Hey Mike, it occured to me that people make more progress when they are training for an event than when they train for the love of training itself. Have you noticed this too?
Purly for physical strength.
Interesting question, as me and a couple of gym friends were just recently discussing our differing objectives… I’m with Kevo at about 90/10 in favour of looks, perhaps even 95 (Just tired of being the skinny pr!ck, and I wanna get more action… LOL). I’ve gained a lot of strength during my weight training time, but I still only squat my body weight, or thereabouts… [shrug] not that it bothers me. One of my good gym buddies trains pretty much entirely for strength though (although he’s still a bit of a huge b@stard!), and has just recently started a program called conju-something-gated… ah shit! I just can’t remember now…! It’s by Dave(?) Tate anyway… geez, I’m drawing a lot of blanks here. Anyway, my point is that his strength has gone through the roof, BIG TIME!!! For those that might be interested I’ll dig up the name of this program and a few details and post it. Cheers!
Mike - Actually, I was doing some cardio for a while and just my regular lifting program. Nothing specific for rugby. I got lazy and stopped the cardio after about a month, but continued busting my ass with the iron. I try to focus on general overall strength to prevent reinjury (back, shoulders, knees specifically) I was at a rugby tournament last month and had a break-away try - my first in a big tournament - I definately attribute that power to plenty of time spent squatting. I’m now back to 20 min of cardio 4x per week, and being very strict with myself about it. I want to make a good showing when I return to my team this fall. (Is anyone going to the Saranac Lake tournament???)
Mark, please do post your friend’s strength workout!
I’m going all out to be scary freakin’ strong.
Thanks, JAY
Mark, you say you’ve seen a lot of gains in strength except for squats and that you only squat bodyweight. You also said you’re skinny, so I assume you don’t weight a lot. My questions to you are 1) Are you sure that you’re not fooling yourself? What I mean is, say your first ever squat was 95 lbs 6 mos. ago. Now you squat 170, which is your body weight. In 6 mos, you’ve gone up 75 lbs. That’s a very good gain. Maybe it’s not a 400 lb squat, but hey, those take YEARS to get to, unless you’re genetically gifted. 2) Are you sure you’re squatting correctly? Are you using proper form? If you’re a newbie and you only squat 1x a week, that would explain why you don’t squat a lot. Squat should be worked 2 or 3 x a week when you’re a newbie. Once you’re big and strong, you cut back to once every 5 days or what have you.
3)If none of the above applies to you, that is you’re not a newbie, you work the squat 2-3x a week, using good form, then you may NOT be suited for squatting and want to check out deadlifts. peace