So I was doing tricep extensions on a pull down machine like this guy:
The problem with this is the elbows are the weakest link in this movement, so they are taking the brunt of abuse. If you look at how this guy is doing it, the elbows are the only stabilizers. They're providing the balance in the movement and preventing this guy's body from moving around. This means they are put into a susceptible position that could lead to elbow injury.
How do you remedy this? Do tricep extensions using a barbell loaded with weights while laying your back on a flat bench. If you want to use a pull down machine like the guy above, use a machine that has a back pad so that you can use the back pad to stabilize your body while in the range of motion. Or go on a machine like the one below:
The main point of this post is if you're going to do tricep work, do it in a safe stabilized position not like the guy in the first video at the top in a unstabilized standing position.
Seems kind of paradoxical. You see on youtube guys just going all out. Grunting. Breathing heavy. Muscles pumped with blood. But all that working out is just half the battle.
So I'm going to just state it like it's some fundamental law: Strength is more of a function of your central nervous system firing off electrical impulses to muscles rapidly and efficiently more so than any muscular development that you're trying elicit from training at the gym.
So how do you acquire central nervous system superiority? Do nothing. Rest. Spend time living life. When you take time off from working out, your soul and body feels like it's being replenished. What's the point of all this working out if you can't use your muscles to live life?
How long should you rest? 48-96 hours. There. There's your answer. I'm always going on like some crazed lunatic like I'm some Mary Poppins paradigm of efficiency, so I'll just cut to the chase and give you your answer. How you input those rest ranges is up to you. You do 48 hours rest when you want muscular development. When your nervous system is kind of frazzled, that is when you can't move your limbs like you're afflicted with cerebral palsy, you should take a 72-96 hour rest. It's true your muscular development will wither away with 72-96 hours rest ranges, but your central nervous system is acquiring the rest it needs to make strength gains, so the next time you workout you might make a strength gain or you might stay at the same strength level. Then maybe you should rest 48 hours and hit the gym again, and then maybe you might make your strength gain.
When you rest, you might want to take to the act of walking like the dalai lama of strength training below suggests. This may help you burn some fat.
That's right. I quit beta alanine and creatine and even fish oil, but I might go back to the fish oil. I don't know yet.
The effects of these actions are meat cravings and a generalized sense of hunger pretty much all the time. It seems like all I wanna do is shove protein into my gut. Sometimes I'll be driving around, get a little hungry and weak, and pull into a McDonald's drive thru and get a double quarter pounder no cheese.
Also I'm spending a lot less time on the toilet watching my expensive protein go down the drain. That's pretty much what your body is craving is that creatine you find in red meat, so once that creatine allowance threshold is met the body is going to excrete the excess. Now that I'm off the creatine, my body is processing the meat I'm eating and using that as a creatine source.
This has a super effect. Because I'm processing the meat for its creatine, I'm also synthesizing the protein from the meat. What I mean by synthesizing is the body breaks down the meat and reassembles the amino acid protein chains into muscle. When protein synthesis goes on, greater muscle growth is achieved.
I feel stronger. I'm making strength gains. My workouts are a lot shorter. The creatine and beta alanine tend to make the body endure longer workouts without tiring out. Some would say longer workouts lead to more strength gains. That maybe true. That's up to you to experiment with.
Of course I'm not doing the same workout either. I'm using more machines. The setup time is minimal and way less intensive than loading plates on a bar. Just taking and replacing the weight stack key is all it takes. Of course on many machines I can do almost the whole stack so I might have to go back to a bar and plates for some movements.
One curious thing is that instead of doing stiff legged deadlifts with a bar and plates, I'm using a heavy duty latex band for stiff legged deadlifts. I place the band flat on the ground. Then step on the band with my bare feet in socks, and I'll leave just enough of a loop on the outside edges of both sides of my feet so that I can grab the loop. Then I'll take a breath of air in through my mouth and try to affix a nice straight position into my lower spine and lock it in. Then with both legs and with knees almost locked and while holding my breath, I'll yank upwards with my lower back while holding the band with both hands I only do single rep sets of these but I do them every workout.
I'm beginning to change my position on repetitive movement injury when it concerns the lower back. It's true that your lower back will get sore if you do stiff legged deadlifts consecutive workouts in a row. But the lower back is considerably more resilient than any other part of the body. It can take a little abuse and the next day be fully recovered. You're pretty much using your lower back all the time even when you're sleeping, so it has the potential to accept stressful training and adapt and recover from it pretty quickly. Of course I'm doing spinal stretches in between sets.
This sounds like it could work. I dunno. Give it a try. The worst that could happen is you wake up in the middle of the night and have to go #2, and you'll be out the thirty or forty bucks it took to buy the casein protein.
I don't see why you have to buy this guy's protein. Why not buy some cheap Walmart whey protein and mix it with some casein protein?
I haven't done any barbell deadlifts in about a month. Instead, I've been using bands but still I plan on getting back to weights with barbells after I clear out my debts. In the meantime, check out this video series from one seriously strong dude.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So it's pretty hard to mark your progress down in a journal if all you're doing is one rep sets. If you make the lift, it's obvious you would mark the number one down. If you don't make the lift, what would you do? Mark it a zero?
That's why I use a rating system to keep track of my lifting progress. I use a scale of one to five.
Five is perfect form with no glitches in the range of motion. When I hit a five, I'll add more weight to the bar immediately and try to hit that on my next set.
Four is completion of the lift but the form was shaky and jittery. If I hit a four in the lift, I will definitely add five or ten pounds to the bar the next time I train that lift.
Three is a miss. Three means the form was terrible. I might have used other muscles to rack the weight like in the squat where you can use the lower back rather than the legs to complete the lift. If I hit a three, I will do the same weight the next time I train that lift until I get a four or five.
Two is basically a partial. If I'm deadlifting for example and I can only get the bar to my knees, that's a two.
One is the worst. If I'm bench pressing and I can only get the bar off my chest, that's a one.
Keeping a journal on your smart phone is what I prefer. You can track back to what you used to lift pretty easily. It's also much more convenient than lugging a paper notebook around a gym. Of course, you'll have to worry about thieves who want your phone.
Strength equations are lifts that can be substituted for each other. When designing a strength training program, you'll need to switch your lifts to avoid repetitive movement injury and to overcome plateaus.
The first equation
Cambered bar bench press= military press+ pectoral flyes
I've been using this equation for the past two weeks, and already I've added fifteen pounds to my cambered bar bench press. I'll do cambered bar bench press on one day and the other two on another workout day.
The military press works the triceps while taking the lats out of the lift. Pectoral flyes hit the fronts of the shoulders and the chest. This helps with lifting the bar off the chest at the bottom of your bench press.
I also do accessory work to help with the cambered bar bench press. Barbell rows and rack pulls help keep the lats strong, so you can pull them close together while laying flat on the bench. This will keep you in a nice tight position on the bench. Tricep extensions help with elbow lockout. Bicep curls help with stabilizing the bar while in the bench press range of motion.
Second equation
Pause Squat= deadlift+pistol squat+good morning
Deadlifts work the quadriceps. When I say deadlift, I mean when two forty five lb plates are placed side by side on the ground, and then one foot goes on one plate and the other foot goes on the other plate. This forces the knees to bend more at the start of the lift which involves more of the leg muscles. Pistol squats strengthen the knees. Good mornings hit the upper spine. This all leads to stronger squats.
Stiff legged deadlifts blast the lower back. Rack pulls hit the lats, forearms, traps, and shoulders. Pause squats hit the glutes and quadriceps.
Standing barbell bicep curl=sitting dumbbell curl
One handed dumbbell tricep extension=barbell tricep extension
Now what you do is construct a strength training program with these equations. Take one side of the equations and do those on one day. Then, on your other workout day do the other side of the equations.
I'm not going to get into specifics about the foods you should eat. In the end all food is broken down by the body into either fats, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals or fiber. Of course, I'm not referring to any synthetic foods when I say food. I mean food that is relatively unprocessed.
No question without a doubt, after a workout the body needs protein to build muscle. To a lesser extent, the body needs carbohydrates to replenish energy reserves. Fat intake after a workout should be kept to negligible amounts because fats delay protein and carbohydrate absorption into the body.
There is definitely a yin/yang principle that applies to resting between workouts. On one hand, there is the facet of muscular development required for gaining strength. On the other hand, the central nervous system needs to be adequately rested as well to gain strength. It's a delicate balancing act between the two, and I've made strength gains on not enough rest and too much rest.
Too little rest can lead to short term strength gains. When I say too little rest, I'm referring to rest periods of 48 hours or less. Short rest periods tend to have a positive impact on muscle development. The muscles are harder and bigger when accompanied by short rests.
The problem though is over the long term, shorter rest periods tend to diminish the capacity of the central nervous system to fire off electrical impulses to requisite muscle groups, so you will miss the lift. When I say long term, I mean three workouts in a row with forty eight hours rest in between them.
Too much rest between workouts can also lead to strength gains. When I say too much rest, I mean rest periods of 72 hours or more. This happens because the central nervous system is adequately rested, so it will fire off electrical impulses to requisite muscle groups in a timely and efficient manner. Consequently, a strength gain will be made.
The problem with too much rest though is if you're constantly taking 72 hours rest in between workouts, you will lose muscle mass and consequently lose strength. When I say constantly I mean two weeks in a row where you workout twice a week with 72 hours rest between workouts.
So what's the answer? Too much rest or too little rest? The answer is there is no right answer. I don't know you're genetics. I don't know how well you keep strength gains over time. I don't know how well your muscles stay strong without atrophying over a duration of time. As a general rule, if your muscles are getting bigger but you're not making strength gains you should probably take a 72 hour rest to adequately rest your central nervous system. If you still haven't made a strength gain, maybe
you need another 72 hours rest between workouts.
My latest health kick is to workout Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday with forty eight hours rest between workouts. I workout each of these days at 8 a.m. Then after Thursday, I'm taking a full 72 hours rest until my Sunday workout.
I used to workout with 60 hours rest between workouts. I would workout on a Monday for example at 8 a.m. Then on Wednesday, I worked out at 8 p.m. Finally on Saturday, I worked out at 8 a.m.
My strength gains were fairly consistent but not always. The Wednesday workout at 8 p.m.was particularly rough. If I had a long day and if my nerves were frazzled because of the usual bull poo I put up with on a daily basis, I would sometimes miss on my lifts and not make strength gains.
The other thing about working out at night is I was too tired to workout. I would park my car in front of the gym and rest and intend to workout after fifteen minutes, but I would just fall asleep and sleep through the night. Then I would wake up in my car in the morning, and then I would workout.
However, I do think the 60 hour rest period is the optimal time frame for resting. The muscles don't atrophy that much, and the central nervous system gets enough rest to perform adequately enough to make strength gains. I would definitely recommend it if you live a relatively stress free life, and you're not too tired to workout at night.
Latest health kick is to workout three times in a row with 48 hours rest between workouts, I'm predicting lots of misses on my Thursday workout because my nervous system will not be adequately rested. But my theory is that since I'm waiting for 72 hours between Thursday and Sunday workouts I should hopefully be rested enough to recover any strength I lost on Thursday and make strength gains on Sunday. I don't know. I'll guess I'll find out.
I do high bar Olympic squats without lifting shoes. The guy makes the point in a brief side notation you have to lift wearing lifting shoes when doing Olympic squats. Lifting shoes have high heels on them which enables your ankles to take on a less severe bent position because the angle between your shin and the top of your foot is widened. The idea is that you'll be able to lift more wearing them.
I'm conflicted about lifting shoes. On one hand you'll lift more with them. That's true. On the other hand are you really the one lifting that weight while wearing lifting shoes. I don't know. You decide.
First off, I injured my right knee a year ago. Then I made some crazy resolution to pause squat every workout. I made consistent strength gains in my pause squat moving up five pounds a week which was what I expected because more so than any muscle group the leg muscles are the most adaptable muscles on the human body and respond the best to training stimuli. This means you can make consistent strength gains all the time with any lift that uses the legs as the primary movers.
However, my problem with doing pause squats every workout is that it aggravates my knee injury and my right knee starts popping when I come out of the hole and my knee joint looks out of position like it's going to snap while I squat back up to the top.
My theory for why this happens is that in the squat the legs and feet are constantly fighting each other because they are in a fixed position on the floor, and they are playing a balancing act to find the best position to enable you to power the bar up to lockout. If that means the knee joints are going to take awkward positions to complete the lift because the legs want to complete the lift then so be it.
To remedy this, I've been doing pistol squats on a hack squat machine. This takes the legs out of the struggle of fighting each other and putting the knees into compromised positions because I'm only using one leg to make the lift. But the problem with this is since I'm using a lighter weight by using only one leg , I'm neglecting the torso and upper back muscles that are equally crucial to squatting.
Enter the good morning. It taxes the exact same upper back and torso muscles that the squat uses. My theory is that the good morning coupled with the pistol squat for each leg will be a suitable substitute for the pause squat. Consequently I should be able to pause squat on one workout day and then do pistol squats and good mornings on the next workout day. This should solve my knee pain problem and translate to strength gains in my pause squat. My ultimate goal for the pistol squat is to eventually use no hack squat machine and move to using a barbell doing either back or front pistol squats.
I'm thinking about doing these. I've never tried them except when I miss on my squat and have to rack the bar. The woman has a good take on the form but I don't see being able to put any serious weight on the bar without locking your spine in a straight up and down position by taking air in through your nostrils and holding it throughout the range of motion.
I don't know if any of the information on this website is true because I haven't checked its sources, but if you read it and lend even a small amount of credence to it you will find contradictory information.
The main point of the article is optimal testosterone production falls in the range of a golden mean. You eat too much your testosterone levels will decrease. You eat too little your testosterone levels will decrease. You workout with too little intensity your testosterone levels will decrease,and the same thing happens if you workout with too much intensity and for too long a time.
I am of the opinion that some form of glutes to the ground squat like the pause squat should be the foundation of any strength training regimen for the simple fact that the leg muscles are the most easily adaptable of all muscle groups.
Elite powerlifters have their strongest lift in the squat. Some of them can squat 1,000+ pounds. We as humans have evolved mostly on our feet over the past couple eons, so you as a powerlifter have all that natural selection breeding in your dna to enable you to put up big numbers in your squat.
There has been a lot of speculation on whether or not squats induce human growth hormone. You could probably Google that and find fifty different websites arguing for or against human growth hormone synthesis while squatting. I don't know myself.
I think we can agree that the squat and deadlift put severe stress on the spine. To alleviate the stiffness of your spine and align it as well, do these stretches.
First stand with feet shoulder width apart with the knees partially bent enough where you can sink your upper body between your legs. Now bend over at the waist gently to feel a gentle pull on your lower spine. Don't yank on the lower back however as it will end up injuring the lower back.
The next stretch is stand with feet shoulder width apart about three to four feet away from a wall and bend backwards so you can catch yourself on the wall behind you with your hands. Gently push your pelvis out and try to slowly arch your lower back to the ceiling. As you get more and more flexible, you'll be able to stand further away from the wall and put your back in a more severe arch.
I never do these stretches without being warm and sweaty. The only time I do them is if after performing a squat or deadlift and I feel a couple of my vertebrae are misaligned. I also do them after taking a hot shower when my body and muscles are relaxed and warm.
I recently started doing this workout, and I have to admit it feels real nice. I go benchpress first, then deadlift, and finally pause squats. I deadlift before squats because the squat really smashes the legs and to do them ahead of the deadlift will only make your deadlift weaker. Also I use cambered bars for bench pressing. After I'm done doing the powerlifting, I'll go to the smaller muscles and start doing bicep curls, pectoral flys, tricep extensions.
Any lift from squat to deadlift to bench press to standing barbell bicep curl requires a certain amount of rigidity and torso tension to complete a successful lift.
One way to add more stiffness to the lift is to suck your in your butt hole. It forces you to contract the glutes hard and flex your quads, and when this happens you have a more stablebase to lift from.
I've been putting off how to do stiff legged deadlifts. The main reason is that it uses bad form to pick the barbell off the ground. You're basically standing with your shins resting against the bar. You bend over at the waist with a slight bend at the knees and latch your hands onto the bar with a hook grip and then you take in a breath of air through the mouth and then pull the bar off the ground with your lower back. In effect, you're lifting the bar off the ground with a rounded back. This puts severe stress on the lower back as you lift the bar past the knees to lockout because the weight severely compresses the vertebrae. The main thing you have to watch for is severe soreness in the lower back. When you experience a slight amount of soreness in the lower spine you should stop doing stiff legged deadlifts because they are definitely not something you want to get sore to the point where you can't even walk the next day.
As far as rep range goes, I'll hit a couple single rep sets and then go to a lighter weight and start putting in six rep sets and then do a couple three rep sets. I'm mostly aiming for lactic acid build-up and to stretch the spine into alignment. The lactic acid build-up is for
irritation of the muscle to induce the production of intra-cellular fluid. The intra-cellular fluid while it doesn't directly lead to strength gains it adds fullness and rigidity to the muscle and you'll need structural support in your spine if you expect to lift big weights for the deadlift and squat.
The only reason is I'm doing stiff legged deadlifts is I'm on a severe plateau and my acute angle deadlifts are not enough of a stimulus on my lower back muscles to make them adapt. I might alternate between doing stiff legged deadlifts and acute angle deadlifts when I'm not doing conventional deadlifts.
Here's an excellent video of correct deadlift form. I don't agree with keeping your head in line with the spine because I don't train with a belt so I'm putting my lower back into a position very susceptible to injury, but with maintaining a severe arch in my lower back and by lifting my head as high up as possible I'm able to avoid injury. Here's how I deadlift.
Kidney failure or renal failure can happen when the muscles break themselves down and release myoglobin into the bloodstream. The myoglobin can then clog the kidneys and cause kidney failure.
One of the causes of muscle breakdown is muscle exertion. I drink whey protein while I work out, so it pretty much prevents my muscles from breaking themselves down. Even then I can only workout for only two to three hours without severe catabolism damage to my muscles although I will usually eat a nice sized meal of eggs and carbohydrate before my workout to prevent muscle breakdown while I lift weights.
This book is what influenced my thoughts on strength training. I don't recommend going out and buying it because it costs 65 dollars. Also it's written by scientists with degrees in biomechanical engineering, so the language is very technical. But if you want to see why I do the workouts I do, then
maybe you might want to read this because this blog is a practical application of the
theories presented in the book.
I started this site because I saw a lot of bad information out there about how to get strong. I know it's out there because I've waded through most of it. Along the way armed with less than seriously proven strength training programs, I've injured myself. I've had terrible plateaus that would go on for months. I've had the worst kind of diets that have caused me to get sick. The point is what I write about to make strength gains has been backed by hard fought research gained through blood, sweat and tears. The problem is my training programs are hard.
I guess when people clicked on the link to this website, they thought there was going to be some quick fix or a little pill they could swallow, and magically muscles would pop out of their chest and arms, or I was going to talk about aligning their chakras or connecting with their spirit animals or some other silly nonsense.
Cambered bar bench presses are scary stuff. You can hurt your shoulders doing them. Pause back squats are equally as painful and terrifying. Who wants to eat eggs all day? Who wants to do single rep sets using all the strength you can muster? The answer is not many.
You have to be a special kind of person to do my workouts. You have to be a trouble shooter first off. You have to have the ability to analyze your plateaus. You have to break down the range of motion into individual muscle groups that need to be strengthened. Secondly, you need to have a high tolerance for pain. Everything from the lifting to the eating even to the resting involves some kind of pain. You ever eat a bunch of eggs after you workout?Your muscles feel like they're about to split in half. But that pain is muscle growth. Lastly, you need courage. A four hundred pound weight on the back of your neck is scary. A three hundred pound weight suspended in air above your chest is equally frightening.
Strength training is not for weak minded individuals. These are the kinds of people who probably look at you at the gym and ask themselves what is that weirdo doing? All the while, they're still lifting the same weights. I had an experience at an old gym of mine. After couple of years of not being there, I went back, and what did I see? The same narrow minded people who would mock me or make little asides to themselves or their friends had the same weak scrawny bodies, and they were lifting the same wimpy weights.
I think those are the people who are frustrated when they come to this blog and expect to find a quick fix to their plateau but find there is no shortcut to strength gains. I don't know. Maybe
you can give me an answer as to why this site isn't more popular. Write your answer in the comment box below.
This is really an excellent video series on the mechanics of squat form and how to strengthen your squat. I know the guy is only doing box squats, that is just sitting down and squatting off a box, but in powerlifting you only have to go down enough so that your glutes sink below your knees so I can see why powerlifters are always training box squats.
I prefer to do olympic high bar back squats with my glutes almost hitting the ground. High bar position means the bar is sitting on the back of my neck as opposed to resting on the middle of my back. I feel when the glutes reach that low of a position, the glutes are being fully recruited in the range of motion and more of a strength gain adaptation will be seen in not only my squat record but also in my deadlift record. If you want to read my advice on squatting click here.
In this series, the instructor also lists some very nice complementary exercises to strengthen your squat and deadlift.
That's right. I've finally resolved myself to do pause back squats every workout. I know. I know. I'm always whining about repetitive movement injury and how you shouldn't do the same exercise two workouts in a row. But there's no way around pause back squats. Sure, you can do acute angle deadlifts and they will hit the glutes almost as well as squats provided you maintain an upright upper torso position. The problem is once you lose that position and bend over at the waist your glutes are taken out of the range of motion and your lower back carries you to the top.
That's why I'm going to do pause back squats every workout. There's no exercise that smashes the lower half of the glutes like pause back squats. The reflexive back squat uses too much bounce to carry the upper torso out of the bottomed out position. That's good if you're trying to break a personal record, but that won't help you stimulate the lower glute muscles.
I think I'll avoid repetitive movement injury in the knees for the simple fact that any kind of pause added to any exercise's range of motion will require a less heavy load. Thus it will reduce the stress on my knees.
Also , a key component to any repetitive movement injury is the shearing action in the exercise's range of motion. Shearing action means when your joints shift out of position and the bones in the joint become misaligned. If you place a load on the joint when it's misaligned, you're increasing your chance of injury.
When a bounce is added to a range of motion, the potential for that shearing action greatly increases. When you bounce out of the bottom of your squat, you don't know where your knees are and how the bones in the knee joint are positioned. They could be out of alignment, so when you activate your glutes to carry you to the top, the bones in your knees have the potential for injury under the stress of a heavy load. That's why I think doing the pause squat will reduce my knee pain because it gives my knee joints a chance to settle in and align properly before I try to muscle the weight back to the top. When I used to do pause bench presses, my shoulder pain was greatly reduced as well because I was dealing with a lighter load and I was giving my shoulder joints a chance to align themselves and thus my shoulder pain was reduced.
There is really no way to have a strong deadlift without having strong glutes and quadricep muscles. From the moment you step to the bar to the point where you reach the top of the lift, the muscle fibers in your legs are firing off to stabilize the weight your holding and to assist your lift to knee lockout. The pause back squat fully stimulates all leg muscles involved in the deadlift.
This powerlifter talks deadlift form. He talks alot about keeping your head in line with your spine. But you have to keep one thing in mind. These powerlifters are wearing training belts, and belts support your lower spine throughout the entire range of motion in the deadlift. If you took the belts off, their lifts would decrease by one to three hundred pounds.
I've tried keeping my head in line with my spine, and it doesn't work for me. The main reason is that I don't wear a training belt, so I take in as much air as I possibly can and try my best to extend my belly out as far as I can and raise my head as high as I can to overemphasize the arch in my back. Click on this link to read how I lift without a belt.
He also talks about how if you keep the head in line with the spine, it will enable you to put a more severe arch in your back. That's fine and dandy if you're wearing a training belt like the powerlifters in his video, but I go completely raw in my workouts. I don't use training belts or talc powder. The only thing I do use is wrist straps in my deadlift. That's because I'm trying to put the tension on my back rather than on my hand grip. I could use a mixed grip where one hand goes over the bar and the other hand goes under the bar, but that hand position puts too much tension on one side of the body and encourages a twist in the stance to one side and thus the spine becomes unaligned. If you keep lifting like that, you risk injury to your spine and hips and biceps.
I've been on a plateau for my deadlift and squat. The problem is I keep bending over at the waist. When this happens, my lower back is overused and since I don't wear a training belt to support my lower back I consequently don't make the lift. What do I do now?
I guess I have to listen to this guy. He squats about half a ton give or take a couple hundred pounds. In this video he gives some complementary exercises to address weaknesses. Notice how he recommends seated good mornings and some weird lower back machine that probably doesn't exist in 90 percent of all commercial gyms.
I used to do stiff legged deadlifts and I saw pretty good gains in my deadlift. I think the reason was that the form for the stiff legged deadlift has you start in a bent over at the waist position with knees almost locked straight and deadlifting the weight off the ground. This motion will pretty much blast your lower back and hamstrings. Be careful though as this puts your lower back and hamstrings in a position very susceptible to injury.
The amount of tension you can hold in your hamstrings determines how well you keep your upper body locked in an upright position. If you lose the tension in your hamstrings, you'll double over at the waist and use the lower back to make the lift which is a good way to injure your lower back.
I think the guy in video above talks about hamstring tension somewhere in his video series. It's a five part video series and you should definitely watch it.
I tend to change my routine depending on whatever research I stumble upon. I basically look at myself as a lab rat when I'm at the gym, and this workout routine page represents my latest up to date experiments I perform on myself. Here's this month's flavor of the month inspired by Louie Simmons' West Side Barbell website. I do the lifts in the order they appear. Bench press, deadlift and squat come first. Then I follow up with the smaller muscles: triceps, biceps, abdomen, pectorals, and shoulders.
Only
do single rep sets for any kind of deadlift. The position you first
lock in your spine on your first rep will always be the most rigid and
safest and you tend to lose that spine position the more you increase
your reps, but if you can hold your breath for the entire set of reps
and keep your spine locked in then by all means do some reps.
The form for the stiff legged deadlift is position
yourself as close to the bar as possible. Your legs are as straight as
possible with your shins resting on the bar and a slight bend in your knees. Take a huge gulp of air,
hold it in and pull the bar up to knee lockout and a straight up and
down position of the spine and head.
It's important to
hold your breath throughout the entire range of motion in the lift to
lock your spine in a straight up and down position. Also if possible,
try to pull your glutes to the ceiling and arch your lower back before
you start pulling the bar up. I only do single rep sets of the stiff
legged deadlift until I
feel noticeable soreness in the lower back which usually happens after four sets of single reps.
Rack Pulls
Rack
pulls are partial deadlifts in a squat rack. I don't wear a belt so I
only do single rep sets of these as well. I do use the straps though.
The
form for these is you pull your glutes to the ceiling and take a huge
belly full of air in and hold the air in to lock your spine in a severe
arched lower back position throughout the entire range of motion in the
lift.
These tend to wreck the shoulders, so quit if
you start to feel sharp pain in them. You've had enough training
simulation when that happens.
These
are very hard on the knees and the lower back. The position of the
exercise requires you to have the bar on the back of your neck which has
a crushing effect on the lower spine. I used to single rep sets of these, but I went back to doing max out sets because the training effect is much greater than just doing single rep sets. Just remember to fill the chest cavity with
air taken in through nostrils but not so much that you put an arch in
your lower back before every rep you perform.
Do the max out routine. If you feel extreme pain in the elbow, quit. This exercise is intended to strengthen your elbow joint as well as the tricep so quit if you feel pain. That's enough stimulation. Also check this out if you're having any pain in the elbows.
I do max out sets of these. They add stability to your bench press range of motion, and they help increase your barbell row.
Pectoral flyes, inverted flyes, and shoulder presses
If I have any energy and protein shake left and I have the time, I'll do some light shoulder work mostly for recuperation after blasting my shoulders on the bench and deadlift. I'm aiming for a time under tension of a minute and a half to two minutes. Time under tension is the time the muscle or muscles are contracted or flexed. It can be accomplished by holding a lift in the range of motion at a point where the muscles are fully engaged and held for a time of a minute and a half to two minutes. You could also do reps for the necessary time or you could slow down the reps for the necessary duration of time. I prefer not to do too many reps as it wears down the joints involved in the range of motion. Sometimes I'll hold the weight at a position where the muscles are fully contracted and flexed. If I can't hold the lift, I'll rest for a couple seconds and then start lifting again to accomplish a burning sensation in the muscle. Of course you have to do these with light weights or use bands that have a weak enough tension in them so you can keep the muscles contracted for a duration of minute and a half to two minutes.
The time under tension has a secondary effect of muscle hypertrophy. That's where the muscle becomes engorged with blood and intercellular fluid. The intercellular fluid is a byproduct of the muscle producing lactic acid. The lactic acid inflames the muscle and irritates it. This is what is referred to by bodybuilders as "the burn" or "the pump". This adds definition and fullness to the muscle giving it a nice sculpted look as well as adding mass to the muscle which adds stability to your lift.
Time under tension can be used for any lift or muscle provided the weight is light enough and that you can maintain the proper form in the lift. Sometimes I'll do time under tension exercises for the tricep extension or the lats or the biceps. I guess they could also be done for leg extensions or calf raises. I don't think it would be safe for deadlifts or squats because the spine has to be kept in a nice stiff position to safely complete the lift although I've never tried holding a squat or deadlift in a fixed position for any duration of time.
Standing Abdominal crunches using a band
I go mostly for the time under tension technique. I loop a band over an upright on a power rack, grab the two ends of the band and start doing standing crunches for a minute and a half to two minutes. Of course the band has to be loose enough to accomplish the requisite amount of time. Sometimes I'll go slow in the range of motion or I'll take three or four second rests and then go back doing crunches until I feel a noticeable "burn" in my abdominal wall.
Tuesday 8 a.m.
Military Shoulder Press
I do military presses in front of the neck, and I start the lift with the bar resting on the safety crossbars on the rack. I have the bar positioned just under my chin, so I can sink my elbows deep and give my shoulders and chest a nice stretch in my setup before the lift. In essence, it's a dead military press because I'm not using reflexive bounce to complete the lift when I bottom out.
I have shoulders that are susceptible to injury, so I don't like to reach behind my head to unrack the bar. Also I take a sip of air through the nostrils to fill the chest cavity with air and lock my spine in a straight up and down position to support the bar throughout the entire range of motion of the lift.
Do max out sets until you feel soreness in the triceps. The main difference between doing the military press and flat bench press is the military press takes the lats out of the lift which means the lats don't have to be contracted to complete the lift. This leaves the triceps to complete the lift which is the most important muscle used in the flat bench press. I learned this from Louie Simmons' site.
Another important thing about the military press is it puts your shoulders at a different angle in the range of motion compared to the flat bench press. This will help alleviate any shoulder pain you might have taken on while flat bench pressing.
Pectoral flyes with dumbbells on a flat bench or on a pec fly machine like the guy below in the video:
Yeah, I know I said I do these last, but since I'm in the power training phase where I'm training to gain strength I'm doing power max sets. I go for a very hyper extended position while in the range of motion of the lift. I make sure the position of my hands are way behind the vertical plane of my chest as far back as comfortable. I also make sure my elbows are locked and my arms are straight as possible. Be careful as these are especially hard on the fronts of the shoulders. These help with raising the bench press.
Leg Presses
My back is especially tender after a pause squat workout so I have taken to doing any kind of movement which involves bending the leg at the knee into a closed position and then pressing with the leg against some kind of resistance. The main point is to take the weight off the back of your neck and give your spine a rest.
This can take the form of doing leg presses on a machine. You can also do pistol squats or lunges. You can also do hack squats on a machine like this one:
You will need to know how to squat before you work out on this machine. If you don't know squat form, click the link above for pause squats because there is a risk of injury even though you're on a machine.
The main point of any leg pressing machine is take the weight off the back of your neck and give your spine a rest from doing back squats. You put a lot of stress on your spine when balancing a heavy weight on your neck.
If you don't have access to machines, I guess you could try barbell hack squats or front squats to take the weight off the back of your neck.
Good mornings
First off, I stopped doing these thanks to fact that I'm wearing powerlifting shoes. The shoes prevent the buttwink problem that occurs when squatting barefoot, so staying upright is much easier.
But if you still want to do them here it is:
I only do single rep sets of these as well. I take in enough air in my nostrils to lock my spine in and hold the breath in throughout the entire range of motion of the lift. Of course you'll want to do these on a squat rack in case you miss and have to bail on the weight and let the safety crossbars catch the bar.
Notice the use of the safety squat bars in the first two videos and the straight barbell in the last one. I never tried these in a down position like the big guys are doing in the first and last video, and I don't know why you couldn't start in a down position like that off some safety crossbars on a squat rack. I'm sure you could achieve a safe and rigid position like they're doing without the bar being suspended by chains. Maybe if you setup a locked in spine position by holding your breath before getting under the bar, you could achieve a safe stable lifting base in your spine. That might negate having the need for the chains. I'm just wondering about this because I don't have chains at my gym.
Stiff legged deadlifts
Yeah I know I said I never do the same movement twice in a row, but I gave up doing deadlifts. The deadlift is really just a hybrid of a squat and stiff legged deadlift anyways, and if I gain in my stiff legged deadlift I'm almost certain to gain in my deadlift.
It's also important to note that the lower lumbar part of your back is a very resillient part of your body when it is strong and stable.
I do max out sets of these. If you feel like mixing it up just use a different machine for your triceps.
Lastly if I have energy, I'm doing recuperative training on the shoulders using ultra light weights or bands that have a small amount of tension in them. I'm mostly going for a time under tension like I talked about in the above paragraphs. Pectoral flyes and/or inverted pectoral flyes, tricep extensions, bicep curls and shoulder presses are some of the time under tension lifts I do. Also I do some more abdominal standing crunches using a band and go for an extended time under tension as well.
Thursday 8 am
I've changed my position on doing three consecutive workouts in a row with 48 hours rest between them. That third workout really makes me hate my life and lose motivation
to go to the gym, so this third workout is totally optional. Also if you were to skip this third workout, your next workout would be on Friday if you worked out on Tuesday. This will give your central nervous system enough time to recover, and Friday's workout would be Sunday's workout, and repeat the cycle between the alternating workouts.
In conclusion take notice of when I'm doing the workout. I like to workout in the morning. My central nervous system is at it's prime operation condition in the morning because I'm haven't been stressed out by the usual trials and tribulations that happen to me throughout the day. Consequently, my strength gains are more consistent.
If you learn anything from Louie Simmons' website, one thing you should take away is that strength is more a product of conditioning your central nervous system to fire off electrical impulses to the requisite muscles in order for the body to complete the lift. Sure, muscular development is necessary for strength training but the central nervous system dictates how strong you will be, and I don't care if you have big muscles because if you don't have a well and rested central nervous system that fires off electrical impulses to your body in a timely and efficient manner there is no way you're making that lift no matter how big your muscles are. Read this to see how long you should rest between workouts.
I used to do supplements. I would take three grams of creatine and three grams of beta alanine daily to boost my endurance. I usually eat a meal of eggs with a carbohydrate food source about an hour before working out. Oatmeal works the best because it is low glycemic so it's absorbed slowly into bloodstream. This helps prevent insulin spikes. You definitely do not want to go into a sugar coma before you workout because it will make you weak and mess up your workout. Protein is not necessary before you workout provided you drink whey protein while you workout. Additionally, I used to take 3 grams of omega 3 fatty acids which equals about nine pills of fish oil daily. This helps keep your heart healthy.
First off make sure you have a solid base to lift from. Stand either on hard rigid flooring or concrete or two forty five lb plates placed side by side. One foot goes on one plate. The other foot goes on the other plate. Also make sure the floor is level because any incline in the floor will put your body out of balance and could lead to injury in the spine or hips or shoulders.
Now put your spine in a deadlift position. If you don't know what I mean, read this. Now reach down with hands slightly shoulder width apart. You should have a huge breath of air in your lungs to lock your spine. Grab the bar with a double over hand grip and pull it to slightly below the top of your abdomen. It's real important to hold that breath of air in your lungs. The weight of the bar has a pulling jarring effect on the lower back and could lead to injury if you lose that breath. This is especially important if you plan on doing reps because you'll have to hold your breath during the entire set of reps. That's why you should probably stick with the max out routine. For the simple fact it only requires you do three reps max.
Also this exercise is pretty hard on the rotator cuff, so I don't recommend you do it every work out. If you're alternating between regular deadlifts and acute angle deadlifts, do bent over rows on your acute angle deadlift days because your acute angle deadlift weight will be considerably less than your regular deadlift weight you work out with. So the upper back and shoulders are not being sufficiently stimulated compared to the load placed on them in a regular deadlift. Think of the bent over row as a complement that addresses the shortcomings of the acute angle deadlift's lighter load.
This guy eats a lot. In this article he talks about how he used to eat compared with how he eats now. He also recommends eating peanut butter sandwiches. The guy is strong as heck
so I would listen to him.
You need strong triceps if you expect a successful elbow lockout for your bench press. Tricep extensions help with that. I alternate between doing tricep extensions using a barbell with a double overhand grip on one day and I use dumbbells on the next workout day. I avoid repetitive movement injury by using this system. The potential for injury is mostly in the wrists, and dumbbells give the hands and wrists mobility to decrease the potential for injury. You can do them either standing up, sitting down or laying flat on your back on a bench. Be mindful of filling the chest cavity with air taken in through the nose and holding the air in to lock your spine in a straight up and down position before attempting any lift while standing up or sitting straight up. Holding your breath with your back flat on the bench will give you a stable base to lift from.
I also take the bar to full bent back elbow position with my forearm touching my bicep. This taxes the elbow joint incredibly so watch for pain in them and quit if the pain becomes severe.
I go through a warm up phase gradually increasing the weight and then I do max out sets until I feel fatigue and soreness in my triceps. The tricep is such a small muscle so it may take ten or more max out sets to achieve fatigue in the muscle.
