Category: Lifting

I’ve done a lot of outside the box things when it comes to lifting weights.

I found high rep jerks carried over to my 225lb bench for reps.

Overhead squats for high reps, as light as the empty bar, saw me grab rim from a standstill.

That was the best vertical jump of my life.

The high reps with the accordion action of the legs and forceful hip thrusts to lockout saw me get powerful under fatigue.

Holding weight at deadlift lockout flips a switch where I mentally freak out.

However long holds and supports are likely the fastest way to improve physiologically.

They’re technically yielding isometrics, and while they may wipe you out – they build you very well.

I like pushup position planks with people standing on my upper back.

5 sets of :45 with my 160lb training partner – I went somewhere.

Then looked leaner the next day while being ravenously hungry.

Humans as weight gets you gorilla strong, and is available in any prison setting outside of solitary confinement.

My favorite implement I’ve ever used?

That was the 185lb rogue yoke at the “hardcore?/powerlifting?” gym.

Seen here deadlifting…with the box…for simulated full range of motion.

Wherever the height was set, I’d pick it up to press it cold either immediately after I walked in, or immediately before I walked out.

Using anywhere from 185-200lbs I’d press it cold, generally for a few reps per set (getting near double digits with 185) as the desk girl looked at me like “he’s freakishly strong, yet refuses to powerlift like the others”.

I never did video tape pressing it.

I liked “rack pulls” on it too. It felt harder than the barbell movements, but also caused far higher muscular activation.

The weight closer to your center line made it easier than a barbell, but the 3″ thickness made it harder than a barbell with greater muscular activation.

I felt the two evened each other out.

The best upper body pump you’ll ever get is to be had flexing hard in simulation of what looks like nail bending.

It makes me wonder how I’d be at nail bending, as manual resistance four directional wrist work improved my sledgehammer levering.

The only levering video I have, during which as luck would have it my buddy flipping me off is out of frame.

And something I’ve learned about bulking :

Bulk comes easily after a period of going very hard.

Fighting a growth spurt during wrestling season junior year of high school, the moment the season was over I went from 195 to 215 in 10 days.

After 3 weeks going psycho on bent rows at the SoCal bodybuilding gym, I went from ~255 to ~270 in a week to ten days as I drove across the country eating poptarts, mcdonalds, continental breakfasts, and drinking half to a full gallon of milk a day, while doing minimal PT.

Do “too much” for a period, up to three months or so, then recover, and grow.

It’d be interesting to use this principle in a chaotic way over shorter time frames.

1500 reps daily, and some heavy work for 7-21 days on low to medium calories, then high calories and little training for a period about half as long. Spend a week or two going normal in food and stimulus, then repeat the process.

As long as you have leg strength, you can focus on the upper body.

Having big strong glutes eliminates back pain.

The wrestler’s bridge is an all encompassing exercise.

Neck, spine, leg/glute, and doing pullovers in this position causes extremely high lat activation.

Always expect athleticism from yourself.

How To Be Effectively Superhuman :

•Strong Wrists
•Strong Ankles
•Strong Neck

Stomping and dropping from height (I regularly jump instead of taking the last few steps) is very useful for leg strength and bone density.

20 rep front squats instead of back squats because legs.

Squatting daily, not only low reps, but with volume back off sets.

Axle cleans and snatches.

And when I’m not at a barbell gym I start pushing calisthenics.

At present I’m working on handstands firstly, and secondly on pushups with people standing on my upper back.

He’s now 5-10lbs heavier, and I get him for triples.

5-10 sets of weighted pushups when the opportunity is there.

Bands allow me to somewhat bypass needing a person for weighted pushups.

If you have the time, and want to experience an interesting body transformation – do 7+ hours a week of density dips, or 7+ hours of handstand practice.

They’ve both worked quite well for me.

-J

How fast can you do 100 dips?

100 dips for time is a challenge I like doing on occasion.

It cracks me up, in the last 18 months I’ve done this thrice, and each time I’ve been consistent at about 3½ minutes.

Dips are a high effect exercise that can be done with relative ease.

Pushing the pace allows a lot of work in a short time.

It’s a bit of a game too – the balancing of reps per set and rest periods.

Rep out and you get more reps, but need more rest, and the clock is still running.

Less reps per set mean more sets -tick tock tick tock.

Give density dips a shot. See how fast you can race to 100 reps in.

Building a big chest is so easy that the attainment of an overdeveloped chest is quite simple.

Just do daily pushups for years.
It’s not complicated or hard, it just takes time.

Everyone wanting a big chest, and not getting it simply isn’t staying dedicated and giving it enough time.

A couple years will do it.
That’s all I needed.

Now though I’ve done so daily, nearly unbroken, for over 12 years.

There is older literature saying a chest can be built too big, some blaming Arnold for a switch from shoulder focus to chest focused development.

Honestly a handstand pushup habit would result in a better overall than a pushups habit, but that’s me saying with 20/20 26 year old hindsight, not what I came up with at 14 knowing two exercises in total.

My starting out 14 year old nightly PT was those two exercises, pushups and situps, done for high reps and a few supersets back to back.

Somewhere in the first few months I dropped the situps, having been viewing them as extra credit from the beginning.

The challenge I accepted from a Stew Smith military.com article was nightly pushups as a discipline challenge.

How many days with a simple calisthenic til you miss one?

I chose to do pushups.

In the past I’ve been told that I’m addicted to the gym.

More accurately would be saying that I’m addicted to pushups.

My answer right now for “more shoulder development in proportion to chest” is to add more shoulder work, not drop pushup volume

I’ve found having done them so consistently for years, that through all the emotions in the past I’ve done them through, that pushups serve me as a psychological trigger.

Yeah, often I do them because it’s daily habit, but regularly enough I’ll have some negativity in my thinking, and I’ll burn it right out cleansing with a quick pushup workout.

For example : speaking on the phone to my grandma, who was sad, lonely, and confused, the second I was checked back in to my physical location (3000 miles away) I smoked myself with 100+ in under 5:00 to reset.

Getting my mind off of something that hurts via effort at pushups.

Pushups ; even with the negative (an overdeveloped chest) I get so much from them that I do them consistently having an inability to even visualize myself not doing them.

Persistence & Tenacity

It was a good pullup set that night, the next day too, both 7 or 8 strict, and kipped to 10 with a brief bar hang to end.

Bigger guys can get good stimulus out of lightly kipped pullups.

I find the kipping to 10 and subsequent bar hang makes the set worth far more than the 7 or 8 reps otherwise.

There was this guy I knew a few years back ; 40 something, he’d used to fight mma, 5’10” 230, always doing conditioning work.

He’d super set combinations of burpees, rowing ergometer, 225lb deadlifts, and the like going hard for a good half hour at a time.

5’10” 230 is a good size to be both relatively lean, strong, and have wind at.

Props.

My nickname for him was “Mr. Intensity”.

He didn’t lift heavy much if at all when I knew him, a good portion of his workouts being the aforementioned superset conditioning style, and the other portion fairly light for 10×5-10 with normal minute or two rests.

However he looked and was far stronger than the plates he’d have on the bar.

Speaking with him he said he was good for a 405 bench – I didn’t doubt it.

Based on the leg press dropset, the 225 he almost never squatted heavier than was probably at most 50% of 1rm max. I figured him good for a mid 400 to mid 500 squat, similar deadlift.

Observation on the gym floor teaches those with eyes to see.

Kipping pullups is one lesson I gained from observing him.

He’d do 10×10 with a brief 45 second rest on lightly kipped pullups.

He told me he was good for 15 if not 20 strict pullups, but that would push the number of reps per subsequent set down far too much to get a good training effect.

With a light kip he got enough volume to get both a muscular and a wind training effect as he pushed the pace of the 10×10 which I regularly witnessed.

I’ve long known on paper that in a so called “hollywood transformation” it’s all about being lean with trap, shoulder, neck, and forearm development.

Coming from a solid burly type base, I’ve been prioritizing shoulders at present.

I’ve learned some stuff :

To build the shoulders well you need to be pressing.

Dumbbell pressing has more of an effect on the shoulders than with a barbell.

With the barbell clean & press it’s more proportionately trapezius and triceps than shoulder. The dumbbell hits the traps too, in a different way than the barbell.

John Grimek was described as using the see saw press as a frequent movement.

Sig Klein described it as the #1 shoulder muscle builder.

I’ve been emulating Grimek and listening to Klein.

See saw pressing is transforming my upper body.

Hitting the shoulders and abs hard, I look better. It’s the side effect of stronger. The see saw press makes you stronger.

Intermittent fasting has me leaner.

Combine the two.

If you have a solid base to begin with you can bring your physique up a level by regularly see saw pressing, particularly if your shoulders need work, and intermittent fasting.

It’s working well.

-J

Count The #P On The Leg Press :

The hammer strength leg press is marked “start 118lbs” on the empty sled itself.

Most actually care what number the leg press calculates out to.

I don’t.

It’s a leg press, you can work up to a space shuttle on the sled if you really choose.

I count the #P.

P is shorthand for plates a side, and on a machine where one can pretty easily do a set of 50 with their squat 1rm (this is a minimal performance number), it’s better to not care the poundage, and for logging and knowledge purposes just have a #P.

At planet fitness with one loading bar removed you can fit 9p on the one there.

At any other gym, with the same model of leg press, but fully built with double sets of loading bar, you can fit 18p on the bars.

A 455lb squat means at a minimum you should be leg pressing 50x5p.

Minimum.

Fuck the exact numbers.

If it #P and change you’d mark it say 5p25 for 5 plates and a 25 each side.

That’s what I had my buddy rep out on the other night.

I recall a drop set from 18p down to 2p, amraps at 9 weights, I was at the time 19 or 20 with a 365lb max squat.

That was a cool day, I was asked to help with the plates by a former college football defensive end (6’3″ 280), and his 145lb lifting partner.

Obviously helping with plate changing I got a turn, it was flat out expected by all involved.

A dude from out of the region on a day pass, seeing the ham effort from three hugely varied in build dudes, joined in from the nearby bench too.

The more the merrier, like deadlift party’s on friday nights.

He, despite he and I being in different parts of the east coast, have actually caught a lift together at the SoCal bodybuilding gym.

The universe aligned for 48 hours of us being in town at the same time.

We did every single thing in the weight room that day, alternating picks of lift for about 4 hours, until a few minutes before closing.

The Leg Press : great for reps, great for bodybuilding, not a place to run numbers. Each machine is different, and #P is all the math you need.

Why?

Because it’s not hard to get to reps at 18P while using decent range of motion, and hogging every 45 in the gym.

Oh that single doing motherfucker.

Depending on your size, you can get huge amounts out of 4p-7p for sets of 50-100+.

And sets of 50-100+ with 4p-7p is well within your ability.

Persistence & Tenacity

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.

Easy as pie.

I feel like I’m growing a shell on my back.

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.

Training Music :

There’s a few ways to go about training weighted pushups.

•with plates
•with bands
•with people

(At the sticking point on the second rep my quads fired extremely hard. It felt like how they should in a military press, the activation was so high that they were cramping when I got up, and felt very well worked hours later. A heavy pushup is not an upper body exercise, it’s full body, that rep even skewed towards the legs.)

With people it’s most challenging when they stand on your back, not sit or lay down on you.

Balance is a big factor.

You could goofing around have the kid standing on you hold some dumbbells. My PR here was my buddy seen above weighing 155, holding a pair of 8lb dumbbells, with a 2.5lb plate resting on his shoes.

173½ el bees that way, I’ve doubled him on a few occasions while he’s weighed between 150 and 160lbs.

My one rep plate PR so far is 180lbs.

Ideally I want to rep out “girl pushups” on video, having two chicks standing on my back for smooth, solid, slow, and controlled double digit reps.

For the time being I do mostly band resisted as that is easy logistically.

I expect to have a solid “girl pushups” video within a year.

That’s how fast the movement progresses in ability.

From 135lb as a 1rm to doubling a 150-160lb standing human in less than a year, with the lockdown, and without much work otherwise.

You want stronger pressing?
No excuses, wed yourself to the band resisted pushups.

I just keep setting rep PRs, up to 6 reps with the big grey band thus far.

I’m tempted to mix band and plate resistance, or human and a small amount of band tension.

And now it sounds like “Westside For Weighted Pushups”.
It’s all good man.

Persistence & Tenacity

Training Music :

The Simplest Way To Build A Thick Neck :

Once a week use the neck harness. Sit there hands on knees style, and nod for 1×100.

For someone entirely new to neck training I’d suggest starting with a 2½ or a 5lb plate and using those for weight jumps for a while.

If you already have strength of neck I’d add 10lbs per week. It’s a simple progression.

If you don’t hit 100 reps stay at that weight til you do. Don’t fail a rep, but do allow the reps to get difficult before stopping a set.

Speaking from experience it’s amazing how quickly you can drive up the reps and poundage on the neck harness. I’ve done sets far past 100 reps, at one point getting to ~500×50-70lbs.

100x100lbs is a reasonable expectation. You can get here. You can go much further. 3p,4p (135/180) for 100+ reps sounds good.

Mike Bruce has done reps with 200lb+ people hanging off the harness. And there’s a picture of him with 4 or 5 100lb plates attached to his neck harness.

I typed this up with 100x135lbs probably done standing hands braced on knees style on my mind.

I’ll beat this old video, and very likely be the first person to ever use a neck harness at the planet fitness location I’ll be doing this at.

Though maybe done in the same manner to compare videos.

I’ll be starting with a 45lb plate. We’ll see where this is at in 3 months.

-J