2004 archives (page 8)

Acronyms abound in powerlifting. So what the Blood Mary is a GHR?! GHR is TNT for the hamstrings. One of the corner stones in the WSB fortress. A furry friend from the former USSR originally used by sprinters.

Strictly speaking, the Glute Ham Raise (GHR) is a movement done on a specially designed Glute Ham Raise bench with the hamstrings, gluteus and gastrocnemius as the prime movers. But GHR benches are few and far between, so people tend to do them off the floor, strategically positioned benches or even stability balls. As with the reverse hyper, some are very keen to point out that unless done on the real thing, it ain’t a glute ham raise (Dave Tate calls it a manual leg curl, detesting the natural glute ham raise label used by many lifters).

Semantics and vested interests aside, it is true that the real deal is a much more dynamic multi-joint affair owing to the rounded pad that allows the knees to move a little. On the GHR bench there is also a back plate to dig the toes into and some momentum is generated by the upper body off the bottom. Makeshift varieties tend to lock everything in place making the movement much harder and less functional. Even so, this is one tremendous movement. Call it what you want, do it however you can.

The movement is so taxing that few people first trying it can crank out more than a few reps on a GHR bench, or even a single rep in a makeshift setup. Thus, novice GHR chaps tend to use some sort of assistance whether from a training partner, upper pulley or rubber band (a mini band works well).

I decided to premier this movement in the lat pulldown. Raised the sitting pad high to stabilize the feet and added an extra coil to make the cable long enough. Found that 30 kg/66 lbs was the most assist I could use, otherwise I had trouble getting past the top of the movement. Could have used a little more assist, but luckily my training partner Måns was ready as ever to give me some extra push for those reps when I found myself stuck with nearly locked legs and a straight body. If you want to try a novel way to spend the evening, do this exercise without a spotter.

I next took the smallest stability/swiss ball for negative GHR reps. Now reassuringly close to the ground, it was easy to break the free fall that inevitably ensured after lowering myself 45 degrees and push off the ground to get some help in getting back up. Worked well, but didn’t feel as techno as doing it in the lat pulley.

Both varieties were hard on both hams and calves; those prone to cramps might have a knotty start. The position felt a little awkward for the hams as I’ve never subjected them to any similar movement (lying leg curls are very different). Totally back friendly (my back) and strenuous; sounds like a good candidate to do as a max exercise this summer, don’t you think?

Finished off with some quad pumping and calves. My back complained a little on the Kraftwerk lying squat machine, so stopped after a lightish set of 10. A short workout, but there should be ample muscle trauma in the hams and calves to produce some nice n’ nasty soreness. No rehab today as the Monday workout was still with me.

The video? Here (3.7M).

GLUTE HAM RAISE LINKS

Exercise description over at Elite Fitness Systems where Tate outlines his prescription for beginners: do the GHR as a warm-up exercise every training day, then when you get strong enough also do it as a main exercise. GHR!!!!!! indeed.

Roman cousins by Chip Conrad, a very general intro.

Brent Mikesell talks about elevating the back of a GHR bench to make it even harder. “I was surprised as I felt I had superior hamstring strength”… nothing for beginners.

The Dark Side by Coach Davies. “For proper development of the hamstring to occur it needs be done so that the muscle acts as a hip extensor and knee flexor as opposed to purely as biceps type movement.”

Video clips
GHR on GHR bench (westsidebar.net)
GHR in upper pulley with bands (Marko Patteri)
GHR with mini band assist (westsidebar.net)
GHR with bicycle inner tube assist (westsidebar.net)
Exercise description (infinityfitness.com)
Ball ham raises, a similar but easier exercise (infinityfitness.com)

A quick and hasty workout before making the journey to our summer cottage where I will be unpacking Toffe’s Gym over the weekend. Felt slow and sluggish, especially on the Blakley speed bench. That’s what you get when you first split a bottle of your favorite Tuscan wine over a nice dinner and then proceed to sit up for most of the night configuring a server. Life is life.

The usual post-winter chores at our summer cottage involve a fair share of lifting in the form of boats, bags of fertilizer for my dad’s countless roses and furniture that wants to come out in the sun. Nothing super heavy, but I was slightly afraid the highly repetitive lifting would be a little too much for my back. Happily it wasn’t.

On the training front, I have occupied myself with thinking about how to best upgrade Toffe’s Gym to an outdoor powerlifting mecca. One of the most urgent additions is a stability ball for my rehab and stability work, but unfortunately I could not locate a ball in the city that was guaranteed to be both burst-proof and loadable to at least 300 kg/663 lbs. Am going back to Helsinki for a few days tomorrow, so will get one there.

With no ball and no cable machine, I summoned Kris the carpenter and set out to construct a balance board that I could do the prescribed bodyweight squats on. After extensive prototyping, I ended up splitting a piece of alder in two with the axe and tapering down the sides of it so that it would rock not only sideways but forward and backward as well. Next I molested an old car tire to get a suitable piece of rubber to drape the piece of wood in. After all, this balance board should be stable in outdoor conditions, even in the eventuality that it has rained. Finally, I nailed a board on top of it and put some more tire on top of the board for the feet. Thus the All-weather Balance Board was born.

Today’s mini clip (520 KB) should give you the general idea of how this board behaves. Although I did eventually manage to do a few bodyweight squats on it without touching the ground, it will be a challenge to get comfortable on top of it. Stability training is never boring, let me tell you. Think I will try side raises standing on the board tomorrow as part of the first hardcore outdoor session of the year. Until then, remember that whatever the road conditions, the All-weather Balance Board delivers.

Remember Vincent Scelfo, the chiropractor who sustained a good morning injury shortly after resuming powerlifting training at age 46 after a 15 year break? We have kept in touch ever since and he has kept me updated on his progress. Some three weeks ago, Vince told me he had heard of a new association, NAP (National Alliance of Powerlifters), and since their drug-free status, meet location and equipment rules felt right he just decided he would make his comeback in one of their meets on 12 June. Imagine my surprise when he wrote me that he is now the official NAP world record holder in the 148 lbs/67 kg Masters 45-49 division with a 358 lbs/162 kg squat, a 178 lbs/81 kg bench and a 297 lbs/134 kg deadlift at a bodyweight of 143 lbs/65 kg! Yes, NAP is a new organization with a clean world record slate, but this does not at all detract from Vince’s great achievement coming back from a long layoff and a potentially chronic injury. I just hope this doesn’t mean that Vince is going to retire again now that he finally has become a world record holder… We want more! We want more!

Hats off for Vince!

I hereby declare the outdoor training season officially OOOPEEEEEEN! To honor this event and give you a glimpse of Toffe’s Gym, I taped the whole workout (5.3MB). Don’t watch it if you find training to bird song revolting.

It was a good day to pump under the bare sky; unlike the last few weeks, today was comfortably warm. Some soreness remained from Friday’s DE Bench workout (yeah, well…), but decided to go for a triple anyway. Not wanting to trust my Weider Cobra bench on any heavy lifts, I took refuge in my trusty squat rack for floor presses. As the sun was slowly making its way past the nearest spruce, I had to set up with feet off the wooden floor as I did not feel any particular need to show off doing floor presses with my eyes shut. The setup off plates turned out to be a teeny weenie bit too low, which made it hard to get the elbows under the lift from the start. Also had to brush off some ants between sets as one of their main highways runs over the western edge of the rack. Despite the hardship, I managed a very average 90 kg/199 lbs double.

If the floor press went only so-so, the Bradfords went through the roof sky. My previous best was 3x10 @ 40 kg/88 lbs dating from Easter, but as that weight was like paper in the breeze from the sea, I went on for a fiver. Nearly lost my scalp, but 52.5 kg/116 lbs was worth it. Finally some sign of progress! The Bradfords are nice for my back, as I can handle a lot less weight on these compared to normal standing presses.

One of the advantages of training at Toffe’s Gym is that it is very easy to setup lying rows by just flinging a thick board over the squat rack support beams. I just plain love this movement, and it is high time I did some other rowing exercises than the supported T-bars I’ve been doing a lot lately. Row, row, row your barbell gently up the air, merrily merrily merrily merrily, a rep is but a squeeze…

Side raises, aka side delt flyes, is quickly becoming the exercise that I always do in an unstable environment for the sake of training the core muscles around the spine. A good choice it is too, for it definitively ranks among those exercises that won’t do a whole lot for overall strength so it doesn’t matter too much if I have to sacrifice some side delt pump for a good balance exercise. My newly made stability board made me sway in sync with the trees, but got the last four reps with 12 kg/27 lbs without touching the ground. Ain’t pretty, but my multifidus will thank me for it.

The last few days I have been really dissecting John Brookfield’s excellent book Mastery of Hand Strength that I got for my birthday back in September. The outdoor setting is perfect for trying out sledgehammer lever lifts, axe head lifting and other lifts that would have me banned for life from my regular gym (webcam) if I tried them there. Come autumn, I probably need to get some of IronMind’s civilized replacements… Although I will soon add direct forearm training to the mix to rectify the feeling that my wrists are quickly becoming the weak link in the heavy benching chain, today was only about setting a base line for plate pinch gripping. To quote Brookfield,

If you can lift two 25-lb. [11 kg] plates by the smooth side with one hand, you have a fairly good grip; most men cannot lift two 25-lb. plates in this manner. If you can lift two 35-lb. [16 kg] plates in a pinch grip, you have a very good grip; and if you are able to lift 90 pounds, or two 45-lb. [20 kg] plates in this fashion you have a world class pinch grip.
John Brookfield, 1995: Mastery of Hand Strength, IronMind Enterprises; pp. 9.

Hoping to at least show up on Brookfield’s radar, I first attempted two 10 kg/22 lbs plates. I got them off the ground for a quick 2 second hold with my right, but the left got a good 3 seconds. Yes!! As he recommends doing sets with a weight that can be held for 5 seconds, I dropped down to two 5 kg/11 lbs plates with a pipe through the holes for additional plates. With this lighter setup, the supremacy of the left pinch grip was demonstrated even more clearly, with its 13 seconds against the 5 seconds of the right. On the Captains of Crush grippers it was the other way around. I’ve always thought that my right was the stronger hand, but apparently it is only in the crushing grip domain with the pinching grip being stronger on the left. In clear text, this means that my left thumb is a lot stronger than my right one.

After the workout I took a plunge into the sea. A refreshing 16 ‘C/60.8 ‘F.

Looking through my web statistics, a chain of events somehow led me to discover Mark Reifkind’s blog where I found him doing kettlebell work standing on a stability ball. Mark, who is operating the private training studio Girya, seems to be able to lure even some of his older clientele on top of a ball. Me thinks there is another challenge around the corner after I master my balance board… But, one should never forget that there is always another challenge! Ad infinitum.

Mark also has an interesting article on combining kettlebells and powerlifting (scroll down).

I was really missing the fresh air and non-sweaty paws of outdoor training as I went through my workout in the crowdy gym. On the other hand, it was raining outside. It took me almost a week to get rid of the ham and calf soreness induced by last week’s GHRs, but today I was up for them again. I managed to get the first two sets almost by myself, but seriously required a helping hand on the last set. A single set of GHRs on the stability ball and a light set of pull-throughs ensured that there would be enough money in the bank to last me another week.

As my back had silently complained on the Kraftwerk lying squat, I now did them one leg at a time allowing me to go to failure without overloading the back. Followed with the rehab routine, but it remains untaped as I was too lazy to mess with the camera. That might explain how I suddenly clocked in under an hour despite the spottin’ n’ talkin’…

Got myself a stability ball for Toffe’s Gym. Its box looks retro in a 60s kind of way, but it is burst-proof and guaranteed for 300 kg/663 lbs. Dark clouds gathered above as I started my rehab workout, and a few minutes later I was doing my ball crunches with rain hitting my face from above. The stability ball got a little slippery, but hey, this is functional training. Still, I am seriously considering adding a roof to the power rack I hope to make next week or so…

Skipped Friday’s DE bench workout as most of the day went packing and making the 450 km journey from Helsinki up north to our summer cottage. Next week I will make up for this by speed benching with chains. Can’t wait!

Not wanting to tax my old dangly Weider bench too much, I opted for a triple max on the JM Press instead of any heavy benching. As I think I have the technique down fairly well by now, this seemed like a doable equation. Put a boulder on the other end of the bench to keep it from tipping over. Wasn’t too pretty (video 1.4MB), but worked up to a triple at 47.5 kg/105 lbs. Then tried 50 kg/111 lbs, but as the first rep took a lot of effort I didn’t try for more. Perhaps it’s just me, but max triple attempts seem to gravitate towards a final double or single… The heaviest I had done before was sets of 5 with 42.5 kg/94 lbs.

Worked fairly quickly through 5x5 on the bradfords and lying rows, but then the workout started slowing down as I started experimenting. Side raises sitting on my new stability ball with the feet on the balance board proved shakier than doing them kneeling on the ball. Added some wrist curls to supplement the grip work, but there is still a lot to be desired on that front. Might consider doing forearm/grip work as extra workouts to help de-bloat my workouts.

The good thing about having your own gym? You get to select the music. Kalmah.

I’ve never been a fan of lunges. In my search for free weight exercises that I could use to keep my legs in some kind of shape during rehab I’ve come to reconsider their worth. Not much load is required to go heavy, in fact repping with just the bar was fairly taxing. Lunges are also somewhat of a balance challenge, so they fit right into the mix. It remains to be seen how my back reacts when I progressively up the weight, but for now they definitively join the GHRs as a main squat/dead exercise. In contrast, a few reps of Romanian deadlifts with only the bar told me that they are still far from being an option. No surprise there.

Finally got my first ten repper on the walk outs. I always fail on these when I can no longer keep my body straight, so this is definitively a big stability improvement over the 5 reps I started out with. I am also approaching a minute on the ab holds. The balance board squats are also becoming easier by the workout. Core hardening is rewarding once you realize how pitifully weak you have been when it comes to such elementary stuff as keeping your body straight straddling a canyon.