Bands: are they an alternative to a barbell and weights?

So I've been using these bands to workout.
http://www.muscledriverusa.com/Strength-Bands-4-inch--X-Heavy--BlackGray_p_809.html

Are they the same as a barbell with weights?
Definitely not.  If you do a deadlift with only the bands using no barbell, most of the resistance happens as you go higher up to the top of the lift. If you do a deadlift with a barbell and weights, most of the resistance is encountered just by breaking inertia and lifting the bar off the ground.

Will the bands translate to strength gains in my
barbell lifts?
That remains to be seen, and if I had to guess I would answer "no". The reason I say that  is for the same reason I stated in the above paragraph. Most of the resistance doesn't happen until you're almost done completing the lift. Another reason is that the bands limit the range of motion as you near lift lockout. This doesn't allow all the muscle fibers to be recruited as much as when compared to lifting with a barbell and weights.


So then why would I stop lifting with weights?
Time. I have little time to workout. When you're working out, it takes  time to setup the weights. The stronger you are the more time it takes to setup more plates on a barbell. If you have to work out at the gym, you might have to wait ten or more minutes to get on a power rack. If you keep on waiting to get on equipment, that will increase your workout time drastically.

The bands eliminate these problems. I can take my bands outside and workout on the sidewalk. That gets rid of the gym. Also setup time is negligible. A couple seconds to secure the band to place resistance on your targeted muscle is all it takes.

I'm also using  bands for economic reasons. To be blunt, I'm in debt. The reason for that is I'm spending too much time working out and trying to recover from my workouts. I could easily hit the six hour mark from the time I get into the gym until I finished eating my first post workout meal.  When I lose time, I lose money.
Until I pull myself out of this crushing debt, I will continue to use bands.

As for my total body workout post, I stand behind it. I was going to start applying the max out set routine to my stiff legged deadlift because I plateaud on it for a couple weeks, and I think max out sets would have yielded a greater training effect and hence led to a strength gain.  However to maintain the integrity of my total body workout routine, I won't be updating it any time soon because I stopped doing it.

Natural strength training versus steroid strength training

Strength Training: How strong can we get?

Here's a story I came across a year ago.  Basically it makes the case that we as humans are products of intelligent design. This means something far more advanced than us designed us.

The story basically argues that since our DNA has a logically and well thought out pattern in it, it means that we didn't happen by chance. We're not random probabilities that somehow  coagulated together, and then voila here we are.

So how does this relate to strength training?

Whatever thought  us up  only intended for us to make moderate strength gains. As evidence, examine the concept of beginner gains.  When you first started strength training, the gains were easy. Your bench press probably shot up rapidly. Then as the weeks went by, you probably hit a plateau and you've been stuck ever since.


Also look at how well you synthesize protein after you workout. You could easily eat two sirloin steaks after lifting and feel fine. If we were meant to keep building muscle, then we could continue to eat meat and still build muscle. But I guarantee  if you continue to eat meat after the first twenty four hours after your workout and don't taper off your protein intake, your body will reject it.

Lastly, if we were meant to continue to get strong, we wouldn't have to worry about repetitive movement injury. Our bones and joints wouldn't be held together by thin little fibers of tissue that can't hold up to too much stressful weight.

If you weren't born  with the genetics to pack muscle onto your frame, then whatever programmed your DNA doesn't want you to get strong. Luckily and almost in contradiction with whatever prime directive that's been programmed into your DNA,  we were given brains to figure out stuff.

This leads me to think that strength training without steroids is a hack. I chose to make my brain figure out how to get strong without steroids. I feel like somehow I'm getting one over on the designers of our bodies. My body was meant to be weak, but I figured out how to make it strong.

My question is then how strong are we supposed to be? I don't know. Maybe I'll find out when my body snaps in half with an eight hundred pound weight on the back of my neck.

Are creatine and beta alanine addictive?

So I got sick of taking creatine and beta alanine every day, so I skipped on them for two days. Then when I worked out, I was sluggish.

 The number of sets I could do was less. When I'm on creatine and beta alanine, I can easily blast through eight or nine single rep sets of pause squats. When I was off the supplements, I could barely  get through five sets.

In fact, my entire workout was a nightmare. I was breathing hard. In between sets, my body felt defeated. It took me longer  to recover as well.

However, during the entire workout all I could think about was how I wished I had taken creatine and beta alanine.

  Doesn't that constitute an addiction? I didn't go through any withdrawal symptoms, when I wasn't  taking them. But I couldn't stop thinking about them while I was working out, so it was like a mental addiction.

Even more, now that I'm in my rest  phase, I'm taking them religiously. First thing after breakfast, I'm getting my pills out and taking them because I don't want to feel lethargic while I workout.  If I feel tired while I workout, so my thought process goes, I  won't be giving my body enough of a training stimulus to make it want to adapt. I kind  of sound like a drug addict.  Oh well.

Eating for strength

48 hour rest between workouts

I haven't done 48 hours rest between workouts in awhile, but now that I'm back doing them I can see why I haven't been doing them.

First off, I'm sore. My forearms and upper back are especially tender after doing consecutive workouts of  variations of deadlifts.

Secondly, I'm missing on a lot of my lifts.  I did cambered bar bench presses on Sunday, and on Tuesday I did military  presses. My military press went down twenty pounds.

That could be bad or good depending on how you look at it. It's bad obviously because I lost strength. However, it's also good because that proves the same muscles I exhausted and fatigued for the cambered bar bench press were too tired  to make any gains in the military press. That means there is an adequate amount of translation between the two presses,   and the training stimuli is effective. Consequently, there should be a strength gain on my Sunday cambered bar bench press personal record. Click here to see what I'm talking about.


Thirdly, I've had to alter my workouts.  I used to do one handed tricep pull downs on a cable machine but the range of motion in the pull down was limited due  to the straight up and down line the elbow and arm must travel while following the path of the cable. This was causing severe stress on my elbow and even a minor dislocation of the elbow joint. To remedy this, I had to switch to dumbbells to  allow for more mobility in the elbow joint and to relieve stress on the joint.

I also had to stop doing bicep curls every workout. Since I'm doing variations of deadlifts every workout, my forearms and wrists are severely fatigued, and they don't have any energy to hit any personal best records for the bicep curl.  Consequently, I'm doing bicep  curls on Sunday and Thursday, and I'm relying on doing barbell rows on Tuesday to hit my biceps.

Additionally, my cravings  for animal proteins  have increased. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, and I had a craving for steak. So I got out of bed and  went to the local Mexican restaurant and ate a huge steak burrito.