A Novel Approach To Training For The Sig Klein Challenge :
I was doing clean and press singles with the 75s, on the last set deciding to press for reps.
After 5 presses, on a whim I decided to clean the bells again, and did another 3 presses a little fresher for the press that way.
I realized that I could keep the clean count low, train up to 15 presses to use as the standby (yes that’s overshooting), then add the cleans into the set backfilling, and going less and less presses per clean until I’ve got the Sig Klein challenge.
This is much easier mentally for me than approaching it with heavier and heavier sets of 12 c&p where I last did the 60s.
Here I’m just pressing (that’s easy), which with dumbbells actually needs more work than the clean (the opposite of on a barbell), and will be sneaking cleans in until completed.
435 views in a week, 389 views on Thursday the 5th, 7 likes, I’ve gained a subscriber. That’s the most views I’ve had on any video, and I’ve been on YouTube since 1/2/17.
Bonkers! I’m hugely psyched!
There’s a new feature called “shorts”, and my video got picked up there. Awesome!
My buddy standing on my back in the video, he wants to go hard on making content.
Oh man, a video taking off, that’s a sign!
YouTube is starting to have growth!
Keep training!
Film worthwhile stuff!
If a video with a guy standing on my back does this good, how about when it’s more reps with two fit chicks standing on my back.
Maybe an hour after getting done I was at the gym.
I had relaxed a bit, had a cup of juice, and despite not being much interested in the gym, went anyway.
It’s better than staying home.
Getting out of the house is almost always better than staying home.
This was not the exception.
Going to the gym after physical work reminded me of all the times I’d done so after shifts at the moving company.
I felt grimy, and smelled rank. I was a bit dehydrated and had very little food in me.
No matter, go anyway.
I changed before going and as I said had a cup of juice.
Little things can make going far easier.
I’m glad I did, I ended up having fun.
And you can always find some movement that clicks each and every day.
As I dried off, having showered up at the end, I thought to myself “the more physical you are during the day, the easier it is to get to the gym”.
It’s the people sitting at a desk all day who struggle to get to the gym.
Anyone with a halfway physical day that isn’t lazy easily brings themselves to the gym.
For example I see shockingly high numbers of construction workers working out.
A lot of the best built and strongest dudes at the gym often have physical jobs.
They’re doing it on top of labor which to the low energy office worker sounds insane, and is viewed as superhuman.
The thing is that workouts on top of labor is actually in their favor. The two feed off of each other.
Not many believe it when I say this, though it’s truth.
Do more physically to be capable of doing more physically.
The human body is capable of evermore.
It just gets used to one way or the other.
Physicality or sloth? Sloth or physicality?
Even if you work seated at a desk, it’s still your choice.
Do you walk an hour in the morning? You can.
In fact it’d be a big help towards getting you into the feel that laborers live with, their natural high energy.
What do you do after work?
Pickup basketball or pickup the remote?
Do you do stuff on the weekends?
Bike rides, hikes, your own yard work, etc.
The more activity you do the more energy reserves you will discover inside you.
That’s why I want you doing stuff, being at least naturally physical daily.
This is why I envision myself as a multimillionaire who owns amongst other things a moving company so as to have a place to undercover boss style work part time for the physicality benefits.
Nobody needs know that J is not only a part time coworker, but their employer.
Good day yesterday.
Good day today.
Good day tomorrow.
If you’re like me, you stomach oats better uncooked than cooked.
They’re a solid ingredient for raw egg shakes, and in homemade weight gainers.
But as far as porridge is concerned I’d instead have grits, while staying far away from cream of wheat.
I’ve seen online that I’m not the only one who doesn’t stomach oats particularly well when they’re cooked.
Many just put them as is into their shakes.
I’ll do this myself when I want to up the carb content of an egg shake.
I’ve come across some just pouring in a bit of water so as to be able to quickly power them down.
I’ve seen it suggested with warm water online, though in person I’ve seen my buddy do this with room temperature water many a time.
I eat oats in a different way.
I started doing this making quick dinners for myself after having lifted while in high school.
16 years old, it was an idea tried on a whim that I ended up liking.
At various points in my life fried eggs have been a dietary staple,
where a quarter if not half of my meals will end up having eggs in them.
Like after the high school weight room junior year.
Last night I cooked what I did back in high school.
I took six eggs, and stretched them.
Cracking them into the bowl, I grabbed the container of oats and a measuring cup.
½ cup oats : 6 eggs being the ratio I found best.
Having dumped the oats into the bowl with the eggs, I then dumped in spices, grabbed a spoon, and stirred it all around.
Oats are a grain. After frying this up it reminds me moreso of a bread made of egg and oats in taste than of fried eggs.
I’ve always liked the consistency.
Whatever odd meat is on hand will go into the pan with it.
It was two hotdogs this time, whereas in high school it was a can of tuna or sale price pepperoni.
Any meat will do.
As alluded to above I came up with this as a high schooler wondering how the consistency would turn out after having thought to do so as a way to add carbs to an otherwise protein and fat only meal.
When you’re not paying particular attention to macros this an enjoyable, clean, mixed macro meal.
•Eggs
•Oats
•Spices
With the options of meat, cheese, condiments, and whatever else you’d add to an egg dish.
When sun’s out you may as well go guns out…regardless of what it says on the calender.
I did some pullups, played around with handstands, and even ran a little barefoot.
The biggest negative of the gym is that it’s indoors, it lacks vitamin d.
Outdoors the air is fresh, the sun shines, the wind blows.
There’s no noise, no poop radio, no televisions in every corner.
I’d like to have a fully equipped gym, but outside.
It needn’t even be in Santa Monica/Venice Beach endless summer type weather, I’d take the Ukrainian seasons if it meant access to fresh air and the equipment.
The Ukrainian gym – pictured without fit female clickbait.
I do olys outside whenever I feel like it, this often ends up being in the colder months.
It annoys me to no end that almost nowhere in america can one find pullup bars that are properly high, yet according to the internet they’re all over former soviet republics.
In america playgrounds are built to what is likely legally considered the safe height for toddlers, while the soviets built the same equipment adult sized.
Still that’s all complaining.
Fitness is able to be financially free, the only costs : in time and sweat equity.
Wherever you are you can get going.
No excuses to lack strength, stamina, flexibility, etc.
You can step outside anywhere.
A parking lot or a field can suffice.
It amuses me to no end when people think they need something for fitness.
The right shoes is one I’m amazed to hear from guys. Though I too remember those days where I still cared.
Now I mostly wear falling apart tshirts and beat up shoes to train.
I can walk to a park and hit some pullups. While there do walking swamp lunges for awhile.
I can kick off my shoes and run/walk barefoot in most any field, though I’m most into doing this on the beach.
With winter coming I’ll no joke jog and sprint barefoot in the snow.
I love doing that.
In fact I love physical efforts. I love training.
Get outside. Enjoy the weather… regardless of degrees out and levels of precipitation.
Goofing around with my barbell by doing a deadlift entirely wrong I came across what felt like a leg press.
I first squatted deep, all the way down, and here grabbed the bar, which necessitated a bend in the elbows like the top of a karwoski shrug.
The bar is in front of me, I’m holding onto it, and I’m at the bottom of an atg squat.
I then squatted up, though by pushing my feet on/through the floor, without hips as the focus joint of movement (only raising them as necessary) it felt very much like a leg press.
Or uncoiling from the bottom of a high bar squat.
I lowered the bar with a deadlift’s negative, and did a few reps in all.
Could this be a Westside Barbell special exercise?
By goofing off I found a very good leg exercise, which reminded me of when you deep squat standing on two boxes with a kettlebell dangling between your legs.
That’s a leg/glute exercise I really like the feel of, it’s very high in muscular activation, and I just improvised a similar feeling with a barbell.
This is as close to having the weight underneath you as you could improvise with just a barbell and the floor.
You can do stuff with weights that are outside the box.
In certain circumstances, you have to. And it does make it all more fun.
I realized the other day that a dude I’m friendly with at the gym, his shoulder, chest, or back always hurts.
Every time.
Dudes barely 30.
He’s young.
It’s all in his head.
As I enjoyed the bourgeois aspects of planet fitness I thought to myself, no realized that :
“I have the best recovery”.
See I’ve been doing shoulders day after day lately, and I don’t break down, all that happens from the frequency is I get better at the thing I’m prioritizing.
I can taste success on the Sig Klein challenge.
Taste it.
And if I was at a barbell gym it’d be straight up bulgarian to the same effect.
Less than 9 months of squat every day brought me from my first 405 squat to a 455lb double (around month 7) done around two in the morning tired, but able.
I don’t believe in the existence of getting hurt or injured.
It’s not in my accepted reality.
Fundamentally I view myself as ever capable of doing more.
Daily training?
That’s easy. I thrive off of it.
You can too.
It’d be more of a challenge to hit two a days and an mma class each night on top of a labor job.
Lifting weights isn’t difficult.
You just have to frame it that way.
Dumbbell clean and press – it’s an amazing movement when you hit it hard and often.
I did a set of 12 with the pair of 60s.
15lbs to go til completing the Sig Klein challenge.
The majority of the session was back and forth between pullups, and db c&p.
A few sets of one, then a few of the other.
The funny thing is that I had went there with the idea to pullover in the wrestler’s bridge, and didn’t.
I’m at the gym doing things that make me diesel.
Literature has a lot of rules for training. I definitely broke one today
Weighted pullups – singles and a few doubles as I got more into it, but using only 10lbs.
I’m been at 5 or 6 pullups lately, not double digits, and I’m doing weighted pullups.
Tsk tsk says the literature.
Through action I say fuck that.
I get a lot out of weighted pullups, I’ve found it transfers back to bodyweight reps.
Get used to a plate dangling off your waist, and when you decide to do bodyweight reps again it’s like you just dropped a bunch of fat with a snap of the fingers.
Plus it makes you stronger, it’s the calisthenic version of a heavy % of 1rm.
I’d rather weighted pullup a few 45s, a 400lb pullup all combined than just rep out.
I’ve never focused on top holds, or middle holds, or any hangs for that matter for a couple of years.
Top holds, middle holds, and slow negatives for the grip and lats.
Cause this is what my pf training is whittling down to :
•weighted pushups
•db c&p
•weighted pullups
4th on that list should be wrestler’s bridge variations – pressing with dumbbells and pullovers with the preloads progressing into dumbbells.
Neck is the muscle I care about having jacked the most, training must reflect this.
Near the end of the session I took the 75s to get a feel for them.
A few sets of c&p for sets of 4 and 3.
The crazy thing is I was jumping/doing the oly stomp on the upswing.
Usually it’s swung between the legs, and follows a swing into curl pattern, but today I was jumping when the bells reached about standard kb swing height.
This made it easier to press though it also made the catch angle 45°/135° instead of the bells being caught and pressed neutral.
Doing the movement I realized for this variation I had found the barbell weightlifting “pocket”, and was doing it right.
John Grimek felt that dumbbells build more strength than barbells.
With how much extra focused coordination is required I agree.
You also are much stronger on the dumbbells when you’re hyper focused on moving them in the right lines.
I did do one set of just the press.
The 75s for 10, which charts say equals 100 for a 1rm.
I remember those charts from freshman pe.
For a little while now I’ve had the gut feeling I could with access to them, clean and press a pair of 100lb dumbbells.
In fact I want that after I’ve hit the Sig Klein challenge which is very near.
A heavier version of the challenge.
Doing it at bodyweight would be very cool, and frankly I feel is possible for me.
That press set taught me something.
Doing each part of c&p alone for reps past the challenge’s required 12 is a good way to build more brute force for both movements.
For the wind to do them combined lighten the dumbbells and do volume with short rests.
I want the Sig Klein challenge so I’m doing work related to it daily.
When you want to get good at a lift do it daily til you’re happy with your ability.
You can vary the exact variation of the lift, but you want to get the frequency, and the exact lift for streaks is entirely fine.
We’ll see whether I lift the barbell in the yard, of if I end up going to pf every day till I’ve completed the Sig Klein challenge.
A barbell hang clean and press with 185lbs is roughly equivalent in my eyes, and training for that in the yard counts for the frequency, but isn’t fully specific.
Firstly I don’t find that this manner of training carries over to my upper body barbell work like a bench press much. If all you care about is your powerlifting total stop reading now, close the tab, and go do something else.
Still with me?
Cool, read on :
Once I went about 9 months gymless. I had an 8lb? (I’ve never weighed it) sledgehammer that I couldn’t lever.
9 months of improv training later, when I touched that sledge again I could with both hands.
In that time period my wrist strength went way up.
I’d do simulated 4 directional levering with both dynamic tension and using the opposite hand as resistance.
I was thinking into the exercise very deeply.
The terms are all often confused, and defined differently from person to person. None of this is helped by the uncommoness of dynamic tension and isometric type methods.
Something I like doing for my entire upper body is to flex hard through the motions of what would be a nail bend or other bending style feet of strength.
Really get into to. Make it as real as possible despite the lack of material in your hand.
Another thing I like doing is to flex, not in standard poses, but in poses I choose.
I’ll hit a lot of uncommon angles.
A favorite is this kung fu inspired one I do for the shoulders. Arms to the side, parallel to the ground, hand In the L like you see done in horse stance. I push outward, and often close the fists, fists held vertically, and pull in for the lats as another exercise.
Get creative. Options are as endless as your imagination and discoveries allow.
Everything I’ve described is on the isometric-dynamic tension scale. There’s a whole lot of manners that you can do this type of stuff with and as.
It builds an odd strength, though you can feel it.
From The Archive :
4/14/19 – While without a gym membership
At age 9 I remember being in a hotel lobby, and as my father was checking in, I was busy paying attention to a small TV on a table in the opposite corner of the room.
On it was something of supreme interest to a 9 year old boy…sumo wrestling on ESPN2 or similar.
“Cool, look at the fat guys smashing into each other.”
“Ha, their butts are showing.”
↑ Sample thoughts.
Their butts are showing.
And though their butts may have been showing, and though they were big fat guys, the muscularity of the glutes and thighs highly impressed me at the time.
The impressive lower body development (traps too) make sense as adaption to the demands of the sport and factoring in the huge bodyweights.
The sumo wrestler Byamba, whom I walked by multiple times at the US Sumo Open a few years back, had the most impressive leg development that I’ve ever seen in person. While they were not defined legs, he had proved their athletic abilities, and the sheer bulk outmassed those of any bodybuilder I’ve met including either of the two 330lb dudes (one of whom was an absolute monster).
Shiko, the squat, leg lift, and stomp exercise is a surprisingly difficult bodyweight squat variation. I generally do not put my hands on my legs for them.
The sliding (I’ve done a few amateur practices out in LA) built lactic acid up right quick.
Of course most of the sport itself is analogulous to a quick, powerful, sled or car push with a resisting superheavyweight.
I know I could shiko my way to a 495+ squat, using them to build my squat while away from the gym. Looking back, I was doing shiko (and Hindu squats, I feel shiko is the more max strength building of the two) in the months leading up to me rejoining a gym and hitting my first 405 squat.
A shiko habit would be good to form as an experiment towards seeing my squat improve while away from the gym and heavy barbell work.
