It All Starts With Your Feet and why I Dislike Machines

By | Published August 13, 2012

Pump up the Base!

Think about this for a minute.  When you are engaged in some sort of athletic activity, or even just walking down the street, what part of your body are you using the most?  Your feet.  The title of this post obviously gives that away, but it really isn’t some big secret either.  The issue is that very rarely do trainees think of it.

Your feet give you significant kinesthetic references about your body, its position, balance, and movement patterns to your brain.  Your brain reacts to these signals by engaging and disengaging muscular skeletal groups to help facilitate what you want your body to be doing.  Take as an example the basic squat.  Without the information given to your brain by what is happening with your feet, you probably would not even be able to keep your body in balace enough to do one rep.  If your feet weren’t in good contact with the ground, you would also loose a secondary function – the ability to use Newtons Third Law of Motion – and stand back up with the weight and finish the squat rep.  Your feet are the base of nearly every motion your body does when standing.  To further this point, consider how much of your life is spent on your feet even for more sedentary people.

Because of all this, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come to a reasonable conclusion that exercises and training done while standing has a more profound impact on strength training than work done while sitting, laying, or strapped into a machine.

This is made even more clear by taking a look at some of the major exercise movements.  The squat, deadlift, clean & jerk, snatch and overhead press are all done in a standing position.  Not only are these movements done while standing, they begin and end with the feet.  While the bench press is considered a major complex movement, it is omitted from this list for the obvious reason that it is preformed while laying on a bench and the main force is directed down through the arms and shoulders into the bench.  Additionally, I do not consider the bench press a functional movement, but that is for another article.

There is another major benefit from doing training on your feet.  When your brain gets the messages relayed to it from your feet, it works in the background to activate other smaller stabilizing muscles throughout your whole body to complete the motion.  This gives these stabilizing muscles a workout without you even having to do anything directly to them.  These are the same muscles that let you stand on one foot, or preform very complex movements with your body.  Without the input from your feet, this would be nearly impossible to replicate.

So what about the machines?

At this point you might be able to see where I am going with this.  If the best results are gained from training on your feet, what do you get from machine work where you are sitting or laying into a machine?  Don’t get me wrong, you may get your quads strong enough to rep the hell out of the stack on the leg extension machine, but what is that really doing for you?  How often are you in a sitting position, elevated above the floor, and forcefully extending your foot?  Additionally, with that machine in particular, you are now putting more shearing force on your knee than doing any other exercise.  Period.

Machines also ask your body to conform to them.  Their positioning of your body, their range of motion, and their range of weight combinations.  Plus they have so many different settings and adjustments, it is nearly impossible for someone with little to no biomechanical knowledge to get one set up in the proper way for YOUR body. Further, if you are not incorporating foot to ground contact, you have lost that kinesthetic awareness that we talked about earlier in the article. In fact, machines are so good at what they do, that you don’t even have to think about the motion at all.  You just need to apply force in a certain direction, and the machine does the rest for you.  That’s one of the reasons you may see people able to read the latest issue of Muscle and Fiction while cranking out reps on the leg curl machine.

Now I have to say that machines are fine for about 3 things.

  1. Very low weight, high rep rehab schemes.  Knee muscle, ligament and tendon strengthening after surgery is a good example.
  2. Assistance exercises. There may be some weak points in one of your major movements that you need to target directly, and this is where a machine might fit the bill.  Seated cable rows do a lot for the top end of a deadlift and posture correction.
  3. Cable machines.  These do put stress on your stabilizing muscles, and should be one of the first “go to’s” for assistance work since the machine works around you not you around the machine.  In fact, several of the products from Freemotion have you doing work while standing, so you are still working on your base while you are using the machine.  These would also be the machines I would use witha new trainee that has led a very sedentary life and is not yet ready for major compound barbell movements yet.

Remember that all this comes from a place of training for functional strength, not bodybuilding, aesthetic/social workouts or rehab.  We are concentrating on making your body the best machine to do work that it can be.  Not to look good with a fake tan, skin varnish, and a thong.

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Anaerobic Training – Rarely Done yet Always Needed

By | Published July 20, 2012

You must have an anaerobic training program

Anaerobic training is new to a lot of people, but it has been around for a very long time.  In short, “anaerobic” means “without oxygen.”  Therefore, if your activity is done without your muscles having to be supplied with oxygen, it is considered anaerobic.  As we all know, you need oxygen to survive, so you will have to “repay” that oxygen “debt” after working anaerobically.  You do this by breathing very hard and fast after doing such an activity.  It almost feels as if all your body wants to do is devote all its resources to breathing.

To further understand anaerobic training, you are going to need to know a bit more about the biochemistry working behind the scenes.  Movements in sports and training are classified as being driven by the ATP/CP energy pathway, the glycolytic pathway, or the oxidative pathway. The first two do not involve oxygen so they are considered anaerobic.  ATP/CP refers to the biochemicals in your muscle fibers that produce energy for your muscles to work (ATP = adenosine triphosphate CP = creatine phosphate). Glycolytic refers to the sugar stored in muscle tissue called glycogen.  When you run out of ATP and CP, your body starts using that glycogen to resynthesize ATP and CP so you can continue training or working.

OK, so why is this so great and why should I do it?

This is where things get a bit more interesting.  Anaerobic training greatly increases the body’s functional capacity for development of explosive strength, and the ability to maximize short-term energy systems.  Unless you are an endurance athlete, nearly everything you do in life, work and training is short-term.  Think of the last time you saw a football play go on for more than 30 seconds, or having to load something into the bed of a truck was more than a few seconds, or even your exercises at the gym.  All of these fall into the short-term category.  You also get the benefit of experiencing some major changes in your body as a result of anaerobic training.  Some of these include, increased size and number of fast twitch muscle fibers, increased tolerance to high levels of bood lactate, an increase in the enzymes involved in glucose breakdown (remember unused glucose is turned into fat by insulin), and an increase in resting levels of ATP, CP, creatine and glycogen stores.  If that isn’t enough, additional changes include an increase in growth hormone and testosterone.  I don’t need to remind anyone that growth hormone, testosterone, insulin, and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) are the four hormones directly responsible for muscle hypertrophy, and fat loss (especially adipose tissue – the “beer gut”).

One more point on this subject is that of calorie burn vs. fat loss. With aerobic training there is a concept out there called “The Fat Burning Zone.”  You probably hear about it all the time, and in fact, see specialty programs for it on many cardio machines like the treadmill and bicycles. The idea here is that the body burns a greater amount of fat during lower intensity aerobic exercise than it does at higher intensity work.  In truth, the body does use a higher percentage of fat calories (nearly 50%) during lower intensity aerobic training, whereas high intensity anaerobic training gets about 35% of it’s energy needs from fat calories.  On the surface this sounds great, and flies in the face of what has been said about anaerobic training.  However, when you read the research, and peel the onion a bit more you will discover that high intensity anaerobic training actually burns significantly more calories.  So while you are getting a smaller percentage of fat calories, you are drawing from a vastly larger caloric pool.  Put another way, would you rather have 50% of $100,000 or 35% of $1,000,000?  You also get the benefit of a higher EPOC effect.

Finally, as strength trainees, we need to be very aware of preserving and  growing our precious muscle fibers.  Long duration, low intensity aerobic activity actually has a deleterious effect on these fibers. In this situation, the endurance trainee uses fat as a major energy source.  That’s fine until you consider a few things.  ATP is the fuel of your muscles, but unfortunately it only lasts 4 – 50 seconds before it needs to be regenerated (as seen in the graphic above) requiring glucose.  Again, unfortunately for the athlete, free glucose is generally low and when its gone, the body resorts to an oxidative (meaning requiring oxygen) process to regenerate ATP.  These oxidative pathways are called the Krebs Cycle and electron transport.  These work just fine for converting fat into energy, and we know that the body stores fat as a reserve energy system.  The problem that comes into play is that the oxidative cycles take a very long time to regenerate ATP.  The fat molecules have to go through two extra steps to get back to ATP, and must be combined with another molecule carnitine that you body has limited stores of.  This is where the rub for strength trainees comes in.  Because the oxidative pathways take so much longer to complete their cycles, your body’s energy requirements can quickly overrun the process, forcing your body to get it’s energy from additional sources, and this means catabolism rears it’s ugly head.  Catabolism is a $2 word that simply mean eating muscle.  So if you have overrun the oxidative pathways, your body is going to eat all those wonderful muscle fibers you have worked so hard to develop and train.

Anaerobic training

As we have already gone over, anaerobic training is simply very high intensity, short duration training in an oxygen depleted state.  These intervals typically last from 1-4 minutes with a 3-10 minute recovery period depending on the activity performed.  Generally speaking, you can use just about any exercise in anaerobic training as long as you are able to accomplish the cycle/interval and maintain good form while giving 100% effort.  Below are three of my favorite examples.  Doing one of these sessions 2x/week right after your normal training routine is more than enough.

Tire Flip - Using a tire of reasonable weight for your strength level (400-500 lbs seems to fit the widest range of athletes), flip the tire as fast as you can 9 times.  Recover for 5 minutes and repeat the cycle up to 3 times.

Rowing - This little demon was introduced to me while training with my friend Jason Bergmann.  You will need a rower that measures distance and time for you.  In this exercise, you just need to row for 500 meters as hard and fast as you can.  500m should be completed in less than 2 minutes – preferably in the 1:30-1:45 range.  When you are done, roll around on the floor for about 5-7 minutes and do it again.  After that, you may want to curse the world and say some prayers, but all that will come out are grunts and moans.  Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.

Tabata - This workout will test you in ways you may never have thought of or witnessed in your worst nightmares.  It also happens to be the reason that the Korean speed skaters give Apollo Ono such a thorn in his side.  It is very hard, but very worth it.  You will want to die for up to 10 minutes after you are done, but you probably wont, and you’ll feel better in a while.  A Tabata series is simple enough on paper.  Just pick a movement that you want to do.  Some examples are sprints, low box jumps, burpees, thrusters, or goblet squats.  For this example, lets use burpees.  Have a friend use a stopwatch to time you.  At 100% effort, crank out as many burpees as you can for 20 seconds.  At the 20 second mark, have your friend call it out, and rest for 10 seconds.  When the 10 seconds are up, go after those burpees again – with the same intensity - for another 20 seconds followed by 10 more seconds of rest.  Repeat this until you have gone for 4 minutes total (work and rest).  When you are done, that cool feeling on the side of your face will be the floor.  In about 5 minutes you’ll be able to lift yourself into a sitting position.  After that all will be good.

In the end…

For the strength athlete/trainee anaerobic training has a significant place in just about any situation.  As with all forms of exercise, it is not a be all and end all, and certainly should not replace a solid strength training routine.  Great gains can be made, and fat will be burned off more efficiently with anaerobic training without sacrificing that hard earned strength and muscle to catabolism.  Anaerobic training is just one more tool for your toolbox.  Learn to deal with the aftermath, and you will love the results!

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Why I Think CrossFit Needs to go Away

By | Published June 26, 2012

I Know this is Going to Upset a lot of People

I have to stand up and say something.  I think CrossFit is dangerous, is poorly instructed, and steals people’s money.  To me the risks of CrossFit training significantly outweigh the benefits.  I know I am going to catch hell for writing this piece, and even some of my friends will vehemently disagree with me, but I need to say my piece.  I suggest you read what I have to say, then do something completely wild – do more research and come up with your own conclusion.

DISCLAIMER: I know that there are going to be exceptions to everything I am going to say here.  There are good CrossFit instructors out there.  They all don’t fleece their trainees, and most of all, at least those trainees are doing something to get off the couch and take responsibility for their health and well being.

What is this CrossFit thing you are Talking About?

I think its important to at least give a quick definition of what CrossFit is.  From their own website…

“Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.”

Wow.  Sounds pretty cool doesn’t it?  Read it again and look for the marketing hype.  Buzzwords like “combat”, “survival” and “life” really tap into what lots of people want to hear.  Heck, even Reebok is sponsoring the CrossFit Games and has a whole marketing campaign devoted to their line of CrossFit approved workout gear.  Slick.

Further reading of their website and listening to its practitioners and you will come away convinced that this is THE program for you.  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.  Read on, and like I said, do some research of your own (yes, I am asking you to think for yourself) and decide what’s best for you.  I’m going to give you my take on it.

Pros:

CrossFit isn’t all bad.  There are a few redeeming qualities.

  • It gets you off the couch
  • It gets your heart pumping and your lungs burning
  • It exposes your body to lots of different movements
  • There is an avenue for competition if you so desire to pursue it
  • High intensity interval training can help promote fat loss
  • Sweaty girls training in yoga pants (this can be a pro or con)

Many of these things I preach myself.  I am all for fitness and good health.  I love it when the sedentary get moving and take some responsibility for their bodies.  For some people, this may be their calling to a higher level of fitness.  I just happen to disagree with much of what the CrossFit industry teaches, how it is taught, and what the goals really are.

Where I Stand:

I’m sure that it is pretty clear by now that I am not a fan of CrossFit.  Personally, I think I have very valid reasons why I think it should go away.

One of my big complaints with CrossFit is the high repetition Olympic lifting.  FOrm is sacrificed to get as many reps in during an allotted period of time.  First of all to quote Mark Rippetoe “Olympic lifts are like gymnastics with a bar.”  The Oly lifts (snatch and Clean and Jerk) are very technical lifts.  Many, many trainees work for long periods of time with just a broomstick or very low weight just to get the form correct before actual heavy weight is used.  Further, there is a reason that Oly lifters limit their sessions to only 6-10 repetitions – they are very taxing exercises with a high degree of complication that if done incorrectly or when overtired lead to significant injuries.

This leads to what the CrossFit industry calls “Twenty Percent Slop.” Translated, this means that during a CrossFit workout, there is an allowable 20% form degradation while performing any given exercise or movement.  This is some very significant latitude that will (not possibly) cause injury.  What type of injury dempends of the exercise being done, but the majority are SLAP injuries to the shoulder or bicep tears.

Because CrossFit, by its very nature, is meant to put the trainee into a different workout every time, basic strength training concepts like periodization are completely ignored.  Essentially what this means is that at no point do you every really master any part of the workout or exercise.  On top of that, I will go right out on the thinnest limb and say that I have never met any CrossFit instructor that has ever competed in any of the sports that CrossFit takes their programs from, nor do I know of any instructors that hold certifications in even the most basic training that you would think would be appropriate like from USA Weightlifting or even CSCS. So, in the end you have an exercise routine with no programming, and with undertrained instructors. Great combination for disaster.

Eric Brown also speaks to another point about CrossFit that often gets swept under the rug.  Allow me to quote him…

“Contrary to the claims of Crossfit founder Greg Glassman, your resting heart rate has no bearing on your ability to pull a limit deadlift, and despite his claims, no one the history of Crossfit has pulled a 750 lbs. deadlift using Crossfit methods. Limit strength requires conditioning of the central nervous system, including improvements in inter- and intra-motor coordination as well as motor unit recruitment that do not occur unless they are trained regularly, and regularity is nothing that occurs in CrossFit.”

I’m not saying that to be strong you need to pull 750 (although that is pretty darn good), but Glassman makes many claims about this, and yet has shown any proof.  So, if you are a CrossFit trainee, my recommendation would be to never attempt a maximal or 1RM lift.  You are setting yourself up for failure at the least and injury at the worst.  Your body is not being trained for that.

If you are looking for a multi-disciplinary approach to strength training and GPP training would be to investigate Strongman training.  It is highly functional, has anaerobic and aerobic properties, and teaches you to use your whole body ans a machine to produce muscular strength and force.  Leave CrossFit to the lemmings.

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The Strength Training Curve – Get Ready for Reality

By | Published June 13, 2012

The Hard Truth

I know many of the strongest people in the world.  I have trained with one of them since 2008. They are at the top of the heap.  These are people that have devoted much of their lives to strength training and strength competition.  One friend of mine even trained on Christmas Day before any family events.  When you get to this point, just maintaining that level is a goal all its own, and to put an additional 5-10% on the bar in a year to 18 months is considered an amazing achievement.

Conversely, I have trained new strength athletes that have been able to double their squat and deadlift 1RM and put 20-30% on their bench 1RM in a matter of a few months.  What the hell is going on here?  To many a lot of this just doesn’t make much sense.

Enter The Strength Curve

The strength curve is an evil master.  She is there to sap the life right out of you.  Her whole goal in life is to make it longer and harder for you to make strength gains.  Trust me when I say that eventually she will slap you across the face and make you question all the hard work you have put in.  I am not talking about training plateaus here, but rather a point in your training where your perceived effort is nearing its highest level and you and the rapid strength gains you have made to this point are fading into the distant past.  Fortunately for most people, this comes far down the line and you will be expecting it and it wont matter because you are too hooked on being strong for it to derail you.  Before I go any further take a look at the chart below to get a better idea of what I am talking about.

Strength Curve

Strength Curve

As you can see from the rudimentary graph above, the new trainee enjoys significant gains during a very rapid time frame.  However, as time goes on, the curve flattens out rather dramatically.  Remember as I said before, this is different than a traditional training plateau.  Plateaus can be broken though by changing training techniques.  Unfortunately the strength curve is there in stone.

Let me explain it with an analogy that may help you better understand it.  Lets say that you are pushing a weighted cart up a slight incline.  In the beginning you are making great time and covering a lot of distance.  After a while, the grade increases and the effort you have to put into pushing the cart increases and slows you down.  You are still making good progress, but the pace is slower.  Further along the road there is another increase in grade, your effort increases again, this time your pace slows even more.  This continues, with the distance between grade increases shortens and the grade becomes even steeper.  Eventually you get to the point where it takes all that you have just to barely move the cart.  This is essentially the strength curve in action.

This Sucks. When Will it Happen to me?

The short answer is it is impossible to predict with any certainty.  There are just too many factors at play.  Genetics, hormones, nutrition, training, lifestyle, and many other elements all play a role.  In the end it happens to all of us.

There is a bit of good news.  Most strength trainees will not seriously butt heads with this evil vixen very hard.  The real flattening of that line happens far down the life of a strength athlete.  Look at a football player as an example.  Through high school their progress is full of steady increases, and as they move into the collegiate level they still continue their gains, just at a slightly slower pace.  Should they be good enough to make it to the NFL, they continue to gain throughout much of their carrer.  Assuming the player stays healthy and injury free, a 5th year NFL player barely resembles their collegiate self.

Don’t Stop!

Don’t let this get you down and impact your training.  By the time all this kicks in you will more than likely be one of the strongest people you know.  When it does happen you’ll know what to do about it, how to handle it, and adjust your training accordingly.  The important thing is that you are strong enough for just about anything that life will throw at you.

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Getting Started – 8 Weeks of Strength Training 101

By | Published June 10, 2012

OK, Lets Get Going!

Just a minute there. Sit back, relax and read on.  There are a few things you need to know before you go charging in to your local gym and start throwing around the iron.  If you are using this program, I am going to make the assumption that you are starting from the beginning.  First off, congratulations!  It’s great that you have made the decision to get stronger.  You body is going to thank you, and you will be full of pride with each milestone you make.

All that said, lets talk about the program, equipment, and the exercises you are going to be doing.

Disclaimer:

I am not a doctor.  I probably have never met you before.  I have never done any type of assessment of you, or your body’s movement.  I have no real way of knowing if this is going to harm you.  I strongly recommend that you see your doctor and have a check up before you begin this or any other training regimen.  There might be some underlying problem that even you are unaware of.  Strength training is great, and can cure many ills, but it can also exacerbate other medical issues.  The idea is that you get better, not worse.  So please make sure you are in reasonably good health before you begin.

Also, if you are unfamiliar with any of the exercises or lifts mentioned here, seek out the advice of a certified personal trainer, or someone you know that is serious about their training.  While the lifts are not overly technical, they do require some instruction and practice to be done efficiently and safely.  Teaching you the lifts is out of the scope of this article.

Equipment:

This is probably the easiest part.  You are just going to need some very fundamental equipment.  The added bonus is that what you are going to use in this program will be the same equipment that will make up the core of your needs for all your strength training form here on out.  Most comercial gyms have what you need, but there are those that don’t.  If your gym doesn’t have these rudimentary items, find a new gym.  This is not Zumba, P90X or Body Pump.  This is strength training.  You may have to weed your way through a plethora of machines to get to the free weight section, but that is a good thing.  Find a good efficient path past these contraptions – they aren’t menat for strength training, and with only some very few exceptions, you wont be using them.

Squat Rack & Barbell:

squat rackWelcome to your new best friend – the squat rack.  As you progress in your training, you are going to be spending more and more time in here.  The exercises that can be performed in it are nearly endless.  In fact, you could do just about everything you would ever need to do in here.  It truly is that versatile.  If you plan on putting together a home gym, this is the first piece of equipment to by after a barbell and weights.

A good rack has lots of holes to adjust the safety pins, and j-hooks (the j-hooks hold the bar as seen in the picture).  It should be sturdy, well constructed, and in a good state of repair.  Having it bolted to the ground is not completely necessary, but a good safety feature.  Some gyms have a weight racking system on the back of the rack for your convenience.  You should be able to stand in the rack with your feet wider than shoulder width and not be touching the base.

Take careful note of the safety pins.  They are there to save you should there be a mishap.  A good rule of thumb is that they should be adjusted to just above your mid thigh.  You may need to raise or lower them when you begin squatting so that they do’t interfere with you getting deep enough when you squat, but still allow you to set the bar on them and crawl out from underneath should you have to.

As you can see in the image, there is also a barbell and some weights.  All of the work you are going to be doing is going to be done with a barbell.  The barbell and the squat rack are symbiotic.  One cannot work without the other.  The bar should be straight and have 2″ diameter end on if for the weights.  Some bars have knurling on the left and right side where you would put your hands, while others have a third, narrower band, in the middle where the bar rides on your back.  Either will work just fine, but if you can get the bar with the middle knurling.  It is assumed that all bars of either type weigh 45 lbs.  Keep that number in your head so that you can accurately calculate the weights you will be lifting.

If you are going to train by yourself, this is also the best place for your to bench press.  All you need to do is move a bench into the rack, lower the j-hooks and safety pins and you are all set to go.  I would go so far as to say that this is in fact the ideal set up for all your training over the next 8 weeks.  Your gym may have dedicated stations for the bench press, but as a beginner, I highly recommend that you bench in the squat rack for safety reasons.  Should you lose control of the bar, the safety pins will save you. Just make sure that they are set so that the bar can touch your chest unimpeded, but the bar cannot touch your throat.

On to the Program:

So you have found the free weight section of your gym, and picked out a squat rack that you like.  There are just a few more items we need to clean up before we begin.

What this program is not:

  • This is not for “firming and toning”.  There is no such thing.
  • This is not going to give you a Jersey Shore body.  Do you really want to look top heavy and if the wind blows too hard you are going to fall over?
  • This is not Muscle and Fiction’s template to huge bulging arms.
  • This program is not easy.  You are not going to be able to read your favorite magazine while doing it, and you are going to sweat.

What this program is:

  • This program will allow you to learn the core lifts – squat, bench press and deadlift – that will be key to all your  future training.
  • It will start your body on the road to more advanced training.
  • It will bring you very recognizable strength gains.
  • It will give you a taste of what you can accomplish over an extended training program.

The Breakdown

This introductory strength training program is broken down into two 4 week cycles.  You are going to be training 3 times a week for 8 total weeks.  Once you have some experience with it, you should be able to accomplish each workout in less than an hour.  Before you can start there is just a little work that you need to do first.  You are going to have to determine what your “1 rep max” is for each of the three lifts.  I strongly suggest you enlist the help of a training partner or a personal trainer to help you with this.  Since you are new, your form for the lifts is not going to be the best, and you probably don’t know where to start.

The process to determine your maxes is relatively straight forward. Let’s use the bench press as an example since it is a lift that many people already know at least at a rudimentary level.  Begin with just the bar and do 10-12 reps concentrating on controlling the bar and getting your body warmed up.  Do not just see how fast you can get your 12 reps done, but actually concentrate on what you are doing.  After that first set of 10-12 add a little weight to the bar.  How much will depend on how heavy the empty bar felt to you.  Don’t try and go for any records yet – you are still warming up.  This time do 8- 10 reps.  Now rest for at least a minute or two.  From here on out you will only be doing sets of three reps each.  At the end of each set, you will rest for at least a full minute (preferably two) and add more weight to the bar.  Add weight in small increments of no more than 10-15%.  When you get to the point where your training parter has to just barely help you get that third rep record that weight.  Follow the same pattern for the squat and the deadlift also.  If you are going to do this testing in the same day, I suggest that you do squat first, then bench, then deadlift.  The squat and deadlift are a bit taxing and work many of the same muscle groups, so it is best to get rest in between for more accurate results.

Now you are going to have to calculate your 1 rep max for each of these lifts.  Don’t worry, this part is completely painless.  It is possible to get a pretty accurate determination of your 1 rep max with some math.  Fortunately there are many websites that will do the work for you.  In fact, here is a link to one that will not only calculate your 1 rep max, but will help you fill in the tables below the comprise your workouts.  On the left side of the page, enter the max weight you lifted and the number of reps, and magically the rest of the page will fill in for you, showing not only your calculated 1 rep max, but what the weights are as a percentage of your 1 rep max (we call a 1 rep max a 1RM for short).  Some of the weights that will be listed may be odd numbers.  Round them all down to the next 5 lb increment.  For example, if 60% of your 1RM is shown as 143 lbs, round down to 140 lbs.  You may even want to print that page for reference in filling out the following table.

First 4 week cycle workout plan

Exercise Reps sets Weight
Squat 12 2 20%
Squat 10 1 30%
Squat 8 1 40%
Squat 4 2 60%
Bench Press 12 2 20%
Bench Press 10 1 30%
Bench Press 8 1 40%
Bench Press 4 2 60%
Deadlift 12 2 20%
Deadlift 10 1 30%
Deadlift 8 1 40%
Deadlift 4 2 60%

The table above represents your workout for the first 4 week cycle.  In the weight column, replace the percentages with appropriate weight that you calculated earlier.  Give yourself at least a minute rest between sets, and 3-5 minutes between exercises.  For best results, do this workout Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week.  When loading the bar, remember to take into consideration that the bar will weigh 45 lbs.  If the weight percentages in the right most column are less 45 lbs or less, just use the empty bar.

I will warn you that if you are new to strength training you are going to be sore.  This is your body’s way of thanking you for putting work into it.  Don’t worry, it does get better over time, but the first few weeks are going to be taxing on your body and its systems.  Make sure you drink lots of water during the day, and don’t miss any meals.  It is in this first 4 weeks that you need to start thinking about fueling your body rather than feeding it.  Plenty of water, high protein, and complex carbs are going to be very beneficial to your workouts, and to your recovery.

The next 4 week cycle

Save the table above.  You are still going to be using it for the next 4 weeks, but slightly differently.  By now you may already be noticing that the workouts are getting a bit easier, the soreness is significantly reduced, and you are generally feeling better.  Most of all, you have had 4 weeks to concentrate and work on your form for the exercises.  Form can not be stressed enough. If you have sloppy form, at the least you will be cheating yourself, at worst you risk an injury that will delay all your training plans.

As I just mentioned, we are going to change things up a bit for the next 4 weeks.  In this cycle, you are still going to do the workout above with no changes to the table.  This time, however, you are going to do the workout from the past cycle on weeks 2 and 4 of this cycle.  For the sake of this program we are going to call these recovery weeks.  On weeks 1 and 3 you are going to spend one of each of your three days doing only one exercise; Monday squats, Wednesday bench press, and Friday deadlift.  On these days you are going to be lifting slightly heavier weights than you did before so it is imperative that you rest at least 2 minutes between sets.  You will also note that the number of reps has declined slightly for each exercise.  It is important that you have a good warmup leading into these lifts.  Spend some time stretching and walking on the treadmill – get up a bit of a sweat before you start.

Monday

Exercise Reps Sets Weight
Squat 10 2 30%
Squat 6 1 40%
Squat 6 1 50%
Squat 4 1 60%
Squat 3 1 70%
Squat 2 2 80%

Wednesday

Exercise Reps Sets Weight
Bench 10 2 30%
Bench 6 1 40%
Bench 6 1 50%
Bench 4 1 60%
Bench 3 1 70%
Bench 2 2 80%

Friday

Exercise Reps Sets Weight
Deadlift 10 2 30%
Deadlift 6 1 40%
Deadlift 6 1 50%
Deadlift 4 1 65%
Deadlift 3 1 75%
Deadlift 2 2 85%

Note that the workouts for Monday and Wednesday follow a similar reps, sets, weight pattern.  But look closely at Friday’s workout.  Here you are going to be deadlifting with a similar reps and sets scheme, but the weight percentages change the last 4 sets – they are slightly higher.  This if for two reasons. 1) You will have the whole weekend to recover and 2) it can be argued that the deadlift is the most all encompassing and most beneficial exercise.  Think about it for a moment.  You were built to pick up heavy things.  Of the three exercises you are doing, the deadlift is the most functional in the real word.  Additionally, it uses nearly all of the muscle groups in your body.  If I had only one exercise I could use for the rest of my life it would be the deadlift.  Because of all this, we are going to work it a bit harder.  Your body will thank you for it.

Remember that during these last 4 weeks that you are going to be alternating weeks between the full body version, and the one lift per day version.

Some final thoughts

After reading all this and making the decision to peruse some strength training, you are probably like me and much of the population – you are ready to jump right in and go for it!  That’s great!  But be careful to remember that this is a process.  Training like this is not at all like what you see on late night infomercials of between the pages of some magazine.  This is real life, not fiction.  You are going to hurt at times.  You are going to be tired.  Don’t worry about that, it all gets better the longer you stick with it.  Don’t be tempted to run to your local supplement store and drop a ton of money on heavily marketed supplements that promise insane results – they don’t deliver.  For these 8 weeks all you are going to need is plenty of rest, quality food, and lots of water.  The rest will come with time.

One last thing – and this is the really cool part – make sure to keep a record of your starting weights.  Then at the end of these 8 weeks, take a week off and retest your 1RM to see how you compare to when you started.  My bet is that you are going to be really surprised.  I would love to predict what kinds of gains you are going to make, but that varies from individual to individual, how hard you trained, how well you stuck with the program, and if you fueled and rested your body properly.  Strength training gives back all that you put into it.  Give it your best, and your results will be great.  Phone in your workouts and eat like a broke teenager, and you are in for a long painful haul.  The choice is really yours.  You are in total control.  Good luck!

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