Gym Equipment Part 1: Grip

STRAPS

Often times Zoids catches a wayward comment such as,

"Hey man, my grips sucks, I was thinking of buying some lifting straps..."

"What are you pulling?" - Zoids

"Uh, I don't know...225?"

Dios Mio, how are you supposed to build a grip when you default to this asshole everytime your forearms begin to fail?
I can't tell you how many times I have seen people in the gym using straps with their pulldowns at 110 lbs, or sweet mother of god, on a pressing exercise. Other than making you look like a terrific douche, you shouldn't need assistance to pull 1/2 your body weight. How do you get out of bed in the morning? OH SHIT I BETTER PUT ON MY BELT AND STRAPS I GOTTA PULL MYSELF OFF THE GODDAMN TOILET!!!!1.

Truth be told, straps blow. The totally take grip strength out of the equation, which is not necessarily a bad thing if you train your grip on a myriad of other exercises in which you are strapless (rows, DB anything, other pulls), but those bastards destroy your wrists nonetheless. I have blown a blood vessel numerous times from straps murdering me, and it takes forever to wrap up on a bar, and while you are doing so crouched down you are losing your psyche out and cramping your legs.

Chalk. Use it from now on. I tried it for the first time the other day and pulled 505. The bar never slipped, and my grip isn't exactly iron clad. Rather than the bar slipping, I lost about a square inch of skin from my right hand.

AWESOME!

Building better dog paws, is all I'll say.

It is so nice to just run right up to the bar, all pissed off about whatever it is that gets you pumped (rising cost of whey, hair loss, etc.) and pull. No set up, no wrap up...just you murdering your lumbar. Chalk is cheap, easy to use, and a fucking mess. But hey, its a lot more fun than straps, though I would suggest using the innernet to find it as every Sports Authority in the DC metro area is currently out of stock.

Central Nervous System Training

I see it all the time, three guys in the 198lb weight class. One deadlifts 315, one 450, and one 650. All have similar BF%, similar body types. Both feel as though they are lifting at their capacity. How does one explain the fact that for the same muscle density and body physiology one lifter is twice as strong as the next?

"Although the maximal force which a muscle can exert is directly related to its cross-sectional area, there is a poor correlation between increases in strength and muscle size."

Enoka R. Sports Med6:146-168, 1988.

What? Hot damn, that just about throws a big monkey wrench into this whole idea of get bigger to get stronger.

The answer I hear time and again cites the central nervous system. If I remember correctly, the relative strength of a muscle group is due to three factors: muscle density, insertion points, and connection to the central nervous system. Trying to remain in the 198-lb weight class, increasing muscle density stops at a certain point once one maximizes strength at current BF%. Insertion points of the muscle can have a huge difference in the relative strengths of different athletes, but it is something one cannot train to get better at, it is fixed from birth. That leaves the neuro-muscular connection, when the brain or spinal chord fires its commands to the muscle to illicit a response. Supposedly, this is the final frontier of muscular development.

The weightlifting world seems chock full of suggestions to improve neuro-muscular response. All seem to revolve around training for explosive concentric and eccentric to spur this brain-movement relationship that equates moving fast with lifting.

Training routines such as westside-barbell training dedicate half their workouts to training in the low-rep, high-set range with 50% 1RM, essentially conducting the concentric and eccentric as fast as possible. I am currently employing this program, since the efficacy is justified by most of its members recording a combined of 2000 and above. It will be interesting to see if this approach to neuro-muscular development works.


For further research, this is a very interesting read on the effect of the brain on muscular development.

Have fun out there.

The Making of the Strong Fat Man, Part One

Part One: Diet

Big guys are at a tremendous advantage when they decide they want to become a monster at iron moving. Pencil necks have a problem because they need to gain mass, and they have all the vagaries associated with eating a shit ton for the first time, eating the right type of shit ton, and working from square one with muscles that are unused to moving anything other than their piddly 140lb frame.

Great website, by the way.

Fat guys on the other hand, already consume lots of calories. So the ingredients to build muscle are already part of their daily regimen. Also, since they are big their muscles are already preconditioned to larger amounts of strain from moving them around doing fun fat guy things like drinking way more beer than me and embarrassing me with insane choke holds.

Points for?

Lots of calories already present in diet
Already has strong tendons, bones, musculature

Points against?

Need to change where they are getting their calories
Need to combat crushing I'll just sit on the couch syndrome

The first key here is to change the diet by moving away from empty calories and carbohydrates in mass quantities. The good thing is here is the fat man doesn't need to eat less, he just needs to eat different. This is good news to the fat man because, like all men he enjoys to eat. Empty calories and sugar needs to be almost completely eliminated and instead substituted with an absolutely insane quantity of protein. Zoidberg suggests at the beginning of the week, the fat man bake himself 4 or 5 lbs of chicken breasts, cover them with some sort of low-cal sauce (mustards, lemon-pepper, etc.) and stick it in the fridge.

Every time the fat man feels his stomach a-growling, rather than eating chips, pretzels, sweets or other carb-heavy stuff he simply grabs a hunk of chicken and eat it. It is much better for you, and it feeds your muscles. Plus, you'll be eating more animals, something I heartily endorse. You can achieve the same goal by baking/grilling a mass quantity of turkey burgers and lean beef or pork.

The key here is to have these meats available. Notice how I am not condoning the fat man stop eating, or eat less. Just eat different. This is far easier, much more fun (the animals thing), and in the long run healthier. You'll find yourself losing weight from the sheer benefit of the fact that you'll be consuming far more of your calories through protein, rather than fat and carbs.

Also, follow this general rule:

Fats and Proteins = yes!
Protein and Carbs = yes!
Carbs and Fats = no!


So let me summarize Part One, Mission Powerlifting Fat Man of Strength - The diet.

1) Cut out carbs as best you can. No pretzels, chips, breads, white pasta (whole wheat if you can), white rice.

2) No fucking sugar other than booze. Yeah yeah booze has 7 calories per gram, but I am trying to meet people half-way here. A life without beer is not a fun life. But you can definitely cut out sugar as a compromise. Drink Diet soda, the aspartame scare is a goddamn lie.

3) Make a shit ton of meat and keep it in your fridge. Eat that stuff whenever you get hungry rather than resulting to the typical snack. Meat, meat, meat! I recommend a Costco Membership and a big oven. It helps if you aren't a vegetarian. But if you are, you don't belong on my blog.


Coming Soon: Part Two - The Workout of Undeniable Awesomeness.

Oh Noes...Readership Increases to Four!

A fitness question floats its way to the Zoidberg from one of his old college buddies ButAss. ButAss has started doing rugby (awesome) and wants to figure out new ways to get his legs more tree-like for the pummeling (even more awesome) and he figures the way to do this is with plyometrics, intervals, and smith machine squats (uh oh).

All kidding aside, let us determine where the problem is here...
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My four day split w/ a full day for legs was going well, at least I thought, until I realized I wasn't going deep enough with my squats and I'm still questioning my form on the deadlifts. I've noticed my legs do fine until I start to get to the bottom of the squat, where I have now noticed I am having trouble getting to even w/o any weights. Any suggestions to improve that? I've been doing squats on the smith machine and lunges in the mean time, even on the smith I have problems getting low w/ just a plate on each side. Any recommendations on how to strengthen that so I can start doing squats properly?
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Approach

Ok, let's break down the situation. It seems that you are vexed at a lack of progress in legs. If you only have time to hit the weights twice a week, make sure you are doing some legs first on both days. I would suggest this:

Day 1: Squats, Deadlift, Chest, Arms

Day 2: Lunges, Step-up, Back, Shoulders

You have to tackle the problem at the source, something I avoided for a long time by trying to do other leg exercises without realizing that if your problem is squats...the solution is squats. Break out of that rat-bastard smith machine. It is most likely restricting your form and keeping you from moving around naturally at the bottom of your lift, forcing you to work against the machines assembly on the drive. Next, start doing these leg exercises deep, slow, and heavy.

A huge problem with lifters who are struggling with lighter weights, knowing they are strong enough to lift more is that they refuse to go for higher weight! If you are struggling to get your three sets of 6 reps at 185 on deadlift, go for broke one week and try and get three sets of 3-4 reps at 225! You'll be better off, I promise.

J-tox and I were doing heavy deadlift Sunday when some dude next to us asked us how often we go for heavy (or near maximal) lifts for legs...

EVERY TIME!

You need to go maximal a couple times EVERY WORKOUT. So this guy had been struggling to get his three or four sets of 6-8 reps at 225 on deadlift. We told him to quit babying himself and push the envelope.
He then proceeded to crank 2 sets at 275 (50 more lbs) for 4-5 reps. Far out man!

Why am I such a genius?

Lifts

Keep doing lunges, they are an excellent addition to a leg workout if done properly, which is deep with your back mostly straight. Use dumbbells only until you have mastered the form and aren't wobbly like a freshman after punch night at ATO.

Deadlifting is an oft-screwed up lift, and without seeing you in person I cannot tell you what you are doing wrong (or right), but I can tell you three simple things you should do in order to facilitate a good lift.

1) Make sure the bar starts out touching your shins.
2) Pull straight up, transferring the weight to your lower back simultaneous to you squeezing your ass together and straightening your legs.
3) Keep your back flat while sticking your ass out.

I can also pass on this brilliant three part article from the boys at T-Nation.

Part I:
Part II:
Part III:

Squat heavy, low, and determined. Not necessarily slow, but don't rush. For the longest time, Zoidberg dropped to what he assumed was essentially parallel. FUCKING WRONG. Parallel is obvious, I just refused to acknowledge truly how painful and deep parallel truly is. ButAss, squat down until you abs are laying on your quads...go below parallel...touch your ass to the ground. Shelve the ego for a while and just squat so low that you feel like you are dropping a load in China. You'll be better off. The gym is full of guys loading up the rack with 315 who go down 30-45 degrees.

Be the guy that squats 185 until his ass touches the ground. You'll be 10 times stronger.

Step-up involves grabbing a steady platform (I use the aerobics platform with 6-7 of those blocks under it, every gym is different though). The idea is that you want to put one leg up and have the bottom of your thigh be parallel with the ground. This is usually somewhere around 15-20 inches. Anyway, load up the barbell and just take turns stepping up, one leg at a time, making sure to fully step up and contract the leg before bringing the other leg to the platform.

It will surely kill you.

Start with dumbbells until you get the form down.

Good luck ButAss, murder some people on the rugby field for me.