Basement Resurrection

Whoa! I just turned 40 and I'm going to try to revive the blog. A lot has happened.
I now work at a private Christian school in Harrisburg, PA and I've helped them put together a weight room. This has allowed me to run 3 trimesters of a "Resistance Training" elective for students in 7th through 12th grades (highlights include a 75lb. 7th grade girl deadlifting 110lbs.). I usually get one workout a week up at the school so I can keep the weight room open for students.

In addition, I'm trying to get one workout a week with my friend Bob from the local best-kept-secret basement-to-yard training facility The Bonney Lane Club (see: Mental Reps). And, of course, one workout a week in my own well-equipped basement.

In future posts I'll be bringing you update on my favorite routines lately, from 5/3/1, the Cube Method and Dave Tate's 6 Week Bench Press Cure. I'll also share a few of my favorite podcast suggestions.

As a teacher, adjusting from my summer routine to my school year routine is always a trial and error.
Saturdays need to be a longer workout with a Squat/Bench emphasis and some sort of upper body pulling. But, I'm also laying off my normal heavy chins and rows because of some tendonitis. And, I'm backing off carbs a bit as of lately.

Current stats: 6'2" about 188#
Today's Workout Locale: My Basement
Today's highlight: Frontsquat 5 x 2 with 85% of conservative 1RM 225, so 5 x 2 with 193 (I have 44# bumper plates).

Newest favorite Websites and tips

Obviously, I have some links in my sidebar, but here are some other sites I really like:

Best place to buy kettlebells:

Christian's Fitness Factory in Ephrata, PA

Especially if you live in central/eastern PA, it is worth a visit to Christian's to pick up your bells.

Their prices are the best to begin with and if you can save on delivery... well, obviously.

Most interesting link-hub:

I love the fact that this Orthodox Church has a huge fitness section of their website AND it isn't all dedicated to aerobic exercise, walking and eating vegetables (not that there's anything wrong with that - I love vegetables). Part of me wants to say "only in Texas" but the Russians have a long history and tradition of physical-strength culture. Unfortunately, a lot of the links just go to other link-hubs.

Best recent discovery:

You CAN surf the web for fitness and NOT see lots of semi-erotic under-dressed people!

I normally use Google Chrome as my browser, but I downloaded Firefox, went to "Preferences" then "Content" and UNchecked "Load Images Automatically." Tada! Now I can go back to some certain websites that I stopped going to almost 3 years ago because they always had "fitness model" pinups. They also have some of the best current research and extensive articles and programs by training experts.

Great and Simple:

Hypertrophy Specific Training

I like simple systems to achieve goals. This one is both clear and simple. If you want to add muscle and you can follow directions, this is great.

The Latest Trends in Lifting

No. I definitely DON'T have one of these things in my basement. But, this summer I have been getting back in the game.

So, here's what I'm seeing out there in lifting land:

1. People used to say that "you can't gain muscle and lose fat at the same time." Pick a goal and do it. Now, some people are saying that you CAN in fact do both. By incorporating proper nutrition (and especially nutritional timing) and also by combining raw-strength and dynamic strength and cardio training, you can do it. That doesn't mean its the fastest way to do either, but it is possible. For more check out: Tom Venuto, Lean Hybrid Muscle and others.

2. Intermittent Fasting. Yep. Everybody used to say "eat a small meal with protein every 2-3 hours." Now, lots of people are advocating everything from a 24 hour fast once a week to eating only two meals a day or even only a huge dinner. The idea is that a fasted state boosts growth hormone, lowers insulin so your body starts burning fat and prepares it to make better use of the food you eat, even carbs at night!! gasp!

3. Suspension Training: If you haven't heard of TRX and suspension training, you are probably also not using the internet to read about exercise. Otherwise, use Google. My only addendum is that you can make your own suspension trainer with tow straps from the hardware store and a couple lengths of rope or chain and PVC pipe for holds. I've really enjoyed doing suspended push-ups especially. An interesting alternative to TRX is the USA (Universal Strength Apparatus) and I'm trying to figure out an easy home-made "hack" for it.

My latest training goals:

1. Get my weight back up closer to 200 (I'm about 180 now).

2. Do reasonably respectable at Tactical Strength Challenge (I'm guessing I need a 400# DL, 20 Pull-ups and 100 KB Snatches in 5 minutes with a 24k kettlebell)

Not sure if these goals are consistent, but...

Fitness Goals I Have Known and Loved

Goal!! Some of us love goals. Most of us benefit from them. A few are obsessed by a goal. I have been all of these people, but here are a few fitness goals I have known and loved.

50 x 100

I once had the goal of doing 50 onearm (alternating) dumbell snatches in 10 minutes with a 100lb dumbell. I went at this a few different ways. One way was starting with a 75lb dumbell and working my way up. The other way (once I could do 1 snatch with a 100lb dumbell) was to do this exercise EVERY DAY for 5 minutes and once a week for ten. Constantly doing the exercise seemed to be the thing that got me there. I think I weighed about 190 at the time and the 100lber was the heaviest dumbell in the weight-room I was using. Since hardly anybody does this exercise, I got a lot of "looks." One guy asked me, "What does that work?" Translation: What part of your body are you trying to get all "swoll" by doing THAT? I laughed. What part of your body do you NOT work when you are trying to get a dumbell (that is over half your body weight) from the floor to a fully extended position over your head?

MEx2

My next favorite was going for a 2x BW deadlift. Translation: I wanted to be able to lift a bar weighted with twice my bodyweight (bw) from the floor to hip-height. Once again, I used 2 different approaches. I didn't have a ton of time to work out (like - not even 20 minutes), so gaining muscle mass wasn't an option anyway, but it would have been counter-productive too! If I weighed more, I would have to lift more. SO, I dropped carbs significantly and dropped down to about 175 (I'm 6 3, but "slender"). Then I started doing 2 sets of relatively heavy deadlifts everyday before bed in addition to some super-quick morning workouts. One morning, I got up and I just "felt it." I wasn't even planning on it. I wasn't in my basement workout gear. I had jeans on. BUT, since I felt it, I just went for it and managed a fairly smooth 363lbs. About 8lbs over bw for good measure.

PISTOLS

The "pistol" is a one legged bodyweight squat where you keep your unloaded leg extended in front of you. I tried to get a picture of someone doing one in here but blogger was hating on me.

I spent a lot of time doing front-squats (with the bar loaded across one's sternum and delts instead of trapezius/back) to get to the point where I could do one pistol without collapsing onto the floor, but it felt great and I eventually got up to 10 per leg before some knee stability issues convinced me to back off.

What's next?

Future goals include a 400lb deadlift, one arm chin-ups and one arm pushups (I have long arms, so these are lofty goals). I'd also like to get to a respectable squat, but my hips and lower back don't like them.

Your Home Fitness Solutions

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I want to work with men, couples and families.

Here are two testimonials:

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"Matt knows more than 90% of personal trainers working in the field."
Bob Gorinski, DPT, CSCS, Cert-MDT, Head PT at First Choice Rehab in Mechanicsburg

Evolving Fitness - Part 2

So, in the last post I was returning to weights from a season of bodyweight training.

My new inspiration was The New Rules of Lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove:

The authors don't claim any of this is really new, but that a lot of popular training articles and programs have deluded people. In future posts, I'll share the basics of the "new rules" without giving you the actual "new rules" since there are at least 19. Here are two:
1. Focus on large muscle groups - (ie. chest/shoulders, back, quads, glute/hamstrings) these programs have VERY few curls or tricep exercises. When you do any sort of upper-body press, your triceps HAVE TO work hard. When you do any pull/chin up or row, your biceps HAVE TO work hard.
2. Focus on exercises that imitate (relatively) "natural" movements: push - pull - squat - bend - lunge etc.

I love these principles and I enjoyed these workouts and made progress, but the recommended workouts were still just a bit too long for a grad student with a wife and a baby whose demands seemed so disproportionate to his size.


The missing piece I needed at the time was a workout system called Escalating Density Training (EDT). The program is described in basic form in several places online and was published in the book Muscle Logic by this guy, Charles Staley, and boasted, "Cut your workout time in half, with better results." This may be an exaggeration, but it did cut my workout time down. I did get better results and I loved the way this system makes you compete with yourself successfully and have continual progress.

My workouts became a hybrids of the principles from New Rules and EDT. I'll explain how I did this in future posts too.

Using this fusion, if I did a 3-5 minute warm-up and rested 3-5 minutes between 2 series of intense supersets, I'd be in and out of the weight-room, or basement, in around 40 minutes or less. If you need shorter workouts, do slightly shorter series of more intense supersets. I think people could make progress with as little as 10 minute series.


I'm doing some other things now that mix up a bunch of these principles with some other things I've learned, but these are the basic building blocks. My pastor recently preached on taking care of ourselves, so maybe this will help someone do that...


My advice to everyone is to do the exercise you enjoy. Play, run, lift, jump, march, whatever. But if you DON'T like what you are currently doing, try something else!


I haven't even talked about nutrition, but I have gained 25-30 pounds since I got back into lifting and I don't think my body-fat percentage has increase much at all. People might ask, "what about cardio-vascular health?" and even though I only run about once a year, I went out and ran 5 miles with a running friend a few weeks ago and felt pretty good!


So, if you're into working out, let me know what you've learned or found helpful! I'm always trying to learn new things. If you have any questions, feel free to ask...

Evolving Fitness

My friend Bob Gorinski ("Mental Reps"- see my links) posted a great blog on weight-training not too long ago. Bob blogs on life, faith, family and sometimes lifting. He is a SICK athlete,a thoughtful Christian and a great dad. He's also a great PT and he blogged about the toll that lifting takes even as he hit an incredible personal best in the squat. Anyone considering PX90 or whatever it is, should see his review of that program.

Yes, there is a masochist element to most of us who like exercising whether we are runners or lifters or whatever... But, I think there are ways to at least maximize our pain to payoff ratio, and one major way to do that is to maximize time.

Once upon a time, I would work out for an hour or more and I know lots of runners and others who exercise for long stretches even though they don't enjoy it because they think they have to in order to reach their goals. See Bob's "Gospel of Not Running" post too. Here's how it went for me...


When I worked out with my dad in the basement we did a few sets of a few exercises (mostly upper-body) with repetitions like this - 12, 10, 7, 5. Not a bad way to go. When these sets got easier, we added weight.


Somewhere along the way I got Bill Pearl's Getting Stronger which is a great book in its own right with workouts for beginners and up, bodybuilders and every imaginable sport.


The problem with the book is mostly that Pearl is a bodybuilder. He thinks in terms of individual muscles and individual exercises to target those muscles. In the end then, the training is less functional and you end up doing a LOT of different exercises in a workout.


I used to follow programs like this and I would do exercises aimed at "isolating" the muscles I wanted to work. When you think this way, you have to do a LOT of exercises. That takes a LOT of time. You also end up treating all muscles equally. You spend just as much time on your biceps, which are a very small proportion of your body, as you do on your hamstrings, which are much larger.


I enjoyed these workouts and made some progress, but they just took too long!
Then I entered grad school and had a 2-3 year hiatus from working out. When I decided I needed to get back into it, I had no equipment and I had no intention of joining a gym.
SO, I got into bodyweight exercises, push-ups, pull-ups, bodyweight squats and crazy variations of all three. It was really fun and, coming back from a "keyboard-only" workout regimen, I made a lot of progress. I still like the simplicity of bodyweight workouts. A person can get incredibly fit without ever picking up a "weight." One great resource for this kind of thing is this primitively published manual by Ross Enamait (see Rosstraining link).

My only real criticism of this book is that Enamait uses a LOT of equipment in some of his workouts, even if the equipment isn't weights. But its still a great book, with a ton of great information as well as exercise ideas to get your creative juices flowing. You really could be "Never Gymless" although I don't know how anybody could go without a good pull-up bar or branch or fire escape or something.


Still, there is something about lifting heavy stuff. It is hard to chart your progress on raw strength doing bodyweight exercises. I mean, its awesome when someone can do 100 pushups, but it takes a lot of determination to decide you're going to do 1 arm push-ups and I never got there. Maybe someday. Anyway, I cruised craigslist, found a weight-set I wanted and made a low-ball offer. $90 got me 2 Olympic bars, a bench/squat rack set-up and about 380lbs of plates. I also reclaimed some weights I bought in high school that my dad wasn't using (he's still using a LOT) and he threw in a couple dumbells. It was time to hit the iron again...
More on that in a future post.