My Thoughts on Lance Armstrong

It must be both rewarding and annoying at the same time that after so many years, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) finally skewered Lance Armstrong for doping in his Tour De France.  After rising above all of the dirty athletes to become the most dominant dirty athlete the TDF has ever known, they still couldn't seem to produce the magical positive test to prove that he was a drug users all along.  Still, they can use their odd power to say that he was.  It seems to me like such a hollow victory. 

Yes, I firmly believe that Lance Armstrong used drugs to produce his record seven straight Tour De France victories.  I have less evidence than the USADA has but since I'm just a puke with a computer and a blog address, I'm not burdened with any particular requirements to prove what I think.  I just have the ability to connect the dots.  Ironically, this isn't too far away from what the USADA has. 

We can all agree that the Tour is a bike race, the most prestigious bike race in the world.  There are other titles it has.  One might be the most obvious example of a doped-to-the-gills sports events there is.  Another title could also be a voluntary foray into a chronic wasting disease without dying...unless you used performance enhancing drugs.  The simple truth about the TDF is that the speed of which the competitors race over such a distance and for the period of time they do it in would kill even the best non-chemically enhanced endurance athletes from muscle destruction alone.  These competitors couldn't possibly do it without drugs.  Their bodies would give out like a cancer or HIV patient.  So, a seven-time winner would have to be doing something to rise above and take the title. 

Another oddity about Lance Armstrong is his height and weight.  When we read that he was 5'9 and 160 lbs at his peak, we don't think anything of it because it's so extra-average for an American Man.  By professional cylists' standards, he might as well be Lou Ferrigno.  Most of these guys on bikes are mighty midgets, most being 5'3"-5'5" and barely over 130 lbs.  The extra size should put him at a disadvantage since most smaller people with less muscle mass to deliver oxygen to should render him in the bottom of the pack rather than a record-breaking run as king.  Something odd was going on...

Going back to alternative titles to give to the Tour, a third title would be the longest-running, doped-up sporting event ever.  Indeed, people have been cheating by taking things to win this race almost as long as the race has existed.  To my knowledge, the earliest use of arsenic as a performance enhancer in sports was used in the Tour back in the early 1900's.  Apparently, before it kills you, it gives your much-beloved, muscle-moving ATP quite a kick into overdrive.

So, taken into account that Lance Armstrong produced unheard of dominance in a race ridden with PED's for nearly as long as the race has existed, it's hard not to reason that he wasn't dirty as the rest of them were.  Perhaps the flagrancy of his dominance and the fact that he couldn't be caught after all of the blood n' piss samples were in after the race was just too much for the powers-that-be to tolerate.   Something had to be done. 

What we can take away from this is that in the world of professional sports, there are few clean miracles left out there.  We shouldn't burden ourselves with dreams of being just like these people unless we're ready to scour the Earth for the best in muscle-enhancing drugs to do get there.  This is just another reminder that these people take bodies that most of us don't done have and fill them with substances we probably (and hopefully) don't want to take.  That's not a path worth going down. 

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Homemade Weights Cable Exercise Machine

This is a great little build for those wanting to make your own pulley exercise machine.

Featured on Instructables.com this is an easy to build cable weights machine.

Check out the link for full details including a downloadable PDF with all the plans including dimensions

If you like the look of this you may also like to take a look at a previous homemade weights pulley machine featured here on DIYStrengthGear












Cable Exercise Machine

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How to Make Your Own Atlas Stone Mould

Atlas stones are superb for strength and conditioning training and feature in almost all strongman events. They are in fact a true strength of manliness and have been used for centuries to test this.

I have found this superb resource for making your own atlas stone mould

Check out the full article on Ontario Strongman where Grant Buhr runs through everything from stone sizes and weight, form construction to mould set up and fibreglassing










Although this process is certainly not a simple one, it would be very rewarding to make an atlas stone mould and atlas stone from scratch using this information

If you like stones and stone lifting you may be interested in making the next best thing to an atlas stone - the stone roller, this requires less gear and is great for training and strength testing

You may also like these atlas stone videos

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My Pull Up Bar

There are dozens of different ways to mount of pull up bar. It's a project that's really unique to your situation so there's no way to give a design that everyone can use. That's why I haven't done a project for it yet even though it's a very important piece of lifting equipment. But I finally decided to just shoot a quick video showing you what I did to install a pull up bar in my home gym.



Cost: $15
Project time: a few minutes
Difficulty: You can get the store to cut the pipe if you need to, so all you really have to do is drill out a hole in the wood and screw them into the wall. Very easy.

Tools Needed:

• Drill
• Hack saw (optional)
• Wood boring bit (the size of your pipe, probably 1 inch)

Materials Needed:

• Two 2x4 studs
• Long deck screws (probably 3 inch long)
• length of 1 inch (outer diameter) pipe (how long depends on where you're mounting it).

One thing I forgot to mention in the video is to make sure there is enough room between the wall (above the door) and the bar. If you mount it right in the corner like I did, and the bar is above the door there is not a lot of room. This isn't a big deal for PULL UPS, but if you intend to do CHIN UPS it can create a problem. My hands are small enough to do chin ups too but I can't put my homemade Fat Grips on there and do chin ups with those.

If this is a concern you should consider mounting it back away from the door a bit so you have plenty of room. I can't do that in this case because it's under the stairs so the cealing is angled and the farther away from the door the lower it gets. I have no desire to do fat bar chin ups so it's not an issue for me, but it's something to condise.

Remember this is just an idea. This is showing you what I did. Mounting a Pull Up bar is not a one size fits all project. Take these ideas and custom fit them into your space if you are interested.

- Carl

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DIY Neck Harness

The most well known commercial neck harness costs around $40. For what amounts to a few straps and carabiners that's quite a lot. I decided to try to make my own. I did it for less than $10. I use it mostly for strengthening the muscles to reinforce proper posture. There is another DIY design out there but I decided to try to make mine look a little more professional.


Cost: $10
Project time: depends on if you use a machine or sew by hand
Difficulty: You have sew. If you don't know how it's easy to learn.

Tools Needed:

• Sewing Needle or Sewing Machine

Materials Needed:

• Lashing Straps or Towing Straps
• Strong Thread like Upholstry thread
• Duct Tape (optional)
• 2 Carabiners
• Velcro hook and loop

- Carl

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How to Make Your Very Own DIY Pull Up Bar

Check out this great video on how to make your own DIY pull up bar.
You can't shy away from the fact that the pull up or chin is a very functional way to build strength and fitness.
Do it for a small amount of cash
Enjoy!

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Unilateralism

One of the greatest sins in my book is the disregard, and even contempt, that I see out there for any sort of exercises that are single-limbed in approach.  I know where it comes from too:  you just can't move the same amount of weight with one one limb that you can move with two.  In the world of weights where the most iron moved is the sole measure of value, a unilateral move is just shit. 

I take a different viewpoint.  As I've said before, weight is simply a means to increasing the difficulty of the movement.  If the movement needs a lot of weight to make it hard then isn't the movement itself a little too easy?  A movement that requires less weight to be considered very difficult is actually a more efficient use of the weight available to you. Those of you blessed with piles of iron obviously don't see the value in this.  In a way, you're kind of the strength training version of pampered house pets.  Welcome to the jungle!  Out here, we learn how to make the most of the least.  Unilateral work is the way we can do that. 

Ben Bruno wrote a pretty good article over at T-Nation where he described his year-long experiment with training his lower body, one leg at a time.  Apparently, he did this in response to a back injury.  The single-legged approach was more kind to his back.  I've heard this approach parroted by a couple of sports-based strength trainers.  I can't comment on it since I don't have an injured back and I haven't done a lot of the work he described but he obviously learned how to get some serious leg training within his limitations.  Iron junkies might balk at the notion but it still worked very well. 

This guy seemingly never takes the weighted vest off... allegedly not even for sex. 

My experience with unilateral leg training for the past few months has been pretty simple:  Pistols.  Honestly, I suck at them.  Granted I suck a lot less now than I sucked in January when I admitted to myself that the fact that I look like a fool while attempting these was simply unacceptable to a guy who runs a "bodyweight blog."  Still, I admitted it and I think that's a lot of people's problem with these:  they don't want to admit that they don't do these because they can't do these.  Pistols have a way of telling the mind a story of a trainee who spends too much time sitting down, getting tight and stiff and then spends their precious gym time lying to themselves that there's something wrong with muscles in and around the hips that don't impress girls too much.  So, they ignore them, throwing them into the trash heap of, "they're just a trick".  I decided to take a giant shit on this scenario and get my ass to the grass on one leg. 

When we move to single-limb, upstairs version, we come to one of my favorite ways to train the upper body, as well as another reason why unilateral work is so awesome:  it's a great, great way to strength train under time constraints.  Just simply blast one limb, doing a movement until you're exhausted.  All you've got to do is break long enough to catch your breath (a little) and then do the other side.  It's possible to get a lot of work in a very short period of time training like this. 

Oh, and training on one arm can be brutally difficult!

We began with the wonders of unilateral training's ability to make great training with a limited amount of weight to move.  A deeper exploration reveals that there is a lot of other benefits to this approach to progressive strength training.  They than work around injury to get stronger and expose weaknesses in need of strengthening just as well as they can serve as a means to make what's strong even stronger.  That kind of approach deserves more recognition than it's currently getting.  Don't make the same error of not realizing a good thing when you see it. 

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