Month: October 2020

My current barbell training is this :

•sldl
•overhead squat
•press

Over the last month or two I’ve been laying off of the frequency at planet fitness, and had started to lift the empty barbell in the yard again.

I’ve been liking the cool fall air, and have been easing back into lifting for the winter.

I’ve started at 135lbs bar weight.

The overhead squats won’t always even be that heavy. The empty bar is worth a lot here. You can just push the reps high.

Easing into it I’ll be adding reps, sets, even exercises (power cleans from the dead hang, power snatches) before adding weight.

135, 155, 185, 205, 225, 255, 275, 300. With the rep goals I have in mind 185 and 205 is a very very strong individual.

Quite simply I’ll be milking the weight every time before making a small jump.

This serves a bunch of purposes :

•The amount of stuff I bring outside is minimized. This bypasses the biggest psychological hurdle I have towards actually doing yard lifting.

•Allows me to dial in weightlifting form as it’s been about two years.

•It really allows easing into volume, and building work capacity back up.

•High reps build strength. You’ve got to own a weight before making the jump. My the time I press 185 for sets of ten I’ll be good for 225.

•It forces me to consciously put in work while forcing me to think past weight on the bar. This means as goals for sldl the # x 100, for the overhead squat the # x 50, press the # x 20, probably 10s on hang clean and power snatch.

This would’ve been a great way to have trained as a beginner in high school.

It’s worth noting that grip is more challenging as I’m wearing little black winter gloves.

Most importantly about this programming is that I’m willing to do it, and am.

That’s #1 for all programs.

The set up reminds me of a York course.

-J

You’re stronger lifting when in your mind you do so with violent intent.

Starting to deadlift again in the yard has me bringing this mentality, the right one, to the exercises (band resisted pushups, and dumbbell clean & pressing) I do at planet fitness.

I’ve made the decision to hit the Sig Klein challenge, and will be doing some dumbell clean and press work every time I go to the gym until I’ve succeeded.

A Sig Klein challenge failure is my most viewed YouTube video.

I’ll be linking the successful video to it in the description.

(The SEO may be especially good on that video from having been linked to here at Persistence & Tenacity over the years.)

The other day after laddering up to 6 or 7 I then hit 12 with the 50s.

I intend to just ladder and/or pyramid, and once I’m comfortable with laddering up to 7 or so at each bell, hitting the 12 reps, then jumping up to the next heavier pair of dumbbells.

Wind is the most challenging part on the sets of 12. Lots of ladders instead of just one every session builds that.

Set a 20 minute timer – get some volume in.

10×5-6 with maybe a minute rest in between would allow for a set of 12. It’s an approach I know works, just not the one I intend to use for this.

75s can feel surprisingly heavy at your shoulder when not used to them, but I know putting dumbbells overhead with high frequency quickly changes that perception.

Treat dumbbell clean and press like girevoy/kettlebell work, and top end performance becomes very very high.

Treating dumbbells like girevoy is possibly the best way overall you could train at planet fitness.

Do that, get your pullups up, both max reps and weighted, your weighted dips up, and still train legs – though I’m covering that at home deadlifting and overhead squatting in the yard.

Horse stance and high mind muscle connection bodyweight squats fill in here.

I did wall sits very regularly at pf for a good period of time.

When I care to I can very quickly get close to maxing the leg extension, repping the stack, one leg at a time.

Sets of 50 or 100 on that selector leg press, because 5p is not enough weight on a hammer strength plate loaded one.

See you can make planet fitness work.

And successfully doing the Sig Klein challenge is a good jump off point for doing some other feats.

For Sig Klein that set was his bodyweight.

Match that at heavyweight. At present that means getting strong enough to do the same with 130lbers.

Hell, even dropping down to 225, and going 110s or 115s is a seriously strong dude.

John Grimek levels of ability.

With planet fitness access only you just start setting higher and higher rep PRs.

Yard barbell could be done for the same movement virtually unlimited in top weight.

Has anyone clean and pressed 500 for high reps?

(Believe in human ability – one day it’ll happen.)

That’s another option to getting the Sig Klein challenge. You could do it heavier on a barbell with hang power clean and press, say 185 for 12, then do the dumbbells having more than enough brute shoulder strength, and the wind requirement already there.

I read a Bill Starr article : he talked of very high rep slow and controlled dumbbell shrugging.

That’s a good idea!

I should be shrugging at pf, and doing everything for far higher reps!

Today was the first time at planet fitness I’ve bottoms up pressed the pair of 30lb kettlebells…their biggest pair of kettlebells.

Now individually each is easy, I’ve pressed a 70lber bottoms up before.

(Not sure as to what I double bell pressed there, I never took video.
Maybe I’ve done higher as they had pairs to as high as 35-53. I’d guess there I did it with the 30s or 35s, and likely with off balanced bells, two different weights.)

They say one arm pressing is harder on the core than with both arms, but that’s not the bottoms up press.

With the weights so far from your center of gravity EVERYTHING has to be locked in, from wrist to oblique.

And I have strong wrists!

Really focussing to keep the left side tight in addition to the right causes this to be a supreme exercise in total body tension.

Looking straight and slightly up as you’re pressing, at a spot maybe 45° higher than the bells in peripheral vision in rack position, helps lock everything in.

It causes a surprising level of grip activation. You squeeze with all you’ve got, and are locking the entire kinetic chain.

I’ll probably video this when that pair of 30s is real slow and controlled into double digit reps.

Today I got a couple real solid sets of 3 reps, and a shakier set of 4.

The whole thing is an exercise in maximising the tools you have.

It’s not a heavy press, but it’s a good exercise.

To this day the right side of my lats are significantly larger than the left side of them.

The difference in development makes the right side appear as though it’s insertion point is lower to the tailbone than the left.

As a beginner I had bought into the internet’s powerlifting “never use straps” philosophy.

And my grip was terrible.

I was pulling more than not with mixed grip.

Eventually I added in straps for shrugging heavier than I could deadlift, but for years I pulled anything I couldn’t hold overhand with the mixed grip.

My right hand was the underhand, and that’s the side of the lats that are a good deal bigger.

I have a few thoughts stemming off that :

•Underhand gives more stimuli to the lats when deadlifting.

•The underhand is the more mobile side, this is an example of more mobility allowing for more muscle growth.

•Dorian Yates did his bent rows underhanded, and at a high angle the “Yates row”. He’d realized how these both grow the lats.

This says chin ups hit more lats than pullups which hit smaller back muscles.

Now if you’re outside of a powerlifting competition going without straps is unnecessary.

Don’t view some minimalistic deadlifting protocol as the be all end all of your grip work.

Enough grip stimuli make it so that you can use straps for deadlifts a lot more.

A buddy has from day 1 almost never pulled mixed grip. When he couldn’t pull a deadlift overhand almost always he’d add straps to the equation. His grip is good always doing volume back work, aside from the deadlift, mostly without straps.

(Of course both of us saw big increases in hand strength when we picked up labor jobs. Working labor jobs is a fast way, faster than the gym most of the time, to build hand strength.)

You know what?
His back development, both sides of the spine, is symmetrical.

I’ve come to the conclusion you needn’t even get to the point that you need to use straps on deadlifts.

You could from day one only pull double overhand, preferably on an axle, and embrace the hands as being the limiting factor.

It may take much longer to get to 400, 500, 600lbs this way, but it’d be a whole lot more sustainable a path.

(Note/Aside : Hands are the biggest limitation on the olys, in weightlifting. However I don’t believe in straps for weightlifting.)

Your hands act as a strength governer.

You don’t fire a rep off the floor that you can barely hold.

If it’s easy in your hands the rest of the body knows it can take off.

Straps bypass this.

That’s fine in strongman competition, and for unlocking extra full body growth while powerbuilding.

For the every man however the hand as a limitation is fine.

You may just end up having a side effect…

Your hands may be strong like men of yesteryear.

A decade of only double overhand is sure to build “man strength”, something those in the gym using straps are unlikely to have developed.

The deadlift is much more than a raw 1rm. Though give it enough time and you’ll have a big one of that too, even with the only double overhand without straps approach.

7/24/20 Flow – Catch, Primal, & Related :

I played catch recently.

My uncle had impulse purchased a ball for a buck or two, intending us to play catch, the purchase a playful act in itself.

As we were tossing the ball he looks at me and goes “catch is enough to make an old man feel young again, an old man would be good if he just found someone and regilarly played catch”.

(He’s in his late 50s. His statement is very much true.)

I hadn’t played catch in years.
It was a blast.

I had to run around a bit to make the grabs.

By playing in the dark my reaction speed was tested. It was like little league without glasses again, having to react quickly.

It felt awesome, while playing I was thinking about being too far into the gym, while not far enough into other physical things.

The concepts of “primal” and MovNat being thought about.

I can still throw well, my uncle (different one) was right about that back in 2018 when he looked at me, and made me move my arm through the pitching motion. Though I’ve muscled up, I still have pitching range of motion, he was hyped up seeing this, saying he could train me to be a high level pitcher.

At the gym I noticed something ; with a dumbbell one arm overhead press I can press underhand/palm facing/curl grip on my throwing side. I have that too as part of the range of motion.

I’ve also done some stone putting recently, I don’t know the weights or the distances but unlike indoors and the gym it was uncalibrated fun, and involved vitamin d.

Now writing something strikes me, when animals stop acting young they lose mobility, speed, physical abilities in every way and their health.

I’ve seen it in dogs, cats, and humans.

Some stay young at heart and youthfully healthy into senior citizenship.

My grandpa was outdoors having fun up until his last year on Earth.

Play keeps you young.

He had his walks, his hobbies, I can’t recall a single time he didn’t play catch with me, nor a time where he didn’t insist on throwing ambidextrously.

I remember the look of excitement on his face when my mom caught him on camera flying an rc model airplane/glider into his own hand.
(I was either at a friend’s or with my uncle at the time, otherwise I’d have seen this in person.)

With him being roughly 65, me in 2nd or 3rd grade he raced me in a hill sprint.

“J is going to run really fast when he’s older!” He was very excited when he told my mom.

Once on vacation (me 9) we went to a store purposefully to get some games to play, I remember a plastic dart board…and a way to play catch. Probably a buck for a tennis ball and these fuzzy paddle things it stuck to.

Catch is amazingly all around athletic.

You get hand eye coordination, to move around quickly, sprint bursts and agility, maybe a jump, some amount of moving the body through space, and when throwing you must aim.

Catch :
•It’s amazing for you.
•It’s not like the gym, it has no rigidity.

Kids do it naturally, and you as an adult probably don’t do it at all.

Fix that, even if it’s simply a solitary activity. It can be social, but you can also grab three tennis balls and learn to juggle.

-J