|
Places to Go
Home
Contact Me
|
Strength Training 101
With professor Urban.
Ok, so you’re new to this game, welcome
aboard. This section will teach you the basics of constructing a
routine geared towards general, functional strength and guide you through
the first year of your venture in the gym. Basically what I will
cover in here are the elements of a good power lifting routine (which is a
good base for strength routines). For those of you not in the know,
power lifting is a sport with three events (AKA the big three): The dead
lift, the Squat, and the bench press. To each one of these Movements
there is quite a bit of technique for preventing injury and moving more
weight. Because of the abundance of articles on these techniques,
I’ll only refer you to them later when it is appropriate (because my
technique is not exactly flawless). We’ll begin with a basic three
day power lifting spit. This encompasses pull, push, and squat
days. Abdominal work is to be factored in as well and I’ll cover that
after I cover the bulk of these three days. In addition, grip work is
very important to your overall strength but I will cover that later as it
is a whole other beast.
I always keep the first day as a pull day.
What this means is that most of your pulling motions are done on this day.
You can just as easily do squats on your first day, I just happen to like
deadlifts more. If, however, you find your deadlift getting MUCH larger
than your squats I would strongly suggest you make this switch.
Because so many people who work out three days a week work M-W-F this also
gives you two days of complete rest before your first day. This is
the day you will develop your back and biceps. A couple of notes on
your pull day:
- There are three main
motions to fully develop your back. The deadlift (almost
irreplaceable as a lower back exercise), overhead pulls (such as
pull-ups and pull downs) and Lateral pulls (such as bent over rows,
chest supported rows, or seated rows).
- Your lower back
responds in ways that are not similar to other parts of your body:
muscle soreness here is often mistaken for injury. This is
because your body has evolved in a way that warns you of potential
injury to your lower back. It evolved this way to prevent you
from aggravating an injury and potentially causing paralysis. If
your lower back is sore, rest, check your
form, and try again next week (assuming you are not still very sore).
- A note on biceps,
because I mentioned them earlier. You’re thinking right now that
curls are the way to go, and you are wrong. Training with
heavy rows, and pulling motions will train your biceps better than if
you were to train them by themselves.
The dead lift is a short movement but encompasses just every major
muscle group. It is the main lift of your pull day because, done
correctly, it will require the most energy. Good Article on deadlift
technique and common errors, Here
The second day is your press day. That’s
right boys and girls, every high school jock’s love in the weight room: the
bench press. Oddly enough, this movement is, in my opinion, the least
important in developing real, functional strength. This is not to say
it’s unimportant, because upper body strength is necessary to fully train
the body. All I want you to know is that coming into the weight room
3+ days a week and training bench press every day is just making you look
like a fool in front of people who know what they’re doing. That’s
all. Simple enough? Now onto notes for constructing a press
day:
- Your bench press
consists of mainly three contracting muscle (groups): your pectorals
(possibly least important) your shoulders, and your triceps (probably
most important).
- Your triceps, like your
biceps, should be training by themselves as little as possible (this
means no cable push downs, no overhead dumbbell extensions, etc.).
Also, many people find that their biceps need more volume (sets
x reps x weight = volume), so most of the time I recommend two
exercises for your triceps in a push day.
Not really much else to say on the matter, being the most involved
lift the bench press is your main lift on this day, and you can pick up
some helpful pointers here
Last but definitely not least is your Squat
day. Your lower body has had three days of rest by this point and
it’s time to put some weight on your back and work. If when I said
squat you immediately thought of a machine then you have been poorly
mislead my friend. Squat does not mean leg press nor is leg press in any
way an appropriate substitution for squats. Yes you can handle more
weight on a machine but squats are a far superior movement.
Important things:
- The first thing to
note is that going beyond parallel is not (I repeat not (did
you hear that? NOT)) bad for your knees. Well, it isn’t
any worse than stopping at parallel. Your knees are actually
their least stable at 90º (which is parallel for you math whizzes out
there), so why would you suddenly stop and switch directions when
you’re most prone to injury.
- Squatting as low as
you can go will require more balance and coordination. More
balance will recruit more stabilizer muscles (little muscles all over
your body to help keep you from shaking, falling over, swaying, etc.).
Stronger stabilizer + better coordination = more strength applicable
to things that aren’t as well balanced as a plate loaded barbell.
- Quads are not really
your only key movers in this lift. Like dead lifts your squat
incorporates you whole body, putting particular emphasis on your lower
back, quads, glutes (your butt) and your
hamstrings. All of these are important for a big squat.
- Your lower body
houses some of the biggest muscles in the male body (btw a woman’s
largest muscle is her uterus, and unfortunately the only way to work
that is giving birth. Regardless the legs house her second
largest muscles).
So squats are important, and are completely safe. Aside from
the main lift, the back squat, there are various other squat variants
you’re going to run into (Front squats, pause squats, hack squats, ½
squats, the list goes on and on). Last but not least, a squat article
for you to read here
Lastly there are your abdominal and core
muscles. Odds are, btw, that right now you don’t know shit about
abdominal training. It’s no big deal; just about everyone out there
is spending time doing endless crunches without getting any particularly
astonishing results. Let me start by saying this, your abs are like
any other muscle and need to be trained heavy. You need weight to
train your abs properly. This doing 200 crunches a night crap is garbage.
Also if you can train your abs every day, you’re doing it WRONG. Now
that you know this, we can begin. There are three or four different
types of abdominal exercises and all accomplish different things.
- First, and most
popular, are your abdominals. Your abs are
worked mostly by contracting them to move your upper body to your
lower body while your lower body remains stationary. Some good
exercises for this are sit-ups (not crunches, full chest to knees,
hands behind your ears (not head) sit-ups), Ab wheel rollouts (the site advocates against
rolling out with your arms extended, however, I feel if you keep a
slightly rounded back, you should keep your arms oriented in the same
way relative to your torso all the way through, which would make them
extended at the end), and standing cable crunches. A note on
sit-ups, go here
and find a level you can do 3 sets of 10 at. Now from week to
week add a set when you can and when you can do 7-10 sets of 10,
re-assess your level. Remember,
the sit-ups on that site are with your feet unsupported (nothing is
holding them down) and if they come off the ground, that’s a failed
rep.
- Next are your
obliques. Now here is where the discrepancy comes in as to 3 or
4 different ways you can train your midsection. Your obliques can be trained by side crunching and side
bending motions, or through rotational exercise. If general
strength is your goal either, will work fine, and you would do best to
mix it up. However as a striker (a boxer or a kick boxer) you
will want rotational strength more. Good oblique crunching moves
are Saxon side bends, Bent press, windmills, and side press all of
which are described here. Also
on that page is the full contact twist (a
good rotational exercise). In addition to the FCT, Russian twists,
and Gagne’s cyclones are great rotational exercises and are described here. A new addition to my rotational
arsenal is the Power iron coil,
which are just plain hard.
- Last but not least
are your hip flexors. These are worked by contracting your
midsection by bringing your legs to your chest (via leg raise type
exercises). Interesting note, in a pole men’s health (a garbage
magazine for weight training) took of Cosmo readers, abs were the most
desirable part of a man to women. But not just the abs, it was the
diagonal muscles that made the lines towards your crotch they
liked. Guess what? Those are your hip flexors. So
lie on your back with your legs together and raise them up to be
perpendicular to the floor. Any leg raise variant will work your
hip flexors pretty well. If you are really hardcore, try dragon
flags. You can go here
again to get a description of a partial dragon flag. A full
dragon flag will go down and come back up (touching but not resting on
the bench). You want my hip
flexor secret? SQUAT! I don’t do leg raises
personally, but that doesn’t mean somebody out there couldn’t benefit
from them.
Now that you know how to work your abs, you probably want to know how
to see them. That is a matter of body fat. Watch what you eat,
kick up your cardio, and you’ll have a six pack in no time. Spot
reduction is a myth. Doing a 1000 sit-ups will not get you a six pack
because it’s burning away the fat on your stomach. Think of your body
fat as a pool, if you take water out of the middle of the pool will the
surface there be lower than the rest over the rest of it? No, the water
(much like your body fat) will redistribute according to the layout of the
pool (your genetics).
If you’re new to lifting (less than 4-6 months
of serious consistent training) stick with higher reps until you meet that
benchmark. As a general rule for 8
weeks I would have you just do 3 sets of 8-12 on most exercises (notable
exceptions to follow in the routine) and rest for a 90 seconds or so in
between sets (To me rest time isn’t really that important. Rest until you’re ready, and your whole
workout should take less than an hour and that’s the only criteria I try to
meet). Then add a set, two weeks
later add another set. By your 12th week you should be doing 5x8-12 for
each exercise. Now that you have your sets up to 5, for the next 8 weeks
you're going to reduce reps. start with 8 reps on all your exercises, and
each week do one less (with more weight you ninny).
“Ok, so I should be failing on every set
right? Push as hard as I can and
have my spotter save me on the last rep or two
each time?” NO! You should fail on less than 20% of your
sets. Strength is LARGELY based on
your central nervous system and the better you condition it not to fail,
the better off you are. Failure will
happen from time to time (from a bad session, simply thinking you’re
stronger than you are, not long enough rest between sets, etc.), but rarely
should you STRIVE to fail on a set.
This holds particularly true for overhead presses, in that instance,
fail less than 10% or 5% of the time.
Three weeks into when you began reducing reps,
you're going to be doing 5 reps on everything. Perfect. now keep your
assistance exercises around the 4-6 rep range and keep knocking off reps on
your main lifts (bench, Squat and deadlift) until your down to 1 rep. now
you can go to failure. This is going to be your max. Go down to 80% of this
and keep doing 5x5 for three weeks, then start knocking off reps for the
last 5 weeks. Repeat until you’re a strong mother fucker. This is called linear periodization. There are several alternatives, many of
which are very complicated, but one that is extremely simple.
The simple way to become a strong mother fucker is
to keep your reps and sets up (5-10 sets of 1 to 5 reps). And each week you strive to beat your
performance last week with either more volume,
more reps, or more weight. So last
week if you worked up to deadlifting 3 @ 300,
this week you may strive to deadlift 4 @ 300 (more reps and volume) or 3 @
300 then 1 @ 300 (more volume), or 2 @ 325 (more weight). This is the kind of mentality you should
use on your assistance lifts no matter what you’re doing with your key
lifts. From the beginning, you
should be striving to progress on everything on a regular basis, but for
the first 20 weeks you want to keep things at sub-maximal weights (that
means you’re not killing yourself in the gym). You can still strive for more reps or more
weights, but you’re not maxing out every time. Focus on form, and move slow as a
beginner, you need to realize that if you add 5 lbs a week, that’s 260 lbs
a year… so focus on your form.
Now let’s put all this together in a routine:
Day 1 – Pull
Deadlift –
Weighted Pull-ups Or Bent over
row
Stiff legged Deadlifts Or Romanian
Deadlifts
Ab
Wheel rollouts
You have your deadlifts, an overhead pull, a
hamstring exercise, a lateral pull, and in addition this is one of your two
Ab days. You can, at the end, tack on some
power shrugs. The deadlift is the
first exercise I wouldn’t use the 3 x 8-12 rep scheme on for beginners. Instead, consider doing 20 sets of 1 rep
with a minute per set. You can get
progressively heavier each set if you like, but you should not be
approaching maximal weights. After
about 8 weeks of that you can move on to 10 x 2-3 or so. Set the bar down and let go in between
every rep. It has been my experience
as well that pull-ups respond best to higher reps (8-12), and conversely
bent over rows respond best to low reps (4-6), so after the initial
technique building weeks, that’s something you want to take into
consideration. Ab
wheel rollouts can be done from the knees if you suck at them, and to add
difficulty you can raise your knees up on a platform or wear a weighted
backpack. When you get up to half
your bodyweight in the backpack do them standing instead of on your knees.
Rest day
Day 2 – Press
Barbell Flat Bench press
Military press or Dumbbell
incline Bench press
Tate press
Some other pressing assistance.
Main lift, Shoulder lift (or shoulder and pectoral
lift), a tricep lift, and whatever else you feel
like doing. Presses can take a lot of volume and a lot of people work
them twice a week with good results.
However, here is the military press, which you are NOT to fail
on. Again, if you can’t make another
rep, just rack the bar and adjust the weight for the next set. If you have the
enough energy, do close grip bench instead of tate
presses to add more specific work to your triceps. You can work your
hip flexors here if you want, I left them out because… well I don’t normally work my hip
flexors. That comes on day 3 when I squat.
Rest Day
Day 3 – Squat
Power squats
Box squats (make sure the box is
low) or Front squats
Good Mornings or Romanian Deadlift
Saxon side bends
Main lift first, technique oriented lift or quad
lift based lift, Hamstring lift and a midsection exercise. Box squats
will help teach you to sit back and not down on your squats. Many
beginners have trouble with this concept.
You need to understand squatting is not about going up and down with
a weight on your shoulders: it’s about moving your hips back and
forward. It’s all in the hips: your
heels should stay on the ground at all times, and you’re going to bend
forward at the waist. Sit back into
a squat not down. Also, as an alternative to using dumbbells on Saxon Side
Bends, you can use a barbell or a heavy plate.
Now that you know how to choose the exercises you
want for your routine, you can play with it. you can mix and match
most of the exercises in a routine like this to make 3 full body days, or
you can move the exercises around so that you to countering motions (put
bench press right before bent over row), or arrange it however you
want. Just make sure of a couple things: don’t move your main
lifts. If you want to swap dead lifts and back squats, fine, but keep
flat bench in between them as a buffer. Do not work
a body part two workouts in a row, if you work your hams on Day 1, don’t do
it on day 2.
I want to introduce the term compound lift
first before I call this done. In the scheme of how to work your
muscles there are two types of exercises: Isolated and compound.
Isolated exercises are that only involve the movement of one joint or one
muscle group’s contraction. Bicep curls, Hamstring curls, Leg
extensions, and triceps kickbacks are a good examples of isolated
exercise. Now at first glance it may seem like Isolated may be the
way to go for training your muscles, but consider how often you have to use
your bicep in isolation in real life: almost never. So why train that
way? Compound movements, which involve the bending of multiple joints
or multiple muscle groups, will train your Central Nervous system to use
your muscles in combination, thereby yielding greater potential to build
good functional strength. Train compound, get stronger faster.
It’s that simple.
Well that’s it sports fans. Good luck!
Lift heavy, train hard, go home happy! And be sure to read the
what I learned article. It
will keep you from making some disastrous mistakes.
Last Updated 1/25/06
|
