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.

Strength training for once I get my back straightened out

Ok, so my back has obviously been having its problems but I keep getting more and more excited about working out the closer I become to getting this thing straightened out.

So here is where my head at right now as far as exercising goes.

I have no doubt talked about the 4-hour body in previous entries and have mentioned the book Building a Gymnastics Body. Well I am starting to think that I want to combine some of the different things discussed each book.

My goal is to build up my strength and flexibility to the maximum I can achieve while maintaining my current body weight (or at least around it plus or minus about 5lbs due to Creatine supplementation).

The diet part is going to be tricky, I have never been one to eat very unhealthy but I am probably going to have to start restricting my diet in order to raise my natural testosterone levels. That means lots of eggs and red meat for me. In the morning when I wake up it will be eggs and at night it will be eggs before bed. Meh!

Also, I am beginning a supplementation program that includes drinking a mixture of cayenne pepper and water, fish oil, creatine ethyl ester and multi-vitamins. Most of those things are pretty self-explanatory except for the cayenne/water mixture. This combo will be taken for its thermogenic nature and will allow me to lower my body fat.

I am not overly concerned about being ripped so my diet wont be some insanely complicated thing where I watch every carb, count every calorie and have a freak out about raising insulin from eating to much fruit.

Next thing I will be making sure to do is to make all my bathes cold bathes because this again raises testosterone as well lowers body fat.

As far as the exercise program goes I intend to get up at around 5 a.m. M-F before I have to go to work so I can do a little egoscue, kettlebell swinging and yoga.

After work I intend to do that superhuman strength training protocol discussed in The 4-Hour Body. Which basically is doing bench and dead lift three times a week. The way this is done is low reps and long rest periods between sets.

I want to figure out a way to include squats into this plan but I'm not sure how I am going to do this. I was thinking since I work out at home that I could do low rep squat work by doing one zercher dead lift and then proceed to squats for reps before setting the bar down.

After all this lifting I intend to do the work out of the day from the gymnastic bodies website to build some foundational gymnastic strength. I say I intend to because the super human protocol is designed in order to allow the athlete to do weight training along with their sport specific training.

Once again I'll end this with some yoga.

Finally, assuming I am not completely exhausted from all this I want to run a little on weekends either normal or retro running depending on how I feel.

That is the plan lets hope that I can stick to it, but first I just need this back to heal.

Self Experimentation Through Gymnastics and Yoga

As of late I have been trying to improve my general fitness and strength using both two things Gymnastics conditioning and Yoga.

I have never been a particularly large person let alone even very strong, what I am though is fairly athletic. For the last few years I have spent most of my attempts at becoming more fit in the weight room trying to get bigger and stronger to match my athleticism .

To give an example I went from 135lbs at the end of my senior year of high school and graduated college with a body weight hovering around 175 to 180lbs, with my heaviest being 185. I always thought if I could reach 200lbs then I would finally be big enough to start making some significant strength gains but through the years of trying to get stronger and bigger I have managed to get a few injuries that took me months to recover from.

The first major one that I can think of is a groin strain I suffered last year likely due to heavy front squats or pressing a beer keg half-full of water over my head.

Now I currently have a pretty bad back injury that I can't quite trace the source of but is most likely due to in one way or another trying to lift something heavy with my back.

So, needless to say I haven't really done much lifting of any sort to work towards my goals in the strength and weight department. But, that doesn't mean that I have given up working out as of late I have been putting a lot of my focus into gymnastics conditioning and Yoga.

It starts with Yoga, I took a yoga class my final semester of college to try and see if I could straighten out some of the kinks in my back for the most part it seemed to work but didn't really cure much of my back pain, of course during this time I was still lifting which was probably a big mistake.

I started rehab for my back and I would leave feeling great but would walk out of the athletic trainers room and into weight room, again I wouldn't recommend this.

One thing I learned that while doing rehab almost all of the exercises I was doing was largely done with body weight with medium sized rep ranges with only about 2 sets. Now, this way of rehab I think would be great if I was someone who wasn't very active already but unfortunately I am extremely active and fit.

So my solution was to get a book called Building a Gymnastics Body which you can buy off of the Gymnastics Bodies website and start utilizing some of the exercises out of that book.

The book has become my new bible for all thing body weight exercises and actually offers some new challenges to test my strength in and some great variations to classics like the push up and dips.

Alongside gymnastics training I have added a much bigger focus on Yoga and stretching and it has now become something I do daily when I wake up after a light warm up.

My results for the most part have been pretty positive, I'm not 100%, but I am starting to feel like I am coming closer to feeling healthy again.