Exercises for Limited Training Space

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

I’m mostly just looking for some ideas.

I recently moved, and while I’m still going through boxes, I don’t [yet] have the room to reassemble my rack and use it.

What I do have is about 24" at the front of the storage unit, where I’ve got some space for mat pulls. Equipment wise, I have plates, a barbell, an axle, chains, mats, “blocks”, db handles, and a pair of jack stands. Enough to improvise with.

What I don’t have is… anything to unrack the bar for a squat, somewhere to do a pullup, access to a bench, or very much floor space.

My training goals are to work up in an axle clean and press for reps, and an 15-18" axle deadlift for reps. Basically chasing Rob Orlando’s numbers from a strongman competition, and trying to get there in as few years as possible.

I found a 3x weekly deadlifting template, with a heavy day, grip-focused day, and volume day. I think that’s what I’m going to build things around.

M: heavy mat pulls, doubles or triples
W: axle zerchers, full lift from the ground each rep (let grip fatigue drive the reps); then axle deadlifts, sticking around 8-10 just dropping the weight as necessary and getting volume in
F: volume mat pulls with chains, sets of 10ish reps, touch and go

Normally I’d also do something like alternate vertical pressing with horizontal pressing every other workout, and add weighted chins. But I don’t have a good horizontal pressing option (don’t really want to do floor presses with my feet sticking out the front of the storage unit, nor on that floor), and no place to do weighted chins.

For vertical pressing, I’m planning on doing z-presses since I figured out a setup for that. But I’m not sure that’s the right thing to be doing 2-3x a week.

And that’s where I’m fishing for ideas. Have any?

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Floor Presses. Barbell on mats at the rack position.

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[quote]LoRez wrote:
don’t really want to do floor presses with my feet sticking out the front of the storage unit, nor on that floor[/quote]

[quote]dt79 wrote:
Floor Presses.[/quote]

How much overhead space do you have?

And is there anything overhead to attach rings to?

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Is there anything to attach olympic rings to overhead?

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[quote]dagill2 wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:
don’t really want to do floor presses with my feet sticking out the front of the storage unit, nor on that floor[/quote]

[quote]dt79 wrote:
Floor Presses.[/quote]

How much overhead space do you have?

And is there anything overhead to attach rings to?
[/quote]

Whoops. Okok how about the Jarvan 1.2x Bodyweight x 5 Power Clean Challenge?

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Video or it never happened

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[quote]dt79 wrote:

Whoops. Okok how about the Jarvan 1.2x Bodyweight x 5 Power Clean Challenge?[/quote]

I didn’t realise anyone was keeping track to be honest. It was much harder than I thought, I expected it to be a breeze, but I’ve obviously put on a lot of useless weight since I last did powercleans, or lost a lot of technique.

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[quote]Jarvan wrote:
Video or it never happened[/quote]

I’ve never video’ed myself doing anything and if I do, powercleans certainly ain’t gonna be where I start.

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[quote]dagill2 wrote:

[quote]dt79 wrote:

Whoops. Okok how about the Jarvan 1.2x Bodyweight x 5 Power Clean Challenge?[/quote]

I didn’t realise anyone was keeping track to be honest. It was much harder than I thought, I expected it to be a breeze, but I’ve obviously put on a lot of useless weight since I last did powercleans, or lost a lot of technique.
[/quote]

I was suggesting Lorez take part. He wrote that he’s playing with strongman stuff doing clean and press or something.

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[quote]dagill2 wrote:

[quote]Jarvan wrote:
Video or it never happened[/quote]

I’ve never video’ed myself doing anything and if I do, powercleans certainly ain’t gonna be where I start.[/quote]

Wasn’t being serious.
The only lift I’ve captured on vid was my all time DL PR

11

1 arm pushups? Front, Split sq, reverse lunges? 1 arm OHP. For pullups, 1 arm hanging from a towel or extended out to the side (convict conditioning stuff), single arm fat man rows. Might be able to rig up something for nordics.

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Don’t have overhead space because that’s where the garage/storage unit door rolls up in the front. Ring pullups and dips would be nice to add if I could.

It sounds like floor presses are probably my only real option for a horizontal press that can be progressively loaded. I can figure out a way to make that work; it was more a matter of… if there’s better options, I’d rather do one of those, but I can get this to work. (Also, I’d forgotten about 1-arm pushups actually.)

I can pretty definitely do nordics with a mat and the barbell to hold my feet, once I find a way to keep that from rolling.

Thanks for the additional ideas and input.

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[quote]LoRez wrote:
I don’t have a good horizontal pressing option (don’t really want to do floor presses with my feet sticking out the front of the storage unit, nor on that floor), and no place to do weighted chins.[/quote]
If there’s a regular doorway also, ‘Iron Gym’ makes a very solid doorway pull-up bar that doesn’t have to be permanently installed. Toss it up, use it, take it down. Short of that, any way to rig up the jack stands high enough to support the bar for inverted rows?

Half-kneeling presses should work. Bret Contreras just wrote about them in the “13 Exercises That’ll Floor You” article last week. Tony Gentilcore, Ben Bruno, and other coaches have also advocated them.

If you can floor press, you can also do them one-arm with a DB. About your feet sticking out, can’t you lay where ever the barbell would be? If not, I don’t think it’s a major compromise having your legs bent and feet planted on the floor, like some guys do on a flat bench.

The other option for chest, depending on how you’re looking to program it, is to pre-exhaust with D-Roy raises ( http://tnation.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding_thibaudeau/dumbell_chest_activation ) since they’re done standing. I’d also consider a Swiss ball if a bench isn’t an option for right now. You wouldn’t be doing heavy work on it, but it should fill in the gap until you can get the rack set up.

Now this is goal setting. Very nice.

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Decline to Incline Ladder push ups with chains as added weight?

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Grab a copy of Josh Bryant’s Jailhouse strong

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Thanks again for the ideas. I’ll incorporate some of them as I get there.

Right now I’m basically using the ‘Bear’ routine from Pavel’s Power to the People with some weekly grip work, so I’m still in the middle of judging how well I’ll handle the volume and how my joints feel.