I got the Muscle-up!

Mr Brady said:

Really great!!!

I'm 46 now hoping to get it by 47.

Yes. Its a whole different game after 40. I was real surprised I got it. I also am a pretty avid cyclist and had to get off the bike for a few weeks following a protracted vascectomy recovery so I had the time to focus on strength as opposed to splitting the time between riding and strength training. I always start the workout with Planche and Level work so going straight to the muscle up seemed to make the difference.

I think for us over 40, its very easy to do too much, plus wife, kids, work, stress, etc. I'm starting to see that less might be more.

Oh it is! I only do the hard stuff once every couple of days. I think I squat once every 10 days or so, and same for bench and deadlift. I am making consistent and surprisingly fast gains! The rest of the time I work easier stuff like weighted SLS and various gymnastics pulling work, from pull ups to the tick tock variants. FL circles, all of it. I just pick a few exercises depending on how hard I have been working, so if I'm tired I just do really easy stuff and if I'm feeling all right I do medium stuff, and every so often, usually not more than once a week, I do the really hard stuff. It works!

slizzardman said:

Oh it is! I only do the hard stuff once every couple of days. I think I squat once every 10 days or so, and same for bench and deadlift. I am making consistent and surprisingly fast gains! The rest of the time I work easier stuff like weighted SLS and various gymnastics pulling work, from pull ups to the tick tock variants. FL circles, all of it. I just pick a few exercises depending on how hard I have been working, so if I'm tired I just do really easy stuff and if I'm feeling all right I do medium stuff, and every so often, usually not more than once a week, I do the really hard stuff. It works!

Yep, everyone just wants to grind it out and be a tough guy but that doesn't work. It works in very beginning because people are so far from their genetic potential, but after a while you keep doing that and you can kiss your ass goodbye!

The key to being strong, in the long run, is being lazy (but still get your reps in) most of the time and working really hard a little bit of the time!

P.S. I don't literally mean you should be lazy. I'm being factitious.

trianglechoke7 said:

slizzardman said:

Oh it is! I only do the hard stuff once every couple of days. I think I squat once every 10 days or so, and same for bench and deadlift. I am making consistent and surprisingly fast gains! The rest of the time I work easier stuff like weighted SLS and various gymnastics pulling work, from pull ups to the tick tock variants. FL circles, all of it. I just pick a few exercises depending on how hard I have been working, so if I'm tired I just do really easy stuff and if I'm feeling all right I do medium stuff, and every so often, usually not more than once a week, I do the really hard stuff. It works!

Yep, everyone just wants to grind it out and be a tough guy but that doesn't work. It works in very beginning because people are so far from their genetic potential, but after a while you keep doing that and you can kiss your ass goodbye!

The key to being strong, in the long run, is being lazy (but still get your reps in) most of the time and working really hard a little bit of the time!

P.S. I don't literally mean you should be lazy. I'm being factitious.

I have learned this recently as well. The harder I worked the less I was achieving, I even went backwards a little due to being overworked. Now I am doing 3 days a week, M-W-F. Monday is a heavy day, Wed is light and Fri is medium. I run on Tuesday, Thursday and do a little active recovery. My active recovery is like Slizzardman said "I just do really easy stuff" and stretch, and maybe some light handstand work. One of my only strength goals for the next month or so is to solidify my straight arm press handstand.

trianglechoke7 said:

slizzardman said:

Oh it is! I only do the hard stuff once every couple of days. I think I squat once every 10 days or so, and same for bench and deadlift. I am making consistent and surprisingly fast gains! The rest of the time I work easier stuff like weighted SLS and various gymnastics pulling work, from pull ups to the tick tock variants. FL circles, all of it. I just pick a few exercises depending on how hard I have been working, so if I'm tired I just do really easy stuff and if I'm feeling all right I do medium stuff, and every so often, usually not more than once a week, I do the really hard stuff. It works!

Yep, everyone just wants to grind it out and be a tough guy but that doesn't work. It works in very beginning because people are so far from their genetic potential, but after a while you keep doing that and you can kiss your ass goodbye!

The key to being strong, in the long run, is being lazy (but still get your reps in) most of the time and working really hard a little bit of the time!

P.S. I don't literally mean you should be lazy. I'm being factitious.

In many ways, if you watch how healthy kids exercise, or how I remember playing as a kid, its like that. You play tag, climb monkey bars, trees, throw balls, ride bikes, build forts; and never consider it as exercise. You'd see a buddy who could walk on his hands and play around for a few weeks until you got it. Watch skate boarders, snow boarders and bmx guys "practice." They just copy each other and look like they spend most time just hanging around. I often wonder whether I would be better off just randomly doing stuff over the course of each day, but work and other stuff makes anything other than a structured workout impossible. And over 40, you just don't recover

Kopride,

There's a lot to be said for randomness in work-outs, but if you're looking to make specific gains and achieve specific goals, you need structure. Once you establish structure, you can find the areas in your routine and workouts where there's a lot more flex, and where you can incorporate instinctive training.

The other aspect to the work capacity of skateboarders (I was one for more than 15 years), snowboarders, surfers, or any other lifestyle-oriented activity (b-boys, capoeristas, climbers, boulderers) is that they are so immersed in the culture that, just by virtue of their participation, they end up putting in many more hours "greasing the groove." Sub-maximal efforts, over and over, 10 hours a day or more, for years.

It's the kind of training and practice that's impossible to replicate with weights or artificially. You can listen to all the Japanese language lessons you want, but nothing beats moving to Japan and speaking it every day.

Specific to the GB WODs, you can follow the pattern of WODs that Coach Sommer posts --- follow the WODs for one cycle, which would be 8 WODs or 2 weeks, then scale back for 4 WODs or one week, i.e. halve sets or reps but maintain intensity.

best,

jason

You would definitely be better off INTENTIONALLY doing specific things during the day, but not random You might end up mopping the ceiling, and how is that going to help?!

It doesn't take that many different exercises to develop incredible athletic ability. Pull ups, push ups, dips, HLL, squats, bridging, and perhaps some deadlifting is all it takes. Obviously, many of the things we do here fall into one of those categories quite neatly, while some share aspects, like the back lever and manna. But it really is that simple. You just keep going through harder and harder progressions until you are a bona fide beast!

jasonmstein said:

Kopride,

The other aspect to the work capacity of skateboarders (I was one for more than 15 years), snowboarders, surfers, or any other lifestyle-oriented activity (b-boys, capoeristas, climbers, boulderers) is that they are so immersed in the culture that, just by virtue of their participation, they end up putting in many more hours "greasing the groove." Sub-maximal efforts, over and over, 10 hours a day or more, for years.

It's the kind of training and practice that's impossible to replicate with weights or artificially. You can listen to all the Japanese language lessons you want, but nothing beats moving to Japan and speaking it every day.

Specific to the GB WODs, you can follow the pattern of WODs that Coach Sommer posts --- follow the WODs for one cycle, which would be 8 WODs or 2 weeks, then scale back for 4 WODs or one week, i.e. halve sets or reps but maintain intensity.

best,

jason

Agreed. I made a gross oversimplification. I coached wrestling for many years, and my response to how do you become a better wrestler was usually "wrestle more." But even that is too simplistic. If you aren't working to improve specific skills you can simply keep doing things wrong or incorrectly and will never improve. Basic drills and breaking down more complicated moves and combinations were the bread and butter to improvement. There are also progressions. You teach the double leg takedown before you teach a single, and then the single leads to more complicated takedowns.

My sister is a cross fitter and it works for her, but I do find the whole randomness of that program a bit puzzling. And there also seems to be a great potential for certain injuries.

The progressions that Coach Sommers laid out in his book are what allowed me to get a muscle up in the first place. Simply doing random strength exercises isn't going to have you develop a specific skill. Its the same, breaking down the exercise to its basic elements and creating progressions to improve.

But the manner in which the skateboarders and bmx'ers "train" did always intrigue me. Very high energy technical skills and strength demonstrated with what looked to be barely breaking a sweat. Many times with the assistance or in spite of herbal substances. Real GTG training. And yes, after childhood, very few of us can devote 10 hours a day immersing ourselves in a culture so its not practical. It is probably pretty close to how primitive man functioned. And very few people take up skateboarding at 45 and start to develop mad skills.

It would be interesting to do a controlled study of groups doing GTG v. structured more intense workouts. For me, structured workouts are the only option, so the temptation is to continually ramp every workout very close to maximum. In cycling, we talk about lots of Sweet spot training or learning to ride at the 80-90% of your one hour maximum power FTP (usually measured by a power meter), and some higher intensity intervals thrown in with prudence. There is a sweet spot in moving through these gymnastic progressions. Too hard and you're overtrained; too little and you don't improve. But once you start cross training, it becomes more complicated. Cycling and gymnastics--both-- at a high intensity starts to just wear you down on both activities.

Specificity, training in the sweet spot, logical progression, and recovery are dificult things to balance for one activity. Then throw in two or more activities, work, kids, and other stresses, and its tough to find that balance. Historically, my problem is that I do cycling WODs that make sense for a cyclist, and strength WODs that make sense for a strength athlete. But its not as easy to just start doing both on alternate days.

The quantum leap I made in strength from having to lay off the cycling for a few weeks was compelling. And the same is true in cycling season when I basically reduce strength training to a pure 1 or 2 times a week maintenance program. Its also hard to factor in life and work stress with the program. At one part of the curve, it clearly relieves and helps with stress, but there is a point at which stuff breaks down in multiple areas. As the work week becomes closer to 60 hours, there is a drop off in your body's capacity to handle more intense exercise. As other strenuous activities are added on the pile, potential goes down.

The nice thing about this gb training is that the strength elements are often self-limiting. I can usually tell from my introductory static holds what kind of workout its going to be.

And Slizzard, if mopping ceiling doesn't make gains, then tell me how Daniel-san was able to become a black belt in Karate from painting fence and wax on wax off

Lead from the paint seeped into his fists and he became a heavy hitter!

kopride said:

My sister is a cross fitter and it works for her, but I do find the whole randomness of that program a bit puzzling. And there also seems to be a great potential for certain injuries...

But the manner in which the skateboarders and bmx'ers "train" did always intrigue me. Very high energy technical skills and strength demonstrated with what looked to be barely breaking a sweat. Many times with the assistance or in spite of herbal substances. Real GTG training.

It would be interesting to do a controlled study of groups doing GTG v. structured more intense workouts. For me, structured workouts are the only option, so the temptation is to continually ramp every workout very close to maximum.

Kopride,

As far as Crossfit goes, it seems to me that it works best as a great overall conditioning program, and most untrained people will see nice strength gains with it, too.

Though like most things in life, it's helpful to get into a Crossfit gym with experienced trainers who can help ensure one doesn't overdo it --- adding a stopwatch and competitive group setting to high-rep workouts can be a recipe for extreme overuse injuries. There's also great novelty in randomized workouts.

I think the thing about the lifestyle activities (many of them aren't really "sports" like stick and ball activities) is that they're both GTG and "structured" intense workouts, which is why they work so well.

Alternately, if you can't participate in a lifestyle activity, you can, as I believe Ido Portal, a frequent poster at this forum, has said, develop single-minded monomaniacal obsession to do a one-arm pull-up, or one-arm handstand, or iron cross, or whatever. It definitely helps.

Having ridden a road bike with several European professionals as well as former US Pro winners and the occasional Kona Iron Man winner --- and by "ridden" I mean often "hung off the back while foaming at the mouth and eating bar tape" --- the one common trait that they all shared was intense discipline.

We'd go for a ride and my buddy would say, "Today is piano ride, heart-rate 60%, 3 hours." And no matter what other cyclists we met up with, or caught us, or passed us up, my buddy's cadence would stay exactly the same.

One of the guys I train with has loads of strength and conditioning experience, was one of the first Crossfitters. His idea on strength days is that he should walk out of the gym feeling like he could do more. It's tough to develop that awareness and that discipline.

As I mentioned before, a structured 2-weeks on/1-week at 50% reduced volume approach might help with the GB WODs. I'd also recommend following the posted WODs, eating a cubic ton of protein, and sleeping 10-12 hours a night, but then, life tends to intervene.

There's also the idea of doing the bare minimum to increase strength and nothing else. Less is more.

best,

jason

jasonmstein said:

kopride said:

Having ridden a road bike with several European professionals as well as former US Pro winners and the occasional Kona Iron Man winner --- and by "ridden" I mean often "hung off the back while foaming at the mouth and eating bar tape" --- the one common trait that they all shared was intense discipline.

We'd go for a ride and my buddy would say, "Today is piano ride, heart-rate 60%, 3 hours." And no matter what other cyclists we met up with, or caught us, or passed us up, my buddy's cadence would stay exactly the same.

One of the guys I train with has loads of strength and conditioning experience, was one of the first Crossfitters. His idea on strength days is that he should walk out of the gym feeling like he could do more. It's tough to develop that awareness and that discipline.

As I mentioned before, a structured 2-weeks on/1-week at 50% reduced volume approach might help with the GB WODs. I'd also recommend following the posted WODs, eating a cubic ton of protein, and sleeping 10-12 hours a night, but then, life tends to intervene.

There's also the idea of doing the bare minimum to increase strength and nothing else. Less is more.

best,

jason

jason,

Thanks for your insight and during this layoff from cycling, the WODs might be just the ticket.

As for my strange journey. You are correct that elite distance athletes are pretty disciplined. At some point it does become a function of work put in, and talent really only allows you to work harder and recover faster. (For a sprinter, choosing your parents well seems very important). But, in contrast to strength training, endurance type training does allow you to escape into that zone, where you can diesel along at a fairly intense pace. Its a different kind of training altogether, and produces very different benefits. My background is strictly local club based racing and training with some of the local pros, but nothing really notable other than my own mind.

Many of the elite cyclists are abandoning heart based training in favor of power based training, so now your friend would be more likely to express the workout in terms of average watts, than heart rate. (The tri guys are a bit slower adopting because the heart rate is more useful to them to compare the various events, but even they are moving over to power based training) Most of the elite cyclists can compute their FTP (average watts over a one hour time trial) within a few watts with pretty good accuracy. Watts, unlike speed, are watts regardless of wind or gradient. HR relates to what your body is doing; watts relate to what kind of power you are generating, and a lot of the early formulas purporting to draw relationships between HR, aerobic capacity have not been proven valid, aside from a very general basis over a broad population, and is not as useful in planning workouts. From average watts over an hour, cyclists can compute VO max, Lactate Threshold and other markers that show when they are truly exceeding that maximal aerobic pace and starting to get into more anaerobic zones. They call it "match burning" when you exceed FTP and start to go anaerobic, but they can cruise in that sub range with brutal efficiency. If a Pro's FTP is effectively 340W; and yours is only 320W, assuming no drafting, at some point the weaker rider is going to drop off, as he is pushing 105% and is going to burn matches while the other guy is cruising. Savvy weaker racers can force the other rider to burn more matches, or they can stay tucked in drafting, which reduces energy expenditure by almost 30%, or stay more aero, but Watts are watts and will move a bike faster all things being equal. (gravity comes into play on hills where the equation is more watts/kg of body weight). And most recreational cyclists FTP is closer to 200, than 300 or above, which starts to get you into the pro and elite ranks. Sprinters can generate more than a Kilowatt for a few seconds or so. And surprisingly, you can put a weightlifter on a bike and they can generate some crazy numbers for a brief moment as well, its just unsustainable for them for anything other than a brief moment.

But your buddy is operating in a very narrow watt range for that kind of workout so cadence and speed are

Ironically, there seems to be only marginal benefits from this type of distance type training to strength training. When I would start coaching wrestling every season, it always surprised me how quickly I gassed on the mat despite being much more aerobically fit from cycling than some of the wrestlers who would have struggled running 5 miles. I mean, cyclists are super fit, but few of them are functionally strong, and moving a person of comprable body weight around a mat requires real functional strength. Guys like Armstrong started seeing some of the grand tours as the endurance contests they are, and improved core strength, but even then, very few of them could crank out 20 pull ups despite very low body weight. Most of the time, when I start to see my cycling FTP go up, my strength level (max pull ups, max lifts etc) goes down, and vice versa. Trying to get simultaneous gains has been very elusive.

So, this has been my weird quest. Trying to work at a relatively high capacity in two seemingly inconsistent disciplines, cycling and strength training.

Kopride,

There weren't many guys in SoCal who didn't ride with PowerTaps, so I'm very familiar with them.

Pro road cycling is a highly specific endeavor in which men strive to be functionally anorexic, and a pro cyclist's ability to perform 20 pull-ups would indicate his training had somewhere gone seriously awry because he'd be carrying too much muscle on his upper body.

There are, however, a lot of use for the traditional lifts for cyclists, especially the back squat, front squat, and deadlift, and were I to take up road cycling again, those would be the lifts I would hit pretty hard.

Many cyclists I rode with only rode their bikes --- they didn't spend any time with a barbell, which can pay enormous and entirely transferable strength dividends.

I've also read of many benefits of sport-specific minimum surplus of LSD work (maybe just conditioning is a better term for non-endurance sports) for strength athletes --- have you seen for example Jim Wendler's 5-3-1 program?

Increasing heart chamber size seems to help athletes adapt, helps you get stronger by improving recovery, and increases work capacity.

Cycling though, you're talking rides and races of up to 7 hours, which requires a big engine.

For wrestling and aerobic capacity, have you seen Joel Jamieson's MMA Conditioning book? He recommends a period of aerobic workouts, too, as a means of building that base, and most fighters and wrestlers put in their road work in order to do just that.

You are tackling two different systems, though: cycling is basically hip-girdle and posterior chain, and the gymnastics strength on this site is mainly shoulder girdle and upper-body strength. If you're eating right (i.e. enough), you're going to gain upper-body weight because you'll put on muscle... kiss the climbing goodbye!

best,

jason

There has been some interesting research regarding cycling, where there a bunch of pro cyclers that all did what I guess is middle distance? 150Km, I believe the distance was. So, one group did the traditional long endurance training and the other group did about 30 minutes worth of 3 minute sprints. I think that includes rest time, but I am not sure. Regardless, the two groups made nearly identical improvement, with the sprint group being maybe 1% ahead of the regular group. This was a university study, I remember reading about it a few years ago. I don't know what's been done since then, but the high intensity interval training, adapted to specific energy systems, seems to be at least as effective and far less time consuming than the traditional training methods. Just some food for thought, consideration, and perhaps discussion.

Hey Slizzard,

This topic seems to come up every couple attention-span cycles, i.e. that HIIT can produce the same results as traditional LSD work.

You may be interested to read this post by Mark Twight on the very same subject; not sure if you're familiar with him, but he was a professional alpinist (i.e. endurance athlete). He practiced HIIT (i.e. Crossfit) for several years in the early part of the last decade.

Makes for good reading.

best,

jason

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH

http://www.gymjones.com/knowledge.php?id=44

Some interesting quotes for you:

“Back in the early and mid 60s the German’s training approach [placed] a greater emphasis on high intensity intervals. What they found was that, to a great extent they did reach high performance levels with this training program. But, they were not seeing progressive improvement from year to year among their elite athletes. Every year they came up to the same level, fell back down in the off-season, and repeated the process the next season. Then they changed the composition of the training to higher volume, lower intensity (fewer killer intervals at max speed) and the long term progress began to occur.†--- Stephen Seiler

“During the 1950s and 1960s, the top runners’ training heavily emphasized intervals. But the interval-trained champions were soundly trounced when Arthur Lydiard’s runners came on the scene. Peter Snell, Ron Clarke, and Murray Halberg did just 6-8 weeks of speedwork, after laying in a 12-week base of pure aerobic endurance running. Runners who’ve done tremendous volumes of speedwork — like Emil Zatopek and Bill “Mad Dog†Scobey — couldn’t match the times of the endurance-trained Lydiard athletes.†--- George Beinhorn

That's really cool! I personally think that the HIIT work is definitely best used to recover peak performance after a layoff, but after that at the very least I think you have to cycle between them, if you'll forgive the pun!

I am learning that the lower intensity methods of building strength are working better for me as well, interestingly. At least for calisthenics. For weights the opposite seems to be true, though I lift so infrequently that in a way the weights are my progress marker for the strength gains from calisthenics!

jasonmstein said:

Kopride,

There weren't many guys in SoCal who didn't ride with PowerTaps, so I'm very familiar with them.

Pro road cycling is a highly specific endeavor in which men strive to be functionally anorexic, and a pro cyclist's ability to perform 20 pull-ups would indicate his training had somewhere gone seriously awry because he'd be carrying too much muscle on his upper body.

For wrestling and aerobic capacity, have you seen Joel Jamieson's MMA Conditioning book? He recommends a period of aerobic workouts, too, as a means of building that base, and most fighters and wrestlers put in their road work in order to do just that.

You are tackling two different systems, though: cycling is basically hip-girdle and posterior chain, and the gymnastics strength on this site is mainly shoulder girdle and upper-body strength. If you're eating right (i.e. enough), you're going to gain upper-body weight because you'll put on muscle... kiss the climbing goodbye!

best,

jason

Jason,

I've been riding with a Powetap for about 3 years and it has totally changed the way I train. For cycling, I'm a big fan of Hunter Allen and Andy Coggan who did a lot of the research into the best way to maximize cycling performance with a power meter. Those guys are not big fans of strength training, but Lance's Coach, Carmichael, advocates a lot of the core type strength training that you mentioned. Since I already do some cross trainng, I'm less inclined to really do any of his off-bike stuff and tend to do SLS-pistols; squat jumps, kettlbell swings, etc for leg and back work.

And yes, most wrestling and grappling coaches recommend some road work, but we stopped most of it on the youth level just out of time constraints. Time on the mat is precious enough so running laps indoors just wasn't efficient. And running was always a part of weight control.

It is two different systems, but cycling is my golf. I spend time with my buddies and its an important part of my life. And I am a competitive SOB so I don't want to get dropped even though I do carry more mass up the hills. This bodyweight/ strength training is a big part of my past since I can't do much wrestling anymore at 44--Randy Natural notwithstanding.