From Olympia to Atlanta: A Cultural-Historical Perspective on Diet and Athletic Training

Galen, the prominent Greek physician, was the doctor to gladiators, and he practiced medicine at Pergamum, in the geographical region now in western Turkey. His principle contributions to athletics are through two essays that consider exercise in general and how to train gladiators. He presents the advantages of exercise using a small ball, as the following selection reveals: The best philosophers and the best doctors among the ancients have frequently stated how beneficial exercise is toward health, and that it must precede eating. ... I say that the best athletics ... are those which not only exercise the body but are able to please the spirit. ... Play with a small ball is so much a people's activity that even the poorest man is able to have the equipment. ... [Such exercise] needs neither nets nor weapons nor horses nor hunting dogs, but only a ball, and a small one at that. ... This kind of exercise is the only one which moves all parts of the body so very equally. ... Many [other] exercises achieve an opposite effect: they make people lazy and drowsy and dull witted. ... [Many] who work out at the palestra [tend] toward being muscular rather than toward the pursuit of excellence. Many have become so weighed down that they have difficulty breathing. ... Perhaps you will suppose that I recommend running and other exercises that slim down the body. ... That is not the case. ... I assert that every [exercise] should be practiced in moderation. ... Accordingly, I do not approve of ... running [with] which people slim their bodies and in which they gain no practice or manly spirit. Victory does not go to those who flee quickly but to those able to persevere in confrontation. ... If you should ask how healthy running is, the answer is that in the same measure that it unequally exercises the parts of the body, it is unhealthy. For by definition [running] has to overwork some parts and leave others utterly idle. Neither of these is good, [and] both nourish the seeds of diseases and render one's forces feeble. Accordingly, I approve of exercise which produces a healthy body and a balance between the various parts of the body, and along with that a fine spirit.

Louis E. Grivetti and Elizabeth A. Applegate

Training Articles

A whole bunch of training articles collected here.

Protein, The Bible

Examine.com has shared some core, easily digestible info on the all important macronutrient at schwarzenegger.com. Some sample takeaways:

• If you are working out and are not fasting, your total protein consumption matters, not your timing.
• If you are working out and are fasted, then timing can matter. However, pre-workout protein is more beneficial than post-workout.
• Worrying about the speed of absorption is a waste of time.
• Glutamine is useless if you eat enough protein.
• BCAAs are useless if you eat enough protein, except when fasted training.
• HMB is useful when cutting.

Solid point to help make life easier:  
As long as you get enough protein and are training after having eaten in the day, protein timing is NOT important.

 Article series starts here.

Welsh Stone Lifting at Beyond Strong

Nice write up of a fun and challenging trip through Wales here.

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."

Quest for the Title

Derek Poundstone's quest for the WSM 2011 Title - a good write up of his journey and the overall event, with plenty of good pictures, too.

UPDATE - new link to google cache of story.

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.

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.

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.

Idaho Weightlifting:Programs/Documents

Idaho Weightlifting:Programs/Documents shares a bunch of documents on programs, etc at their site here.

Power and the Olympic lifts

by Pierre Roy

The concept of power is misunderstood.

Considering that power is the combination of strength and speed and knowing that strength is the easiest element to improve it is taken for granted that to improve levels of power and consequently of performance, it was thought to be enough to raise the level of strength.

This observation is true to some extent ... the difficulty is that often increases in strength occurs at the expense of technique and the speed of the bar in various stages of movement so that if this process is applied incorrectly, it will weaken the nervous system, and thus potentially affect speed and coordination.

Full article.

The Records

If you've ever wondered about the best lifts ever, here's a list.

The Paper of Record

The New York Times has an article on Melanie Roach, USA Olympic hopeful.

Gotta earn it the hard way.

“You can have all the money in the world but you can’t buy a body."

You gotta squat.

Mike's Gym - website of an official Regional Training Center for USA Weightlifting and Mike Burgener, a top American Olympic Weightlifting coach and father of one of America's best young lifters, has great resources. Here's the squat program page (with an excel download).

Dinosaur Training

This is an old article I found on a page no longer hosted, so I had to find it using the way-back machine.
Basically an attempt to marry Dinosaur Style training with some Westside organization, it seemed a great take on lifting big for some real development in strength.
An outtake...

What I realized is that dinosaur training and the Westside system are much more similar than different. How so? Well,

1. Both emphasize heavy training. If I might quote the 2 'experts' of Westside and Dinosaur theory, Brooks Kubik says that "HEAVY weights are the name of the game. Never forget that. You need to train with heavy weights because doing so is the only way to build the strength of tendons and ligaments along with your muscles." Louie Simmons says that "We know best of all you have to train heavy-very heavy-and often."

2. Both camps dismiss the typical Western periodization, or cycling, model. Louie Simmons says that "It is my experience that all elements of training must be done simultaneously, or the training effects are lost very quickly", while Brooks Kubik feels that "Back-cycling to 60 or 70% of your max and then working back up is a waste of time. You are going nowhere. Most of your time is spent with poundages too light to test your abilities."

3. Both systems are devoted to exercises that are hard and heavy. Things like squats, deadlifts, zercher squats, front squats, bench presses, military presses, and reverse hyperextensions are lifts that build strength through compound movements. The exercises in each system are dedicated to building functional strength through a movement chain, not isolating each individual muscle group, unless that muscle group is a weak link. Similarly, because of the fact that training with machines is not as demanding as training with free weights, machines are not of prime importance in either system.

4. Both systems make use of particularly 'hard aerobics' as I like to call them. The sled dragging, wheelbarrow pushing, and walking lunges of the Westside system are very much like the sandbag carrying and farmer's walks of Dinosaur training.

Here's one of the splits proposed (looks tasty!):

DAY 1: Deadlifts, Front Squats, Bench Press, Bent-Over Rows, Bradford Press, Standing Calf, Seated Calf

DAY 2: OFF

DAY 3: OFF

DAY 4: Squats, Romanian Deadlifts, Close-Grip Benches, One-Arm DB Press, DB Extensions, Strict Curls, Grip Work

DAY 5: OFF

DAY 6: OFF

DAY 7: Speed Squats, Speed Bench, Power Cleans, Bent-Over Rows, Push Presses,Standing Calf, Seated Calf

DAY 8: OFF

DAY 9: OFF

Here's the archived version of the page. If anyone has info on the author, please share.

Books

My personal library of weightlifting and strength books recently increased a little. Here's where it stands so far:

Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training by Mohamed F. El-Hewie, MD.
Just purchased, so I can't comment on this yet, but you can see his forum and get a sample of his work here.

Strong Enough? by Mark Rippetoe. A collection of thoughts and essays. A very fundamental approach to getting strong via lifting heavy stuff - the only proven effective method..
Sold off. Not worth it.

Weightlifting, Olympic Style by Tommy Kono. The multiple world and Olympic champion (and former Mr. Universe) lays down the fundamentals in a very easy to read, informative and enjoyable book. Illustrative examples are taken from his own experiences. Might be the best book to start a lifter with.

The Weightlifting Encyclopedia: A Guide to World Class Performance
by Arthur J. Drechsler. Exhaustive and comprehensive.

From the Ground Up, by Dan John. A 97 page pdf free from the author's website. Informative and well worth the price. An excellent work that contains nuggets from his experiences and has a great orientation towards lifting and training. It was my first lifting "book."

Doug Hepburn

Let's follow how Doug trained for the 1953 World Championships in Stockholm, Sweden: He worked out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Monday
Cleans 280 - 2 reps
300 - 2 reps
320 - 8x2 reps

The first clean was made from the floor and second from the hang.

Bench press - regular grip
350 - 5 reps
400 - 2 reps
450 - 5x2 reps

Full squat 475 - 5 reps
520 - 3 reps
550 - 5x3 reps

Wednesday
Snatch 200 - for several reps
240- 2 reps
260 - 8x2 reps

First from floor, second from hang.

Bench press - same as Monday

Squat - same as Monday.

Friday: Entire workout same as Monday.

It was interesting to note that he relied on bench pressing to keep up his pressing power for the Olympic press. His official lifts at the World Championships, which he won, were 371-1/4 press, 297-1/2 snatch, and 363-3/4 clean and jerk.

More on this club-footed champion.

Article Mine

Here's all kinds of articles on the history of physical culture and muscular development.