I used to work out when the conventional wisdom was to do brutal squats or deadlifts, alternating every week. I’d warm up with leg presses, piling on 100 pound plates. Then it was on to deadlifts or squats on raised platforms with multiple mirrors so I could admire my stupidity. The three days after leg day were always brutal. Getting out of a chair was horrible. There were many days when I was hobbling down the street walking my dogs like a little old lady because of the way I brutalized my body in the gym. But now, 20 years later, I’m having to do romanian deadlifts at 135 pounds just to not throw my back out and I really miss being able to brutalize my young self.
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I was 17. It was 1982. I have told this before. Regardless, a fellow opened a Nautilus studio in town. In 1982 No Pain No Gain was the mantra. Frank lived by it. Three times a week. Every exercise to failure. I could not do that again.
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Did you wrestle at Iowa?
I feel seen.
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Running Sheiko advanced my second to last semester of uni
Absolutely brutal… and my 85year old prof beat me up the stairs a couple of times after squat day.
It was definitely not the programme to be running when taking an overload of classes, working a part time job, writing applications for grad school and working on 2 research projects
I am not really sure how I survived
That’s brilliant 
When I was a teenager, at some point I was doing 2 sets of 120 jump squats and 1 set of 50 jumping lunges per leg on leg day. It was during the summer and I was sweating like a pig. I was extremely nauseous after each session, and decided to start working on strength over endurance.
I did this a few weeks ago… terrible
The time when we had a challenge here on T-nation and I did 100 deadlifts at 100 kgs in 8 minutes was horrible as well… I was done after that
But the most terrible was during a Crossfit comp… I don’t remember the exact wod but the first part was like lots of bodyweight stuff, wall-balls, jumps in a team of 2 for 11 minutes
Then max power cleans at 60 kgs for 5 minutes… with the crowd and your partner screaming at you… I think we did 135 and placed seconds, but I’m sure this took me weeks of life expectancy
Shit no… Ha. I wish. He was before my time. I wrestled in the mid 90’s then again in 2000’s… by toughest mf I meant wrestlers in general
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Probably the worst was some of the track workouts. I remember a few 3 x 200m sessions where I puked. The lactic acid buildup was awful, if you laid down it would cause you a headache. Afterwards you didn’t even feel good, it was just an hour of feeling really terrible. No other workout or activity has come remotely close to just how bad it makes you feel. High rep squat, rowing, long distance running in the heat, none of it makes you feel like you’re dying quite like 200 repeats do.
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John Meadows leg days can be brutal!
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Being tired makes performance Worse.
Silly American coaches!
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Think they were training mental fortitude more than physical conditioning.
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That had to be brutal.
Gotcha… I was like “holy shit”
Not that that isn’t the case anyway with your Recon background
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You can do this at home with a copy of the exorcist and 6g of magic mushrooms. No need to handicap athletic performance to do it
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I’m sure parents would sign off on this for high school students.
My hardest ever trained probably isn’t very impressive. I never trained under a coach to push me. I have always considered that I trained hard enough and many couldn’t keep pace with me (most of you here would have little trouble doing so), but it was always to a level that recovery came quickly. “Muscle adaptation doesn’t occur until recovery is complete,” is a philosophy that was a core value to my approach to weight training.
The strength portion of my weight training is possibly why my training method doesn’t fall into the “hardest” category, that is, requiring tremendous internal push past your perceived capability. I only tried 20 rep squats once. I had believed that 10 rep squats was the sweet spot for hypertrophy. I now believe that I may have missed an opportunity to have larger thighs.
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I terms of sheer difficulty, probably sprint tabatas would be the about the toughest thing I’ve ever attempted (I managed to get about 5 rounds in and basically ran out of steam).
Also, some of the cardio I did in the run up to competing at indoor rowing recently was really tough (cycling 9 miles in 20 minutes on a stationary bike was, a somewhat expletive-infused-mad-frantic-effort!).
People really don’t know what they don’t know…
Beyond exhausted
Constantly cold or freezing
Body broken
Sand in your pee hole
Loooooong walks with a lot of weight
Staying mentally focused
Honestly the trick is just not quitting. They want the right guys not necessarily the best.
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