Crossfit WODs rock. If you do them for a couple of weeks, good things happen. I like the fact that you measure things - time, weight, volume; good stuff.
I give it two thumbs up and whirl around the world.
Big fan, too, of the site…
Like ActionJackson, I am fairly new to the olympic lifts. Being a former competitive powerlifter (and now 37) I have discovered my flexiblity is, well, non-existent.
My problem: front squating causes tremendous pain in both wrists. This also makes completing a proper clean darn near impossible. In your experience, is this a wrist flexibilty or shoulder girdle issue? Do you have any recommendations to work through this? Thanks for the help!
G’day Dan,
Quick question about setting up a home gym, which is something I am contemplating at the moment. I want to do a lot of Oly lifts but I am a little bit concerned about what will happen when I eventually get to lift weights that will require me to drop the bar from the overhead position. It’s not a problem at the moment as I can lower it down to my shoulders and then “catch” the bar on my thighs, but I don’t intend to remain at these weights for long!
The trouble is bumper plates are outrageously expensive here in Australia so I was wondering what you do for your home workouts. Do you use bumpers or the normal rubber coated plates. Do you have a lifting platform at all? If so what do you make it out of or is there another way of providing some good floor padding?
Cheers,
Ben
Get horse stall mats…very inexpensive and work great!
[quote]Danny John wrote:
Get horse stall mats…very inexpensive and work great![/quote]
Is that for use with normal plates or bumpers?
On the Front Squat issue, I think I have answered this a number of times, but I am a fan of using warm water stretches for the wrists then front squatting. Now, if it doesn’t get better…don’t do them! No need to suffer for something that may or may not help you with your long term goals…
Oh, the platform I have is a couple of cheap pieces of fiberboard and the horse mats…that’s it. Not pretty, but pretty good!
Yes, metal plates and bumpers. No, not perfect, but not awful either.
Thanks Dan, appreciate the advice.
With your platform, how is that put together? fibreboard on top of horse mats or vice versa? How thick does it need to be to provide adequate shock absorption?
The reason I ask is that I do have a height issue with any platform or mats as my garage ceiling is quite low and according to my measurements with any overhead lift off just the bare floor I will only have a few centimetres to spare between weight plates and the gyprock ceiling. I do have a flat concrete area in the backyard where I could drag weights and a platform outside, but this won’t work during a rainy week!
Do you think it would cause much difference to my lifts if I was to create two mini-platforms to place on either side of my stance so that I could stand on the floor in between them, thus eliminating the height issue but still allowing me to drop the weight?
It would mean that the weights would start from a slightly elevated position of a few inches rather than the bare floor, would this be detrimental to my lifts in the long run?
I guess the other option would be to place the platform about a foot in front of me, pull the bar from the floor and then make sure that I “lose” the weight forward onto the platform, or shuffle forward slightly with the weight overhead until I reached the platform edge (Would be a great stabilising muscle workout!)
Also, what are the horse stall mats made from? I’m a city boy after all and haven’t heard of them before…
[quote]bg100 wrote:
Thanks Dan, appreciate the advice.
With your platform, how is that put together? fibreboard on top of horse mats or vice versa? How thick does it need to be to provide adequate shock absorption?
The reason I ask is that I do have a height issue with any platform or mats as my garage ceiling is quite low and according to my measurements with any overhead lift off just the bare floor I will only have a few centimetres to spare between weight plates and the gyprock ceiling. I do have a flat concrete area in the backyard where I could drag weights and a platform outside, but this won’t work during a rainy week!
Do you think it would cause much difference to my lifts if I was to create two mini-platforms to place on either side of my stance so that I could stand on the floor in between them, thus eliminating the height issue but still allowing me to drop the weight?
It would mean that the weights would start from a slightly elevated position of a few inches rather than the bare floor, would this be detrimental to my lifts in the long run?
I guess the other option would be to place the platform about a foot in front of me, pull the bar from the floor and then make sure that I “lose” the weight forward onto the platform, or shuffle forward slightly with the weight overhead until I reached the platform edge (Would be a great stabilising muscle workout!)
Also, what are the horse stall mats made from? I’m a city boy after all and haven’t heard of them before…[/quote]
among others. Go to google and run “stall mats”.
You can order them, or I’m sure you can find a place–even in a city and even in Oz–to get them.
Dan, I’ve been suffering a shoulder impingement and am looking into ways to rehabilitate it without severely limiting my training split. I’m avoiding the flat bench and lateral raises, along with push-presses…
Do you have any useful techniques to alleviate problems with an impingement? I know that the best advice would be to take time off and rest the shoulder… but that’s not a possibility right now for a few reasons.
Everyone goes through this experimental stage with platforms. Really, just get some stuff (blankets work, too) and start sorting it out. Don’t worry too much about the details. If you have one of those big hardware stores, or someone who has a bunch of “crap” just fish around in their and you will find something perfect. Go as CHEAP as you can the first time…
Thanks J-Dub!
[quote]Joe Weider wrote:
bg100 wrote:
Thanks Dan, appreciate the advice.
With your platform, how is that put together? fibreboard on top of horse mats or vice versa? How thick does it need to be to provide adequate shock absorption?
The reason I ask is that I do have a height issue with any platform or mats as my garage ceiling is quite low and according to my measurements with any overhead lift off just the bare floor I will only have a few centimetres to spare between weight plates and the gyprock ceiling. I do have a flat concrete area in the backyard where I could drag weights and a platform outside, but this won’t work during a rainy week!
Do you think it would cause much difference to my lifts if I was to create two mini-platforms to place on either side of my stance so that I could stand on the floor in between them, thus eliminating the height issue but still allowing me to drop the weight?
It would mean that the weights would start from a slightly elevated position of a few inches rather than the bare floor, would this be detrimental to my lifts in the long run?
I guess the other option would be to place the platform about a foot in front of me, pull the bar from the floor and then make sure that I “lose” the weight forward onto the platform, or shuffle forward slightly with the weight overhead until I reached the platform edge (Would be a great stabilising muscle workout!)
Also, what are the horse stall mats made from? I’m a city boy after all and haven’t heard of them before…
among others. Go to google and run “stall mats”.
You can order them, or I’m sure you can find a place–even in a city and even in Oz–to get them.
[/quote]
I will try the deadstop front squats. I know my weaknesses are squatting and hamstring/hip flexor flexibility so I will get to work on those first.
Daily the answer stares me in the face but for some reason I often choose not to face it, probably because it is the most difficult and humbling.
Thanks for your input, I love your website and frequent contributions to this site.
Jackson
[quote]Danny John wrote:
Everyone goes through this experimental stage with platforms. Really, just get some stuff (blankets work, too) and start sorting it out. Don’t worry too much about the details. If you have one of those big hardware stores, or someone who has a bunch of “crap” just fish around in their and you will find something perfect. Go as CHEAP as you can the first time…[/quote]
Thanks Dan, I’ll have a look around and see what I can find.
bg100, re buying horse stall mats in Oz - I have recently bought some from a company in Melbourne (Flexitec). They also make specialist stuff for weight platforms. I got the horse mats because they were cheaper (they had some seconds which had imperfections on the edges). Go to:
http://www.flexitec.com.au/fitness.htm
The shipping cost is quite high, as the mats are heavy.
Dan John’s Forty Day Workout:
The Forty Days Workout
Have you ever heard something so simple, yet so right, that you literally can’t wait to try it? My good buddy, Greg Watson, a young upcoming hammer thrower, had gone back east to the Yuri Sedyck hammer clinic. Whenwe met up in Las Vegas, he opened my eyes to a concept that simply staggered me in its rightness.
Page 6
Volume III, Issue 9 February 2005 Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page 6
Last summer, as Get Up!, readers may recall, I spent a week learning the hammer from Sedyck?the world record holder. No, I’m not any good, but one thing I have learned in life should be worthy of consideration: always, always listen at the knee of a master. Any master any field, trust me, you will learn. The technical stuff is important, but Greg came back with a real training gem, the forty day workout. No, you don’t workout for forty straight days, instead, well, let’s talk. The key is this: for the next forty days, maybe eight weeks in total if you take two days a week off, you are going to work out. No surprises, so far.
But, here is the difference, for the next forty days, you are going to do the EXACT sameworkout. Hang on, didn’t Pavel just finish telling us that we should also adjust our training with the variation mantra of same, but different. Yes, but didn’t he also tell us to Grease the Groove?
Here is the program:
Pick four to six exercises in the weightroom.
Pick a couple of drills, if you are a thrower or other athlete.
Pick a throwing routine.
Now, each and every day: do it.
Start light, light, light and simply add weight whenever the bar starts feeling too easy. Each day, tick off one more off of the total count of forty workouts. Think Day One of Forty or Day Fourteen of Forty. No single workout is the end all or be all of training. At the end, test yourself by competing. If you improved, you chose wisely.
Examples: Sure, here is part of what I am doing:
Lifting Romanian Deadlifts: 3 sets of 3 or 2 sets of 5
Incline Bench Press: 3 sets of 3 or 2 sets of 5
Chin ups: 3-5 sets of a few reps less than failure
Isometric Abs L-Sits or Hanging Raises Sneak these up to a minute
In addition, I do the Ab Wheel and Kettlebell Snatches in the mornings. Throwing Discus Drills, Nickersons, One Ball Drill, Tech work Snow is an issue, so I do break from the perfect system because of weather. If I can, I try to follow a simple scheme of throws, but, until the weather breaks and the sun is out when I get home, this isn’t perfect. The upside of this training idea is that there is no single great workout or lousy workout. It is simply one of forty. Is it working? Well, Paul Northway donated an Incline Bench to the Institute this last autumn and I began this experiment. I decided that a 300 pound Incline Bench with no spotters and no lift off would be a worthy goal. Every day, for about eight weeks, I did around ten reps. I started with someugly reps with 165 pounds and only raised the weights on the bar when it felt light. On December 14, by myself in freezing temperatures, I benched 300 for a double, easy. All I did for eight weeks is gently add weight when I felt like it. My goal had been reached about six months early.
The other members of the Forty Day Club are reporting similar results. What if you don’t have Forty Days. Try the idea with simply Ten or Twenty Days. Mentally, this is a rather refreshing workout, no one day is good or bad, it is simply one more brick on the building.
An Old Post from Old School I gave blood yesterday, and thought this postfrom 2000 worth repeating: On another note: I gave bloodyesterday. As you guys who have been around know, I give blood as often as I can, four or five times a year. I usually pass out, but I have been giving blood since 1978 and I keep coming back. I had a great talk with all the nice gals at the RedCross, believe it or not, I usually get intoconversations about health, lifting and theology.
Well, the research is getting clearer and clearer (of course, the Red Cross would push this point anyway) that giving blood is one of the healthiest things a man can do! It lowers the blood iron levels, a good thing: you don’t want rust, and it helps the blood flow easier through the system. The nice young girls (don’t tell my wife about my nurse problem) also sang the praises of high protein diets for health and the evils of sugar, simple carbs, and, one even included, starches.
My point: for long term health benefits and free drinks, give blood. I feel great after I do it because it is over, plus it is good for thecommunity. I figure when I die, I will stand before The ONE who made all? and I will hear a litany of all the great sins I have done. A longlitany. I am hoping someone will yell from the back: Hey, I got some of his blood. And I will hear: Okay, whatever, come on in.
Published by Daniel JohnDaniel John, Editor Copyright Daniel John, 2004All Rights ReservedAny unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.
Thanks for helping us.
What is the best order of the following money exercises in a back workout?
Deads (with shrug at top?)
Cleans OR Snatches
Chins
Rows
Bent-over (Rear Delt) Raises
I want to do all of them unless it’s too much; I’m most worried about not being able to stabilize myself for the rows, and also about not being able to do O-lifts after deads.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks mate, that’s the sort of thing I’m looking for. I’m sure there is an equivalent place in Sydney where I won’t have to pay freight.
[quote]sharetrader wrote:
bg100, re buying horse stall mats in Oz - I have recently bought some from a company in Melbourne (Flexitec). They also make specialist stuff for weight platforms. I got the horse mats because they were cheaper (they had some seconds which had imperfections on the edges). Go to:
http://www.flexitec.com.au/fitness.htm
The shipping cost is quite high, as the mats are heavy.[/quote]
I’d do the O lifts first, any highly technical or explosive exercise should be done before you get tired from other exercises and lose your technique. I currently do deads after doing push jerks, and use snatches and cleans as my posterior chain exercises on other days.
[quote]dond1esel wrote:
Thanks for helping us.
What is the best order of the following money exercises in a back workout?
Deads (with shrug at top?)
Cleans OR Snatches
Chins
Rows
Bent-over (Rear Delt) Raises
I want to do all of them unless it’s too much; I’m most worried about not being able to stabilize myself for the rows, and also about not being able to do O-lifts after deads.
Thanks in advance.[/quote]