2003 archives (page 2)

New routine

After testing the waters for a week I am now plunging right in with my first Westside training routine. Quite a conventional concoction based on the squat/deadlift template and bench template at Elite Fitness Systems, plus the Westside training manual by Sakari Selkäinaho. Conventional is what I want to begin with; I expect to refine the routine as I find out what my weaknesses are and how my recuperation abilities cope.

Below is the general outline. I have also devoted a separate page for my training routines, where some more detail can be obtained.

MON: ME SQUAT/DEADLIFT
Squat/Deadlift ME exercise: work up to single or triple max
Hamstrings: 3-6x5-8
Abs: 3-4x6-15
Lower back: 3-4x8
Calves: 4-6x6-12

WED: ME BENCH
Bench ME exercise: work up to single or triple max
Triceps: 4-6x5-10
Lats (rows): 4x6-10
Side delts: 2x10-15
Triceps: 2x5-10

FRI: DE SQUAT/DEADLIFT
Speed Box squat: 8x2 @ 65-85% of box max
Hamstrings: 4-6x5-8 or deadlift singles @ 60-75% of max
Abs: 3-4x6-15
Abs: 3-4x6-15

SUN: DE BENCH
Speed Bench, three grips: 9x3 @ 60% of max
Triceps: 3-4x8-12
Lats (pulldowns): 4x6-10
Rear delts: 2x10-15
Rotator cuffs: 2-3x10-15
Biceps: 3-4x5-10

After some initial confusion about when to train lats, I have now decided to fall into the line and train them on bench days.

Second DE Bench workout

In reading the More Big Benches article by Simmons I referenced on Wednesday the following caught my attention:

Jimmy will lower the bar very fast, almost dropping it, and he catches it 1-3 inches off his chest. This is ballistic bench pressing. He will press it up as fast as possible, keeping the motionless period as short as possible. The time to complete 3 reps is roughly 3 seconds, the same amount of time as max of 650 pounds.

Although mentioned in Selkäinaho’s manual, this idea of dropping the bar as fast as possible somehow eluded me until now. Last workout I lowered the bar slowly and then attempted to explode the bar up as fast as possible from a complete rest. This workout I paid heed to Simmons’s advice nearly letting the bar free fall to my chest before catching it and then immediately blasting it back up. What comes down must go up.

I still had slightly sore pecs, but most of the triceps soreness close to the elbows was now gone. The general trend so far seems to be that I get less sore than from standard bodybuilding training. Perhaps not surprising in light of the higher volume and beyond failure model typical of that training, but I was still somehow expecting the combination of heavier iron and more frequent training to cause more muscle soreness. I was especially concerned that my lower back would not cope with the added demands, but so far I am positively amazed how quickly it has recuperated. It is still early days, but so far this routine looks very promising.

Since I’m training at my forest gym without the luxury of pulleys, I substituted pull-ups for pulldowns despite the fact that my 92 kg/203 pounds make them less than gracious to behold. Otherwise I followed my new routine to the letter. Did not find my groove in close-grip benches, probably owing to the fact that I did them with the same arch as regular benches, whereas I used to do them with no arch at all and without pulling the shoulder blades in under the body. I wish arching would be prohibited in powerlifting, as I have trained myself to detest it during my earlier training. So far the new plane of motion has only made me feel weaker, but I expect to get used to it in a few weeks …at least physically.

ME Squat/Deadlift tomorrow. Stay tuned.

So much for taking it easy. Popped Rammstein’s Mutter into my MiniDisc and started going for triples according to plan. The form felt good. I had no idea were I was going, but after a very easy triple at 70 kg/155 pounds my appetite got whetted from more. Switched to singles. 95 kg/210 pounds went up slowly but surely. I felt fairly confident that the big 100 kg/221 pounds would too, but that jammed. Happy thing I was doing this in my squat rack. Of course, it is much more enjoyable sitting on a box with the barbell than at the bottom of a squat while waiting for help, but still. Guess this means I’m in business as far as the box squat goes.

This new baseline means that I need to go heavier on the DE box squat. 65-85% of my box squat max amounts to 62 kg/137 pounds to 81 kg/179 pounds. A big change from the 40 kg/88 pounds I had on it last workout.

Tried Romanian deads for the first time. Since I love stiff-legged deads, it was very easy liking these too. The Romanian variety felt a little heavier, but the shorter range of motion compensated for that. 3x5 at 100 kg/221 pounds was pretty easy going. No problem with the grip either.

After crunches I did poor man’s reverse-hypers off a board I placed between the support beams in my squat rack. First time for these too. Went for easy for three sets of 15 reps without any extra weight. One-legged dumbell calf raises followed by a swim in the sea topped off a pretty nice outdoor workout.

I was a little hungry today, a feeling which wasn’t alleviated by the somewhat cumbersome procedure of setting up the floor press in the rack. The base of the rack turned out to be too high catching the bar well before my elbows hit the ground. Luckily, there were some hard pads around that were ideal for raising the floor. Slid the bar holders down as low as they would go. Voilà! Perfect setup.

Started pyramiding up the weights as usual, switching from triples to singles when I hit 65 kg/144 pounds. The 80 kg/177 pounds came up easily enough to convince me that 90 kg/199 pounds would too. It was a looong struggle, but in the end it did come up. The result: 15 kg/33 pounds more than what I got for a single on the bench last week. Quite the opposite of what should happen.

Usually, the lifter is much weaker off the floor than the bench, basically because the floor puts the weight squarely on the arms and cancels out the drive generated by the chest, legs, and back. In the Westside FAQ, Tate gives an 82% average, meaning a 90 kg/199 pound floor press should translate into a 110 kg/243 pound bench. Why then a tiny 75 kg/166 pound single? According to Tate,

When you can do more on the floor than the average it means you have strong delts and triceps. By being on the floor you are flat, so you
take your legs out of the movement, it is also very hard to keep your shoulder blades pulled together because you don’t have your legs to use as a brace. Now when you go to the bench you don’t get the same carry over. This means you are still only using the same floor press muscles and patterns.
Learn to drive your shoulder blades into the bench by driving your heels into the floor.

Strong delts and triceps is definitively me. When I was doing eight reps on the incline dumbell press with 32 kg/71 pounds I was also doing at least eight reps on the seated shoulder press with the same weight. I have said before that I have avoided the bench in my previous training, the reason being that I felt my shoulder were taking over all the work. In fact, I have usually been much stronger on the close-grip bench than the normal bench having done close to 90 kg/199 pounds.

But then again, I also need technique and speed badly. Typical of a former bodybuilding style trainer, I am used to muscling the weight up without any leg drive whatsoever (i.e., “using the same pattern of benching off the bench as off the floor”). Contrary to what I wrote earlier, my sticking point is definitively lower than the starting position for the floor press. This means that I will change the supplementary exercise to target this weakness instead of the lockout (i.e. triceps).

Tate’s article Five reasons your bench gets stuck at the bottom and what you can do about it suggests concentrating on dumbell work, floor presses, cambered bar presses and ultra-wide benches in addition to the normal speed work on DE day. Many people lifting without bench shirts (raw lifters) have also suggested that one should add some more chest work to compensate for the lack of drive the shirt gives off the bottom.

Less triceps, more dumbell, decline and incline work plus a big focus on technique and speed and we’ll see if my bench doesn’t start to climb.

This will be the last workout of the week and also the last workout at Norrvalla Rehab Center in Vörå. After living a year in this little peaceful rural town in Finnish Ostrobothnia, we are now heading back to the capital Helsinki. The actual move will take place on Sunday, and I will thus skip DE Bench. Besides, seems like I could use an extra rest day or two, at least in light of today’s workout.

Did the box squats off hard pads piled on top of each other. Although not as nice as my own box at Toffe’s gym it worked pretty well. Not quite sure that the height was precisely my standard 13 inches (33 cm), but close enough. Even though I decided to squat at the lighter end of the spectrum (65-85% of my 95 kg/210 pound max being 62 kg/137 pounds to 81 kg/179 pounds) my reps where sluggish and slow. Apparently my body was still pondering the cosmic significance of Monday’s max box squats. At least they felt that way.

For my supplementary exercise I decided to try kneeling squats. This is an exercise which doesn’t leave much room for incorrect form: sit down on the knees in a rack with a pad under the knees, get the bar on the back, sit down until the butt touches the calves and come back up pushing the hips forward. Found an old archived thread on the kneeling squat which suggests that one can usually handle about 20% more on the kneeling squat than in the normal squat. Indeed, the lure of heavy weights is very strong in this one as is suggested by very easy eights with 70 kg/155 pounds. When combined with the inevitable knee strain, it is no surprise that this one should only be done for higher reps and never as a ME exercise. Another example of a really beneficial exercise that is potentially hazardous.

After doing standing cable crunches I got the idea to try really steep incline sit-ups on a board raised to an angle of about 70 degrees (90 being vertical) just to see how many I would get. I haven’t done sit-ups in years since they are mainly a psoas movement, so this proved to be an interesting experiment.

A few days of box deadlifting, stair squatting and door benching convinced me that it would be futile to attempt a hard ME Squat/Deadlift session today. Besides, all the boxes that now surround me in our new flat need some attention. Don’t even know where I put my training shoes.

Started my quest to eliminate the sticking point off the chest. I chose dumbells to concentrate specifically on two major weak points in my bench form: elbow placement at the bottom of the press and positioning on the bench. As suggested by Tate, I did flat dumbell presses with the palms facing each other throughout the movement to get accustomed to pulling in the elbows at the bottom instead of flaring them out. At the same time, I concentrated hard on driving my traps and upper back into the bench with my legs to create a stable base. On the third set I felt I was finally getting somewhere with the leg drive. It’s a start.

Until the sticking point is gone I will ditch the supplementary triceps exercises on ME Bench day for exercises that directly target this weakness. Dumbell floor presses were fairly interesting and turned a few heads at the gym as I stretched out on the floor and had a friend hand me the dumbells. “Looks like a pretty good rotator cuff movement” he commented as I laid there stabilizing the dumbells with my elbows on the floor. I don’t know if the leg drive had anything to do with it or if it was just the pre-exhaust effect caused by the preceding presses, but the floor presses felt just as heavy as the flat presses. On the third set I suffered from what I like to call “sudden failure syndrome” in reference to failure that seems to come right out of the blue (usually caused by bad groove, heavy fatigue, no mental drive, or the occurrence of something funny in the middle of the set… what’s this smell?).

Chose to mimic the bench grip on the seated cable rows. Wide grips on rows always makes me feel weak compared to close grips, but all the more reason to do them. Had some trouble with the grip in the last two sets, which explains the drop in reps on the last sets.

The dumbell presses hit the delts and triceps quite hard, which showed up in the form of quite meager results in the side delt flyes and tate press (on which I had to drop the weight from the 16 kg/35 pounds I had last workout on the second set).

Metallica’s long-awaited studio album St. Anger was released yesterday. After reading this raving preview, it was only natural that I would buy the album before heading to the gym. I have to agree with the review; this is definitively a lot different from what they have produced earlier. Pretty rough stuff, albeit somewhat messy after a first listening. Sitting here and blogging to a third listening I can say that it is indeed growing on me. How far it will go on my personal chart remains to be seen, but yes, it is pretty good lifting music if you like the metal genre (a good rule of thumb: metal attracts metal). Seeing Ulrich bang the drums like crazy on the bonus DVD makes me wonder what kind of GPP he does.

This workout was fairly typical, if I’m permitted to use that term after only four DE Squat/Deadlift workouts. Added 15 kg/33 pounds to the bar on Romanian deadlifts for a hard 3x5 at 115 kg/254 pounds. It was a close call but my grip prevailed. My lats, and erectors to a slighter degree, were very sore from last workout’s wide-grip seated rows, which made the deads a little more challenging. After putting my abs on fire with ball crunches I did not manage to crank out a full 3x10 on the hanging leg raises landing two reps short on the last set.

Getting on the bench today was somewhat cumbersome as the Romanian deads and ball crunches on Friday left me with very sore hams and abs. Once I got that far the bar was really flying despite some very light chest soreness left from the ME day dumbell presses. I might go up to 50 kg/111 pounds next week if I can keep the speed up. All nine sets took only nine minutes.

90 kg/199 pounds proved to be a little too light for pulldowns to the chest, next week I’ll pile on a little more.

A new article by Dave Tate is out at T-mag titled The Eight Keys, Part I
A complete guide to maximum strength development.

Not surprisingly, no magic transformation occurred from yesterday; my hamstrings and abs were still making their presence felt. They weren’t precisely killing me, but they were still too sore for an all-out-balls-to-the-walls-maximum-effort day. Decided to go for good mornings, but stop well short of ripping my back in two. Still, I piled on more than last time I did them. On the flip side, I stopped a little short of going parallel with the floor this time, as my hams didn’t feel like taking that deep a nosedive.

Being sore is the perfect rationale for going light, which in turn makes for a good opportunity to try out new movements. Enter pull-throughs. Some wobbliness came to pass when I didn’t keep leaning forward enough to counterbalance the weight. A new favorite I think.

Slashed the reps in half on the ball crunches to flush them a little. Did donkey calf raises after reverse-hypers, but piled on a little too much weight to keep the reps up.

Continued with my dumbell bench program. Got an extra rep on every set up until the second set of the floor presses; as I felt a third set would not have added anything significant I dropped it.

If every workout has a theme this one was all about my left elbow. While struggling to nail a final rep on the floor press, I noticed that it started to drift out to the side while the right one remained in place. On the JM Press the same thing happened. I know from experience that getting the last rep of any form of dumbell presses or one-handed extensions usually boils down to whether the left one can manage. I’m not sure if anything like this happens when benching, but I will have my ME Bench session next Wednesday videotaped so I can have a closer look. Besides, I have more issues to correct than just my elbows and slow motion playback doesn’t lie.