yes, like form - the often ignored aspect - which ensures consistantly applied effort to the right muscle groups and avoidance of injury. The lack of adherence to form is why the deadlift, otherwise the single best basic exercise, is not generally advisable. I am roughly familiar with SuperSlow, it has been a while but I read - Ken Hutchins I believe - and other SuperSlow gurus. A good friend is an intense physical trainer and he attained the SuperSlow certification - which I hear is comparable to the medical PhD exams in difficult. Three of us used to hang around DC and myself and the other non-kickboxer used to try to pick fights with people because we knew Al would mash - but h always diffused things so we gave up after awhile. For the last few months I was training I used a 4 up / 10 down cadence, which is also like SuperSlow. People would occasionally tell me something while I was in the Leg Press. They were always baffled as to why I didn't remember what they said, but who the fuck is listening to anything at the point of failure with 400+ lbs. perched directly above and a voice screaming in your head - FUCKIN STOP THIS SHIT IT HURTS YOU STUPID FUCK. Ahh, the good times.
I HEAR YA! I hate when i'm in middle of a set and some idiot starts talkin to me.... I just go GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! i jus growl. When i'm doing a set im in another world. i try to take it to the limit. i and a friend used to say.. "if you lived thru the set.. you didn;t go intense enuf" many times i collapse on the floor after a particularly intense set .. twitching like a dying frog. NO PAIN NO GAIN! :-/
dude, wait til u read what just happened to me!! i just got back from running...i ran 4 miles. I SAW 2 HOT CHICKS GOING FOR A WALK HOLDING HANDS! MAN, I NEED TO FIND OUT IF THESE GIRLS LIVE AROUND HERE!!! i ran around a block.....the first time i passed them, they were on the other side of the street. i couldn't get a good look, but i could tell they were holding hands. i passed them again (because we were going opposite directions), this time i made sure i was on the same side of the road. ALL I GOTTA SAY IS.....THEY DID NOT LOOK FUCKIN BAD!!!!! I WAS IMPRESSED!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHIT!!!!!!!!! I FIND OUT WHO THEY ARE!!!!!!!! HOPE THEY'RE BISEXUAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'M GONNA RUN AROUND THAT BLOCK A FEW TIMES A DAY NOW...... BTW, THEY WERE CHECKIN' ME OUT, TOO... WHEN I PASSED THEM WE WERE TOTALLY LOOKING AT EACHOTHER...EYE TO EYE..... OH MAN..........THIS COULD BE GOOD...
Some folks judge themselves by 'burn,' whatever that is, but I have always ensured a good workout by pushing myself into a seizure. To me, that's failure. When you entire body's neuro-muscular system fails and you go into complete spasm. I trained a few folks too. Didn't get to keep my clients very long, they took issue with this. I said fine, if you don't want to get jacked quit before seizure I don't want to work with pussies like you anyway. The ones that passed this test were worthwhile clients, of course, I didn't get to train them very often either because they were in and out of the hospital all the time. But hey, atleast we got some good anesthesia. I've been on a plateau lately, I think I'm going to step things up to anuerism intensity, that should do the trick. RLB
Strength does not depend on cross-sectional area. Pretty simple. Does size help? Of course. Is it essential? Should it be in the main focus? Absolutely not. I guess if you've been looking at pictures from MuscleMag or Flex for too long it's easy to think that big muscles = strength. But body building is not synonymous with strength training. Look at the real strong guys, weight lifters. 150 lb guys heaving around 400 lb weights. These guys would annilihate a body builder on the bench press or squat, yet do they have bulging muscles? Hell no. I don't know how anyone, especially someone that claims to be such a rationalist, can ignore the in your face evidence that strength gains are not dependant on ever bigger muscles. Now I'm not a pure strength trainer, not by a long shot (excuse the pun); I certainly do like the sex appeal of big, defined muscles. Now, whether we're training Mentzer style HiT or we're doing more sets, we're doing a certain amount of reps per set -- usually around 10ish, although we may vary it -- to get the muscle building effect. To increase this intensity, we can attempt to do more reps with the same weight or increase the weight and do the same reps. I think most of us would agree that increasing the weight would be the way to go. (Stuart McRobert's "Brawn" does a good job of explaining this.) Well, after a while it gets hard to keep adding weight. Who of us hasn't experienced that? That's why I recommend easing off and going on a strength building cycle. And to do that, don't you think it makes sense to look at they way strength training athletes exercise? I do. And, from everything I've read and seen and talked about, I can tell you that they're certainly not "going for burn" or training to failure on each set (hardly ever, in fact). Many of these guys train two or three times a day, day after day. Hard to do that if you're going to failure. And it seems to work; they sure are a lot stronger than you or I (unless you happen to be able to do 800lb deads). I don't mean to say that they don't exert themselves, they certainly do. But such exertion isn't required at every work out, and is, according to what I've been able to gather, counterproductive. They periodize their training. A good book to check out regarding periodization is Tudor Bompa's stuff. He has a book with "Strength Training" in the title, if I recall correctly, which is a bit misleading, because it doesn't actually talk about strenght training, as I've described it, but it is a good overview of the concept of periodization. Imagine, after a few months of training like this, you go back to your high intensity routines, how much more weight you'll be able to lift. Think that might be good for your muscle size? You betcha. (And depending on how long you've been going all out intensity, your body will probably respond well to the (relative) rest, ie grow.) ps - it's a real fun way to work out, too. I love lifting weights. I mean I really enjoy it. Training for strength is great, because I can just go in my weight room, pick up a bar and do a few snatches or cleans, just for fun, and I know I'm not really disturbing my body's recuperation because I didn't annilihate the muscle on the last work out.
With some of your points I adamantly agree and yet with others I would disagree. Firstly, Brawn is an excellent read. Tudor Bompa, though citing some good studies, I think, poorly translates the data he has gathered. The essential problem is in definitions. The distinction which is often confused is between the ability for a muscle to exert force and strength. Strength, as you and other have used it is a combination of skill and the ability for a muscle or group of muscles to exert force. This is part of the reason why a body builder cannot perform nearly as well as an olympic weight lifter. While a body builder generally has larger muscle mass, he can never compete with an olympic clean & jerk(er) because of the skill involved in that motion. Clean & jerk, snatch and other olympic motions are done at high speed and with specific technique. This makes these motions relatively more dangerous. Another major reason body builders cannot exert their muscle mass to specific motions such as a clean & jerk or swinging a baseball bat or many other athletic movements is the lack of flexibility. Body builders are often, though not always, generally less flexible than most athletes. This is for two reasons: (1) The actual muscle they have is so big it impedes motion, and (2) they pay little to no attention to improving their flexibility. In fact, (2), the length of the muscle may actually be an impedement to their primary goal because by lengthening the muscle they may make it more difficult to create the appearance of large muscle. There would by necessity be more muscle to build to achieve a 36" diameter over a 6" length than over a 12" length. I would suggest also, looking into the current writings on Time Under Tension (TUT). I have not done so for a while and I am sure the concept has advanced since I have last checked, but a brief description is this: Based on the make-up of a muscle as per its fibers (generally broken down into fast and slow twitch, or fast twitch and slow twitch I & II) it can exert maximal force over a given period of time. So, if for example one's biceps are primarily fast twitch they would perform under high stress for roughly 60 sec. - at which point a significant drop-off in performance would occur. On the other hand, one's pecs may be primarily slow twitch in which case an exercise like butterfly's would be performed for roughly 120 sec. before a similar drop-off in musculature output would occur. One key to HIT training is to, via experimentation, determine each major muscle group's optimal TUT. One then trains their muscle for this duration each workout and, given enough rest, should be able to consistently increase the resistance they use. You'll notice in my previous post that bench press was an area where I showed very little improvement. This was in large part because my pecs and triceps are composed of a significantly different ratio of fast to slow twitch fibers. When I experimented by isolating each muscle group by performing butterfly's and dips I was able to progress quite rapidly. This occurred near the end of my training though so my data was limited. Were I not a pitcher, I probably would have been more concerned with this motioned and picked up on this fact earlier. However, bench press never concerned me too much and I thus languished in poor performance for quite some time. to the max, RLB p.s. Mentzer is an ass. Heavy Duty was my first HIT read and an inspiration but he was a hypocrite and a fucking loser (except for that championship thing) - his brother too. It's no wonder he died of a heart-attack.
Somewhat surprised no one has mentioned this yet, given all the talk about men's bodies and how certain people like to admire themselves, and of course the sadomasochistic undertones of pumping for pleasure and pain, and exceeding the limits of normalcy to the point of passing out...... . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Long, Rock... You ever get a knife like feeling in your elbow while lifting? I've been going thru it for a few weeks now and it's really holding me back.....im working with 175-220 bench now because I can;t lift anymore.. it just gives out...I gave it a week off but it has;t helped??? I don;t think i tore anything because it only hurts with Bench press??