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Bodyweight training for powerlifting gains

Some people are afraid of the weight, they’re afraid to take the strain, to have three hundred pounds over head that needs to come down to the chest and then be locked out overhead for a perfect rep. These people would rather push and pull their own bodies in various ways to achieve their fitness goals.
But for every person out there who is afraid to lift heavy weights there are those on the opposite end of the spectrum. There are those who see using their own body as an instrument to gain strength as burdensome, tiring and lacking in excitement.
The argument will rage on and many will criticize weight lifting for its steep learning curve and need for perfect technique to maintain safety. Is it important to know proper technique while weight lifting? The answer is yes but it also goes without saying that with bodyweight training that technique is important as well.
Not knowing the proper technique for some of the most basic exercises like a pull up or push up can result in a tweaked shoulders or other injuries.
An argument against bodyweight training is that you can’t develop maximum strength and hypertrophy doing it. Once again another misconception-- people perceive bodyweight training today as an endurance activity and are only familiar with push ups, pull ups, squats and crunches. People are blissfully unaware of all the variations of these exercises as well some of the more challenging isolation style exercises.
With each exercises there is a harder variation-- take for example the body weight squat. If a person can master the bodyweight squat the next step would be to move on to the one-legged variation called the pistol. Is 200-pound person weak if they can squat their own bodyweight with one leg? I think not which just goes to show that each system of strength training has its benefits.
What I am advocating as a strength enthusiast is a mixture of weight lifting and bodyweight exercises.
I admire the 300-pound strongmen like Brian Shaw and Zydrunas Savickas who can dead lift 800-pounds, lift stones that weigh more then they do and could crush my skull with their bare hands. However, I also admire gymnasts and their amazing ability to flip through the air, support their bodyweight in a handstand position and amazing conditioning.
At 170-pounds I am not going to be winning any strong man competitions and at my previous weight of 185-pounds I wasn’t going to either. I’m not even heavy enough to move a semi truck two inches. However, I am in a position to get massively strong and maintain my natural athletic ability.
Bodyweight exercises -- especially those that are used in gymnastics-- are an excellent way to compliment your weight lifting while maintaining athleticism. Bodyweight exercises like the handstand, human flag and L-sit are difficult and require a high level of muscular tension and strength. These exercises are perfect additions to the would be power lifter and bodybuilder.
Why? Well as far as power lifting goes the goal is to lift a maximum amount of weight. A power lifter relies heavily on creating muscular tension through out the entire body in order to get that burst of strength to lift the weight. This act of muscular tension is referred to by Pavel Tsatsouline as irradiation. Things like handstands, human flags and L-sits reinforce the concept of muscular tension and require a tremendous amount to maintain the feat.
For bodybuilding things like push ups, squats, pull ups and all their variations are not only going to build strength but will tone and create a physique that is to be admired. Gymnasts have some of the most defined bodies on the planet and rely almost exclusively on bodyweight techniques. Bodybuilders may want to take note of this and incorporate these exercises into their routines.
Finally, trying to build athleticism can be achieved using bodyweight exercises as well. Practicing things like cart wheels, back flips, hand springs and their variations can have a tremendous affect on developing coordination and explosiveness.
None of this I am sure is new information but it is relevant information and are great things to consider adding to any fitness routine. Remember however that it is important to learn these things from an experienced individual and in a proper training environment. Not all of these things can be accomplish on their first try and may require you to develop the skills to do them.

Cardio for athletic performance

When I was younger I always thought that being able to run five miles non-stop would get me in shape for a season of varsity soccer.

Boy was I wrong. Running at the same pace for 20 minutes didn't do jack for my in season conditioning.

The running I did in soccer was completely different then what I was doing on my own in the preseason.

In one minute of the game I could slowly be jogging to receive a pass and the next minute sprinting at full speed towards the net trying to shake defenders.

There was no carry over from the preseason to the season however from preseason to post I found that this was the opposite.

The constant pace change of the sport had conditioned my heart beyond what any sort of cross country work out had done.

I was running faster and doing more miles in less time then I was doing prior.

So what happened?

I’ll let the scientists and people much smarter then myself to figure this out but for my two centsI can only say that cross-country style running is a complete waste for sports conditioning.

Unless, I compete in an endurance sport rarely do I run super long distances.

Instead I find simply practicing the sport will give you the best conditioning you can get for it.

The more you the play a sport the longer you will be able to play it.

Now, that does not mean you can’t supplement your practice with conditioning.

However, instead of doing the typical knee crushing and ankle breaking long distance running people are obsessed with doing I suggest doing fast paced sprint style conditioning.

Do wind sprints, hill runs and suicides.

My favorite is lifting weights and swinging kettlebells.

If you raised your eye brow in confusion to the lifting weights part of the last sentence then let me explain.

When we lift weights for endurance we are working on speed and variety.

Something, I do not recommend in a strength building phase.

However, take a work out and do circuits from the floor to the ground and then let me know if you aren’t getting a cardio workout.

Here is a suggestion instead of focusing on the poundage on the bar focus on the time it takes you to complete a workout.


Work to minimize rest time.

Another classic is supersetting with reverse body parts like doing bench immediately followed by pull ups for reps.

Also, kettlebells nothing can compare to the affect of swinging a kettlebell for five minutes straight,

Not only is it taxing on your muscles but also your heart and your mind.

It takes will power to grind out five minutes of swings with a heavy weight and then it takes guts to try and best your reps by 10 next week.

Drink coffee, lift big then take a nap

If there is one supplement that does exactly what its suppose to do it is caffeine.

I’m not writing an article saying that drinking one cup of coffee before a work out is going to make you strong like Bill Kazimaier and ripped like Arnold Schwarzenegger but caffeine does have it’s advantages.

Personally, I don’t drink much of the stuff and when I do I usually stick to the basics coffee and tea (usually green tea).

Personally, I don’t like all the sugar that comes with drinking pop and energy drinks.

That being said caffeine is a wonderful supplement and something I recommend using on occasion.

Typically, when I use caffeine I use it when I am feeling tired, a little worn out and not very motivated to walk the two-feet from my house to the garage to work out.

First thing is first usually when I feel crummy like this it is from a lack of energy which boils down to two possible problems. Those problems typically are poor nutrition or a lack of sleep.

Like I said earlier in this article I don’t really care to drink caffeine but I hate even more to miss a work out. So, my solution is slug down a few cups of coffee or tea and whatever issues I am having.

Usually for me this would be going to bed earlier that night to make sure I am feeling ready to train tomorrow.

If your lack of energy continues after correcting your diet and sleeping more you may be getting dangerously close to over training.

If that’s the case it is time to consider a few days off from exercise completely to let your body recuperate.

As much as I hate taking extra days off I know that being over trained can lead to me getting sick. Something, I like to avoid and understand will cause more missed training sessions.

Remember caffeine is not a long term solution to correcting fatigue its simply a short term.

Use the stuff sparingly and try to use it as seldom as possible.

Caffeine is a stimulant and over time you can develop a tolerance (or so I’ve been told) so eventually the effectiveness is going to wear off.

For me one cup of coffee is enough. I use to drink no-Xplode before a work out and found that my body could hardly handle one scope full of the stuff.

I would experience caffeine overdose my speech would slur, I would have an extreme head ache, feel sick to my stomach and have the jitters.

Eventually, I got to the point where I could drink three scoops of the stuff but that was also when I could no longer discern whether the stuff was helping to boost my performance or not

Remember, moderation try to not be dependent. More is less with caffeine when I started using it constantly I found out that I wasn’t getting the energy or the performance enhancing qualities promised.

However, once I weened myself from using it again I found that on occasion a little bit would go a long way.

Goal Setting part 2

In my last post I talked about training consistency which is something that I believe is very important when weight lifting or doing any sort physical training.

However, that is only the stepping stone because the focus of these articles is success.

Any person doing any sort of exercise will be more successful if they set goals for themselves.

If there is one lesson that should be taken out of the last post it’s that you need to keep a journal, diary or whatever you call it to log your progress.

This journal or whatever will be instrumental for tracking your success and achieving your goals.

Here is an exercise that I think almost any person can benefit from in any endeavor whether physical, mental or financial.

On a piece of paper right out your long term goals-- things that you want to accomplish. From there take your goal and break it down it to several mini goals.

An example would be bench pressing 300-pounds. First what your would do is break that goal down to benching 145 for 3, 200 for 3, 225 for 3 and so on.

You want to set bench marks find mini-goals that are achievable that will eventually work to that final result.

Breaking something down smaller and smaller will help you gain the confidence you need to succeed.

Endlessly repping 195 for months even years at a time will not put you any closer towards that 300 bench.

Nothing is impossible it just might need more steps to complete.

If you continue to achieve these mini goals you will become more motivated to work hard and succeed.

Remember the naysayers that tell you, you can’t do something are people who are either jealous or have tried and failed.

Why did they fail because they didn’t set those mini goals they just went for it and failed.

Goal Setting part 1

For me consistently doing the same routine week after week is difficult. Week after week doing the same old thing over and over again just seems so boring.

So what have I done for most of my weight lifting career?

Well in all honesty I have constantly changed and reinvented my routine to a point where I had no clue how strong I was. The routine would be different from week to week taking in and accounting for every new breakthrough and fad that was popular at the moment.

I guess the pop term for this would be “muscle confusion” (imaginary finger quotes not needed) and is basically what is being sold by every mail-order exercise routine at the moment.

So what does muscle confusion do for a person who wants to be strong like a powerlifter? The answer is nothing.

I went from having a thin body (I’m talking Kate Moss) to having a lean over sized cross country runner body. I ended college at 185-pounds and did not look or feel like the weight lifting machine I had always hoped to be.

People still mistook me for being in high school and instead of looking 185 I looked like an big 155.

Huh? Yeah my thoughts exactly.

So, lesson learned muscle confusion was not the answer. What I am now finding out

and really have known all along is that keeping a training diary, log, journal or whatever is important to become successful.

Stick to a core routine and write down everything you do and accomplish. Exhaust a routine until you stop making gains and then change things or start over.

Simple enough yet for me it was and still can be the hardest thing to do.

I want to bench and press massive weights, be able to deadlift a car and tear decks of cards like they were paper. Unfortunately, muscle confusion and even those bodybuilding routines published in magazines were not getting me the results I wanted.

So after reading Pavel Tsatsouline books, reading John Brookfields grip books and looking through Brooks Kubiks “Dinosaur Training” I have finally found what I believe works for me.

My first step was losing weight-- why keep it if it doesn’t help. I’m between 165 and 170 depending on the day. I checked my ego at the door and have yet to see if affect my lifting.

Why carry the weight if I’m not strong enough to use it?

Next I decided to put together a core routine consisting of two sets of bench and two sets of dead lifts with five minute rest intervals. Keep the sets in the two to three rep range.

I add weight at either the end of a week or the beginning of the next.

For me doing only two exercises for two sets is hard. I’m someone who actually likes to exercise so when I cut my work out down to about twenty minutes I actually get sad.

My solution here was to alternate days between grip and ab work and biceps and stretching.

Keep a log and be consistent and make sure every week you try to go heavier.

Finally, Friday is a fun day you do your regular routine and then you throw in whatever the hell you want to do.

Go nuts this day is for you and feel free to experiment.

I like to do keg presses, ring work and mace swinging so these are the days I usually mess around with these kind of lifts.

Diet versus "Diet"

To many the word diet is a short term change to ones eating patterns to get thin. The thing is that a diet should be so much more.
People should think of their diet as rules to eat by for their entire life.
You will often times here so and so say I feel so great now that I began eating healthy and lost all this weight. Next month that person returns to their regular eating habits and undoes months of hard work spent eating healthy and going to the gym.
The word diet should carry a little more weight in peoples vocabulary. When I tell my friends a McDonald's Big Mac is not part of my diet they know that I don’t eat it. I don’t eat McDonald’s and I haven’t since I was a junior in high school.
People that know me know that my diet is how I always eat. I have never had to lose weight never had to “diet” in the usual Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig sense of the word.
So do I diet?
Yes I diet I constantly diet. I change it to fit whatever I am trying to accomplish.
Sometimes I diet to gain weight. For some that is a concept that might be confusing which may be understandable because the average desk jockey with a bad back doesn’t understand the value of weight gain.
People, my family and friends included don’t always understand that their is such a thing as positive weight gain.
What I mean by positive weight gain is that you gain weight to gain muscle not gain weight to get fat.
Regardless of all that there is too much emphasis on the “diet” and not a diet. People allow themselves to much leniency when it comes to eating. The simple matter of it is there is to much positive re-enforcement and to much incentive to eat poorly in most diet plans.
Most diets work on calorie counting.
“Oh if I just eat 15 calories for lunch then I can eat this 100 calorie piece of cake.”
Wrong, complete crap maybe I am someone who was gifted with a fast metabolism but from my stand point it is about the quality of food you eat not the calories.
What is cake?
Cake is sugar and carbohydrates plain and simple. Obviously sugar and carbs is no-no in any diet. How can simply counting calories prevent the negative affects that sugar and carbs have on your insulin?
I don’t have the answer because I’m not a dietitian but I know that insulin plays a big role in body fat percentage. In my personal opinion it is probably a lot better to eat 100 calories of almonds then of cake.
Why? Almonds=Protein.
Not only do almonds have protein but they are rich in unsaturated fats which by the way is an appetite suppressant.
There is to much fat-free and reduced-fat this and that. Diet food is crap for the most part. They replace one ingredient with another just to reduce the calorie count of the food and in turn might be replacing it with something that does you more harm then good.
The biggest joke is diet tea.
How can there be such a thing as diet tea?
Tea if it is brewed actually helps you lose weight especially the green tea variety. So something labeled diet tea is obviously not real tea.
Look it is simple if you feel better about yourself and have more energy from eating healthy why sabotage that?
If you know you should be eating a chicken breast instead of eating pizza why reach for the pizza?
It’s simple you lack motivation and you need to get it.
We all know that eating healthy you feel better, you look better, and if your an athlete probably perform better. But looking at it from a financial standpoint if you eat healthy you are going to have less doctors visits and less medications to buy for things like high blood pressure and type-2 diabetes.
So with less doctors visits and less medicine to buy you are going to have more money.
Isn’t more money enough of an incentive to try and be healthy?
So what are the blueprints for a good diet?
Simple fresh fruits and vegetables, raw meat that you have to cook yourself, nuts, milk and minimal to no carbs
The more you have to prepare your food the healthier it is going to be for you to eat.