How much money do I need for food?

I have already made a similar article to this, which you can check out here. However, this one is going to be more focused on the hard limits of how cheap you can make your diet, and how it becomes exponentially harder to eat all your food when you approach the extreme end of low cost dieting. I'm well aware that most people who visit this site are looking for ways to save money. That's basically the whole premise of what we do here.

This article has been sitting in draft for months, if not years. I forgot I even wrote it. And upon discovering it I decided I might as well release it. It is, perhaps a little rough, and I'm not bothering to put in pictures, or to flesh it out further. I believe I was going to talk about supplements as well but that will have to be for another time. I've got some new supplement review articles coming in the next few months, after I give them all a good testing. I'm waiting for Rogue to re-stock their bare steel Ohio Power Bars, and then I'll pick one up, literally, and let you know what I think of it. I don't have any new projects because I simply don't need anything else at the moment. So that's what's in the works.

The cost of food is something many people don't pay much attention to when thinking about sports or bodybuilding. But it's really no different than buying any other luxury item. If you want to upgrade your house you're going to have to buy the materials and labor to do so. And while we always think about the labor it takes to upgrade our body, the cost of the materials is often overlooked. You already have to eat to survive. But if you want to eat to be strong, it's going to cost you more. Many people find that it costs quite a bit more. Even if you eat the cheapest foods available it's still going to cost something.

My hard answer to the question, "how much do i need to spend on food?" is $120 a month if you're a small guy. Since protein is the most costly nutrient, the bigger you are, the more you need, and the more you will spend. Calories, in general, are cheap. When I say you need $120 that doesn't mean that is the ideal amount. It is the absolute rock bottom amount. It is the point where if you don't have that much I will tell you to devote all your time to getting it before you worry about going to the gym. If you can't pay for gas, you don't need a car. This is the price of admission. It's the worst seat in the stadium. But if you don't have that minimum amount to spend you don't even have to worry about the game because you're not getting in anyway.

PROTEIN

Protein is the raw material from which your body will build new useful tissue. The question isn't do you need protein but how much protein do you need. I think people will fight forevermore with that topic. We can all agree that there is a minimum amount of protein needed, and if you go below this you are definitely fucking up your progress in the gym. As to what that limit is, I don't think we will ever all agree. However, since this is an article discussing budget let's be conservative and take a lower end figure as our mark.

There have been studies that basically conclude that anything above 0.8 grams of protein per lb. of lean body mass is "excessive." Now this doesn't mean it's useless. What they are saying is that it won't produce more protein synthesis, and thus translate into more muscle. To make things easier, let's forget about the lean mass part of the equation. I will assume you're not obese and thus it won't make a huge deal. So let's say 0.8 grams of protein per lb. of bodyweight is our mark. I'm not saying this is correct. I'm not saying that more protein won't build more muscle. But for the purpose of this article, let's assume that's true. This is what the studies say. And the biggest limiting factor with protein is that it is the most expensive macro nutrient. So if you're really trying to keep costs down you have to keep your protein down as well.

The following are the cheapest sources of protein. Most of them are not lean since it usually costs the same or less to get fat with your protein it simply becomes cost effective to do so. That way you don't also have to spend more money to get your dietary fat, which is necessary, just so you know.

Frozen Ground Turkey
At Aldi, this costs $1.70 a lb. It is not lean. It has 17g of fat and 17g of protein per 4 oz. This comes out to $0.63 for 25g of protein and you get 25g of fat to go with it.

Fresh Chicken Breast
This often gets to $2 a lb. and sometimes a bit lower. i've seen it as low as $1.70. However, I'll use $2 a lb. as the figure because that is common enough to get without too much trouble. You do have to buy the family size but it freezes well so there's no issue there. This is a lean source but you can always add butter to bring the fat up for a fair comparison to fatty meats. 4oz. will have 25g of protein and a few grams of fat at the most. It will cost about $0.50. If you want to add butter to get the fat up to 25g (for the sake of comparison) it would cost $0.66.

Eggs
The price of eggs can fluctuate throughout the year. There was a period of time when they were under a dollar a dozen in my area last year. Aldi is generally the cheapest place for eggs. They seem to be predictably around $1.80 a dozen so that's the figure I'll use. 4 eggs will give you 24g protein and 20g of fat for $0.58.

Whole Milk
Milk is usually a little cheaper than this but you can get it all day long, any day of the week for $3 a gallon so that's the figure I'll use. 24oz will get you 24g of protein 24g of fat, and 36g of carbs for $0.60. Since whole milk is not more expensive than skim milk you might as well get the free fat/calories if you need them.

Pinto Beans
These cost about 90 cents a lb. if you buy the dry beans. 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans will get you 24g protein, 42g of carbs, minimal fat, and 24g of fiber for $0.45.

Whey Protein Powder
I get mine from TrueNutrition.com. I am partial to the plain unsweetened, unflavored variety. I typically get whatever is the cheapest whey at the time. I don't care how much fat or carbs is in the mix. I just factor in the cost of protein per serving of 25 grams of protein. Remember that some products have less than 25g of protein per "serving" so you have to do the math and make things equal to get the real story. The nice thing is, TrueNutrition has the nutrition facts for every product right there so you can figure out exactly how much it costs. And the protein at TrueNutrition is always 15 servings per lb. There are no gimmicks or games. So if one whey blend has 19g of protein per scoop, and another has 24, simply multiply each by 15 to find out how many grams of protein you get in a lb. of the stuff. Then divide the cost of 1 lb. by the number of grams of protein. Then, if you want, multiply the result by 25, and that will tell you how much 25g of protein costs. Hypothetical example:

19g of protein per serving, cost per lb. $8.50.
19 multiplied by 15 = 285g of protein per lb.
$8.50 divided by 285 = 0.0298 (basically 3 cents) per gram of protein
0.0298 multiplied by 25 = 0.7456 (75 cents) for 25g of protein.

This is completely hypothetical, I pulled the 19 grams and $8.50 figures out of my ass. This, of course, doesn't factor in shipping charges, so how ever much shipping is, divide that evenly among how many lbs. you are ordering. If shipping was $20 and you were ordering 20 lbs. add $1 to the cost of each lb. then do the calculations above. But if you're debating which type of protein to get, you don't have to factor in shipping to do that comparison. If both proteins have the same amount of protein per serving you don't have to do any math at all.

In any case, I've rambled longer than I intended there. Whey protein typically costs around 50 to 70 cents for 25 grams. It really depends on the source and how much you order. This makes it comparable to the foods listed above. However, it is also a lean source. As such, i wouldn't necessarily use it as a main source of nutrition. But it does have its place as a convenience food. And it's certainly cheap enough to use on a budget. But it's definitely not necessary.

Notes about these foods:
First, this obviously isn't a comprehensive list of protein. I tried to include only the cheapest options. I daresay I've missed some. I'm thinking at the right time of year pork roasts could get very economical. You also have to factor in the bone weight. That's an experiment I haven't run yet so I can't say for sure how they compare. The price often gets down close to $1 per lb. so I'm going to unofficially say it would be comparable, if not cheaper than the sources listed above.

Also, people often talk about beans as though they are dirt cheap. In fact, they are not much cheaper than any of the other sources listed above. So if you like beans, that's cool, but you're not saving a lot of money compared to milk, eggs, chicken, or turkey. However, it should be noted that beans have a lot of fiber, which ultimately limits how much you can eat since you don't want your fiber to be insanely high. Beans also have carbs, but most of the other protein sources have fat, which beans do not. So in a comparison of calories it's basically a wash. 100 calories of carbs costs about 5 to 10 cents. 100 calories of a decent fat, like butter, costs about 8 cents. And it's worth noting that dry beans require you to soak them, then cook them. And sometimes you still don't get every single bean properly cooked. It's annoying to bite into a crumbly half cooked bean. Maybe I just suck at cooking them, but I don't care to use them as a main food source since they aren't that much cheaper anyway.

FAT

Like it or not, you do need some fat. Most people will recommend between 50 and 100 grams a day. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with going higher but you really don't want to go too low. If you are efficient you should just choose sources of protein that already have fat. That way, by the time you get your protein requirements you'll also have enough fat. As such, I don't really give too much though to fat since I don't seek out lean sources of protein. But if it was an issue, butter is about the cheapest source of decent fat that I know of. It costs about 8 cents for 11g of fat (100 calories). There are, of course, other sources of fat like avocados and coconut oil and all that, but that is starting to get into "health food" territory. Since this is about budget dieting, you should just piggyback your fat onto your protein and thus spend no extra money on fat.

However, you should understand that many other cheap sources of calories often have bad fats (vegetable oils) and you could rack up a considerable amount of fat that way, so that is something to keep an eye on. Ramon Noodles, for example, do have 14g of fat mostly from vegetable oils in one package.

CALORIES

I say calories instead of carbs because once protein and fat are squared away that's all that really matters. We can endlessly complicate and refine, but that is beyond the scope of this article. Carbs are by far the cheapest source of calories. So in theory you would get your needed protein and fat and then use the rest of your calories on carbs. That would be the cheapest way to approach it. I'm not saying I endorse this method, so keep reading for the full story, and the ultimate point of this article.

Ramon Noodles
I'm starting with this for two reasons. It is the poster boy for cheap food, although it's not as cheap as it used to be. And most people trying eat on a budget have had this before so they have an idea of the serving size. One packet is 380 calories. I don't consider protein from these kinds of sources to be of good quality so I don't count it. Ramon also has 14g of fat per package so that's worth noting (it's vegetable oil so not good).At Aldi you can get a 12 pack box for $2.10. This comes out to 2,171 calories per dollar.

Pasta
Pasta is pretty much 89 cents a lb. but if you buy it from Aldi in a 2 lb. box it's only $1.50. This comes out to 2,133 calories per dollar. And you also don't get all the fat from vegetable oil, like with Ramon noodles.

White Rice
20 lb. bags of this can be had for $11 any day of the week at my local Meijer, which is a big chain grocery store. This equates to 2,948 calories per dollar.

Homemade Biscuits
One of the easiest recipes ever. It's essentially flour, butter, salt, baking powder, and water or milk. It comes out to about 2,050 calories per dollar.

Kool-Aid
If you buy the generic packets at aldi you get 20 for $1.50. If you mix it to full strength it takes 1 cup of sugar, 1 flavor packet, and 2 liters of water. This will cost 29 cents and have about 100 calories per 8oz. Compare this to soda and premixed artificial juices. It's 1/3 of the price. This comes out to 2,670 calories per dollar. I personally like lemonade mixed to half strength, which means makes double the amount but gives half the calories per glass, of course. My main use for this is to add whey powder and make a protein shake.

Cookies
As far as junk food goes duplex sandwich cookies (generic Oreos, usually with a vanilla cookie on one side and chocolate on the other) are the cheapest source of calories I've yet to find. At Walmart a pack is $1.40 which makes them 2,428 calories per dollar. They do, however, have 2.33 grams of fat (vegetable oil) per cookie.

Notes about these foods:
Clearly I'm not going to list every possible cheap source of calories. We can see a general pattern developing. 2000 to 3000 calories per dollar is approaching the limit of how cheap you can make things in the average non-city locale in the U.S. This bring us to the main points of this article.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Let's say you're 150 lbs. By our low standards that means you'll want at least 120 grams of protein per day. Looking at the foods above we can see that a 25 gram serving of quality protein is costing about 60 cents. Since you'll want 5 of those a day (not that I'm saying you need to split it that way) you'll spend $3 just on your protein. If you chose wisely you should be able to get your 50 to 100 grams of fat from that as well. So then this, in theory, just leaves calories left. Best case scenario, you got about 1400 calories from your fat and protein intake.

How many calories you need is an individual thing. For our hypothetical situation let's just say you need 4,000 a day to fuel your progress in the gym. I'm not saying YOU need this much. You need however much it takes to gain weight at a rate that you feel is appropriate. In any case, it won't effect the bottom line too much since cheap calories are cheap.

In this scenario you would need an additional 2600 calories. The absolute cheapest, that I've found, would be rice, at 2900 calories per dollar. But let's just take an average from all those cheap foods. The average is 2,352 calories per dollar. So you would spend  $1.10 to get your 2600 calories. This brings your daily total to $4.10.

Keep in mind this is the theoretical absolute cheapest you could make things, on average. This requires you to eat the cheapest protein, which isn't too big a deal because there are multiple sources. And even harder is the fact that it requires you to eat only the cheapest sources of calories: pasta, rice, and other flour/sugar based items.

Yet the hardest aspect of this is the fact that 2600 calories of these cheap foods is quite a bit of food. To give you an idea, this is what 2600 calories of each food amounts to:

46 "oreo" cookies
13 cups of cooked rice
About 13 biscuits
Just shy of 7 packs of Ramon Noodles
728g (dry) of pasta, this is the (volume) equivilant of 8.5 packs of cooked Ramon

4000 calories of any food is going to be "a lot" for most people in a day. However, variety is the key that makes such a thing moderately easy. If you opt for only the cheapest food sources things become much more difficult. Because while you may be able to eat 2600 extra calories, in addition to your meat and dairy, you might not be able to eat 13 cups of rice, or 7 packs of Ramon, or nearly 2 lbs. of pasta (dry weight). So that is definitely something to keep in mind.

Of course, not everyone needs 4000 calories a day. just because that is what I seem to need at the time, even when pretty sedentary, doesn't mean that's what you need. Maybe you need 3000. It seems like some people need even less. Who are the lucky ones? The guys who "get to" eat 5000 calories a day, or the guys who "don't have to" eat but 2500 calories. The answer is, whichever one you're not, it seems. As they say, the grass isn't greener on the other side, it's green where you water it. In any case, if you need less calories you'll need to eat less food, and thus it will cost less money. But it won't cost that much less, since 75% of our budget goes to protein anyway. And as you get bigger and heavier you'll need more protein, and thus your cost will go up.

But the main point of this article is the most obvious.

YOU STILL NEED MONEY

You can't just go to the gym, eat like a normal skinny kid, and expect to turn into Thor. $4 a day doesn't sound like much, but it's all relative. A strong, aesthetic, functional body is not free. You have to properly nourish yourself. This article talks nothing about health and micro nutrients. I've said nothing about vegetables, fruits, or supplements yet. Just talking on a macro nutrition scale you need a bare minimum of $112 a month for food, assuming you are going for 125g protein and 4000 calories a day. Unless you are particularly small, your protein needs aren't going to be much less than that. Your calorie needs might be a bit lower but that will save you what, 50 cents a day? Fair enough, maybe you only need $100 a month right now, but as your protein needs go up as you grow the food bill will also grow soon enough.

Since you're on Homemade Strength I'm going to assume there's a good change you don't have a gym membership. That saves you money. Still your time is wasted if you don't properly feed yourself. there's no point in having a car if you can't afford gas. Weight lifting is not free. Growing big and strong is not free. It's going to cost you money to build the body you want. Of course it costs everyone to simply stay alive but it costs even more if you want to "upgrade" your body into the beast that it can become. Although I'm calling $120 a month the starting point, that doesn't mean it's "good" or ideal. It is simply theoretically possible. You can purchase enough calories and protein to see progress in the gym with that amount of money, depending on where you live, of course.

So if you can't come up with that much money, your first step is to find a way to do that.

Disclaimer:

Let me clarify that I do not subscribe to this way of eating. I'm currently getting over double the protein that those studies recommend a day. At this moment, I've got about 10 lbs. of whey in the cupboard, over 20 lbs. of chicken wings plus whole chicken in the freezer. There is literally no room to fit anything more in there. Not to mention a 14 lb. turkey in the fridge; and the holidays are over so that's not for the family. Clearly I'm not trying to skimp by on minimal protein. But nevertheless the studies say what they say. I'm just being candid. This article was a theoretical analysis, not necessarily a recommendation, and certainly not a description of my diet.

I'm simply making the point that if you are literally scrapping by, eating on $20 a week, and trying to get swole, it's probably not going to happen. As I said, make it $30 a week and you can play the game. But more is better, and ideally I'd like to recommend more like $75. This is a lot if you're pulling in, say $1600 a month, which isn't uncommon these days. But you better have your priorities in order before you start bitching about this. If you don't have $300 for good food you don't have $5 for a caramel macchiato everyday. And you certainly don't have $500 to early upgrade your iphone 5 to an iphone 6, as if anyone else gives a shit about your phone.  Of course, not everyone strapped for cash is making bad choices. But math remains a cruel whore, and unfortunately the price is non-negotiable.

Until next time,

-Carl

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The Fifth Movement, The Key to Tactical Strength

Strength training is essentially loaded movement.  A complete strength training program will include all of the basic fundamental movement patterns.  Strength and conditioning coach Dan John likes to classify the fundamental human movements into the following categories: 

1. push
2. pull
3. squat
4. hip hinge
5. fifth movement.  

The fifth movement is a bit undefined because it varies considerably.  Dan John sometimes calls the fifth movement “everything else.”  Sometimes it consists of loaded carries, or pushing a sled, maybe ab wheel roll outs.  Dan sometimes refers to it as “everything else.”  This is because there are so many different types of movements that are possible that it becomes hard to characterize.  People do OK with understanding the first four movements but there is often considerable confusion about the fifth movement.  I would like to lay out my idea of what the fifth movement consists of and why it is so important for tactical athletes. 

I initially replaced “fifth movement” with “core” but that word did not really suffice.  There was more to it than that.  When I thought carefully about what I would include as a “fifth movement” the list could simply be described as exercises that involved, “the dynamic transfer of force from upper body to lower body or vice versa, through a rigid core.”  The plank is an exercise where force is transferred from upper to lower (and vice versa), but it is static.  It fits our definition OK but not entirely.  An ab wheel rollout is a dynamic version of the plank and is a great example of a fifth movement.  Sprinting fits the definition of fifth movement OK but sprinting while pushing a prowler sled fits it even better.  Other great examples are:

Turkish Getups

Sled push

Loaded carries

Rucking

Chops

Sledge hammer work

Overhead squats

Throws

Punching a heavy bag

Paddleboarding

Windmills

There are many, many more.  Fifth movement exercises are dynamic and athletic.  As a result, they are great for building the type of strength that transfers outside of the gym to a variety of activities.  If your goal is performance outside of the gym, the fifth movement is the key.  n fact, one way to think about your strength program is that you use the first four movements to get better at fifth movement exercises.  Read that again.  It is that important (and under utilized).  In fact, most people skip the fifth movement exercises.  This is backwards.  If you are really time constrained and have to cut something out, don’t cut out the most important part!  A program of nothing but fifth movement exercises would be an effective strength and conditioning program, but the opposite is not true.  If you only do the first four, you will have a gap in your strength program and real world performance is likely to suffer.  If all you did were a variety of fifth movement exercises, you might not be quite as strong, but you would not have a large gap in your strength.  You would have good, usable strength.  Because fifth movement exercises are whole body exercises, they are really hard and make great metabolic conditioning exercises.  A typical workout might include the first four movements, followed by 5-15 minutes of fifth movement work.  If you only had 15 minutes to train, you could get an effective workout with 15 minutes of fifth movement exercises.

Based on the discussion above, I am dropping the term “fifth movement” if favor of “dynamic core force transfer.”  It is a bit long, but it gets the point across. 

In summary:

1. Fifth movement consists of dynamic core force transfer exercises.

2. The purpose of the first four movements is to make you better at dynamic core force transfer.

3. Dynamic core force transfer exercises are the most important movement if performance outside of the gym is the goal. 

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Upping My Axle Deadlifts

It's unknown to me if I got a bastardized version of the Armstrong Pull-up program or I bastardized it in my own, twisted head.  Either way, that was my first exposure to the notion of a pyramid set way back in 2006-2007.  Pyramid sets seem to be used in two ways.  The first uses weights and involves using lighter weights for higher reps.  Then, you increase the weight and drop the number of reps. The bodyweight version is simply to increase the reps in the set until you fail to hit the last number of reps in the last set.  I used it back in 2007 frequently with pull-ups.  While I didn't dramatically increase my single-set rep count, I did manage to maintain as I bulked up from 157 lbs to 180 lbs.

So, where did I bastardize the Armstrong thing (and pyramid setting)?  I added a drop set to the fun.  In other words, when I hit my max set, I would work my way back down doing the same sets that I used to work up to the max set.  I've done this with weights before as well just BW.  The latter formed one of my favorite, pressed-for-time and short on equipment that can be found here. 

Like I said, I don't know if this was innocent, bad recollection or my training-obsessed mind just looking to squeeze a lot of work into a bit of time.  Neither would surprise me

So, the Armstrong Program has been floating around for so long that it got its own web site not too long ago.  It seems to be that popular.  Other than that, pyramid setting seems to be relegated to the dust bin of the training universe, along with lat pull-overs and hyperextensions.  Like these two, there doesn't seem to be a good answer as to why. 

Florida's Strongest Man...and Deadlifts
Just like The Dungeon Spring Break Classic, Brevard, and the Bacon Beatdown strongman competitions, I had to forego doing Florida's Strongest Man.  Work and my body don't cooperate very often.  I suspected that this could happen but I trained for this competition as though I was going to do it just the same.  Among the events was a 325 lbs axle deadlift, for most reps, in one minute.  My previous deadlifting prowess was abysmal.  I just don't get much opportunity to train this lift.  So, I had to build up my numbers, and fast.  This show was only two months after my first show, and it was a heavy one.  So, I elected to pull the idea of pyramid-drop set hybrid out of my bag of tricks, turning my sunday in to my deadlift training days. 

Am I really going to Blog about DEADLIFTING???
Yeah, I know, by blogging about what amounts to my deadlift program, I'm about to jump into such crowded, mucky swamp of vanilla-like uniformity with the rest of the mostly-shitty strength training sites.  Just about all of them have a deadlift program.  Plus, I've generally sworn to not be like everyone else.  Still, I'm going there because:

1. I tried it. 
2. It worked.
3. I appears that nobody else did it like this

Still, with strongman competitions increasingly becoming more alike one another (god forbid), you'll likely run across an axle deadlift event for reps, if strongman competition is your fancy.  After all, axle deadlift is cheap and fast to set-up.  Unfortunately, poverty and time constraints don't inspire the same creativity for strength sports that the do for me. 

So, the first thing I found out in those seven weeks was that the total volume worked best if kept to a total of 40-50 reps of deadlifting (excluding some warm-up sets; of which I don't do many).  I don't know why that was. It just worked out ridiculously well.  I made very regular progress.  I don't keep records either.  I do remember that the pyramid-drop sets looked something like this:

1. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
2. 2-4-6-8-10-8-6-4-2
3. 3-6-9-12-9-6-3

How well did this work?  Well, as I lamented above, I didn't get a chance to do the competition.  My friend, who has been competing for six years, told me 15 reps in this event would probably put me in contention to win the event.  The day of the show, I had such a burning desire to figure out what I could do in a minute.  So, I tested myself and this is what I came up with:

 

 

 

Now, keep in mind when I first started doing this after Tampa, I was only doing 315 lbs for 6 reps!   I have no idea how the rest of the show would have affected my deadlift performance.  This is all I have to go off of and I banged out 17 reps in a minute.  That would have tied me for second place in that event.  The guy who also got 17 reps, a friend of mine who I affectionately call "Rabbi,"  outweighs me by a very noticeable margin. 

 

The winner of the event got 21 reps.  FUCK!

 

But what about accessory work?



Fuck, do I really have go into that too???  Well, what is a deadlift program without accessory work, I guess.  Yes, I did have some guidelines for that too. Even at 50 reps, give or take, this deadlifting generally fried my spinal erector muscles.  So I chose two accessory lifts, one upper body and the other lower body.  Neither of these lifts would hit the lower back. 

 

For my upper body lift, I'd usually do pendalay rows with the axle.  After all, I had the bar already loaded.  I also did weighted pull-ups and bent presses (I can't be that normal) on occasion. rep ranges on the Pendalays were 5-7 reps.  Pull-ups were 10-15 reps.  The bent presses were two reps per side (lots of time under tension with just two reps).  All were done 3-6 sets. 

 

For the lower body, I grabbed two kettlebells (or a T-handle) and did swings.  15-20 reps for 4 sets.  I also stumbled onto this sort of sumo deadlift-squat hybrid that I have no idea what the name of it is.  It's right here, about 30 seconds in...

 

I'd also do that for about the same rep range as the swings.  Frankly, anything that hit the hamstrings and glutes will work well; just avoid hitting the lower back muscles again.  Remember, hit the upper body after the pyramid-drop set and then do the lower body stuff afterwards. 

 

That's as close as you're ever going to get to me being conventional in a blog entry with a "program"  for a long, long time hopefully.  It's also the most concrete proof I've found that this rep scheme works extremely well for popping up reps in a surprisingly shot period of time.  Frankly, it's so much fun for me that I'm still doing it on my deadlift Sundays.  My most recent exploit was 350 lbs for 8 reps.  That used to be my max three years ago when I started deadlifting.  This whole rep scheme just shows that you need to keep  your eyes and your mind open to many different training protocols, even if it's from the Bodyweight Crowd. 

 

"Rabbi"...Nice job, chico!

 

 



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Simple Tactical Fitness Template Based on Simple and Sinister

Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Blake Midnight 

First of all, buy Simple and Sinister by Pavel.  You can get the e-copy for $10.  It is worth it.  The basis of Simple and Sinister is the one arm kettlebell swing and Turkish Getups.  In this simple tactical template, this serves as the base of the program.  It is a one stop shop for conditioning, grip strength, core strength, bulletproof shoulders, and lower back stability/strength.  That is a lot of "bang for the buck" for only 2 exercises.  If all you did were these 2 exercises and you got really good at them, you would be awesome and more physically capable than the vast majority of the population, even fellow tactical athletes.  However, adding some simple strength "grinds" can really add a new dimension to this template.  Here is how I lay it out:

Monday: Simple and Sinister (SS), push 5 X 5
Tuesday: AM: SS, pull 5 X 5  PM: ruck
Wednesday: SS, squat 5 X 5
Thursday: AM: SS, push 5 X 5  PM ruck
Friday: SS, pull 5 X 5
Saturday: run or ruck 1-2 hours
Sunday: rest

Mix up the pushing and pulling, using a variety of exercises.  Try different pull-up grips, rows, body rows, and one arm presses, weighted push ups, dips, press, KB overhead press, handstand push ups, and split squats, goblet squats, front squats, lunges, box squats etc....  Go heavy for sets across (google it).   If you can manage the simple and sinister workout with a 70lb kettlebell (better yet and 80 or 90), you have all of the strength you need as a tactical athlete and any other strength accomplishments are largely irrelevant.  If time is short, just do the SS part.  The SS part of this template is the base, the  foundation, and is the most important part.  It is the cake, the rest is icing on the cake.  This is just another way to achieve the kind of sustainable fitness program that covers all bases for the tactical athlete.  It is based on the same fundamental principles as The Tactical Template (see Tactical Training Template link on the right side of the home page).  The keys are sustainable (most important!) and complete.  If you want to last, you cannot jack hammer your way to fitness.  You have to gently nudge your body there, bit by bit, until you reach a really high  level.

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Building a Base

He takes his time, pondering the barbell on the rack.  Stalking around with an attempt at a self-assured swagger.  He pays meticulous attention to putting his belt.  He checks the tension carefully as he puts on his wrist wraps.  He chalks his hands up thoroughly so as to make sure that even the spaces between his fingers are dry and ready for the big lift.  He sets up the camera to catch the big moment.  Five minutes of preparation come down to this one, singular moment in the cage. 

 

ALL OF THIS WAS FOR A 120 LBS PRESS! 

Since I joined a gym, for the first time in nearly 14 years, I've seen such scenarios played out constantly by 20-something kids in between these walls with stunning regularity.  While I understand, and I try to keep in mind, that everyone starts somewhere, there's something missing in each of these over-suited up millenials struggling with baby-weights that I've seen grown women of average levels of fitness achieve.  It's what my buddy in the gym and I both agree on as we watch the above-mentioned man-child who wraps his wrists up for stability for the big push and follows up his press workout with pinch grip training lacks:  a complete lack of a base. 

 

He's not the first veteran lifter that I've heard complain that too many aspiring gym rats have no good training base anymore.  With the proliferation of the internet experts that read everything on Elite FTS and T-Nation but can't actually bring themselves to do a two-plate squat to proper depth, there's an ever-increasing pile of meat bags in nice gym clothing who are going to provide the fitness gym industry with a nice revenue stream of easy money.  They just don't get it and I think my buddy and I lament that at the rate they're going, they never will. 

 

So they need a base, but it got me thinking we chatted this up:  what exactly is a good base?  We threw a few ideas about the strength training horror-comedy show before us.  Still, it was an abbreviated conversation before we went our separate ways for the night. 

 

In the interest of making this constructive criticism (something tells me this person reads the blog and may be able to put together that I'm talking about him) since not trying to solve a problem while talking about it incessantly is nothing more than gossip, I decided to put my thoughts down as to what I think constitutes a good base for strength training. 

 

It isn't necessarily exercise selection...

Look up any article resembling building a good base for strength and I can almost guarantee you that you'll get some sort of list of exercises that are good for building a base of strength.  The problem is that most of these lists are lifts that I've almost never done on a regular basis since starting on this path almost a decade and a half ago.  Frankly, they're almost always competitive lifts for sports that I've never done and likely never will do.  Just because they're the basis of a strength sport doesn't make them the best base for all efforts to build strength.  There's a difference that's lost on lots of base-builders. 

 

Rather than rattle off specific exercises, I'd just rather simply leave it at making sure that you make sure to throw in some good pushing and pulling exercises, both for the upper body and lower body first and foremost.  Next, make sure there's some work for your midsection.  All of it (rectus abdominals, obliques, spinal erectors, and hip muscles).  Don't forget to get a dash of exercises that force your body to move rotationally.  Some carrying, dragging, and pulling of weights is also a remarkably good, simple-to-learn and easy way to build strength and conditioning. 

 

As long as you hit those categories up with some regularity, you should build a good beginner strength.  Don't think because I'm doing strongman and lifting weights more regularly that I believe that a good chunk of this can't be bodyweight.  I used BW-only for years and it got me to where I am now.  I wasn't doing specific events, I could easily be using handstand push-ups and pull-ups for strength training and get challenges out them. 

 

  ...But it is about doing as much of it as possible!

I've flat-out said that people take too much rest in between sets during workouts in a past entry.  That criticism also applies to our above-"lifter" taking five minutes to prepare for a tragically modest overhead press.  It shouldn't take that long BECAUSE HE SHOULDN'T NEED A LIFTING BELT AND WRIST WRAPS TO DO A PRESS LIKE THAT.  Since I'm too busy to determine if this was a max effort lift (I certainly hope it wasn't, this is not a small kid) I'll assume with such a modest amount of weight, it wasn't.  So, this stuff isn't helping make him stronger but allowing him to stay weak. 

 

Yes, support gear probably has it's place when approaching maximum strength lifts where the boundaries of the human body.  If properly used in conjunction with the body , it does help protect and strengthen during a lift.  Improperly used, it becomes a cast that does the work for the body.  If someone's building a base, then these implements have no use. 

 

While I abhor using high reps in bodyweight training in perpetuity, and I have for several years, I do admit that at the beginning, it definitely assisted in my ability to do more work.  The more work I could do, the closer I could get to maximum strength efforts without issues.  I have few doubts that all of my BW training helped may ability to handle large training volume, made my midsection (particularly my abdominals) powerful, bullet-proofed my shoulders and developed my grip. 

Ultimately, I think it's important to cultivate the ability to do a lot of work before doing a lot of maximum-effort work. 

 

One of my slices of broscience cake that I fed to the world years ago was that if you develop strong hips, shoulders and grip, you'll be a powerful person.  While I may not have done everything right in training to transition to strongman work (who does?) I do feel that since I had those three, combined with good work capacity, I was off to a good start.

 

Combined with HAVNG THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND

Simply put:  too many people in the gym are just not comfortable with being uncomfortable.  That's why modern gyms look like they've been child-proofed by an OCD mother who just stole a foam padding truck.  The insistence with pristine skin isn't the only sign that people don't like to be uncomfortable in the gym.  The simple fact that our strength training-grasshopper  took five minutes to do a 120 lbs says it all.  He had no rush to get to lifting and he had no desire to push himself to lift with any sort of purpose.  Instead, bullshitting with others and playing compulsively with a phone were all so much more...comfortable. 
 

It takes time to adjust to forcing the body to do things that are intense and uncomfortable.  Still, that's what it takes to be good at training.  It also doesn't hurt if you learn to enjoy the process of training.  That's why I'm such a wing nut with my strength training movement selections.  I enjoy lifting weird objects in different ways.  As long as I do it with intensity and purpose, I still get strong.  Not everything has to be deadlift, bench and squat.  If you get strong while enjoying what you're doing, then who cares how you did it?  That will go a long way towards doing it with conviction. 

Of course, this all has to be combined with good food and rest.  Base building is pointless if those two parts aren't in order.  After all, at best, you may only have 45 minutes per day to devote to training.  While you can get a lot done in that time frame, it will be unraveled if the other 23 hours and 15 minutes of the day don't do something to support that other 3/4-hour. 

Hopefully this skull of mush gets his shit together and gets his training sorted out sooner or later.  Since this initial lift, I've offered whatever advice/words that I've seen relevant to him at key training times.  After all, without a solution to criticism, then it's all mean-girl-like complaining and gossip with gym clothing and body odor.  With a little luck,  these millenials will figure what a good base is all out. 
 

 

 

 



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Got a Minute? Let's talk about timing and your training...

No, I'm not writing an article about how he got so big, especially since he hasn't told anyone how he did it...

For the readers who have seen both, "The Dark Knight," and the, "The Dark Knight Rises," I've got a question for you:  which of these movies was longer?  As a die-hard fan of anything that Christopher Nolan directs, I eagerly anticipated, and thoroughly adored, both movies.  However, I was baffled by one, common criticism of the last one:  the movie felt too long.  That question was a little bit of a trick question.  The Dark Knight Rises is only about ten minutes longer.  Christopher Nolan simply manipulated the timeline of events in the Dark Knight much more than the Dark Knight Rises.  So, since the story line wasn't being told in order, it seemed shorter than it really was. 

Christopher Nolan is widely regarded as a pioneer in movie making for his ability for juggling multiple timelines on film, making him a master at manipulating the feeling of time in movies.  That's a skill so few who try to build their bodies (rather than movies) seem good at. 

If anything, the sense of timing in training is totally screwed up.  People seem to have no idea when to rush and when to wait.  Patience is horribly mis-applied.  This poorly-manipulated use of rushing and patience is something that I see frequently screwing up routines in the short term and goals over a longer period of time.  While I will throw an Atlas stone at any reader who dares call me an expert, I think I've got my sense of timing down when it comes to my training.  I think it's about time someone sort this all out. 

Time Between Sets
This should be pretty simple but people love sticking their faces in the mud, opening their eyes, and looking for an answer:  rest as much as you need to and no more than that.  Maybe it's because people try to oversimplify, trying to find a rest period that's good for all movements.  The news flash for these people is that there isn't one.  You'll need more rest between maximum effort lifts. You'll use less for conditioning routines. You'll want to be a bit more generous on new movements so you can learn them rather than build strength out of them.  The less technical a movement usually requires less rest. 

Whatever you're doing or what you're looking to achieve out of it, just get enough rest out of the time between sets so you can do your next set.  No more than that.  If you need more than five minutes between sets you're either doing something that is far beyond your physical capabilities or you're just plain, fucking wasting your time by being lazy or unfocused.  Feelings of passing out and vomiting, or trying to make a joint work right after you did too much, are as much of a waste of time as chatting with other gym lazy-asses (like yourself) while posting selfies that nobody cares about to Instagram.  You're in the gym to move.  So, do whatever you can to keep yourself moving.  When you look to move as much as possible, you'll need some rest.  Take it since it's needed to keep yourself going.  Then go. 

Time to Reach Your Goals
In a short period of time, you're likely to hear an interview I did where I stress the overwhelming significance of being patient when reaching strength and fitness goals.  While I generally walk around my gym pushing millenials to get their asses moving and, you know, maybe exercise once every five minutes, I can't stand it when people are in a huge rush to become 500 lbs deadlifters, first place strongmen-competitors, or get 18" arms.  I agree that the majority of fitness and strength rules are pretty bendable.  One that I firmly believe isn't is that anything worthwhile transformation with your body will take time.  By time, I mean months and years.  Everything from fat loss to muscle and strength gain has to be done with the same amount of time you'll do in jail if you commit a felony. 

When I tried to gain some muscle mass seven years ago, it took me 9 months to put on 27 lbs of muscle.  I did it again this year and it took me six months to put on 15 lbs.  When I wanted to start bent pressing back in 2009, I started out with a 35 lbs kettlebell.  After five years, I'm started bent pressing a 150 lbs sandbag.  I had to wait nearly one year after I got it in my head to do my first strongman competition. 

If you look at the majority of the people who are telling  you that you can get results fast are either trying to sell you something or sell you on the notion that they are so much more awesome than you are.  Both are equally full of shit.  In between exercises, life is going on.  That alone is going to divert attention away from your goals.  You need time to learn how to do things right.  You need rest that you may not always get.  Then, there's the fact that a body will come up with reasons to resist changes in its current state.  You'll have to force yourself through all that. 

So, the takeaway from this is all pretty simple.  Make haste with your workouts and patiently wait for the results. 

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Fall, get up, finish, learn something and don't forget to have some fun: Recapping my First Strongman Competition

If I had to join a gym, I was at least going to join one that kind of matched my sprained personality along with my disgust of cardio equipment even if an exercise bike was what I was joining the gym for in the first place.  As part of my ACL physical therapy, I needed to ride an exercise bike, forwards and backwards, for 15-30 minutes a day.  While that's about as fun to me as drinking gasoline, it's PT.  I didn't have to like it.  I just had to do it.

The Dungeon Gym had three cardio machines and the rest is weights and strength training equipment.  That equipment line-up runs parallel to my training belief system.  You go there to lift.  Most of the crew there were getting into strongman training and that training, as I sadly peddled my knee back into use, rubbed off on me.  As I progressed in PT, the notion of joining my new crew of friends in strongman became a thought and goal that propelled me along with my training. 

After a year, I finally got the opportunity to achieve that goal.   Last Saturday, I did my first strongman competition in Tampa, Florida, taking 6th in the Novice Division. 

 

Over the past year, I've acquired a reputation for my unfiltered jokes and my wildly unconventional approach to strength training.  My cohorts in chalk and sweat shouldn't have been surprised that I'd rolled up in Clearwater sporting these sunglasses. That guy in the middle is my dear friend Richard. He's as conventional in the gym as I am crazy.  I was so overjoyed to be here with him.  I was overjoyed just to be here.  It's been a long, long struggle to get to a point where I felt like I could take my body to such a proving grounds.  While I wanted to do well, I was also here to have some fun.  In my typical, inappropriate fashion, that's what I was setting out to do.

 

Who need steroids when you eat these kind of sandwiches?

Training for this show had it's ups and downs.  One of the major downsides, naturally, was my lower body training.  My knee PT was generally successful save for one issue:  My left knee doesn't hyperextend like it supposed to.  So, my lifting with my lower body was slighty uneven, my right legs moving faster and working more than the left.  This eventually led to a carousel of lumbar disc irritation and issues an IT band tightness.  Plus, any movement that forced a lot of hamstring activation would leave my bad knee sore for the next day or so.  Long story made short:  my heavy squat work was minimal for much of the summer and I zeroed out on the Hummer Tire squat.




My friend, who was also competing, said it best:  shake it off, it didn't happen.  Move on!

 



 

Which I ended up doing with some success in the next event:  a car deadlift hold for time, head-to-head with another competitor.  That competitor turned out to be a guy named Bryan.  I ended up beating him by a grand total of .06 seconds.  The humor wasn't lost on either of us as we did the dude embrace after finishing.  While most of my leg training was suboptimal for months at a time, the one thing that worked really well was barbell hack squatting.  This movement that I regularly did was a pretty close approximation to a car deadlift.  In reality, a car deadlift is more of a squat anyway. 



I sprinted over to my lane.  Bryan looked at me like I was nuts. 

I wasn't too far behind him...

That .06 second difference basically turned Bryan and I into short term rivals.  We went head-to-head on the medley run (225 lbs farmers handles, 180 lbs yoke, 250 lbs power stair, 125 lbs dumbbell press, chain press).  Had I not been so amped up on nerve juice and anticipation for my favorite event to train, I might have taken note that one of the farmers handle kept rolling away from me.  At least I would have realized that the pavement on that side that I was about to step into had a slight depression right off the starting pads.  As soon as I took a step into it, I fell with the handles.  Other than a scrapped elbow and jamming the tip of my thumb, I got back to my feet and managed to catch up with Bryan a little bit. 

 That's when inexperience and nerve juice got the better of me. I exploded off the ground with the yoke, locking it out and steadying it with surprising ease.  Unfortunately, I missed the down command and kept moving.  I had to go back and do it. 

...Now I am



 

 

 



Nobody knew what to make of this.  Apparently, someone wanted to have me disqualified

I missed one.  Just not this one.  The crowd went nuts!

"you're a fast little shit!"  Bryan

Bryan later told me that he was stunned when he saw me just behind him on the dumbbell press.  He figured that my redo on the yoke press combined with the power stair would give him an advantage.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  While we both missed our first attempts with the circus Dumbbell (Bryan has some elbow issues; my jammed thumb weakened my grip on the dumbbell), I pulled ahead, throwing the Crossfit-like chain press easily and again edging him out. 

The last event I figured to be my strongest event:  keg tossing over a 13' bar (Four Quarter-kegs.  20, 25, 30 and 35 lbs).  What I didn't figure was how good everyone else would be.  I threw just before Bryan, who I didn't realize was a Highland Games thrower.  He one-handed his way through those fuckers in just over 21 seconds. 

 I drilled the hell out of the throws.  I regularly did heavy T-handle swings, double Kettlebell swings, and throws with my Alpha Strong Sandbag (40 lbs).  I got off to a very hot start, throwing the first three kegs 3-4' over the bar in around 18 seconds.  However, inexperience got the better of me.  As I was throwing,  I stopped taking the two steps backwards to get into a good position to throw the keg.  By the time I got to the 35 lbs, I was throwing too far away and my last keg bounced off the pole, forcing me to redo the throw and coming away with a 26 second finish time.  



 

 

 

Initially, I heard that I had came in 4th place.  After a few days, when the scores were finally posted, I had to readjust to just missing the top three.  While I told myself that I just wanted to have some fun and simply being able to do this was reward unto itself, I'm still a competitive person.  I couldn't simply just go to participate.  There's a part of me that wanted to win, even if I was cognizant of the fact that it may be unlikely on my first competition since I was going in knowing that my squatting practice had been marginal and thoroughly sub-par (I also had tweaked my lower back the week of the competition.  I spent the entire week trying to get rid of the back pain, which I did succeed at). 

 

What was particularly galling about the tire squats was that I previously trained for these back in April for another show that I wasn't able to do in Florida, hitting 350 lbs for two, 385 lbs for one, and narrowly missing 405 lbs.  So, failing at 365 lbs proved that I lost leg strength in the course of six months.  Still, I've gotten in front of the IT band syndrome and hitting the hyperextensions served the dual purpose of helping get my left knee closer to natural hyperextension and strengthening my lower back muscles.  I trust that if I get my knee to do that, most of my back and IT problems will dissipate.

 

The rest of my errors I felt were a combination of inexperience and nerves.  I will never do a moving event without checking the surface I'm walking on first.  Ever.  That fall cost me both on the farmers handles and the circus dumbbell.  I also should have paid closer attention to my down calls.  Finally, I need to make sure that I take the needed two steps back on my keg tosses.  The winner of the novice division, Alex, also pointed out something I hadn't thought of:  after asking me if I knew I could clear the bar with my throws (which I knew I could) why watch and see if they were going to clear?  That could have shaved some time off too. 

 

Still, there were bright points to take note of:

• I correctly surmised that a barbell hack squat was likely to be very similar to a car deadlift.  As a result, the car went up pretty easily. 
• Getting the farmers handles were initially a problem for me in training since I did so little heavy deadlifting due to my back.  So, what I did do instead was practice lighter deficit deadlifts and deficit-deadlifts with chains.  As a result, I was able to get the handles off the ground and do it reasonably quick. 
• Despite some problems with the yoke in training, I mastered squatting underneath it and pressing as I drove upwards.  This made my two yoke presses fast.  I also correctly surmised that regular squat-pressing would aid in this.
• While my thumb screwed with my grip on the circus dumbbell press, I still nailed it.  I'd been practicing this for over a year and this one implement in the medley finished the medley for 4 of the 10 competitors. 
• Inexplicably, I didn't meet anyone who used swings to training for throwing kegs. Someone must have! Lots of the competitors needed start the keg at eye level in order to get the extra momentum to get the keg over the bar.  After months of swinging 100-150 lbs of weights, I started most of my throws at my knees.  Even that may have been unnecessary. 

 



I suppose I can only be so hard on myself.  This picture is about 13 months old. 

 

So, after popping my strongman cherry after a year of conceiving of doing such a competition, I'm tentatively setting my sites on Florida's Strongest man in Davenport, FL.  Overall, this day will go down as one of the best in my life and I couldn't be happier to take part.  

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Bench Pressing again...

The comment about mastering the pushup will make you rival or surpass any body builder or power lifter is so stupid. If this were the case every body builder and power lifter would be doing pushups instead of lifting weights. Even Body builders and power lifters train quite differently from each other. One utilizing Rep range from 8 -15 the other rep range 1-6. This whole functional strength argument is stupid too, to say someone that lifts weights isn't functionally strong? How is a pushup any more functional? If your building a house, carrying a baby, or doing garden work dropping down and doing 20 isn't going to help any more than bench press. I'd wager that most people that workout do it to look better and feel better. If your goals are to just generally be in better shape sure go for the pushup. It's even challenging enough for most new people to build some decent size and strength, but if you want the earth to move when you walk, the ability to push trees over, and for people to make sculptures of your body you better stack on some weights. -Brent

That fateful post from nearly seven years ago now still draws views and comments to my blog...

http://thebodyweightfiles.blogspot.com/2008/02/pushup-vs-bench-press.html

 

 

Things have changed over those years.  While I do look back on some of my old posts and sometimes find my past self outright wrong on a few occasions, this post still stands up.  Much of what I think about the bench press vs. the push up hasn't really changed all of that much.  There might be a very good reason for that.  That reason is that, in a lot of ways, the bench press encapsulates much of what I don't like about the strength training subculture that I inhabit. 

 

First, the bench press needs very specific stuff to perform.  You have to have a bench, a barbell and plates, sometimes lots of them.  In other words, you have to have a gym set-up in order to do it.  So much of what I do is based on the premise that you don't need a gym to work out in the first place.  Benching anchors you to the gym if you insist on doing it.

 

There are lots of people insist on doing it.  As I've ventured into strongman training, I've noticed that lots of people migrate over to it from powerlifting.  Some strongmen, in turn, seem to take a shocking amount of programming tips from powerlifting.   What lots of people therefore don't get is that working the chest doesn't simply mean doing the bench press.  I've said it before:  the pectoral major muscles are extremely versatile.  Any movement that requires moving your arms in front of your body back towards your centerline is using them.  So, you don't need to be glued to one movement that, in turn, glues you to the gym.  Since I have an aversion to being intentionally stuck to a physical location to train, you can bet your ass I have a problem being married to one movement, especially one that I hate that's part of a competition of have no desire to participate.

 

Frankly, there is NO GOOD REASON to be so glued to the bench press.  It's an incomplete upper body-push movement anyway.  If done by itself, it doesn't develop the shoulder and chest muscles in a balanced manner.  Push-ups can and do, which is why I prefer them (weighted these days).  One thing that some strongmen do get right is they move the bench press to an accessory movement to the overhead press.  There are a mess of chest exercises out there any why the more incomplete ones got selected as the go-to for chest training just boggles my mind. 

 

To top it all off, as I said above,  I just don't really enjoy bench pressing.  I don't really have a rhyme or reason for that other than it just isn't a compelling lift for me.  So, since I don't enjoy then why should I do it?  After all, it's not a lift in any competition that I'll ever do.  I can do others to get  complete upper body development.  Plus, I don't need to be at a gym that, aside from the past two years, I have extremely limited access to.  At the end of the day, there are more practical lifts for me to consume my time with.  I'll just stick to those. 

 

 

 

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Check your special shoes at the door and get your head right

I should have been finishing up dead-last in the group, looking like a pasty weakling.   At 195 lbs, minimal direct strongman training experience, only two months of regular leg training, and a pair of totally gripless Chuck Taylor shoes I shouldn't have been doing much to write home about with a 12,000 lbs truck pull.  This was my second time ever attempting one...

While my technique was as ugly as I am stunningly handsome, on my second pull I tugged out the second best time of the day out of the group.  I ended up beating one of my best buddies at the gym by two seconds.  With his extra 30 lbs of extra weight, more strongman training experience, and a brand new set of rock climbing shoes to that savvy strongmen competitors utilize on truck pulling he should have left buried me. 

Questions about what shoes to use with what kind of lifting and training seem to come up as often as Kardashians show up in the public consciousness.  Like the Kardashians, as far as I'm concerned, they pop up far, FAR too often.  This has to be part of a larger marketing conspiracy that exploded way back in the 1980's when Nike teamed up with Michael Jordon and created the illusion that somehow shoes were the key to peak athletic performance.  Strength training chicanery simply must have followed suit. 

I mostly train with Chuck Taylors for two key reasons:  they're cheap and they're what I have.  With my limited funds and my near-constant traveling, I'm forced into strength training minimalism largely by necessity.  That has drawbacks that I largely don't mind.  Just like growing up poor teaches you more about living life than growing up privileged, training with nothing will teach force someone to make more out of less. 

As we were all playing around with pulling a truck, many of the guys in the group struggled with driving with their legs because they were up too far on their toes.  I explained to everyone that they need to think of their feet like their hands and get a good grip on the ground by making sure that with each step by planting as much of their foot on the ground (balls and toes of the foot) with each step.

Ever heard of chip-coated pavement?  It's pretty much gravel with not enough tar to call it real asphalt.  In other words, it's a little loose.  That's what I was pushing this truck on.  Either I get my footing right or put my teeth into the bumper when I slip!

 

I learned this from pushing work trucks in lousy driveways...wearing my Chucks.  Push heavy weights on such an unforgivingly-loose surface with a shoe that has does you no favors will force you to plant your feet one way:  the right way.  What would rock climbing shoes have done to fix that? 

I'm not completely slamming specialized shoes, or anything else for that matter in aiding weight training.  Where I in a competition and I had the means to buy a special pair of shoe for every event to maximize my chances of winning, I'd certainly do it!

Your work-out gear doesn't make you strong.  It didn't make Michael Jordon one of the most legendary athletes of all time and it won't make you fantastically strong.  Your head and your body are responsible for that.  If you don't have those two things in check then the only thing that your shoes buy you is credit card debt. 

SO TRAIN AND STOP WORRYING ABOUT SHIT THAT DOESN'T MATTER.

    

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Old Man Strength Training

OK....this also applies to "old women" but I thought the title was catchier that way.  Here is the deal; most trainers get this terribly wrong.  By wrong I mean that their focus is 180 degrees out, exactly opposite of what it should be.  And this concept also applies to middle age trainees (like me).  Trainers and the major certifying agencies often get the programming backwards.  Their focus is wrong, and as a result, they deliver much less than they should.  Let's explore the issue a bit more.

Coach Dan John likes to say that strength training is loaded movement.  There are basically 5 different fundamental human movements: push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and core/carry.  Of course there are other movements, but these are the fundamental ones that form the basis of most athletic movements.  They simply must be addressed in your training program or it is incomplete at best. Again, strength training is loaded movement.  Load and movement (along with volume) are the major variables that are manipulated in designing a strength training program.

Young people spend lots of time running, jumping, tumbling, climbing trees, jumping over fences, wrestling, playing sports ............ moving.  Active young people rarely have a movement deficit.  I think you will agree that in general, young people move better than older people.  They may not be strong, or even fit, but they can move.

As we get older, we don't do that stuff anymore.  If you are 40+, when was the last time you climbed a tree or hopped over a fence?  Your movement ability is not what it used to be.  This is partly why recreational sports are so dangerous for 30 somethings.  They are young enough to feel invincible, and to remember participating vigorously, but they have already lost some movement capability.

Which brings up a simple concept.  Programming for younger trainees should focus on loading, with simple, basic movements.  Of course, movement quality is always important!  However, it is OK to use some machines to increase loading.  However, for older adults, the focus should always be on movement.  Movement is more important than loading!

Consider the exercise below.  This is a seated overhead press.  This is the kind of exercise that is often used with older adults. It is used because it is "safer" than the free weight version.

Here is the problem, all of the "movement" work is done by the machine.  It is completely stabilized, with the movement path fixed.  This removes all of the stability work, which is the most critical part for older adults!  The legs are completely relaxed, the core does not really need to be engaged.  Really, only the few muscles that are necessary to move the device along the fixed path are engaged.  However, because the movement path is fixed, with little chance of deviation or error, it is safer to load heavy.  That is why it is often used with older adults.  Again, this is backwards.  It is sacrificing movement for loading.  

Take a look at the exercise below.  This is a very "movement" focused exercise.  It is a movement based version of the exercise above.  Every muscle in the body is engaged from the muscles in your fingers to your toes.  The core is locked down, the neck and traps are stabilizing the upper spine and shoulder blades.  The lumbar stabilizers, glutes and hip flexors are stabilizing the trunk and hips.  The legs are working to provide a strong base.  

But, many trainers will object,"That exercise is not safe for older adults!"  Wrong.  It is not safe if the loading is too heavy.  They may have to start unloaded!  That is OK.  Strength training is loaded movement.  We don't sacrifice movement for loading, especially in older adults.  Instead of prescribing exercises that help to restore functional movement, they often prescribe exercises like in the top picture (seated machine press).  They emphasize loading over movement by having the older client do 5-6 exercise machines.  

Instead, how about having an older client practice getting up off the floor instead (i.e., Turkish get ups, even without a load)?  Maybe lift something off the floor and even press it overhead.  It does not have to be heavy, yet.  Instead of a machine bench press, how about a push up?  Even if it is a knee pushup the core will still be engaged.  What about a bodyweight squat instead of a machine leg press? Even if it is not a full squat initially, or they have to deload a bit by holding on to something (i.e. TRX), it is a more of a functional movement than the leg press and is plenty safe if loading is appropriate.  

There are lots of simple programs that fit this template:

Dan John's Lifetime Warrior Workout

How about a version of the "Program Minimum"

Monday - Swings
Tuesday - Getups
Wednesday - Pushups
Thursday - Swings
Friday - Getups
Saturday or Sunday - Pushups

Or maybe something like:

Monday/Thursday: Pushups, body rows
Tuesday/Friday: Goblet squats, Bulgarian goat belly swings

Or perhaps for a middle aged client:

Warm up: Turkish Getups, then: Pull-ups, dips, goblet squats, kettlebell swings

For an older adult, a program of nothing but Turkish Getups (starting unloaded and progressing to loaded as able) could be a life changer.  In fact, for a middle aged adult, try working up to a 1/2 bodyweight Turkish Getup!  If that is all you did, and you reached that goal, you would be a strong and capable human being!

Some parting thoughts.  Doing some work on the ground is good.  Any exercise that requires you to get off of the floor is going to be of benefit.  Carry some stuff for distance.  Training to pick things up off the floor is important. You are going to have to do that every day in real life anyway.  Press things overhead.  Most exercises should be done while supporting your own weight, and not sitting or lying down.  Keep it simple! Focus on improving movement quality first, and loading second.  Never sacrifice movement quality for loading.

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