Training Update April 28, 2012

A solid week of training. Everything after this will be a personal record.

Music and the Power Therein

Music can be awesome and music can well.....suck. In high school I was a music nut. I mostly loved all forms of rock and blues (guitar music) but I also listened to classical music (usually on Sundays). Most rock stars are not great weight lifters. In fact most of them are poor role models in general. Though the mighty zeppelin did drugs and other stupid things, their hard pounding rhythms, screeching voices and screaming guitars serve strength training athletes well. If you've found yourself stuck in your training, find some good rock that gets you amped up and you'll find yourself unstuck.

Training Update April 21, 2012

A solid week of training. Normal ups and downs but I am nearly in PR territory on the press and bench press and hit 315 for a new personal record on the deadlift. Squats are coming right along as well.

The Press

"How much can you bench?" A silly question often asked between members of the male sex of the human race. The result of this question seems to determine the strength of the individual answering the question. The question is flawed. A person with a strong upper body (big bench press numbers) may have really weak back, hips, and legs (since these muscle groups are not stressed sufficiently during the bench press). Also there are few times during which an individual is lying on the ground (or a bench) and required to press some heavy object away from his/her chest. If you want to know how strong a person's upper body is in a highly functional way the question to ask is "How much can you press?"

Bill Starr Pressing 

Training Update April 14, 2012

This week had some up and downs. I started good nearly getting 250 3x5 in my squat on Tuesday. Then out of paranoia of asymmetric squats I de-loaded on Thursdays training. Saturday was a bang (the good kind).

More on Squatting

If you are not yet convinced that squatting is good for you, you should take some time to read more about squatting in order to convince yourself.  It IS good for you. Strength coach Mark Rippetoe thinks our society would be improved if everyone could squat 185 pounds (this level of strength only takes a few weeks of training for 90% of the male population and a few months for the females). Dan John, a widely respected strength and track and field coach, thinks even a few sets of 10 body weight squats would do the world good. This sentiment again comes from the idea of "use or lose it."

Taken from http://thetraininggeek.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/why-squat/ on 13 April 2012

The Most Important Exercise: Low-bar Back-squat

Good exercises involve multiple joints through the full range of motion and recruit lots of muscle mass. The low-bar back-squat does this. It is often thought that the squat is a leg exercise about equivalent to what is done in leg press machines. This idea is not true. The squat involves the ankle, knee, hip, and shoulder joints. The back is heavily trained during squatting just like all the muscles that control flexion and extension of the joints listed in the preceding sentence. Yes even the shoulders are worked, especially if the low-bar version of the squat is used.

Training Update April 7, 2012

I hate missing training days. I had a conference this week so I only got two training sessions in.

My Ankle's Sad Sorry Story

It all started when I decided to lead a climbing route that, in hindsight, I clearly was not experienced enough to lead. The route is called no nuts and it found up Ogden Canyon in Utah. It is pretty much a vertical wall of gneiss (metamorphized granite) with two small roofs. A roof is a big chunk of rock that juts out from the wall, they are challenging to climb over. I was a little more than halfway up working on clipping into a bolt on the second roof. I tried to get my quick-draw clipped in twice and missed then on the third try my left hand fatigued and I fell down. It probably looked something like this:

http://flic.kr/p/6tkE1D