Is there any problems squatting for an “older” lifter? My knees never bother me but I worry sometimes about my lower back and compression. Is there a possibility of compression damage to the vertabrae due to heavy weight?
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.