The Garage Gym Online

Yet again, I’ve found another crop of stimulating articles, pictures and videos from that wonderful place, the internet.  It never ceases to amaze me how much new material comes out in so little time.  When I think back to the 1980’s and the only information that you had was the newspapers, it just floors me.    

• The post of the week this week goes to this blast from the past.  A double article about back training from the one and only Bill Starr.  Part one talks about the importance of lower back training and why it needs to be in every programme.  It also has an exceptional description of how to carry out the Good Morning exercise correctly.  Part two expands a bit more on the importance of lower back training, and in particular how the lower back is vital to the back squat.  It also includes a detailed description of the (almost) straight-legged deadlift.  I read these articles and felt my training IQ soar.
• This is training footage of the number one ranked raw powerlifter in the world, Konstantin Konstantinovs, doing a 2” box deadlift with 932lbs.  That’s 424kg in real money or approximately twice my conventional deadlift goal for 2010.  Oops, well now I’ve let the cat out of the bag!
• Another creature feature this week, with an amazing picture of a snow leopard.  Give yourself a few minutes to try and find it in the first photograph because you’ll kick yourself when you see it.
• And it’s Bill Kazmaier again!  This article on The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban is a report from a seminar held with Bill Kazmaier in 1980.  During the seminar, Bill described his training routines (especially for the bench press) and dropped various controversial hints, including the fact that he finds power cleans unnecessary.
• Another old-time great is covered in an article on RossTraining.  William Pullum was apparently undefeated as a competitive weightlifter for a career that spanned over 15 years.
• This fascinating article about sugar addiction explains the Palaeolithic background to how it is possible to become addicted to sugar and what recent studies have done to demonstrate this.
• I think Jason Ferruggia can sometimes rub people up the wrong way with his aggressive approach but his article explaining the most important ingredient to strength or fitness success is spot on.  And quite funny to boot.
• Another great post from Bob Whelan, this one is about John Grimek.  It explodes the myth that strength training will make you “muscle-bound”.
• A rare post from Carl Lanore at Superhuman Radio discusses recent studies showing that cholesterol-lowering drugs do not actually prevent heart disease.  This is something that Carl has done a lot to promote in recent years and if you have time it is well worth having a listen to some of his shows on the subject.
• The story of my life, as summarised by Seth Godin: “the reason they want you to fit in is that once you do, then they can ignore you.”
• And a perfect example of how Seth’s maxim works in practice: the British Press Complaints Commission is trying to regulate blogs despite being manifestly toothless when it comes to regulating tabloids.  The tabloids are part of the established order.  Bloggers are not.  Therefore, we need to regulate the bloggers.  Sometimes, I just despair of the human race.
• This looks like great fun.  I really want one of these trampolines in my garden now…
• I wrote a recent post about my diet when I’m putting on muscle and one of the things I included was my pre-workout snack.  Brian St. Pierre explains what his version looks like in this article about the world’s greatest smoothie.

Well that wraps up this week’s links.  I hope you enjoyed them.

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