NaterMania

long time passed when last time watched "Training Logs". I watched just last video so I don't have a comment for them

Slizz your chest seems very big And nice intorductions through strength series, I have just little tips for you:

1. At the MU: try a fraction of a second later before you burst with shoulder forward. It seems you are trying to quick to burst forward (ok you can do like you did, but it's harder :wink: ). Also watch first MU and right before you start turning shoulder you do litlle piking in hips-what happens:shoulders go back/shoulders center gravity moves back insted of further (should make a upper hollow chest instead-like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame-Quasimodo" looks like).

2. Try to hold every support for 2s.

3. FL: press rings down earlier and harder (try rise you upper body with pressing down the rings)

AH, sweet! Thanks Gregor!

Hopefully you'll see some improvement as I post more videos! I will work on the shoulder roll and my hollow!

Well, I have done too much muscle up work. Fortunately I have caught on fairly quickly, but I should have known better. The Russian Dip work sets right before the Seminar was my first clue, lol! My elbows were wrecked after that workout for a few days, and doing muscle ups at the seminar was a bit too much for me. The strength is there, but I think I need a good 2-3 months to make the proper adaptations in my connective tissue. Maybe a little longer, I don't know. All I know for sure is that I had to ice my elbows after round 1 of the tempo muscle ups, even though I was using assistance. Not good! So, it's wall tricep push ups and tricep cable pressdowns along with my biceps tendon rehab for a while so that I heal properly. Eventually i will work my way back up to high reps of floor tricep push ups.

I also have a pulley system set up in my basement, but I am going to buy better pulleys to get smoother action for a much better assist. What I have now is pretty crappy and it should really be a lot better than it is. I will know more in a week or two when I get that under control

I also found out that doing some of the Hungarian stuff on hard floor is too much for my left foot, but I have been very good about rehabbing it and I am able to do some stuff with no problems now.

I have integrated a lot of what we have done at the seminars into my warm up, it is really a good one. Now I just have to get things cleaned up downstairs so that I have space. I am working on setting things up so that I can perform multiple different warm ups, and once I have that done I will explain the basic set up. The warm ups I will need to keep private for a while, until more info gets published.

All in all, I am feeling good. Everything is healing nice and slowly, and I am feeling better and better. I am doing the wrist series at least 4 days a week and I can feel the initial adaptations. After modifying my warm up I have developed the ability since the seminars to do arch/hollow snaps properly with no pain, hand walking has become a part of my warm up and is getting insanely good, I should be able to do the 40 feet forward and 40 backwards together at the next May seminar. That will be pretty awesome.

I am falling behind in the WODs, and with the development of this outer elbow pain I am no longer trying to catch up with the ring wods I have missed. I'm stepping in at the leg WODs, which I initially avoided to allow my foot to heal. I may skip the depth jumps, I think it may be too soon for now. Maybe I will just do little ones.

Hey man you mentioned once that spiking insulin before taking ZMA is a bad idea, when you have time could you explain why? And isn't it about time to be logging again? I miss my daily log reading

Yea, the insulin spike negates any potential testosterone or growth hormone elevation. You also have to watch out for calcium, which will compete for absorption. As long as you avoid insulin spikes and calcium, and other metals, you will be fine. There seems to not be quite as much hormonal boosting going on as advertised from what I have been reading, but it really helps with sleep!

All right, it's time for an update here. I fell behind in the WODs but I am more or less caught up and back on the horse, so to speak.

I am going to be focusing on the basic structural elements of my body and mobility for a while, with my WOD effort being secondary. I will be following them, of course, but expect to see at least an initial drop off in my ability. This is an important illusion to understand, because if you do not you will not understand what I am getting out of this change in focus.

Over the past year I have learned a lot, first hand, about the importance of connective tissues but I believe there is even more to the story. I am starting to believe that there is more to peak performance than just how well you perform in training. For example, the last month has seen me doing specific scapular retraction work 4-5 days a week for 1-3 sets a day with 20-30 reps per set, 202 tempo on average though many times it is slower. In that time, my front lever has improved despite almost no preparatory work for it directly. JUST this short term scapular work has given me such enormous improvements in strength and stability that I am starting to realize most of us may have fitness completely backwards.

The joints are where our strength comes from, as they allow us to move as we do. We know that neuromuscular(NM) inhibition is one of the primary limiting factors in strength building. The body has an intricate network of alpha and gamma motor neurons that act as force and stretch sensors inside each muscle, and allow the body to regulate how hard muscles around each joint are allowed (not ABLE, but given permission to by the CNS) to contract. Our prime movers are not what hold our joints firmly together. Our lats don't hold our shoulder blade on or contribute to its movement! Subscapularis , trapezius, rhomboid, and the serratus groups do most of that. If those are unable to handle, proportionally, the amount of force our prime movers can exert, won't our built-in NM inhibition limit the force production of prime movers to what the more structurally significant muscles(that may not be the ideal terminology but I mean the muscles that are primarily responsible for joint integrity and stability) can handle? My initial exploration into this idea has been influenced by the seminars and all of my outside reading, and I am thinking, at this point, that focusing primarily on shoulder and hip rotator muscles, scapular movement and stability muscles, and hip adduction/abduction to some degree will prove to be what I and everyone else needs to build a powerful base.

We have all been focusing on the wrong places. How is my levery? How is my planche? How are my HSPU? Those are the wrong places. I believe that by placing the primary focus on the areas mentioned in the previous paragraph and pursuing the WODs with whatever energy is left will result in the biggest payoff in training, and will actually be instrumental in developing higher levels of strength.

The recent discussion regarding hamstrings/traps and Coach's comment about HS press for trap development really got me thinking more specifically, and I think that the high degree of overall scapular strength, endurance and stability that must be present for 10+ reps of technically correct straddle L to HS press to be accomplished is probably the reason that this particular movement is such an excellent predictor for a gymnast's high level skill ability.

So, given that we do not have a gym with a trainer to guide us and spot us as we try to learn this skill, how can WE develop this same scapular mobility, strength, and endurance? Well, the movement is a separate issue that I think can be trained to SOME degree using a belt and a band for press HS assistance, but that will probably require manual spotting or lots of negatives. As for the strength, stability, and endurance characteristics... I believe we can handle that ourselves. All by itself, this will make us extremely injury resistant, but it will also give us the base characteristics that are present in high level gymnasts, at least in the shoulder girdle. Some things that Ido showed us at the seminar, and most of which is on his Squat Clinic video, have made me start thinking about the hip in a similar fashion.

I am thinking that consistently focusing primarily on these core structural elements and relegating the WODs to secondary status, as opposed to continuing to structure training so that I am always ready to give the WODs my main energy and performing this integral training that I am suggesting as a secondary focus, is going to lead to some drastic improvements, starting with the elimination of my long-standing injuries. I will be focusing on the elbow joint in a similar fashion. This will not be a temporary thing. From now on, this will be my fitness priority chart. I believe this will lay the foundation for me to

achieve truly high level ability without having to deal with injury along the way.

Here is my proposed idea:

1: there will be two sessions each WOD day, the WOD and the integral training. They will occur in that order. Prehab done in the WOD warm up will remain there, primarily as a GTG-type element, as it is now. I will perform my integral training later in a separate session.

2: My hypothesis, which I have already started to test myself:

The integral training will start as a German Volume Training protocol, because this is going to produce rapid vascularization of these key areas. These are all fairly small muscles so hypertrophy will not present any real obstacle to gymnastic progress as this hypertrophy will, I believe, be necessary in the long run. I believe that specific training adaptations like vascularization and increased mitochondrial count, which allow for faster healing and more efficient nutrient absorption/utilization, are absolutely necessary.

This can only be accomplished by producing extremely high levels of lactic acid, which in turn can only be done by high repetition work done with low rest. Traditionally this has been shied away from since this type of work will usually cause transitional muscle fibers to recondition themselves as endurance fibers. The workaround for this shortfall is laughably simple... Keep the load low enough to where you never engage hardly any of these transitional fibers. The existing fibers that are already either permanently endurance type or that are already very conditioned for endurance will be the only ones working when utilizing a 30% 1RM workload or less, and possibly up to 40% or thereabouts. These fibers have a fairly low threshold for hypertrophy and will be working fairly close to their inherent limitations, and as such they will actually become stronger, which in turn will allow you to raise the weight slowly over time if you wish without eliciting fiber type conversion to any significant degree. There WILL be hypertrophy, but it will not be anywhere near as significant as if you were stimulating more of the muscle fibers, and the very high amounts of lactic acid produced from local glycogen metabolism will stimulate the body to produce more local capillaries and more mitochondria.

This is to be something of a steady state cycle, though the weight may never even need to be increased to maintain benefits, so it could be a permanent static cycle. I don't know about that part yet. The body WILL adapt to this sort of training, especially with the load so low and fixed, to the point where it can easily handle it on a weekly basis, which is all that is needed. Eventually it will not longer challenge the body, which is what we want. So, in the short term there will be a perceived loss of strength as you do this, but there will be no actual loss as I (and you) will still be able to perform the WODs. Healing will actually be accelerated over time through this method.

Exercise selection should be limited to what will most effectively work the muscles. This means primarily shrug variations for the shoulders, as these will strengthen the scapular muscles most effectively, with rotator cuff work being peformed as well. The external rotators will get worked to some degree during various scapular retractions as they must maintain the humerus' position in the glenoid 'socket'. Actual external rotation work is less important, I think, and will be treated as such, but it will still be performed as the rotator cuff msuculature is extremely important. I actually think that supraspinatus is the most important rotator cuff muscle to focus on, but initially it will be treated the same as the external rotators. For the hips, internal and external rotation in a full squat and in the crab position will be used along with bands.

To minimize the disruption of the routine, I will be performing this routine in a linearly scaled manner until 10x10 is reached with a very low weight. On the cable machine, 80 lbs or so will be my retraction weight. 80 lb dumbbells will be my standing shrug weight, and I will alternate weekly between standing shrugs and inverted hang shrugs. I believe both are important. Scapular push ups will be my forward shrug, and dip shrugs will be my downward shrug. My plan is two supersets: retraction and standing/inverted hang shrugs, as these can both be done at the same machine. Dip shrugs and scap push ups will be my other super set. I will start with 4 sets, 30s rest between each exercise AND set, which should produce a ton of lactic acid. Each week I will add one set, though I may take two weeks to add a set as I get closer to 10 sets. The weight will not change. I am considering a third super set of seated cable front raises and overhead shrugs, as these are the most specific to the handstand and handstand press. For my hips, I will use bands or the cable machine and an ankle strap at the knee, or other similar attachment and I will perform internal and external rotations as a super set. I am also considering doing quarter squats from the bottom of the squat to 1/4 of the way up as a separate exercise. I believe that between these exercises the hips will be well taken care of.

Notice that this is about mobility as much as it is about moving the weight. COMPLETELY FULL ROM to the utmost extent of my ability will be practiced with every rep.

I will also be doing something similar with my biceps and triceps, as I believe there are some special rules for people as big as me when it comes to the necessary joint preparation, but I also believe that EVERYONE here will benefit from the same thing, so I do advocate this as basic elbow conditioning. I have started performing 1 set of 20 incline bicep curls with 20 lb dumbbells or bicep curls on the cable machine with 30-40 lbs, as there is some loss of resistance due to the pulley set up. Either way I perform triceps extensions. I am also performing this 10x10 training with the behind the neck military press. My weight is 75 lbs. I do not expect to ever change these weights in the forseeable future, as this is quite literally just for eliciting the training adaptations that will lead to the fastest healing times and most joint stability. Certainly not for the first 6 months, at a minimum. My ideal situation is for the 10x10 to eventually be a joke, so that there is no soreness in the days between sessions.

ALL REPS WILL BE 3 SECOND CONCENTRIC CONTRACTION, 1-2 SECOND ECCENTRIC. The simple reason for this is that these training adaptations are primarily the result of metabolic byproducts. Concentric contractions take more energy than eccentric or isometric contractions. Therefore they should get priority. The WOD warm up and WOD itself will take care of maintaining and building strength and speed characteristics, so there is no need for me to worry about that here.

My integral training schedule will look like this, as of now:

Monday: BTN military press, scapular shrugs (it's a lot for one day, but these are all connected and I have the time, I think.)

Tuesday: hips and squat

Thursday: rotator cuff, perhaps wrists/forearms

Friday: biceps and triceps

WODs will take place as normal and will probably be done earlier in the day since they will be easier to tape in daylight. I may make tapes of my integral training once I get into the groove for a few weeks and see what is going on. For now, I don't want that distraction.

I believe that my results will speak for themselves, and that this will become an ingrained part of high performance training if this works as I think it will. I feel as if I have stumbled upon something profound and true, I mean it really hit me by surprise.

Whenever you bust out a full planche, your results will surely speak for themselves..or should i say shout for themselves

This is true. Based on the advanced ring prep we did at the Seminar, I am virtually guaranteed to be able to achieve planche and maltese as long as I can heal my elbows. So I am writing a plan out, and it is looking like it will be 5-6 years for the rings stuff and 4-5 years for the floor planche. XR FL is almost back, actually, my scapular work is going great! I will have close to a 10s perfect FL by May for sure. That will be fun all by itself.

I hope you guys get your seminar! That would be SWEET!

Dude you in a maltese is like... :shock: :shock: :shock: THAT would be crazy! I'm sorta stealing your prehab plan.. realized that on the days where I don't do shit I need to get my ass together and bump up the prehab! And manna work! I can't describe how much I'm hoping for that seminar to happen, I'm sure it will help me ridiculously towards advanced ring strength and well..everything else

Yea, it will be bananas. I expect that to really put us in the spotlight for a while. It will be good to get your input since you don't have the same injuries I do, so I would love to know what you end up doing and how you scale it, because it is important to know what other experiences besides mine are.

After I get a proper training schedule in the new gym club and come home from the seminar I will let you know when I'm expecting my maltese. I definately believe in more prehab work aswell, I've just been too lazy to put in the effort, but no more! In 30 mins I'll have my prehab of today posted in my log.

slizzardman said:

This is true. Based on the advanced ring prep we did at the Seminar, I am virtually guaranteed to be able to achieve planche and maltese as long as I can heal my elbows. So I am writing a plan out, and it is looking like it will be 5-6 years for the rings stuff and 4-5 years for the floor planche. XR FL is almost back, actually, my scapular work is going great! I will have close to a 10s perfect FL by May for sure. That will be fun all by itself.

I hope you guys get your seminar! That would be SWEET!

********* BTW on an off note what do you think that your Bench would be when you can floor planche let's say 10 reps?

Brandon Green

10 strict planche pushups should call for a double bw bench I'd say! Without training the bench that is.

That is really an almost impossible question to answer, but I am sure 1.5-2xBW is a reasonable estimate. The more backwards your fingers are the higher your bench will be, that is for sure. Now, XR planche push ups? Hahaha... I'm sure 2x BW. Certainly at my size with my bigger legs.

Well, yesterday's WOD was great, that was the first time I completed a dynamic leg WOD exactly as prescribed. Well, almost. I didn't do the 5 depth jumps because I did 10 off of the box(retaining wall), and that was plenty on asphalt. I actually ended up doing twice the number of depth jumps prescribed.

Later that day I made use of my "warm up" card that I made! It is a double sided business card that has my entire general warm up and prehab. It took me about 40 minutes to complete. I will be creating specific versions of this for each workout day, but for now this general one is what I am doing. I also did my first retraction and protraction GVT workout, along with my second BTN press GVT! So far so good, but I'm barely 12 hours PWO so we'll see how I feel TOMORROW! I already feel a lot better than last time, and the 10x10 retractions allowed me to actually feel the exact areas I am weak in the right shoulder. I've never felt anything like it. My last 5 sets were 7 reps. I have also 'discovered' that spending most of the time in concentric contraction is WAY WAY WAY HARDER than most of the time in eccentric contraction. Holy crap. I have never worked so hard to do something so light in my life. Way more lactic acid. I also was able to keep my weight at 65 lbs for the BTN press, better than last time! 2x75, 8x65 at 9-10 reps per set. A definite improvement.

AFTER the workout I found out that I can do a 2-3 second perfect straight bar front lever. I am totally going to be rocking hard by May.

Dude I wanna attend the American seminar aswell.. would be cool as hell One day in the future I will be there for sure

That would be awesome for sure!

slizzardman said:

Later that day I made use of my "warm up" card that I made! It is a double sided business card that has my entire general warm up and prehab. It took me about 40 minutes to complete. I will be creating specific versions of this for each workout day, but for now this general one is what I am doing.

Can you elaborate here? I love mobility/corrective work ("prehab" as this forums tends to call it). I do something similar with index cards - I have a whole variety of different mobility / warmup work and conditioning workouts on cards which I pull out sometimes.

What's on your card? And how are you going to vary it per workout day? Do you mean specialized "leg day" warmups and things?

What is on my card is somewhat proprietary. I perform low intensity work for low volume in nearly every plane of motion or vector of loading, depending on how you define things.

Prehab is a different concept than mobility/corrective work in that it is done BEFORE you have problems. It is preventative maintenance, not restorative maintenance. The tools are often similar, but protocols are quite a bit different.

I won't be doing specialized leg day warm ups so much as I will be alternating the exercises and therefore vectors of loading and changing the emphasis from day to day. This will allow me to cover a much wider variety of movements, thus keeping my body prepared for much, much more than anyone could do on a traditional program. This also is a very easy way to drastically increase work capacity. It's working, that's all I can say, and it's working FAST.

I do work my entire body in each warm up, from my feet to my neck. Creating 2-4 different warm ups will be a big step forward for me.

I apologize for not being specific, but this stuff is partially Coach's and partially things that I am putting together for my own business. Everything I do is based around the GB program and the WODs.

slizzardman said:

That is really an almost impossible question to answer, but I am sure 1.5-2xBW is a reasonable estimate. The more backwards your fingers are the higher your bench will be, that is for sure. Now, XR planche push ups? Hahaha... I'm sure 2x BW. Certainly at my size with my bigger legs.

Well, yesterday's WOD was great, that was the first time I completed a dynamic leg WOD exactly as prescribed. Well, almost. I didn't do the 5 depth jumps because I did 10 off of the box(retaining wall), and that was plenty on asphalt. I actually ended up doing twice the number of depth jumps prescribed.

Later that day I made use of my "warm up" card that I made! It is a double sided business card that has my entire general warm up and prehab. It took me about 40 minutes to complete. I will be creating specific versions of this for each workout day, but for now this general one is what I am doing. I also did my first retraction and protraction GVT workout, along with my second BTN press GVT! So far so good, but I'm barely 12 hours PWO so we'll see how I feel TOMORROW! I already feel a lot better than last time, and the 10x10 retractions allowed me to actually feel the exact areas I am weak in the right shoulder. I've never felt anything like it. My last 5 sets were 7 reps. I have also 'discovered' that spending most of the time in concentric contraction is WAY WAY WAY HARDER than most of the time in eccentric contraction. Holy crap. I have never worked so hard to do something so light in my life. Way more lactic acid. I also was able to keep my weight at 65 lbs for the BTN press, better than last time! 2x75, 8x65 at 9-10 reps per set. A definite improvement.

AFTER the workout I found out that I can do a 2-3 second perfect straight bar front lever. I am totally going to be rocking hard by May.

*********** thanks for the reply. I have included on push day 1 the "wall maltese".

Brandon Green

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I did it. I made my bendy steel contraption. Well, I've cut the metal and done some test bends, and HOLY CRAP, it is just... so different from EVERYTHING. I think this is going to be incredibly good for my arm joints, though I am going to have to figure out some clever ways to do similar work for my back to balance things. At any rate I'll keep it light for a while, just two strips, like Breitbart recommends at first.

I tried to bend all 8 strips that I made and as I eased off the tension I felt a ripple of wave-like contractions roll through my chest muscles. I have absolutely no idea what that is, I have never felt anything like it. I have also never felt anything like the wrist tension this type of exercise generates. I am excited at the prospects this device holds.

I am also going to order the vertical jump project. I intend to have at least a 36" vertical by May, hopefully a good bit higher. I am at 27-28" right now when I am fresh and 26" a day after the heavy sled drags lol!

Slizzardman,

That first video was awesome! Look like a cool progression on the reverse muscle up because doing a curl straight from inverted even with a spotter seems unlikely for me. Thanks!

You're welcome! That was super hard, I am excited about discovering this progression!

Sliz, you are a monster. Please keep posting videos

You guys were talking about benching earlier. I would just like to make mention of how much pressure your legs bear during the lift. When I show my clients how much arching, putting pressure into the balls of the feet first, then driving the heels down does they are always amazed at how sore they are from benching. It takes a LOT of postior strength to bench heavy, not like doing a flat bench. That being said, someone who can do a maltese may be able to do a double BW bench, but I remember even Gregor saying that his bench didn't feel strong.

Hope I can meet all you guys in person someday, I am sure we would have a blast

Wow :shock: I just tried the bicep curl, Talk about being humbled THAT IS INSANE!!!