NaterMania

Been quiet here for a while...?

Yea, it has. *glares*

I have indeed been out of touch! The seminars were great, I HIGHLY recommend that everyone goes to them when possible! First-hand instruction is simply incredible.

I have just started working out again, the last time was may 31 at the seminar!

I also highly recommend following the WODs, when done properly they are just about all you will need or can handle. We all god toasted on just two rounds of the dynamic press WOD!

I have recently discovered the amazing world of extended duration isometrics, specifically in the extreme end ROM. There are multiple benefits to these, ALL off which benefit this community directly! You work up, over a long period of time, to 5 minute single holds at the end of various exercises. Hand and feet elevated push ups, for one. You set yourself up so that you can go down as far as your muscles will allow you to and still have plenty of clearance off the ground. You do not move. Get to that ultimate bottom of the push up ROM and hold. I was able to do 80 seconds for my first two sets. Unlike the FSP, you want to extend that first set as long as possible until you have 1 solid 5 minute hold.

What the hell are the benefits to this crazy talk? Check this out, Willis...

1) You specifically target the fast twitch fibers. The constant contraction chokes off the blood supply to the muscles working, which forces the high threshold fibers to do ALL of the work! They fatigue quickly, which means that they switch motor units frequently. This means you get very, very high total activation of high threshold units without burning a ton of energy, draining the CNS, or getting particularly tired. In plain Engrish: Your type II fibers, the strongest ones, can increase in size by 20% in just a few weeks. Yea, I'm not making that up. And that was in trained athletes! This causes fiber conversion, literally increasing your potential for explosive strength and strength in general!

2) Because you are in the end ROM, you will be maintaining and gaining flexibility. You will also become strong at the weakest point in your ROM!

3) Because your muscles will be fully stretched, your fascia will become thicker and stiffer. That's the membrane that surrounds muscle tissue. This is a good thing. Thick, stiff fascia is strongly correlated with extremely high strength and explosive power!

I'll make a new thread and write more on this topic soon, but for now let me just say that this training is awesome. It feels great and already makes me feel stronger! Who knows how that will go in the long run, but from everything I have read it will make me stupidly, atrociously powerful. I am all about radically increasing my relative strength and power!

Make no mistake, this is really REALLY tough training. Fortunately, that's nothing new to me.

And yes, I am still working my statics! We'll see how this works out in the long run.

The extreme isometrics I'm doing will be:

day 1:

push up

chin up

2 leg squat

day 2:

split squat (both sides)

stiff leg deadlift (225 lbs)

HSPU (yes, I'm on my paralletes... this one requires couch cushions to fall on at the end...)

day 3:

SLS (oh yea, this is tomorrow... gonna be ROUGH!)

foot supported body row

inverted hang

dip

There may be a day 4 before I repeat, but I haven't worked that out yet. Yes, I will post videos to explain. Eventually!

I believe Jay Schroeder's programs do this sort of thing.

Is this something that was discussed at the seminar?

Interesting, Sliz. I took a week off and managed to do 3 out of the 4 workouts last week. The week after the seminar, I felt I needed just time off. Then again, I was pretty tired because of all the travel.

One thing, the dynamic/power workouts are tough the way we did them without rest breaks. Normally per the WOD, they incorporate 2-3m rest breaks in between rounds. Most rounds take about 2.5-4 minutes to complete in my experience with them, be they push/pull/legs.

I did play around with doing 3m rest, 2m rest, then 1m of rest with the legs one last week. Still doable, but power was noticeably dropped each round.

I have done some of the dynamic/power GB WOD's without rest breaks and they suck. Generally I have to scale back from what I would normally do for the GB WOD's, which isn't necessarily RX'd. For instance I'm sure if I had to do 5 HeSPU and 5 russian dips in each round without rest I would have to scale it to 5 kipping HeSPU or block HeSPU and perhaps regular dips.

Btw, I did try those wide arm PB dips last week. They are not as difficult as I thought they would be. Bulgarian PB dips.

Typically those 4 round Dy/Pwr GB WOD's take me around 17-20m+ I think. 9m of rest or so. Yet, they are not as fatiguing as a typical 10-15m Str Metcon ala GPP/CF. I still feel fairly powerful as I'm able to complete most of the rounds straight through without breaks but that is a matter of scaling as well.

Getting that cuban press up, eh? Last time I was doing last week I bumped them up to 10+ (5's on the ends besides handles). I'm gonna guess it's around 12-13lbs for 5 reps. Shooting to hit that (9% of BP which is 200x3 currently [yes, way low]). I think I can handle more than 5r but I'm not going further because the quality of the rep is just waiting to get crummy by then besides the tempo I use (313?). Generally 3s to raise up, 3 to move through external rotation, 3 to press vertical. Exactly the same on the way down.

...and what is a cuban press?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyQKP48F ... re=related

Your google-fu is weak. :roll:

Slizzardman, I am looking forward to those videos. With the pushup example that almost reminds me of Army Story Time. Everytime our Sgt. said a number to=two etc. We would have to get in that position. We would have to hold it there for several minutes. Looking forward to seeing this, let us know when you post the new topic.

trianglechoke7 said:

I believe Jay Schroeder's programs do this sort of thing.

Is this something that was discussed at the seminar?

This is directly from Schroeder. Good eye! This was not discussed at the seminar, I just constantly try to expand my knowledge. Once again I ran across something substantial! Now I just need a vibration machine lol! I am slowly saving up for a good one.

I got up off of the toilet after taking care of business last night and almost jumped on accident! It felt like my body wasn't even there! I'm not going to do much of any dynamic training for 2-3 months and see what happens to my strength.

Just so you guys know, the long-term goal of the extreme isos is to be doing them for 5 minutes with your bodyweight +35-40% BW. So for me, a 75lb weighted vest. That, my friends, is serious business. It's a good thing I'm a serious businessman.

First off, the extended isometrics are brutal! I learned new stuff this morning from more reading that has changed my plan to a daily one, 5x per week and possibly multiple sessions for a few basics.

New info: You MUST do these sets as 1 continuous set. No consolitation routine as I had previously set up. For rest you can take 3 deep breaths, and then get right back into position. Believe it or not, that is actually enough! I tried it and it is great. Wonderful time saver and it keeps the effectiveness of the work as high as possible.

The other important bit of new info prompted me to switch from my proposed rotation to an every day schedule for everything. Here are the reasons why this works:

The claim: 5 minute isometrics cause very little fatigue.

Slizzardman's verdict after two days of experience: Surprisingly, this is true. I'm not even sore.

The claim: The more often you do these the better your results will be.

Slizzardman's verdict after two days of experience: I'm seeing improvement from yesterday to today. Not too shabby! My one month verdict will mean a lot more.

The claim: You should not do any other exercise with the muscles worked until you have mastered the isometrics( 300s with minimum 30% BW added). Why?

Because one of the primary benefits of this work is that it re-programs neural pathways. Your body makes physical and chemical changes in the nervous system based on what you do the most. Even occasional stimulation of old pathways will reactivate and reinforce these old habits, dramatically setting back the re-programming process. This is, in fact, basic psychology at work. The brain is part of the nervous system, so that shouldn't surprise anyone. Look at Pavlov and others' work on extinction rates of learned behaviors for more info.

Slizzardman's verdict: Absolutely. If you take one month off of your lifting and whatever else (except straight arm statics, perhaps, to maintain biceps tendon conditioning, which can also be done with this extended isometric system) and just hit these 5-6 days a week at least once a day, you will re-program your motor units and you will be using the correct muscles in the correct sequence. JUST FROM THIS you will see massive strength gains, both maximally and dynamically. If you continue to true mastery, your body will be ready to safely perform hardcore plyometric training AND get far more out of it!

One final note: The Isometrics must be continued for the training career. Sound crazy? Think about this: You can maintain massively high levels of strength with almost no impact on your recovery during the competitive season. Want more? These isometrics prime the nervous system for plyometric training, which IN TURN primes the nervous system for max efforts! By utilizing these primers in order correctly, you will make incredible strides in your athletic ability.

How far can you go? Let's take a look at one of the best NFL safeties in the game. Adam Archuleta. Under this system, the 6 foot tall 211 lb safety went from a 268 lb bench press that took 2.38 seconds(pretty average for the most part) to move from chest to lockout all the way to a 530 lb bench press that takes 1.09 seconds to move from chest to lockout. HOLY M@#*$#F*@&^%G CRAP! Granted, this took a few years, but seriously, that's an insane bench at absolutely incredible speed, from a not very big guy. The speed is the important thing, since that is what makes us powerful. He has a 39 inch vertical, a 10 foot + standing broad jump, etc etc. That's frikin bananas for a guy that size!

It all started with the isometrics. They are the foundation, much as the FBE and FSP are here. This is an excellent tool to use to accelerate your progress here at GB safely.

If there is interest I will explain how to do this for our purposes.

Is possible to try this only with the legs lets say: squat, good morning?. Now I´m injured of SLS, my left knee doesn´t like them very much as this is the second time it happens this year, so I have to stick to regular squat (no problems with that).I don´t know if is meniscus or ligament I´ll have a Magnetic resonance next month.

This will be a great way to work my ligaments and leg muscles at the same time once I´m better. On the squat do you have to be at the bottom and maintain that but with out resting your butt at your feet or how is it done?. Im reading the wgf forum with the super isometric topic and it´s loooong!.

So, at the bottom of this post is my second day of Isos. Tough day. Takes about an hour, so not too bad, and the plus is that you don't have to warm up much. This was an experimental day combined with researching, so I did 3-4 exercises back to back, not necessarily in the order shown. I will re-arrange for maximum effectiveness as time passes.

Total time for each set is 300 seconds, which is 5 minutes. When I fail, I take a 3 breath break, and get right back into position. For me a 3 breath break lasts about 6 seconds. I make a record for how long the first hold is, just to see my improvements. Eventually, there will be no breaks and each hold will be 300s straight. I will be doing these 5 days a week, once a day. That's the plan from now until the end of July, just to see what happens. I have a VERY good feeling that my statics are going to improve. I will probably do separate L-sit work and stretching, and possibly FL. If I do it will be once or twice a week for FL and 2-3x for FL. At the moment, I'm doing hollow holds, not body levers. No body lever work until a 5 minute hollow hold is mine. That's all for now.

For those of you wondering WTF IS HE DOING?! I am resetting my nervous system to use the correct muscles in each position and re-arranging the physical distribution of my aerobic and anaerobic muscle fibers. My anaerobic fibers will occupy an increasingly large percentage of my muscle tissue, maximizing my power output. At the same time, I am increasing tendon and ligament strength, along with that of the muscle fascia. I expect this to occur on a time scale similar with that of the static progressions: That is to say, I probably won't be doing ALL of the holds with 75 extra lbs until 2-3 years from today. That's my guess, but I don't know. My legs are already half-way to 5 minutes. I'll know a lot more in a few months.

omegant said:

Is possible to try this only with the legs lets say: squat, good morning?. Now I´m injured of SLS, my left knee doesn´t like them very much as this is the second time it happens this year, so I have to stick to regular squat (no problems with that).I don´t know if is meniscus or ligament I´ll have a Magnetic resonance next month.

This will be a great way to work my ligaments and leg muscles at the same time once I´m better. On the squat do you have to be at the bottom and maintain that but with out resting your butt at your feet or how is it done?. Im reading the wgf forum with the super isometric topic and it´s loooong!.

Absolutely! In fact, a number of people appear to have done exactly that. You hold in the most stretched position. In the squat, A) you need to be barefoot and B) you need to be almost all the way down. You should not be resting on your calves, you should be just a hair above them. Does that make sense? You WILL be on the ball of your foot. It will NOT hurt you. There is really not any avoiding it due to joint angles for one thing, because of the specific form you will be using. This is BODY WEIGHT ONLY until you consistently hit 5 minutes.then you can add on 1 lb at a time until you hit 30-40% of your BW added on.

Form for squat: heels right under the arm pits. Feet PARALLEL! NOT POINTED OUT! Now, get all the way down and brace for shock. You will start shaking after a minute or two. That's literally the fast twitch fibers alternating motor groups since the slow twitch fibers can't get enough oxygen through the contracted muscle to do much work. The fast twitch fibers are forced to take over the job, which means they start cycling through motor groups like mad!

You should find that after a few months of this SLS will not bother you anymore. That's not my personal experience yet, just the observations of several people who always had clicky joints or knee pain in squats before they did the extended isometrics. Be prepared for your explosive and maximal abilities to skyrocket!

Good morning: You should be all the way parallel with the ground. Obviously you will be using VERY light weight. maybe 5-10 lbs, I don't know, maybe even BW alone will be enough at first. Use the same weight until you accomplish 5 minutes straight in the correct position. When that happens for a few days in a row go ahead and add 1-2 lbs. Keep repeating this. You'll be doing these 5 days a week, so you will be making rapid improvements.

Form for good mornings: Same foot position as squats. You will probably have slightly bent knees, that's fine. Back straight and parallel with the ground, eyes looking at the floor slightly in front of you. That keeps the spine neutral. That's very important. DO NOT REST YOUR STOMACH ON YOUR QUADS! If you have to do that it's time for 3 deep breaths.

Go ahead and do 5 minutes a day. Set a timer for 5 minutes, a digital one preferably. Put on the tv or radio, start the timer, and bust it out! It's only 10 minutes out of your day, you can afford to give it your all! When you need a rest go ahead and stand up, take 3 deep breaths, and get right back down. A rest shouldn't take more than 5-7 seconds. If you can only do 5-6 seconds at a time between rests, that is fine! Tough it out! It will be rough for that short period of time. I'd take a 3-5 minute break between the squats and the good mornings.

Slizzardman,

Do you hold your excercises just above "bottom"? Ross Enemait (Hope I spelled that right) also discusses holding your holds at different points in the motion, for a thorough iso hold. However his time is different than yours but nonetheless he talks about iso holds being so detremental to strenght development. Bruce Lee also believed in Iso-Training. I definitely will try to incorporate this more into my training as well, and the best part of Iso's is they are as difficult as you want them to be.

First off, these aren't MY times!

I'm just smart enough to follow in the footsteps of the athletes who have developed TRULY superior abilities! This phase of my training is all about building a basic level of connective tissue integrity, re-arranging my fiber volumes, and reprogramming my nervous system. Once that is complete (which may take a year or two for some exercises, I don't know) I will begin the true strength work.

Just like L-sit holds are not high level strength work, neither are these isometrics. They, like the L-sit, are a foundation that MUST be built before you undertake more advanced training. I am literally doing this for my entire body, because my future goals require that I have superior strength-speed abilities across a very wide spectrum of sports.

I am holding my holds at the bottom-most position in which I can maintain full tension. Sometimes going too low, like the squat, takes tension off.

For all squat variations, you want to be in strong plantar flexion.

Ross is a smart guy and has a great training program. One thing to keep in mind is that in sports, everything happens at maximum speed. Speed is king, strength is queen, and power is the royal couple getting it on! So to speak. Concentrating too much on isometrics is a bad thing, because by themselves they don't create monstrous speed or strength through a full range of motion. Performing isometrics at various points in the ROM of a certain exercise CAN be useful, but again not as a primary training tool. It only works well when used as a proper preparatory tool for priming the nervous system or conditioning specific tissues in ways that will allow more advanced work to be more effective than it would be without said training.

When done right, there is no such thing as an easy Iso. Don't think that way, it's a failure mindset. I don't like being preachy, but that's the truth. If it's easy you stay the hell away from it unless it is part of an overarching plan and has a specific purpose that can not be duplicated with more effective alternatives.

Bruce used a variety of training techniques that were used together, not as a single training regimen. They served a very specific purpose, and were an important part of preparing for the speed and strength work that allowed him to shatter unbraced wooden planks with a side kick. I have never heard of anyone else doing that. There are, in all probability, a few but not very many. We can probably count them on our fingers. He was 'superhumanly' fast and powerful.

Also, if you intend to use the isometrics the same way as I am you will need to take a month off of all other training for those muscle groups and concentrate on the isos. If you don't, you won't effectively re-train the nervous system to use the appropriate muscles. This will also be a waste of time if you don't concentrate hard on doing each iso that you choose to perform perfectly and correctly.

Here are today's holds. Bicep curl is with 3" bar. I put a 1x10 board under my upper arms on my chest to keep a 30-45 degree angle with a straight arm the whole time. This is working VERY well. I ONLY feel it in the muscles. I was worried at first, but this is great. Much easier to control than advanced frog.

If you already feel like you have good motor recruitment patterns, feel free to add in 5 minute isometrics. If you are doing a lot of other training you should probably only do them 3x per week for a while, until you get used to it.

I have to eat more with these than I ever have with any other program that takes the same amount of time. I can already see slight but visible and palpable physique changes. All of my fat folds feel thinner.

My set up is comprehensive and has a LOT of grip work due to the many hanging holds. Inverted hang, body row, chin up, bicep curl, and deadlift are all very tough on the grip. That makes 25 minutes of straight grip work, time under tension. That's a LOT. If you notice, even though I have an excellent grip I am forced to take a lot of breathers in these. That is primarily due to grip fatigue. A year from now for sure I will have straight holds on all of these, and I will probably start doing my deadlifts with softball or baseball grips to add more difficult grip work. For those of you who are afraid to try the inverted hang, do shrug holds as a substitute.

If you notice, my split squat times went down. This is because I stayed on the balls of my feet the whole time. That one change makes a WORLD of difference!

What are your thoughts on one-armed hangs in this manner?

They shouldn't be done until two-armed hangs are mastered, meaning 5 minutes straight with 30% minimum BW added. The reason I say this is, to me, pretty simple.

If you can't realistically do at least a 3 minute two arm hold with 30% BW added you simply don't have a prayer of training properly with one arm. You won't have the strength to pull off the hold with good form, and doing any holds with bad form is extremely detrimental to your results and performance since you will be rapidly learning incorrect motor unit recruitment patterns.

If you do build up the two arm holds in any given position to mastery, I don't see any reason why you couldn't or shouldn't continue with one arm holds. This may simply be an oversight somehow, since I am not personally experienced with this type of training yet. I'll know more when I master the holds myself.

After a month or two I'll be getting back to my static holds. I can already feel my upper back re-learning correct recruitment patterns and this will be much more important to my long-term success than trying to maintain my FL gains. I have a feeling I'm not going to be losing anything.

interesting stuff you are doing, looking forward to seeing the results!

Slizzardman,

I believe a couple people who post here have personal (and valuable) experience with these protocols.

(I don't, however.)

It might be helpful to put the question out there as to the efficacy of your plan in general, as well as its specific relation to gymnastics-style training (i.e. achieving static-hold goals).

best,

jason

Excellent thoughts Jason! I will ask what other peoples' experiences have been.

Here is what I notice now, after 3 full days: I am leaner, my muscles as a whole seem bigger, and I can press to advanced tuck with no problem at all. It actually feels EASY. Something good is happening. I AM noticing that mobility work is very important. I am making sure to do the warm up routine that Coach's athletes walked us through, and that helps a lot. By themselves with no mobility work, the statics were making me feel like my nerves were sticking to the muscles or something in certain overhead ROMs. With the mobility work it's not a problem, I just did it today and the symptoms are almost gone. That doesn't surprise me, honestly.

I'm interested in trying this for a month too, but I have some questions if you don't mind helping me out.

I don't think I'll have the time to do all the exercises every day. Could I concentrate it to fewer holds? If so, which are the most important to work?

I could see myself skipping the split squats and going with the two-legged squats for leg work, but maybe that's not a good thing to do.

Could I skip the pushup and only work the dip, or maybe better, alternate them, or should I work both every day?

I'll try a workout now while I wait for your reply.

How's it going for you? Any more results since last post?

SLizzardman, what do you think about using the SLS as an isometric hold. Specifically, holding just higher than the bottom of the SLS?

Would you consider Horse stance training an isometric. Before I ever touched a BB squat, I had done plenty of Horse stance which is probably what helped me ramp to a decent BS and FS back in HS within 3 months.

slizzardman said:

trianglechoke7 said:

I believe Jay Schroeder's programs do this sort of thing.

Is this something that was discussed at the seminar?

This is directly from Schroeder. Good eye! This was not discussed at the seminar, I just constantly try to expand my knowledge. Once again I ran across something substantial! Now I just need a vibration machine lol! I am slowly saving up for a good one.

I got up off of the toilet after taking care of business last night and almost jumped on accident! It felt like my body wasn't even there! I'm not going to do much of any dynamic training for 2-3 months and see what happens to my strength.

Just so you guys know, the long-term goal of the extreme isos is to be doing them for 5 minutes with your bodyweight +35-40% BW. So for me, a 75lb weighted vest. That, my friends, is serious business. It's a good thing I'm a serious businessman.

**********Where(or what site) did you run across the iso extremes at? Where did you get 30-40% bw plus at? I trained with jay before the iso's. I believe they do what he says they do. WGF has a view point on them as well. Do you think James Colbert is correct in his understanding of LDISOS? In addition what about doing these on a vibration plate or someone using a vibrating wand on you ala inno-sport?

Brandon Green

slizzardman said:

Ross is a smart guy and has a great training program. One thing to keep in mind is that in sports, everything happens at maximum speed. Speed is king, strength is queen, and power is the royal couple getting it on! So to speak. Concentrating too much on isometrics is a bad thing, because by themselves they don't create monstrous speed or strength through a full range of motion. Performing isometrics at various points in the ROM of a certain exercise CAN be useful, but again not as a primary training tool. It only works well when used as a proper preparatory tool for priming the nervous system or conditioning specific tissues in ways that will allow more advanced work to be more effective than it would be without said training.

When done right, there is no such thing as an easy Iso. Don't think that way, it's a failure mindset. I don't like being preachy, but that's the truth. If it's easy you stay the hell away from it unless it is part of an overarching plan and has a specific purpose that can not be duplicated with more effective alternatives.

Also, if you intend to use the isometrics the same way as I am you will need to take a month off of all other training for those muscle groups and concentrate on the isos. If you don't, you won't effectively re-train the nervous system to use the appropriate muscles. This will also be a waste of time if you don't concentrate hard on doing each iso that you choose to perform perfectly and correctly.

I agree but in terms of an easy ISO or choosing a level of difficulty is along the same idea as progression. You might encourage starting off max effort for max time, but another such way would be an effort that you can sustain for 5 mins and then the next time up that effort. Both ways are progressions, what works for the individual is up to him or her. True, there should be no easy ISO because both ways will be demanding but all I am saying is there are two ways one can approach this. I am just being devil's advocate :twisted:

As for me I don't plan on using the ISO's the same way, but rather a way to help get through some sticking points in my holds. I don't feel I have enough time in the day or week to go one way or the other since as you may know half of my weekly workout involves running and the other half is split between kinetic and static movements. Power in traditional terms is not my end goal, personal efficiency is. I am not trying to set records with weights by any means I just want to master myself, to me that means being comfortable doing most bodyweight kinetic movements for high reps (ie 50 pullups in a row) and being able to hold the body in gymnastic positions for upwards of 2 mins if not more. After rereading this I guess I am on the hunt for endurance in the long run, however I need to develop the strength in order to reach such feats.