Archive January 2010

Madness Ensues. Or Whatever.

Ever had “that” week? Well, so did I. Sometimes, you stand in the middle of the whirlwind and sometimes you are the wind. This week, the metaphor is more of a semaphore. And, no, I have no idea what that means either.

But, sitting in the middle of the craziness was the barbell and the kettlebell. You really can get in a lot of reps if you don’t care what the number is or the set count or the time under whatever we call it now. Dave Draper has done a far better job of talking about the love affair between lifter and bar, but there are times, like this week, where I really “get it.” Nobody asks less of me than the weightroom and nothing gives back more.

So, we squat, press, pull, carry and snap over and over and over again and life makes more sense. I makes notes in my journal to do this or that, but I don’t note the reps and sets and weights because for a few brief moments…the world makes sense.

I have escaped to the gym and the discus ring many times in my life. For those who do not have the hiding place, the secret love affair with barbell and iron, I feel for you. Sometimes, I just don’t want the theories, the BS, the domains, the optimal this and that, and just spend some time moving the iron. It’s that week.

One of my first workshops was on…

This idea that there are like two models of training people: one, the industrial revolution and, two, the more intuitive (or “Irish,” as I am starting to think of it more and more). The IR model, or “Maxine” named after a lady I used to work with, is the idea that we will train like this:

Middle Back:
A1: Locked Down Bat Wings with a 0-1-10 Tempo with 12 Kilo Kettlebells
A2: Horizonal Rows at a 1-1-3 Tempo for 16 reps
Repeat six times, with 14 seconds rest between A1 and A2. 84 Seconds rest between supersets.

That’s fine for some. I can’t do it. My boredom and focus level simply can’t handle it. When my life is crazy, I certainly benefit for structured training, but I am only good for my Transformation Workout. For clarity: if your life is crazy, train more like a worker from a factory. Punch in, do the exact warmup, do the lifts, do the whatever. If you work somewhere where you have a break at 10:15 and Noon and 3:00 and you are on the tram at 5:17…you might need some craziness to your workouts.

For me, I find that even though I have journals back to 1971, I train best when my journals talk about my life and note that today “I did Front Squats, a couple of sets, some presses, nailed a good pullup, played catch.” A few months of that and I am feeling great. When I start to follow some printed model, I make great progress, then BOOM.

I’m not even sure what I am saying. Am I saying that you make progress by following a program exactly? Yes, that is true. Am I saying that you make progress just by showing up and getting some work and play in? Yes, no question. So, what is it?

Yes.

Not every question gets the same answer

I had some odd things pop up on the Q and A and some emails. I sometimes get people telling me: “You said this here and now you are telling that to this guy.” I have no issue with that as one of the signs of human intellect is to hold opposing thoughts in concert at once. Moreover, not everyone is the same. I have this little pyramid in my head when I answer fitness questions:

At the base is simply moving around…again. Although those basic human movements should be done (squat, walk (run), push, pull, big move from the hip hinge like a deadlift or swing), the reality is that we just want to get going again. So, long walks might trump everything else. Don’t forget that throughout a career either: long easy stuff always has a place.

Next, comes the 1. Pick stuff up off the ground 2. Put things overhead and 3. Carry things for time and distance. So, in a sense, the Program Minimum Minimum (with a little walking or whatever) might be the base of a fairly serious program. Like Dan Martin discovered, the PMM or variations can remind you of shortcomings or provide you with some awareness of where you are heading. So, some people who are at the “next level” need to drop back for a short while to relearn some things. I try to do it yearly.

This second tier can be informative, too, but a workout of deadlifts, military press and farmer walks can get you ready for about anything. The top layer is the intensity. For me, it is my “Sprint 8″ workout where I do eight buildups (“start slow and taper off” is my joke) in sprinting. It is also heavy lifts, usually at lifting meets or rare heavy training sessions. If you spend a lot of time here, you are going to tumble down the whole pyramid sooner or later.

I have the same ideas about diet and recovery: sleep and drink water. Eat your veggies, meats, fish and eggs. Take your fish oil capsules and Mg. Try something cool and groovy like Leucine. Note that we just rose up the pyramid here, too.

So, when someone asks a question, I try hard to figure out where the person is actually coming from so I can honestly answer them.

So, yes, I say one thing here and one there. I am completely comfortable with this, too.

Another New Interview

From my good friend, Mike:

http://robertsontrainingsystems.com/Podcasts/ITTF_Ep21_100120.mp3

I’m training really well again. It took 20 hours to get out of my funk.

Working on the New Book/Problems in Training

Well, life would be too easy if everything clicked. As I start the process of organizing these grand thoughts, I think it sucks my excitement from training. Yesterday, I did a bunch one arm presses and pullups and I did two sessions of VO2 Max today, but it is just that odd funk that I get this time of year.

Utah can be brutal. Toss in a full day in-service and my enthusiasm for training dwindles. I’m okay with that, of course. I have learned to embrace lousy workouts years ago. You can always tell someone who is rather new: there is this expectation that everything is going to get better and better. Crack out the book “Mastery” again and think linear progression through a little bit. It simply doesn’t last long. Which is fine. As Earth, Wind and Fire said it so well: “That’s the way of the world.” Although it sounded better when they sang it.

So many things are coming up on me. I’m fine with all of this, of course. By August, there is a chance that Tiff and I will be empty nesters and it seems like yesterday I was dealing with childhood diseases. A friend told me today that days drag by, but years fly by.

Which is even more reason to never worry about crappy workouts. At least, you are working out.

Mulling…similar to thinking

As I wash over the experiences of the past few years, I began to notice that I put a huge priority on posture, but never talk about it. I was zipping through Chek’s book today and I found his basic movements: pull, push, bend, gait, lunge and twist (I think…top of my head only). We all have the basic same list. I tossed out twist and torque and rotate and those things years ago as I never really found a group of moves that worked well, without hurting anyone.

In my philosophy, I state something like “movement over muscles” which I invented right after oxygen. But, I never truly realized how much I relied on posture as part of the deal until I read Esther Gokhale’s book on back pain. I think the RKC does a great job teaching the hinge, but her work really expanded my thinking. I am pretty sure I am going to teach even something as simple as Farmer Walks better in the future.

With the insight of my own reality that at 52 one needs to respect and work joint mobility and hypertrophy harder than anything else…or maybe simply keep the focus on those qualities in the front of the training planning…I have this sense that I might add a new drawing or figure to my workshops, one that includes Posture/Movement/Joint Mobility/Hypertrophy.

I thought I would maybe share this journey of how the insides of my brain works as so many people come up to me after workshops and ask me how I “cut to the chase” or “discover these things.” The process starts either with a problem (which is the easier way to be honest: an injury, a failure, or an ongoing issue) or by reading or seeing something that sparks a brain cell to nag me until I can make a drawing on a white board that satisfies my whatver has been driving at me.

Then, I talk to dozens of people and summarize and sanitize all of this so that when I give this to a lifter with six weeks experience, he can tell me “yes, I knew this!”

An Interesting Way to Improve Strength

Mike Brown, my intern, liked our workout this week. It is a variation of one I call the “Three Amigos.” The idea is gently prod the volume and load up over the workout and have the athlete “rest” by doing movements that complement the “big lifts” of the day. This variation is based on these reps: 3-2-1. So, a couple things here. We also do these in a simple Drumline pattern, we do the first movement, then the next, then…and repeat.

The movements:

Read more

A Little Nervous about RKC II

It’s going to be physically demanding to just make the minimums for RKC II. I’m off to San Jose State next month and I am truly nervous. It’s one thing to do the 100 snatches in five minutes another to do the weighted pull up AND do the really heavy one armed press…as a minimum. Plus, all the work load…plus…plus…plus.

I’m nervous about it. I’m doing my “Secret Diet” to lean out as I just don’t think belly flab is going to help. Also, I’m trying to do tons of pull ups and snatches and I’m doing my best to undo the injury issues. At 52, the margin of error is not so much a margin but just a line on the margin.

I passed the snatch test tonight. For RKC I, I did this a number of times just to get the pacing. With 100, I simply think 20-20-15-15-10-10-5-5…although usually I just do ten at the end to finish it. I tried to hit five minutes exactly tonight and got 4:50.

I think there is great value in constantly trying to learn new things. The upside of things like the RKC and track meets and Highland Games is that you get a chance to put this “new stuff” to the test. There is nothing worse than armchair gurus telling all of us we have “no squat” or “lousy whatevers,” but we never see the performance. Thankfully, it is enough to make me drink.

So, off I go.

Complexes before Strength Work

I did Complex B before my strength work today. I had a question on the forum about doing them first and the question was solid: if you are wrecked doing something BEFORE strength work, then is it wrong? So, I did 4 sets of 8 of Complex B and found that the room was very hot, my sweating was sweating and my interest in going heavy diminished.

So, it comes back to this: When I was in just flat out great shape doing Alwyn Cosgrove’s Afterburn II, I handled the strength work after complexes like a breeze. My athletes after football or wrestling season can move big weights after complexes. So, like so many things in lifting, you have to stand on a balance board juggling watermelons to figure this out. If you are in fairly good shape, at least the way I use the concept, you can do strength training after a rigorous warm up. But, if you are not, strength work should start the workout.

Everything I just wrote is mostly BS. Oh, it’s true BS, but you have to keep one other factor in there, too: if you are doing strength lifts that really aren’t that close to top end maxes, you can get away with a lot before the big lifts. So, on the 5/3/1 for example, I did nine reps with 235 in the Bench Press slightly gassed. Well, I’ve benched 405, so 235 for reps is hard, but not top end hard. Doing an additional rep with 235 isn’t like doing one more with 365.

I know this kind of bantering can drive readers crazy, but this is how using the brain to train works. The answers to questions always have to run through some kind of filter and the reality filter is my favorite. So, if a teenage boy who is lean and just finished football season does three sets of eight with 65 pounds in a complex, it might have no effect on his 165 last “max reps” set in the Bench Press. Six months from now, with 225 on the bar then we can talk. With an adult struggling to do this and that and this and that in a traininig session, the complexes are best left as finishers. I have started workouts with Farmer Bars and discovered that everything after that was subpar.

So, if your conditioning is suspect and/or your big lifts of the day are serious big lifts, start the session with some foam rolling, some rolling the feet with a lacrosse ball, some hip flexor stretches, a few Goblet Squats and some general hippity dippidy moving around. Keep as much in the tank as you can as you approach a big squat or deadlift. Experiment on deloading weeks or easy days with putting harder things at the start of the training session.

Pavel has mentioned to me a dozen times that simply getting gassed in a workout is easy. I always joke: Do 10,000 jumping jacks. The key isn’t so much destroying yourself in a workout, but actually training, learning, mastering and then coming back time after time after time. It’s fine to make a mistake in training and realize you did something stupid. Learn from it. I tend to enjoy repeating stupid ideas several times until the surgeon tells me to stop doing this or that.

I never consider anything about training to be so true and correct that it can’t stand another look. Just about everything you do or try works…for about two weeks. The key, the real key, is discovering those simple and elegant things that provide the most benefit for the least amount of payment. Call it “Bang for the Buck” or “Cost to Benefit,” but there is nothing more true than if one simply mastered three to five things and did them with some intensity some times and some volume some other times, you would find the “perfect program.”

Then, as I so often lament, when I find the perfect program, I stop doing it because it works so well.