Pushing more, more ways, more harder.

5 Pushup variations worth including in your arsenal.

Core / ABZ / Waist Training

Get your midsection strong.

Keeping Balance While Specializing

Sane thoughts on what to do with the other aspects of your training when you're specializing on one lift - The REST of Your Program.

Progress

The smallest steps can be taken the most often.
Productive work can be done frequently.
The deepest inroads take longer to recover from.
It is a power law distribution. Your true max Max MAX cannot be drawn from frequently.
All modes of lifts can lead to strength.

More than lifting something heavy...

Pick it up then carry it somewhere.
The Secret of Loaded Carries by Dan John.

Increasing the Deadlift for the Collision Sport Athlete

Great piece by Dan John.

You need to pull to pull heavy, but you don't need to pull heavy all the time to pull heavy.

A few years the past I had achieved 90% of my current deadlift max (done after some deadlift focus) by never doing deadlifts except for a couple "tests."

Grip Training for your Deadlift By James Smith (www.dieselcrew.com)

Have trouble opening jars? Your hands look someone who got smashed by a house in the Wizard of Oz? You’ve got problems. Well, fortunately you are doing something about it. You are accessing a wealth of knowledge, on the greatest Powerlifting site on the web – www.EliteFTS.com. To increase your bench, dead and squat, one essential aspect everyone forgets – is strengthening your grip. Gripping the bar with the strongest / tightest grip possible is essential for locking your body into a solid, weight bearing structure. There are many different types of grip strength; supporting, pinch, crush, levering, bending and tearing – for instance. For this article we will focus on supporting strength as it pertains to your deadlift.
Here are 3 quick, simple exercises that will help increase your deadlift grip.

How to Strengthen Rosie and her Five Friends - Grip

By Jim Wendler
One of the biggest things that I struggled with during my deadlift training was my grip. This was never a big deal when I was lighter (under 250lbs), but as I became bigger my grip began to suffer.

...


The big embarrassment came when I pulled 585 and it fell out of my hands. I had everyone telling me to go see a doctor because of the numbness, but I knew what the real story was; I had not taken my grip training seriously enough.
Now I was in somewhat of a dilemma – I know I needed to train my grip but everything I’ve read was contradicting itself. I’ve heard that the best way to better your deadlift grip is to deadlift. While I believe this is true, the only problem with this is that when one becomes more advanced, the less you can perform deadlift workouts. The deadlift is extremely hard on your body and can take a long time to recover from. So what was going to suffer? My overall training or my grip?
Then I got the shot in the ass that I needed. (No, not that shot.) I met Jed and Smitty from the Diesel Crew at the 2003 Boston Seminar and they got me on track. First, they showed me what it is like to have fun and train again. Like many of you, training often became a job for me; something that I did only because of habit. It was the same routine over and over again and I would feel guilty if I didn’t do Reverse Hyperextensions or ab work at the end of a workout. I know that many of you are or were in the same boat. Then I met the Crew and things changed. They loved what they did and it showed. I had a renewed sense of training after seeing them.
The Diesel Crew (www.DieselCrew.com)  is known for grip prowess as well as doing lifts that have long been forgotten. They’ve got dozens of strange videos on their website; most of them showcase some kind of lift that will make your head shake in amazement.
Anyway, with their guidance (along with some other people) here are some of the things that helped my grip tremendously. They are simple to do, but grip work takes time. While I noticed results in about 6 weeks, it took about 8 months of training my grip to get it where it needed to be. To give you a point of reference – when I began doing this, I couldn’t close the Captains of Crush Trainer with my left hand (this was my numb/weak hand). In about 6 months, I was able to close the #2 fairly easy. I think this was a substantial improvement. The biggest thing that you will notice is that I didn’t really focus on improving my crushing grip, but my finger strength. In doing so, my overall grip improved. Remember the saying, “You are only as strong as your weakest link”? Well, much of grip training focuses on the thumb and forefinger. These are already strong on most people. It’s the pinky, ring and middle finger that are usually weakest.

Deadlift Grip Development - Ernest F. Cottrell

There are many reasons that lifters fail to make a record deadlift they have worked so hard to attempt, and one of the major problems appears to be in grip strength for two important reasons: 1. Obviously, if the grip isn’t strong enough to hold the bar it is lost during the lift, and 2. If the grip is just strong enough to get the weight up in an accepted lift, your grip strength may not be strong enough for you to do this at any given time, and you either lose the lift now and then, or when it weakens, your confidence weakens too, and it’s left up to accident whether you make it or not. Naturally, this is a big problem you’d like to eliminate if possible, and develop a grip that has reserve power at all times.

Adding 100 pounds to my deadlift by Paul Carter

"So for all of you crappy deadlifters out there such as myself, I'm going to write about how I took my deadlift from the 550 range to it's current 650-660 range over the last few years, and put into a program you can use combining some of the methodologies I used to get there.  So I hope you enjoy benefiting from my mistakes."

Coan/Phillipi 10 week Deadlift Routine Calculator

Nice calculator for the well known Coan/Phillipi routine here.

Polish Training Hall

Partials, or the vast majority of lifts

I can modestly say that I am world famous for doing partials (in that I seem to be the only one doing them in such a comprehensive manner), this has lead many people to believe that I therefore cannot or will not do fulls.

From the many comments I have received I can see a number of mistakes being made. These mistakes were the same mistakes I made for many years and which lead to me not making gains for many years…

Let’s see if I can address these issues by replying to some of the questions I have received…

From the incomparable Sumoman.

The Soul is Greater than the World - training clip

Can you build strength with the Olympic lifts? by Glenn Pendlay

"Consider the fact that the argument used to disparage the Olympic lifts as drivers of strength gain is usually that they use too light a weight, move too fast, and are over with too quickly to adequately provide the necessary stress. But a lifter who clean and jerks in excess of 80% of their squat or deadlift has, when performing a heavy clean and jerk, racked a bar to the shoulders that is higher percentage of their deadlift than most competitive powerlifters use to train the deadlift, front squatted a weight that is a maximal or near maximal front squat, pushed overhead and supported a weight that is a higher percentage of their back squat than many popular strength programs use to train the back squat, and completed a lift that lasted longer and had the body under the stress of the weight longer than any back squat that most lifters are ever likely to do."
Full article here.

That Glenn Pendlay Concetric Only Idea...

has been getting some play on the intertubes lately. Here's a piece in that vein I saw attributed to Glenn a couple years back, same idea:

GAIN WEIGHT WITH CONCENTRIC MOVEMENTS - Attributed to Glenn Pendlay

As most of you know, I train athletes and not bodybuilders, so often the methods I use are geared mostly towards strength with little regard to gaining size, or even geared specifically toward gaining strength WITHOUT any size gain for athletes in specific weight classes.

that having been said, I usually have a hard time keeping weight off the guys, the volume of training we do often means that the guys must watch the diet really close to avoid growing out of their proper weight class.

now, having said all that, there are times when I have a guy that needs to move up a weight class quickly, for instance I recently had a guy that needed to move from the 77kilo weight class to the 85kilo (or from 169lbs to 187lbs) weight class because in his particular division the competition was actually easier at 85.

This particular guy usually trains about 10-12lbs overweight, so I actually had to move him from 180lbs to about 200lbs in 8 weeks, hopefully with no body fat increase, and of course with no drugs. I thought id share one of the ways I have accomplished this quick weight gain in the past and how I did it in this case. In case you wondered, he did accomplish this, weighed 201lbs 2 weeks before competition, and is now cutting for competition; he’s weighing 195 now one week out, most of the rest well sweat off the day of weigh in.

the best way to accomplish weight gain is with of course more food and increased training volume, but I run into a problem here because my guys are squatting hard 3 days a week already, and doing maximal lifts in heavy leg and back exercises like the snatch and clean and jerk 6 days a week already... so adding volume in the conventional way would quickly result in an athlete breaking down.

So I use an idea that didn’t start with Westside, but has been recently popularized by them, concentric only exercise. The good thing about this is that it seems to have a good effect on the body, but doesn’t really make you sore, and doesn’t seem to affect recovery that much; in some athletes it seems to even help it.

The way I structure the workouts is this, the regular training around noon, and the extra workouts around 6 or 7 pm. typical exercises are as follows.

Walking up stairs with weight, taking the elevator down. For this I have a long, thin bag filled with sand, actually several of them. An athlete takes a bag, say a 50lb bag, and walks up 2 flights of stairs, then walks to the elevator and rides it back down.

Heavy ball throws. I have various bags and balls weighing between 20 and 100lbs. the athlete gets his arms around one on the ground, then with a clean or snatch type motion throws it up and behind them. It hits the ground; they turn around and throw it back. We usually do 10 throws at a time.

Various sled pulling. This is pure Westside; they have come up with many variations of this. a couple that we use are simply to attach a rope from the sled to the waist, usually around a weight belt, and walk 40 or 50 yards taking long, straight legged strides. for the upper body, we use two ropes, each with a handle, and for instance do a bench press type motion to pull the sled forward, then walk a step, then press again, etc. or turn around and do the same thing with a row motion. we also put the rope between our legs, and face away from the sled... as you take a step, straighten the body slightly, this pulls the sled forward. Take another step to take the slack out, and then do it again.

all of these things work the major muscle groups with concentric only action... adding to the workload but not compromising recovery ability that much, as long as you get extra sleep and remember to take in more food at least. Using these sorts of methods seems to allow athletes to handle more workload than they could with only normal exercises, but it’s important I think to time the workouts right. You want to do these "extra" workouts 4-6 hours after your normal workouts if possible. I know others who have done their regular workouts in the evenings, and gotten up and done these extra workouts in the mornings and had good results, but I haven’t tried that much.

I am not really sure how these types of things would work for bodybuilders... however I have to think that they would in fact work... I mean one of the reasons I don’t use them more in regular training is that it tends to make it too hard to keep a guys weight. They seem to be particularly effective for adding mass to the hamstrings, calves, glutes, and the spinal erectors and also upper back.

one other thing, we alter the weight we use for each day much as Westside does... in other words, if you do it 3 days in a row, the second day you use half the weight you used on the first day, the third day half of what you used on the second day, and then you start over again with 100% weight. If any of you bodybuilders out there thinks about trying this, I’d is interested to hear how it worked for you.

Things you need to do so you can do what you want to do.

5 Squatting Programs That Work

A conversation between masters

"Hey bro, I want to do 5x5 bro. Will it work for mass?"

"Yeah bro. It will. But I don't do it that way. I change it around. Because 5 reps aren't enough to get big bro."

"How do you do it then?"

"Well I use the 5x5 outline but I do 3x12, then what I do is superset the next two movements and do like 5 burn out sets bro. Makes my arms pumped to the max bro."

"But that's not 5x5."

"Sure it is bro. I use it almost exactly like it says. I just add my own thing to it. So it's almost the same. I've gotten jacked this way bro. My arms have never been so swole."


"Sounds good bro. I will do that."

8 Stupid Myths about Squatting

Myth #2: Squats are bad for the knees. Not only are squats not bad for the knees, every legitimate research study on this subject has shown that squats improve knee stability and therefore help reduce the risk of injuries. The National Strength and Conditioning Association has published an excellent position paper on this subject with an extensive literature review, and data from the Canadian National Alpine Ski Team suggests that regular squatting reduces not only the rate of injuries but also the time it takes to recuperate from injuries that do occur.

See the rest of the list here. But if you read this blog you probably already know squats are healthy and good for you.

Programs and Splits

Earlier I discussed some here....
Am currently enjoying a push-pull split since joining the health club gym across from work and training mostly away from a real platform.  I have been inspired largely by an old Glenn Pendlay forum post  pasted below.

I've even seen people who after a while on a 3 day a week program, switched to a 4 day split, doing squats and pressing exercises on Monday and Thursday, back and pulling exercises on wed and Saturday. I don't see this as retreating from the principles of the 5 by 5 at all. you are STILL working your whole body, or very nearly so, every training day. squats work the back, they work everything... and deadlifts or stiff legged deadlifts work the legs, not as much as squats, but they still work them. this is in fact the favored program of mike stone, probably the best ex phys guy on the planet and former head of sports science at the Olympic training center.

the main thing is to go about it in a systematic way.

one of my lifters, josh wells, who made the junior world team in 2004 in weightlifting, and can jerk close to 400lbs weighing around 180lbs as a teenager, did this program about a year ago in his "off season" to try to gain some general strength.

• Monday, squats (5 sets of 3), push presses (3 sets of 5) then glute ham raises or reverse hypers
• Wednesday, snatch pulls (5 sets of 2), powercleans (5 sets of 2), chin-ups (5 sets of 10 with extra weight, hanging from a 2" bar)
• Thursday, front squats (6 sets of 2), push jerks (5 sets of 2), military press (3 sets of 5), then glute ham raises or reverse hypers.
• Saturday, powersnatches (5 sets of 2), clean pulls (5 sets of 5), barbell rows, (5 sets of 5)

Splitting up the work but still using total body lifts. One thing I am finding is that heavy squats and heavy overhead work (push presses or jerks) on the same day takes a lot out of me.