Just Strong
This is about a workout to get strong. Simply strong in two or three lifts,
nothing fancy, nothing extra.
Strength is often a matter of practice. The better and more fluent you get
at a motion, the more force your nervous system allows you to produce. This
is a protective mechanism where your brain will try not to allow you to produce
more force than it thinks you can competently handle. The solution is simply
to practice with resonably heavy weight (but not excessive) as much as you
can without wearing yourself out.
In the workout below what you are doing for that hour is simply practicing
the lift. Start with a weight you can do a double with easily and work up
to more as you can. If the last set was too easy, add more weight. If the
last set was too hard, especially if you had to break form to get the lift
then take weight off till you are doing a perfect two reps again. The idea
is to practice doing perfect lifts for an hour. The idea is not to turn this
into a marathon of pain, or a test of any kind. You should feel better when
you are done than you felt when you started. You should feel sharp, not drained.
If you feel tired or exhausted, you are using too much weight or packing
your sets too tightly together.
For example, walk in load up 315#'s. You know your maximum is 405#'s so good
to start low. Do your first set and its easy, add 20#'s and do the next at
335#'s. This is easy too so you add another 20#'s and when you are ready
a few minutes later you do the 355#, this one is slower so you add 10#'s
more and right at the sticking point on the second rep it stalls and you
have to break form to get it up. On the next set use less, maybe back to
335# again. Do that for a set or two,. If that starts feeling easy then take
the weight up again. Who knows, you might go up to 385#'s or more for the
day but dont' get greedy, just practice doing perfect lifts. You want to
keep the weights between 60%-85% of your max generally.
If you practice perfection, performance will always be there if you need
it.
The Basic Workout:
Monday morning--Squat practice 1 hour, sets of two
Tuesday morning--Pull practice 1 hour, sets of two
Tuesday evening--Bench practice 1 hour, sets of two
Wednessday--Rest
Thursday morning--Squat practice 1 hour, sets of two
Friday morning--Pull practice 1 hour, sets of two
Friday evening--Bench practice 1 hour, sets of two
Saturday and Sunday--Rest
One important part of this is to vary things a bit, but not too much between
weeks. Sometimes if you do things precisely the same way too much over several
weeks, you wind up going backwards. Some people are like this, some not.
If you are, then try something like this three week rotation below. If you
are not, then just keep working away.
Variation example:
Week 1--Regular stance squats, clean grip pulls, regular grip bench
Week 2--Wide stance squats, snatch grip pulls, narrow grip bench
Week 3--Narrow stance squats, fast deadlifts, wide grip bench
You will find that your lifts tend to creep up well past your expectations,
pretty quickly without burning you out. Its counterintuitive that you can
get strong so quick without just busting your butt everytime you go in the
gym; however this sort of thing has been around a long time and has a great
track record. This is also a fine way to put a peak on your strength before
a contest if you already have a good base under you. There are several ways
to arrange this besides the way I wrote. You can use the basic idea just
as well with olympic lifting also. Feel free to try other ideas as long as
you keep to the basic principle of "as much practice with heavy weights as
possible with as little fatigue as possible".
Bryce Lane
Visalia, Ca. 2003