica are a well-known outdoor fitness hotspot. The stairs, 189 or them, go from the top of the bluff to the street below.

If you look 2/3 of the way down the page, in the center, you sell what looks like an “equal” sign. That is where the stairs begin. They end at the street below.

On this particular day, it was pretty busy and I had something different in mind…resistance. I have done this before with a 40# weight vest and that that was tough enough. Today, I wanted to do it with a 65# sandbag. Going down the 189 stairs was easy enough, but coming up them was brutal and even more so when you get stuck behind someone going slower than me. There were times I just had to drop the bag at a landing and get my breath.

There are two sets of stairs. The concrete, which I did and the wood which were just a few stairs less.

My first lap was over one shoulder and the second lap over the other. The third was carried on my back. When I got to the top on that last round, I dropped the bag and the sensation of walking was such that my legs and body were not communicating well with each other!

After some recovery, I went into the grassy boulevard on 4th Street and did 8×10 of squat cleans, power cleans, clean and presses and snatches.

I rewarded my efforts by going to the Santa Monica Pier where one of my favorites, The Bonedaddys put on the best show I’ve ever seen from them.

Today is most definitely a recovery day. Writing about this is as close to exercise I will get today.

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Running shoes are designed for running and weightlifting shoes are designed for…well you can finish the sentence. Then why do so many people lift at the gym with running shoes?

Here is what a power clean looks like in slo-mo wearing spongy, cushy running shoes.

Now here is what a power clean looks like wearing a pair of weightlifting shoes.

For contrast, go back and look at the squishy running shoes again.

If you were a runner, you wouldn’t think twice about going out and getting a pair of running shoes, in fact several throughout the course of a year, would you? Well, if weightlifting is your thing, what is holding you back from getting proper footwear for your sport?

MarkFu’s Blue Suede Do-Wins

You can get a nice comparison of the most popular weightlifting shoes and decide for yourself and read Mark Rippetoe’s comments about the advantages of weightlifting shoes in general.

Adidas has long been the pre-eminent weightlifting shoe around the world and for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing but this year Nike has a shoe in the competition, the Nike Romaleos and you will see Team USA, Team China and Team Ukraine wearing them. At the moment, they are unavailable to the rest of us.

In the 80’s and 90’s the shiny gym chains all across America were in their heyday. Slick marketing and high pressure membership drives brought in legions of Americans to chrome and neon fitness palaces in those heady days. Fitness gurus sprouted up all over the place from Jane Fonda to Richard Simmons to lead followers to the true road to fitness. The shift away from the big box mass consumer gyms has been going on for several years now. Greg Glassman and Crossfit have been in front of the drive away from the big box “Globo Gyms” as Glassman calls them. Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran the story, “Gym Payments Too Big A Stretch” in response to rising fuel prices where the author states more and more Americans are heading for outdoor parks where they can exercise free.

If people are working out in the parks and in their garages doing Crossfit, then the way they train has also been changing, away from expensive machines and complex equipment. Over the last few years, you have seen more routines featuring the “lost” exercises like bodyweight movements, old school implements like barbells, dumbells, and most recently, kettlebells and sandbags.

Exercise seems to be going “retro” and I think it is a good thing, (except for the new crop of gurus coming on the scene. Ok, call me cynical). People are rediscovering “old school” training methods from a bygone era. One of my friends, Steve Belanger has the “Old School Barbell Club“. Zach Even-Esh, founder of the popular UndergroundStrengthCoach.com has developed training programs around stones, sledghammers, barrels, sandbags, tires and more. Ross Enamait is one of the best trainers in the old school tried and true. Other leaders include Brooks Kubik, author of Dinosaur Training has defined the genre in his excellent book of the same name.

Author and friend, Ori Hofmekler has been advocating the dietary equivalent with his “Warrior Diet” in which he advocates a more simple, basic diet which calls for eating as close to the bottom of the food chain as possible for optimum health. It must be noted that Ori was also one of the early movers to a more functional appriach to training with his Controlled Fatigue Training (CFT). I was fortunate enough to have gotten several CFT training sessions with Ori and it is the real deal. Recently, Ori and one of the big names today in fitness, Marty Gallagher, have been doing Ori’s interesting and knowledgeable internet show, “The Warrior Within”. (By the way, it should be noted that both men despise the word “fitness”), Marty is one of the true giants in the strength game that has been out of the “scene” for a bit but has returned with a new book, “The Purposeful Primitive” about to be released July 1, 2008. I ordered a copy and learned it is 396 pages large! Here is a look at the Table of Contents. If you would like to get an idea about what Marty is all about, there is an article available for download at DragonDoor, titled “The Purposeful Primitive Pulls” .

I think all these new “Back to the Future” events and new faces in fitness are a good thing and as someone who worked out using machines for most of my life except for the last two years, I enjoy training like a primitive, a caveman, old school, whatever you want to call it. If you aren’t training old school yourself, take a look. It’s a lot of fun for being such hard work!

Monday, June 16, 2008

Sandbag Clean to 10 Zercher Squats x 4

Back Squat: 135 x 3/225 x 3/225 x 3/225 x 3/245 x 3/245 x 3/
Snatch Deadlift, 130 x 2 x 3
Push Press, 135 x 5 x 5
Pull-ups, (w/mini band assistance) 8/7/8
Sandbag Turkish Get-ups, 70#: 5 each side

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Deadlift Singles to 90% 1RM

Snatch Grip: 155×3/199×3

Std.: 289/339/379/429/450f/379/379.

Pull-ups, (band assisted): 8/7/7.

Good Mornings, x 5: 65/85/95/115/115.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Rest Day

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Warm-ups, including 3 rounds of Burgeners

Snatch + Hang Squat Snatch + Overhead Squat x 3: 65/75/88

Cleans + Hang Squat Clean + Front Squat x 3: 88/115/125

KB Snatch, 24 kg: 20/20/20/20

Stopped when my form went away. Very hot and humid.

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Friday, June 20, 2008

Warm-ups with mini-bands, OHS 45×10 x 2; BB Presses 45×10 x 2; Snatch Balance 45×5 x 2; Power Snatch 45×5 x 2.

Two Position Snatch, 60% x 4. 60% = 70#

Snatch Balance, 88×2 x 3/100 (85%) x2 x 3.

Band Assisted Pull-ups: 7/8/9/8/.

10# Ball Slams: 50

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

2 Station 2 Man Metcon

Station 1: 70# sandbag. 1 clean to 10 zercher squats, press overhead and walk 50 meters and drop. Clean to shoulder, walk back 50 meters and bear hug squat 10 x

Station: 2: 88# BB Power Cleans until the other guy finishes the sandbag set.

Repeat Station 1:

Station 2: 3 BB deadlifts + 3 overhead presses. Repeat until the sandbag guy finishes.

Repeat Station 1:

Station 2: 24 kilo kettlebell swings until the sandbag guy finishes.

After a minute rest, I repeated the Station 1 sandbag set and the Station 2 Power Cleans

Kettlebell swings 24 kg: 20/20/25/.

Ring Dip Ladder: 2/4/6/8/10/8/6/4/2. Ast my strength waned on some of te higher repped dips, I did jumpers to lockout.
Ring Push-up Ladder: 2/4/6/8/10/8/6/4/2.

Mike Covert came up with this hot fun smoker!

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Sunday, June 22. 2008

Rest Day

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Over the last several months, readership to this blog has gone up dramatically and many of those new readers are from outside the US. From Australia to Uruguay and many countries in between. It has been a lot of fun for me to blog.

When I started fitness blogging a couple years ago, my intention was to post my modest workouts and I  really didn’t care if anyone saw them but it became so enjoyable that I decided to add other content related to the workouts I enjoy doing. As a result of my training and blogging I have met some interesting people, well-known and unknown and take great enjoyment in passing what I have learned by way of MFBB. Since adding a WordPress language translation widget, I have been getting a lot more traffic from overseas. I would be interested in knowing the quality and accuracy of the translation. Ron, a Chinese vendor of mine gives it a “C+”, which might sound alright until I learned his son is graduating with honors at Stanford and will soon attend MIT. Isabella, from Italy called it “horrendous”. As long as I don’t come across to you as an idiot, it might be ok. Drop me a comment and tell me how this reads in your language.

To make this blog even better, I would like to hear from as many of you as possible in the “Comments” to find out what interests each of you and your own plan for health and fitness. Your suggestions for my blog would also be most welcome and would provide some good ideas to write about.

I recently interviewed a very savvy personal trainer in Australia which was very well received. If you have an interesting perspective on fitness as you enjoy it, it might be fun to share your story and pictures.

I am going to send an e-book on kettlebell training to the person who writes the most interesting comment as an incentive. I also would appreciate it if you would find a post you like best here and Digg it or Stumble it at the bottom of the post.

Mostly though, it is very cool to see this blog grow and have readers from all over the world.  I’d like to thank all of you, particularly my repeat visitors. Now go lift something heavy.

Last year, I posted an article and a hilarious video on the importance of sleep. (Check out the video, you may be in it).

If you want to improve at anything you do athletically, competitively or anything in life, it should be obvious to you by now that getting plenty of good sleep every night will make a huge difference in how you perform.

Jim at Lean & Hungry Fitness has posted 3 very good articles and studies on the value of sleep to athletic performance. Spend less money of supplements and get more sleep and your performance will soar.

It should be noted, I chose the topic for this post because I have not been getting enough sleep over the last few weeks. Pardon the pun, but I will consider it a “wake-up call”.

Some time ago, I took a strong dose of a muscle relaxer for acute lower back pain. It worked so well that the only muscles that were firing were the ones that allowed me to crawl into bed to sleep for almost 36 hours. When standing, I could have been pushed over by a feather, that’s how relaxed I was. Probably the first muscles to “relax” were the stabilizers that kept me upright, in defiance of gravity.

When you do a push-up, what prevents your back from sagging and your belly hitting the floor? If you said “nothing”, besides making a wrong mouse click to this post unintentionally, I would say your spinal erectors are weak. When you are holding a plank position doing a push-up, the spinal erectors go into an isometric contraction to keep you tight, allowing your primary muscles to do the movement.

So, the stabilizing muscles keep your body tight, balanced and in recruitment with other muscles to carry out a physical movement, say, like walking, which we all would consider functional movement. In fact, you can’t have good functional movement without strong stabilizers. Contracted stabilizers keep your body under tension, which is a good thing because it also prevents injury. Heavy deadlifting is where I first learned the importance of keeping this tension in the body. Consider it as a necessary safety mechanism.

In the gym with all the elaborate pieces of equipment available to do isolation exercises like bicep curls and other “mirror muscle” exercises, the emphasis is on the strict targeting of a major muscle group and not necessarily recruiting any others, hence the name, isolation. In compound exercises, many major muscles are called upon and the stabilizers are there to assist. The body is an engineering structural marvel when you consider the sophistication of human movement!

Try this: do 5 reps of 45# dumbbell concentration curls and really focus on isolating the bicep. Now take a 6′ 45# barbell and do the same thing, with one arm. It is a lot harder, isn’t it? Try it again, but this time, get every muscle in your body tight and rigid, keep your elbow in close to the body and grip the bar like you are going to crush it.

What you are doing is recruiting more major and stabilizing muscles to help you perform the task. Pavel calls this the Principle of Irradiation. If you were to tense and recruit muscles like this on all your exercises, not only would your primary muscles increase in strength but so would your entire body.

If you machine train, this alone will help you get more reps and more weight, but the real beauty of strengthening the stabilizers, is in compound lifting like Olympic and power lifting, dumbbells and kettlebells, where strong stabilizers are a necessity. The next level up where these muscles are crucial is when you are lifting heavy, odd-shaped things like sandbags, partially-filled barrels of water and slosh pipes.

From a daily use application, imagine how you felt the two days after the dreaded Moving Day, emptying a houseful of stuff into a moving van, unloading it into the new house and then organizing it. (The mere thought of this makes me cringe)! In spite of your machine or barbell strength, you will be sore as hell, first from muscles you don’t train much and then muscles you painfully exclaim, “I never even knew I had these”! Those are your neglected stabilizer muscles.

How do you train them? I suppose you could become a professional mover, but for most of us, it is about as appealing as lumberjack logrolling or being on a chain gang next to Bubba, (sledgehammer and pick ax training).

You aren’t going to get much stabilization muscle strength from machines since the machine makes it all stable for you, keeping you only on a single physical plane of movement. Hell, on most of these, you get to sit or lie down! That Hammer Curl machine is good for only one thing, nothing, I mean curls.

Barbell training with power and Olympic-style lifting will definitely help you improve your overall strength, but movements such as bodyweight exercises, including pull-ups, ballistic exercises, especially kettlebell swings and snatches are good examples, sandbags, lifting heavy, odd-shaped things like stones and kegs is where the real strength lies. If you have ever worked on a farm, you know what I am talking about. In fact, that strong farm kid who often excels in sports, would laugh his butt off watching us swinging kettlebells and tossing sandbags. Some of us would barely last a day in his world!

Though I don’t use them much, I think Bosu balancers have some value, as it puts you on an unstable plane while you are doing an exercise. It requires a lot of stability muscle action and will develop coordination and balance which are necessary complements to strength.

For me, stability training is something that works well outside of the gym, in the real world, developing real strength.

I would love to hear your comments and thoughts on this post.