QUOTE from a lifter of ours:

“Dear sweet wonderful coaches o mine… am I supposed to be this broken after starting the programming?”

MY ANSWER:

The answer is Yes

This is meant to be a “kick the living crap out of you” type of program that eventually REQUIRES that you take a deload week periodically so that your body can bounce back.

The goal is ALWAYS to work as hard as you can for as long as you can – intentionally creating such massive systemic fatigue that your lifts in the gym go DOWN. That is good.

Embrace it as a sign of success. Because that is what it is. You are doing everything right.

The bigger the dip, the bigger the gains after we taper you.

This type of training is NOT for beginners or weak-minded people, it is for people like you have progressed into a much more advanced place.

The greater the stress, the greater the adaptation. The ability to drive through the tough periods is THE difference between those who see big gains fast, and those that mire in mediocrity forever.

I know it’s frustrating, but I like to use that as a lesson in how to harness your ability to accept things as they come.

I have NO number goals for you in any workout. That is, I don’t care what weights you hit.

That is meaningless to me. On some days an empty bar is more than enough.

My ONLY goal is for you to lift huge weights in a contest… not in the gym.

In the gym, you will go through phases when you feel strong and lift heavy, other phases when you feel like shit and can’t lift anything. That is GOOD.

If you only have good days, that means you are wimping out in your workouts, and your results will reflect that. If you have more good days than bad days, I’m suspect: either you are wimping out or on steroids.

Most days should be in the middle. But don’t freak about bad days. You WANT them.

When you feel totally overwhelmed by the shear work you have been putting in, feel crazy tired, sore, can barely move, can’t snatch the bar without wanting to take a nap… be PROUD of yourself. That means you are on track and great things are going to happen.

It’s a massive mindset change that many lifters who are past the easy beginners phase are never able to embrace. Those are the people who’s booties you are going to kick.

Now go lift something heavy,

Nick Horton

PS. If you haven’t signed up for our FREE “How To Snatch” course, you gotta check it out.

A theater teacher of mine was asked once why she didn’t video the performances we did so that we could see them later.

She said, “Why? The actors will only watch themselves and ignore the play.”

I know that with the advent of smart phones, we all have the easy ability to video ourselves doing just about everything. And that means that in the gym you can video yourself doing your lifts and then watch them  immediately to see if you “did it right”.

DON’T DO THIS!

Confidence Is Everything In Sports (And Life)

My teacher was right. Every time we watched a play we did, we all just sat there hyper-focused on ourselves and missed the entire POINT of the performance as a whole.

Your COACH is supposed to get nit-picky. That is THEIR job. You are NOT.

YOUR job as an athlete is to guard and nourish your confidence and belief in yourself like your life depends on it… because your athletic life DOES depend on it!

Nothing is more precious, rare, easy to lose, and fragile than your honest belief that you WILL succeed NO MATTER WHAT. There is NOTHING that will stand in your way. (NOTE: this is not arrogance, it is intelligence and honesty at it’s most piercing. Arrogant people are often those with the lowest true confidence in themselves. You need real confidence, not that fake crap.)

Constructive criticism is important. But that is someone else’s job. Your job is to find every opportunity you can to remind yourself how much of a freakin’ bad ass you are. BECAUSE YOU ARE

If you are self coaching, that is OK, too. But that means you need to watch those videos LATER when you have your coaching hat on. NOT IN THE GYM.

It is far too easy to see on that video what you think is some glaring mistake, focus in on it, and have it spiral your emotions downward into a pool of self-loathing. You’ll start whining about how you will never reach your goals, how you are not as good as anyone else, this one thing is proof that “I” suck. And that is all…

BULLSHIT

Listen to your coach (or your coaching-self) and implement the shit you need to work on. But never let anything destroy your fundamental belief that you are going to reach your goals, that you are more than good enough to do so, that you are a bad-mo-fo about to open a can of whoop-ass on that barbell.

Don’t Know, DO!

The second issue is about how to learn the lifts themselves.

The Olympic lifts are extremely technical and must be performed at maximum speed and with maximum weight. What that means in practice is that when you go for a lift, it cannot be a conscious activity!

You cannot learn how to do something subconsciously by constantly making it conscious. By watching a video of yourself at every turn, you are keeping the entire learning process in the conscious part of your brain and you are short-circuiting the subconscious (parasympathetic nervous system) learning that MUST occur before you will ever be any good.

Your goal is to learn how to FEEL the weights correctly. That is not possible if you are thinking.

You literally need to lift with a blank mind. But what do you think happens when you watch yourself between every set? You start thinking at full speed. It creates the OPPOSITE mental environment that you are after.

Stay in the right ZONE mentally: blank.

You ARE Doing It Right

There is nothing worse than a new lifter posting a video online – looking for help – only to have a shit-storm of utterly USELESS drivel thrown at them about all of the things they are doing “wrong”.

“Wrong” is a relative term, in part relative to your level. If it’s your first day and you finally lock out the snatch for the first time correctly, you did it right. I don’t care if you missed your hip, the bar swung out, or you didn’t have the right facial expression.

What both you and the internet idiots miss is that you are not supposed to do everything “right”. Learning is a PROCESS, and processes have STEPS. Your goal is NOT perfection, it is practicing the ONE step you are on right now, and dialing that in. Everything else is noise.

Conclusion

Video is a powerful and potentially extremely helpful tool for your lifting. I video all of my lifters and post their stuff publicly.  I believe in it. Like this one of Lauren hitting a PR snatch:

But video is a disaster if used wrongly.

An athlete’s job is to develop confidence and proper feel. A coaches job is to help the athlete accomplish both of those things.

Don’t fall into the trap of watching yourself lift mid-workout. You are BANNED from your own videos until you go home!

Never forget: The point is the play, not the actor.

Now go lift something heavy,

Nick Horton

PS. Chip Conrad and I are doing a seminar that will combine the mental side of training with the physical called, “Creating The Holistic Weightlifter” on June 22nd/23rd here at my gym, Asheville Strength. We want you to join us!

I had the honor of being interviewed by Dave Hall of Mental Meat Heads.

We were introduced by our mutual buddy, Chip Conrad (who I’m doing a seminar with at our place here in Asheville in June – You should come!

Dave and I went in DEEP into weightlifting, coaching, art, blogging, business – you name it! I had a great time.

You can either watch the interview on video below, or listen to (and download) the audio HERE.

Thanks again, Dave!

Make sure you check out Dave’s site, Agoge Fitness Systems, it’s got a ton of great interviews on it. I’m honored to be a part of that list.

Now go lift something heavy,

Nick Horton

PS. In case you don’t know, Agoge was the name given to the Spartan’s training regimen. AKA, badass.

Read an article recently, the premises of which I am going to argue against below.

However I will not link to it, because doing so misses the point and makes it seem like I have some beef with either the author or her world view in totality. I don’t. It has nothing to do with her or her point of view, but rather the thrust of a certain idea that I’ve already began to fight against that she simply agreed with.

I’m putting this up here, in part to just help myself collect my own thoughts on the subject.

My beef is with the trend toward, “Strong Is The New Skinny.”

I don’t believe that. I don’t promote that. And for a certain population, I am strongly opposed to that. (See what I did there?)

 I object to 2 things:

1. That we should be preaching the SAME message to ALL people.

2. Telling someone else what THEIR goals should be. It’s a mommy knows best kind of pushing which treats anyone who doesn’t share your goals as inferior.

On The First Point: We Are Not All The Same

While there are LOTS of girls in this country who are at risk of developing a real calorie reduction eating disorder, there are just as many (or more) who are currently clinically OBESE… and will NEVER be at risk of these diseases. They are at risk of OPPOSITE eating disorders, and that can’t be taken lightly.

Dealing with a person who has tendencies towards anorexia  bulimia  or othrorexia requires a toolbox that is almost the precise opposite of what it takes to deal with people who have OVER-eating psychological issues.

My concern is largely with people who are obese and what it is going to take to “convert” the largest number of them to being in a healthier weight range and lifestyle.

I’d love it if it came down to pushing strength training, because that is MY thing. I am a professional strength-pusher. I run a competitive Olympic Weightlifting Club. I take women who are wimpy and I make them stronger than they ever thought possible.

I’m proud of that. I love doing that.

Example: Here’s our lifter Chelsea kicking ass lifting heavy shit.

But, unfortunately that is NOT what every woman WANTS.

I don’t buy the argument (for this particular group of people: obese women who want to be skinny) that making them strong and focusing on that is the answer. That isn’t to say you DON’T work on strength at all, or that if they want it you don’t give it to them. But strength is NOT going to be a good working goal for these people most of the time.

I say that because I’ve been working with them for 17 years  (LONGER than I’ve been a strength coach, by the way.) My experience with this population has led me to believe that most of them will:

• Never like working out the way we do
• Never be willing to get “super serious” about changing their “lifestyle” to fit into what we’d consider “ideal” (whatever the Hell that is).

They justifiably want to be SKINNY. Not anorexic  not Hollywood, just SKINNIER… and that is correct.

If you are 5’4” and weigh 250 pounds, losing 100 pounds means you just got skinnier by definition. To THEM, this is SKINNY. But to a person with a calorie-reduction eating disorder, 150 pounds at 5’4” seems fat.

In other words, these populations are near opposites in every way that truly matters, and should be dealt with separately in order to meet THEIR needs optimally.

Don’t miss understand me! I believe in promoting strength training as a METHOD toward the end goals of helping someone get smaller. I just don’t like promoting it as the end goal for everyone, certainly not for someone who has the justifiable goal of losing weight – aka, getting skinny.

On The Second Point: Pushing

No matter what the “strong is the new skinny” crowd says, we all know that how people LOOK is still a big deal to them – as it is to everyone.

They don’t want to look skinny, they want to look strong. Yes, they want to BE strong, but it’s the LOOK they object to as much as anything. It’s the look of skinny that they make fun of. It’s the look of skinny that they abhor.

It’s all wrapped up together: function AND looks.

The term “Strong is the new skinny” is NEVER accompanied by a skinny looking girl who is also super strong.

In my opinion, Gwen Sisto would be a GREAT model for this phrase if it was truly NOT about looking strong, but simply being strong.

Gwen is one of the top 63 kg lifters in the country. She is CRAZY strong. She also looks perfectly normal. Her body doesn’t scream, “National Level Weightlifter.” If you just met her on the street, you would have no idea she was as strong as she actually is.

Here she is lifting more than most of the girls in these posters will ever lift in their lives:

If a girl tells me she wants to be healthy and strong… but does NOT want people to look at her and say, “she must workout”… I will RESPECT that.

Sure, my lady looks like a bodybuilder, and I love that LOOK. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to force ALL ladies to look like that!

Here’s my girl, Tamara doing pull ups. She is beautiful. She is also “bulky” and absolutely covered in huge muscles. Awesome for some of us, not the goal for others. That’s perfectly OK.

Take a good look at the picture at the top of this post. Seriously, look at their arms!

That LOOK is as much reliant on genetics as anything else. Many MEN will never be able to grow arms like that no matter how hard they work.

Are we just substituting one unreachable ideal for another?

Don’t lie to me, you want bigger “guns”.

And no matter how much you have subsumed yourself into the Olympic lifting, CrossFit, Powerlifting, functional (etc) culture that has indoctrinated you into believing curls are bad, you still secretly like to do them.

You are not alone.

Join me in The 21-Day “Gun” Salute Curl Challenge and take back your biceps!

So far, myself, JC Deen, Chip Conrad, 2 of our athletes at Asheville Strength (Zach, Matt, & Lon), and a few others are jumping on this.

Are you ready? CT Fletcher trained arms every day for a year and a half… I think we can do 3 weeks.

RULES:

1. Curl every day for 21 days straight (can be any version you want)

2. Get in 30+ reps (any way you want)

3. Lather on the bronzer (as much as you want)

NOTES:

Cheating is always a good thing – after all, this IS a curl challenge. So measure your biceps at the beginning cold, and at the end pumped.

Also, work your triceps because you have a lot of growth potential there. If your biceps don’t grow, maybe your tri’s will!

THE POINT:

Remember that the point here is to have fun. I think it is far too easy to forget that the reason we all got into this gym game was because we like to lift stuff… but somewhere along the line we got “serious”, started competing, dialed in our workouts and diets to make sure we reached our goals “optimally”, blah blah blah.

While I’m all for working our asses off and having big goals and doing what it takes to reach those goals, I find it important to periodically get back to that place where we are lifting purely for fun again.

3 weeks is hardly a long time, and who knows… maybe this is just the shot in the arm(s) you need to kick start your training again.

Leave your results, workouts, thoughts, poems, whatever you want below in the comments section!

Now go curl something heavy,

Nick Horton

PS. I am personally combining this with my official 21-Day Squat Challenge (which regularly packs upwards of 40 to 60+ pounds on peoples squats in less than a month).

I’ll be doing at least these 3 exercises daily:

• Squat Nemesis
• Dips – 30+ reps anyhow
• Curls – 30+ reps anyhow

Everything else is gravy, but knowing me, I’ll also snatch and do jerks, push press, Snatch/Clean domination pulls, etc.

How about you? What’s your plan?

Gender in the gym … it’s a hot-button topic for many of us.

So in the spirit of starting internet battles, I’m linking to a collection of 8 articles all about it (one of which is by me) over on Breaking Muscle (click here to read them).

My Views On Gender In The Gym

My personal feelings on the issue come from being a gym owner and coach, and that heavily colors my views.

For me, the question is how to make sure we have an environment that fosters bad-assery all around for whomever is willing to put in the work. Your gender, or sexual orientation, or anything else – that we COULD use as a delimiter – should be as irrelevant as humanly possible to whatever we’re doing.

I have NO interest in pandering to stereotypical shit just to get more women, or men, or lesbians, or whatever through the doors. Not because I don’t believe in marketing, but precisely because I think that shit doesn’t work as well.

That kind of thing is a way of treating my clients like statistics, like trends, rather than as an individual person who probably bucks convention in a surprising number of ways once you get to know them.

Hell… I am certainly like that! I have never fit in well in “dude” environments, even though I AM a straight male who loves lifting heavy shit. Aren’t I supposed to love wearing camouflage cargo shorts and Tapout shirts to the gym rather than pink socks and glitter? Aren’t I supposed to prefer listening to metal while I train rather than the Spice Girls Pandora station?

I’m an individual, damn it… and so are YOU.

Our Gym Is Paradise… To Us

Maybe I’m biased, but I like how Tamara and I run our place… Asheville Strength.

Our gym is at once extremely, and unabashedly “hardcore” – we yell, scream, slam weights, curse constantly, and are perpetually covered in chalk…

Example of some heavy lifting at our place:

Also Good For A Laugh

But we also go out of our way to be inviting to newbies and people who are just trying to have fun lifting – we have mini disco balls, zebra-print athletic tape, will put almost anything on the radio, are ALWAYS laughing and making jokes, bring in donuts as “workout fuel”, have totally oddball impromptu competitions (all in effort to kick Chelsea Kay’s ass… we usually fail).

If it wasn’t for the actual lifting going on, you might think we were just having a non-stop block party in the gym every day.

Want proof of our shenanigans? Here’s our encounter with aliens from outer space:

And here is a make-shift supplement review with 3 of the girls:

Kumbaya

Almost by accident we have a place that is very open to just about anyone so long as they are just cool people. We don’t have some overly “male” or “female” vibe… it’s just a fun vibe.

Yes, our gym is more than 50% of the lady variety… but then, so is the general population. So that hardly seems weird!

IMO, so long as you go out of your way to treat EVERY client as a real person who you get to know well and understand, then you don’t have to worry about “gender” or anything else that our society is all up in arms about every 5 seconds.

I love joking that I’m just one of the girls… but really, we’re all just people. (Don’t pretend like that didn’t make you want to shed a tear.)

NOTE: Eight years ago, when I was first starting my 1st Olympic weightlifting club (PDX Weightlifting), I got onto the phone with Dan John to get some help and advice. He said, “Do you want to build a serious competitive team or do you want a Kumbaya kind of club? Either one is fine, but it helps to know what you’re trying to do.”

Well Dan, I guess I did both

The above is a video from our new place.

But the vibe we had back at PDX was almost exactly the same. (NOTE: if you are ever in Portland, you need to check out Vulkan Weightlifting. It’s coached by Arron Steiner and Trevor Smith who were my lifters and assistant coaches “back in the day”, and is THE place to be in Portland.)

A few (a lot of?) questions:

•  What do you think?
• Am I too Libertarian about this?
• Is it better to take a harder look at the differences between women and men to better service them?
• ARE there any differences between the genders that matter that much in a gym situation?
• If so, is “gender” even enough of a delineation? (I’m hardly someone who fits into a “binary/traditionalist” view of gender… and I’m not alone in this.)
• Does my perspective only work when dealing with competitive athletes who all share a commonality that transcends gender?
• What about the general population who needs A LOT of help just getting into a gym and staying there in the first place?

Let me know what you think below!

PS. If you haven’t already, make sure you sign up for our FREE “How To Snatch” online coaching series: Snatch Domination.

Squats!

We all love them. But sometimes they just ain’t happening. Maybe it’s an injury, maybe it’s just boredom. Either way, you have options.

Below is a video of my partner, my co-coach, my lady, Tamara doing a back squat with 105 kg.

Now, that’s just cool all by itself, but what is really cool is that this was only 7k off her previous PR since before we began rehabbing her knee.

She has NOT been squatting regularly at all. Instead we’ve used LOTS of RDL’s and pulls, partial front squats off HIGH pins, hip thrusts, mellow bodybuilding work, pistols, and a ton of serious mobility work.

PLUS… these look even nicer than her squats used to look. AKA, lifetime PR’s are coming.

We are going to be doing a HUGE write up of her routine – coming back from a knee injury that was so bad she couldn’t even squat with her own weight without massive pain – to being able to not only hit a big squat today without pain… but also be within 93% of her best ever Olympic lifts (snatch, clean, and jerk)… ALL WITHOUT SQUATTING.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you HAVE to squat heavy or that you can’t possibly be a strength athlete without them: that’s objectively false. I LOVE squats and HIGHLY recommend them (obviously! I AM the 21 day squat challenge guy, duh!)… but, there are a lot of very serious world-level Olympic lifters out there (hint: China) who don’t squat all that often but do a ton of other work to make up for it.

Never get locked into a particular tool. Your goal is to build the building, not to get overly attached to your hammer.

KEEP THE GOAL THE GOAL (ala Dan John)

2013 American Open: She’s coming for you…

That’s my girl

PS. 

Have you signed up for our FREE “How To Snatch” course, Snatch Domination yet? 

Olympic weightlifting is an art form.

It is closer to the martial arts than it is to other strength sports. And once you finally let this fact sink in, your progress will soar.

In the spirit of that I’m starting a new series here called, “The Tao Of Snatch” which is my way of focusing more on the art of weightlifting (ala, Zen Mind, Big Snatch) rather than the science of weightlifting which I do a lot of (ala, my squat nemesis program). Don’t worry, I’ll keep doing the other stuff. But I thought this could be a fun series and allow us to dive deeper into more of the mental and Zen-like elements that play a big role in your progress once you get past that early-rank-beginner hyper-focus on basic technique phase (If you ARE still in that phase, go here and we can help you.)

While these quotes by Bruce Lee aren’t intentionally about Olympic weightlifting, they all apply to your training directly.  Take these seriously. Don’t simply read them and say, “Ya, Bruce Lee was awesome!”… then go right back to living a life that is the opposite of everything he just said.

Your goal is to always improve yourself. Be better today than you were yesterday. Discard those things from your past that are always dragging you down.

Become who you have always wanted to be.

(Hat Tip: Optimal Experience)

Here are Bruce Lee’s top 10 quotes for an Olympic Weightlifter: 

1. “Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”
2. “Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
3. “Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
4. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
5. “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
6. “When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.”
7. “Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.”
8. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”
9. “A powerful athlete is not a strong athlete, but one who can exert his strength quickly. Since power equals force times speed, if the athlete learns to make faster movements he increases his power, even though the contractile pulling strength of his muscles remains unchanged. Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly.”
10. “Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.”
11. “Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.”
12. “The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.”
13. “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”
14. “What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.”
15. “Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being “wholly” and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.”
16. “The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.”
17. “Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”
18. “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
19. “All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
20. “I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.”

My favorites are #3, #6, #16, #17, and of course #20… which are your favorites?  How do you see these applying to Weightlifting?

(Also, I totally dig Bruce in the pic above. Sunglasses are always important.)

EDIT: I’d originally called this post, “The Kendrick Farris Program: 12 Lessons For The Weightlifter”, but I ran into a problem. You see, Kendrick himself contacted me and said that while he loved to positive message, this actually is NOT his training routine!

There is an important lesson here. This routine has been on the internet floating around on all the forums and weightlifting blogs for years, always attributed to him. But that didn’t make it true.  So while I think the routine below is interesting (and MIGHT still be a Kyle Pierce program), it isn’t the program of our Olympian Kendrick Farris.

Thankfully, the post was never REALLY about the routine at all. It was about the 12 lessons for YOU to take seriously in your weightlifting (and life). 

OK, here’s the post…

Lord knows I LOVE the underlying principles of Bulgarian training.

I’m also a hardcore believer in my friend Chris Extine’s principle “you get good at what you do” (implying that if you want to get good at snatching… you should snatch a lot).

BUT… it’s VERY easy to get overly myopic and forget that there are a lot of ways to reach a goal. And sometimes, at different phases of your lifting, you may need to change things up a bit – it could be simply to heal up an injury, or prevent boredom, or to get jacked like Kendrick Farris…

Speaking of the great jacked one… Below is an example of a routine that is about as anti-Bulgarian as you can get. (Originally attributed as the program of Kendrick Farris, but it isn’t.)

It’s very instructive to take a hard look at programs that have produced good lifters that look NOTHING like the one you are on… it’s like a reality check to the xenophobic tendencies that ALL athletes are prone to.

Lessons:

1. Keep the goal the goal (ala, Dan John)
2. Don’t get overly caught up in exercise selection, sets, reps, and all that nitty-gritty bullshit…
3. Work your ass off.
4. Slowly increase your ability to handle higher and higher workloads.
5. More volume… more volume… more volume…
6. Numbers in the gym are meaningless, it’s what happens in a contest that matters.
7. Seriously, for the love of Bojangles, stop caring so much about your daily maxes, they are there as a GAUGE not a GOAL!
8. Have fun with them, then move on to the REAL work.
9. Eat donuts.
10. Drink coffee.
11. Listen to Maxwell.
12. And never stop telling your girl that she’s beautiful (or your man!)

OK, some of those I just threw in there for fun

Here’s the Training Routine that has been floating around the net for a long time (if you know the TRUE story of this program, please let me know. It’s like a great mystery novel!):

10’s: 3-4 weeks

Monday:

Push press up to 10 RM. drop set at -5% and 1 at -10%

Squat up to 10 RM 1 set -5% and -10%

Bench press up to 10RM 1 set -5% and -10%

Press/military press 10RM -5% and -10%

ABS

Tuesday:

Snatch from hip/thigh up to 5RM then -5% and -10%

Snatch deadlift 10RM -5% and -10%

RDL 10RM -5% and -10%

SHRUG 10RM -5% and -10%

Bent rows 10RM -5% and -10%

Pull ups bodyweight 3-5×10

ABS

Wednesday:

Push Press 3-5×10 within 10% of 10RM on Monday then drop set -5 and -10%

Squat 3-5×10 within 10% of 10RM then drop set -5% and -10%

Bench press 3-5×10 within 10% of 10 RM drop set -5% and -10%

Press/military press 3-5×10 within 10% of 10RM then -5% and -10%

abs

Thursday:

Clean from hip/thigh up to 5RM then drop set at -5% and -10%

Clean deadlift up to 10RM drop set -5% and -10%

RDL 3×10 within 10% of Tuesday drop set -5% and -10%

SHRUG 3×10 within 10% of 10RM -5% and -10%

Pull ups 3-5×10 bdy weight

abs

Saturday:

Snatch and clean and jerk hit between 8-12 reps between 80-90% of your best, and go heavier if you feel good enough.

Front squat 2RM

5’s 3-4weeks:

 

Monday:

Powerjerk 5RM -5% -10%

Squat 5RM -5% and -10%

Pushpress 5RM -5% and -10%

Bench press 5RM -5% and -10%

abs

Tuesday:

Snatch up to 3RM from the knee and -5% and -10%

Snatch deadlift up to 5RM -5% and -10%

Rdl 5RM -5% -10%

Shrug 5RM -5% -10%

Bent row 5RM -5% -10%

Muscle snatch 5RM -5% -10%

Pull ups weight As Heavy as Possible 3-5×5

Abs

Wednesday:

Powerjerk 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% and -10%

Squat 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% and -10%

Push Press 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% -10%

` Bench press 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% and -10%

Press/Military press within 10% of 5RM -5% and -10%

ABS

Thursday:

Clean up to 3RM from the knee then drop set -5% -10%

Clean deadlift 5RM then drop -5% and -10%

RDL 3-5×5 within 10% 5RM then -5% and -10%

Muscle snatch 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% -10%

Shrug 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% -10%

Bent Row 3-5×5 within 10% of 5RM -5% -10%

ABS

Saturday:

Snatch and clean and jerk AHAP then front squat up to 2RM

3 weeks of 3’s:

 

Monday:

Split jerk up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Squat up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Push Press up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Bench Press up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Press up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Abs

Tuesday:

Clean up to 3RM from floor then -5% and -10%

Clean Pull 3RM -5% -10%

Clean deadlift 3RM -5% -10%

RDL 3RM -5% -10%

Bent row 3RM -5% -10%

Pull ups

ABS

Wednesday:

Split Jerk 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM -5% -10%

Squat 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM -5% -10%

Push press 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM -5% -10%

Bench press 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM -5% -10%

Press 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM -5% -10%

ABS

Thursday:

Snatch from floor up to 3RM -5% -10%

Snatch Pull up to 3RM -5% -10%

Snatch deadlift up to 3RM -5% -10%

RDL 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM

Bent row 3-5×3 within 10% of 3RM

ABS

Saturday

Snatch and clean and jerk AHAP then front squat up to 2RM

Peaking Phase 1-2 weeks:

Monday:

(power) clean and (power) jerk up to 1RM -5% 2-10%

Squat up to 2RM

Power jerk or split jerk up to 2RM

Push press up to 2RM

Bench press up to 2RM

ABS

Tuesday:

Snatch up to 1RM

Clean pull up to 3RM

Clean pull from power position up to 3RM

Back extensions

Pull Ups

Abs

Wednesday:

Clean and jerk or power clean and jerk up to 1RM -5% and 2-10%

Front squat up to 2RM -5% -10%

Power jerk up to 2RM -5% and -10%

Push press 3×2 within 10% of 2RM

ABS

Thursday:

Snatch or power snatch up to 1RM -5% and -10%

Snatch pull up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Snatch pull from powerposition up to 3RM -5% and -10%

Back extensions

Pull ups

Abs

Saturday:

Snatch and clean and jerk AHAP Front squat up to 1RM

Taper Week:

 

Monday

Snatch and clean and jerk up to 90%

Front squat up to 2RM

Tuesday:

Snatch and clean pull up to 1RM

Back extensions

Abs

Wednesday

Snatch and clean and jerk up to 80%

Thursday

snatch and clean and jerk up to 70%

Competition on Saturday

This is pretty much our exact workout but we always change and modify them according to an athlete’s weakness but this is basically it.

NOTE: Those “-5% -10%” numbers above mean that you drop 5% off the bar and do the same # of reps you just did for you RM, then you drop 10% off the bar and do that same thing (resting in between of course! <— that’s for you, my CrossFit friends, rest is good, lol)

I think there is a lot of gold here if you’re willing to work hard. I don’t train my own lifters like this in the details, but there are a lot of DEEP similarities in PRINCIPLE between this and my own Squat Nemesis program for instance.

Keep cool, do work, smile, you’re on camera.

What do YOU think?

Tamara is just a bit over her weight class limit, and needs to slim down while still gaining strength.

She’s going to do exactly that. But first… Dairy Queen!

The next morning, it’s all about her new diet plan to get shredded, while she cooks up a meaty breakfast:

What is YOUR diet strategy?