The Garage Gym Online

The Garage Gym Online header image 4

Top 10 articles: Dan John

March 10th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

Dan John is an internet legend and a well-published writer.  But with so many posts and articles to read, where do you go to get a handle on his philosophy?  Try here, with these top 10 articles.

And if you’re already a fan of Mr J and I’ve missed out your favourite article,  just let me know in the comments.

  1. Three simple tips that work: if you have time, read the whole this article.  Hell, if you have time, read everything Dan has ever written.  But if you are short of time, and who isn’t, just read the first tip about using rack work to improve your strength from a dead stop.
  2. One lift a day: it’s a simple principle and one I have yet to try.  Bench on Monday, Row on Tuesday, Squat on Wednesday, Press on Saturday and Deadlift on Sunday.  Workouts are short, maybe just 45 minutes, but brutal.  Dan asks “have you ever tried to squat for 45 minutes?” No?  Me neither.
  3. The 40 day programme: This is one of those articles that is great fun to read if you’ve already seen the light and somewhat painful if you haven’t.  Dan wades in, all guns blazing, and makes it known that in his opinion most people who train “to look good naked” have to be naked before you can tell that they train.  Ouch!  Dan tells it how it is: if you want to lose fat, lose fat.  If you want to gain muscle, gain muscle.  Stop trying to ride two horses with one ass.  You know who you are Mr Internet Warrior, you.  The 40 day programme?  It’s a gift for reading to the end of the article and one I am looking forward to trying out one day.
  4. I hate medium: the source of the great Dan John quote “fat loss is an all-out war.  Give it 28 days, only 28 days.  Attack it with all you have.  It’s not a lifestyle choice; it’s a battle.  Lose fat and then get back into moderation.”  So saying, Dan lost 26lbs on the Velocity Diet in one month so he knows what he’s talking about.  But Dan doesn’t limit himself to talking about fat loss, he covers all the bases.  The premise is that your highs need to be high and your lows low.  Most athletes spend most of their time doing chipper workouts when they need to go hard, to go heavy and to go home.  Still don’t get it?  Read the article.
  5. More new techniques: Dan goes through some stuff that he likes.  He praises the Neti Pot, Sugar-Free Metamucil, Vibram Five Fingers, and fish oil, amongst other things.  But none of these are the jewel in the article, which is his ladders protocol: 2, 3, 5, and 10.  One set is 20 reps.  Do five sets and you’ve done 100 reps, just like German Volume Training, but a lot easier.  Dan recommends you try this with a single lift for a week’s worth of workouts to get some extra volume.   
  6. My secret coaching methods: Dan reveals the secret to why people ask him to coach them and extols the virtues of training at home, maybe in your own Garage Gym.
  7. The Gable Method: “if it’s important, do it every day.  If it’s not important, don’t do it at all” was Olympic medal-winner and coach Dan Gable’s motto.  Dan picks it up, dusts it off and gives it a new lease of life in this article.  If you’re talking about a particular lift, it doesn’t necessarily mean every day (although it can!) but certainly every training session.  Dan also gives a great little introduction to Percy Cerutty, the iconoclastic Australian track coach who suggested as early as the 1960s that runners should lift weights and run up hills.
  8. The Litvinov Workout: Dan tells the story of Sergey Litvinov at the 1983 World Track and Field Championships in Helsinki, Finland.  Litvinov took gold in the hammer that year, noticeably leaner and more muscular than the other competitors.  His secret was the rather strange workout that he did: eight reps of front squats followed immediately by a 400m run.  He lifted 405lbs for the front squats and ran the 400m in 75s.   
  9. Three mentors: Dan talks about his personal encounters with three great sportsmen, Wilt Chamberlain, Fortune Gordien and Robby Robinson.  The lessons? One: you’ve got to do it in competition.  Two: simplify.  Three: toss out the extras.
  10. Dan John’s Top 10 tips: Dan offers some no-nonsense tips for beginners and experts alike, which seems like a good place to stop.

But if you want to see Dan in action, check out this short clip on YouTube about goal setting:

Or this clip on strength training and physical performance:

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   2 Comments

What I’ve been eating: the good, the bad and the ugly

March 9th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

As I said in my post yesterday, I’ve reached the end of my winter weight-gaining project.  In that post, I talked about the different strategies that enabled me to gain 20lbs.  And I’ve talked about my weight gain diet in general terms once or twice before but in none of my posts have I gone into any detail about the meals or recipes.  So here is a taster.

Before I start, I would add that Anna is a great cook and she took on the responsibility of getting plenty of quality calories inside of me with great success.  After all, one of her more formidable ideas was the monster weight gain shake that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  She tends to do most of the real cooking in our house.  Most of the time, it’s fantastic.  However, there are occasions when her creativity runs away with her and we end up eating all manner of strange body parts. 

 Here is a sample of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Now excuse me while I run for cover…

Good: Meatloaf and cauliflower bake

This meatloaf looks a bit anemic but it tasted fantastic, with a more-ish flavour and plenty of herbs and spices.  The cauliflower bake (like a pasta bake but with cauliflower instead of pasta) is delicious as well.  I strongly recommend that you go and check out the recipe here.

Meatloaf and cauliflower bake

Good: Steak and salad

My ideal lunch.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  I even got chopped up cold sausage in with the side salad.

Steak and salad

Bad: Fish, green stuff and red tomato something-or-other

Fish and I aren’t the best of friends and it being coupled with a green vegetable that looked like seaweed and some lumpy tomato salsa was enough to put me off a bit.  Anna thought it was really nice, though, so it might just be me.

Fish for lunch top view

Ugly: Beef heart stir fry

Yes this really is pieces of a cow’s heart cut up in pieces and stir fried.  I have this unpleasant feeling that I might be living with Hannibal Lecter’s grand-daughter…

Beef heart stir fry

Ugly: Liver and onions

I have finally put my foot down on the subject of liver, having been forced to try both lamb and pig’s liver.  It’s not so much the grainy texture as much as the strange flavour that seems to build up in your mouth the more you eat it.   If you’re a masochist, you can find the recipe here.

Liver and onions

Now I think I’ll be ordering take-away this evening…

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   7 Comments

How I gained 20lbs

March 8th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

I’ve reached the end of my winter weight-gaining project.  And while I have only just got to the point where people at work can tell I lift weights (I started out quite lean and I wear a jacket and tie most of the time), I can see a visible difference in the mirror.

Oh, and I gained 10kg (20lbs).  I started at 72.5kg (160lbs) and I now weigh just over 82.5kg (180lbs).

So what’s your point, pencil-neck?

My point is that while my achievement is not particularly impressive, what I am about to write is pure experience, from 6 months of gaining weight.  I haven’t read it in a book and it isn’t taken from someone else’s experience.  I tried last year and failed bitterly.  This year, I succeeded.

So if you’re struggling to gain weight and you’d like to put on 20lbs, then read on.  You might find this helpful. 

 

Point #1: you need to eat more than you think

When I started out, I was eating about 2,000kcals per day (excluding pre- and post- workout nutrition).  When I started my weight gain project, I increased my daily intake by 500kcals for a few weeks.  Very little happened.  I bumped them up to 2,750kcals and the scale started moving.  After a while, the scale stopped and I needed to bump them up again.  3,000kcals did the trick this time and progress continued.

I heard Jamie Reeves say in an interview once that he ate 12,000kcals per day when training for the World’s Strongest Man.  I cannot imagine how much he had to stuff down his throat to achieve that.

LESSON LEARNED: if you aren’t gaining weight, keep bumping the calories up

  

Point #2: you are probably overestimating how many calories you are eating

People often said to me “oh, 2,750kcals is nothing”.  But if you use Fitday, you’ll find that if you want to get most of your calories from meat, eggs, fish, fruit and vegetables, this is a big volume of food.  My stomach ached on a daily basis from stuffing it full six times a day.  And I was using shakes quite a lot, too.  So if you aren’t using Fitday, and you aren’t getting the progress you want, I would settle down for an evening in front of the computer and start entering in your diet.

Steak and salad

Steak and salad: notice the chopped up bits of sausage in the salad for extra calories

LESSON LEARNED: you need to keep a record of what you are eating and measure the calories

 

Point #3: you need to treat it like a diet

I can honestly say that I made better progress this year because I treated the weight gain project like a diet.  I had a plan of food I was going to eat that amounted to a set number of calories each day.  I had a target weight that I wanted to gain and I measured my progress against the target.  My motivation came from seeing progress towards the goal.

LESSON LEARNED: you need to set a target and go for it

 

Point #4: you will feel sick from eating so much

I wrote to my friend Rob Newman recently that I had not felt hungry since September 2009.  I can honestly say that I have never hated food so much as in the last 6 months.  I felt like the main character in Brewster’s Millions, who is forced to fritter away $30m in order to inherit $300m.  Except with food, OK?

Someone I know who went through a similar process a while back said “if you are not feeling uncomfortably stuffed full all of the time, then you are not eating enough.”  I would have to agree.  If you want to see my diet mid-way through the project, I did an article about what I ate to put on muscle a little while ago.

LESSON LEARNED: don’t expect it to be easy and prepare for it to be hard.

 

Point #5: drink your calories

Bearing point #4 in mind, it helps to drink your calories as much as possible.  While milk doesn’t work for me, I have been using a monster shake that works brilliantly for packing a huge calorie punch as well as being extremely healthy.

Monster shake

LESSON LEARNED: err, drink your calories.

 

Point #6: what food you eat DOES matter

Last year, I drank milk and ate chocolate and most of it went directly from my mouth to my overhanging belly.  This year, I’ve concentrated on meat, fish, fruit and vegetables and my waist measurement is a lot lower than it was last year after a similar length weight gaining project.

LESSON LEARNED: don’t go mad on poor quality food.

 

Point # 7: time your meals

It’s really hard to make yourself eat the amount you need to eat.  I found that the only way I could guarantee getting to the end of the day and making sure that I had eaten everything was to eat by the clock.  If one of my meals slipped it was horrible trying to catch up again as I would find that no sooner had I finished it, then I would have to start the next one.

Clock

LESSON LEARNED: eat by the clock.

 

Point #8: increase your training volume

Don’t expect to gain weight if you’re still doing the same sets and reps of the same weight you do during the summer while you’re trying to hold onto your abs.  I found that 10 sets of 3-5 reps of heavy weights on the big compound lifts, four exercises per workout, four workouts per week were just about what I needed.  If I didn’t get that level of work in, I didn’t grow.  You may need more or less than that.

LESSON LEARNED: work harder.

 

Well, that’s it for my lessons learned this year.  I wonder if next year’s winter weight gain cycle will bring any more?

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   · 4 Comments

Workouts for 6 to 12 March

March 5th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

OK, so week five after my deload.  This is the last week before I go on holiday so I can’t promise I’ll be completely true to plan :-)

  • Assistance: I’ll start another 2 week assistance cycle when I get back.
  • RE (lower): I’ve just switched over from sumo to conventional deadlifts so I’ll do another week of those.
  • RE (upper): I’m starting to struggle with progressing the close grip chins and military press linearly, so I may switch these around with my max effort exercises.
  • Max (lower): I find zerchers mentally cruel but they seem to be OK.  I am enjoying starting to back squat again so I will keep both of these for the time being.
  • Max (upper): Bench is hacking me off and I’m not really getting anywhere with my pull up variations, so I may switch my max and rep exercises around when I get back but I don’t know yet.

My goals

For what it is worth, my current goals are:

  • a double bodyweight pull up;
  • a 2.5x bodyweight conventional deadlift; and
  • bench 100kg (220lbs).

Progress so far and notes

Coming back to conventional deadlifts was nice and it was good to feel comfortable with 150kg (330lbs) for 10 sets of 2 reps on 1 minute.  I feel confident about 155kg on Sunday.

Box squats felt heavier this week at 120kg (265lbs) but still nicely within my ability.  Legs felt a bit shaky afterwards, though.

Everything else seems to be behaving itself (for the moment).

Without further ado, here is the workout plan

Saturday – Upper (max)

Exercise Weight Sets Reps Rest Detail
Bench (3RM)

100kg

3

3

3mins

Work up
Pull up

47.5kg

3

5

3mins

Work up
Dips

25kg

10

4

1min

-
Dumbbell row

40kg

10

5

1min

Each arm

 

Sunday – Lower (repetition)

Exercise Weight Sets Reps Rest Detail
Deadlift off 2″ plates

155kg

10

2

1min

-
Glute bridges

78kg

10

5

   1min

-
RDL

78kg

10

5

1min

-
Hanging leg raise

5.5kg

3

5

3mins

Work up

 

Tuesday – Upper (repetition)

Exercise Weight Sets Reps Rest Detail
Military press

54kg

10

3

1min

-
Close grip chin

39kg

10

3

1min

-
Dips

25kg

10

4

1min

-
Dumbbell row

40kg

10 

1min

Each arm

 

Thursday – Lower (max)

Exercise

Weight

Sets

Reps

Rest

Detail
Zercher squat

95kg

3

5

3mins

Work up
Glute bridges

80kg

10

5

   1min

-
RDL

80kg

10

5

1min

-
Hanging leg raise

5.5kg

3

5

3mins

-

 

Notes on assistance exercise PRs

On the last 2 week cycle, for 10 sets of 5 on 1 minute:

  • Floor press – 64kg
  • Barbell row – 74kg
  • Glute-ham raise – blue band with half of pink band (using sling)
  • Hip thrusts – 66kg

On this 2 week cycle, for 10 sets of 5 on 1 minute:

  • Dips – 25kg
  • Dumbbell row – 40kg
  • RDL – 80kg
  • Glute bridges – 80kg
  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   No Comments.

Don’t miss these great links!

March 4th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

It’s March already!  I can’t believe it.  The year is flying past and it will be Christmas again before we know it.  In the meantime, you can enjoy these great links…

I have a veritable bounty of Star Wars links for those science fiction geeks amongst us.  In fact, I found so many this week, I’m going to split them out into a separate section: 

  • A new Star Wars novel has been written by Troy Denning.  This features some significant developments, with Luke in exile and Han and Leia back on the right side of the law.
  • And if you thought you were a Star Wars fan, check out the lengths that some people go to with this picture of a Jabba the Hut birthday cake
  • For those collectors of paraphernalia amongst you, here is a new stormtrooper figurine with some moving parts.  This post also has a number of other links to stormtrooper sites.  There is a whole subculture out there!
  • I’ve enjoyed looking at some of the behind the scenes pictures of the Star Wars films, particularly when filming A New Hope (on Tatooine) and The Empire Strikes Back (on Hoth) but this is the first one I’ve seen from Endor in The Return of the Jedi.
  • And this set of digitally manipulated pictures will add a new dimension to your Star Wars fantasies as some of the iconic characters and spaceships come to earth: photographer Cedric Delsaux directed these in Dubai.
  • Be warned that you really have to be a geek to appreciate this: find out whether you speak BASIC or if you’re just a Wookie.

And now, the rest of the links…

  • Moving away from Star Wars, there’s a dinosaur vibe to this week’s set remaining set of links, kicking off with this rather odd helicopter in the shape of a triceratops, dubbed “the Triceracopter”.  I don’t know, what will they think of next?
  • Continuing on the dinosaur theme, a new tyrannosaur has been discovered in Mexico.  Unfortunately, it died over 74m years ago so don’t go rushing off to see it.   Dubbed the “Bisti beast”, this creature differed from the T-Rex in various small ways but it was still 30ft long and weighed 3 tonnes.
  • If you like Calvin & Hobbes, or you just want to read about T-Rexes flying F-14s, then check out this great appreciation of the Bill Watterson opus.
  • Still on the subject of dinosaurs (I jest! I jest!), this old article by Mike Boyle is one of the great classics of the personal training and strength coach lexica.  In Boyle’s inimitable style, he asks you, are you a chef or a cook?  Find out here.
  • I am really excited to try this functional mass gaining scheme by Geoff Neupert the next time that I switch programmes.  It sounds fairly close to what I am doing at the moment but the main benefit is that you can do max effort and rep work on the same day, which means that progress should be accelerated.  I am doing something approximating to WS4SB at the moment and while I am putting on mass, I don’t feel like I am pushing my lifts as hard as I could be.
  • This article by Louie Simmons on Zach Even-Esh’s site is a combination of old material but it’s worth re-reading to better understand the principles of the conjugate system. 
  • Other than dinosaurs, there isn’t much to share by way of a creature feature this week, apart from this amusing couple of pictures.  And I thought I had some weird stuff in my garage until I saw this
  • And the new world record for breath holding under water is 19 minutes and 21 seconds.  As a former competitive swimmer, I thought I could give most people a kicking with 2 minutes.  I’ll get my coat…
  • And finally, I’ve been watching some of the World’s Strongest Man finals on DVD recently, as I received the box sets of the 1980s and 1990s for my birthday in January.  Magnus Samuelsson was one of the standout competitors, with two wins and some very near misses.  Add to these achievements that he was always an easygoing personality and a great performer and I have to confess I am a big fan.  Keep up to date with what he’s up to now with this update from IronMind.

That’s it for this week.  Hope you enjoyed them.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   No Comments.

Cost-benefit analysis in your Garage Gym (part two)

March 3rd, 2010 by Chris
Respond

Last week, I talked about how to do a cost-benefit analysis and how it was useful for creating information about yourself and other people.

I suggested it was also useful to help you make the best of your garage gym and I mentioned the following example:

I might have the goal of squatting 160kg by the end of the year.  Perhaps there is a particular competition that has 160kg as the necessary starting weight.  But if I naturally tend towards deadlifting every time I do my max effort lower body workout then I am unlikely to hit that goal.  If, on the other hand, I do a cost-benefit analysis on my max effort lower body workouts then I’ll quickly realise that my deadlifting mania isn’t helping my goals.  So I’ll start using exercises to build up my squat.

Similarly, I know some people who are still doing the same workout programme with the same weight as they were doing years ago.  Are those exercises really bringing any benefits?  Or does the cost of the time spent doing them now more than outweigh the non-existent benefits?

So a cost-benefit analysis on your workout programme could be worth a few minutes of your time. 

But you can do the same analysis on your gym equipment, too.

What equipment to buy - a cost-benefit analysis

I think it’s possible to talk in general terms about the cost-benefit of buying different pieces of equipment, if only because space and cash are both such overriding considerations for most of us.

  • Footprint – how much space the equipment takes up is important.  It will count as a cost if a piece of kit occupies a lot of space (especially if you have a very small garage like I do).
  • Multiple usage – being able to use the equipment for several purposes presents a benefit.
  • Types of exercise – the type of exercise that the equipment allows you to do will be a benefit but the type of exercise you need will depend on you and your goals.
  • Price – unless you are very wealthy and can do a bulk order at EliteFTS for whatever you feel like whenever the fancy takes you, cheaper equipment is likely to be a benefit.
  • Quality- but you don’t want to be replacing it every other year or have it creak in pain every time your powerlifting buddies show up and start chucking weights around, so quality is a benefit.
  • Homemade – this depends a lot on you.  If you enjoy the making process and/or are a bit hard up, them homemade kit is brilliant.  If you hate getting your hands dirty, well, don’t bother.  So it could be a cost or a benefit!

So, for example, a power rack has some big benefits as it has almost infinite uses and takes up relatively little space when compared with the equivalent in machines.  On the other hand, it could set you back quite a bit of hard-earned cash.

A pull up bar, on the other hand, costs about as much as my weekend beer allowance and, while the exercises I can use it for are fairly limited, it does give me a lot of value for that minimal investment.

It all depends on your goals…

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   No Comments.

Introducing: round up

March 2nd, 2010 by Chris
Respond

In this Introducing series, I’m trying to cover exercises that aren’t run-of-the-mill in all training environments.

That doesn’t mean that you won’t have heard of them but hopefully they won’t be so familiar that there isn’t a tip here somewhere that might help.  And as you might expect, most of the tips relate to doing the exercises in the limitations of your own garage gym. 

OK, I get the idea.  So what have you covered so far?

These are some of the exercises I’ve covered so far, along with the reasons why:

The weighted pistol - I think many people write the pistol off as a bodyweight only exercise (in fact I know they do and it really gets my goat).  But it’s actually really simple to load up with dumbbells or kettlebells.  The advantage is that you take the load off the lower back while really working the legs.  In this post, I link to a number of basic pistol tutorials and show you how to load up easily.

Weighted pistol on box

Farmers’ walks - These are under-rated by many people and are actually really hard to do with proper weight.  In this post, I’ve covered how to improvise your own farmers’ walk bars quite quickly using easy to obtain climbing equipment.

Farmers walks alternative

The assisted glute-ham raise - As I show you in this post, I think there are two easy ways to make your own glute-ham raise set-up.  One, using resistance bands and a pull up bar.  And two, using two pull up bars, a pulley and some cord.

Glute-ham raise middle position

Lumberjack squat - For ages, I kept Googling this exercise and never found very much about it.  So one day I just put it in my programme and it works really well.  It’s brutal, makes you keep your chest up when squatting and doesn’t load the spine.  I couldn’t ask for more.  See my pictures (in a very tasteful red T-shirt) as well as a crucial tip for adding extra weight in this post.

Lumberjack squat bottom position

Assisted one-arm chins - If you want a one-arm chin, then this post shows you the easiest and most elbow-friendly way to do it.  I don’t believe you can do it just loading up weighted chins (and I speak from experience). 

One arm chin top other hand

The floor press  – I tried this exercise for the first time recently and thought that there was a lot of mileage in it.  Besides, it’s one of the good oldtime strongman movements.  I did a post on it because many people think that it’s a hard movement to set up in any gym without a really good power rack, let alone a garage gym.  I found that with two plyometric boxes and a certain amount of wilful determination it can be done.

Floor press - top

Zercher squats - Another exercise I only tried recently and one I’m still getting the hang of.  It’s very much like the lumberjack squat but the stresses seem to fall in a different place.  One to watch and learn from, I feel.

Zercher - bottom

The viking press - This is an exercise I used to do quite a lot and then for some reason abandoned in favour of more conventional presses.  I’m coming back to it now for the sake of variety more than anything.

Viking - bottom

So there you have it.  Eight slightly off-the-wall exercises perfect for the garage gym.  There’s nothing there that costs more than a few bob to make, buy or scrounge.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   No Comments.

Top 10 most popular posts on The Garage Gym Online

March 1st, 2010 by Chris
Respond

To mark the occasion of the 6 month anniversary of The Garage Gym Online, here is a list of the top 10 most popular posts, ranked by individual page views…

  1. Introducing hip mobility and lumbar stability
  2. Top 10 Articles: The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban
  3. Top 10 Articles: T-Nation Corrective Exercises
  4. How to keep your shoulders injury free for pull ups (parts one and two)
  5. Hip mobility parts one, two, three and four
  6. My Top 5 Adam T Glass Articles
  7. Using climbing kit for your garage gym
  8. How to make a cheap sandbag
  9. Sandow Plus: Eugen Sandow
  10. Training with sandbags

Some of them I found a bit surprising when I went and looked at the data.  Others didn’t surprise me at all.

It’s rare that a day goes by without quite a few hits on the Top 10 Articles: The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  On the other hand, I was surprised that one or two of my personal favourites didn’t make the cut.  In particular, I missed seeing:

Anyway.  For the really curious

Here is how they rated:

Page views of posts

I’ve not counted the total of all the hip mobility posts together otherwise they would have rated top by a long way.  I’ve only counted the first one, which rated 190 views.  Similarly, I’ve only counted the higher of the two how to keep your shoulders injury free for pull ups posts.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   No Comments.

Workouts for Saturday 27 February to Friday 5 March

February 26th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

OK, so week four after my deload.  This will be another interesting one… 

My goals

For what it is worth, my current goals are:

  • a double bodyweight pull up;
  • a 2.5x bodyweight conventional deadlift; and
  • bench 100kg (220lbs).

Progress so far and notes

OK so I already have some tweaks to the programme!  I have quickly realised that max effort dips don’t really transfer very well over to max effort bench (I kind of knew this already but tried to ignore it).  So I’m going to rotate 5RM and 3RM benches instead of bench and dips.  I’m going to put dips in as an assistance exercise instead. 

Without further ado, here is the workout plan

Saturday – Upper (max)

Exercise Weight Sets Reps Rest Detail
Bench (5RM)

95kg

3

5

3mins

Work up
Elbow flexor pull up

38.75kg

3

5

3mins

Work up
Dips

25kg

10

4

1min

-
Dumbbell row

40kg

10

5

1min

Each arm

 

Sunday – Lower (repetition)

Exercise Weight Sets Reps Rest Detail
Deadlift off 2″ plates

150kg

10

2

1min

-
Glute bridges

74kg

10

5

   1min

-
RDL

74kg

10

5

1min

-
Hanging leg raise

5.5kg

3

5

3mins

Work up

 

Tuesday – Upper (repetition)

Exercise Weight Sets Reps Rest Detail
Military press

53kg

10

3

1min

-
Close grip chin

38kg

10

3

1min

-
Dips

25kg

10

4

1min

-
Dumbbell row

40kg

10 

1min

Each arm

 

Thursday – Lower (max)

Exercise

Weight

Sets

Reps

Rest

Detail
Box squat (15″)

120kg

3

5

3mins

Work up
Glute bridges

76kg

10

5

   1min

-
RDL

76kg

10

5

1min

-
Hanging leg raise

5.5kg

3

5

3mins

-

 

Notes on assistance exercise PRs

On the last 2 week cycle, for 10 sets of 5 on 1 minute:

  • Floor press – 64kg
  • Barbell row – 74kg
  • Glute-ham raise – blue band with half of pink band (using sling)
  • Hip thrusts – 66kg
  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   3 Comments

Don’t miss these great links!

February 25th, 2010 by Chris
Respond

And here we are, almost at the end of February.  Two months of 2010 have disappeared already!  Time flies, whether you are having fun or not.  Anyway, here’s some fun links to enjoy…

  • This week’s Star Wars links: first a montage of various Star Wars characters interacting with a chipmunk.  These are definitely worth checking out as they take the Stormtroopers 365 idea one step further into our world.  And second, this rather strange collection of pictures features science fiction characters in everyday settings including a closet look at Darth Vader on the, er, water closet.
  • I’m not sure quite what to make of this IronMan Magazine interview with Mike O’Hearn but his work ethic is remarkable and he’s a really big guy.  I did disagree with one thing that he said, though, and that was the idea that weighted chins give you big biceps.  I don’t think this is necessarily true as I found very little change in my arm size going from a weighted chin of 30kg to 70kg.
  • Don’t miss this training footage of Ted Ligety’s off-season training for the slalom in the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver.  There are some interesting new movements in there plus some twists on older movements.  If you’re looking for more, check out this interview with Ted.
  • Recent business news has shown that as full-time jobs continue to decrease, part-time jobs are on the rise.  Is this the start of a new Utopia in which we all work 21 hours a week or less?  Or is it an unsustainable position and we’ll all need to go back to working all hours once the economy picks up again?  As someone who was on the brink of being offered a 4-day week once upon a time, I am still unsure about how I would feel about it.
  • This week’s creature feature is a selection of pictures of mountain goats in progressively more precarious perches.
  • Bill Hartman doesn’t write often but when he does it is wise to pay attention.  In this short article, he comments on a study performed on female athletes showing that the rear-foot-elevated-split-squat showed greater demands on the glutes and hamstrings than a traditional back squat.
  • Geoff Neupert is another infrequent poster but sage advice provider.  If you’re jumping aboard the biofeedback bandwagon, it might be worth checking out this post about Geoff’s experiences from a lifetime of lifting and learning.
  • A new blog to link to this week, with this interesting snippet from the brilliantly titled blog “What would Pisarenko do?”  The principle is that “every weight requires a slightly different body position and a slightly different coordination of the muscles in order for the bar/body unit to be in the correct balance and for the maximum force in the correct direction to be imparted to the bar.”  A simple but very profound concept.  Having read this, I immediately realized that my squat form changes very subtly as I add weight but I had never put two and two together.
  • To my shame, as someone claims to be able to do a passable front lever for at least a couple of seconds when they put their mind to it, I had never seen this progression, called the “ice-cream maker”.  Next time I need to pull my stuff together (usually because someone I know is coming round), I will try these.
  • A friend recently asked me about sorting out his knee pain, caused as he thought by too much running.  I would qualify that statement, as he spends most of the day sitting at a desk and weighs about as much as the average runner bean.  I sent him a link to this article, which is a great round up of the various stretches and drills you should do to keep your hips, knees and ankles in order.

That’s it for this week.  Short and sweet.

But if you’re a fan of Star Wars, you won’t want to miss next week’s edition of Don’t miss these great links!  There’s been a bumper crop of posts and photographs on the web from the galaxy far, far away.  So I’ve done an extra-special Star Wars edition.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:   2 Comments