Stretching for Strength and Muscle Mass

Practical advice on getting the most out of this effective training method

by Charles Poliquin
2/24/2012 4:08:34 PM

You can use the timing and the nature of stretching to maximize gains in strength and flexibility.

The timing of stretching is critical to maximize the training response, meaning that a great method of stretching used at the wrong time can be disastrous. The regular practice of stretching will accelerate maximal gains in strength and hypertrophy. However, restrictions in fascial structures slow down hypertrophy gains and make it difficult to improve flexibility. Hence, the popularity of our FAT tool courses to remove limiting adhesions – especially when combined with a NO2 increasing cream such as Zanagen Ignite.

If you stretch with the wrong method, such as doing static stretching before strength training, you make the muscle temporarily weak and increase the risk of injury. This has been proven in multiple studies of various stretching activities, ranging from strength training to warming up for rugby and football. In most studies the decreases in maximal strength and power range from 7 to 20 percent. Who wants to train or compete at 80 to 93 percent of their best?

PNF stretching and ballistic stretching increase strength levels for workouts and competition. The key is to perform until you feel your nervous system being activated. Using bands to stretch the joint capsules also potentiates strength and flexibility gains.

To maximize your flexibility gains, four to six hours after strength training do a combination of stretching methods in this order: PNF, then ballistic, then static; following this protocol will accelerate your progress in the weightroom and on the athletic field. With PNF stretching make sure to gradually increase the tension to about 66 percent of maximal strength for 6-8 seconds for the highest return on your time investment.

When using the ballistic method, use the pendulum approach, by gradually increasing both range and velocity of the stretch. Although many physical therapists frown upon this method and argue that it increases the risk of injury, this is no more than the talk of glorified bartenders with their bags of ice. Successful kicks and throws are ballistic, so you can and should train the same way you compete! It’s all about the progressions. Weightlifters lift world records after progressive warm-ups. They get there by lifting heavy weights in a progressive manner. Why not apply the same principles to stretching?

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Sandbags For Strength

by Matt Palfrey – 10/28/2011

Is the sandbag the key to elite strength and conditioning? Probably not. It isn’t a miracle tool and likely not the missing link between you and strength training glory. However, used properly, sandbags can certainly be an effective adjunct to a solid resistance-training program.

Before you rush out and start stealing sandbags from the stack your neighbor has holding up his kid’s swing-set, you need a rationale for using them. This article will discuss how sandbags can help you build strength, conditioning, and power.

Often regarded as a “poor man’s choice” for strength and conditioning, there’s a distinct split between those that use sandbags (and other odd-shaped lifting devices) and those that train with traditional resistance, namely barbells and dumbbells. For some reason, we rarely find people that consistently work at both ends of the spectrum. Why?

• It’s difficult to “grease the groove” with sandbag training. Although your technique will undoubtedly improve over time, you’ll still find yourself fighting for most lifts. Most don’t like this.
• Sandbag training, being unstable and constantly shifting, will prevent you from lifting as much weight as you could on a more fixed device, like a barbell. This means that most who train for absolute strength tend to write them off.
• Sandbags aren’t always employed for their unique properties. They’re often used for sandbag variations of regular barbell exercises, meaning that serious trainees just end up lifting less weight than normal. As a result, the comparable results between sandbag training and barbell training aren’t that impressive.

If you’re considering adding sandbag lifting into your training program, it’s important to first qualify what it will, and what it won’t do for you.

Functional Fiction

The annoying functional training “buzz” has come full circle. People are now wise to the fact that the modality used (barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, sandbag, etc.) and exercise selected don’t necessarily make it functional. What makes these things functional (and indeed anything) is how they relate to you and your individual needs.

Subsequently, we’re starting to see a return to programs that are more functional for most people. Programs based around good, compound lifts are now common – and this is a great thing.

Does this mean that we should avoid those other “real-life” lifts altogether? I say no, provided we realize why we’re including them in our program.

Most avoid “odd-object” lifting because it’s tough and they find themselves struggling to make many of the lifts, even at moderate loads. For those aiming to increase absolute strength this can become an issue. I’m proposing that you don’t substitute sandbag training for barbell training, but use it as an additional tool.

What Makes The Sandbag Awesome

• The sandbag is awkward to lift, requiring that you fight hard to perform exercises with it, just like working with a “real-life” object or person. (Hello, mixed martial artists, bouncers, and amateur mud wrestlers.)
• Sandbags require great levels of grip strength to lift. You’ll find that you naturally grip them in positions like the bear hug, Zercher, or shoulder.
• The sandbag is malleable. It will adjust to your body and how you’re using it. Like Spiderman’s alter ego Venom, it’s particularly effective in “molding” itself to your body and is perfect for carrying, dragging, and throwing.
• The sandbag is unstable and will develop great core strength. This is the opposite of most “core” training where the surface you’re standing on is unstable. Working with an unstable object is much more akin to the demands of real life.
• They’re a great way to push past plateaus. Get used to lifting a 200-pound bag of sand above your head and you’ll be stronger when you go back to the relatively “stable” barbell.
• Finally, sandbags are inexpensive. They’re perfect for anyone on a budget. Just show up to a riverside community in the weeks following a spring flood – they’ll pay you to take them away!

Integrating Sandbag Training

The simplest way to incorporate sandbag lifting is to use the bag as an alternative to deadlifts, squats, presses, and pulls. This isn’t the most effective use of the sandbag but it will give you a taste of the benefits therein.

How you integrate sandbag training into your strength and conditioning will be highly specific to your own individual needs. The following three options will provide you with some starting points:

• Substitute an existing session of lifting for sandbag variations. Replace the lifts you’d normally do with a traditional free weight with the sandbag. Do this 1-2 times per month.
• Add in a unique sandbag lifting session. Use some of the sandbag exercises described below and try a session that’s either strength based (high weight, low rep, long rest periods) or conditioning based (light-moderate weight, moderate-high rep, minimal rest periods).
• Use sandbags for a sport-specific session. Push it, pull it, drag it, and throw it. Treat it like an opposing shopper at Best Buy on Black Friday and be creative.

Sandbag Exercises

The following exercises will give you the best of what the sandbag has to offer. They’re exercises that you probably wouldn’t normally do, and that’s a good thing!

Sandbag Windmill

If you’ve ever tried a windmill with a kettlebell or dumbbell you’ll appreciate that it can be a tough exercise. It requires great flexibility, core and shoulder strength. Try it with a sandbag and it goes to a whole new level. The constantly shifting load of the sandbag will challenge your shoulder stability like nothing else.

Sandbag Bear-Hug Load Carry

This is the type of exercise that the sandbag was designed for. The bear hug will develop the kind of strength that’s difficult to get from regular lifting. Couple this with a load carry (or sprint for supreme conditioning) for a great strength and conditioning exercise. You could move the bag between platforms or chairs, or perhaps set out a course to cover.

Sandbag Floor Press with Bridge

The floor press is a great exercise for developing pushing strength, and the sandbag version encourages greater development of grip strength and shoulder stability. Plus, you can be creative with it. MMA athletes can try escapes and transitions with the sandbag.

Sandbag Clean and Press

Lifting a bag of sand above your head is no easy feat, and the added challenge from the sandbag is enough to justify its inclusion in the list.

Wrap Up

There’s absolutely no substitute for the basics, namely barbells and dumbbells. However, just as the Prowler and kettlebells can be effective additions to a solid weight-training program, so can the dirty old sandbag. It might just be the plateau buster you were looking for!

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Bodyweight Isometrics for Improved Strength

(No, Really!)

by Adam Vogel and Michael Campanella – 1/20/2012

We already know what you’re thinking.

“Bodyweight isometrics in my strength program? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

If we were trying to come up with an article topic that would simultaneously draw the ire of the entire strength and conditioning world, destroy our credibility, and raise the estrogen levels of anyone unfortunate enough to lay their eyes upon it, bodyweight isometrics would hit the bull’s-eye.
Hear us out. We’re not suggesting that you trade in your Chuck’s for stretchy yoga pants and soy lattes. We’re not even suggesting that you change a single repetition in your weight-training program at all.
This article is about leveraging the benefits of an extremely powerful training tool that’s been used by bodybuilders, Russian power athletes, and Olympic gymnasts for centuries. So wipe out any preconceived notions you might have of what bodyweight training is all about.

Enter the World of Isometrics

Bodybuilding legend Charles Atlas first introduced isometrics to the fitness world in the 1920s under the term, “dynamic tension.” Atlas seemingly did quite well for himself with isometrics, earning both a reputation for being the best-built man in the world and a small fortune from sales of his program detailing how to use them.
The popularity of isometrics surged again in the 1950s after a study by Hettinger and Mueller showed that a small dose of daily isometrics could increase strength by 5% per week for up to 10 weeks. But somewhere between the 1960s and today, isometrics seemingly disappeared from mass circulation.
Although isometrics have managed to maintain their popularity among power athletes, their role has been significantly downgraded to the rehabilitative setting and breast enhancement programs for flat-chested women.

The Way of the Isometric

Adequately defining isometrics can be problematic; the best we can do is to say that it’s a movement. As such, it occurs when the force produced by a muscle is exactly equal to the external load imposed on it. But that’s not to say that there’s no movement at all.
I think the Bee Gee’s said it best when they observed that when an “irresistible force meets an immovable object… blood starts to flow.” And it does, as do nerve impulses, calcium ions, sliding actin, and myosin filaments, as well as all the other internal processes that must occur to produce a muscular contraction.
The carryover benefits of isometric training on dynamic lifts have been well documented. For decades, Russian coaches have advocated a strength regime that consists of 75% concentrics, 15% eccentrics, and 10% isometrics.
Why would the Russians devote so much time to this style of training?
Because they knew (and we know) that isometric exercises can be more effective than dynamic ones for building strength movements that require muscle contractions of large magnitude during particular stages.
Where would that fit into weight training? Perhaps at the bottom of a deadlift, the midpoint of a bench press, or the lock out in an overhead jerk?
During a dynamic exercise, the application of maximal force that can be achieved at any one joint angle is transient at best. Static contractions, on the other hand, allow you to focus on a specific joint angle and blast it with the type of sustained stress necessary for neuromuscular adaptations to occur.
As an additional benefit, many claim the strength that’s produced at any particular joint angle has a 10-15% carryover above and below that position.

Iso-Methods

There are many different ways you can add isometrics into your program, depending on your goals. Powerlifters and strength athletes have used chopped-up versions of their competition lifts to perform static holds with maximal weight in a position of emphasis.
This is usually accomplished by performing overcoming isometrics, in which the bar is pushed or pulled against an immovable object like a squat rack, or yielding isometrics, where a maximal weight is prevented from falling to the ground.
While these methods can be an incredibly effective means for building strength and power for these particular patterns, the lack of a need for body awareness or strategic placement makes them less applicable for non-strength athletes like football players, MMA fighters, or for general physical preparedness.
One method to address this is to pair static gymnastics-based holds with our athlete’s dynamic exercises. Using these types of holds allows for similar levels of muscle activation as standard isometric movements, but with the added benefit of improving overall body control, core activation, and body awareness.
If you have any doubts, spend two-minutes watching a collegiate level or higher gymnastic meet and you’ll quickly come around. Not only do they look like bodybuilders, with well-defined muscles and incredibly low body fat levels, they’re also some of the strongest pound-for-pound athletes in the world.
The weightroom exploits of gymnasts are legendary. Consider 140-pound gymnasts who could crush 300-pound + bench presses and triple-bodyweight deadlifts without ever having touched a weight in practice before. Conversely, there aren’t many 300-pound bench-pressers rocking iron crosses their first time out.
Below are three gymnastics-based exercises that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

L-Sits and Front Levers

L-Sits

The L-sit is a staple exercise in gymnastics core-conditioning programs, forming the basis for the more advanced parallel bar and ring maneuvers. It includes elements of active posterior chain flexibility, static abdominal strength, and a remarkable level of shoulder girdle and upper arm support strength.
L-sits are probably the most humbling abdominal exercise on the planet. No amount of sit-ups, bent-leg raises, or front planks can ever truly prepare you for the feelings of feebleness that accompanies most people’s first attempt with this exercise.
The L-sit is pure badassery. Along with forging a set of Kevlar-coated abdominals, working the L-Sit position can do wonders for your front squat, deadlift, and any other exercise that relies on hip flexor and knee extensor strength.
Here’s a great progression that will get you started on your journey toward building a strong and functional midsection:

Phase One: Tuck Hold

Support yourself between two benches with your arms straight, and torso in an upright position. Raise both legs (bent) to at least parallel, if not a little higher.

Phase Two: Low L-Sit

Using the same setup, raise both legs (straight) to a level just below parallel. This will pull the quadriceps more into the mix, setting you up for the next variation.

Phase Three: Full L-Sit

The full L-sit is usually performed from the floor. The goal here is to keep both your legs off the ground, at or above hip height for 5-10 seconds. Once you’ve mastered the L-sit, make sure to congratulate yourself as this is no small task – you’ve officially earned the privilege to refer to your abs as a “Situation.”

Note on progressions: The goal is to accumulate 60 seconds in each hold. This could be 10 sets of 6 seconds, 6 sets of 10 seconds, or 3 sets of 20 seconds – it doesn’t really matter. Once you can hold the position for 30 seconds straight, continue to the next progression.

Front Levers

The front lever is the gold standard in total body strength development, requiring upper body pulling power, core control, and the ability to subjugate the physical properties of the universe by sheer force of will.
It involves holding your entire body in a rigid horizontal plank on a pull-up bar, with your arms straight and your back parallel to the floor, giving you the Jedi-like appearance of floating on air. Achieving this position requires a Herculean effort from your lats, abdominals, hip flexors, and scapular stabilizers.
This is one of the hardest total body exercises out there, so a tight progression that works up to the final product is a must. Before you jump into hanging variations of the front lever, it’s helpful to get a “feel” for the exercise by practicing the basic positions on a bench or the ground first.

Tucked Front Lever to Single-leg Lever

Beginning from an inverted hang position, slowly lower your body until your back is parallel to the floor. Consciously tense your armpits and pull downwards (towards the bar) while retracting your shoulder blades. Once you’re able to maintain this position for at 5-10 seconds, begin to reach one leg out in an alternating fashion.

A word of caution, these are tough, demonstrating the power of disadvantageous leverages and bodyweight isometrics. If you can’t get one leg out, follow the L-sit progression until you’re comfortable in the tuck for 30 seconds straight and try again. At this point, you should have enough strength to attempt the movement.

Full Front Lever

Assuming you’ve already turned a few heads at the gym with your single-leg lever, get ready to start blowing people’s minds by extending your other leg out straight to complete the full front lever position. This is an extremely difficult position to get into, and you only need to hold it for 1-2 seconds to officially claim it as yours.

Conclusion

As you can see, bodyweight isometrics aren’t all wall squats and front planks borrowed from a geriatric training program. Applied correctly, they can be powerful training tools with multiple benefits that go well beyond increasing muscular endurance.
They may even be a more effective means of developing overall strength, power, and body control than traditional weight-based movements. Just don’t tell anyone at the gym we said that, okay?

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Why You Need More Strength

by Chad Waterbury – 10/10/2011

In order to be powerful, you must be strong.
Developing huge levels of muscle force takes a lot of maximal strength, but it’s only after you enhance your ability to quickly reach that peak level of force that you achieve head-turning power.
Power is defined as work divided by time (P=W/T), so in order to become more powerful you must decrease the amount of time it takes you to perform a certain amount of work. Let’s say two guys can achieve the same level of peak force. The guy who can reach that peak force faster is more powerful.
The typical way a strength coach will build a power athlete is with a combination of speed and maximal strength training.
Speed training uses submaximal loads with fast tempos. For example, you’ll put a load on the bar you could lift 10 times but you’ll only perform three super-fast reps.
The goal of speed training isn’t to enhance your peak force, but instead to enhance your ability to reach that peak force in less time. Put another way – speed training won’t increase your maximal strength and this can be problematic for most power athletes.
For the purposes of this discussion, a power athlete is someone whose sport mandates lightning fast movements. Think of a MMA fighter or a running back.
Ironically, the only sport with the word “power” in the description – powerlifting – doesn’t mandate fast movements. Whether it takes you two seconds or eight seconds to lock out the deadlift doesn’t matter; either is acceptable in that sport. Nevertheless, speed work is important in powerlifting. There are two reasons.
First, speed work enhances your ability to reach peak levels of force. The inability to reach max force can cause you to miss the lift. The second reason is because, in most cases, powerlifters aren’t doing anything outside of the gym that challenges their speed. They need to train for speed in their workouts because they’re not getting it anywhere else.
You must be able to tap into your peak force very fast to get bigger and stronger. But this article isn’t an overview of how to train for speed. Eric Cressey already did an excellent job covering that in Training Speed to Get Strong.
Powerlifters aside, most power athletes don’t need additional speed work. They need to develop more maximal strength. That’s the focus of this article.

How to Target Maximal Strength

Maximal strength is your ability to produce the highest level of force possible. Based on motor unit physiology, your ability to maintain maximum continuous force decreases at the 10-second mark. So any set or exercise that lasts longer than 10 seconds of continuous tension isn’t directly training maximal strength.
There are two different ways to increase maximal strength. The first is with those big, compound exercises that you love to do in the gym because you can load plenty of plates on the bar. I’m talking about the deadlift and back squat, among others. You lift heavy, you keep the reps low, and you keep the rest periods long.
The other way to build maximal strength is with high-tension exercises. These exercises don’t require much external load but they’re brutally tough. Heck, in some cases you don’t need any external load before you have to stop.
Two examples include the iron cross on the rings or a body weight glute-ham raise. Most strong athletes can’t complete a single, full range of motion rep of either. So even though there’s no external load, it’s still maximal strength training since you can’t maintain muscle tension for more than 10 seconds.
There’s no new way to build pure strength. You need to lift heavy and use high-tension exercises. Thirty years ago a professional football player would practice to build his game and lift heavy in the gym to build his maximal strength. But then something changed.

The Sport Specific Training Setback

By the 1990′s, sport specific training became the rage. The concept was simple – try to mimic in the weight room what you’re doing in the sport. That way, what you develop in the gym will directly correlate with an increase in sport-specific performance.
Take a 100-meter sprinter, for example, whose replay video shows a high knee kick throughout the race. His strength coach has him perform a bunch of high knee kicks with a resistance band to build strength in that movement pattern because, well, that’s what the sport shows.
Yet, this type of sport specific training didn’t help. What proof do I have? Well, the progressive strength coaches who ended up removing those crazy exercises out of their athlete’s programs saw no loss in sport performance. In many cases, the athletes actually improved their speed and strength once those fatigue-inducing exercises were put on the shelf.
I was reminded of this fact when I recently met up with sprint strength coach savant, Barry Ross, to talk shop. He’s a guy who’s known for having his athletes perform an extremely basic strength-building program; I mean, really basic. His strength program focuses on building the deadlift and not much else.
A deadlift-focused program for sprinters seems about as far from sport-specific as training can be. Yet Ross consistently produces some of the fastest sprinters in the world.
He doesn’t have his sprinters perform a high knee kick against resistance because he figured out that the high kick was merely a rebound effect from the huge amount of force his sprinters were able to pound into the ground from their monstrous deadlifts.
Another example – back in 1997 I was fortunate to spend time around another legend in the world of strength training, Tim Grover. He’s the guy who trained Michael Jordan throughout his career, in addition to many other top NBA players.
One really smart thing Tim did was measure his players’ average heart rate on the basketball court. He wanted to see it decrease over time as they got further into the off-season strength and conditioning program he set up for them.
Tim didn’t have Jordan or Pippen run up and down the court wearing a weighted vest with ankle weights while shooting a 20-pound basketball. He used basic strength exercises to get them stronger. Grover knew that making his basketball players stronger would allow them to perform jump shots with less effort. This kept their heart rate down and, by default, increased their endurance.
I mention Barry Ross and Tim Grover for a reason. Ross’ athletes only need to run in a straight line for a very short amount of time. Grover’s athletes had to run in multiple directions for a long period of time. Yet both focused on a basic maximal strength-building program to improve their athlete’s performance, and both are hugely successful with their methods. They didn’t fall victim to the sport-specific training nonsense.
The problem with the sport specific training craze is that the exercises weren’t nearly as effective as training the sport itself. Those exercises just accumulated fatigue that kept athletes from practicing at their peak on the field or in the ring.
The idea of taking any sprint, punch or kick and adding resistance to it in order to build sport specific endurance is akin to prescribing a 4/0/2 tempo for the step-up. Both approaches set the strength and conditioning industry back 20 years.

The Fatigue Factor

Fatigue is the number one enemy of any athlete. Anyone who’s a fighter, or trains fighters, has a clear understanding of how detrimental fatigue can be.
Look, if you’re a running back, fatigue will decrease your agility so you’re more likely to get tackled. That’s not good. However, for MMA fighters, the inability to maintain their reflexes at the end of a fight could be a career ender.
It’s this respect for my fighter’s safety at the end of a fight that made me put such a large emphasis on speed training and sport-specific endurance development when I first started working with them. In those days, half of our training would be speed with endurance work, while the other half was maximal strength training.
But I wasn’t satisfied with their maximal strength development. I knew the problem – they were doing too much overall training throughout the week to recover. So I started tapering off the amount of speed work I had them do. Of course, their maximal strength went up.
And their endurance and explosive strength also went up!
I determined an increase in endurance by their ability to maintain a lower average heart rate while they were sparring. The explosive strength enhancement was determined by an increase in their broad jump score.
Of course, training for nothing but maximal strength won’t make you an endurance athlete. However, when I cut out the speed/endurance exercises, they were able to put more energy into their kickboxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, and boxing.
In other words, they had the extra energy outside of our strength workouts to literally build sport specific endurance by practicing their sport more frequently and with greater intensity. And remember that having higher levels of maximal strength means you can perform the sport with less effort.
The only type of sport specific training worth doing is the sport itself. I like battling ropes for MMA athletes as much as the next guy, but it’s still inferior to letting them spend that energy on actual striking.

3 Guidelines for Training Power Athletes

1. If you train a MMA fighter, sprinter, running back, or any other similar athlete you probably don’t need speed work in their training sessions because their sport is the speed work. Focus on building nothing but maximal strength with high load and high-tension exercises.

Use the deadlift as the ultimate measure of high-load training strength with being able to pull at least a raw double body weight lift with an unmixed grip as the goal. Focus on building the glute-ham raise, iron cross, muscle-up, and handstand push-up from rings for body weight high-tension exercises.
A key with maximal strength training is to rest at least three minutes before repeating an exercise. This doesn’t mean you need to sit around for three minutes, though. Here’s a sample sequence I like for developing the core and posterior chain.

	Exercise	Reps	Rest
1A	Pallof press-hold for 10 seconds		60 sec.
1B	Deadlift*	2	60 sec.
1C	Body weight glute-ham raise	**	60 sec.

* with heaviest load possible
** for as many reps as possible

Repeat 1A-1C four more times.

2. Monitor their endurance with a heart rate monitor while sparring. Their average heart rate should decrease over time. If it doesn’t decrease, I would encourage them to spend more time practicing their fighting style.

If that doesn’t work, add battling ropes, sled work, sprints or something similar into the program, one at a time. Make sure whatever you add in is improving their sparring endurance.

3. Monitor their explosive strength with one of the simplest ways to measure rate of force development (RFD), the broad jump. Here are the details:

The broad jump is a versatile tool in athletic settings. Not only is it an accurate way to test your potential increase in RFD, but it’s also a good measure of which young athlete might be genetically predisposed to being a great power athlete.
The kid with the longest broad jump is often the one chosen by an Olympic coach who’s looking to build his resume.
In science, all possible variables must be kept consistent through subsequent trials or the data will be skewed. This need for accuracy, of course, is just as important when testing athletes. The biomechanics of the broad jump must be as consistent as possible.
In subsequent trials, if the athlete uses a wider or narrower foot placement, if he’s wearing different shoes, or if he’s jumping from a different surface, you won’t get an accurate measure of his changes in performance.
Testing Surface: Ideally you’ll jump from a hard surface and land on a slightly softer one. Think of a basketball court floor for takeoff and a hard rubber surface like you see in gyms for landing. A surface that’s too soft, however, isn’t helpful either since it’s difficult for the athlete to land solid. It’s not imperative that you land on a softer surface, but if one is available, use it.
Footwear: I usually have my athletes perform the broad jump with bare feet. Any shoe with minimal cushioning will work, too. Avoid testing athletes who are wearing shoes with thick, cushioned soles.
Foot placement: When the athlete is ready to perform a broad jump, measure the distance between the inside of his heels and place two marks on the floor with tape so his heels are the exact same width with each subsequent attempt. Whichever foot placement feels most powerful is what you want to test. That stance width will be slightly different for everyone.
Attempts, Measuring and Calculations: Perform three broad jumps with three minutes of rest between each attempt. If the athlete loses his balance on the landing, it doesn’t count. Wait three minutes and perform another attempt.
Measure from the front of his toes at takeoff to the back of his heel at landing. Measure to the heel that’s closest to the takeoff line if the feet aren’t perfectly even. The longest jump is the one that counts in your data.
Testing frequency: Test the broad jump every four weeks. Ideally, you’ll test it on the same day at the same time with the same warm-up, if you choose to use a warm-up (as little as 10 jumping jacks one minute before the first jump is usually sufficient). The key is to keep whatever warm-up you’re doing consistent over time.
Now, in a perfect world the athlete would refrain from any heavy weight training for two days before testing the broad jump. If you test the broad jump two days after a heavy deadlift the first week, and retest it one day after a heavy deadlift the fourth week, you’re going to skew your data. Be smart with your timing of the broad jump test and try to keep all variables as consistent as possible.
It would be easy to get into a scholarly discussion over what constitutes an ideal broad jump distance. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that your broad jump is consistently increasing over time. Once it stops increasing, add speed exercises into your training program if you feel that’s what’s lacking.

Final Words

This article isn’t a slam on speed training. It has its place. If you’re an avid lifter who doesn’t compete in any sport and wants to get bigger and stronger, traditional speed training should be a part of your program.
However, if you’re a power athlete it’s important to remember that your sport probably gives you all the speed training you need, if you practice it enough.
What you’ll most likely get the greatest benefit from is maximal strength training. This is especially true if your goal is to be the next MMA champion!

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Training Speed to Get Strong

by Eric Cressey – 8/22/2011
Imagine two lifters standing near one another – each with a barbell loaded to 405 pounds on the floor in front of them.
Assume these two are identical in every way – except for one key fact. Lifter A was a high-jumper, but Lifter B got his physique from more traditional bodybuilding methods.
Neither of these guys has ever deadlifted 405 previously.
Which of the two do you put your money on to hit the PR if you don’t know anything else about them?
Ten times out of ten, I take the high jumper – and I’d guarantee you that most folks in the human performance industry would do the same. Why?
Based on his athletic background, you can assume that he’s learned to apply force quickly.
These two might have the exact same peak force capabilities, but the guy who can put force into the ground the quickest to break that bar from the floor stands a better chance of completing the lift.
The take-home message is very simple: learn to apply force quickly and it’ll make you stronger. The optimal approach, however, is not that simple; in fact, it’s different for everyone – and that’s what I’ll cover in this article.

What You Can Learn from the Crazy Father of an Unathletic 14 Year-Old

At Cressey Performance, we train a lot of high school athletes. Roughly once a week, we have a father come in and tell us that his kid needs more “agility training” in his program because he isn’t quite fast enough. I encourage them all to read this article: Make My Kid Run Faster.
The basic gist of the article is that you can do all the speed training you want with a young kid, but unless he has a foundation of strength, it won’t help much at all. It’s the equivalent of swapping out the fuzzy dice in the mirror of a car with no engine.
Sprinting and change-of-direction work involve substantial ground reaction forces, and without adequate strength to provide eccentric control, unprepared bodies turn to mush. You have to have force in order to display force quickly.
How does this apply to incorporating speed work in a strength-training program? Very simply, if you haven’t built a solid foundation of strength, incorporating specific speed work in your program probably won’t do much for you.
What’s a solid foundation of strength? If I had to estimate it based on previous experience, I’d say a 1.5x body weight squat, 1.25x body weight bench press, and 1.75x body weight deadlift.
With folks that aren’t quite at that level who still want to give a passing nod to speed, I typically just recommend that they add a few additional warm-up sets on their first exercise of the day. On these additional sets, their focus is outstanding concentric bar speed in perfect technique. So if a 185-pound guy is working up to squatting 230×3, he might proceed as follows:

Bar (45) x 8
95 x 5
135 x 3
155 x 3 Fast
165 x 3 Fast
175 x 3 Fast
185 x 3
205 x 3
230 x 3 (first official work set)

A normal work-up for this guy might be 45×8, 95×5, 135×3, 185×3, 205×3 – and then on to his first work set at 230. In this instance, however, he adds an additional three sets of speed work without beating up on his body or adding unnecessary volume that could interfere with his more important work sets.
In the process, he not only gets a chance to practice technique, but also learns that he should always accelerate the bar as fast as possible. The intent to develop force quickly is where it’s at – even if the bar speed isn’t tremendous, that bar speed will come in time.

What Constitutes Speed Work, Anyway?

I’ve seen some blanket recommendations about how to best train bar speed in the weight room, but I’m not sure that there’s one that’s universally accurate. You see, the slower you are (regardless of how much force you can develop), the lower the percentage of one-repetition maximum (1RM) you’ll need to use.
Conversely, the fastest guys usually don’t even need to train speed; their natural reactive ability allows them to just lift heavy stuff and continue to get faster. You can usually identify these naturally fast-twitch guys as people who will absolutely smoke a lift at 99% of their 1RM, but get absolutely stapled by 101%. They either crush a lift or don’t get it at all (whereas most folks will have to grind them all out).
As the saying goes, “It’s easier to make a fast guy strong than it is to make a strong guy fast.” Most folks (myself included) are somewhere in the middle.
With that in mind, I like to let the bar “sound” dictate whether the weight is right. In most cases, if you’re accelerating the bar with good speed, you’ll hear the plates rattle against each other in the strongest portion of the movement.
In fact, a good way to test this out is to simply load up a bar to roughly the weight you think you should use, but use several 2.5- and 5-pound plates in the process, then put the safety clamp about 1″ away from the weights. If you’re smoking big weights, the plates will make some noise – but you won’t get this if the bar is too heavy.
At what weight will this take place? In most cases, 40-70% of 1RM is your best bet. Of course, there are exceptions; as an example, jump squat percentages will be lower because you’re actually leaving the ground. And, of course, the Olympic lifts – which are absolutely fantastic for improving rate of force development – are self-limiting in that if you can’t move the bar fast, you simply won’t complete the lift.
Of course, all the preceding paragraphs assume that you need external loading to improve speed to the point that it’ll carry over to lifting. That’s not necessarily the case.

Ten Ways to Train Speed in Your Strength Training Program

A lot of folks get stuck in a rut when it comes to training speed in the context of strength and conditioning. It seems like everyone’s all about just doing box squats and bench presses – but there really are a number of other options.

• Sprinting: No equipment needed. It might not carry over perfectly from a specificity standpoint, but running fast will never make you less athletic. In terms of resisted sprinting, I’ve never been a fan of sprinting with parachutes, but we will use sprinting with sleds.
• Box Jumps: You go up, but don’t come down – so the pounding on the body is minimized. I’ve read of quite a few high-level deadlifters who have utilized box jumps with outstanding success.
• Countermovement (Vertical) and Broad Jumps: You can do these with body weight only, or against added resistance. Band-resisted broad jumps are arguably my favorite exercise for training posterior chain power.
• Medicine Ball Drills: These might not carry over from a specificity standpoint, but frankly, people spend too much time in the sagittal plane – and power training is no different. Plus, it’s fun as hell to try to smash medicine balls. You can do overhead, rotational, and scoop variations. I’d also put sledgehammer swings against tires in this category.

• Non-Sagittal Plane Plyos: Like medicine ball drills, they aren’t necessarily “specific” to lifting, but there will be carryover, and you’ll certainly move better on the whole. We utilize many different variations of heidens with our athletes.

• Olympic lifts: As noted earlier, assuming you learn proper technique and you have the adequate mobility to perform them correctly, you can’t go wrong with Olympic lifts if you’re trying to improve universal bar speed. Cleans, snatches, high pulls, jerks, you name it; if you’re slow, they can help.
• Squat Variations: Following the percentage variations I noted above, you have loads of options for variations: different bars (straight bar, giant cambered bar, safety squat bar), free squats, box squats, Anderson squats (from pins or chains), and different forms of accommodating resistances (chains and bands).
• Deadlift Variations: I increased my deadlift from 510 to 628 in just under a year, and I’m convinced that it had to do with the fact that my programs included speed deadlift variations twice a week for that entire period. You can do conventional, sumo, trap bar, and snatch grip variations.
• Bench Press Variations: As with the last two examples, variety is easy to include. You can vary grip width, change bars (straight bar, multipurpose bar, thick bar), perform the movement with or without a pause at the bottom, and implement different accommodating resistances.
• Plyometric or Clap Push-ups: These can be a good change of pace for those who are bored with speed benching – and they can be great exercises to take on the road if you don’t have a lot of equipment at your fingertips.

How to Pick the Right Speed Exercises for You



Several factors influence which of the above modalities you choose, but the foremost of these factors are a) your goal and b) your current training experience.
If your goal is to deadlift a Buick, then you need to go with specific options. I’d use speed deadlift variations almost exclusively, and perhaps just use some broad/box jump variations and a bit of hip dominant squatting for speed as variety. Specificity will always rule if lifting heavier weights is the only goal.
If you’re just an Average Joe trying to get more athletic with some solid carryover to your strength training program, I’d rotate my “speed work” on a monthly basis. Each month, in both the upper and lower body, I’d do one movement with minimal external loading (jumping variation, sprinting, medicine ball work) and another with more appreciable loading (speed box squats, speed deadlifts, or Olympic lifts).
If you have two upper-body and two lower-body training sessions in each week, you could simply do one in each as the first movement of each session. I’m in this category, and I tend to do one day of speed benches and one day of speed squats or deadlifts per week, then supplement it with a bit of sprinting and some medicine ball throws. In other words, I get some general, and some specific.
If you’ve got decent speed already, chances are that you can get away with just once a week in both the upper and lower body.
As you can probably tell, I don’t see any reason to devote specific training sessions, weeks, or entire blocks specifically to training speed. Rather, I see it as one component of a comprehensive program – and something that can be trained alongside other strength qualities in each training block. You might do more of it at certain times than others, but that doesn’t mean it should be performed to the exclusion of everything else; heavy lifting and rep work definitely still has its place!

When to Include Speed Work

Most of the time, the best place to put your speed drills is first thing in your strength training session, right after the warm-up. In other words, it’d be your “A1.” There are, however, a few exceptions to the rule.
I’ve often done my speed deadlifting as my “B1″ exercise after heavy squatting.
We’ll also integrate complex training, in which a speed exercise is preceded by a heavier load. In other words, you might do a heavy set of 2-4 reps on a front squat, and then do a set of five countermovement (vertical) jumps within 20-30 seconds.
You’d rest 2-3 minutes, and then repeat the process. Through a principle known as post-activation potentiation, the heavy loading of the front squat increases neural drive and recruitment of high-threshold motor units, which in turn allows for greater power output on the subsequent task. It can work great, but if you do it all the time, you can burn athletes out.
Finally, in certain cases, it might be necessary to do a separate speed session altogether. Sprinting and medicine ball work, for instance, may need to take place in a separate location than lifting, so for sake of convenience, you’d just perform those exercises on their own.
Basically, the idea is to train speed when you’re fresh. Doing a bunch of box jumps at the end of a heavy lower body training session isn’t just unproductive; it’s dangerous.

Wrapping Up

Everyone needs speed, but some certainly need to improve in this regard more than others – and some don’t even “qualify” for dedicated speed work because they haven’t already built up a solid foundation. If you use the aforementioned strategies for implementing speed training in your training programs, I’m confident that you’ll start hitting big weights faster than ever.

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Complex Neuromuscular Training for Size and Strength

Squat and Sprint

Complex Neuromuscular Training for Size and Strength

by Dean Somerset – 8/16/2011

What’s the best way to pack on pounds of lean mass? Heavy loads with long rest periods? High volume with short rest periods? A combination of the two, with a sprinkle of P-90X thrown in for flavor?

Though either approach can certainly “work,” you don’t have to look further than the nearest gymnastic training center to see that there are other effective ways to pack on appreciable muscle mass. Considering gymnasts often have some of the thickest arms and shoulders per pound of body mass of any athlete, it’s surprising you don’t see more gym rats hitting the rings or pommel horse.

And let’s not forget sprinters. Many 100m and 200m sprinters like Harry Aikines-Aryeetey from the UK have more beef on their arms, shoulders, and thighs than many gym rats could ever dream of building. On top of that, their muscles tend to have a “denser” look, possibly due to a higher concentration of contractile proteins than that of bodybuilders, where increased cell volume and intramuscular glycogen play a big role (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy).

I recall watching training footage of disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson before his performance enhancement drug scandal. For one particular workout, Johnson brought a squat rack onto the track and performed an extremely heavy set of back squats (I think he had over 500 pounds) for 3-5 reps, then immediately burst from the cage in a full speed sprint for 60m.

The reasoning behind this was to overload the nervous system in a sort of “pre-fatigue” manner with the back squats, and then have to generate power through the already tired legs to achieve top velocity.

To put it differently, he was working the fast-twitch fibers with high-force, low-speed contractions in the back squat, and then immediately hitting them with high-force, high-speed contractions in sprinting. It was two mechanically different activities requiring a high degree of neural activity to produce maximal force in a sort of bipolar manner.

This was interesting as much of the prevailing wisdom at the time regarding hypertrophy revolved around simply lifting heavier weights within an 8-12 rep range. As you got stronger you either lifted more weight or did another rep with the same weight in the subsequent workouts.

The idea of resistance and speed of contraction being inversely related didn’t take into account the muscle force production capacity, and the associated muscle activity to get it there.

This is why many athletes can generate huge muscle force components with relatively light resistance (baseball, punching, golf, etc.). If we were to crank up the resistance without significantly affecting the top-end movement speed, we’d see some explosive gains in size and strength.

So I started experimenting. I couldn’t take a squat rack onto the field, but I was able to position a squat rack and a cycle ergometer right next to each other. I’d set up the rack for a heavy set and then hop on the bike for a 6-second bout of very high speed sprint work that left my legs feeling like Jell-O.

After two months, both my squat weight and sprint speed were up significantly, along with noticeable growth in my quads and hamstrings. My acceleration and top speed in all the sports I was participating in was up, too.

I tried this workout again a decade later – being outside the fantastic adaptable teenage hormonal years – with similar results. I then tried it on a few of my “hard-gainer” clients, and found that with only two workouts a week in this scheme, both saw solid gains in size and strength.

One client gained 10 pounds of muscle in two months (going from 156 at 5’8″ to 166) without changing his diet, and after training hard for over a year. Another gained 14 pounds after already training for two years, but found that his diet definitely changed because he was eating almost anything that wasn’t nailed down.

By making the muscle contract in a high force/low speed and high force/high speed series, the body is put under a very high-intensity training stimulus, which provides three major benefits.

First, it extends the force production phase of the exercise beyond the 3-5 reps of the heavy squat and incorporates a cyclic natured movement that requires a high degree of muscle force production.

The increased time under tension of roughly 10 seconds of maximal power output will completely tax the creatine phosphate system and the neural systems’ ability to generate an impulse into the muscle for an extended period. The end result is a greater response from the endocrine system and muscle satellite cells to put everything back together, and a greater development and repair of muscle fibers.

Second, fast twitch muscle fibers, the ones that can grow to be the biggest within the body, are stimulated by both high force production and high speed production. By using a system that addresses both of these components, we’re getting the best variety of stimulation to the fast twitch fibers, as well as the highest intensity stimulation possible short of hooking our muscles up to a generator and redlining the sucker.

Third, although not a component of the exercise itself, the rest period is kept to just 90 seconds between bouts, allowing for an adequate recovery of strength and contractile energy sources while putting the body in the most advantageous position to pump out growth hormone and Testosterone.

Most powerlifting or high strength development workouts require the user to rest between sets for between 2-5 minutes, whereas keeping the rest periods short helps to continue the taxation of the growth hormone and Testosterone response within the body. What this means is that the maximal amount of weight lifted in a session is going to be slightly less as the sets wear on, so adjust the weights down as needed.

The Workouts

This program is meant to be used as a two-day-per-week substitution to an existing strength program for someone who has at least a year of good solid training under their belt. Make sure you have the finer points of lifting down for the specific lifts given, and that you have an understanding of the physical requirements for top speed sprint work. For those willing to give it a try, get ready to hate life for a few hours each day.

Workout One

Warm-up: General conditioning, movement prep, and foam rolling.

Series One: Barbell back squats plus sprinting (Airdyne, spin bike, or ideally 60m track).

Set	Exercises	Reps	Weight	Speed	Rest
1	Squat	10	60% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint*			80% Top speed
2	Squat	5	80% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint*			90% Top speed
3	Squat	3	90% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint*			Top speed
4	Squat	3	87% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint*			Top speed
5	Squat	3	87% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint*			Top speed

* 6 seconds on machines or distance on track, from dead start

Series Two: Weighted chins plus countercurrent vertical jumps (swing arms down and back in preparation of the jump, then reach for the sky when you leave the ground). Optimal to use a Verta-Max or wall or other surface to gauge height.

Set	Exercises	Reps	Weight	Rest
1	Chin-ups	5	Body weight	90 sec.
	Jumps for max height	5
2	Chin-ups	3	45 lbs.	90 sec.
	Jumps for max height	5
3	Chin-ups	3	45 lbs.	90 sec.
	Jumps for max height	5
4	Chin-ups	3	25 lbs.	90 sec.
	Jumps for max height	5

Workout Two

Warm-up: General conditioning, movement prep, and foam rolling.

Series One: Barbell front squats plus Concept rower sprints.

Set	Exercises	Reps	Weight	Distance/Speed	Rest
1	Squat	10	60% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint on rower			100m < 80% Top speed
2	Squat	5	80% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint on rower			100m < 90% Top speed
3	Squat	3	90% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint on rower			50m – Top speed
4	Squat	3	87% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint on rower			50m – Top speed
5	Squat	3	87% 1RM		90 sec.
	Sprint on rower			50m – Top speed

Series Two: Bench press & Prowler push, sled drag, or other resisted run device.

Set	Exercises	Reps	Weight	Distance/Speed	Rest
1	Bench press	10	60% 1RM		90 sec.
	Resisted run device			25m < 80% Full speed
2	Bench press	5	80% 1RM		90 sec.
	Resisted run device			25m < 90% Full speed
3	Bench press	3	90% 1RM		90 sec.
	Resisted run device			25m – Full speed
4	Bench press	3	87% 1RM		90 sec.
	Resisted run device			25m – Full speed
5	Bench press	3	87% 1RM		90 sec.
	Resisted run device			25m – Full speed

These workouts are insanely intense, but considering the goal is to increase peak strength, peak velocity, and build muscle, you need to create a systemic strain on the muscular system that evokes the largest response in growth hormone and Testosterone.

Alternate these two days once each per week with at least two days in between. For instance, workout one would be on Monday, and workout two either on Thursday or Friday. This will give your nervous system a chance to recover before going into the next workout.

Once the first month (four times through each workout) is in the books, add 2-5% to each lift you’re performing for the second month. For instance, on day one, set 3 of back squats will move from 90% 1RM to 92% 1RM. For the theoretical lifter who maxes out at 315 pounds, this means the weight they will move from 285 up to 290 pounds. A 5% increase would mean going from 285 to 300 pounds.

This systematic increase in resistance is necessary to keep the relative intensity high throughout the workouts. Do not perform heavy squats on any other day of the week, although after the second week you may not be able to even walk, let alone squat on the alternate days.

What this workout program lacks in variety must be made up for in raw aggression. As T NATION contributor Tony Gentilcore says, you have to intimidate the weights when doing this program. Yell, scream, kick, and claw to get every rep out, and put every ounce of your being into every second of the sprint work. Since the rest intervals are only 90 seconds long, you won’t have full recovery before beginning the next set, so it will definitely be a mental test to get through these workouts. That said, the end result should more than make up for going through hell and back.

References

Shoenfeld, B. (2010) The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and their Application to Resistance Training. J. Str & Cond Research Vol. 24 issue 10, pp. 2857-2872.

Rahimi et al. (2010). Effects of Very Short Rest Periods on Hormonal Responses to Resistance Exercise in Men. J Str. & Cond Research Vol. 24 issue 7, pp. 1851-1859.

Cristea et al (2008). Effects of Combined Strength and Sprint Training on Regulation of Muscle Contraction at the Whole-Muscle and Single-Fibre Levels in Elite Master Sprinters. Acta Phsyiol. Vol 193, issue 3. Pp. 275-289.h

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>Strong in the Stretch:5 Exercises for Size, Strength, and Mobility

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by Jeremy Frisch – 2/22/2011Step into a commercial gym around 5 PM any day of the week. Sure you’ll come across some “strong” people who can lift heavy weights, but if you take a closer look, it’ll become painfully obvious that most meatheads have simply lost the ability to move with any semblance of fluidity.
Poor daily posture leads to tight, inhibited muscles, which leads to poor movement, which then compounds the issue, which killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built…and eventually we’re left with serious inefficiencies and often injuries.
As avid T NATIONers, we know training to be anything but thoughtless and poorly contrived. We train hard week in and week out, and as readers we’re privy to a constant flow of solid information and training advice, but no matter what our focus in the gym consists of, we come to T NATION to separate ourselves from the “regular folk” who are simply sheep in the flock.
Touching back on my original thought, however, many of us don’t realize that the focus on mobility can elude us and when it does, it’s something that can be very difficult to recapture.
This article isn’t intended for you to change your approach to training, or to take away from your main lifts. However, many of these exercises can replace current techniques you use now, and with a little hard work and effort they can help take you to higher levels of strength and movement.
This short list is something you can incorporate in your current program that will help you lengthen your range of motion, build size and strength, and oh yeah, hurt like hell.

1. The Long Duration Sumo Squat Hold

This is a great foundational exercise but can double as much more. In our young athletes, it teaches proper squat technique in regards to the pelvis and spine, and the kids find out how much mental toughness they have, fast. It’s pure hell, and it’s the last thing our athletes do on Fridays before they go home. In fact, they often crawl out of here!
The holds are between 45 and 60 seconds and we do them for 3-4 sets.
The better you become at this movement, the more gravity just keeps assisting you into a deeper hold. You’ll soon see some dramatic changes in hip mobility.
For anyone looking for size, loads and long times under tension can provide a great breeding ground for some new muscle.

Focus: Spread the floor apart with the feet. Drive the knees out while constantly PULLING yourself down using your hip flexors and abs.

2. The Dumbbell Iso-Dynamic Elevated Split Squat

This exercise is based on the standard split squat, just adding a couple of boxes to elevate both feet. By standing on boxes you’ll allow for greater range of motion and that’s precisely the goal of the exercise.
The athlete pulls himself deeper into the hole with each rep (3-5 second holds). This not only hammers away at those pesky tight hip flexors, it also develops a great amount of starting strength by working the athlete in his greatest (and weakest) joint angles.
If you’re looking for some serious upper leg development, then try a few heavy sets of these and feel sore in some places you didn’t even know existed!

Focus: Pull yourself into a deep position by pulling with the front hamstring. Flex and extend the rear leg glute as hard as possible. Always pull deeper on subsequent repetitions.

3. Elevated Barbell Reverse Lunge

This is without a doubt one of my favorite exercises for developing the glutes, hams, and adductors.
If you’re new to these be careful on your volume initially as you may find it hard to walk for a few days. Not only do they provide a tremendous strengthening effect on the front leg, but the dynamic flexibility component they provide to the rear leg hip flexor and rectus is incredible.
In some cases when we’re focusing on the range of motion in the rear leg, we have the athlete bring the rear leg all the way through and up to waist height (you’ll end in a position similar to a step up, with one leg on the box and the other knee driven up).

Focus: Stay tall with your torso. Carry much of the weight on the front leg when lowering into the lunge. Pull yourself back up to the box.

4. Iso-Dynamic Band Resisted Push-up

This exercise can be very humbling when you’re not used to full ranges of motion.
The video below will show a 320 + lbs. bencher struggling on the sixth rep of a push up. The reason for the difficulty is the combination of the extreme joint angle (weakest point) and the accommodating resistance of the bands.
In my opinion, the deep isometric push up is one of the best scapular retraction exercises out there. By lengthening the anterior shoulder and pecs, you place the muscles that move the scapulae in the best leverage position to contract maximally.
For people who have naturally poor posture or jobs that require them to sit in poor posture all day, this exercise can be just the thing to help even out their overworked anterior body.
Besides postural benefits, this exercise can be great at developing strength and size in the upper back and will allow the anterior portion of the shoulder to get a solid stretch that could also translate into better recovery and muscle production.

Focus: Don’t think about lowering with gravity. Pull yourself into the hold using your scapular retractors. Remember to squeeze those muscles of the upper back as hard as you can.

5. Band Resisted Iso-Dynamic Chin-Up

This may be the most difficult one in terms of perceived difficulty because it’s the only exercise that’s RESISTED by gravity instead of assisted. To make it worse, gravity won’t be the only thing pulling you back down to earth.
Place a band around your waist and have a partner stand on the band. Alternately, you can hook the band under a rack or dumbbell.
While in the hanging position, squeeze/contract the muscles of your chest and triceps as hard as possible, which will protect the shoulders and allow the major muscles of the back to lengthen.
After a short hold (3-5 seconds), pull up with as much speed and power as possible. The band will kick in near the top and slow you down to a snail’s pace. The answer to overcoming the added resistance? Pull HARDER. It’s just you against the band, and of course Sir Isaac Newton’s old buddy, gravity.

Focus: Start in the hang by squeezing the “push” muscles so the “pull” muscles can lengthen. Drive your chest towards the bar, and drive your elbows away from the bar as fast as possible. Most importantly, don’t give up.

To reiterate, again I’m not trying to tell you what you’re doing is wrong or that you need to replace all of your trusty go-to lifts with these options. I’m merely offering alternatives, ones that I think are of great importance and value to any serious lifter.
If you want to continue to train hard and heavy, there will someday come a time when quality of movement must be prioritized. Why not start now?

Sources:

1. Buchenholz, Dietrich. The Best Sports Training Book Ever. Inno-Sport Group, 2003. Print.

2. Shroeder, Jay. “Iso-Extreme Lecture Notes.” Be Athletic Seminar. College of the Holy Cross, Worcester. Lecture.

3. Uram, Paul, and Dave McKinnis. Refining Human Movement. Butler, PA: Paul Uram, 1971. Print.

4. Verkhoshansky, Yuri Vitalievitch., and Mel Cunningham. Siff. Supertraining. Rome, Italy: Verkhoshansky, 2009. Print.

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3 Ways to Immediately Boost Your Strength

by CHAD WATERBURY on JANUARY 21, 2011

Imagine this scenario. You’re sitting in the audience at a strength and conditioning conference, there to learn a thing or two about building bigger, stronger muscles, and the speaker calls you up to the podium.

The speaker has a barbell onstage with a stack of plates next to it. He tells you that you’re going to test your maximum strength for the deadlift in front of the audience.

You’re a little nervous, but you get yourself onstage and go through a typical warm-up that consists of a handful of sets with progressively heavier weights. You’re not a powerlifter, just a regular gym rat, so you know the pull isn’t going to impress anyone in the powerlifting game. But you don’t care. You’re in front of a couple hundred people and this is your time to shine.

After a few minutes you’ve got the weight dialed in. With all the effort you can muster you manage to pull 350 pounds. This load, clearly evident to yourself and anyone watching, is your true one repetition maximum. Five more pounds and you would’ve failed.

“Not bad,” says the speaker. “And guess what? Today is your lucky day. Let’s see if you can pull more weight with motivation from some dead Presidents.”

The speaker reaches behind the podium and pulls out a briefcase, opens it, and shows you a million bucks – cash. This isn’t that snooze-fest television, Deal or No Deal – this is the real deal and you know it.

“All you have to do is pull 20 more pounds and the cash is yours,” the speaker says. He throws another 10-pound plate on each side of the 350-pound barbell, now making it 370 pounds, and smiles.

Think you could pull that extra 20 pounds for a million bucks? Of course you could!

With most things in life, though, reward doesn’t come without risk. This contest is no exception. You just took a million from the speaker and he wants to up the ante in order to get it back. I mean, really up the ante.

So he reaches behind the podium and pulls out a chainsaw. Like a scene straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he fires up the gas-filled tree killer, hoists it in the air, and swings it around while belting out a hellacious howl. You’re not sure what’s on the line, but you’re damn sure whatever it is ain’t good.

You were right.

The speaker looks you dead in the eyes, and with a tone that makes Johnny Cash sound like Alvin the Chipmunk, he passes on this little gem.

“You must add another 20 pounds to your deadlift or I’m going to cut off both of your legs.”

You and your legs don’t doubt his dedication to the chainsaw swinging craft, so you decide it’s best to proceed. After all, that half-inch you added to your calves didn’t come easy, and your vastus medialis muscles have been looking pretty impressive in those board shorts your girlfriend bought you at Patagonia.

The speaker adds 20 more pounds to the bar, making it 40 pounds heavier than when you started, and then gives you a nod while gripping the chainsaw with the most ominous look you’ve ever seen.

Now, here’s my question: Do you think you could pull those extra 20 pounds if your God-given wheels were on the line?

I’d be willing to bet both my legs, my arms, and my autographed Miley Cyrus poster that you could.

Why? Read on.

Release The Brake
When I speak at a seminar my goal is to leave the attendees with a few bits of information they’ll never forget.

While in graduate school one of my professors had the reputation for being able to talk about virtually anything and make it sound exciting. (I guess such a gift for gab is necessary when your goal is to make people giddy over the sodium/potassium pump.) But he was also very effective since his students, myself included, would retain most of what he taught.

Of course, I frequently asked him for advice before I had to speak in front of grad students and professors. He’d say, “Waterbury, you must tell them what you’re gonna tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them.”

Repeat whatever is important at least three times, in other words.

When I give a presentation about the nervous system to a good group of trainers, coaches, and athletes what do I usually tell them three, four, maybe 10 times?

The nervous system is akin to a parking brake that’s partially engaged on your muscles.

And this is why my introduction, no matter how far-fetched it might seem, is important to appreciate. There’s no better way to instantly boost your strength than to get really motivated, or scared to death. Indeed, neuroscientists like to amuse themselves by saying that lunatics, people who are drowning, or those suffering from tetanus are extremely powerful.

They are.

Why? Because in any of the three cases the nervous system is running full speed ahead. It’s not because the people are powerlifters or gifted strength athletes, it’s because their nervous system has released its brake and put a plethora of neural drive straight to the muscles.

Release that brake and you’ll get stronger and recruit more muscle fibers – instantly!

So, the question is, how do you release the brake without risking a limb or two? I wish I could motivate you with a million bucks because you’d have newfound respect for the nervous system, but since I can’t, these are the next best ways.

1. Light The Fire
Before you pull a heavy lift; before you start your first warm-up set; heck, before you even step foot in the gym your nervous system must be ready for action. If it’s not you’ll be relegated to playing catch up as you wait for your nervous system to turn on. You must walk into the gym and feel like you’re ready to chew on rusty nails.

The simplest way to enhance your focus and nervous system output is to drink a cup of black coffee about 30 minutes before your workout. This only works if you don’t drink a lot of coffee to begin with, and it doesn’t work equally well for everyone (coffee, believe it or not, puts me to sleep).

If coffee isn’t your thing try Spike by Biotest. Take one tablet 30 minutes before training, or drink half a can of their liquid version that you can find in 7-11. This will boost neurotransmitters, alertness, and strength.

2. Secure Your Foundation
Okay, so now your nervous system has been lit up with a pre-workout stimulant. For most people, that’s enough to add some appreciable weight and intensity to the workout. Now you can take it a step further. Your next job is to let the nervous system know your body isn’t going to crumble when it releases the brake to your muscles.

As any good engineer will tell you, the foundation must support the building. If you own a 10-story building and feel the need to add five more floors on top of it, the foundation must be able to support the extra burden. With regard to strength training, I’m talking about the added stress that comes from putting more load on your muscles and joints.

Your support system comes from your glutes, abdominal wall, and lats. When these muscle groups fire together it forms a super-stiff foundation to support whatever lift you’re pulling. That’s why Dr. Stuart McGill calls the synchronous firing of the glutes, abdominal wall, and lats, “super stiffness.” When these muscles fire together, the nervous system will release more neural input to all your muscles. This is why boosting your squat will also enhance your bench press.

Putting your body in super stiffness mode is simple. You only need two exercises to do it. Start with two sets of three reps for the Romanian deadlift. Be sure to lock out your hips and squeeze the glutes as hard as possible at the top of each rep. Then, do two sets of three reps for the ab wheel-rollout exercise. These two exercises should not waste you of any energy so there’s no need to go for a max lift, especially with the Romanian deadlift. The goal is to simply add tension and neural input to the right muscles in order to strengthen your foundation before training.

To ramp up your nervous system, do this before your strength workout:

Romanian Deadlift
Sets: 2
Reps: 3
Load: moderately heavy (a weight you could normally lift 7 or 8 times)

Ab wheel-rollout
Sets: 2
Reps: 3
Load: body weight

3. Harness the Power of a SMH 
At this point your neurotransmitters are pouring out, and your foundation is strong and solid. The nervous system is approaching its apex of neural output. Now you just need one more boost to release that proverbial parking brake.

The most effective technique I’ve ever used to instantly boost strength is the supramaximal hold (SMH). It’s a key component of my Total Strength Program program in Muscle Revolution and it’s also used in the advanced strength phases of Huge in a Hurry.

Put simply, you’ll hold a weight near lockout that’s more than you could ever lift through a full range of motion. This tricks your nervous system into releasing more neural drive to your muscles. In essence, your brain thinks you’re really going to try and lift that monstrous load so it releases the brake on your muscles. There are many mechanisms at work – some that are still ambiguous – when you hold a supramaximal load, but one of the most well-documented is postactivation potentiation. Research by Baudry and Duchateau have demonstrated the power of it.

The SMH serves as a conditioning contraction – a primer for your muscles, in other words. For all you science buffs, postactivation potentiation increases the number of cross bridges that attach by increasing the sensitivity of contractile proteins to ionized calcium.(1) This allows the muscles to produce more force. However, the effect only lasts for about a minute, so you’ve got to get straight to your work set after the SMH is finished.

The SMH works awesome, but it’s pretty taxing to your system so you must limit the amount of times you do it. It’s best to use the SMH for exercises that give you the most bang for your buck. It’s perfect for squats, deadlifts, and presses. Curls and kickbacks, not so much.

An excellent workout to reap the benefits of the SMH is the deadlift and seated shoulder press. For each lift you’ll hold 120% of your one repetition maximum near lockout for 6-8 seconds. It’s important to use the power rack with pins set just below lockout for both exercises. Within 30 seconds of finishing the hold you’ll crank out as many full range of motion reps as you can with approximately 85% of your one repetition maximum (this number doesn’t have to be exact, just a ballpark estimate).

1A Deadlift SMH
Load: 120% of full range of motion maximum
Duration of hold: 6-8 seconds
Rest 30 seconds
1B Deadlift (full range of motion)
Load: ~85% of 1RM
Reps: as many as possible
Rest 120 seconds and repeat 1A and 1B pairing three more times

2A Seated Shoulder Press SMH
Load: 120% of full range of motion maximum
Duration of hold: 6-8 seconds
Rest 30 seconds
2B Seated Shoulder Press (full range of motion)
Load: ~85% of 1RM
Reps: as many as possible
Rest 120 seconds and repeat 2A and 2B pairing three more times

This workout looks deceptively simple, but it’ll take a lot out of you. However, it’ll add strength and muscle fast. Feel free to add a few less demanding exercises at the end. Do this workout twice per week (Monday and Friday). On Wednesday, use more traditional strength building methods such as 5 sets of 5 reps, without the SMH.

Conclusion
You’ll benefit by using steps #1 and #2 before all your workouts. Step #3, the SMH, should be reserved for the times when your nutrition and recovery is really dialed in. However, keep the SMH in your arsenal to boost big lifts while your nervous system learns that you’re ready for more strength and muscle.

1. Baudry and Duchateau. J Appl Physiol. 102: 1394-1401, 2007.

Stay focused,
CW

Wikio

Wikio

Pull-Up Strength: The Missing Link

by Domenic Micheli

This isn’t skinny twig fitness. We couldn’t care less about the 120-pound and proud of it guy who can bust out dozens of pull-ups with no problem. But give us a guy with muscle who can’t do more than a handful of pull-ups and, well, we start to get worried.

One of the most impressive displays of strength-to-bodyweight—not to mention one of the best ways to add muscle to your upper body—is the pull-up. (If you don’t find it impressive, think about it for a minute: you’re using your upper body to pull your entire body up your entire arm length. I mean, holy shit.)

Thing is, unless you’re one of the guys who can jump up to the bar and bang out 12 good ones right now, it’s safe to bet that one of the biggest muscles in your body is probably one of the weakest, too. And that’s never a good thing.

It’s time to fix that.

— Nate Green

Pick Your Poison

Do a pull-up every time you walk by the bar. Do 50 sets of one, 25 sets of two reps, or don’t stop until you get 100 reps. Eccentric pull-ups or band-assisted. The list goes on.

For most guys, these methods don’t work because none address the reason why your pull-up sucks. This article does.

Why Your Pull-up Sucks

Everyone knows that men, as a whole, are stronger than women. Men have more muscle, better strength-to-bodyweight ratio (most times), and more Testosterone. But looking closely at why women can’t do certain things can give you insight into why men can’t do things as well as they should be able to. (Insert inappropriate sexist joke here.)

Take an average in-shape woman (but not a star athlete), put her on the bar, and watch her try to do a pull-up from a dead hang. Often, she won’t be able to move. Like, at all. Now if you help this same woman up through the first third of the exercise, she’ll suddenly gain a tremendous amount of strength and often be able to perform a few reps on her own, as long as she doesn’t drop down into a dead hang.

How does this relate to a man?

Most men suffer from the exact same lack of pull-up strength as women, the difference being most men have enough muscle mass to call upon—be it biceps, brachialis, brachioradialis, long head of the triceps, or teres major—that he will get up there. It’ll just look ugly as shit. (You’ll also notice most men avoiding dropping into a dead hang, because they know they’re extremely weak there.)

Herein lies the problem of all the pull-up methods I listed earlier.

All the aforementioned muscles—like the biceps and teres major— are going to be strengthened doing 50 sets of one rep, or eccentric pull-ups, or whatever method you choose. But there’s one muscle that not only won’t be getting stronger. In fact, it’ll be getting weaker because your body will be practicing not using it: the lats.

“But I Can Feel My Lats Working!”

Think what you like. But if you can’t bang out one pull-up where your upper chest easily flies up and smashes into the bar while your shoulders stay down and back, your lats—especially your upper lats—aren’t working nearly enough. And they probably aren’t working at all initially.

Liken it to chest training from a bodybuilding standpoint. As you press up out of the hole on a dumbbell press, you first feel your outer chest, and then the emphasis shifts as you press up further.

Pulling exercises are the same. When you initiate a vertical pull, for instance, you’re going to pull through the uppermost portion of the lat, which can be found in your armpit when your arm is overhead. And if you don’t get your upper lat from the very beginning of the motion, you won’t ever get it.

A major problem is that the uppermost portion of the lat is so weak that doing full pull-ups, band pull-ups, negatives, or even assisted pull-ups on the lightest setting is going to be way too heavy. It’s like trying to build glute function by doing hip thrusts with 315 before you do hip thrusts with bodyweight.

That’s why I like lat pull-downs for activating and strengthening the upper lats. (But not the kind you’re used to.) Yep, you read that right; I’m ditching pull-ups for a machine. But only for a while.

Over at the Pull-Down Machine

Most guys will go right to 170 pounds or something semi-heavy right away. (That’s why most guys in my gym get beaten with the bar.) We just established that your lats are not working because your pull-ups suck. How is doing the same weight you’ve been doing going to fix anything? (Hint: it’s not.)

You’re gonna have to face facts. The muscle with the most potential to be the strongest muscle in your body—your lats—is extremely weak right now, especially the upper portion. That’s why you have to go light enough that your lats can actually begin to work.

Admittedly, this method is a bit of a bitch; it takes concentration, discipline, and throwing your ego to the side for at least one month. But you’ll come back to the bar much stronger and finally able to engage your lats.

The How To

The problem with the lat pull-down is that you have to concentrate very hard to get the lat to work from the start.

To do it, set up on the lat pull-down with a third of the weight you normally use. (If you’re a 170-pound puller, you should start with roughly 60 pounds.) Grab the bar and let yourself dead hang while seated. Focus on squeezing your upper lat (it’s in the armpit when your arms are overhead) before you do anything else.

Once you’ve squeezed the upper lat, pull your shoulders all the way down (without bending your elbow) and begin to pull the bar down using your lats. Go slow and do it smoothly. Make sure your forearm angle stays in line with the cable as the bar passes your chin, and pull the bar down to your collarbone.

The first few sets will be the worst, but by the fifth or sixth set you should really start to feel yourself pulling through the lat. I like doing eight reps since it’s enough to get several cracks at the motion, but not so much that you’re fatigued before you get to the next set.

A Few Specific Tips

• Be sure to use a weight light enough that your lat can work, but heavy enough that you feel it working. If you use a weight that’s too light, your body will have a very hard time recruiting more muscle mass than it needs. If you go too heavy, you’ll just engage all the wrong muscles.

• Remember that when your arms are overhead the upper lat will be in your armpit. (The lat basically wraps around to the front side of the body.) You want to focus on pulling from your armpit at the beginning of the movement to activate the upper lats.

The Transition

As each week of this first month goes by, you should feel yourself getting stronger and better able to perceive yourself pulling through your lats. If you’re especially in tune with your body, you’ll feel your lats thicken up, too.

By the end of the month, it’s unlikely that you’ll be completely ready to ditch pull-downs for pull-ups, but you should start incorporating some pull-ups into your workout. (You should still take one day of the week to continue to work on the lat pull-down. Think of it as lat activation.)

Start with one or two pull-ups at a time. The only caveat: they have to come smoothly and relatively effortlessly. That’s how you know they’re viable lat-developing pull-ups.

Over time you’ll be able to get higher and higher with greater ease, and eventually be able to ditch the lat pull-downs and move into straight sets of pull-ups. You may even be able to transition into muscle ups, which require incredibly explosive lat strength. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Bottom line: get your lats engaged, do more pull-ups, and start building more muscle.

A former bench-riding Juco basketball player, Domenic Micheli now lives and works as a personal trainer in Nashville, TN and holds a BS in Exercise Physiology from Umass-Boston.

The typical female pull-up. Okay, not so typical. This girl can bury you, but you get the idea.

I…can’t…even…do…one!

When performed correctly, a lat pull-down can help build the upper lat, which is usually inactive.

The final product. Kickin’ it old school.

© 1998 — 2010 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Wikio

Wikio

Pull-Up Strength: The Missing Link

by Domenic Micheli
This isn’t skinny twig fitness. We couldn’t care less about the 120-pound and proud of it guy who can bust out dozens of pull-ups with no problem. But give us a guy with muscle who can’t do more than a handful of pull-ups and, well, we start to get worried.

One of the most impressive displays of strength-to-bodyweight—not to mention one of the best ways to add muscle to your upper body—is the pull-up. (If you don’t find it impressive, think about it for a minute: you’re using your upper body to pull your entire body up your entire arm length. I mean, holy shit.)

Thing is, unless you’re one of the guys who can jump up to the bar and bang out 12 good ones right now, it’s safe to bet that one of the biggest muscles in your body is probably one of the weakest, too. And that’s never a good thing.

It’s time to fix that.

— Nate Green

Pick Your Poison

Do a pull-up every time you walk by the bar. Do 50 sets of one, 25 sets of two reps, or don’t stop until you get 100 reps. Eccentric pull-ups or band-assisted. The list goes on.
For most guys, these methods don’t work because none address the reason why your pull-up sucks. This article does.

Why Your Pull-up Sucks

Everyone knows that men, as a whole, are stronger than women. Men have more muscle, better strength-to-bodyweight ratio (most times), and more Testosterone. But looking closely at why women can’t do certain things can give you insight into why men can’t do things as well as they should be able to. (Insert inappropriate sexist joke here.)

Take an average in-shape woman (but not a star athlete), put her on the bar, and watch her try to do a pull-up from a dead hang. Often, she won’t be able to move. Like, at all. Now if you help this same woman up through the first third of the exercise, she’ll suddenly gain a tremendous amount of strength and often be able to perform a few reps on her own, as long as she doesn’t drop down into a dead hang.

How does this relate to a man?
Most men suffer from the exact same lack of pull-up strength as women, the difference being most men have enough muscle mass to call upon—be it biceps, brachialis, brachioradialis, long head of the triceps, or teres major—that he will get up there. It’ll just look ugly as shit. (You’ll also notice most men avoiding dropping into a dead hang, because they know they’re extremely weak there.)
Herein lies the problem of all the pull-up methods I listed earlier.
All the aforementioned muscles—like the biceps and teres major— are going to be strengthened doing 50 sets of one rep, or eccentric pull-ups, or whatever method you choose. But there’s one muscle that not only won’t be getting stronger. In fact, it’ll be getting weaker because your body will be practicing not using it: the lats.

“But I Can Feel My Lats Working!”

Think what you like. But if you can’t bang out one pull-up where your upper chest easily flies up and smashes into the bar while your shoulders stay down and back, your lats—especially your upper lats—aren’t working nearly enough. And they probably aren’t working at all initially.
Liken it to chest training from a bodybuilding standpoint. As you press up out of the hole on a dumbbell press, you first feel your outer chest, and then the emphasis shifts as you press up further.
Pulling exercises are the same. When you initiate a vertical pull, for instance, you’re going to pull through the uppermost portion of the lat, which can be found in your armpit when your arm is overhead. And if you don’t get your upper lat from the very beginning of the motion, you won’t ever get it.

A major problem is that the uppermost portion of the lat is so weak that doing full pull-ups, band pull-ups, negatives, or even assisted pull-ups on the lightest setting is going to be way too heavy. It’s like trying to build glute function by doing hip thrusts with 315 before you do hip thrusts with bodyweight.
That’s why I like lat pull-downs for activating and strengthening the upper lats. (But not the kind you’re used to.) Yep, you read that right; I’m ditching pull-ups for a machine. But only for a while.

Over at the Pull-Down Machine

Most guys will go right to 170 pounds or something semi-heavy right away. (That’s why most guys in my gym get beaten with the bar.) We just established that your lats are not working because your pull-ups suck. How is doing the same weight you’ve been doing going to fix anything? (Hint: it’s not.)
You’re gonna have to face facts. The muscle with the most potential to be the strongest muscle in your body—your lats—is extremely weak right now, especially the upper portion. That’s why you have to go light enough that your lats can actually begin to work.

Admittedly, this method is a bit of a bitch; it takes concentration, discipline, and throwing your ego to the side for at least one month. But you’ll come back to the bar much stronger and finally able to engage your lats.

The How To

The problem with the lat pull-down is that you have to concentrate very hard to get the lat to work from the start.

To do it, set up on the lat pull-down with a third of the weight you normally use. (If you’re a 170-pound puller, you should start with roughly 60 pounds.) Grab the bar and let yourself dead hang while seated. Focus on squeezing your upper lat (it’s in the armpit when your arms are overhead) before you do anything else.
Once you’ve squeezed the upper lat, pull your shoulders all the way down (without bending your elbow) and begin to pull the bar down using your lats. Go slow and do it smoothly. Make sure your forearm angle stays in line with the cable as the bar passes your chin, and pull the bar down to your collarbone.

The first few sets will be the worst, but by the fifth or sixth set you should really start to feel yourself pulling through the lat. I like doing eight reps since it’s enough to get several cracks at the motion, but not so much that you’re fatigued before you get to the next set.

A Few Specific Tips

• Be sure to use a weight light enough that your lat can work, but heavy enough that you feel it working. If you use a weight that’s too light, your body will have a very hard time recruiting more muscle mass than it needs. If you go too heavy, you’ll just engage all the wrong muscles.
• Remember that when your arms are overhead the upper lat will be in your armpit. (The lat basically wraps around to the front side of the body.) You want to focus on pulling from your armpit at the beginning of the movement to activate the upper lats.

The Transition

As each week of this first month goes by, you should feel yourself getting stronger and better able to perceive yourself pulling through your lats. If you’re especially in tune with your body, you’ll feel your lats thicken up, too.
By the end of the month, it’s unlikely that you’ll be completely ready to ditch pull-downs for pull-ups, but you should start incorporating some pull-ups into your workout. (You should still take one day of the week to continue to work on the lat pull-down. Think of it as lat activation.)
Start with one or two pull-ups at a time. The only caveat: they have to come smoothly and relatively effortlessly. That’s how you know they’re viable lat-developing pull-ups.
Over time you’ll be able to get higher and higher with greater ease, and eventually be able to ditch the lat pull-downs and move into straight sets of pull-ups. You may even be able to transition into muscle ups, which require incredibly explosive lat strength. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Bottom line: get your lats engaged, do more pull-ups, and start building more muscle.

A former bench-riding Juco basketball player, Domenic Micheli now lives and works as a personal trainer in Nashville, TN and holds a BS in Exercise Physiology from Umass-Boston.

The typical female pull-up. Okay, not so typical. This girl can bury you, but you get the idea.

I…can’t…even…do…one!

When performed correctly, a lat pull-down can help build the upper lat, which is usually inactive.

The final product. Kickin’ it old school.

© 1998 — 2010 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

PUBLISHED 05-10-10 08:00
Discuss | Rate | Print Version

Wikio

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