After eating a delicious spaghetti dinner, me and the other boys from Easy Company ran up Mount Currahee until we puked.
Oh wait, I saw that in a mini series.
I have been looking for new stimuluses stimuli to keep things interesting and see if I can make my upper back bigger or stronger. I find I can do way more volume using a (30” “jumpcube” to appropriately angle a landmine) viking press attachment (to just below shoulder height) than I can using the Smith machine, military press or overhead presses from the rack . Of course these are fairly different movements, but the goal is hypertrophy and volume. So I’m going with what is easiest on the joints. Especially since you need to control both lifting and lowering the weight.
I have been working my way up. Today, for no good reason, I did 270 pounds of vikings for ten sets of five reps, every minute on the minute, repeating this six times, for a total volume exceeding 80,000 pounds.
I do not feel it yet, but am pretty sure tomorrow will not be a good day to play tennis.
I did it, with moderate soreness for two days after. I can see repeating it. But it takes a long time to do, almost two hours with just one exercise, so it will likely be a while. The odd thing is, you do ten seconds of work than rest for fifty seconds. It’s a sweet ratio. It does not feel that strenuous in the moment, working at 50-70% 1RM.
I went to the gym today thinking I had up to three hours to exercise. Then learned it was closing earlier today, in an hour. So I decided to do overhead presses again, every minute on the minute for three “sessions”. Each “session” was ten reps at a moderate weight just above 200 pounds, on the minute, for ten minutes - so a hundred reps per session. The weight was slightly lower than before, but the number of reps was double and so rest times between sets was forty seconds instead of fifty. Between sessions, I rested for as long as I needed, which turned out to be five minutes.
So in forty minutes, I overhead pressed 60,000 pounds. Slightly sore and tomorrow will be more so. But I feel kinda proud I was able to pack so much density into a short time. I figure it makes sense to lower volume if you increase effort by both more reps and less rest.
Absolutely. The reality is things like benches and straight vertical presses are hard on the shoulder. Floor presses and things like Smiths or landmines that let you lean forward 5-20 degrees, or position to destress the shoulder (e.g. bench with the arms 15 degrees down from a 90 degree T) are just better for high volume hypertrophy. It won’t transfer to the powerlifting exercises - my benches have gone down because I floor pressed too much. But if going for bigness, you can’t beat it, and for us old coots it is a no brainer.
Today I pressed 125,000 pounds. That is easier than it sounds - moderate weights every minute as before, ten reps a minute. Took longer rest breaks between sessions, but it still took over two hours to do it. I think I have spent enough time doing this type of volume and it is now time to change focus. I find that this type of novel stimulus works well for three to four weeks, but longer is not better for me.
In the past, old timers believed in sticking to the routine, “Milking the Gains,” and working harder and harder for less and less pay off.
Now we know it’s better to Smash, Grab and Get Out. Get the strongest novel stimulus for a handful of sessions, then try something new before the returns diminish.
I suppose it depends on how “Old Timer” you wanna go, because John McCallum nailed this in his Keys to Progress by releasing a new program every month with each issue of Strength and Health coming out. “Muscle Mag Periodization”: we need to go back.
I decided I might have a little more in the tank. So I decided to do what I could in terms of pressing volume, as above, pushing myself a little more. After all, it will be a while before there is much use in revisiting this amount of volume, but I did not feel maxed out and my deltoids have been doing okay. Just a couple times, I surprised myself in the mirror thinking I looked pretty swole. Probably just the old ego.
I ate a huge spaghetti dinner, and took a nap before going for the gusto.
Anyway, in about 2.5 hours, I cranked out over 300,000 pounds of presses. Twelve “sessions” with just over 250 pounds on the bar. A day later, the delts are feeling it, but are doing better than expected. Although I think there is little benefit to pushing it further for now, I’m definitely going to do more regular landmine presses. “Fun” and relatively easy on the joints.
Since the world record for most weight lifted in 24h might be 1.4m lbs (Google has been known to be wrong), I’m wondering if some Franken combination also including leg presses and the pelvic machine would count. Probably not.