Becoming an Athlete

My goal in training has always been to develop the physical qualities necessary to be an agile bodyweight athlete (rock climbing, ninja warrior stuff), with explosiveness (Highland Games), and stamina (MMA, boxing), with enough muscle to look like a badass (marginal bodybuilder). I have finally distilled it all down to the principles that make most sense to me, and are yielding consistent results. I'm going to lay out my principles as succinctly as I can, and hopefully in a logical order. 1. Follow the Old-school Split: I was a whole-body training zealot for years, till my deadlift got to 500+ lbs and my squat to 475.  Once I started getting heavy in those lifts and my snatches and cleans, my lower back just couldn't handle the constant exposure to training stimulus.  Also, my targeted muscles needed more time to recover.  Paul Carter recently wrote an article on why Push, Pull, Legs is the best split.  I use it.  It works. At the moment I'm cycling throug...

I rolled my ankle on an easy trail run Saturday morning.  It was pretty bad.  Lots of discoloration in my foot from the internal bleeding, lots of swelling, etc. etc. But like I posted on instagram, every injury is a two-fold opportunity to grow.  First and foremost, is discerning the lesson.  Every setback or injury affords me the opportunity to pause, assess myself, my motives, and discover a lesson.  Every lesson is different, so each one is an experience to fully embrace. Secondarily, it's an opportunity to keep my ego in check and rehab my way to a level of structural balance and strength that is greater than before the injury.  It exposes the weaknesses I've been ignoring and forces me to address it with precision and consistency. So for now, my plans of trail running, high frequency squatting or deadlifting, and lots of plyos will be shelved. I'm coming back to that plan in the spring with determination!!!!! For now, I'm doing what I call "D-...

I've trained so many times this week.  But the experiment led to some obvious conclusions after just one week. I can't train legs every single day, even when alternating from quad-dominant movements to hams/hips-dominant movements.  Every other day will be the max. Basic rowing is adequate for developing muscle, but it isn't enough to develop power and athleticism. I'm going to add snatch grip high pulls from blocks to every Pull day. The lack of eccentric loading should make recovery a non-issue. Dips are absolutely tanking my ability to press with any real load, but watching the reps go up during my 3 minute AMRAP sets is crazy motivating. 3 minute AMRAP sets are the absolute sickest way to do your accessory work.  45 reps of dips, or 21 or chinups, or 110 reps of alternating jump lunges in 3 minutes each builds stamina, conditioning, vasularity, and size. I'm gonna stick with these!!!!!

About 3-4 weeks ago I really tweaked my right trap.  I deadlifted what I'm calling my 40's PR: 485 x 1. A few days later, my trap started hurting was down into my lat and even down to my elbow.  It was incredibly painful but I worked around it. Now that I'm lifting like normal again, my pulling strength feels hampered by neural inhibition more than muscular pain.  To overcome this as quickly as possible, I'm moving to a high frequency program. For this month, I'm following a push / pull split, and will train 6 days per week. Every muscle group will be trained three times per week. Monday: push-1 Tuesday: pull-1 Wednesday: push-2 Thursday: pull-2 Friday: push-3 Saturday: pull-3 Volume within each session will be fairly low, but volume across a single week will be higher than a normal bodybuilding split.  Each of the three sessions have a bit of variety to ensure week to week progress. I'll write up a summary at the end of week 1 to see how it's goin...

I feels amazing to see myself getting bigger muscles, losing fat, and feeling my mobility improve and my stamina increase all at the same time. My lower back was starting to hit a wall from all the clean and snatch complexes, so now I'm starting my workouts with bodyweight circuits. I'm blowing through these and plan to do a few weeks of them while increasing reps per circuit, then sprinkling in a couple complexes each week. Yesterday I was able to deadlift 435 for 5 reps.  2 weeks ago I BARELY hit 3 reps with that weight. Today is the first time in my life I was able to curl 100 pounds as a work set. I worked up to 100 x 10 on ez-bar curl.  I'm so pleased with the steady inches of progress. God willing, there is no end in sight.  I just need to keep my ego in check and focus on consistent diet and sleep. Happy Friday!!!!

Certain authors have a way of presenting an idea that is simple, logical, and compelling to the point of getting me to examine my previous methods as well as my motives.  Paul Carter is one such author and trainer. The major concept I've embraced from him is chasing rep PRs before Weight PRs. I'm almost 42 and realize I'll never compete in a powerlifting competition, so chasing 1 rep maxes has very little relevance to my goals. Its high risk and low reward. Rather than trying to add more weight every week, I'll stick with a specific weight and just grind out more reps every week. The two methods I am using at the moment: Volume Accumulation programming: I'm not sure if there is a better name for it, but that's what I call it.  I can run this for 12 weeks with amazing results before I have to switch. I pick a weight I can manage for 10x5. Each week, I add 1 rep per set for a total of 10 extra reps.  By the end of 6 weeks, I've gone from 50 total to 100...

I am a tinkerer by nature.  I've built a career of consistently improving things, optimizing results for minimal effort. I have many shortcomings and weaknesses, but one of my strengths is to filter out all the distractions from a situation and zero in on the critical few that matter. I've realized the following limitations in myself: I'm too old to keep chasing weekly increases in poundages, so 5-3-1 isn't optimal for me I need LOTS of volume to elicit the metabolic stress necessary for my goals, so 5-3-1 isn't optimal for me When I follow typical periodization blocks, I lose the other qualities far too fast I've solved this by: Following a Push / Pull split that ensure I'm hitting everything twice a week. Always starting with a variety of barbell complexes, focused on Snatch or Clean.  The variety means I have to master movement before I can increase load. The nature of complexes adds significant metabolic stress with minimal time, and leav...