IOL Strength and Conditioning

I must be the last person alive who should be writing about training or nutrition research, but because of that, I’ve been collecting resources. My daily work involves typesetting, editing, coding or graphics (actually, it’s mostly email), so the studying I do is of software tech manuals. That makes my excuse for science inadequacy better than yours.

I never trained my brain to stay focused when reading about research. This works for me, but for those of you who work with clients and patients on health, fitness and strength issues, you don’t really get that freedom. These days, if you don’t stay aware of the latest science and can’t explain to your clients why you’re using the exercises you choose or how the news media got the latest research wrong, your clients are likely to trust you less. Unless your personality is the most contagious one in the gym, if you continue to let your eyes glaze over when science comes into play, as a personal trainer or strength coach you’re probably going to need a new retirement plan.

Jonathan Fass is working on a research lecture for us on the movementlectures.com site, and I’m sure the topic will get a mention often in future lectures. In the meantime I have a couple of suggestions for you… even as I sit here at my desk practicing audio editing techniques with no science involved at the level I work with the waveforms.

From PubMed: How to Read Health News:

Your first concern should be the research behind the news article. If an article touts a treatment or some aspect of your lifestyle that is supposed to prevent or cause a disease, but doesn’t give any information about the scientific research behind it, then treat it with a lot of caution. The same applies to research that has yet to be published.

From Bret Contreras: Evidence-Based Coaching:

Some types of articles are better than others. A meta-analysis showing strong results or a review paper citing multiple studies leading to the same conclusion would hold a lot of weight. In contrast, an in vitro study or an animal study might not. A specific study that carefully examines the topic at hand is ideal, but many times specific studies are lacking, causing us to extrapolate or piece information together, which isn’t quite as sound of a practice.

From Tim Huntley’s Scientific Research 101: Bad Science, Common Problems in Research Articles:

This problem typically occurs when the results of a study from a specific sample are extrapolated to what is believed to be a similar group.  An example would be research where a new cholesterol drug was tested on females aged 30-50.  Can we, or should we make assumptions on what the drug might do for males or 65 year old women?  Absolutely not.

From Mark Young’s How to Read Fitness Research:

Here’s a tutorial on how to get full text articles for PubMed citations, both free and for a fee.

• Bret Contreras and Chris Beardsley’s S&C Research Review
• Alan Aragon’s Nutrition and S&C Review
• James Kreiger’s Journal of Pure Power

Bret explains here:

And, of course, like me you can stick your head in the sand, because as Dr. Ferric Fang discovered, researchers doctor papers. Whatever you do, ignore mainstream headlines and double-check the wording.

Nick Tumminello

Although the pistol squat is a trendy, cool-looking old-time exercise, it’s not something we use with our clients and athletes at Performance U.

We don’t feel the pistol squat exercise is “bad,” nor do we feel it’s dangerous. And, we don’t get caught up arguing against pistols, nor will we try to convince anyone to stop doing them.   All we can do is share the training methodologies that make the most sense to us, along with the exercise applications we’ve found to work best for us.

That said, in our training with individuals of all levels from pro athletes to active seniors, we haven’t found the body positions and force production patterns involved in the pistol squat exercise to have as much value and functional carryover as some of the other creative, hybrid single-leg squat variations we use, which I’ve displayed in this new Secrets of Single Leg Training 2-DVD set.

You can see more about why we don’t use the pistol squat in this video:

Sure the pistol squat can make you stronger!  It’s also very challenging exercise. And, if you enjoy doing them, then great! But we’ve found other single-leg squat training optionsto be more beneficial because they more accurately match the body postures we see in sports and daily living. And they more closely replicate the force production patterns we are looking to improve with the clients and athlete we train.

If you’ve followed the other “squat-challenged” posts (here, then here, and finally, here), you’re familiar with the many and varied approaches I’ve taken over the years to find a reasonable substitute for the squat.  Free squats, Zane styled squats, dumbbell squats, hip  belt squats, leverage machine squats, shrug bar squats and the lengthy “let’s forget about it altogether” squat…they all found their way into my workouts from time to time.  All had their time and place, their advantages and disadvantages…but none completely satisfied.  None filled that nagging little “squat sized” hole in my psyche.  None.

This past Tuesday night saw a victory of sorts take place in the WWGG.  (The Wicked Willie Garage Gym for the uninitiated.)  I actually did squats.  No tricks, no assistance, no machines – “just put the barbell on my back and squat” squats.

Granted, the weight was embarassingly light.  (Somewhere, a ten year old girl has just warmed up with a heavier weight.)  Granted, it was only to just parallel and not the most upright of squats.  Granted, I didn’t always push through my heels and my lower back may have lost its arch a time or two…BUT THEY WERE SQUATS!  Without falling and without losing balance, standing on my own two feet with my heels flat on the floor, I squatted.  Felt good, it did.

How and why did this happen?  I have a theory.

All of the various movements I used over the years helped to build quad strength but lacked in the balance department.  Looking back, I can see an unconscious progression from movements that addressed the balance issue by eliminating it, to movements that assumed increasingly greater amounts of free movement.  I went from movements that utilized various means of assisting balance (hip belt squats holding a tether, Zane “Leg Blaster” styled squats in the same manner) to movements where I stood on my feet without the benefit of assistance – i.e. shrug bar “lifts,” dumbbell squats  and free squats.  Albeit slowly and without conscious thought, I was progressively developing the strength in the ancillary muscles and the neural pathways that would allow me to make the necessary corrections to squat without losing balance.  Call it serendipity or pure dumb luck…the end result was the same.  I squatted.

Tempering my joy is the knowledge that I have a long way to go to reach a matured form.  Flexibilities will have to be developed and movement patterns will have to be addressed, isolated and fixed.  All of that seems a little less onerous and a little more possible now.

I sincerely doubt that I’ll squat three wheels.  Two wheels may be a lofty goal.  In truth, ONE wheel on each side may be enough to satisfy me for a long time.  It doesn’t really matter…the journey has begun.  Am I still “squat-challenged?”  Yes.  Does it matter?

No…not now.

The often-referenced goblet squats were invented by Dan John a to teach his student athletes how to squat well, his favorite overhead squats specifically. The thinking was the goblet groove would help the athlete learn to squat between the legs, rather than with the upper body stiff at the hips. I suspect it also works very, very well for teaching women how to squat.

You see, we have a hip thing going on. In case you didn’t know.We are, for the most part, more suited for front squats over the more common back squats, too, so you guys trying to teach your spouses to squat should take note of Coach John’s handy teaching tool.

My lagging blogger partner Byron Chandler notes:

The goblet squat is excellent for teaching you to spread your stance and “squat between your heels.” The reason you squat upright with a goblet squat is because it’s basically a front squat. You won’t be able to duplicate that upright position with a back squat. Incidentally, if you are long legged, you might be better off focusing on the front squat rather than the back squat.

Many of us took to them immediately. In fact, I use them regularly with a medicine ball as a pre-workout warm-up, working the toes to the shoulders… scratch that, higher. Gets my head in the game, too.

I usually proceed to a medicine ball clean/goblet/thruster effort as the warm-up proceeds.

Well into the warm-up, I like to get and stay down at the bottom position, hold and stretch a little. Dave doesn’t agree with this and says it looks like a warm-up to a knee problem instead. So shake a little salt into the sweetness.

As an aside: A lot of us have a noisy knee thing going on. Fred Hatfield (you know him as Dr. Squat) discusses squats and knee issues here, and for an opposing viewpoint may I quote Coach Bill Starr about noisy knees:

“If they don’t hurt, I wouldn’t be concerned. I’ve trained with quite a few lifters who experienced noise in their knees when they squatted, but it never caused them any real trouble. Naturally, if they do start hurting, it would be wise to see a doctor.”

Your foot position — the width between your feet — is, I think, suggested by individual physiology, although I believe one can adjust from the natural position and strengthen the supportive muscles in the process. For example, my natural position involves a fairly wide stance, yet I see a value in a narrow stance to strengthen the muscles around the knees. I wouldn’t suggest much experimentation until you’re fairly proficient, completely warmed up but not tired, or before your body awareness is well developed, because you’re more likely to train yourself right into bad form, straining your knees or low back if you’re not careful.

The natural stance of the goblet squat will ensure a more upright body during the downward motion. If you’re attentive to a straight-back position, a narrow-stance, butt-back goblet squat is perfectly save and very effective as an exercise you might keep in the arsenal for years to come.

Back to my warm-ups, the medicine ball goblets move agreeable to a clean from the floor/goblet squat/thruster effort that really gets my heart pumping and the full body working. Then I’m ready to move to goblets with a kettlebell by the horns — or a barbell or dumbbell, depending on where I’m training that day. Once things get heavier, I keep the reps at six or below because it’s an easy exercise to learn, but as one gets tired, things get sloppy and danger sets in.

Keep the goblet object close to your chest. Coach John points out that your elbows should be between your knees at the bottom, not on top or to the side of your knees (unlike the photo above, however that’s the only goblet squat photo currently floating around these parts).

When doing goblets with kettlebells, I like to follow them (or just as often, superset them) with swings. If using a dumbbell, I go for pullovers after… or between sets. These return the backside to an extended, upright position.

Want to really blast it? Superset your goblets with swings or pullovers and follow the whole package with elevated lunges. You won’t be forgiving me for a while. Ouch!

Here’s another thing: Because the weight used is so light, I do these goodies most every workout.

Nice!

Taskmaster Dan suggests this:

While doing your goblet squats, drop down to rock bottom, rise back up to just parallel, then drop down again and repeat many times. Then, without rest and still maintaining good form, do step-ups while holding your dumbbell or kettlebell in the goblet squat position. Yow!

While developed as a teaching exercise, many of us — especially the women — may like to keep this exercise around for the duration. Meanwhile, here are a couple of…

• Step-by-step how to squat instructions
• Squat description and squatting tips
  
• Krista on learning to squat, written for women — for whom goblet squats shine — but suitable for men, too

You can spend an afternoon over at Dan’s site for more unique training philosophy and techniques, here: Dan John’s website..

Boris Bachmann, of Squat RX

I often talk to people who have a hard time properly racking the bar on their backs for barbell squatting. Sometimes, it is simply a matter of knowing how and where to place the bar on your back. For others, compromised shoulder and thoracic flexibility, often due to a combination of injury and poor posture, make it difficult to get under an empty bar, let alone maintain proper positioning under load. In this article, I’ll suggest a few tips and stretches that might help you get back under bar and stay there with less discomfort. If you have neck or shoulder girdle issues that go beyond simple inflexibility, and extend into pain and injury, be sure to work with a medical professional to determine if these drills would be appropriate for you and your issues.

In the first two pictures below of high bar and low bar positioning, notice how inattention to form and/or lack of flexibility has hindered proper back extension even before the lifter has taken the first step out of the racks.

High and low bar positions – hollowing upper body and the resulting spinal flexion

In the following pictures, notice how proper extension engages the posterior chain musculature, reducing stress on your body’s “hardware”, effectively “spreading the load.”

“Proud chest” = chest out, tight upper back, elbows driven downward, lats engaged

You might be thinking, “I can’t get into those proper positions because I’ve been sitting at my computer and in my lazyboy for too long–I’m not Mr. Bendy-Man like you.” Then I’m going to suggest you add the following stretches, drills and exercises to your training diet for a while.

Dislocates

Most people are familiar with this drill. Using a dowel, broomstick, or PVC, bring the arms overhead into a stretch. If you are flexible enough, you can bring your arms all the way over your body. Take a wide grip and start slowly. As you gain flexibility, you can bring the hands closer, however don’t rush this as because a grip that is too narrow can crank your shoulders and elbows.

Barbell Stretches

With this stretch, which can be done on a fireplace mantel or railing just as easily as with a barbell in a rack, a key is to hinge at the hips and keep the chest out while allowing the head to sink between the arms. You should feel a stretch throughout the lats and upper back. Allowing one shoulder to dip will deepen the lat stretch on that side.

Skin The Cat

Turning away from the barbell (or mantel, railing, etc), hands palm down, you should feel a gentle stretch across the pectoral region through the biceps. Move the hands closer and lower your upper body to feel a greater stretch.

Bent Over Laterals & Cross Bench Pullovers

Bent over laterals and cross bench pullovers are two exercises that you rarely see performed in gyms these days, but are excellent for building and maintaining upper body suppleness. Add them to your routine. There’s no need to go heavy on them – these should not be “ego-exercises.” Most people would be fine starting with a pair of 5-20lb dumbbells for their bent-over laterals, and a 10-20lb dumbbell on their cross-bench pullovers. Focus on getting a full range of motion. Build into them, gradually adding range of motion and weight.

Doorway Stretches

Bracing the forearm against a door (or power rack) frame, stick your chest out (remember “proud chest”), draw your shoulder blades together, and lean forward to feel a stretch across the pectoral and anterior delt region. You can do this unilaterally, or both arms at once. Vary the height of the elbow relative to the upper body to shift emphasis of the stretch.

Foam Roller

With a foam roller, you can do stretching positions as shown in the pictures above. Do as tolerated and position yourself by pulling or pushing your body forward and backward with the legs over the roller. A small cushion for your head and neck can be added if the positions cause discomfort.

Adding The Drills

• Add the barbell stretches, skin-the-cat, dislocates, light cross-bench dumbbell pullovers and light bent-over laterals to your squat session warm-up.  Two or three “sets” of each should suffice and take no more than five minutes total. Seek a light stretch—the goal is to feel better and more comfortable under the bar.
• When you’re relaxing in front of the television or at home killing time, add the foam roller work, doorway stretches, and skin-the-cat drill to your daily routine.

After incorporating these drills into your warm-ups and daily routine for a couple of weeks, you should feel a marked difference in your ability to maintain proper positioning under the bar.

Boris is in the middle of a Japanese Disaster Relief Squat-a-thon: One Million Pounds. He’d love to have your participation in building his squat support team, or in cash contributions or just to check in on his work. To join the party, here’s a link to the forum thread, and here’s one to his blog updates.

Visit Boris’ Squat RX site for more of his fabulous tutorials.

This is Dan John’s new bulking guidebook for those who need to build strength and size. This is a 7×9 inch, spiral-bound lay-flat book consisting of 119 pages of text, followed by a 42-page, 6-week training log.

Tried and true, Dan describes exactly what’s to be done to add mass — what, when and why. Each week’s workout plan is laid out, and each day’s workout is preplanned, every rep scheduled, later to be documented in the fill-in-the-blanks log pages. Here’s an example of one of the log pages:

Dan has adjusted menu and supplement tweaks weekly to match the needs of the week. Once you read this short, clear manual, you’ll know exactly what to do and when to do it. All that’s left is for you to faithfully fill in the blanks of the log sheets and watch the scale climb.

Carefully priced at $19.95, this new guidebook is just what you need to pack an extra ten pounds of muscle on your meaty or not-so-meaty physique. Click here to order Dan John’s Mass Made Simple today.

What are the planes of motion and why do we care? Let’s sort this out, just between us gymrats. While it’s true that we don’t really *need* to know this stuff, it’s also true we’re going to bump into the terms more and more when reading modern training articles. It’s time we caught up with this generation of training lingo. We’ll take the simple route, I promise.

The main problem for most of us is that we weren’t introduced to the terms in our early training (today that reads: Who needs it?). Additionally, the actions along the planes don’t seem to match the describing terms; for example, the frontal plane motions are left to right, and our brains just kind of disconnect in a sort of “I can’t learn that” frustration when we see frontal associated with side to side.

At its simplest:

To picture the three planes, imagine slicing through the body, like so:

• First through the center, dividing the body from the left to the right to make up the sagittal plane
• Next through the body from the left side to the right, separating the front and back halves to create the frontal plane (front side and back side)
• Finally cutting straight through the hips to divide the top of the body from the bottom, the transverse plane

That’s not so hard. It starts to get a little more complicated when we begin to sort out which motions move along the planes. You want to think of the motion as moving along the surface of the plane, rather than visualizing the sectioned off body.

Planes of motion look like this:

Sagittal plane motion would include forward and backward motions, like sit-ups, back extensions or biceps curls. The sagittal plane cuts through the center of the body, so the motion is front to back or back to front, including straight forward running. Squats involve flexion (forward motion) and extension (backwards on the way up), so would fit into the sagittal plane.

Frontal plane motion would include leaning from left to right as in sidebends and lateral raises, or perhaps you might picture jumping jacks for a good image of movement along the frontal plane.

Transverse plane motion is the hardest to picture because the plane is horizontal as it divides the top from the bottom, so it’s hard to get our heads around it being a rotating action. The main thing to remember is rotation. An example of a transverse plane exercise would be floor to overhead diagonals with a medicine ball, and a transverse activity might be swinging a golf club.

Why would an average trainee need to know this? Two reasons, really. It comes up fairly often as we read the work of our favorite writers, because these folks know this stuff and it comes out naturally for them. It’s frustrating to have to skim sections because we don’t know the lingo, and in internet reading, skimming a section often means losing interest and clicking away before we get to the vital parts.

Secondly, what’s most important about the planes is to know they exist and to make sure our training programs include exercises along each. Our most common gym exercises are on the sagittal plane, moving forward or back such as in flat pressing, pushups, crunches or even squats and lunges.

When you create your training programs, be sure to add some frontal plane and transverse plane exercises to bring up your built-in injury prevention. That’s what’s going to help ensure good balance in your muscular body. Training only on one plane will pretty much do the opposite.

Time and time again, our IOL forum discussions entertain while they educate. I can’t begin to measure all I’ve learned from my friends there, nor count the times they’ve had me giggling at my desk. Let’s take a look at some of this week’s top conversations.

Here’s a guy who’s been training for 25 years and is thinking of quitting the weight room because of back pain. The forum members gather around with re-building suggestions that most readers would do well to practice.

Over here, Andy asked for clarification on central nervous system burnout. We’ll see some interesting comments, with a real zinger from Keith Wassung that makes clear the whole CNS question.

Ever wonder why anyone would stand on a stability ball? Let alone try to do loaded squats on one? Byron begins the discussion on balance work.

Every guy I know walks around the gym rubbing his shoulders (fewer women do this, because most of us aren’t as stupid about bench pressing). John Izzo contributes his 7-phase approach to protecting the shoulders, and a good group chime in with questions and additions on this important subject.

Wondering about Smith Press or barbell, behind the neck or in front, a member from the UK asks for views on shoulder pressing.

When would you choose a full body workout; when is a split routine better? The pros and cons of both are discussed in this thread.

In the IOL Co-op Training Log this month, Dan Manor leads a team through a fat-loss quest during April. There’ll be plenty to read in here this month, me thinks.

Spend a little time clicking around the 16,152 topics. There’s a lot to learn, and we promise some grins along the way. With 422,277 posts, however, it make take you a bit to catch up. How’s the weekend looking?

In a couple of blog posts earlier this fall, I listed the results of our server log reports showing the top 20 pages of our health and fitness database, and the most notable forum threads this past summer. That search uncovered some really fine forum discussions long since forgotten, and as I thought about how often I use some of the guidance and recommendations, I knew we’d have to find a way to bring them to the forefront. Hence, our new Must Reads Topic Archive, 20 of our Very Best.

What I did in many cases was dig out a selection of our best conversations on a topic, and merge the strings together into one long archive. In this way, you’ll be able to see how our learning developed as the science developed, or as we tried and tested the philosophies and training techniques.

By the time you get to the end of the topic, you’ll have a broad base of knowledge along with all the links we used to compile it. Looking for a quick way to learn what you need to know about a topic you saw mentioned in an article or forum? We gotcha covered.

Check this:

• Foam roller rehab work

• Trigger Points & ART (Active Release Therapy)

• Omega 3s, EFAs: Fish oil and flax

• All about Cholesterol: LDL, HDL, testing and lowering

• Leistner: Sensible Training by Dr. Ken

• Building a Home Gym

• Homemade Gym Equipment Ideas

• Intermittent fasting

Amazing stuff, huh? And you know what? There’s a whole lot more where that came from.

It came from right here: Must Reads Topic Archive.

Once you’re done there (this is going to be awhile), try this one for your Sunday afternoon hangout: Links to other must-read archived topics. Actually, that should be our IOL forum first stop for most new visitors. Great, great stuff.

I can’t emphasize enough how effective a good cycling plan — periodization — can be in getting off a plateau. It’s not just a plateau-buster, either; it’s a way to live.

1. Keep your routine simple, using just a few multi-joint moves. Try Squat, Row, and Bench for the first few cycles; DL, OHP, and Chin for the next few.

2. Work out three times a week in a whole-body routine.
3. Use a Heavy/Light/Medium weekly mini-cycle.
4. Make your heaviest set on Week 1′s heavy day (say, Monday) ~85 percent of your 5RM and do 5 on that heavy set. Do one more work set with 90 percent of that first set.
5. Monday on Week 2 should see you using ~92.5 percent of your previously-established 5RM.
6. Monday on Week 3: 100 percent.
7. Monday on Week 4: Go for a new 5RM and lay off the rest of that week.
8. Week 6: Start over using the new 5RM as the basis of the next cycle.
9. Use 80 percent of Week 2/Monday’s heavier set for Week 1/Wednesday’s heavier set; 90 percent of Week 2/Monday’s heavier set for Week 1/Friday’s heavier set. Follow that template for each of the first 4 weeks.

Poundages go up with this simple cycle. You get big and strong.

Some of the basics are what you’ll read from other people, like using a full-body routine, using multi-joint moves . . . and very few of those at a time.

The point I like to harp on is cycling. I first read about cycling in the 1970s, but I couldn’t make myself exercise at anything less than full-bore intensity. That was a legacy of my Nautilus days. Even when a coach in New Hampshire named George Elder was writing great articles on the concept in Iron Man, I’d flirt with cycling for a short while but then revert to driving every set to failure.

Never think an old dog can’t learn new tricks, though. And, hey, it only took me a few decades. Pavel Tsatsouline’s outline of cycling in his book, Power to the People! was what finally brought me fully over to using cycling.

The cycling he advocates is different from what I toyed with in the early 1980s and gained a lot from (amazing how even success won’t convince the person who’s been so thoroughly educated in and convinced by another school of thought!). It forms the basis for one method of gaining strength without much mass and another method combining strength and mass. Both approaches, which are based on the same foundation, guide you to real success.

The idea behind cycling is nudging the body into greater and greater accomplishment, rather than trying to force it. Like all of life, growth in strength and size comes in cycles.

Stimulus is followed eventually by growth. And because growth can happen as the result of some unknown minimum of intensity (percent of 1RM), cycling poundages up and down but with an overall increase, allows the body to recover enough to respond.

In Power to the People, Pavel states that a good cycle lasts between 8 and 12 workouts. If you exercise 3 times per week, that’s an overall upward increase in poundage used over 2.5 to 4 weeks. If you follow that with a week of low intensity – exercising with resistance and reps that feel pretty light – recovery is enhanced. A full layoff might be even better, if the HST crowd is correct, because it allows you to strategically decondition (“soften up for gains,” a la McCallum). A good compromise might be to go light on Week 4 (and later, on Week 8) and lay completely off after 2 or 3 cycles (at about the three-month mark).

Linear cycling
A linear cycle is one in which the weights just go up from session to session. This is what I did – or intended – during 2 productive periods of my training life. One was when I progressively pushed my bench press way beyond where it’d been before. But I got stuck with a double at my highest poundage. Unfortunately, the things I’d read about cycling hadn’t really penetrated my sometimes-thick skull, and I hit an impasse. If I’d known what I was doing, I’d have backed off to about 85 percent of that and gone slowly up again, doing triples or slightly more reps. But I was dumb and impulsive, and I turned my attention in another direction.

Another productive time was when I decided to give deadlifting a go. I was busy and chronically tired from getting up early and battling Beltway traffic, to get to work by 7:00. I worked on DLing for a few months, never having really concentrated on them before, and I added chins late in that game. Both were cut short by medical need, but not before making really good progress. My DL got pretty good for a few months’ work, and the cycle was rarely modified from a small increase almost every session.

Step cycling
On the few occasions that my DL progress slowed, I kept the poundage the same for another session. I didn’t really think about it, but it was a form of defacto step cycling. Stepping is simply alternating an increase in poundage (over several workouts) with keeping the poundage the same. So, 8 sessions might look like this: 225, 230, 235, 235, 240, 245, 245, 250.

Wave cycling
Don’t confuse this with wave loading. The best way to think about wave cycling is to look at the tried-and-true heavy-light-medium weekly mini-cycle. My favorite way of doing HLM is to make Wednesday’s heaviest set 80 percent of next Monday’s heaviest set. Friday would be 90 percent of next Monday’s.

Why next Monday’s heaviest set and not this Monday’s? It’s a small detail, but if you’re planning out the cycle in advance, you’re going to know what each heavy day’s going to look like anyway. And I like making this week’s light and medium days a run-up to next week’s heavy day.

I like wave cycling the best, because (especially as you get stronger) the light and medium days help with recovery and still stimulate muscle growth to varying extents. That’s important both for advanced weight trainers and older weight trainers, because both populations need to pay attention to recovery issues.

Frequency
A lot of people might look at the 3-session/week nature of HLM and dismiss it, because they prefer more volume over fewer workout days in the week. I think frequency is important, though. Like everything in this art, it is a variable, but in general, I think that if you’ve got a choice between less frequency and more, and overall volume is the same, more frequency is generally the way to go. The body likes repetition when it’s training to get stronger.

Next I want to discuss how a simple cycle can serve both for neural training and muscle-growth training, but let me sidetrack for just a moment to respond to a comment of Fred Fornicola’s:

Along the lines of “cycles”, those who really understand high intensity training (or as I prefer to refer to it as simply “hard work”) utilize some type of cycling as well. It’s not as formalized or planned out but I don’t feel anyone can make progress banging it too hard all the time – it just becomes counter productive.

It’s my opinion (based on several conversations with those who were there in the beginning and just my own feelings) that Arthur Jones was still “discovering” and “experimenting” and never really took his concept to the “next level”. The next level I am referring to is how to implement the level of intensity to the recreational lifter as well as the older trainee. AJ would recommend significant layoffs to recover – which I feel is counterproductive. I believe a smart coach/trainee understands that you don’t need to bury yourself into the ground to make progress (progress defined as your own, specific goals – not someone else’s) and that you learn how and when to accelerate and when to brake. Basically, using your head to cycle your training.

I have implemented this approach over the last few years and have had good success with the people I work with. It’s amazing what little amount of exercise is truly needed if applied intelligently.

During one of the conversations I had with Ell Darden about 15 years ago or so, I asked him his opinions about cycling. He didn’t think it was necessary to plan such a thing out, even if you do back off every so often. (The big exception to that would be his recommendation of cycling higher-volume — but still high-intensity — work for specific bodyparts throughout the year.)

I said, “Well, what about some of Arthur’s earlier writings, which advocated making Wednesday a session using lower intensity than on Monday or Friday?”

“That’s for when a trainee progresses to the point where his recovery ability can’t keep pace with his strength.”

I knew that, but I pressed him: “But isn’t that a tacit admission that some level of intensity below 100 percent can still yield muscle-building results?”

“Well, those workouts are more to prevent losing gains than making them.”

“Which makes it a matter of degree, right? I mean, if 85 percent intensity prevents me from backsliding, that’s sort of like progressing, but slower. The thing that keeps me from losing progress is progress. It’s just relatively less progress.”

There was one of those long pauses you get in a conversation with Darden, and it doesn’t mean he’s confused. It means he’s choosing his words . . . or mulling over your words. Finally, he said, “You can put it that way, yes.”

“So, if one day a week is sub-maximal, and you plan that, it’s really a kind of cycling of intensity.”

“Well, you can say that, but bear in mind Arthur’s changed a bit on that recommendation.” At that point, we began talking about working out twice a week, rather than three times. It was a direction of Nautilus theory that I embraced for a few years and ultimately rejected; frequency, I began to understand, really is important to continued progress, especially on the neural level. It requires less than 100 percent effort on a high percentage of your workouts, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Back on track, here’s the foundation of the program.

This is the neural piece.

Getting strong is accomplished partly by getting a better neural connection to your muscles and partly by getting bigger muscles. The neural connection is more than just skill, though skill is probably its biggest component. It’s increasing what Arthur Jones called neurological efficiency. Jones said that NE was fixed at birth (actually, at conception). He said most people have around 30 percent NE, meaning that 3 muscle fibers out of 10 are contracted at any single moment during a maximal effort. On either end of a bell curve, you’ve got “genetic freaks,” who have 50 percent NE, like Paul Anderson and Casey Viator, and “motor morons,” who have only 10 percent NE.

The history of the strength sports seems to contradict Jones, though, concerning the fixed nature of neurological efficiency. Weightlifters are able to get stronger and stronger over a period of years without leaving their weight classes, for example. Beyond questions of drugs and motivation, there appears to be a good case for NE improving with the right kind of training.

Tension and strength
So, first, what is the right kind of training to get stronger on the neural level? Neural training is the same thing as training for high levels of muscular tension. Such tension is the end result of that kind of training. So, the statement we can work with is: Acquire the skill to generate more tension.

Like any skill, this takes repetition. You don’t learn to play the guitar like Eric Clapton overnight, and you don’t learn how to lift a large barbell over your head overnight, either. Both involve learning and practicing a set of smaller skills. In the latter case, they’re the skills involved in creating more and more muscular tension.

The five key conditions for training these skills, creating high levels of muscular tension, are:
1) moving slowly
2) consciously maximizing muscular tension, as though you’re posing
3) using heavy weights most of the time
4) minimizing fatigue
5) using specific techniques: a. power breathing, b. hyperirradiation, c. pre-tension, d. successive induction

Slow motion
Force/tension drops off rapidly when velocity increases. When you have to deal with resistance over several seconds, rather than for a fraction of one second, you just get better overload. Lifting heavy weights will always trump throwing things for building strength. One reason is because to get sufficient overload, you need resistance greater than what you get in something you can throw.

Arm-wrestlers and powerlifters are good examples of athletes who move slowly and get very, very strong. There are exceptions to this slow-speed rule, but the general principle holds. (I’m not talking about super-slow training here, by the way.)

Does this mean you’ll slow down for some other sport you’re engaged in? Not necessarily. I think the important thing to do in such cases is not to make strength training the main thing you do (it doesn’t take long, and, done right, it doesn’t exhaust you, so this shouldn’t present a problem). Spend most of your time training the fast thing you do. Keep those skills highly honed. The small investment of time using slow, heavy weights won’t, in my opinion, take away from the fast skills you work on at other times.

Maximizing tension
Even if you’re using a light weight, it’s good practice to handle it as though it weighs a lot, if you’re aiming at training yourself to create high muscular tension. Tense the muscles on purpose. You’re using dynamic tension, which can build a lot of neural strength.

Using heavy weights
We’re talking about the 85-95 percent range of your 1RM. There are at least three reasons for using heavy weights.

One, you build strength in the connective tissues and joints. An added benefit is the effect using heavy weights has on inhibiting your mechanoreceptors, the governors of your body’s strength. Those guys say “okay” to your using heavy weights, once they’re used to them through repetition.

Two, you need to experience real, live resistance to gain skill at creating high tension levels in your muscles. Electrical and chemical signals in your body are generated in response to heavy resistance, and experiencing that on a regular basis builds the skill we’re talking about.

And three, Henneman’s Size Principle states that motor units are generally recruited in order of smallest to largest (fewest fibers to most fibers, as well as slowest-contraction to fastest-contraction fibers) as contraction increases. And this is in response to greater and greater resistance.

You might see that these three reasons overlap. Regardless, they build a strong case for using heavy weights when you’re training for the skill of strength.

Minimizing fatigue
Fatigue is your friend when you’re training for size, and we’ll get to that. For the neural part of the equation, though, it’s your enemy. Don’t worry; there’s a simple way of both avoiding it and using it in the same workout, and that’s coming up.

Next, I’ll talk about minimizing fatigue.

Using specific techniques
Power breathing: Hold your breath as the weight’s coming down and going back up again, until the last part of the concentric, when you blow roughly half of it out. Or blow it out after the rep is completed. If, for some reason, you’ve been advised not to hold your breath under the load of a barbell, try this alternative: Instead of holding your breath, blow out through pursed lips at the beginning of the concentric and whoosh it out hard on the last part. Don’t completely empty the lungs; keep enough air in there to stabilize the spine. In other words, keep abdominal pressure high. Make your ab wall hard but not bulgy.

Hyperirradiation, in a nutshell: HI is purposeful tensing of muscles other than the ones directly responsible for the task you’re doing. Although we’re really talking about tensing the whole body during any one lift, there are three key points: the grip, the abs, and the glutes. If you grip the bar as if to squeeze juice out of it (on upper body drills) and you make a shield of your ab wall and you mentally try to grip a coin with your butt muscles, you’ll generate more strength in your lift. There’s a big neural stimulus sent to your working muscles when you simultaneously tense the ones here. As an added benefit, you create a safer foundation for exercising, preventing hyperflexion or hyperextension in your joints and properly aligning your body in the process.

Pre-tension: Stay tight. Keep in mind the high correlation between tension and strength. Tensing up before unracking the bar has a strong effect on creating tension and strength.

This might be one reason why walk-outs are so effective. If you load a squat bar with weights you can’t actually squat with, unrack it and walk backward a step or two, as though you’re going to squat, and then, after standing there a sec, walking back and re-racking it, your squat workout a few minutes later can noticeably improve. Part of that is psychological: You’re less scared now. But I think you’ve also disinhibited a bunch of your neural protective mechanisms, too.

Successive induction: What this means is when you’re doing the negative part of a press, for example, you’re not just lowering the weight (or dropping it). You’re actively pulling it down with your biceps and lats, as though doing a pulldown. This is actually an extension of pre-tension. You start by tensing before unracking; you finish by pulling down on the bar during the eccentric contraction with the muscles that oppose those that do the concentric part. The power of this technique probably has to do with the body saying to itself, “Hey, I don’t have to protect this guy by inhibiting his power; he’s protecting himself.”

Again, there’s a safety windfall: Your joints are stabilized way beyond what they’d be if you made it a habit to drop the bar on the eccentric or swing the bar up and down. A lot of us old-timers have joint problems. Maybe the young turks among us won’t be dazzled by the safety promises of a lot of this material, but if they see immediate and long-term strength gains by following the principles, they’ll appreciate the safety aspect in the years to come.

Your strength dance is your safety dance.

We’re going to talk about minimizing fatigue in neural training, but I swear to you the very next part will get to the size-building part of this equation. I wanted to go through neural training first, because it really is foundational.

Why minimizing fatigue? Because, as Pavel puts it,

“Fatigue and strength/tension are mutually exclusive! Metabolic waste products like lactic acid hamper further powerful contractions. Cardiovascular insufficiency forces you to prematurely terminate your set. Mental fatigue from doing too many reps or sets prevents you from generating required intensity. The ‘communication lines’ between your brain and your muscles get overworked and no longer conduct your orders effectively.” – p 18, Power to the People!

Those weaned on the writings of Arthur Jones and Ell Darden will see what looks like a big departure of opinion here. It starts with definitions, specifically of the term intensity. For Jones, it was perceived effort. For Pavel and the researchers he cites, it’s percentage of 1RM. This is something I brought up with Darden a long time ago. First of all, percentage of 1RM is much more friendly to accurate measurement than is perceived effort, and measurement is foundational to science. Perceived effort changes daily and even hourly. One-rep max also changes, but it’s not as subject to emotional and psychological states as is the perception of effort.

I asked Darden about something he wrote in one of his books, a variation on a theme running through just about everything he’s written. My question concerned what Jones called “the rush factor.” I understood its role in metabolic conditioning, but I questioned its efficacy in creating strength gains. I pointed out the importance of overload, one of the very principles Darden himself said was essential for effective strength training (the other being progression). I asked him how a person could overload in a given exercise when he’s gasping for air after doing several exercises full-bore and back-to-back. He said that it didn’t matter that a person could only press, say, 80 pounds for 8 in the middle of this fast-paced workout, when normally he could do 100 for 8. What mattered was that he hit failure with that 80.

Then he added, “Besides, you’re going to meet and exceed your old numbers soon enough.” He offered, I should add, abundant proof, including the results of the West Point study in 1975, in which the participating members of the football team really did exceed their old PRs by a long shot, and they did this working out with fifteen seconds max between exercises.

Another apparent wrinkle here is that Pavel himself cites a couple of studies in his first kettlebell book, showing how the use of moderate poundages in the competitive KB lifts yielded tremendous performance results. In a 1983 (I think) study, comparing a KB-only group with a control group using more traditional exercises, the KB guys outperformed the control group in the very exercises the control group had been working on the whole time.

So, is Pavel contradicting himself, and has Arthur Jones been right all along? Well, the contradiction is only apparent. The KB observations and the Nautilus studies noted improvements in muscular strength. Growth in that area has a neural component (through motor skill refinement), but the improvement is essentially made through growth of muscle. On the continuum that joins strength-through-purely-neural-means and strength-through-growth-o f-tissue, neural strength training really does prefer a low-fatigue environment. It might even require it.

The advantages of working for metabolic conditioning (something we can talk about at another time) include physical improvement across the board (e.g., various types of strength, systemic endurance, and local muscular endurance). The advantages of a slower, low-fatigue approach to strength include being able to stick with a routine that doesn’t threaten to kill you every time you follow it.

Now, I’ll get to the promised nuts and bolts of minimizing fatigue in order to build neural strength.

Part of the challenge of reporting on Power to the People! is the fact that it’s not a well-organized book. It jumps around a bit. But Pavel does organize some things well, and this is one of them. He lists 5 ways to minimize “various types of fatigue.” Here they are.

1. Keep your reps low

Pavel advises reps in the same range Bill Starr does, up to 6. Both simplify by saying, “Five.” Although he spells out why he likes low reps better in other writings, essentially it’s for a couple of reasons:

a. You don’t exhaust the stabilizer muscles, which — in a high-rep set — tend to give out before prime movers, making an exercise more dangerous. This was a point made by a chiropractor friend who was also a muscle-head way back in the early 1990s. When I made mention of 20-rep squats, he said, “I wouldn’t do more than 10, and even that’s high.” His reasoning was that the lower back muscles, which are held in isometric contraction during the set, fatigue faster than the muscles of the thighs — and that they tire unevenly. So, when one side of your spinal erectors begins to fail before the other, your spine begins to tilt. This is dangerous under a heavy load. For his part, Pavel recognizes the usefulness of 20-rep squats but says not to stay on such a routine for long.

b. Doing five reps prevents the possibility of overdoing sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Pavel calls such growth fake. While some of such growth will occur, especially in the Bear-style training I’ll get to, myofibrillar growth is responsible for the greatest growth. Why? Because Bear-style training emphasizes heavy weights and low reps, even while going for a pump.

2. Keep rest intervals up around 3-5 minutes
ATP stores are depleted during exercise, and, while short rest periods are good for creating a cumulative breakdown of muscle tissue, longer ones are better for doing consistently heavy work for several sets of an exercise.

3. Keep the number of sets low
Fatigue will eventually set in, even when your reps are low and your rest intervals are longish. So, for neural strength training, don’t do a high volume of work. Hit it fairly hard and heavy, and then go home. The PTP! template involves two work sets per exercise: The first one conforms to the overall cycle, and the second one is 90 percent of that first set.

Pavel’s caveat is that such a percentage is not precise. Just take some plates off and do a second set. Bam, that’s it.

4. Pause and relax between reps

This is something I remember reading Larry Scott did when working his biceps. Each rep was its own thing: He’d rest for a moment at the top of preacher bench curls before lowering the weight for another rep. That short rest allows you to “generate higher values of muscular tension” as your set progresses. The ATP thing mentioned above is a big reason why.

5. Lift frequently but not too frequently

Tsatsouline likens exercising to practicing. And practicing any skill requires repetition. He cites numerous studies and lots of historical examples for practically everything he writes, and for this principle, he tells about Bob Peoples, the great deadlifter, who practiced his pet lift 4 to 5 times a week. You can be assured that these sessions were heavy but not intense the way Arthur Jones described intense. Peoples didn’t carry a lot of muscle, and his training style shows one reason why. He didn’t try to exhaust muscle; he just practiced lifting progressively heavier weights.

How Pavel combines neural training with higher volume, fatigue-oriented work to yield an effective size-building approach: Get a pump with heavy weights.

That’s the gist of size building, according to the Energetic Theory of Muscle Hypertrophy. It rings true for me. Although I tried lots of set/rep protocols when I was a pup, that’s the one that delivered the most for me.

How does it work? There are two main things going on when you train heavy, using multiple sets and comparatively brief rest periods (compared, that is, to the intervals I described for neural training): tension and fatigue.

You get tension by using heavy weights. By using five reps per set with weights that’ll allow 6 or 7 reps (if you went to failure), you can use heavy loads. Also, there are the tension producing techniques mentioned above.

You get fatigue by doing multiple sets and keeping rest intervals brief. Forget all the chemical things going on in your muscle cells; you’re getting a pump. Ted Arcidi called a high-rep pump a “suck pump.” I don’t know how he came up with such an interesting term, but it reveals his attitude. Arcidi was a very strong, very big man. Whether his size was pure accident or intentional, I don’t know. I do know that a low-rep pump, one utilizing heavy weights, is one even that power man would respect.

Combine the previous principles
Remember when we talked about creating high levels of muscular tension? Well, doing that over several sets creates a real nice growth stimulus. It’s almost like posing with a barbell. Employ all the performance principles mentioned in my above posts for multiple sets.

Here’s how the set/rep approach is done.
You’ve set up your cycle already. Let’s say you’re going to follow the HLM weekly mini-cycle. Also, you’re going to go increasingly heavy for 3 weeks, back off somewhat for one, then hit that pattern again. That’s a good, solid approach, time-honored and proven.

So, let’s say today’s first set is 92 percent of your 5RM. Never mind that it’s 92 percent of what you can do… today, it’s your “money set.” You do one set of 5 with it. Rest for 3 minutes or 5 minutes or anything in between: your call. Now, take 10 percent off the bar and do another set of 5. That’s 90 percent of today’s heavy set, not of your 5RM.

If you were going for strength without size, you’d leave it at that. Instead of going for workout volume, you’d go for frequency throughout the week. You could get away with training the lift 5 times a week, if you cycled properly. None of those sets would be limit sets. You’re training a skill, remember: the skill of being strong.

For size, though, you don’t stop at those two sets (and you don’t train the exercise 5 times per week; stick with 3, when you’re using this kind of workout volume). After you finish the second set, you strip another 10 percent off the bar and start doing sets of 5. Rest 30-90 seconds between these sets and do as many as you can. This means you keep doing sets until 5 reps won’t go up anymore. That’s when you call it quits.

So, it’s:
Set 1: poundage indexed to your cycle.
Set 2: 90 percent of Set 1
Remaining sets: 80 percent of Set 1

Some people end up able to do a lot more of the 80 percent sets than others can do. A lot of that has to do with the muscle fiber types making up the involved muscles. The more fast-twitch fibers you’ve got, the fewer sets you’ll be able to do (all other things, like rest intervals, being equal). They’re strong, but they have little endurance.

The reason Pavel has you doing 2 – or at most, 3 – exercises in this approach is that you’ve got to account for recovery factors. His recommendation for exercises is the deadlift and the side press. I’d do rows, too, but I wouldn’t do Bear-style sets (all those 80 percenters) on all 3 exercises. I’d do them with 2 movements at most, doing just the 2 strength sets (Set 1 and Set 2) for the third. After a cycle or two, change out which 2 you do Bear-style.

Pavel’s simple advice is to pound protein. Remember when I wrote above that using heavy weights increases tension? That’s because, as Pavel writes, tension increases amino acid uptake by the muscles. The more tension there is and the longer the muscles stay under tension (always balanced by adequate recovery), the better, for the purposes of getting big muscles. He likens it to throwing scoops of protein into your muscles with every rep… and bigger weights make bigger scoops.

Well, combine that with actual, literal protein. According to PTP!, to build muscle, you need extra protein and a lot of it. I remember Bob Simpson writing essentially the same thing in Iron Man many years ago. Neither Pavel nor Bob sells protein (to my knowledge), so their words aren’t backed by a profit motive. Pavel urges the reader to experiment both with sources and amounts of protein to find what works best.

Adequate rest is the last — but not the least important –- leg of the stool. Train to be calm when you’re awake, and rest well when you’re asleep. By resting well, I mean for example that you can knock yourself out with a lot of booze, but it isn’t a restful sleep. Be healthy. There are lots of quality-of-life reasons for that, and one of them is building a big, strong body.

Not just one way
The point should be made here that this is not Pavel’s only recommendation for gaining size. He’s got a whole book out there called Beyond Bodybuilding, which describes many approaches toward building size. What they all have in common, though, is that they also build strength. He even goes on to say in an interview that an advanced bodybuilder can use any routine he likes; just add the breathing and high-tension techniques described above (if you don’t already do them), and you’ll have a greatly improved routine.

My addendum is that the minimalist approach (3 exercises) described in PTP! is a valuable one to consider, due to stress-and-recovery balance issues. Too often, we drive too hard for too long, and we defeat ourselves, because we’re not recovering enough. You don’t have to fully recover, I don’t believe (anymore), but you have to recover enough over time to make progress. If you measure progress on, say, a monthly schedule (rather than a workout-to-workout schedule), you might end up doing better. There will be some over-reaching, and there will be a nice overcompensation as a reward.

Have you no time for a full workout? Do you want real lifting efficiency? Are you a fan of “Old School” lifting? If you answered “yes” to any one or all of those three questions…The Clean and Press is for you.

You don’t often see the clean and press being performed in many gyms and there are a few good reasons for this. First and foremost, the movement is hard. When it is done in sufficient sets and reps with even moderate weight, it can provide a whole body workout that will tax the most of the body. It doesn’t take much examination to see that the legs, lower and upper back, biceps, triceps and deltoids, as well as the cardiovascular system will be worked quite well by the movement, especially if you are doing the movement “full cycle.” (This means that you clean and press for each repetition.) The movement requires (and develops) strength and balance. You can’t sit comfortably in a seat and do the movement.

Second, it is not a glamorous movement. Rather, it is basic and primitive. Pull the weight to your shoulders and shove it overhead. Repeat. You can’t be casual while you clean and press. You can’t hold a conversation, talk on your cell phone, nor can you check the gym’s “eye candy.” You have to devote your full attention to struggling to overcome gravity. Simple, basic and demanding equals “not popular.”

Third and finally, the movement is perceived as dangerous. The lower back is at risk when you bend over to clean. The clean subjects your attachments to “unnatural” forces. Your shoulders and lower back are dangerously loaded while the weight is overhead. Why would anyone want to do such a dangerous movement?

Why?

Because you will be in danger of developing coordinated bodily effort and a strong, muscular physique if you devote honest effort to the clean and press. That’s why.

I recommend that you do the movement “full cycle” as mentioned above. However, that may be too taxing for a beginner so feel free to clean every second or third press if you wish. Once you’ve built up some conditioning, you can do the movement full cycle. You should start with moderate weight, especially if you haven’t done the movement before. You can use a barbell or dumbbells – though the beginner will be better served by the barbell initially. A barbell is a little easier to control than are dumbbells – which require that you divide your concentration and control each ‘bell. If using dumbbells, a good starting weight is the same weight that you use for standing lateral or front raises. (Yup, you heard me…start that lightly!)

It’s not necessary (nor even desirable) to completely lock out the elbows and shoulders each rep, since by doing so you transfer the loading from the muscles to the bones and joints. Just ensure that you completely lock out a few reps of each set, to guarantee full range of motion and to make a “complete” lift.

Give the clean and press and honest try…the movement will surprise and reward you.

Recently, I purchased a shrug bar. I’ve worked with it a number of months now and I consider it one of the more intelligent purchases I’ve made. Simply put, it allows me to squat and deadlift in greater safety and comfort than does a conventional bar. There are a couple of reasons why this is so. First, during the lift, your hands and arms are in a more natural position, just like when they are hanging relaxed by your side. Second, as you lift, the weight is free to move to the centerline of the body, rather than remaining in front of the body…lessening the stress on the lower back and making the lift more mechanically efficient. Also, since the weight is lower, there is less stress to the lower back, because the distance to the fulcrum or the movement arm is shorter. Third, the lift is safer to perform with the weight held in the hands. It is much easier to “dump” a bad lift, when the weight is near the hips and hand held, than it is when supported across the upper back. With the low center of gravity, balance is easier for me, also. The grip work is a nice bonus that goes almost unnoticed…until the latter reps of the set!

With the use of this bar, I’ve been able to incorporate into my workout what is a fairly intensive compound movement, without the disadvantages of the conventional squat and deadlift. It’s a “win, win” situation for me. Purists will decry that this is neither a “true” squat or deadlift…but there is a simple answer to those objections:

I don’t care.

The above movements are a good fit for me. I often find myself constructing “quickie” workouts using these two movements and find that they work nearly the entire body in a most pleasing fashion. Give these two movements a try and enjoy your training.

We’ve got a bit of an anniversary to celebrate this week: Our blog rolled over its one-year calendar. It’s clearly been a lot of fun and has provided an outstanding and wide-ranging collection of material; still, without a specific purpose in mind at the outset, it’s hard to say we met any goals here. Next year we simply promise more of the same un-planned randomness to educate and entertain.

Snooping around the thousands of pages of the forum looking for the highlights to point out in a blog post a couple weeks ago reminded me of the kazillion other pages in this 3,000-page website you’re unlikely to have accidentally stumbled upon. A quick glance at our server logs gives a picture of our wiki health and fitness database, and I thought you might like a look at what pages are drawing the most reader attention, see what you’re missing.

Exercises and Workout Routines

1. Exercise Descriptions
2. Bodypart Exercise Suggestions
3. Workout Routines
4. Overhead Squat Instruction
5. Bench Press Instruction
6. Byron’s 5×5 Workout Guide
   
7. Bentover Barbell Row
8. Abdominals

Training Styles and Home Gyms

1. Powerlifting
2. Cardiovascular Fitness
3. Homemade Gym Equipment Ideas
4. Home Gym Set-up
5. Kettlebells
6. Sandbag Training

Health and Wellness

1. Dealing with Back Pain
2. Male and Female Hormones
3. Menopause
4. Cholesterol

Food and Diet

1. Intermittent Fasting
2. Protein Shake Recipes
3. Weight Gain

I was surprised to discover the weight loss page wasn’t even in the top 20. Who *are* you guys?

If you’ve been around the Iron Game for any length of time, you’ve come to realize that there are many different theories regarding training and just as many approaches spawned by these theories. In recent years, high intensity training has become a very popular way of training. It has seen its share of use and abuse in the Iron Game…here’s an “average” lifter’s thoughts on the subject.

This style of training can rapidly increase the trainee’s strength and supposedly, his muscular hypertrophy will keep pace with the strength. In an ideal world…this happens. It tain’t so in the real world. Muscular hypertrophy requires two things (I’m greatly simplifying things here) fiber thickening and capillary perfusion. High intensity training – where you push to momentary muscular failure in a limited amounts of sets – allows for fiber thickening but doesn’t really have enough volume to stimulate capillary perfusion. So the strength can outrun the muscle size.

If this weren’t true…Olympic weightlifters would have huge muscles like bodybuilders and by extension, bodybuilders would be world class strength athletes. Again, tain’t so.

This style of training is also said to be safe – and the statement often used is that “the harder it seems, the easier it is.” Also, it has been said that “the first rep is the most dangerous rep.” The theory here (using curls as an example) is that if you’re curling 100 pounds, the first reps are accomplished quickly…because you’re producing in excess of 100 pounds of force. So they are the most dangerous, since you’re producing excessive force and subjecting the muscles, tendons and attachments to a greater force. As the set progresses, the reps slow down and you produce less force each time until movement isn’t possible…or you produce less than 100 pounds force. So your final rep (where you produce less than 100 pounds force) is actually safer and easier than your first. Sounds logical, eh?

Well, it is logical…but it’s not necessarily correct. Injury won’t usually occur in the primary muscle mover being stressed (the biceps and brachialis) but in the smaller, supporting muscles that tire even quicker.

This style of training requires a constant emphasis on progression…usually in the form of more reps and/or more weight. Progression should be fairly linear for a short time, then stall. At this point, you rest, recover and start gaining again. This is true for the most part…after all, isn’t one of the names applied to weight training “progressive resistance training?”

The problem here is that the relentless pursuit of progression often leads to poor form, with resultant soft tissue injury. The trainee pushes the poundage or the reps before they have actually mastered the previous poundage and gets sloppy. Injury usually isn’t far away.

If the trainee will strive to maintain scrupulously good form, using muscle power and not momentum, to move the weight…if the trainee will forestall progression until they have dominated a particular weight with good form…and if they will occasionally train lighter using more volume…then high intensity training should be a safe and productive form of training for them.

For a short time, anyway. We’ll leave the discussion regarding failure and central nervous system issues for another time.

Regarding poundage goals…there is an author that recommends trying to meet the following goals:

Three hundred pounds in the bench press, four hundred pounds in the full squat and five hundred pounds in the conventional, bent leg deadlift. As laudatory as these goals are, they aren’t very practical for quite a few of us. In fact, I disagree with them.

Granted, you will certainly be strong if you achieve these goals and you may develop a fairly husky, if not muscular physique – but striving for these goals doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be built like a physique competitor through their achievement or pursuit. Contrary, you may end up injured and with a thoroughly sour attitude toward training. (This author injured himself in doing 400×20 in the deadlift. It was quite a while before he recovered and was able to train effectively again.)

I found it interesting that the late Arthur Jones had this to say about squatting and effort:

“In performing power lifts, the danger comes from another source – from prolonged exposure to a force that may be more than the skeleton is capable of supporting, regardless of the strength of the muscles involved. At the moment of this writing, at least a few individuals are squatting with over 800 pounds – and since most of these men weigh at least 300 pounds, this means that they are actually supporting over 1,100 pounds on their feet, and most of that amount on their spines. In the author’s opinion, the human skeleton simply was not designed to support such loads for prolonged periods of time; for any purpose except power lifting competition, all of the benefits that can be provided by squats can be derived without using more than 400 pounds, and in most cases without using more than 300 pounds.” (bold emphasis mine) (From the Nautilus Training Bulletin Number 1)
I’ve moderated my goals to a more obtainable standard, 200, 225-250 and 300 in the three lifts mentioned. By doing this, I hope to preserve my joint integrity and avoid soft tissue injury. I’ll still train intensely but that will be achieved through other gambits, such as decreasing rest times between sets and cumulative fatigue training. Sometimes you just have to reconcile with your existence…and train so as to not hinder your enjoyment of life, which catastrophic injury or overuse injury would certainly do.

Over and out.

I don’t have to tell you my favorite part of the day is a morning cup of Leo’s java and an hour clicking around our forum for a visit with my great friends there. Still, for those who haven’t been around since the beginning and don’t know the players, sometimes it’s a little daunting to jump right in. Who’s who, and do they really know what they’re talking about? Is that guy joking or is this a serious argument? Once in a while it’s hard to tell, especially for newcomers.

So how about a sweet little intro to show you around? These are a few of the notable threads from August.

In the Main Flight Deck:

• Let’s begin with our memory thread of Arthur Jones, who, as you already know, died yesterday. Perhaps you have a memory of your own, something he wrote that triggered your training evolution back in the ’70s? Give us the scoop!

• Do you wake up with a numb arm sometimes? What’s causing that and how do you fix it? Michelle gets us going here in “Nighttime Numbness.”

• Farmer’s Walks — what’s not to like? Who’s doing what, and how; we’ll find out in this thread started by Tim Tyler of tylergrip.com.

• Up next: Quitting Smoking. Time for you to get onboard? Here’s some encouragement you can print out and tape to your carton of cigs. Getcha goin’.

• Kyle invites the Southern California locals to join him in this year’s Volkslauf October 13th. It’s an obstacle loop, either a 10k or a 5k; he knows the course from last year and has a training plan to get you in shape for the event. Ya got 6 weeks, go for it!

• We talked about this last week, still it’s a notable thread going strong. Whether you’re interested in fasting or not, the discussion is intriguing: Intermittent Fasting.

• Boris’ Squat RX instruction videos again topped the charts, and I’d be remiss to slide past this one, even though this, too, was pointed out earlier this month.

In the Bodybuilding Hangar:

• Well, heck, let’s tackle the toughest one first: Is Bodybuilding Healthy? If not, and we’re aging yet in it for the long haul, what can we change to be strong all the way into our longevity?

• Mark would like to know about squat depth, in particular how far past parallel should he go when doing a 20-rep squat program. Once he gets the answer, he then needs to know how exactly to get there.

In the Training Logs Forum:

Now here in the training log section, I couldn’t begin to select a few favored links for you. Some of the logs have been going strong since we brought the email discussion group over to the forum board back in spring of 2004. Other people started a new log each January, or when changing training focus for a variety of reasons. What began as an exercise in accountability became, I think for nearly everyone, a private place for group camaraderie. This is where individual attention is given when times are tough, PRs are abundant — or sparse — and consistency in training is paramount.

Pick a few training logs to read through; you’re sure to find one you can either learn from or contribute to, and perhaps you’ll get the bug to start a report of your own. You’re welcome here.

In the IOL APO/FPO Military Barracks:

• Over in the APO/FPO Barracks forum we’re happy to welcome a couple of Afghanistan-based troops to our military support space. From his plastic tent, Sgt. Clifton expands on his questions of diet and exercise; we welcome your Q&A assistance, our way of supporting these guys and gals (actually, so far it’s just gal, our Army Mom, who’s on her way home to the kids in slightly less than a month).

In the Kettlebell Training Forum:

• In the kettlebell forum, Stella, a veteran gymrat new to kettlebell training, requests our favorite kettlebell workouts in a thread that ranges from a simple swings ladder to a Tabata-style kettlebell snatch workout on video.

In the Vince Gironda Wild Physique Forum:

• Jack triggers a hearty discussion in, “Gironda Bench Press to Neck,” wherein, as you might expect, not too many are in favor of the exercise. The discussion, however, is illuminating, as was the rest of the study of Vince Gironda and his Wild Physique.

And now, I bid you adieu. Dave is finished with his part of the newsletter, so I’m up to bat in the clean-up position. There are countless more terrific threads in the forum, so many in fact, I think I’ll dig you out more treasures next month.

If you’re like most iron flingers, you’re impressed by a set of large, muscular arms. C’mon, admit it…nothing catches your eye more than a fully fleshed pair of arms protruding from short sleeves. There’s just something about a set of muscular arms that says the owner is a serious trainer. Even from childhood, when asked to show our “muscle,” we don’t do a twisting back shot or a crab/trap shot…we flex our biceps.

If this is the way you feel about arms, here’s a routine that just may help you obtain them. First, some background information:

Most people “overwork” their arms. By this I mean that they do too much, too often to allow good recovery and muscle growth. The triceps and especially the biceps, are relatively small muscle groups and don’t need a lot of stimulation to grow. Doing a full body routine that includes many movements that are arm specific may actually cause your arms to stagnate and remain the same size…or even shrink slightly. (Perish the thought!)

In this routine, you’ll work the whole body 2-3 times a week, depending upon your ability to recuperate. To this whole body scheme, you’ll “tack on” direct arm work once a week. This will guarantee stimulation but also allow the necessary rest to build extra tissue. Here’s the reasoning behind once weekly arm work: If you’re working presses, benches, rows and chins as hard as you should be…your arms will handle more weight and workload than is possible in specific arm work and will need recuperation time. Working the arms directly three times weekly won’t allow full recuperation. You may develop lots of endurance and some strength but your growth will suffer.

Are you with me so far?

If you think that I might just be on to something, let’s construct your full body “maintenance” routine. Choose ONE movement from each grouping to construct your routine.

Group A

Overhead Press – barbell or dumbbell(s)

Bench Press – barbell or dumbbell(s)

Incline Press – barbell or dumbbell(s)

Parallel Bar Dip

(My preference here is for the overhead press, since the arms travel through a more complete range of motion. If you must bench…consider alternating the bench press and the overhead press every other workout.)

Group B

Bent Over Rows – Barbell or dumbbell(s)

Chins or Pull Ups

Power Cleans

Lat Pulldowns

Group C

Hyperextension

Romanian Deadlift

Stiff Legged Deadlift

Good Morning Movement

Group D

Full Squat

Leg Press

Shrug Bar Deadlift

Front Squat

Set and reps are to be those that you’ve found most effective. After a short warm up that sees your core temperature bumped up till you’ve broken a light sweat…train hard on these four movements 2-3 times weekly. Try to progress either in weight, reps or shortened rest between sets each week. If you choose to train the full routine three times weekly…make the third workout a lighter one, OK?

Once a week, “tack on” the arm work. My preference here is to place the arm work where you’ll have the most rest days following. For example, if you train three times weekly, (M W F) place the arm work on Friday. If you train twice…do one of two things: Either train (M TH0 and tack the arm work on Thursday or train (M W F) doing ONLY the arm work on Friday. Dig?

You’ll construct your arm work the same way. Choose ONE movement from each group.

Biceps

Barbell or dumbbell curl, either standing or seated.

Alternate curl

Concentration curl

Curl with EZ curl bar

Cable Curl

Triceps

Lying or Standing Tricep Extension

Tricep Pressdowns

Single dumbbell across chest extension

Hands touching push up, feet on floor or elevated

Bench dips

Triceps extensions with cables

Forearms

Draper/Sipes wrist curl

Reverse wrist curls

Zottman curl

Hand gripper work

With the arm work, you’ll train a little less intensely, using higher reps to promote capillary perfusion. Again, you should know what works for you so far as sets and reps.

Give this style of training a good run for 6-8 weeks. Eat well and try to get in a little extra sleep and rest time. I’m willing to bet my EZ curl bar that you’ll have a larger set of arms hanging from your sleeves at the end of the routine.

Training Variety

Many iron enthusiasts short change themselves by rigidly adhering to a set routine and a limited amount of movements. They patiently and persistently plug away at the same old movements, done in the same old sets and reps…and they wonder why they aren’t enjoying their training anymore and why they seem to get injured frequently. Have you ever found yourself in that situation? Training variety can help to free you…if you’re brave enough to try.

Let’s examine everyone’s favorite…the bench press.

Our intrepid trainee does three sets of ten of the flat bench barbell press three times weekly. If he/she is normal, a plateau will be reached where it seems progress stops. To add insult to injury, our trainee’s shoulders are starting to hurt. Maybe he/she is just plain bored. What to do?

First, you must conquer your fear. Many trainees persist at a movement, even if their progress has stopped or the pain of injury rears its ugly head. The reason why they do this is fear…fear that they will drop some pounds off the lift, fear that they may lose a quarter of an inch of size or maybe even fear that someone will call them a quitter or some similar name. Fear can paralyze and cause you to avoid doing anything that might benefit, simply because it is different. Follow? Although you may not believe it, your body is constantly changing and reacting to the various demands made upon it…so why limit yourself to one or two basic movements?

The first thing our trainee could do is vary either the amount of weight used and/or the set and reps. Next, different movements or tools could be utilized. Here are some examples:

The incline press with either a barbell or dumbbells

The decline press with either a barbell or dumbbells

The floor press with either a barbell or dumbbells

The floor dip (push up) with feet elevated

The parallel bar dip

There’s four variations (or seven, if you include the dumbbells) of a basic bench pressing movement and also the parallel bar dips. Now, even more variety is available by varying hand spacing. By utilizing either wide, medium or close hand spacings, the options available increase to at least 21 variations. Varying the incline/decline will offer even more variety. Further variety could be introduced by using partials. You could easily find 50 variations with just a little creativity.

What are the benefits of thinking and training this way? The first and most obvious benefit would be the elimination of boredom. You also might avoid setting up a “repetitive stress” situation. It’s quite likely that you would achieve a more complete development or that your strength would increase. Or maybe, just maybe, you’d enjoy your training more…and isn’t that sufficient reason alone? Give it a try…there’s quite a menu available. It would be a shame to limit yourself to just one entree.

If you made it past the title, Congratulations!

If you’re interested in huge muscle size, powerlifting, strongman events or the latest “bioengineered protein supplement with additional NO2 for a monsterous pump”…you won’t find what you seek here. What you will find are some thoughts and ideas from an “average” trainer. Some may anger you. Some may challenge you to think. Some you may dismiss entirely…so be it. But if you hang in there, you just might find something with which you agree. Still with me?

Let’s start with the “muscle mags” and the training/nutritional advice contained therein. Most of what these “overly expensive supplement catalogs” contain is pure, unadulterated crap. As in not realistic for the average trainer…or the average human, for that matter. I am sick (and tired) of shelling out five bucks or more for about 20 pages maximum of information. Of those 20 pages, maybe ten percent is useful. I am also sick of seeing steroid bloated, inhumanely vascular, painted tan “freaks” training…mouths agape with wild eyes, as if this last set were a life or death emergency. Some of these guys train hard for sure…but the rest is pure theater. The training and weights used by these chemically assisted aberrations have little to do with the average trainee.

Supplements. The magazines are loaded with them. Suffice it to say, you’d better be rich if you’re gullible enough to swallow all the hype in print. Many of the supplements are just plain ineffective as anything other than a reducing agent. They are wonderfully efficient at reducing the size of your wallet. A good protein supplement is convenient and will allow you to easily obtain extra protein and calories without overloading your digestive system…but isn’t an absolute necessity. I’ve used non-fat dry milk or dried whole milk for years as a protein supplement…and I haven’t experienced any muscle wasting. A good multi-vitamin/mineral formulation (without iron) completes my supplement blueprint…the rest is optional and usually in response to a specific need…such as an oil for the omega complex and some extra C and calcium to try and combat osteoporosis. It’s been said so many times it’s almost a cliche’…supplements supplement your intake, they don’t replace it.

If you’ve endured my ranting thus far, genetics, goals and training are next on my hit list.

Genetics and your genetic potential can be both an excuse and a liberating wisdom. In a nutshell, you need to realistically assess what you’ve been given genetically and structure your goals so that your genetics assist you rather than hinder you, in the attainment of these goals. (That is, unless you really enjoy banging your head against the wall for diminished returns.) I’d be a fool (at 51) to continue to think that I would have a realistic chance at high level bodybuilding or strength competition…but it’s not foolish to think that I could maintain above average strength into my old age or that I could develop an above average level of grip strength. I’m 6’1″, narrow shouldered, with a medium small bone structure…hardly Olympia material or a WSM contender but I can look better than most men my age and be a fair amount stronger than many of them.

It’s been said that “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what is there a heaven for?” That’s a nice thought but again, it’s not very realistic. If you continue to reach, reach, and reach yet again.but never touch that which you seek…don’t you think that at some point you’ll stop reaching? I’m not ashamed to admit that I would. Does this mean that you shouldn’t strive or have goals? No, that’s not what is being said. You should have realistic goals…goals which probably can’t be achieved at your first, second, third, fourth or even fifth attempt. However, consistent effort should see you obtaining that goal after a time…at which time, you select another goal just a bit further down the road. Dig?

My thoughts about training have really evolved over the years. First off, I’ve drastically cut down on the amount/volume of training I do. I’ve found that I need less than I think I need. The use of 3-5 quality compound movements, two to three times weekly, in sufficient sets and reps gets it done for me. I’ve gravitated toward whole body workouts, since you can’t split up your recovery…you only have one recovery system. Also, if you aren’t quite up to snuff, you cut back on the sets and reps but still work the whole body…which is something that a split system can’t do. Since I don’t entertain any physique competition goals, a split is unnecessary and intrudes too much into my normal life.

I’ve also altered my thoughts on poundages. I was originally of the “heavy weight, high rep, train to failure” mindset. The rewards of training in such a manner (for the most part, without proper and intelligent supervision) haven’t been good. I’ve numerous issues with soft tissue injuries and some joint problems. These often limit the movements that I can use effectively…or at all. A popular author maintains poundage goals of 300-400-500 respectively, for the bench press, squat and deadlift. Phooey, I say! I once read poundage goals by a trainer/fellow by the name of David Manners. His take on the issue was that the average trainee simply didn’t need to strive to exceed 150-200,200-250-300 in those lifts. I agree. If you feel that’s not enough…try a 10×10 of bench presses, or try a 6×6 with 15 seconds in between sets and I’m fairly sure that you’ll develop a new appreciation for moderate weights. I’ve come to view the iron as a medicine…you should only take what you need to get the job done and for the least amount of time that proves effective.

Finally, I’ve found that enjoyment is probably the major motivation behind the way I train and the resultant changes. If you don’t enjoy your training, why do it? Is it because some “Trainer of Champions” says that you should train that way? C’mon…think for yourself.

Can I reasonably fit this training within my lifestyle and budget? Are my goals realistic? Will this style of training help me achieve my goals, while maintaining good health and physical integrity? Do I still enjoy my training a majority of the time? Answer those questions and don’t blindly follow the crowd. After all, most of the crowd is out of shape and has little training longevity.

Thanks for sticking with me, if you’ve made it this far. Just had to get this off my chest.

It’s been about five months since I purchased the PowerTec Leverage Squat machine. It’s been used more or less steadily since then. This far into the game, it has proven to be a good purchase. Click here for part one, if you missed it.

My training with this machine has been conservative – I haven’t pushed the weight or the reps significantly. This is probably one reason why I haven’t experienced any injuries. When initially using the machine, it would cause my lower back to become sore and to spasm, especially when squatting with feet flat on the floor. It was a couple of months before I “conditioned” and became accustomed to the quirks of the machine’s movement planes. Also, I’m sure that I was just simply out of condition period, having not done any type of leg work that significantly loaded the core muscles or the lower back.

During this time period, I’m sure that I also stretched some muscles and attachements that have allowed me to squat to a greater depth while maintaining a flat footed positioning on the floor, versus using the angled footplate exclusively. I also am getting better at maintaining the proper “tracking” of my knees and thighs in relation to my feet, meaning that my quads and abductors have strengthened. This is all good and very pleasing to me.

The “negatives” of using this machine are few but important. It is easy to “cheat’ the movement and to push up and back against the pads and rigidity of the leverage arm to use greater weight. This isn’t something that you would be able to do during a free weight squat. Since you’re using a pinned, pivoting leverage arm…no balance is involved. This is a double-edged sword for me, since the lack of balance actually allows me to successfully perform the movement…yet it does nothing to train me to eventually squat with a barbell. Give me a moment to compose myself and I’ll get over it.

There. I’m over it.

Recently, I stumbled across a reasonably priced shrug bar during one of my many forays into the local “Play It Again Sports” sports resale shop. I had always been curious about the utility of these bars and now I had the chance to try one out at a price that was better suited to my frugal propensities. What I discovered was that this bar allowed me to squat in a manner most pleasing to me without losing my balance or leaning excessively forward, like I do when a bar is on my back. It allows me to descend to a depth that is roughly equivalent to the depth and positioning for the conventional straight bar deadlift. While this isn’t as deep as the position I can achieve on the PowerTec, the fact that it is done free standing compensates for the minor difference in depth. The increased comfort of the more naturally positioned parallel grip is a plus, as well as the incidental grip work. The safety aspect of having the weight at arm’s length hasn’t been lost on me…it is a simple matter to “dump” a bad lift and much safer than dumping a conventional squat (even if done in a power cage.) My lower back doesn’t complain as much as it does during conventional straight bar deadlifts and this also is a plus.

Now, here’s the thorny question: Am I able to squat with the shrug bar more effectively because of the bar’s design or am I able to squat more effectively because of the prior strengthening from the PowerTec Leverage Squat machine? The answer to that one is tersely simple…

I don’t care.

Click here for Part Three of the Squat-Challenged Lifter.

The best online personal training program will

• have personal trainers with decades of weight training experience in both commercial and home gyms
• be structured to consider your personal goals and your unique life circumstances
• create a workout routine perfectly designed to suit your training experience and equipment availability

When you put those elements together, you’ll find trainees living their dreams, and that is what makes a successful online personal training program.Sounds pretty sweet, doesn’t it? That’s what we thought after discussions with IOL’s Bill Keyes, Byron Chandler, Dan Martin, Bill Peel and Chris McClinch, and with high-fives and grins all around, we set out to create the best quality personal training available online.

Today we introduce our new Online Personal Training program.

The IOL forum is terrific; the education and camaraderie can’t be beat. But let’s face it, sometimes we need a little personal attention. There isn’t enough time in the day to search through the ins and outs of a new weight training program, the latest nutrition news… and goodness knows, most of us, left to our own devices, skip a few sets or secretly slide in some pizza.

Don’t you get tired of thinking sometimes? Wouldn’t you like someone to just tell you what to do?

As I see it, there are three main benefits to an online personal trainer, assuming it’s a quality trainer like one of these IOL guys.

• Training Motivation

• Accountability to Your Personal Coach

• Confidence in Your Training Program

Once your personal goals and circumstances are considered and a good workout routine prepared, those are the three things that will make a personal training program work. And that’s what we offer.

A couple of the guys are hard at work preparing small group training, 4-10 weeks of attention from a coach, just you and a few of your closest online friends. Sessions will be priced individually, depending on the workload and timeframe, and will go online this spring.

Bill Keyes. Byron Chandler. Dan Martin. Bill Peel. Chris McClinch.

Ya can’t beat that lineup, can ya?

Read the details of our new online personal training program here.