Holy Crap, Readership Hits Five!

Word spread through the old fraternity network that Zoids apparently spends all his time complaining about bleeding hearts and deadlifting. Though Zoid's activities encompass many things other than weightlifting, take liftweighting for example, Zoid is perfectly happy with the rest of humanity considering me as an angry federalist/objectivist ape.

On to the substance! My dear college associate Smegma Von Grundle (actual name) heigh hos me for a solid routine and purports that he has up to five (5!) days to commit to the gym. This makes my heart explode with joy, too often people come to Zoids asking for a 2 day workout that will turn them into Ed Coan.

The product of 2 training days per week

Von Grundle wanted a routine to do in a shitty gym, and so the Shitty Gym Dumbbell Workout ((C) Adam Goldberg 2008) was born. A lot of this may seem repetitive...but hey, fuck you buddy.

I can imagine the place Grundle is forced to exercise and I shudder because it's probably nothing more than a lot of machines and a paltry assortment of dumbbells. Regardless, I am positive I can provide a routine that is awesome because I am awesome, and no shitty weight room will stand in the way of iron progress.

Anyway, the key to your workout will be to use those dumbbells as much as possible. Machines blow, I don't want Grundle to use any machines if at all possible. The key to getting strong is, and always has been, "maximum strain." I harp about this constantly, whatever exercise puts the largest amount of your body into the largest amount of peak strain is the best exercise. I like to use the chinups vs. pullups debate to elucidate this maxim. People can usually chin a lot more than they pullup, but the consensus has always been that this is because you use more of your biceps when you do a chin and therefore you aren't working out your lats as much (which is the goal of the movement). This is clearly fallacious reasoning because when you chin more weight, you are placing your entire chain of muscles from your lats to your forearms into a larger amount of strain. The more you tear your muscles, the more they grow. Biceps will always be the weak muscle in that chain, so why wouldn't you perform the exercise that allows them to hang on the longest? Your biceps are certainly not stronger than your lats, so fears over training your biceps more in an exercise that primarily involve the lats are completely misguided and nonsensical.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling. With 5 days, Grundle can get a very balanced workout. I don't really know anything about his body type so I'll give him a good solid general template that is sure to work. I just want to mention a few things before I go into the details. First, I hope he is eating well. By eating well, I just mean eating a lot of protein. It is absolutely imperative that Grundle consumes at least 1 gram per lb of body weight. This goes before anything else. I suggest several scoops of whey per day. Also, I know his goal is "general fitness," which may preclude some cardio, but always bear in mind that cardio is the arch enemy of muscle growth. It is possible to get totally ripped and never touch hisrunning shoes, it just requires a fairly strict diet. So he can add cardio to this routine if he must, but remember that a real tough weight workout burns more calories than a 5 mile run, and runner bodies are gross.

THE SHITTY GYM DUMBBELL WORKOUT (C) Adam Goldberg 2008

Day 1 Legs, Abs
Day 2 Chest, Back
Day 3 Shoulders, Arms
Day 4 Crossfit, Abs
Day 5 Chest, Back
Day 6 Boozing
Day 7 Xbox

Seem repetitive? It's supposed to be. Train the biggest muscles the most, little ones will be forced to catch up, you don't necessarily need to train them every day to achieve the same goal. I can't help but mercilessly mock guys in the gym who curl endlessly for an hour 3 times a week in a desperate bid to increase their arms. Remember, its all about PEAK strain to the LARGEST amount of your body. Want to train your arms? deadlift. There are no men who deadlift 600 lbs with small biceps!

Anyway, the key to getting strong is and always has been constant punishment of the legs. As the largest muscle group in your body (by far), training your legs stimulates ridiculous testosterone production which helps out all of your muscles. Find me a guy who can't get strong on bench and I'll show you guy who doesn't squat. However, we have a problem, and that is Grundle's shitty gym has no squat rack. He can make do, but this really blows. Even though there is no rack, he shouldn't touch the goddamn machines. Use dumbbells. Sure, you'll probably be limited by your grip, but hey, his grip will get stronger. Also, Grundle can bend nails.

Grundle mentioned taking the weekend off, and I don't blame him However, I'd urge him to maybe stick one day off in the middle of this routine. It's pretty intense and his body may need the rest.


Day 1 Legs, Abs

1) Dumbbell Lunges, 4 sets of 6 (6 per leg). Make sure to keep the trunk erect and lower yourself until your knee almost touches the ground
2) Dumbbell Stiff leg or Romanian deadlift, 4 sets of 10. Check the interwebs for a definition of these lifts, then just use dumbbells
3) Incline sit up, 4 sets of 10 with as much weight as you can do. Let the grip recover here, and don't do reps! You don't need to do endless crunches to get strong abs. The key is weight!
4) Dumbbell Squat, 4 sets of 6. Heavy weight. Probably going to be grip limited.
5) Roman chair lifts. Hopefully he's got a chair or something you can do these on, otherwise he may have to do gay leg raises. 4 sets of to failure.

Day 2 Chest, Back

1) Dumbbell Bench, 5 sets of 6-8
2) Lat pull down or chins. I don't know if or how many chins he can do, so if he can't do chins use the pull down machine. If hecan, try and get 4 or 5 sets to 1 or 2 reps before failure
3) Dumbbell Flye, 4 sets of 10
4) Dumbbell Bent over row, 4 sets of 8

Days 3 Shoulders, Arms

1) Standing Dumbbell Press, 4 sets of 8. You have got to do these standing! People will cheat so much if they do them seated, don't lie and say it won't happen. Everyone who does them seated cheats and turns it into an incline press. Do them standing. It's a good balance workout or some shit. Anyway, make sure these are done all the way down. In fact, all these exercises NEED and MUST be done to the limits of your flexibility, which means touch the chest on bench and back, get your ass to the ground in squats, and contract the arms all the way for shoulders. Don't
cheat! Anyone who tells you that this shit will injure you is either a pussy, a liar, a dumbass....or a trainer. Listen to me, those guys are idiots. Do everything as far as comfortable and remember the effort you put in is equal to the results you get out.
2) Seated Incline Curls, 3 sets of 8. I hate curls. they are so useless. But I'll throw in this bone.
3) Dumbbell front raise, 4 sets of 10.
4) Tate press, 4 sets of 10. Do a google search for this one, words fail me in attempting to describe this exercise.

Day 4 Crossfit, Abs

I don't know if our readership has ever heard of crossfit, but basically it's a bunch of crazy weirdos who wave around weights until their hearts explode. I like crossfit because it is essentially a cardio workout for the lifter, and I never have to touch a damn treadmill. Also, some of their shit is so unbelievably hard it will make you see god. Here are a couple things Grundle can do on day 4, scale them up with weights and reps as proficiency comes.

Dumbbell Bear:

Every minute on the minute for 20 minutes perform: 5 dumbbell squats, 5 dumbbell cleans, 5 dumbbell thrusters. Perform this with 50% your bodyweight, but that may be a bit optimistic, I am still at 40% BW and STRUGGLING. So try 25s for the first time around. Good description and video.

-or-

Man-makers:

I'd do a google search to find out what exactly these entail, it's a bit difficult to do so in text. Try 4-6 sets of 25lbs for 6 reps, adjust according to how sick they make you feel.

-then-

2) Incline sit-up - same as day 1
3) Upper abs, you can try something like bosu ball sit ups or my favorite the serratus crunch
sets of 10 with whatever weight you can manage.

Day 5 Chest, Back redux

1) Incline Dumbbell Bench Press, 4 sets of 8
2) Pull down with the opposite grip you did on day 2. If you did pullup, do chins...vice versa.
3) Decline Dummbell Flye, 4 sets of 10
4) A different row from day 2. 4 sets of 8. If they have a seated cable row, do that, and try and pick a different grip this time (wide).
5) Hyperextensions, 4 sets of 10 with as much weight as you can bear.


Just remember..

1) Don't use machines
2) Eat lots of animals
3) Go deep and use full range of motion on everything
4) Try not to do cardio.
5) Don't ever sacrifice the workout of a larger muscle for a smaller one. For example, don't save yourself on chest so that you can get in a killer curl workout.
6) Fall in love with legs

The Making of the Strong Fat Man, Part Two

Zoids has been party to many different lifting routines over the ages: body part split, GVT, total body, Westside, high rep, low rep, no rep...the list goes on. It would be easy for me to conclude that the best of these workouts is westside since I am the strongest now that I ever have been, but that would sell short the objectives of the other training methods. Westside is geared towards the big three: squat, deadlift, bench. Who knows what your physique will be when you have a combined of 1500, but westside will get you there. GVT will probably give you the most money body, but I don't see the fun in benching 185 100 times, I'd rather bench 405 once.

Anyway, the point I am belaboring is that every training method has a different goal, an ideal body that it attempts to produce. You should bear that in mind anytime you read a new routine and say to yourself "what kind of body is this routine trying to build?" If you are reading a routine in Maxim, chances are that body is a slim emo turbo douche who struggles to lift the most modest of weights, but has totally killer sweet abz!

This training regimen, heretofore referred to as the big movement workout, is designed for the large man who desires to get strong. He will probably lose significant body fat while ascribing to this plan, but the overall goal of this routine is to get STRONG, not turn into Brad Pitt. Mainly because I have no experience being Brad Pitt. If you follow this workout (and part 1) you will undoubtedly lose weight, but more than anything it is going to turn you into this guy...

rather than this guy...


The purpose of the big movement workout is to utilize big movements. Squat, deadlift, bench, row, lunge! These are the staples. The big guy needs to divorce himself from working his smaller muscles because the focus needs to be on building muscle, rather than shaping it. The best way to stimulate muscle growth is to put as much of your body into as much strain as possible in a single movement. This workout is geared around several major exercises intended to drain you, but not cause hypertrophy. Remember, build muscle...not shape it. It is absolutely crucial make muscle before even considering the move to higher rep workouts.

Big Movement focuses on large, hellish movements. Isolation exercises are really in here only to fill in the gaps, as spending any more than token time on your smaller muscle groups is a waste. Any time you feel as though you aren't spending enough time on your guns, bear in mind THERE ARE NO GUYS WHO PULL 600 THAT HAVE SMALL BICEPS!

On to the workout, I have set this up as a 4 day routine.

Day 1 Heavy Legs 1
Day 2 Off
Day 3 Upper Body 1, Light Cardio
Day 4 Off
Day 5 Heavy Legs 2
Day 6 Upper Body 2, Light Cardio
Day 7 Off

First, a note on the addition of cardio...

I am highly resistant to the idea of adding cardio, I am firm believer in not sending mixed signals to your cardiovascular system, and any real effort on any machine is going to temper your musculature for two wholly different operations. However, until the big man packs on a lot of muscle, his body will not be prepped to burn more calories. Without the addition of lots of lean muscle, he will probably require some additional cardio in the beginning. For now, I have added light cardio into this workout...but it certainly is not a long term idea.

Light cardio means 20-30 minutes tops, at a light to moderate effort. A good workout may be a 2 mile jog, 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill at an incline of 8-15%, or 20 minutes on the erg at a slow rate (18-20 SPM) at somewhere between 2:04 and 2:10. The key here is to stay well below your lactic threshold. If at any time you feel like your heart rate is anything higher than 70%, turn it down.

If you have the ability to go to the gym more than 4 times per week, I would strongly urge the large man to put these cardio workouts on separate days, as far away from lifting as possible.

Remember....cardio is a secondary effort, and is only around to get your heart rate up and burn a little fat. Do not pursue cardio with any high degree of effort or you will find your ability to lift severely curtailed, muscle growth is the long term solution for burning fat...not cardio.


Heavy Legs 1:

Squat: 3 sets of 5, 2 sets of 3, 1 set of 1.
The goal here is to slowly pare down into one heavy lift that won't quite be an accurate measure of your 1 rep max (because you should be fairly exhausted by then) but will be fairly close. Squats should be performed with heavy weight ranging from 75% of your max all the way up to 90%. Take your time in between sets, your goal here is quality sets...not a high heart rate.
Stiff legged or Romanian Deadlift: 4 sets of 6
Time to hit the hammies and lower back! These exercises are far more effective than queer leg curls, and your lower back shouldn't be that tired from squats. Make an effort to keep you back rigid flat, and your knees almost locked.
Mid Abdominals: 4 sets of 8-10
Contrary to popular opinion, big strong guys should not do endless crunches to work their abs. I don't know why it took me so long to realize that every other exercise in my routine was high weight, low rep...why shouldn't abs be the same? Anyway, a good way to work your abs here is to set up the incline sit up bench at a height where you struggle your way through 8-10 reps.

Upper Body 1, Light Cardio

Bench Press: 3 sets of 5, 2 sets of 3, 1 set of 1
Same deal as the squat. Your grip should be precisely shoulder width (yes, this is a bit narrow) and you need to concentrate on pointing your elbows forward through both the concentric and eccentric phase. This is purely for shoulder health, it is very easy to turn your elbows out to engage more of your pecs, but you put your shoulder into a horrendous amount of external rotation. Save your rotator cuff and AC joint and go with a narrow(er) grip, elbows forward. It is harder in the short term because it throws more weight on your triceps...but hey...work your triceps more and quite whining.
DB standing Military press: 4 sets of 6
Sorry, I love shoulders. They have to find their way into this routine somewhere. I have them after chest so there is no question that emphasis is on pecs, not shoulders. Do them standing so you won't cheat.
Tricep Extensions (any variation): 3 sets of 10-12
A bit of hypertophy at the end.
Lower Abdominals: 4 sets of 8
Low ab pull in, leg raises, roman chair thingie...all these are great for your lower abs, or as I like to call it, the sex region.

Heavy Legs 2

Deadlift: 8 sets of 2
There are about 2 billion different variations of deadlift, so I would use this to your advantage and mix things up every once in a while. However, I'd stick to conventional for the first 2 months to get your form right and build up some posterior chain strength. Refer to part 1, part 2, and part 3 of this guy's info to get your form right.
Lunges: 4 sets of 6
Check this link out for proper form. It is easy to screw these up.
Upper Abdominals: 4 sets of 8
You'll never hear me say this again, but those sit ups on that damn ball are pretty effective. I started doing these as well.

Upper Body 2, Light Cardio

Pullups: 5 sets of 5
Now, I know it is going to be damn near impossible for our big guy to do a pullup. But that shouldn't stop the big guy from doing pull-downs. Pull downs are damn near intrinsic for lat development, which gives your arms a platform to lay down on as you bench (you are doing narrow grip, right?). The road to being a sailsman is paved with the pulldown. Just make sure you don't look like a worm on a hook, don't lean back or jerk the weight down, and pull it to just below chin level. Nice and slow.
Rows: 4 sets of 6
Again, lots of variation here. You can do t-row, bent over row, wide grip row, close grip, supinated grip row...all you have to do is make sure you don't exceed what you can do an honest rep with. Now, I am not saying bring the bar back until it touches your chest (unless you are doing bent over row) because this is generally beyond the limits of flexibility...but you'll know when you are cheating too much. It is important you keep your wits about you because back is an easy cheat when it is difficult to discern if you are done with a rep. Chest is easy...your rep is complete when you touch the bar to your chest (you are touching the bar to your chest?)...but back can be a bit more subjective. Just play it smart and don't rack up a whole lot of weight to do what is essentially a glorified shrug.
BB half bench: 4 sets of 5
Since you are moving to a narrower bench grip, you need to spend some time developing your triceps a bit more than normal. I love half bench. It trains the lockout from 4 inches above your chest up, where most people fail. It will take some time to get used to pausing in mid-air above your chest, but this exercise is killer for training your failure at lockout.


The Four Principles of the Big Movement Workout:

1) Never sacrifice big movements for small ones.
In other words, don't breeze through your chest just to get to shoulder or biceps. Never "save yourself" so that you can hit some new max with any smaller muscle group.
2) Quality sets, Quality reps
Keep your form, make every rep count, and rest plenty between the major lifts.
3) To become strong and in shape, you must build muscle, to build muscle you must strain your body to the maximum.
You must keep your motivation and push yourself week to week. These are big motions, and it takes a lot of gumption to get up set after set for tortuous squats...much more motivation than doing a set of curls. But you reap what you sow, the more you put in the more you get out.
4) Eat smart, and eat plenty.
Don't starve yourself, and eat lots of kittens.


Go get 'em.

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...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.