I came across a great audio interview with the sandbag guy, Josh Henkin interviewing Olympic lifting coach, Greg Everett, who also publishes Performance Menu and runs Catalyst Athletics. They cover a lot of great topics including some pros and cons of the Crossfit protocol, training clients, the advantages and limitations of kettlebell training and a lot of great information on Olympic lift training. If you find any of these topics interesting, then you will want to listen to this interview.

By the way, I have both this book and the video and they are absolutely first rate!

Olympic Lifting, kettlebells, sandbags, Josh Henkin, Greg Everett, Performance Menu, Crossfit,

With specialty social networking sites springing up all over the place, it shouldn’t come as a surprise there is another dedicated to fitness. (I am loathing that word more and more)!

I just found one called iSweat and while it has the usual bosu ball, swiss ball, six-pack ab and toning crowd, there is a group from Zach Even-Esh called Underground Strength Fans that looks promising. His “underground” style of powerlifting, kettlebells, sandbags, strongman and iron is the focus so I’ll hang around here for a while. Zach’s stuff never sucks!

Speaking of Zach, he addresses grip strength with a good video. I don’t even want to see your wrist straps!

Underground Strength, Zach Even-Esh, iSweat,

Monday, 7/21/08

Barbell Snatch:
65×2/75×2/88×2/98/103/103/103/103, 85% 1RM

Kettlebell Swings, 24 kg.
15×5

Kettlebell Snatch:
10/10/20/20/20/10/10

Not yet recovered from the strongman training on Saturday and that was especially apparent on the KB snatches.

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Tuesday, 7/22/08

5 rounds,

5 Squat Cleans + 5 Zercher Squats with 75# sandbag + 40# weighted vest

Bench Press:

95×6/115×6
60% 1RM 135 x 3 x 5
70%+ 1RM 165 x 3 x 5
205 x 4 singles

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Wednesday, 7/23/08

Rest Day

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Thursday, 7/24/08

Snatch:

65×2/70×2/75×2/90×2/90×2 (missed 1st)/100 missed/100/105/105
This was a pathetic snatch session!

Mike’s Medley

3 rounds,
5 sandbag clean and toss
20 kettlebell swings, 32 kg
10 burpees

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Friday, 7/25/08

Overhead Squats, 5 x 5:
95/95/115/130/139

Kettlebell Swings, 32 kg. 10 x 10
2 Hand, 10/10/10/10/10
H 2 H, 10/10/10/10/10

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Saturday, 7/26/08

Snatch Grip Deadlifts, from deficit:

155×5/155×5/205×3/205×3 (no deficit)

Deadlift Singles:

245/335, missed w/pronated grip/335/385/405/425/425/435f/345/405/425.

Went down to 345 before going back up to counter a long “rest” break. Too much political bantering going on.

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Sunday, 7/27/08

Rest Day

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Monday, 7/14/08

Burgener Warm-ups x 3

Barbell Snatch:
65×3/75×3/88×3/88×3/95×3/115pc/120pc/120/120f/120

Kettlebell Swing + Burpee Ladder, 24 kg

10 kettlebell swings + 1 Burpee
10 kettlebell swings + 2 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 3 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 4 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 5 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 6 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 7 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 8 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 9 Burpees
10 kettlebell swings + 10 Burpees

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Tuesday, 7/15/08

Rest Day

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Wednesday, 7/16/08

Sandbag Training, 75#
10 reps each:

Squat Clean and Press
Walking Lunges
Zercher Step-ups
Over the Shoulder, 5L/5R
Snatches
Step-ups, sandbag on back
Back Squats
Lateral Throws
Power Cleans
Good Mornings

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Thursday, 7/17/08

2 Position Snatch:
65/65/70/75/80/88/95/100/105 <sloppy>/105

2 Position Clean:
100/115/135/145/155

GHD Sit-ups:
2×20

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Friday, 7/18/08

Burgener warm-ups x 3

Barbell Snatch, singles:

65/65/88/88/103/103/103/103. The last 4 were at 85% of 1RM.

Medicine Ball Throws, 30#

• overhead, 20
• chest passes, 25

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Saturday, 7/19/08

Strongman-Style Workout

Already beat from my training of the last few days, I had to be ready for whatever Scott Brengel and his strongman freaks had planned.

Log Cleans and Push Presses, short 50# log
116×3/116×5/126×3/136×3/145×4

Log Cleans and Push Presses, long 75# log
151×3/161×3/161×3/161×3.

Log, 115# 1 set, 9 reps per minute for 1 minute

I liked the log.

44 kg kettlebell swings
2×10

Farmer’s Walk, 410#, 100′ uphill. This one surprised me. My grip strength was up to the task.

Medley

• Farmer’s Walk, 410#, 100′ uphill. This was a do-over since I wasn’t on the clock.
• tire flip, 3xm with help. This beast weight 800-900#
• tire sled drag. After getting through the first two, this truly was a “drag”!
  
• time was 2:07 (seemed like 20 minutes)

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.

  

Cleaning the Bag

Originally uploaded by MarkFu2U

Earlier in my sales career the company would have monthly and annual sales contests for it’s sales people. There were two dominant strategies to win. The first was that of the front runner. Start strong, fast and never relinquish your lead, which was difficult over a 22 day sales month. The cagey veterans saved all their big stuff from their money customers until the last possible moment and then posted big sales numbers to take the lead away from the front runners. These were the “sandbaggers”. The front runners hated sandbagging because they claimed it was “unfair”. In the end, it was usually “scoreboard” for the sand baggers and it was they who left with the big prize.

I am sandbagging once again, but here the idea is not to hold back and for my first sandbagging workout, I let it go… literally.

I am not going to go on about how sandbagging is superior to other forms of training and go into the details of the tool. Like so many other things out in fitness land, somewhere there is a sand bag guru who has the Enlightened Path to Fitness Nirvana by way of the exalted sandbag. (Please, no sandbag certifications)! It is, however, yet another effective way to train, just not the only way and for me, another way to stay interested in the workout.

Maybe I have ADD, or just like some variety in my workouts which is why I have added sandbag training to kettlebells, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, Crossfit-style, metcon, running, bodyweight, hill climbing, skating, Highland Games and dog tossing to my personal fitness regimen.

My first session of sandbag training looked like this:

70# Sandbag Workout

Stair Climbs
•Zercher Carries: 3 x 3
•Over the Shoulder, L: 3 x 3
•Over the Shoulder, R: 3 x 3
•On the Back: 3 x 3

Back Squats: 3 x 10

Side Throws: 16