2004 archives (page 2)

The old timers among you might recall me sticking some enthusiastic thumbs up for Finnish heavy metal band Kalmah’s Swampsong (2003) record. It’s been a while since I last bought me some training cum late night working music, so decided to go grab me another cold Kalmah. I was delighted to fall victim to a marketing scheme someone with a big brain at Free Record Shop came up with: buy two CD’s for 20 euro. Located both Swamplord (2000) and They will return (2002) and had the very metal looking guy at the counter shave a twentier off my plastic. Didn’t hurt as much as crashing down on my box three hours later to the tune of Heritance of Berija from Swamplord, which in turn probably hurt a lot less than Ano’s recent heavy box squat done in preparation for the Arnold Classic 2004.

Looking at Ano’s video you will realize why he came down hard. In my case the puny 70 kg/155 lbs bar had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was simply tiredness resulting from a short night spent finalizing a lecture that made my first sets a few degrees less than graceful. Good thing I did not bring the camera today; no need to immortalize the hopelessly lost. Overall it was a decent workout with a bumpy start. Standing crunches, donkey calf raises and dumbell shrugs made it all good in the end.

And Kalmah? I will still rave about Swampsong unprovoked. My first impression is that their debut album Swamplord is their second best. Lacking some of the deep raw energy Swampsong is soaked in, it is a good album which can easily defend its place in a powerlifter’s training music collection (if you doubt that, just look at the spear on the front cover). They will return is pretty good too. Actually, all three albums are great, Swampsong is just übergreat. Buy that and find yourself instantly setting a new squat PR. Then get the other ones for the bench and deadlift PRs. If in doubt first check out the official samples and read some reviews.

Much can be learned reading other people’s training logs. Or more specifically, that of OP Eskola over at Westsidebar.net (in Finnish) where he recently mentioned doing benches to the neck after his board presses. He was also kind enough to provide a clip of training partner Marko Patteri demonstrating this fab move. Basically, the bar is lowered to the collar bone with elbows held wide to the side and pressed straight up. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that this, like the Tate press and JM press, is a great movement for the lower triceps. I did it. I liked it.

What I liked less was that my back felt utterly powerless today, making the T-bar rows feel like a bee trying to get lift-off after crash landing in banana flavored chewing gum.

With the Zercher commandos having done good reconnaissance along the Ripped Back frontier, it was time to up the ante and bring in the 13″ box squat. The perimeter being far from secured, I staid a safe sounding 15 kg/33 lbs below my max from the pre-injury days of November. That being said, the last single with 100 kg/221 lbs felt heavy enough after not having maxed out on these for a few months.

Tapping the back with a heavier stick was not my only objective today. Pushing the torso forward and the head back was a supremely good reason to get in under the bar after those fairly nasty looking Zerchers. I am happy to report that these looked better (video 3.8M), although things degenerated a little towards the end. It was suggested over at westsidebar.net that the tendency to good morning the weight up might actually be indicative of a strong back and weak legs; first do the easy part (extend the legs), then finish it off with a good morning. I have always wondered what the point of bending the legs in the deadlift is…

One flaw that quite literarily sticks out in the video is the elbows. Next time I vow to keep them aligned under the bar. As Tate writes:

When your elbows turn out toward the back, the bar will drift forward again and end up stapling you to the floor as well as ripping your head off. This is one common mistake I see in all my seminars.

My shins seem to be fairly vertical, but I could definitively sit back a little further. I also need to look into spreading the knees and pushing the feet out. Work to be done, work to be done…

Dave Tate has a guest forum over at T-mag where he will be answering questions for one week.

Forums seem to be mushrooming left, right and center with the more notable (and permanent) ones including Nazareth Barbell, Metal Militia, Deepsquatter and Ryan Kennelly. My first stop, along with the Finnish Westsidebar, is still the good ole’ Elite Fitness Systems Q&A where poor Tate can be pestered with questions every day of the year. Don’t look at me, I am innocent so far.

Monday has turned into traditional short sleep day. A nap before the workout helped some and loading Kalmah into the CD player helped some more. I was training very near closing time, so the number of potential complaints about the music where few. In fact, it turned out that one of the guys training was a die hard Kalmah and death metal fan. I had him scribble down some names of other Scandinavian bands in the genre that he considered to be melodic: Dark Tranquility, Godgory, Inflames and Vintersorg. All unfamiliar to me (no surprise here), will have to peruse their homepages for samples later on.

Consistent with my quest to improve benching power off the chest, I camped with the dumbells for my first exercise. My previous, and first, encounter with dumbell benches date back to Christmas Eve when I got 3 reps with 38 kg/84 lbs. Back then I noted some problems with my groove, a sentiment that was echoed today. The 36 kg/80 lbs set was especially bad, when the left dumbell drifted off course for the last rep leaving me to press it up with no power off the bottom. No big improvements; got one rep more with 36 kg/80 lbs than last time but my last set ended up at the same three reps with 38 kg/84 lbs. Tried the 40 kg/88 lbs dumbells, but couldn’t get past my sticking point (picture at right). The first rep is always hell with heavy bells… hells bells?

Tried illegally wide benches as my chest/tri assistance movement. Worked up to a fairly easy fiver with 70 kg/155 lbs and then stayed at that weight for two more quick sets (perhaps 30-40 seconds rest in between). The wide grip didn’t hurt my shoulders, but you can see from the video that the reps were a little wobbly.

video (5.2 MB)

Monday’s dumbell benches and illegal wides left some major pec soreness behind. Thought that this would be an ideal moment to try some restoration work by increasing blood flow to the sore muscles. It is usually recommended that the extra work is done some 4-24 hours after the main workout. As muscle soreness tends to peak about 48 hours after the workout, this means that the need for extra workouts has to be predicted well before soreness hits with full force. Did some supersets for the chest, back and arms anyway figuring that some late arriving blood would probably still be better than nothing. Felt good, but the ball presses were perhaps a tad too heavy for my pecs gasping for relief even with only 10 kg/22 lbs dumbells. Ditto for the cable curls. Lesson learned: go lighter than light.

After standing up well to heavier zercher and box squats, I decided to pass on the speed box today to reward the lower back with some well deserved extra rest. It won’t be long now before I will be ready to start going after and beyond my maxes in the squat/deadlift exercises.

What was left then was some heavy ab, calf and grip work. Haven’t done the Captains of Crush grippers in a long while, yet they felt quite light and I got the number ones more closed throughout the sets than before. I could probably start working on the number two gripper for negatives. That would necessitate ordering one first though.

Speaking of the devil: a copy of JM Blakley’s XTM Bench I ordered through a special over at Voimaharjoittelu.net arrived today. This video seems to be somewhat hard to come by. I know Elite Fitness Systems have stocked it in the past, but now I couldn’t locate it anywhere except for at Voimaharjoittelu.net. Even JM Blakley’s home page currently returns a Please visit this site later; under construction. This 3 hour video will have to wait until tomorrow, but the anticipation runs high as Building the Perfect Beast was a really really great video. I have heard that it is shot in black & white and is fuzzy etc. apparently to give it a more hardcore air. This has made some people really upset accusing him of covering up bad production with a HC label. I am expecting a mixed bag of nuts, perhaps a little like the current weather situation here in Helsinki: first it snows like crazy (really) over the weekend, then it starts to rain like hell (really) for the next couple of days. A very vivid small scale example of what will happen if the polar ice starts to melt rapidly.

No miracles happened after the chest restoration work I did on Wednesday; my pecs being still slightly sore there was not much point in attempting to do a dynamic bench day today. Instead I staid home with the love of my life enjoying pizza with a few glasses of Chianti Ruffino. A great deal if you ask me!

I plan to continue this cultivated lifestyle throughout next week. The first four-week cycle of my three-day rotating Westside routine is now completed and my body is starting to feel a little run down, so I think it is time to ease on the gas a little. My usual medicine has been to stay out of the gym completely for a week, but this time I am considering doing a light week instead using sub-maximal loads for higher reps. The plan is to do two of these light workouts next week - one for the bench and one for the squat - and then jump right back into another four-week cycle with the workload raised somewhat (more sets). A toast for that!

Appropriate for a light squat/deadlift workout, I did some very light speed deadlifts for the first time since the lower back injury. No nasty surprises, but I was glad that this was not a ME day calling for risky machismo.

I got the Westside Squat Workout tape from Elite Fitness Systems a few days ago. After seeing the Squatting Secrets tape (my review), watching clips on the net and reading a lot of Westside articles there was not too many revelations left for this tape (the action was still great of course!). Among the gold nuggets I picked up was calf raises done standing on the floor with a barbell on the back. Compared with doing raises off a calf board this movement is half range, but it should provide a better carry over to squatting/deadlifting stability as it is done with the same equipment (barbell), same stance and same posture.

If done with a wide squat stance, this movement will also hit the calves in a way difficult with a machine. In a calf machine the legs will usually be pretty straight (knees in line with heels), but here the angle of the legs puts the knees way to the inside of the heels forcing much of the weight towards the big toe. Admittedly you could just buckle in the knees doing calf raises in a machine with a narrow stance, but I seriously doubt that the effect will be as dramatic as with a barbell and a wide stance. The fact that I almost failed doing ten reps at 90 kg/199 lbs tells me that it matters little that I can move some serious weight on a standing calf raise or a donkey calf press.

I have been thinking a little about my bench lately, more specifically about improving strength at my sticking point. Looking at the picture where I got stuck with the 40 kg/88 lbs dumbells on dumbell benches tells me I have more of a lockout problem than a start problem (weak triceps) as the bar got stuck fairly high. It sure didn’t feel all that high, but the camera does not lie (I hope).

Besides working on increasing speed to get the bar moving faster towards the sticking point, one remedy often recommended for half way/high sticking points is board presses and pin presses/rack lockouts done from the sticking point to lockout. To do this you need to know two things: 1) where your sticking point is and 2) which variety of board (two board? three board?) and pin presses (fourth hole? fifth hole?) start from that height. To pave the ground for number two, I brought the camera with me today and took shots of board, pin and floor presses with a wide, medium and narrow grip. Next week’s Wednesday I plan to go for another bench max. It should then be trivial to compare the angle of the upper arms in the board and pin presses at various starting heights to the angle the arms are at my sticking point. Once I got that I will focus on doing more work at my sticking point and see what happens.

After the shots, I did the second workout of my light week. Began with illegal wide benches and worked up to a very near failure with a triple at 80 kg/177 lbs. I had thought I would handle a little more than this, and can only hope that this “max attempt” does not offset the effect of this light week as far as the bench is concerned. With the overall volume kept low, I don’t think this one set matters much.

Just got forwarded this link to Brad Appleton’s Stretching and Flexibility: Everything you never wanted to know. Although it seems to have been last modified in 1998, it looks solid and is based on sources I trust highly, most notably Thomas Kurz’s Stretching Scientifically, which, as I have mentioned, was the book that finally got me past those last inches into a full split cold in my martial arts heydays. Although this degree of flexibility is most likely detrimental to joint stability in powerlifting, you might want to read the link if you feel like Judd Biasiotto is pointing right at you:

From what I’ve observed over the years, most powerlifters are an accident waiting to happen. In fact, some lifters should be sporting a sign that reads “Accident in progress”. The reason for this is flexibility, or rather the conspicuous lack of it. Believe me, it would probably be easier to find a legitimate television evangelist than a powerlifter who can touch his toes without bending his knees.
Judd Biasiotto (1988): Power. World Class Enterprises; pp. 67.

I can.

While surfing Dr. Biasiotto’s web site I noticed that the main page has been hacked (screenshot) by someone calling themselves “chix0rs! the chick side of hax0rs” offering to take care of his web security from now on. Fired away an email to him just in case he hadn’t noticed. Web crime sucks big time!!