Warm Up
10 KB Swing R hand,
10 KB Clean R Hand
10 KB Snatch R hand
10 Kb Press R hand
Switched, same on left.
Movement Prep
Stretching
Power Cleans
135 x 3
175 x 3
200 x 3
205 x 3
215 x 0
210 x 2
Front Squats
210 x 2
205 x 2
200 x 4
175 x 6
135 x 10
Toast.
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thanks and we look forward to serving you.
namaste
Nick@thePainCave
(only Jean Claude Van Damme made baggy pants “functional”)
How this late night commercial, that I thought was a joke at first, actually made enough sales for Dick’s Sporting Goods to pick it up? Yep, they did, and they still sell them.
Well as hard to believe it is, this piece of equipment is reportedly the highest selling infomercial fitness product to date. Total Pro Sports give us a breakdown of some truly silly fads that made their way onto late night TV, this being one of them.
in the gym as well as at the office in slacks or jeans (I have to say they look silly in jeans), or just casually walking down the street. What started as a future fad actually came from the past. Aborigine people, Native Americans (besides moccasins) and tribal Africans were the first to use this “new” technology. In fact, the ancient Egyptians are credited with inventing shoes as a way to prepare you for death, laying in a sarcophagus, so that you could get the feel of wandering around in the after-life in that box you were buried in.
Yes, that’s the governator deadlifting barefoot. You can Google “Arnold training without shoes” to give you a number of pictures of he and his cohorts doing all sorts to lifts with no shoes. 
as my go to the gym or train in the Cave shoe. Initially, I got the Vibrams to do a little walking and short runs but I noticed that when I wore them for longer periods of time (even after acclimating to them per the instructions) my knees would hurt, my arch of my feet would hurt and I got plenty of blisters. I even tried using them only in the weight room, and much to the same results I became weary of wearing them. 
Thanksgiving is upon us, busy travel days are here again, and routines get routinely thrown out the window in the process. It’s not because we don’t have time to fit EVERYTHING into our schedule such as work, buying gifts, flying on a jet plane, eating Aunt Nana’s banana bread (and the icing isn’t sweet at all). I remember the days of flying up to Pittsburgh to visit relatives and running into Aunt Nana inevitably.
She ALWAYS had a banana bread ready, at all time, to give to guests; albeit they would be down in the basement freezer every time instead of the refrigerator on the 1st floor. Would she just make enormous amounts of cake and freeze it, or was this cake from back in the 50’s, down in that freezer for God knows how long…
But I digress…..
The holidays are great, you get to see the family all in one place again, get to eat some really good food, play games, watch movies and eat snacks. Everyone knows about the holiday bulge: the time of year that we slow down to appreciate family and friends, but seem to fall out of anything closely related to a fitness routine. Maybe it’s because you travel far and wide and back in the stix your parents live in there isn’t a decent gym in 50 miles either way, or maybe there are a ton of choices close to where you are staying, but you don’t like any of them.
What to do, what to do.
Let’s clarify that the holiday season is a 6-week winter period from Thanksgiving (November 24) through New Year (Jan 1)
First, let’s get a little fact out of the way. A recent study published by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in the March 23 edition of the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine) shows that the average weight gain during the holidays is 1lb for people that are of average weight for their size. If we equate that to calories, it’s about 3500 of those little measurements of heat.
Another study done at Tufts University showed that people that were already overweight for their size gained about 5lbs. Once again, let’s take the 3500 calorie rule and multiply it by 5 to get a whopping 17,500 calories. The study also stated weight gain for the rest of us at “weight gain during the 6-week holiday season explained 51% of annual weight gain”.
These are lbs most of us never lose.
Let’s think about a few key differences in between those of us that are of “average” weight (AW) and those of us that are “above average weight” (AAW). AW people tend to eat according to conscious dietary needs, with most having the thought “its only 1 time of year that I get to eat like this, might as well enjoy it”. If we can also ascertain that AW people MAY have a fitness routine during the rest of the year, 3500 calories (1lb) is not that detrimental.
But for those AW people that seem to have gifted genetics that don’t train, age will always catch up with them, and that 1lb gets harder to lose every year we age.
For those that are AAW, we can ascertain that most do not have a regular fitness routine and eat according to hunger. Remember though that the more weight you carry, the more calories your body requires just to stay the same (in bodybuilders this is very important that they keep up caloric intake to match or increase to stay the same or gain bulk) and the processes that control hunger change in those that are AAW. Leptin and Grehlin are 2 major hormones that control hunger. People that are AAW have decreased affinity for Leptin receptors which signal the end of hunger, but also have increased production of Grehlin to stimulate hunger to accommodate the body’s energy needs.
Now that we understand a little of what happens during the holidays, let’s think of a few ways to counteract the additional lbs we inevitably gain. One easy thing to do is to take part in what most areas around the country call the “Turkey Trot”. Not only does this become a fun, social event, but it also puts you into a negative energy balance at the start of the day. This allows you to be a little more generous in the servings of turkey, stuffing, cakes and pies that will be consumed later in the day.
Another quick idea is to see if there is any wood to chop (more for those up north). Not only is chopping wood calorically demanding, but it’s also a great anaerobic endurance exercise that can produce large amounts of EPOC (excessive post exercise oxygen consumption). EPOC generally governs how many calories you continue to burn after the activity, also helping put you in a negative caloric balance.
The most important thing to take from this is to not let your travel schedule ruin your fitness routine. Buy a TRX, go buy a day pass at the gym, go for a run, do some calisthenics. It doesn’t matter what you do, it just matters that you do it.
That way you can enjoy food with your family without guilt or fear of weight gain.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
Ok, so you workout everyday at least for an hour. But say, today you have meetings all the way across town and you won’t have time to go to the gym. What is one to do? What can I do that will still give me benefit even if it’s not in my “plan”?
Of course, having a routine planned ahead of time even for a few weeks at a time is the best scenario. That way you can track your weights, % of lifts, reps etc. This data helps gauge your progress and will eventually determine any changes or adaptations that you will inevitably make. But there is a key fact that some people just don’t follow:
Something, even small, is better than nothing.
This means that even though your life got derailed by “life” you can still get a benefit from a short workout. Not only will it improve you’re your state of mind, but sometimes a short workout is a necessity. Most people have the all or nothing principle engrained in them: if I can’t do what I planned, then I will do nothing at all and get back on track tomorrow…..
This is a missed opportunity.
When trying to fit your daily schedule with every task, errand, job, activity you have to have a give and take attitude. If you are going to give extra time to working out, then you have to take time away from something else, be it work, family, school etc. This is not ideal for anyone, but there is a way around it.
There are 24 hours in a day, 16 if we take out sleep. Your routine will look something like this (even shift workers): wake up, eat, work, lunch, work some more, family time and/or gym time. So if we take an additional 8 hours out for work, we are left with 8 hours.
Now let’s take a wake up time of 7am. Since you have to be to work at 9, this gives you 2 hours to get ready. If you have kids and have to get them off to school, either you or your spouse will have to deal with them, let’s say an hour. Now we are down to 1 hour for yourself, and 6 hours left over.
Let’s say you work from 9-1 and take a lunch, more or less an hour. This brings you down to 6 hours left. Now you go back to work at 2 and work till 6. This means you have until approx 11pm-12am. I know that you have to have “family” time, but let’s look at how we can schedule that.
For the remaining 6 hours in the day, let’s say the kids go to bed at 8. If you were to leave work right at 6, drive to them gym and train, this could all be done in an hour (depending on where you live, traffic, mass transit). Doable, but cutting it close. And who said you had to join a gym that was not close to work or home, or even invest that money in some basic equipment for your garage gym. Without brass tacks, you still have roughly 30 min to devote to a workout, each day. Yes there will be days that life disrupts your routine, but its best to even have a routine to disrupt than to not, because working out is a habit. I have to have a workout in my day for me to feel alive, its great stress relief and it makes me look good naked.
Within that 30 min workout are the confines of what we call “intensity”. Intensity can either be a fast paced workout with little rest, or short bursts of work with high weight and high reps (bodyweight too) and longer rests. Even on a power day you can life for a min and rest for 2, as long as the weight you are using is appropriate for that training day (a whole ‘nother topic)
So, here is a simple little formula that you can use to determine a short but effective workout.
Basic Warm UP: can be a jump rope, jumping jacks, swinging a bucket of water like a kettlebell etc. A warm up has to be at least done for 5 min, not including stretching.
Then we formulate the workout based on 1 big movement, and then lots of little ones. Say we start with pull ups. If you have a hard time doing pull ups and are not near a weight assist machine, I recommend the Pull Up Revolution. So let’s say we do 5 sets of max pull ups, with 30-45 sec rest in between. If you don’t have a pull up bar, use a flat bench and do inverted rows.
Then we go on to complexes, which Al Cosgrove made famous: 2 complimentary or opposed exercises done back to back with no rest. Similar to a super set, but instead of doing 1 movement for time and reps, you are doing 2. Not only does this cause metabolic conditioning but it also ramps up the intensity.
For example, let’s take bent over row or a deadlift followed immediately by a push up or dip. You can do 1 set or you can do multiple before moving onto the next complex, and reps can be varied depending on weight used.
For the last 2 movements, let’s take a single arm hammer curl followed by a straight back sit up (where you don’t “crunch the spine, but try to stay as straight as possible.)
Simple formula:
Warm up
Main Movement – multiple sets with adequate rest
Complex 1- no rest in between exercises
Rest
Complex 2- no rest between exercises. Then you start over again at complex 1 for set #2 and so on.
A great finisher: a series of sprints, sandbag shouldering, burpees, sledge hammer on tire (you can go to any tire shop and get a free tire, in fact get 1 big one and 1 little one, you can use the little one for overhead throws.
For your main movement, think big muscles: back, legs, chest.
For complexes think multi plane exercises (secondary movements i.e. chest press would be a main movement, but a fly could be a complex)
Remember this, when all else fails, use the KISS method.
Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid.
Namaste
I walked into the gym silently, and as the soft sounds of the inner office cubes gave way to the loudness of music and ESPN playing on the TV in the I noticed Linny Mac; I turned, nodded and said hello. I made my way through the various mazes of weights, bars, plates and machines that change every day. As I chalked up, I noticed that my headphones separated from my iPod, the cord left dangling just below my shirt. I grab the red plastic tubing and insert the metal plug into where it belongs, bringing the paused music to a full audible scream which I am not prepared for.
I re chalk because now after handling my shirt with the headphone plugs, I am covered in a snowy white granular powder that smells like an old school room after you’ve clapped out all of the chalk in the erasers for the teacher at the end of the day. I walk past Big Lin’s smile over to where my weapon is laying, a perfectly round purple ATC 20kg kettlebell. As I bend forward to grab the handle, some chalk lightly gallops off my hand and onto the floor, covering the bell at the same moment. I pick it up, rack it, and walk to where I will begin.
As I drop the bell down from the rack and into the swing, Public Enemy’s “Bring the noise” starts on the iPod. 10 swings, and without stopping I move into 10 cleans all on the right side. When I finish my last clean, I swing the bell into a snatch; I lightly twist my wrist to begin softening the downward momentum the bell will surely gain as it begins its controlled fall back between my legs. 9 more, 8more, 7 more, all the way down to the last one. I lower the bell back into the rack and perform 10 presses, still on the right side.
After the 10th press, I swing the bell back down again, up to meet my other hand so that I can pass it to my left arm I look in the mirror and notice that I am the only one in the gym at that very moment. I perform with the same preciseness that my right arm garnered the same sets and reps.
Now, the warm up is done, onto the rest of my workout.
Cleans
135 x 5
155 x 5
185 x 3+2
185 x 4
185 x 5
Let’s see what the PM workout has in store for me. Been battling a sinus infection for about 2 weeks now and I have had a ton of stomach pain these past 3 days. I feel weak with 0 energy. While I was sick, I got lax on my diet and am paying the price for it now. Any of those out there with food allergies knows what I mean, it’s just one of those things that make you feel pathetic because you look fine on the outside, but inside there is a storm brewing. I have to put on my game face as much as possible, but when you are constantly going to the bathroom, it gets embarrassing. I’m really tired of it. Allergies, you can kiss my ass. Mast cells, kiss my ass too. You won’t beat me. You may take me out of the game for a bit, but I’ll get back up, until I have no energy left.
I will keep fighting.
The “Clean” or formally known as Power clean (or hang clean) to all you iron-heads out there, is probably my #1 go to exercise. It develops multiple parts of the entire kinetic chain, starting with the deadlift from the bottom position, high pull from the hang (where the bar is in the crease of your hips as you hold it in your hands from the top of the deadlift), heel drive (more below), the catch or rack (top part of the exercise), the heel stomp, and the front squat (unequivocal in my mind as the only squat. Keep in mind, the actual clean does not have to include a squat, but you can include it to take the level of difficulty up or to add a twist to your training. When I do cleans, 1 week it’s with the squat and the next its without. You will be able to use more weight without the squat, and it’s the only way to advance in weight through the squat.
Without the squat:
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With the squat:
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There is also a version of the clean you can do with a DB or KB, and the KB clean is one of the main exercises you use in just about every other exercise with the kb: you have to get it into the clean to squat, push, or coming down from any overhead lift. The dumbbell version is also a great way to train a more dynamic, isolateral lift, it lets you use weight almost the same way the kb does, except your hand positioning is a bit different in the rack.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h7rib_DhL2s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The clean is a versatile movement that is not as advanced as you might think. If you know the deadlift, you already know 1/3 of the exercise. A next step you can take is with a piece of PVC pipe and cut it about 6 feet long and about the same diameter as a barbell. Stand with the PVC about shoulder width apart, and adjust your hands a little wider than shoulder width. As you start the movement, begin with repping out a high row, that is to pull the bar up to your neck with a shrug of the shoulders. Chip Sigmon teaches it by “I don’t Know”, so try to imagine you saying I don’t know to someone with a shoulder shrug.
The next step is to add a little jump from the toes, or a drive-the-heels off the deck movement. This heel lift and subsequent ¼ squat into the “catch or rack” position (bar across top of delts, pushed back into neck) is integral to getting the power generated after the deadlift into an upward direction. Remember, you are not trying to raise the bar up to you, you want to be able to get under it and catch it as soon as it gets past your elbows. The speed in which the movement is done demands that you turn 3 separate exercises into 1 fluid motion.
An intermediate form of the exercise is called the Hang Clean. The hang clean is performed without the deadlift portion but still uses the shrug and heel drive and stomp. The purpose for the heel raise and stomp is to generate as much power as possible and give your body a little “spring” when going from the pull to the catch or rack.
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After you rep that out about 15-20x, you can start training the wrist flip. As you start the high row again, as soon as your hands get past your elbows, invert them, and partial squat (only about ¼ of the way). Push your elbows up so that the bar closes in on your neck. It will be different once you put weight on the bar, as the weight actually helps keep your hands close to your neck, maintaining the weight as high as you can while resting on the shoulders.
This will help keep you from bending forward, which is going to be your worst nightmare in this lift. One thing to stress is once you start with weight on the bar, make sure that you are able to “let go” and stand and move away as quick as possible. If you are lifting on hard concrete, make sure you either have rubber weights or a rubber floor mat so that you do not damage the bar and weight. To be able to safely bail from the movement gone awry is integral in keeping you out of the hospital.
So naturally the first progression after the Pvc pipe is onto the bar by itself. You can use light training bumpers (around the size of a 45lb plate in diameter (not weight) to help get the proper starting height from the floor with the “deadlift”.
NOTE: I think of the start of a clean or snatch almost a variation of a deadlift and squat together. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CLEAN FROM THE ROMANIAN DEADLIFT POSITION.
Do your reps throughout each part of the movement divided into separate movements at first, meaning do 10 deadlifts, do 10 high pulls, do 10 catches with the inverting of the hands (and heel raises). Then you can start putting it all together in one movement.
Here is a sample workout to learn the clean:
After a general warm up: jumping rope, KB swings etc (no less than 5 minutes)
1. Pvc deadlifts- 20
2. Pvc high pulls-20 (start by doing 10 with no heel lift, then 10 with heel lift. Drive up so that your heels come off the ground)
3. Pvc high pulls with shrug-20
4. Pvc high pulls with “catch and partial squat”
5. PVC hang cleans (starting from the hang, drive your feet up so that your heels come off the ground but toes stay planted). You should notice a “stomp” as your heels come back to the ground. This is integral to the lift, especially when you have weight on the bar.
Rest. Also, having some chalk on hand is a great idea as it helps you grip the bar while allowing it to spin in your hands.
Next, start with the Olympic barbell:
1. 10 deadlifts
2. 10 high pulls
3. 10 high pulls with shrug
4. 10 high pulls with “catch and partial squat”
5. 10 Hang Clean, with the foot drive
6. rest
Make sure that you are breathing out when you are coming up on the lift and breathing in on the negative. This helps keep your TVA or transverse abdominis active and protecting your spine. If you notice you are falling forward, take a rest and work on your squat. Also video tape yourself or have someone watching you that knows the form and can guide you, as these are very important in the self discovery process of ironing out the wrinkles with the lift.
Now that you have a feel for the individual parts of the movement, and your form is spot on with the training tools, it is the time to add some weight. Work with light weights at first while you develop the “groove” with the lift.
1. 10 reps with bar and 10’s on the side for women and “25’s” for men (use training plates if you have them, they come in all weights from 2lbs up to 5kg)
2. Increase weight only if form is spot on and you are not fatigued. Go up in 10lb (5kg) increments, 8 reps
3. 6 reps
4. 5 reps x 5 sets. This is your real work set, and you can set these to 5 sets of 3 if you don’t feel you can make all 5x5. The reason we do 5 reps at this point is to develop the motor skills necessary to use when you really start implementing the clean in your training regimen.
Most people in the fitness world, especially Crossfitters these days use too little weight with too many reps. Yes there is a place for that, but not every session. The clean is a power movement, you can change attributes to make it a power-endurance movement, but it’s not a lift I would ever have high volume on (high volume while training the movements but not the complete exercise).
Key points to remember:
1. Learn the movements without weight
2. Learn to breathe properly through the movement
3. Practice kegels and “stomach” tightening throughout ever stage. I call this the TVA Tight or “Breathe behind the shield”
4. Start light, with higher reps
5. Work sets are heavy(er) with less reps
Next I will tackle the front squat, and how to implement it into the power clean.
