Archive June 2011

Great Workout Based on “Intervention”

I sure love my group at the Coyote Point Kettlebell Club. We trained on Thursday this week and had a lot of new people. We were going to do the “Humane Burpee” with Pull Ups, but SteveO (Steve Ledbetter) added a simple idea: “Let’s do Suitcase Carries so we can do all five human movements.” More on that in a second…

So, off we went:
10 Bulgarian Goat Bag Swings
10 Goblet Squats
10 Push Up
Suitcase Carry Left Hand to Pull Up Bar
One Pull Up (Trust me on this!)
Suitcase Carry Right Hand back to Swing area.

Now, you can do this 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 fashion or a bunch of sets of Five…it doesn’t matter. It steams you up, gets the heart beating and works on a lot of things. What it REALLY works on is your abs at they don’t even have a chance to catch up.

So, I think we called it “The SteveO Segue Super Sircuit of Sweetness” or something like that.

My new DVD, “Intervention” will be available soon. It is the culmination of four decades experience in the weightroom, track, pitch, field, and life in one understandable package. I don’t think I am overstating that this will change the way you approach your training and how you train others at any age or goal. Check it out HERE.

To get a sense of it, look at these two clips:

You can see why I think our SteveO workout was such an excellent idea. I think, honestly, that this is why “community” is the missing link in most people’s training.

I’d love to hear some feedback on workouts like this and some others!

My Conversations…what I am “listening” for…

(Quick note: I had someone mention that they couldn’t find the original of this piece. Here is a follow up, that I may or may not have posted here on my blog. This is part of my “Intervention Toolkit.”)
Everybody assesses and, as my friend Wil Heffernan says it, “if you ain’t assessing, you’re guessing.”

My tools are pretty simple. I am a huge fan of the Functional Movement Screen and I recently sat in a cold, dark auditorium for four days with Gray Cook and Brett Jones at the CK FMS workshop (Certified Kettlebell Instructor Functional Movement Screen). Although my skill set with the FMS is, at best, rudimentary, I insist on two of the basics for everyone I work with in the gym: the Active Straight Leg Raise and the Shoulder Mobility screens.

True, you could use all seven screens and strive for the mantra: “14 and no asymmetries,” the standard results for a “cleared exam.” In other words, someone with this score will statistically NOT get hurt doing their sport. The problem with our fighter or our football player: he puts bread on the table by contact so I am not comfortable saying: “Sorry, you can’t work because you have a tight calf muscle.” (Okay, that was a gross overstatement, but I think you get the point).

The reason I use the ASLR and SM screens are that I get an instant insight into what Doctor Mark Cheng calls the “Four Knots.” The shoulders and hips need to be in an interesting balance between tension, mobility, stability, strength and looseness. Like a knot on your shoelace, too loose and it doesn’t hold (bad) and too tight and you can’t untie it (bad). It has to be “just so.”

In just minutes, I can have a handle on the four knots. As Gray and Brett pounded into me, if there are asymmetries between Right and Left, that’s where we begin to work. We will be doing hip, shoulder and thoracic mobility work probably every day available for the next six months, so have some kind of basic starting point will be helpful.

Okay, so I am in two minutes and have a basic sense of how much time we need to spend on basic mobility work. It’s the next part that I take real pride in: Intervention!

The idea is based, of course, on the way some addicts are confronted by loved ones about their addictions. I actually see the same thing, in a sense, with athletes: we become some single focused on our strengths that we need to have a bunch of people point out our flaws.

The official title in my notes is this: “Best lifts…oral exam.” My fun little subtitle is
“Waddya Bench?’ from the classic SNL telecast. In just a few minutes, I usually can discover what the focus of the athlete has been and the glaring omissions!

I am NOT listening for the maxs, I am listening for this list:

1. Push
2. Pull
3. Hinge
4. Squat
5. Walk/Run/Sprint under load

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The Four Steps

The Four Steps

As noted before, in terms of “popularity,” the five basic human movements from the Strength Coach’s perspective are in this order:
1. Push
2. Pull
3. Hinge
4. Squat
5. Loaded Carry
However, in terms of simple impact, the ability to be a “game changer” to an athlete, this is the order:
1. Loaded Carry
2. Squat
3. Hinge
4. Pull
5. Push
And, the five movements have an interesting relationship when one wants to move into the area of “Metabolic Conditioning.” I first heard this term in the late 1970s or early 1980s from the work of Ellington Darden. Essentially, Metabolic Conditioning is that odd feeling when one moves from one movement, say Squats, to another movement like a Pull Up and even though the heart rate is within reason (cardiovascular conditioning, so to speak) and the muscles about to be used are fresh (so strength endurance isn’t an issue) but the athlete can’t gear up enough “whatever” to do the job.

Don’t go crazy with metabolic conditioning. Yes, it has a value. Yes, it is a “finisher” or a “gasser,” but it can also lead to a variety of issues from simple joint issues from crappy reps to some serious medical conditions that seem to be sweeping some facilities.

The important thing is the mix. Patterning movements work well for Metabolic Conditioning because the amount of movement “error” is going to be minimal. Mixing them with the other movement is the issue. Very simply, I believe that there are four natural combinations and they move naturally through this system. The key has always been: “what to mix with it (the basic patterning movement)?”

A few years ago, I discovered the simple combo called “The Eagle.” Our school mascot was the Soaring Eagle, so the name was a natural. It combined the simplest of the Loaded Carries, the patterning movement “Farmer Walks,” with the basic grinding Squat, the Double Kettlebell Front Squat. I am going to say “simply” here, but the workload is incredible. Simply, we had the athlete do eight Double Kettlebell Front Squats, then drop the weight to his sides and Farmer Walk for twenty meters, then another eight squats and repeat until you complete eight circuits. That goal is often not met.

There are some hidden benefits to this combo. The athlete needs two kettlebells and never puts them down. So, the metabolic hit is accelerated by the grip work, the wrestling with the bells and the sheer volume of carrying the load. It was this “Eagle” that made me think about the “ideal” combos.
Patterning movements work well with Grinds. However, they all don’t work well together! Oh, sure, you can slap together anything, but the “Four Steps” are ideal for most people.

As you look up the Intervention chart, it is easy to see that the Patterning Movement of Loaded Carries (Farmer Walks) was simply mixed with the Grinding Movement of Squats (Double Kettlebell Front Squats). For whatever reason, those two Kettlebells also were a sign from heaven that this was going to be a hard workout.

Moving up the chart, note that the Patterning Movement for the Squat (Goblet Squat) work extraordinarily well with the Grinding Movement of the Hinge (Bulgarian Goat Bag Swings). This single Kettlebell workout can really stoke your fires. It doesn’t have to be complex in numbers or structure, but try it.

The next movement has actually changed the way I teach both the Hinge and the rowing motions for pulls. Using the Wall RDL mixed with a Row seems to really protect the lower back (an issue for many lifters who row, including me) and seems to light up the whole back from an inch below the knee through the neck. That’s a lot of muscles.

The fourth and final combo as we walk the “ladder” up the lifts is combining the Patterning Movement of the Pull (Bat Wings) with the Grinding Push (Bench Press or Push Ups). It becomes similar to the classic bodybuilding “Superset” but the athlete is deeply protecting his shoulders. Many trainees tend to do far too many horizontal presses and totally neglect the opposite pull. That’s also why many trainees have shoulder issues.

The clever ones who have looked at these four have added: “Why don’t you mix Planks with Car Pushing?” Now, that is funny at least at one level, but one better be fully planked when push a car or a prowler.

These four combos:
1. Farmer Walks and Double Kettlebell Front Squats
2. Goblet Squats and Bulgarian Goat Belly Swings
3. Wall RDLs and Rows
4. Batwings and Push Up
can be a training program in themselves. The first two are clearly the best simple workouts I have ever used. The second two are more traditional bodybuilding movements, but work well with even the newest of trainees.

Tim Anderson’s VERY smart review of the 40 Day Workout

I read some real idiots discussing “why this won’t work.” Of course, like Mike Boyle tells me, they are probably 14 year old boys training “hardcore” in Wisconsin or whatever. Tim did something different…he tried it!
Tim’s Blog

Tim was my partner at CK FMS and he is an upcoming guy in this field…pay attention to him!

A great book to supplement “this idea,” beside my other books, is Return of the Kettlebell. It will give you some other ideas about this “kind” of planning. Enjoy.

Even Easier Strength

Even “Easier Strength”

Years ago, when I first met Pavel, he challenged me to do a “40 Day Workout.” I followed his simple instructions to a “T:”

“For the next forty workouts, pick five lifts. Do them every workout. Never miss a rep, in fact, never even get close to struggling. Go as light as you need to go and don’t go over ten reps for any of the movements in a workout. It is going to seem easy. When the weights feel light, simply add more weight.”

So, I did exactly as he said. On the 22nd workout, alone in my garage gym, I broke my lifetime best Incline Bench Press record that was 300 for a single. Without a spotter, in a frozen garage, I benched 315 for a double. All the other lifts went through the roof and I was as amazed then as I am now.

It is “too easy.” In fact, it is so easy that I have had to break it down into literally dozens of pages of article to make it as simple as possible! And, the more I try to simplify it, honestly, the more lost some people become about the program.

I am not entirely convinced that I am a genius, but somebody has to prove to me why I followed those simple instructions so easily and vast hoards of trainers can’t seem to follow the concept without the obvious answer is that I have an unrivaled intelligence. Or, perhaps, I just can follow simple rules.

So, I came up with “Easier Strength.” I didn’t want to but I was exhausted explaining to people that “Three Sets of Three adding weight each time” meant to do “Three Sets of Three adding weight each time.” So, my frustrations, I think, lead to even more clarity.

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