[quote]Kareem Said wrote:
Aragorn did you take your name from the famous German slave who took part in the spartacus revolts?[/quote]
Sadly no, although a great historical character nonetheless. Furo is right 
[quote]AnytimeJake wrote:
This thread just keeps gettin better, thanks for answering my questions above, and some cool story telling/answers that followed. I want to switch to lower body since your working on 600, and I’m just comming back in this department. I know the current trend right now is to be slow and steady, working everything evenly, but I’ve never had much luck personaly making big gains with the squat, and dead at the same time. I like to focus, say 6-8 weeks at a time, on the squat, multiple sessions a week, then park the squat, and repeat with the dead. Matty’s helped me alot with this, putting me onto Mike Turshnerer. Was wondering your feelings on this, once the number’s get heavy, making strength gains on more than one lift at a time.
How you approch this, cookie cutter programs, and what not. If this gets answered with just explaining your current training, I’m good with that. By the way, I love picking the brain of guys stronger than me. Thanks for the detailed explanations. I don’t think anyone’s complaining about the wordyness, probably not a word, were all enjoying/learning, keep it up if you don’t mind[/quote]
Well, I feel a bit like I’m getting a bad case of “brain drag” today vs. yesterday when I was sharp and thinking quick, but I’ll do my best to answer here.
I think it quite frankly depends a lot on your build and limb/torso proportions or leverages. I think there will rarely if ever be a point where you make equally awesome progress on all lifts (unless right after you start training/ come back from retirement) because almost nobody is built equally well for all three of the big lifts (squat/bench/dead), let alone overhead pressing or more technically demanding and “tricky” lifts like the snatch or clean. Mike T. is a great great coach and has made some people really strong. Nothing but love here.
For myself the squat is a challenge and is always willing to go downhill, even if I’ve got all the muscle I need. Deadlifting is a piece of cake. Just a couple weeks ago I worked up to an “easy” 500x2 RDL after not touching the deadlift for a year or more…at all. It was easy in the sense that I knew I could get it but NOT easy because it felt like rusty ass–the groove wasn’t greased technically. Kinda like when you PR one week and then the next hit 80% of a lift and you go “well shit that felt terrible, nothing was tight or braced or shit”.
Speaking of that–POWER SNATCH. I credit the power snatch and the high pull (heavy, CT style) with enabling me to keep most of all my strength for a year even if my technique was rusty as fuck. Seriously. The explosive nature of the hip movement combined with the hamstring stretch and the heavy upper back involvement does fucking wonders for helping you keep strength levels up. Essentially a loaded plyo with the same benefits the jump squat has that CT wrote an article about a couple weeks ago. Again one of the many infinite reasons I love that lift so much.
Anyway, squat is a bitch for me because of long legs, deadlift is great because of my leverages, and my bench is shitty hard to improve because of arm length. For me I think it’s easier to make progress on one or two lifts at a time–but as always there’s an “it depends”.
It Depends: if your leverages rock for a lift, then the chances are you can make progress on that lift + another are better.
It Depends: if your weakness in a lift is technique oriented and not muscle oriented, you can make progress in a bunch of lifts that that is true for: olympic lifters are pretty much well known for this. This also happens to be true for a lot of guys doing “bodybuilding” style training–switch to an olympic full body template where you squat, pull, press overhead all in one workout and the strength will likely go up IF it’s programmed correctly because it’s a motor pattern/neural drive thing, not a “lack of muscle to complete the lift” thing.
It Depends: if your weakness is mental, then until you sort that out it won’t matter if it’s your only focus or not, the lift isn’t going anywhere.
It Depends: Most people who try to make progress in all lifts at the same time don’t program their sessions correctly. Even if they do full body sessions they don’t plan them correctly. They either spend too much time on one lift, or they put too much volume and intensity in a workout–this is the origin of “you can’t squat every day and gain unless roided out”–well no shit! If you’re going to rage face and snort ammonia and psych up, then hell no. If you’re going to miss a lift 3 times before you make your “max” lift for the day then fuck no you can’t do that every day. Not even if roided. The other mistake people often make is thinking “this workout was too damn easy, I better add more volume and a couple more exercises”. This is because they’re used to body part splits or upper/lower splits and they carry that body part split mindset into the high frequency game. You can’t do that unless you’ve had a year or more to get used to the training style. If the workout was easy, great. You have to sustain the effort the whole week so you store up that “easy” workout for future shitty ones when you just have to push. Take your easy day gains and go home.
That’s hard to differentiate from the concept of auto-regulation, where if the lift was “too easy” you go for more and if it wasn’t you stop for the day (take CT’s thoughts on the layer approach for instance) but it is very true nonetheless. They can both be true actually, but it’s a balancing act.
If you want BIG gains on something, there’s no way around the fact that you have to specialize on it and drop other stuff. None. But it is possible to make good gains on more than one lift if you’re setting it up correctly, even with leverages that aren’t perfect. This is one area where the rest of the fitness community has lots to learn from competitive olympic lifting schools–it has to do with how you program.
The flip side is, it’s a metric fuck ton easier to KEEP your maintenance on a super busy schedule doing full body lifting, and it helps with your conditioning too.
I’m not sure what you meant by " cookie cutter programs, and what not" but if you could unpack that comment a little I’ll tell you.
[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Geez Louise, tons of great info in here, man. No surprise though, ha.
Can you share your take on nutrition and supps - what you’ve found to work for you and/or your thoughts in general?
Sounds like you’ve put on 80-90ish pounds and filled out a pretty tall frame. What’d you do to get there and what’re you doing to stay where you are?[/quote]
That’s about right. I peaked at 255, 6’2" ish, so almost exactly 100 lbs (I was approximately as lean as when I started, so that makes it nice and easy to compute lol), but in regards to your second question one thing I have discovered is that the higher you get the more volatile your gains–just like strength. You can keep a 300 lb squat after a lay-off, but hitting 600 or 700+ takes another level and as many powerlifters can attest is volatile: just a couple weeks after hammering 700 you might get stapled by 550, less than 85% of your max.
I need to make one thing really really clear before writing the book: I HAVE SHITTY GENETICS. I WAS A HARDGAINER. I am naturally skinny, so it was “easier” for me to do this in the sense that I didn’t need to worry AS MUCH about putting on extra fat in the first 3/4 of the journey. To get here I ate. Ate and ate and ate and ate. I still needed to eat clean and I still paid for it when I didn’t, sometimes needing to cut, but less than a naturally husky boy. In that sense I had it easier. The other sense though it was fucking tough: My body sheds weight like crazy. I can drop about 5-7 lbs in a week without trying. In fact, all it takes is not keeping my food up and I’ll lose something like that. Or stress. Or both. I’ve dropped 12 lbs in a week before–not from fluctuations in drinking water, but the combo of stress and not getting my food.
To combat that I took a Professor X approach. Well, semi, not the full monte. I push for a new weight, then hold it as long as I can. The longer you hold it the easier it becomes to keep or get back to after dropping. Yes, you do need to not be fat for this to work: we’re talking muscle here not flab. Obviously I’m talking about “set point” theory in a sense, and it might have some strikes against it in the literature. However, this is one thing I know but can’t prove. It works this way in real life.
It should be noted that I’m not talking about full out “bulking”, because I did stay fairly lean for pretty much most of the time. not 4 pack lean, not even necessarily 2 pack lean, but I never left my 34 inch waist jeans. Did I want to take my shirt of? Not necessarily, but was I fat? No.
To gain that type of weight, you absolutely have to minimize the need to cut. Serious cutting I mean, not the “add 2-3 runs/week and eat cleaner”–I mean dropping calories and/or large quantities of cardio. I wrote about this somewhere else (maybe a beginner forum post, or one of the stickies in this forum, I don’t remember–no wait it was the “tips on how to get fucking hyooge” thread) but every month you spend cutting is one month not growing. Cut for spring break–that’s 4-6-8 weeks. Cut for summer-another 4-6-8 weeks and then you want to stay lean for the summer. Cut for vacation, another month or more lost.
Let’s reiterate this right now. I am NOT a fan of putting on extra fat while gaining. I don’t believe in the all-out bulk unless reeeeaaaally necessary and then only for very short periods of time (couple weeks max). I don’t like that, I don’t think you need to get flabby and if you do it’s not a good thing. HOWEVER, typical guys in high school or college that want to gain weight and get HUGE fall into the trap I just mentioned: the spring break summer cycle. You do this and you spend between 4-6 months not growing. Hell that’s up to 50% of your year wasted in not progressing towards your goal! No wonder nobody ever makes significant progress and thinks you need steroids to get 20 lbs above your beginning weight. They waste too much motherfucking time!
I have cut, and I do cut. But I can remember only really about 6-7 cuts in the 12 years I’ve been doing this. Don’t get too fat and you don’t need to cut. Work on conditioning and you don’t need to cut as much–think of conditioning as GPP for strength gains. Westside guys do sled dragging, what’s that? Cardio. Why do they do it? To condition their recovery ability–not fat loss. Is it typical cardio as we would do it if losing fat? NOPE, it’s not long enough or high enough heartrate. However it does help keep you leaner IF you eat right. And it helps you recover from lifting, which is just as good/better.
I’ll do supps in another post later mate :). This one is too massive already.
Chris— Forgot: specific strategies I used to gain weight (as opposed to general philosophizing like above).
Alternated solid/liquid meals. This made it MUCH easier for me to stomach the calories and not feel like I was going to burst. This is one of the biggest things I did. Obviously I did do lots of weeks and days that were all solid foods, but this made it waaaaay easier on me and when time constrained, much easier to pack for class/work/whatever.
Some times I would just do all liquid meals for days. Not the same, and I made an attempt vary foods/protein sources in the shake or at least the other components (veggies/fruit/nuts/oils or dairy sources in the shakes). Pretty much depended on how much time I had or how hard it was for me to get in the calorie levels. This wasn’t normal but it did occur occasionally.
I ate breakfast. Even when I felt like it was the last thing I wanted to do. It took me a month and change to re-program myself but I did and eventually I started getting really hungry in the mornings. It took forcing though. Didn’t have to be 600 calories, but had to be at least 300 and have protein.
Eggs. Breakfast of kings baby. No proof of this, but whole omega-3 eggs are way superior to the equivalent in egg whites.
Red meat. Lean red meat that is. Red meat is nature’s multi-vitamin. Turkey and chicken are great and lean, and I ate TONS of them, but red meat is just the shit. But hey, if you’re poor do what you can and at least get the turkey/chicken/tuna. I did that and it worked and I gained weight. I do however feel much much more energetic and better off with red meat.
TRACK YOUR FUCKING DIET. Guys under-eat all the time. I tracked it for years until it was so ingrained I didn’t need to anymore because I have a mental library of calories, protein grams and could just add it all up. And I’ll go back and still track stuff now if I get stuck or if I’m in a rut either gaining or cutting. No substitute for proof that you actually did what you think you remember doing.
Those are the biggies. I didn’t really pay attention to low-carb/zone/whatever. I did do the meal P/C P/F combinations that Berardi helped pioneer, but have since stopped doing that. It was a handy way to think but I am not sure it helped overmuch. It DID however make me think about what I was putting in my body, and that is reason enough–I paid attention to quality food sources and didn’t go “hey look, maple syrup bacon glazed donut pizza! I’m bulking”.
[quote]Iron_Made wrote:
Just want to say that there is gold in almost all of your posts that I have read (not just in this thread). So if your feel the urge to write a novel, please do and be aware that there are those who are grateful that you take the time to do so.[/quote]
Will do sir. I guess after this page of people telling me I’m alright I’ll just not worry about length (she said…oh wait). I suppose this is my thread after all haha.
Thanks for the compliment brother.
[quote]fisch wrote:
Can you explain how you went about improving T-spine and shoulder mobility and health?[/quote]
Ahhh, a very specific question :). Here’s what I did.
Kelly Starrett, otherwise known as KStar, and his mobilityWOD.com site were ridiculously awesome sources of information on these topics. I use him as one of my primary, if not my single, go to resources on mobility. Eric Cressey has some amazingly good stuff–he is one of the most brilliant people I know in the industry–but KStar’s stuff just seems more…organic for lack of a better word. Cressey has been one of my biggest influences over the years, so no hate on him. I would use Cressey’s stuff a lot more for diagnosing problems or injuries and fixes to those (gluteal amnesia, or serratus dysfunction, or some trauma). For simple mobility work and “body maintenance” KStar is a big go to resource.
I pay attention to fascia–not just in foam rolling but also in pressure points in my feet (rolling on a golf ball or tennis ball), and in my back and all that jazz. One of the biggest points is breaking up scar tissue. Just that can have a huge boost in mobility. Everybody knows how much better you feel after a massage right? You feel looser and more mobile right? Well tennis ball or baseball to the back as a similar effect. Dig the scar tissue and adhesions out.
I pay attention to PNF stretching. Otherwise known as “neural flossing”. mobility is both based on actual tissue quality–scar tissue breaking up or adhesions getting fixed–and also a neural component. Only this time instead of muscle fascia sticking together it’s the nerve not sliding along its path in the body (ulnar nerve down through the lat/elbow/forearm area comes to mind). Doesn’t take much time after the initial couple days to a week of hammering it. You can get it done in a couple minutes total or do it in between exercises to save even more time.
I sat in full ranges of motion. Think like pausing in the hole of the squat for 10 seconds or longer. Sit down and hang out with a super light weight. This is a variation of weighted stretching, but it is not as risky (I won’t say ‘dangerous’ because weighted stretches don’t have to be, but there’s a possibility).
Basic things I did:
- dig out scar tissue–foam roll/baseball/tennis ball work
- PNF stretch for ulnar nerve
- Thoracic Extensions over a foam roller (technique is very important on this one. Both Cressey and KStar have really good descriptions)
Then 4) “broomstick stretch”–if unavailable or you can’t do it, do the same stretch but using a mini-band–the band stretches and accommodates you where the broomstick does not.
- Not sure what this is called, but a band stretch for the lat and tricep. Look up KStar but this is essentially a behind the neck tricep extention without the extension. Anchor a light band at the bottom of a power rack or immovable object. Then grab it with your hand while squatting down so it’s loose, put your elbow by your ear with your palm behind your back, facing directly up/away from you. Then stand up while squeeze your abs and glutes. You squeeze your abs so your back does NOT arch–people compensate for lack of T-spine mobility with increased arch in the lower back, so you anchor your rib cage down by squeezing your abs.
Broomstick overhead squat–this puts all of the above things together into one. When you get enough mobility in the T-spine and shoulder to do this properly with an empty bar (this means no leaning forward, very strict vertical torso olympic lifter style, super tight squeezed back and arms straight with the bar behind your ears)…that’s really all you need. Sitting in a deeeep overhead squat is the single best mobility exercise ever devised in the history of mankind. It does EVERYTHING except solve soft tissue issues with knots/nerve issues. Not to mention the fact that I once made a professional MMA athlete sweat his balls off and cramp his entire back just doing this with a broomstick and empty bar. It will activate your back like few things.
I am convinced people who diss the overhead squat simply do not understand what it is capable of. This doesn’t mean you have to do heavy weight on it, it just means that the movement itself works every single joint structure people have problems with all at the same time. Barring pre-existing shoulder injury of course
The actual technique of each exercise is a bit involved, but described a lot of places so I won’t go into it.
Best part is, once you GET the mobility, keeping it is a total cake walk and not very time consuming at all. Just do all your lifts in a full range of motion and pay attention to fascia/foam rolling/scar tissue/neural flossing. Just sitting in a warm-up regular squat for a while is almost enough.
One of the secrets for my shoulders is doing a lot of this with weight on it. There’s mobility, and then the “graduate school” is being able to be mobile AND stable enough to handle decent weight on there. This is where you really start to get major benefits and where OH pressing is essentially doable whenever you want. A select few will have structural issues with the acromion that will stop them from OH pressing, but the majority of people simply lack the proper mobility and activation patterns in their postural muscles–no injuries or boney structures interfering. If you’re able to do this you will have no mobility issues ever and can stop worrying about all of that stuff–as long as you can hit a full and comfortable OH squat with some weight (no need to go above 115 lb) you will never have mobility issues. If it gets hard, you know you need to work on something–OH squat is the diagnostic and the solution to maintaining things without spending 20 minutes a fucking day doing mobility work.
Did that hit on what you were looking for? If there’s something specific or I didn’t get to what you wanted let me know.
[quote]fisch wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]fisch wrote:
Aragorn I appreciate the write up. One thing I’m always curious about for experienced lifters, how to you feel those who are fairly weak/undeveloped should train? Do you think they should train differently starting out if their goals are just being as strong as possible vs. being as aesthetic as possible?
Basically, what is your belief for how newer people should train? Would the type of workout change depending on their goals?[/quote]
Man you opened up a can of worms with that question! Lol. I have a lot of thoughts on that, but in my attempt to curtail a novel length answer I’ll say 1) it very very much depends on goals. ALWAYS. 2) I firmly believe the new guys need frequency and volume more than heavy intensity. Now, I’m defining heavy as heavier than 5 RM here, so I’m not recommending “light” weight, and I am assuming you don’t have access to a coach. I consider 5 rep maxes “normal”, not heavy.
Things I do with people I can personally coach are different by necessity from general guidelines obviously. Also, I’m not saying that intensity is unnecessary–remember in the book length posts earlier I mentioned I pretty much started Westside from scratch as a brand newb. That included maxing every week to a single. I’m saying if you had to pick 2 of the 3, go with frequency and volume.
I define volume as a weekly thing, not necessarily a per workout thing. Honestly that question is hard to answer because of two things: I believe Starting Strength is incredibly, incredibly undertraining people for the most part (some exceptions), and I believe that body part splits are next to worthless for a brand new trainee (not that they’re worthless for everyone). This is because they can’t do enough weight on these isolation exercises to really really make a big difference at first.
So somewhere in the middle. I’m a fan of whole body workouts and upper/lower splits for new guys. That was one thing Westside did perfectly for me. Intensity, 2x weekly frequency, and volume of assistance work.
In general we have two extremes of brand new people–those that are paranoid about this “overtraining” thing they’ve read/heard horror stories about, and those that would work themselves into a coma because “more is better brah!”. Starting Strength for me is bordering on reinforcing some of those silly notions about overtraining, and body part splits are just asking for a guy to do 15 different exercises of worthlessness without a plan.
So long/short answer I guess: Upper/lower split or whole body, and definitely definitely depends on one’s goals. People can handle so much more than they think they can it’s silly–but they also tend to get super distracted if there is not a solid limit on some things (cough isolation exercises cough) and just spin their wheels.
There are 10 year old kids that can olympic lift 5 days a week. Why would a 24 year old die if they tried that? Ya dig? Bottom line–overtraining is real, but overrated. HOWEVER, you need to spend the time as a new guy hammering the basics with frequency because of a lot of science reasons I won’t touch on (if you ask I will, but that means a longer post haha).
[/quote]
Thanks man. If you want to go into all the science reasons I’ll read every word 10 times lol, and I’m sure others would too.
I’m not new to lifting, but I’m coming back from a couple major surgeries and some health problems over 3 years and am basically starting from a newbie state because of those issues. Though, I basically read something training related every day and have been doing that since I started 5 years ago so lots of information in my head but was too injured to use it.
I’m starting to shift my mindset similar to yours it seems about how newer people should train. Hell, reading through your posts here it seems like my whole belief about training is similar to yours, new people or experienced. Since coming back from my injury I’ve been doing a body part split and while I have improved some, it’s slower then I think it should be. I switched over last week to a upper/lower split, trying to focus on bringing up my strength while still focusing on aesthetics. I figure very few people ever look big without putting up somewhat respectable numbers.
Anyway, please keep responding to everyone’s questions! And write as much as you want, I seriously doubt anyone is complaining about learning more.[/quote]
I’ll get to this soon, I haven’t forgotten!
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Anyway, squat is a bitch for me because of long legs, deadlift is great because of my leverages, and my bench is shitty hard to improve because of arm length. For me I think it’s easier to make progress on one or two lifts at a time–but as always there’s an “it depends”.
That’s hard to differentiate from the concept of auto-regulation, where if the lift was “too easy” you go for more and if it wasn’t you stop for the day (take CT’s thoughts on the layer approach for instance) but it is very true nonetheless. They can both be true actually, but it’s a balancing act.
[/quote]
Damn, looks like I really opened up a can of worms with this thread. I hope you don’t mind being bombarded with questions! Especially since I’ve still got a bunch.
1)I have got similar leverages to you, except I’m on the shorter with proportionally shorter legs and am pretty much a textbook natural meso. Okay not that similar, but I do have the long arms. So squatting and especially deadlifting go up really really fast, but I naturally have a hard time with pressing movements (unsurprisingly) and I’m getting a little annoyed with how weak my bench is. Pressing isn’t that great, either, though I seem to be gaining pretty fast in the push press lately. What kinds of things have you found to be helpful in bringing up your bench and OHP?
- Does autoreg actually work? I mean, I don’t treat my programming as gospel or anything if I happen to feel really good/shitty, but I’ve got a friend who has been on an autoreg kick lately and swears by it. Seems to be an odd thing to base large amounts of your training off of.
3)Why is biochemistry so fucking hard??
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Ok, so I have to very much apologize in advance for the stream-of-consciousness randomness or disjointed flow of my posts here. One of the problems I have is that my brain tends to run very quickly and most of the time is jumping through connections that my mouth or fingers can’t follow fast enough to speak or write lucidly. Very much like an overloaded funnel haha.
[/quote]
OMG LOL!! CHris!!
[quote]Spock81 wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Ok, so I have to very much apologize in advance for the stream-of-consciousness randomness or disjointed flow of my posts here. One of the problems I have is that my brain tends to run very quickly and most of the time is jumping through connections that my mouth or fingers can’t follow fast enough to speak or write lucidly. Very much like an overloaded funnel haha.
[/quote]
OMG LOL!! CHris!! [/quote]
Haha. One of very many things we share in common, and one of the reasons I like you so much!
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]Spock81 wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Ok, so I have to very much apologize in advance for the stream-of-consciousness randomness or disjointed flow of my posts here. One of the problems I have is that my brain tends to run very quickly and most of the time is jumping through connections that my mouth or fingers can’t follow fast enough to speak or write lucidly. Very much like an overloaded funnel haha.
[/quote]
OMG LOL!! CHris!! [/quote]
Haha. One of very many things we share in common, and one of the reasons I like you so much! :)[/quote]
.
Hey! Right back attcha! Us sitting down to have a conversation would be interesting because we’d both be trying to talk a mile a minute LOL.
BRAIN CHATTER RULES !
[quote]Apoklyps wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Anyway, squat is a bitch for me because of long legs, deadlift is great because of my leverages, and my bench is shitty hard to improve because of arm length. For me I think it’s easier to make progress on one or two lifts at a time–but as always there’s an “it depends”.
That’s hard to differentiate from the concept of auto-regulation, where if the lift was “too easy” you go for more and if it wasn’t you stop for the day (take CT’s thoughts on the layer approach for instance) but it is very true nonetheless. They can both be true actually, but it’s a balancing act.
[/quote]
Damn, looks like I really opened up a can of worms with this thread. I hope you don’t mind being bombarded with questions! Especially since I’ve still got a bunch.[/quote]
Not at all. It’s pretty much only limited by the amount of time I have to sit and post without interfering with work. I love talking shop.
Well they are tricky subjects depending on how you press (technique wise). I have found that technically you have to be very sound because you don’t get away with any small mistakes that a guy with t-rex arms can let slide.
For bench I found that getting the lats to fire was very very difficult for me. I’m not sure whether it was just a mind/muscle connection problem or partially due to my leverages but man I couldn’t get that for years. I also found changing my technique towards what Thibaudeau and Wendler prescibe for the bench was better for me–the traps helped me quite a bit in setting for the bench.
I find that volume is very important as well as dead-stop pressing or pressing with a very long pause–one of the problems that long limbed lifters have is learning to stay tight in the hole. Because of the limb length, you don’t get as much help from rebound as a shorter armed guy. That’s not to say it doesn’t help (it does), but if you are losing tension in the hole your long arms mean that you are at more of a disadvantage once the initial SSC rebound gives out. You must learn to descent under control while staying tight, and then stay tight with the weight on your chest before going back up–otherwise you (as well as myself) tend to TRY to rely on a rebound to make up for holes in your leverage and this can lead to a whole host of issues. Obviously this is not ONLY for long limbed guys, but it makes a bigger difference because natural benchers can get away with subpar technique and still progress faster.
So, heavy weight in the singles or triples is needed for strength, but volume at the higher weights is needed for learning to stay tight under heavy loads, and the pauses are needed to learn to stay tight and get your muscles to fire together rather than solely relying on a rebound to outwork your disadvantaged arms. We are talking like a 5 second pause, focusing on staying tight with the back, lats, and traps the whole time. I would not max out like Westside if I were to do it over–I would still work singles and triples but focus more on accumulating volume at the weights I could already do while also working week to week to include more and longer pauses.
For OHP I would recommend the Klokov press if you are able to do it safely/without aggravation. Learning to “lead” the movement with your back and traps/lats is key to technique. If people have problems getting loose in the bench, it is 10x as bad in the OHP. If you can learn to do it on the klokov press you can learn to do it on the bench. I actually find it is harder to do it on the “regular width grip” overhead press than either of those others. Bonus is klokov pressing makes your shoulders much stronger and I think carries over pretty well to a lot of things.
Oh, and I would rethink your grip width. What grip width do you use?
It really does. It works for some things better than others, but it really does. The trick is that you have to know how to do it–and I am still learning on it. This is why coaches that are very experienced will help out: they auto-reg “for” you, the only problem is that you don’t get to really get in touch with your own state because you are relying on the coach to tell you what to do. Sort of like looking in the mirror to watch technique rather than feeling it for yourself, like powerlifters never squat looking at mirrors.
The over-riding temptation with auto-reg is that people get lazy. “oh I feel tired, I’ll just do 1 set rather than 3x5”. That’s not auto-reg. There are methods by which you can really assess whether you’re good to go or not, the rest is just trying to talk yourself out of working hard when you feel bad. Morning temperature, grip strength, tap test, stuff like that. The other big temptation is that if something isn’t working you change your entire program–just like newbs do. “auto-reg” is not a synonym for “random”. It’s very methodical, just doesn’t appear that way at first sight. CT’s layer system would be a prime example of one form of auto-regulating training.
Hahaha! I sense a story behind this…why do you say that? Are you majoring in the discipline?
Think of it like learning a different language. Don’t think of it like learning flash card facts–it’s all pattern recognition.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]fisch wrote:
Can you explain how you went about improving T-spine and shoulder mobility and health?[/quote]
Ahhh, a very specific question :). Here’s what I did.
Kelly Starrett, otherwise known as KStar, and his mobilityWOD.com site were ridiculously awesome sources of information on these topics. I use him as one of my primary, if not my single, go to resources on mobility. Eric Cressey has some amazingly good stuff–he is one of the most brilliant people I know in the industry–but KStar’s stuff just seems more…organic for lack of a better word. Cressey has been one of my biggest influences over the years, so no hate on him. I would use Cressey’s stuff a lot more for diagnosing problems or injuries and fixes to those (gluteal amnesia, or serratus dysfunction, or some trauma). For simple mobility work and “body maintenance” KStar is a big go to resource.
I pay attention to fascia–not just in foam rolling but also in pressure points in my feet (rolling on a golf ball or tennis ball), and in my back and all that jazz. One of the biggest points is breaking up scar tissue. Just that can have a huge boost in mobility. Everybody knows how much better you feel after a massage right? You feel looser and more mobile right? Well tennis ball or baseball to the back as a similar effect. Dig the scar tissue and adhesions out.
I pay attention to PNF stretching. Otherwise known as “neural flossing”. mobility is both based on actual tissue quality–scar tissue breaking up or adhesions getting fixed–and also a neural component. Only this time instead of muscle fascia sticking together it’s the nerve not sliding along its path in the body (ulnar nerve down through the lat/elbow/forearm area comes to mind). Doesn’t take much time after the initial couple days to a week of hammering it. You can get it done in a couple minutes total or do it in between exercises to save even more time.
I sat in full ranges of motion. Think like pausing in the hole of the squat for 10 seconds or longer. Sit down and hang out with a super light weight. This is a variation of weighted stretching, but it is not as risky (I won’t say ‘dangerous’ because weighted stretches don’t have to be, but there’s a possibility).
Basic things I did:
- dig out scar tissue–foam roll/baseball/tennis ball work
- PNF stretch for ulnar nerve
- Thoracic Extensions over a foam roller (technique is very important on this one. Both Cressey and KStar have really good descriptions)
Then 4) “broomstick stretch”–if unavailable or you can’t do it, do the same stretch but using a mini-band–the band stretches and accommodates you where the broomstick does not.
- Not sure what this is called, but a band stretch for the lat and tricep. Look up KStar but this is essentially a behind the neck tricep extention without the extension. Anchor a light band at the bottom of a power rack or immovable object. Then grab it with your hand while squatting down so it’s loose, put your elbow by your ear with your palm behind your back, facing directly up/away from you. Then stand up while squeeze your abs and glutes. You squeeze your abs so your back does NOT arch–people compensate for lack of T-spine mobility with increased arch in the lower back, so you anchor your rib cage down by squeezing your abs.
Broomstick overhead squat–this puts all of the above things together into one. When you get enough mobility in the T-spine and shoulder to do this properly with an empty bar (this means no leaning forward, very strict vertical torso olympic lifter style, super tight squeezed back and arms straight with the bar behind your ears)…that’s really all you need. Sitting in a deeeep overhead squat is the single best mobility exercise ever devised in the history of mankind. It does EVERYTHING except solve soft tissue issues with knots/nerve issues. Not to mention the fact that I once made a professional MMA athlete sweat his balls off and cramp his entire back just doing this with a broomstick and empty bar. It will activate your back like few things.
I am convinced people who diss the overhead squat simply do not understand what it is capable of. This doesn’t mean you have to do heavy weight on it, it just means that the movement itself works every single joint structure people have problems with all at the same time. Barring pre-existing shoulder injury of course
The actual technique of each exercise is a bit involved, but described a lot of places so I won’t go into it.
Best part is, once you GET the mobility, keeping it is a total cake walk and not very time consuming at all. Just do all your lifts in a full range of motion and pay attention to fascia/foam rolling/scar tissue/neural flossing. Just sitting in a warm-up regular squat for a while is almost enough.
One of the secrets for my shoulders is doing a lot of this with weight on it. There’s mobility, and then the “graduate school” is being able to be mobile AND stable enough to handle decent weight on there. This is where you really start to get major benefits and where OH pressing is essentially doable whenever you want. A select few will have structural issues with the acromion that will stop them from OH pressing, but the majority of people simply lack the proper mobility and activation patterns in their postural muscles–no injuries or boney structures interfering. If you’re able to do this you will have no mobility issues ever and can stop worrying about all of that stuff–as long as you can hit a full and comfortable OH squat with some weight (no need to go above 115 lb) you will never have mobility issues. If it gets hard, you know you need to work on something–OH squat is the diagnostic and the solution to maintaining things without spending 20 minutes a fucking day doing mobility work.
Did that hit on what you were looking for? If there’s something specific or I didn’t get to what you wanted let me know.[/quote]
It did, thanks! I need to start working on this and scapula work to fix a winged scapula. Thanks to being in a full arm cast for multiple months my shoulder doesn’t seem to track right and I had to visit a chiropractor/ART guy to fix my nerve entrapment. Been trying to find something to get the rest of my shoulder back to normal, so I’ll use your suggestions and start looking into it some more also.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]furo wrote:
Great thread! Thanks for all the in-depth replies Aragorn.
EDIT: I’m guessing your username inspiration comes from Aragorn of Tolkien fame (rather than Agron from Spartacus). Are you a big Tolkien fan? It sounds stupid but reading the Hobbit way back when was what initially got me interested in training. I was, and still am, inspired by strong heroes like Thorin, Beorn and Bard etc. [/quote]
Indeed yes. Glad to hear a fellow fan! I’ve always been in lovewith Tolkien’s work; it is my favorite trilogy of all, tied with my favorite authors in Frank Herbert and George Martin. I read LOTR in 7th grade, and have managed to re-read the trilogy at least once almost every year since. They are old friends. Aragorn is one of my favorite characters as a hero because he is unsparing, not shiny or flashy, and hidden in the background doing the dirty work by himself without thanks or praise until…well, until he is forced into the limelight/front.[/quote]
That’s awesome. And I know exactly what you mean about them being like old friends.
Thanks again for all the great info in this thread!
[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Geez Louise, tons of great info in here, man. No surprise though, ha.
Can you share your take on nutrition and supps - what you’ve found to work for you and/or your thoughts in general?
[/quote]
I think if I had to encapsulate my view it comes down to “buy what you can afford”. I love supplements in general because there are a lot of things even a smart eating person can’t quite cover in many parts of the US with a lot of processed food options staring you in the face, even at grocery stores. I mean, has anybody noticed that grocery stores smell like confectioneries now?? Hell I walk by aisles of food that say “all natural” and then have 30 different ingredients that you only find in factories.
So they’re useful. I view protein powder essentially as a food, not a supplement, so unless you’re getting some sick-ass deals on your hamburger or steak, protein powder is great. It is more packable than meat and you don’t have to refrigerate it if you make a shake with water or something–this means it is very good for busy people. I view creatine as close to the same, because it is so cheap it just makes no sense not to buy it for most people.
If you’re going to buy “super muscle exploder 5000” for $80 you can damn well spend $15 on 3 months worth of creatine lol. There are exceptions but it’s tried and true, and it’s cheap. That’s about all you can ask of a supplement.
I think a TON of people get caught up in supplements though–I mean I’ve been in a spot where I was essentially eating only protein shakes for meals because I was so busy, but it wasn’t great and of course I went back to real food ASAP when I could. However, there is a certain threshold below which a lot of supplements won’t really give you that edge you look for–this is why I say “buy what you can afford”, not in the literal sense (well that too) but in the sense that you want to make realistic assessments of how hard you are working, what your goals are, and what needs to happen.
If you’ve got an NPC BB comp, you probably ought to be buying literally everything you can afford comfortably. If you’re like a friend of mine, 2 months into working out and on 5x5 strong lifts, then you really don’t need much except for protein/carbs, creatine and maybe beta-alanine. You need to realistically assess your level of training and then proceed to buy the key supps that will help you most. Just like a
I could go on, but I think I’ll save it for now. I think a lot of us get into “supplement accumulation mode” like guitarists start collecting guitars: you don’t need more than the basics per se, but it’s fun and also may help you. The question is always “does this particular supp help me the most at this time in my lifting?”
Essential supplements for me personally are:
Protein. Duh. I am always playing with what I do so it varies, but generally I keep AT LEAST a cheap whey protein for meal replacement shakes and MAG-10 for workouts. Varies on budget but I’d prefer to have MAG-10 for between meals (not IN meal replacement shakes) as well as workouts. I at least have a whey powder on hand though.
Creatine. I always have some on hand. Whether I use it or not varies, but it is dirt friggin cheap so there’s absolutely no reason to not use it. Again, almost not a supp for me because it is too cheap to really go into the budget plan.
Beta-alanine. This stuff I like even more than creatine and I’ve written rave reviews before, however if the workouts aren’t high enough volume you might not see a big boost. Additionally, I prefer to take it multiple times throughout the day rather than just prior to workouts. I like to have my blood levels topped off ala creatine and I think that makes a difference although I haven’t been specific about testing it on myself. Currently my program is not high enough volume for me to use it religiously TBH.
I would say o-3 fish oil if you were a client of mine, but to be honest I don’t use it too much. I think it is extremely valuable from a health standpoint or for inflammation issues but I try not to have to use it. Spike it in your diet from time to time on high doses and then let it ride. Sort of like maintenance: if you get below normal you have to get back, but maintaining normal is ok IF you put the work in to eat right. I spike it if I need a boost for tendons/joints/immune system or if I am cutting.
Rhodiola. That stuff is great, but can’t take the place of protein/carbs/creatine/beta-alanine. I take it if I want a boost–or Carbolin 19.
For fat loss the only supp I really consistently believe in is HOT-ROX. Others help but that one is 100% always in a cutting regimen. My favorite.
WORKOUT SUPPS:
Budget dependent. A number of others will disagree with what I have and I’m not too interested in hearing about you pissing and moaning how it’s “not necessary” (referencing another thread here). There’s always been a difference between “not necessary” and “optimal for performance”. Or, for that matter, “healthy” and “optimal for performance”. —if you don’t believe in stuff or you have questions fire away at me in this thread, I am just saying I’m not going to debate stuff. Answer questions yes, debate no.
Plazma and Indigo. I freaking love this stuff. Now, if budget is a concern for me I have to make decisions, but I budget for supps the way college kids budget for beer :). These are killer but the price tag usually means they can’t be on the “essential” list if you’re training very frequently. This is why I put down MAG-10 earlier–although not as good, MAG-10/swf is a good combo and cheaper. I’d rather have Plazma though.
I’m not using very much of it now because once again, workouts lower volume. I do find that unless the training is particularly brutal I can do well with only 2 servings instead of the 3 they recommend. I may change that but again my schedule right now means my training won’t be experimenting with “brutal high volume”.
So: volume and intensity, Plazma/Indigo.
Frequency/low volume: Indigo/some protein & carb mix/ Power Drive. I’ve been a fan of Power Drive for recovering mentally and neurally, + it’s cheap.
The list of my current supplements on my shelf:
Plazma, MAG-10, Indigo, Whey, creatine, alpha-GPC, Power Drive, EliteMinerals
[quote]fisch wrote:
[quote]fisch wrote:
Aragorn I appreciate the write up. One thing I’m always curious about for experienced lifters, how to you feel those who are fairly weak/undeveloped should train? Do you think they should train differently starting out if their goals are just being as strong as possible vs. being as aesthetic as possible?
Basically, what is your belief for how newer people should train? Would the type of workout change depending on their goals?[/quote]
I’m not new to lifting, but I’m coming back from a couple major surgeries and some health problems over 3 years and am basically starting from a newbie state because of those issues. Though, I basically read something training related every day and have been doing that since I started 5 years ago so lots of information in my head but was too injured to use it.
I’m starting to shift my mindset similar to yours it seems about how newer people should train. Hell, reading through your posts here it seems like my whole belief about training is similar to yours, new people or experienced. Since coming back from my injury I’ve been doing a body part split and while I have improved some, it’s slower then I think it should be. I switched over last week to a upper/lower split, trying to focus on bringing up my strength while still focusing on aesthetics. I figure very few people ever look big without putting up somewhat respectable numbers.
[/quote]
Reading and self-educating is critical. I mean, like, absolutely 100% critical to success. I did the same thing and have managed to read an average of 1-2 hours a day every day for about 9 of the 12 years I’ve been training. I am still learning new things, but you have to seize that.
Honestly, I don’t think aesthetics is that hard to achieve if your goal is strength. Think about it: if your bench sucks because your chest is weak, then your weak chest probably doesn’t look too big either right? So doing chest work could be considered “beach training” but you are really doing it because it benefits your bench press, not because you are trying to be a bodybuilder. I think this is a big reason I have done ok as far as aesthetics go–I train for strength and eat for bodybuilding. “Powerlifters are fatties” is an obvious fallacy, but they got that stereotype because they don’t pay attention to their diet. If most of them did they’d look a shit ton more like Kyle Gulledge did when he dieted down.
Also, that being said, I like the push/pull/legs split as well. More time to emphasis a lagging muscle because the whole workout is push oriented, but you can still hypothetically train each muscle 2x a week if you’re training 6x a week. If you train 5x a week and rotate it is still a net improvement in frequency over a body part split.
Volume is king for growth. You can get that volume different ways, but you still need it. You also need it for strength, but in a different sense. I much prefer frequency as the way to build overall volume, as long as my schedule allows. High frequency training has too many benefits. Muscles recover quickly if given properly timed nutrition, and can be worked much more often than every 48 hours. An old client of mine did 3 days of back work in a row, we were trying to bring her back up for figure competition in the off season. She had 10 weeks and we turned her back into a strong point from a marginal weak point.
[quote]fisch wrote:
It did, thanks! I need to start working on this and scapula work to fix a winged scapula. Thanks to being in a full arm cast for multiple months my shoulder doesn’t seem to track right and I had to visit a chiropractor/ART guy to fix my nerve entrapment. Been trying to find something to get the rest of my shoulder back to normal, so I’ll use your suggestions and start looking into it some more also.[/quote]
In that case I would pay particular attention to the serratus, the low traps, and the broomstick overhead squat. Don’t put weight on that sucker until you’re able to fire your back and balance everything with tight tension. The weighted overhead squat is like the graduate school level. PNF/neural flossing will help a lot with nerve entrapment. You will need to dig into your pec minor and lat HARD with tennis balls/baseballs/soft tissue work and get those particular muscles to stretch easily–especially the pec minor. The 10-2 wall stretch is also very useful (Eric Cressey).
Your actual training needs to focus on perfect technique and the pause/hold technique (Weider principle #2759 also known as peak contraction method). Weight will have to take a dive but volume should be up. At this point you have to realize if you are messing with body english and/or not getting the scapula retracted hard you are feeding into the bad motor habit and bad alignment. Frequency is helpful in re-educating your motor pattern, but only if it’s the RIGHT motor habit. pause/hold can help you mentally connect with your weak area and learn to activate it more and more.
[quote]fisch wrote:
It did, thanks! I need to start working on this and scapula work to fix a winged scapula. Thanks to being in a full arm cast for multiple months my shoulder doesn’t seem to track right and I had to visit a chiropractor/ART guy to fix my nerve entrapment. Been trying to find something to get the rest of my shoulder back to normal, so I’ll use your suggestions and start looking into it some more also.[/quote]
I’ve had GREAT success so far on fixing what appears to be a winged scapula on my left side by doing the exercises described in the Diesel Crew shoulder rehab.
I only do the dumbbell exercises along with the face pulls and shoulder dislocates, but they seem to be more than enough to do the trick.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]fisch wrote:
It did, thanks! I need to start working on this and scapula work to fix a winged scapula. Thanks to being in a full arm cast for multiple months my shoulder doesn’t seem to track right and I had to visit a chiropractor/ART guy to fix my nerve entrapment. Been trying to find something to get the rest of my shoulder back to normal, so I’ll use your suggestions and start looking into it some more also.[/quote]
In that case I would pay particular attention to the serratus, the low traps, and the broomstick overhead squat. Don’t put weight on that sucker until you’re able to fire your back and balance everything with tight tension. The weighted overhead squat is like the graduate school level. PNF/neural flossing will help a lot with nerve entrapment. You will need to dig into your pec minor and lat HARD with tennis balls/baseballs/soft tissue work and get those particular muscles to stretch easily–especially the pec minor. The 10-2 wall stretch is also very useful (Eric Cressey).
Your actual training needs to focus on perfect technique and the pause/hold technique (Weider principle #2759 also known as peak contraction method). Weight will have to take a dive but volume should be up. At this point you have to realize if you are messing with body english and/or not getting the scapula retracted hard you are feeding into the bad motor habit and bad alignment. Frequency is helpful in re-educating your motor pattern, but only if it’s the RIGHT motor habit. pause/hold can help you mentally connect with your weak area and learn to activate it more and more.[/quote]
Thanks! I’ve been incorporating some scap push ups in my training recently (during my body part split phase), but only once a week which really isn’t enough I realize. Especially when trying to fix issues like these. Low traps I’ve had a lot of trouble targeting, trap 3 raises or similar type movements only seem to fatigue my anterior delt so I’m still searching for that. Machine rows with elbows flared I tried today during my pull workout and seemed to hit my mid back, so I’m planning on doing those multiple times a week.
The broomstick overhead squat I tried maybe two years ago and sucked so bad at it lol that I “convinced” myself it wasn’t useful for me and haven’t tried it since. Though I have to be careful about going about it now, one of my surgeries was a hip one and that’s made regular back squats a no go (front squats still work though. Has to do with the hip angle and how much the joint is pinched).
[quote]fisch wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
[quote]fisch wrote:
It did, thanks! I need to start working on this and scapula work to fix a winged scapula. Thanks to being in a full arm cast for multiple months my shoulder doesn’t seem to track right and I had to visit a chiropractor/ART guy to fix my nerve entrapment. Been trying to find something to get the rest of my shoulder back to normal, so I’ll use your suggestions and start looking into it some more also.[/quote]
In that case I would pay particular attention to the serratus, the low traps, and the broomstick overhead squat. Don’t put weight on that sucker until you’re able to fire your back and balance everything with tight tension. The weighted overhead squat is like the graduate school level. PNF/neural flossing will help a lot with nerve entrapment. You will need to dig into your pec minor and lat HARD with tennis balls/baseballs/soft tissue work and get those particular muscles to stretch easily–especially the pec minor. The 10-2 wall stretch is also very useful (Eric Cressey).
Your actual training needs to focus on perfect technique and the pause/hold technique (Weider principle #2759 also known as peak contraction method). Weight will have to take a dive but volume should be up. At this point you have to realize if you are messing with body english and/or not getting the scapula retracted hard you are feeding into the bad motor habit and bad alignment. Frequency is helpful in re-educating your motor pattern, but only if it’s the RIGHT motor habit. pause/hold can help you mentally connect with your weak area and learn to activate it more and more.[/quote]
Thanks! I’ve been incorporating some scap push ups in my training recently (during my body part split phase), but only once a week which really isn’t enough I realize. Especially when trying to fix issues like these. Low traps I’ve had a lot of trouble targeting, trap 3 raises or similar type movements only seem to fatigue my anterior delt so I’m still searching for that. Machine rows with elbows flared I tried today during my pull workout and seemed to hit my mid back, so I’m planning on doing those multiple times a week.
The broomstick overhead squat I tried maybe two years ago and sucked so bad at it lol that I “convinced” myself it wasn’t useful for me and haven’t tried it since. Though I have to be careful about going about it now, one of my surgeries was a hip one and that’s made regular back squats a no go (front squats still work though. Has to do with the hip angle and how much the joint is pinched).[/quote]
Couple thoughts: 1) frequency is a must when reeducating the body, I do certain things as part of my warm-up every day I am in the gym and it is perfect–also much easier because I know I wouldn’t do them at the end lol. and 2) a Proper overhead squat is done with a torso angle nearly identical to the upright one of a front squat. I’m not a doc so I can’t really help with that, but I would look into that possibility.
Definitely do exercises you feel most, but also try to use the trap 3 raises AFTER you have fatigued the mid back with something you feel, and use band pull-aparts in the same manner–after an exercise you really feel, no rest. Also how you do them is very important–are you on an incline bench?