Gym Quitter

Today I came across a scrap of paper while looking for a tape measure in my toolbox.

It was a training diary (well, of sorts) from 2005. I scribbled out the resistance and reps implemented with my new training gear. For about $1200, this consisted of:

LA Sea of Chrome

1. A "rack" - with 4 sturdy uprights and two cross bars for spotting yourself. This also includes a chin-up bar, a stand for dips, and a low/high pulley attachment.
2. An adjustable bench.
3. A barbell and 300 pounds of plates.
4. Two fairly junky adjustable dumbbells.
5. A chin-up/dip belt to add resistance to those movements.
6. An old but sturdy stationary bike. Ugly green, of course.
7. An old CD player.

I've added more weight and some other gear here and there, but even today the home gym is little more than that.

Ah, 2005, the year I quit traditional gyms. I learned a TON through that process. The first major lessons being:

1. No b.s. I've elaborated on this concept some here and here:

I Pick Things Up and Put Them Down 
The Best Time to Train

Yeah. No excessive talkers, unsolicited advice givers, grunters, women marketing butt floss, and other typical bullshit that goes on in big commercial gyms.

2. I finally got stronger! I was 28 then. The resistance and reps listed on that scrap of paper are unimpressive given the fact that I had already been training HARD for about 9 years. I mean, most of the working weights that I used then are what I use now for my first or second warm up sets.

The real reason that I got stronger is because training at home limited my options and thus focused time and physical resources on what really matters in training: PROGRESSION.

I previously lifted 3 to 4 days per week at a gym in Harrisburg and played intense street (basket)ball at least two days per week. With the home gym, it wasn't long until I was weight training only 2 or 3 days per week because the workouts were so much more intense that I needed extra recovery days.

No more seated leg extensions. No shoulder abduction machine or pec dec. No more this, no more that. These days I've settled on a "main stay" program that has me lifting just two days per week for about 1 hour. I see progress like never before. That's what cutting out the fluff and wiser recovery will do for you.

3. The social aspect of training is critical.

Descending to your own basement by yourself at 7 p.m. or a.m. on a dreary Wednesday in November to do battle with a "big" exercise that nearly freakin killed you last week is just plain TERRIBLE. I cannot under emphasize the importance of having others to go into battle with you, to encourage and inspire and showboat with you.

I trudged to the basement solo for close to a year before inviting a brother from basketball over. Best. Idea. Ever. I've forged some truly meaningful friendships and really gotten to know every person who's trained with me on a regular basis. I've witnessed people change mentally and physically. And importantly, we really kicked some ass.

4. This is not for everyone.

Driving yourself into the floor with minimal variation in a select few exercises is super effective AND efficient.  But it's not for anyone who constantly craves something new or feels that they really do need a whole warehouse full of high tech chrome gear to achieve anything. It's not for the semi serious person who just wants a decent calorie burn, "pump," or goes to the gym with the mindset of "getting in shape for swimsuit season."

But it is for busy parents and professionals who have 30 minutes tops. It's for any person who views that walk down stairs as a mind and body and spirit pilgrimage to known territory with uncharted potential. It's for the brave soul with butterflies in his stomach, eager to square up against something that nearly flattened him last week and take on .5% more. It's for the person who wants not just a big bench press or sick abs, but to walk up the stairs as a different person.

But yeah, abs are a decent side effect...

The New Measures of Fitness

There are 5 traditional components of physical fitness:

1. Cardiovascular Fitness
2. Muscular Strength
3. Muscular Endurance
4. Flexibility
5. Body Composition

Sounds nice? Well I think that delineating these into separate compartments is pointless when it comes to how well the body functions.

the "Sit and Who Cares" test

I mean, it's the year 2012 and college students are still taught how to perform the Sit & Reach test. Meanwhile, our ability to sit on the floor and reach past the toes has practically no bearing on how well we actually move when reaching and running and lifting and sitting.

And really, who cares if you're 3 percent body fat but can't easily reach both arms overhead or make a lateral cut without buckling a knee?

Why, goodness why, do so many people still think that completing a marathon is THE holy grail of fitness? I've worked with many who have a cardiovascular system capable of delivering massive volumes of oxygenated blood to the top of a Red Wood through a crazy straw but have not the strength or controlled mobility to reach to the ground without their spine weeping.


So you think I'm a big strength guy? The bench press is completely unimpressive. You want to lay on your back, drop weight onto an air inflated chest, and bump it up into a four inch lifting motion? That's like the opposite of fitness. Haven't we all seen huge barrel chested gorillas who could lay down and press a car from the ground but not catch up with a baby toddling toward the street?

And as much as I love dead lifts as a total body measure of strength and mobility, I've seen too many mega lifting tanks who probably couldn't jump over the barbell if they tried. [Plus heavy dead lifts just don't lend themselves well to higher repetition ranges.]

Yoga is cool. Maybe it's fun to do. I don't know, I haven't spent much time in it. It's great to be able to stand on one foot while putting on your socks, which would actually make a decent measure of balance-strength-flexibility. But I doubt that yoga trains or captures the body's ability to control body segments when dealing with momentum and gravity at the speed of regular life.

What if there are even simpler and better ways to boil the relevant principles down to a minimalist set of fitness tests? While hand stand push ups and power cleans are pretty awesome, we need simple tests that are fairly low on risk and skill demands. So may I propose:

The New Measures of Fitness

Jumping. Vertical jump is good, but tuck jumps are even better because they require more timing, coordination, trunk strength, and flexibility. If you can tuck jump over 4 feet, you are one adequately strong, powerful, flexible, physically fit cat who could probably complete a marathon without much undue training.

 Pull Ups. I don't care about the size of your chest or arms or your body composition. Those things will have taken care of themselves once you can use just the upper body to pull yourself up from a dead hang. If you can do 5 pull ups with 25% of your body weight added, you are one strong person with far better than average body composition.

20 Rep Squat. How much weight can you squat 20 times? Take all the time you want but each squat must be of sufficient depth and you can't rack the weight. Let me tell you that there may be no better test of strength, stability, total body range of motion, stamina, and GUTS than high rep squats.

For example, if your 20 rep squat score is low because you can't reach sufficient depth without racheting and straining, then you probably lack core strength, good thoracic posture, and/or hip or ankle flexibility and you don't HAVE to test all these things separately.

If you can squat 1.75 X your body weight for 20 solid reps, you can do just about anything. Hiking or lifting or swimming or biking or generally being awesome will come easy when you've spent time working on sufficient posture and strength and stability etc to be able to safely push yourself on squats.

If you think I've missed a specific test of cardiovascular fitness, then try a hard set of 20 rep squats. Okay, well, you could include the mile run or the "beep" test if you still think necessary. But in almost every facet of life, I'll go with the person with a better 20 Rep Squat over the person with a better time in the mile run. 

better than sitting on the couch, yes, but...

learn to squat!

biceps routine amazingness

Today I'm going to share with you my very own, highly confidential, secret biceps routine. Of the stars. But first a functional anatomy review.

The biceps originates from a few structures at the front of the shoulder and inserts into both bones below the elbow. It functions to flex the elbow, supinate the forearm (turn the hand and wrist palm up), and flex the shoulder. In everyday movements, the biceps is an important anterior stabilizer of the shoulder.

But you don't want to worry about all the supinate this and stabilize that. You want GUNS! And with that, we're going to get right down to business.

The first exercise in my bicep routine is something called a bicep curl. You pick up something that's heavy and you bend the elbow. Lower it semi slowly so the elbow is straight, and you bend it again. Repeat. Do two or three sets of six reps, once or (if you must) even twice per week.

Are you ready for the great unveiling of what this may look like?

Really though, direct arm work (bis and tris, anyone?) should be an afterthought. If you must, do a set or three after your hard and heavy pull-ups and rows, squats, dead lifts and presses. Strive to progress the resistance, just like any other exercise.

Once you're able to dead lift two times your body weight for reps and do an equal number of chin-ups with 30 or 50 added pounds, then I'll hear your arguments about selective recruitment of the long head of the triceps and building a peak in the short head of the biceps. No, never mind. I don't want to hear about it even if you're a hulk with bowling balls bis blocking you from wiping your own... Okay never mind.

I've no more time for that than a 4th set of bis.

Tuck Jump Big Butt Paradox

Not functional. Not the ideal, on a few levels. Advertising fail.

I've written before about how much I love tuck jumps. I catch myself eyeing up fences, retaining walls, and other items fit for normal domestic use. But I'm labeling them. My pulse quickens at about the 5 foot mark.

"I'd get over that. Probably."

The tuck jump is an explosive total body effort. You leap off two legs to go on or over some kind of target. They are a critical ingredient in any program designed for increased power and speed.

Jumping over a chair or fence or theraband (less penalty with failure) or onto a rock or picnic table - those are tuck jumps. Thousands of reps on an agility ladder and hundreds of burpees and billions of leg raises won't achieve what a max effort tuck jump will.

Tuck jumps make you commit. The brain takes an automated approach to generating maximal force off the ground, including timing and coordination of multiple body segments. Try doing a series of high effort tuck jumps and see how your abdominal and low back muscles feel the next day.

There's no pacing with tuck jumps, which is part of their magic! You are not trying to be graceful or even particularly quick. Simply get up and over, higher and higher still!

The butt is a funny thing when it comes to tuck jumps. It gets in the way and knocks the bar down. But then again, it's what gets you up to higher capacity in the first place. So please don't lose that butt. [Or insert your own mandatory Sir Mix-A-Lot reference).

                                      5 foot 3 inch fail, due to butt.

Most typical sport movements require tremendous hip strength and power. You simply cannot have a scrawny celebrity butt and be powerful and athletic. Nobody ever sprinted hard or launched high due to a big barrel chest, hulking biceps, or bulky thick calves.

It's the hips! So move on your squats and single leg squats and dead lift variations. And plyos. Many people benefit greatly from a few corrective type moves to turn on the circuitry to those muscles (like glute bridges, hip hinge reaches, kettle bell swings, etc).

If you get a bigger more muscular looking butt, most people should be saying "good." But really, who cares? If you can raise your entire body up and over 50 inches (or so) and land on two feet, most fitness and aesthetic concerns will have taken care of themselves. You don't need to run a marathon to establish that you are fit. Some yoga or cross fit or "quick feet" drills may have their place.

But if you lift weights and jump things, you can learn to do just about anything well.

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Is knee pain inevitable?

For the first time since shoulder surgery in May, I went up strong and dunked with two hands yesterday. I was in a good mood all day after that. Yes, that's how awesome lame I am.

It was a big deal because I'm somewhere near the edge of down hill. Basketball, heavy lifting and most of the other things I like to do inflict far more impact than most 36 year old knees can take. I feel old man aches after over-doing it. 

The knees felt great for a few weeks after surgery forced a few weeks of rest upon me. No, I wasn't taking the post-op percocet. I should be thankful for the ability to move well at 36, perhaps stop with the high impact stuff while I'm ahead. Yeah, I'm going to seriously need a 12-step program for that. You don't just tell an addict to stop.

Runners run. Lifters lift. And so on and so forth. Because that's what they do. They will accept ache as the years wear on. Nobody ever said that basketball or tennis or jogging day in and day out was good for your knees.

Physical therapy is no magic bullet or miracle cure for the reality of time. It is no substitute for common sense or surgery or even ibuprofen. I would have to say that knee some degree of kneee pain is inevitable if you remain active like you're supposed to.

But I can tell you that many have some mechanical issue(s) that they can improve. It may be related to movement patterns, footwear, habits, or impaired strength, range of motion, and structural issues at other joints.

The knees usually take the brunt of dysfunction anywhere in the lower extremities because they are (1) weight bearing hinge joints with less degrees of freedom that (2) involve some of the strongest muscles with (3) the longest leverage in the body and (4) take on an insane amount of repetition.

If for any reason you walk down a flight of stairs with either foot turned out a bit too much, there's a significant amount of loaded twist and flex, twist and flex, grinding on your meniscus right there. And just last week I was able to help someone with knee pain by simply working on their gait pattern and first toe range of motion. They were habitually jogging around a problem they had ever since having surgery on their first toe.

Nobody runs or jumps or lifts or swims forever. But you often can delay the inevitable. You would be surprised what a little moderation in running and increased hip and core strengthening can do for the life of a runner. People with and without structural foot issues should be excited about what a shoe suited to their foot type and activity can accomplish.

And aging strength athletes? I'm sure I'll keep you posted. Today is deadlift day. No Advil today, I promise.

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move at the speed of heavy

"When weight training to gain size and strength, it is best to lower the weight slowly. The lowering phase is what tears the muscle fibers, thus stimulating a growth response." 

Does it matter how fast you move during a resistance exercise? Sure. But there's no formula. Slower does not equal better, as the statement implies.

Who are these by-the-book exercise people who actually implement a two second concentric (lifting) phase and a four second eccentric (lowering) phase? I appreciate their understanding of the academics, but moving that slowly looks ridiculous in almost any context.

[Excuse me as I go pick up my 1-year old daughter for 2 seconds, remove her from the bowl of dog food, and relocate her to another section of the living room with 4 second lowering technique.]

"Dad, what the hell?" 

It's true that the eccentric (lowering) phase of resistance exercise is key to muscle growth and, later, strength development. The magic lies in the fact that muscles are literally shredded (and likely quite perplexed) when you ask them to simultaneously generate lots of force and lengthen. Afterwards, you cut the muscle a break, and the repairing process begins.

But the duration of lowering is not the whole story. Guess what else shreds muscle fibers and stimulates the entire body towards growth and various awesomeness?

Loading! Iron! Heav-ey! Every muscle in in every person can move drastically less load with a 2:4- second rep than they can with a more functional and less weird looking pace of say, 1:3.

So the bottom line is that lifting slowly does provide a longer eccentric time under tension (good for stimulating more growth), but also necessitates a lighter load (not as good for stimulating more growth). And now we bring in the big guns to settle the dispute!

[Enter the Central Nervous System, strutting with lats flared.]

CNS is king when it comes to movement. The CNS derives more benefit from non pencil-necked rep speeds, and especially flourishes in the "survive or be crushed" tempo. Handling more weight and accelerating it quickly develops the fastest and largest number of high threshold, powerful, bigsexy motor units. Heavy loading and high speeds streamline neural drive to the muscles in numerous ways. Ways that actually mean something when you're trying to chase down a soccer ball or wide receiver or 90 mph fastball or curious toddler.

So the faster the better then?

Not really. Speed kills...if it means failing to control a massive load in any way, shape, or form.

Instead try this 4-step guideline to YOUR best rep speed*.

1. Step 1: Load the thing! After you have done time ingraining correct movement patterns. Warm up and then us enough weight that you don't have energy to worry about counting seconds.
2. Step 2: Lift it. Attack the movement with deliberately furious fury, as if you're going to throw/push/pull the resistance through the roof. In reality, the load moves relatively slowly because, again, the weight is heavy!
3. Step 3: Put it down. Don't throw down. Don't slam weight plates so everyone in the gym knows what rep you're on. Don't levitate/hover. Don't bounce it off your chest to test the integrity of your sternum. Lower it under control so you don't get injured. 
4. Step 4: Repeat
5. Step 5: Have a MASSIVE bucket of power to draw from, and apply to whatever it is you like to do.

*Results may vary. It will take more than 90 days...sorry P90 [blank] mentality.
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the best time to train [5:38]

I cleared the area of costumes and toys before moving into the first warm-up set. Racking the weight, I glanced at the clock on the basement wall. It was 5:38. Was it a.m. or p.m.? What does it matter? This writing, the one you're reading right now, has everything on  diurnal and circadian rhythms.

It was just last week that I trained at a massive Gold's Gym in Tulsa equipped with every tool that elevates form and function. It was also loaded with cutting edge distraction; chrome, lights, and every contraption that makes you think you're accomplishing something while actually working very little. The approximate usage was 30/70, respectively.




I have nothing against Gold's, but was happy to be back in my basement. The mega-gym concept would be on it's way out if it weren't for the socialization aspect. People are (hopefully) catching on. The largest barriers to health and fitness are NOT:

1. Equipment - You can get what you call "a crazy lot" done with minimal gear. Weight/fat loss and cardiovascular health are easy. For other goals, a decent home gym that allows you to load up on resistance for the purpose of body recomposition including size/strength gain can be had for $1500. (No you won't acquire super human strength and rippedness by pulling on elastic tubing and waving around 3 pound dumbbells.)

2. Exercise and Diet Gnosticism - Yes we need trainers and rehab people who know what they're doing for the purpose of efficiently achieving specific goals while managing injury risk. But generally speaking, there's not a single American in poor shape for lack of some secret fitness knowledge. "Don't eat (much) crap" and "Find some regular physical activity that you enjoy or at least tolerate" will take 99% of us a long way.

3. Comfort - "No pain - no gain" is totally a half-truth. But to expect the numerous physical and mental benefits of exercise without discomfort is like asking for a shower without getting wet. The stress of controlled loading and impact and striving and straining is the real magic behind resilient bodies and minds.

4. The Great Exception - By definition, we cannot all be exceptions to all the basic rules of human physiology and life as we know it. Yes we are unique individuals. But your special metabolism simply can't gain, lose, improve, tolerate? While everyone else is granted 168 weekly hours to find a few hours to train, that's just not enough for you? You have pain or a disability that keeps you from doing everything?

It's possible that any one of those could be true for the rare exceptions. But for you, in the long-term, I doubt it.

The barriers to health and fitness have always been and will always be:

1. Time.
2. Motivation.

We usually have a choice in whether or not a hectic, no-time-for-anything season of life becomes a chronic condition. Write exercise into your schedule as if it's a life giving, brain saving, body conditioning, stress busting, depression dampening, disease fighting miracle. Because it is.

If attaining fitness means waking up early and packing clothes and driving through traffic before a long work day to do a "shoulders and calves" routine, then I have no time for training either. Training the body as a functional unit is efficient and effective. Unless you enjoy spending 6 days per week watching others flex at themselves in the mirror, feel free to let the body part split routine up to the oily tan body builder guy.

Never under estimate the social aspect of getting out of the home environment and into a crew of like-minded people. On the other hand, some would never get around to training if they had to go out. Either way, find accountability and inspiration to get it done. I'm thankful to train mostly at home with friends large and small (my kids).

I've found 5:38 to be the absolute best time to train, especially when busy and drained, stressed and in need of some perspective. Actually, I always train at 5:38.

Haven't changed the batteries in that clock for years.
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