Archives for workouts (page 17)

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!

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’…

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.

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.

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)

Weird flu I got. Still not the energy bunny reincarnated, but with the lower back starting to subtly remind me of its existence again… it was time. Didn’t try to nail my balls to the walls, but worked up to a decent triple with 36 kg/80 lbs on the dumbell press and stopped there. Then did some stability ball stuff and finished with my surprisingly challenging new rehab program. Will try to get it on tape sometime this week.

Oh boy. June 2nd passed during my flu, so the bench guessing competition is now officially over with the same 97.5 kg/215 lbs still standing. Today I sent the $15 Amazon gift certificate to none other than my fiancée, who having put in the most conservative guess of 112.5 kg/249 lbs, won the competition. All in all, I am pleased with the gain as I was benching a measly 75 kg/166 lbs a year ago, but enough of this dry season already. Time to draw up a concrete battle plan. There will be triples. Perhaps chains? Hmmm…

And in case you wondered, there will be another competition announced in the near future.

Broke the routine and did my ME bench workout today as my two latest attempts were foiled by too much soreness from the previous DE bench workout. With a ticket to Metallica’s concert in Helsinki on Friday, I am somewhat likely to skip Friday’s DE bench workout anyhow.

Forgot my latest rehab workout instructions at home, so took the ball thingy to its extreme and did the whole bench workout on it (VIDEO, 4.5M). My training partner Måns came up with the idea of taking the ball to the rack for benching. Pin presses were suitably unstable and more difficult than on a normal bench, JM presses might actually have been a little easier on the ball in spite of the bouncy ride. Also tried doing side raises kneeling on the ball, which was a little easier than I had thought. Still, I did have to adjust my balance continuously lest I throw the dumbells through the roof. Finished off with dumbell curls sitting on the ball. A great workout. I wonder if benching on a stable bench will not feel a lot easier if I keep this up…

If you try this, make sure you have a burst proof ball (will not explode, but deflates slowly if it breaks), have the pins set so the bar cannot implode your chest even if you drop the bar and see that the ball is certified as being able to handle the load.

Had to drag my behind to the gym today. Once there, the music (AC/DC, imagine that) combined with a bottle of Andrenalyn stack transformed me into a well-oiled training machine. The Blakley speed benches, which I now did in classic Westside style for nine sets with three sets for each grip width, went a lot more smoothly than last week. Most things felt great today, even did some one-handed rows in a ultra-strict slowmo fashion on the Kraftwerk one-handed row machine.

Also decided that from now on, I will start to do more bicep work. After starting to powerlift, I have usually done something like zero to three sets of direct bicep work a week. This might be enough for powerlifting, but the fact that I used to curl with 24 kg/53 lbs dumbells easily during my bodybuilding days but am now struggling with 18 kg/40 lbs gives some reason for thought. Could also use a little more volume on the front of my arms to balance the growing triceps. I have almost forgotten how fun training the biceps is.

As usual, I did my rehab work at the end of the workout. Finally adjusted the training day counter in the sidebar (this way –>) so that it now shows the correct workout on the correct day. As you might have noticed, I am doing the standard Westside four day split, but with benching on Monday and Friday. The reason for this is that my training partner is usually training on those days, so assistance is readily available for benching if need be. Since I have gotten into the habit of doing rehab after every workout, the Sunday DE squat day is in practice a rest day until I can box squat again.

My back is doing a lot better now. I seem to be straight and I can move normally at last. Like McKenzie suggests in his book, I have cut back on the frequency of back extending, but am still doing them several times a day or as needed. For the first time, I could also do assisted hamstring stretching for both legs without the back complaining. A week ago I could stretch the right leg, but could not even get a mild stretch in the left before it started hurting like h*ll in the back. The sweet taste of progress. On Tuesday, it is back to the back clinic for what will probably be the last consultation before I am on my own.

Was really sore after the DE bench workout on Friday. Convinced myself that this did not matter and set up to incline bench for triples. Ended up leaving 80 kg/177 lbs on the chest. Burst that bubble.

Tried some pulldowns, but the back was not ready for these quite yet. Back to assisted pull-ups. A new record on the walk-outs saved the day.

After the Prilepin bench program interlude, it is time to add speed benching back into the mix. This time around, I am going to deviate from the standard Westside style of speed work and try the form of speed work JM Blakley recommends on his XTM Bench video in an effort to achieve better bar path consistency.

Sadly, I am unable to consult Blakley’s video because it has mysteriously disappeared. I’ve literally searched for it for hours, and as my desperation deepened Sanna joined the search. No, it’s not in the video machine or under the fridge. At this point, the most likely scenario is that someone broke into our apartment via the toilet pipe, snatched the tape from under the mess on my desk and then base jumped down the balcony. I have now reluctantly come to accept that it has gone to bench press video heaven. I guess it is as good a grade as any, that I am now seriously considering buying another copy, if only for the great footage of the JM press.

I do recall the gist: start out with a slow rep, then a little faster rep, then a little faster… then BOOM!, BOOM!, BOOM! bang out reps as fast as you can. I am pretty sure it was 7 reps in total, but don’t remember if it was 3 or 4 all out reps. The formula I am going to follow is one slow rep, one normal speed rep, one rep faster than normal, and then three all-out BOOM! reps. This is basically normal Westside speed benching (three bench reps with as light a weight needed to complete them within 3 seconds, usually 50-60% of current max), but with three introductory reps. I think Blakley’s rationale was that the introductory reps would teach the body what is really fast. My main appeal with this stems from the simple observation that it is quite difficult to throttle the bar up at maximum velocity while retaining a consistent bar path unless you are an experienced bencher. Granted, I’ve gotten a lot better at it, but as chalking the middle of the bar has revealed, my consistency varies a lot from set to set. What I am thinking is that the introductory reps will give me a chance to practice perfect groove with increasing speed until exploding as fast as I can. If it helps my body understand what real speed is, then all the better.

Did eight sets of Blakley speed benching with a conservative 50 kg/111 lbs. The first set produced a perfect line, but the others left a lot to be desired. Guess Blakley speed benching cannot immediately solve rustiness from not having done any speed benching since February (that long?!). Also dared to do some swiss ball dumbell benching being careful to lift the dumbells on a bench one by one before grabbing them for the next set and having my training partner rerack them for me.

After no heavy chest work for a couple of weeks, this workout felt great! Nearly every set pulled me out of alignment, but a couple of end range extensions put me straight again. Decided that I would stop the workout immediately if this failed. It didn’t. Then did the rehab program again, minus the muscle activation and the neural mobilization, both of which I think made me hurt last time around. I was leaning to the right as usual when I was walking home, but on the whole this workout exceeded my expectations.