Training Strongman without Strongman-Part II: Triple Extension
Let me paint a picture for you…
It’s Friday night on sorority row, and your rival fraternity takes the party by storm and pins you as their target. It’s a swarm of socialites wanting to beat your rear for taking the coolest girl on campus. You have to retreat and find shelter before the storm erupts. You have to hop the fence and leap the sky to escape their hunt…
Best solution for this crisis? BECOME MORE DYNAMIC! TAP INTO TRIPLE EXTENSION!
Training Strongman without Strongman: Part I-Correcting your Movement
In this video, Spencer and I worked on three movements that I believe are big indicators of success in strongman: squat, deadlift, and overhead press. During these three movements, I watched Spencer and not only indicated the deficiencies, but how to correct them and promote better movement! Please watch and see the information provided. Knowledge is KEY!
Quit being that pipsqueak that complains about their lack of gains. Make the girls gawk at your superior bench supported by your superior pecs!
Let me paint a picture for you…you’re at dinner, took your girl to the finest Applebee’s establishment nearby and order the unlimited boneless wings special. Things get exciting, she might even be the one…she looks you in the eyes and says…
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but you have a subpar bench. Your bottom speed is decent, but your transitional speed needs work and you have no tricep development whatsoever”
Let’s just put this out there: if you want to squat like a king or pull like a Viking, you HAVE to have stronger hips, even if you risk looking foolish in the gym.
When looking back at my younger years, I can tell you that I definitely had under-developed hips that I think caused my lifts to suffer for a long time. I think the people I even worked with had the same issue. To this day, I still work with clients and while overlooking the squat and deadlift development, I can easily tell they are hip-deficient and need various movements to help elevate their lifts not just for max effort, but for also correcting their movement for safer engagement in lifting. So how do we do this?
Brisket is in the oven, you only have limited time to head to the gym: Circuit Training-Lifting in a CRUNCH
Circuit training doesn’t have to be a bad thing! We can even throw in the big three movements while hitting accessories with changing the variables of volume, rest, and intensity. Below, I have a video of a client of mine working hard through various circuits and supersets that had her gasping by the end of it. We have a 30 minute window and we try to do as much as we can, with how little time we are allowed to lift. The format of the workout is also listed below:
Want to get thick on DEADLIFT? Break the barriers of Bro-Science: LIFT WITH LESS WEIGHT
Don’t get me wrong, to get a bigger deadlift you NEED to hoist some heavy iron. That’s common knowledge amongst the lifting community. But the problem is that if you’re always lifting heavy, the barbell is going to suffer from slower speeds. I know that powerlifting isn’t everyone’s choice of sport, but we can all agree that the deadlift is a tremendously important movement in that sport. Powerlifting encompasses the word “power”, which is a combination of mass and velocity. You know another term for velocity? SPEED! So when creating the title of this post, I emphasized that we must break the barriers of bro-science and “lift with less weight”. The point of this is not to become weaker, but to also lift submaximal weight with SPEED!
What’s more important to training…fatigue and failure, or volume for muscle hypertrophy and strength?
During my younger years, I would bang the iron for about two hours at a time. That seemed normal, traditional, and the bare minimum for anyone who wanted to be a dominant force in the realm of strength training. Fast forward to now, and I work out at most 45-50 minutes at a time which is more than HALF of what I used to do. But now I feel much more fatigued, exhausted, and at the same time, accomplished. When I would hoist the iron for two hours, I would literally throw the weight as hard as I could and as fast as I could. My only concern was if I lifted more than the previous week, and if I finished my reps with the prescribed weight for that exercise. If I was to do 365 pounds on bench press for 6 reps, I felt the best way to do this was to throw the weight fast, and get the set over with! I didn’t think about tension, tempo, fatigue, etc. I just wanted to be successful.
If you want to be a heavier lifter, it’s time for you to become more aggressive with the iron and showcase your dominance by engaging in more aggressive tendencies.
The other day, I had posted a video of a client of mine performing a deadlift to zercher of 405lbs. I received much feedback about his performance, feedback such as “woah, hell of a lift!” to “oh my, he is going to destroy his back”…well whether you’re amazed at his efforts or ready to crucify his unique technique, I want to focus in one on aspect of this lift…
Brotha, he lifted that weight with A TON OF ANGER!
It’s not enough to just prescribe specific movements in your program, you have to dig below the surface level of training to develop these athletes. CHAPTER FOUR: MUSCLE SPINDLE ENGAGEMENT
Okay, so first thing...I am NOT a scientist. So for any alpha-dominant frat daddy who wants to chime in and critique my perspective, chances are you aren’t a scientist either. When working with explosive athletes, I want to employ movements that required reactive strength to close the gap between the eccentric stretch and the concentric reaction. What we are technically talking about here is manipulating the three phases of the “stretch shortening cycle”. Phase one is the “stretch” of the eccentric contraction, followed by the third phase (the “shortening” phase) created through a tightened concentric contraction. What occurs between phase one and phase three is the second phase, the “amortization” phase that is known as the transitional period between the stretch and shortening motions. That transitional period is …
There are some great movements that can be promoted to elicit deadly gains in speed, so why not use them? CHAPTER THREE: SPECIFICITY
All I have to say is this,
Science rocks. Use your brain, not your ego, to develop appropriate programming, whether it’s to increase speed for catching insubordinate scum or bench pressing more than the bozo next to you. Knowledge conquers all.