Month: November 2020

If you have a barbell and plates you can do the olympic lifts.

No bumper plates necessary, you do like they did before bumpers…always lowering the bar under control.

Never drop the bar.

You teach yourself form.

Weightlifting Form Simplified :

•Knees and elbows in alignment, shoulders in front of bar to start.

•Pull out the slack. You’re primed.

•Slowly deadlift to around knee height, then jump & shrug as hard as possible.

•Dip/Dive & Catch

•Use Power Variants

Simple.

The best training effect comes from reps done from the deadhang.

The bar stopped, paused completely at jump & shrug height.
Then you jump & shrug. Hard.

Pull with all you’ve got.

That’s brute force acceleration.

Don’t lower the weight down at the hang preloading yourself with added momentum before the jump and shrug.

Do reps from the deadhang for the majority of your training.

Use normal reps without pause for maxes.

Any shoe will work. I don’t own weightlifting shoes.

Work boots are the blue collar oly shoe.

Lately I’ve worn beat up sneakers.

My flexibility has improved. I don’t need the work boot’s heel to comfortably overhead squat.

You don’t need a $1000 Eleiko bar.

The bar I lift with is sturdy, not a name brand, though a decent all purpose bar. I paid around $150 for it as a teenager.

I bought nice, but generic.
Functional. Affordable.

I’ll pass this barbell down to the next generation.

You don’t need to go for max weights every time, or often for that matter.

A light to moderate weight will give a good training effect, especially from the deadhang.

I power clean and power snatch, sometimes from the deadhang, but the two are really ways to press and overhead squat for reps.

Occasionally I deadhang one arm snatch light or do a javelin press.

Nor is there anything wrong with emulating girevoy sport with your barbell.

High rep barbell jerks are a great builder of ability.

At my own cold air barbell club I train by my own rules.

Training by your own rules – that’s the training philosophy to live by.

And since I want it, I get it, training outdoors in the winter.

The fresh air is phenomenal.

Persistence & Tenacity

The cold air is invigorating.

“Easy! Easy!” I yell during the first sets, dialing in form, adjusting to the temperature and gusts of wind as I warm up.

I’m not recording sets and reps this workout, just enjoying the fresh air as I oly at my barbell gym.

Checking off my overhead work for the day.

With overhead work daily this month, I’ve grown shoulders. I attribute this most strongly to the dumbbell see saw presses.

Using “base weight” – 135lbs, no more no less, I’m set on making it work for me.

Oh no the horrors of warming up and working with one weight…outside…in the cold.

Unideal set ups make ideal set ups that much easier, I’ll circle round back to this.

The power cleans and presses feel real good with form dialed in.

I don’t intend to push bar weight up fast, just doing olys easy like whenever through the winter.

A jump in weight here and there.
A session here and there.

The power snatches were good with explosion. I’m not starfishing.

The overhead squat is a bomb movement.

Power snatch into overhead squats likely being the best all around complete barbell workout in one movement.

I know how to train the entire local high school football team.

I’d forgo benching, not bother squatting out of a rack, and just get the team good at calisthenics and olys done real old school style.

Power variations, mostly from a dead hang, while never dropping the bar.

You don’t need bumper plates.

Reps once the bar is overhead, presses, overhead squats, jerks, alongside pullup and weighted pushup beasts.

1000x better than what my high school football team did…what I called “the silly circuit”, where big boy linemen got away with never front squatting harder than 8x115lbs, doing lackluster sets on every machine, while paying attention to and mostly being an embarrassment on ez bar curls and benching.

My way – 1000x better.
My way builds beasts.

It being something I’ve learned outdoors in the cold, the footing a piece of particle board which means perfect never starfish foot form, little black winter gloves keeping my hands from getting double dog dared stuck to the bar.

“If only I’d done this every summer through high school”.

The high rep overhead squats would’ve been a game changer.

You could train for weightlifting under these circumstances.
Bar. Plates. It’s there.

In my mind at the moment I see this as the real lifting base to bodybuild and calisthenic at planet fitness off of.

I can teach this and train others to superior results.

This far into typing I went back to working out.

Oh man a set of 15 overhead squats with 135 let me know I’m alive.

I barked back at a neighborhood dog going off at the sounds of my lifting barely into that set. A few Ric Flair “whoos” to keep the set going, the set slightly breathing squat style.

Into it.

Before stripping the bar another clean and a few military presses bringing my heels together to finish each rep like they used to a century ago.

I stripped the bar, did a few one arm snatches from the deadhang (a movement worth focus), and a javelin press on each side, then happy having lifted and written put the weights away.

The cold air barbell club hosted at my state of the art facilities is in session.

Cold air & barbells, you’re on top of the world.

Love it.

From The Archives :
3/23/19
(“я машина” wasn’t the first time I wrote this down.)

“I’m a machine.”

I’m a machine.

High reps? Timed sets?
It’s nothin, there is only doing the work.

A machine feels nothing.
A machine just does.

Nothing phases him.

No days off? A machine doesn’t even notice. There is required training to be done.

The squats are pistoned off, up, down, up, down, up.

Food? Fuel.
What did you eat again?
_________

Feasting, fasting, dirty, or clean… the reps get done regardless.

Is that lactic acid? The machine puts it out of mind.

“Lactic acid? Does not compute.”
Back to skipping rope.

A joint feels buggy? The machine does some prehab work (maintenance), and gets back to work.

“Dude, you’re curling!”
“Just to keep the elbows good for squat everyday.”

Every human has weakness. With a machine mentality you get rid of that shit.

Who knows when I’ll step inside a gym again. Thing is though, I’ll always get stronger. Machine mentality. There is no other way.

It’s easier to have the task oriented outlook of a machine without weakling outside influence.

Training solely alone either turns you weakling or robot.

Persistence & Tenacity