Whole body workout for a little bit of everything

Earlier this year I ‘found’ myself in one of the most de-conditioned states I’d been in for a while, in fact probably forever. It followed a few months in which I’d focused exclusively on pushing up my numbers in the big three lifts, which while made me stronger, also left me a tad on the chubby side, with the conditioning to match. To compound matters my girlfriend had also booked us a holiday, and now for the first time in years the prospect of walking around semi-naked in public left me feeling ever so slightly anxious. Narcissistic? Fuck yeah.


There’s nowt like a bit of public humiliation top motivate you, and spurred on by this I set about rectifying the damage of the past few months.

In addition to cleaning up my diet a bit, I devised a training programme that I felt would address my immediate concerns: a bit of hypertrophy for the beach and a bit of conditioning – the latter to help me through the marathon sex sessions that would inevitably follow after the Mrs had spent all day gazing at my chiselled torso.

Now some people may raise an eyebrow at this, as gym-lore states that you cannot build muscle and lose fat at the same time. While I agree that if you want to excel at either of these then you have to choose between them, I have found that if you are merely trying to regain lost form, then you can probably do both at once. Clearly you wont look like a bodybuilder in contest shape, but who the fuck wants to anyway?

I broke my training down into 2 parts – strength training and energy systems work. Energy systems work, is actually just cardio, but why use one word when you can use three and sound 66% more clever? I’ll look at the strength training first….

I decided to get back to basics with this, and perform 3 total body workouts a week. With the extra energy…ah fuck it, cardio, that I was doing, I would need to make these fairly brief, so borrowing heavily from Joe Kenn’s Tier System I decided to perform 3 exercises each workout: an upper body lift, a lower body lift and a total body lift.

The exercise ‘pool’ I chose from consisted of big, basic exercises for each of those groups. These are listed below:

Upper Body Lifts
-Bench press variation
-military press or push press
-board press
-db press variation

Lower Body Lifts
-Box squats of various heights
-Back squat
-front squat
-good morning
-step ups and lunges

Total body lifts
-Power clean
-Power snatch
-deadlift variation
-other olympic hybrids that popped in my head

You may pick up that I counted the push press as an upper body move, despite the leg drive. This is because I’m shit at doing them and they are nothing like a total body move when executed by me. You may also wonder if the deadlift should be in the lower body section. Well, I disagree here, as it utilises pretty much the entire posterior chain, making it fairly ‘total body’, in my opinion. Finally, you may wonder where the upper back work is… well, I always added some chins or rows either at the start or end of my workout, so fear not.

In terms of the rep & set scheme I used, I didn’t pin myself to anything specific, but always did one exercise ‘heavy’, one ‘medium’, and one ‘light’. I then rotated the exercise order each workout so that over the course of the week each movement got worked at each of these intensities, (again, thanks Mr Kenn). ‘Heavy’, normally meant sets of 3-5, while medium was a bit less, say 6-8 or so, and light was either higher rep work or occasionally dynamic effort type stuff. If it sounds a bit woolly, that’s because it was; I had just spent months adhering to a rigidly prescribed programme, and wanted a mental break from following instructions.

A typical week may have looked like this:

Monday
Snatch grip deadlift – heavy – 5 sets of 3-5 reps
Incline DB Bench – medium – 4 sets of 6-8 reps
Step ups – light – 3 sets of 10-15 reps
back work by feel

Wednesday
Floor press – heavy – 5 sets of 3-5 reps
Front squat – medium – 4 sets of 6-8 reps
Power clean – light – 8 sets of 3 @ 60% (DE style)
back work

Friday
Good morning – heavy – 5 sets of 3-5 reps
Romanian deadlift with shrug – medium – 4 sets of 6-8 reps
DB military press – light – 3 sets of 10-12 reps
back work…..


I kept exercises going as long as they maintained my interest – sometimes I’d rotate them every week, sometimes if I’d keep them on for longer. I purposefully avoided the actual 3 powerlifts, as I was bored to death with them, but I include them in the exercise pool above as they are obviously great choices for most people.

The above marked an increase volume for me in terms of number of reps completed, and an increased frequency also. These 2 factors combined quite nicely to give me a good bit of hypertrophy, (I felt). I’m afraid I don’t go in for measuring myself, (that would be gay) but my shirts felt a bit more snug around the shoulders and the Mrs began complaining that my traps were too big. Good enough indicators for me.

Energy Systems work
For the cardio side of things, I opted for a two pronged approach. Like a trident but with one less prong. A bident, (thanks Alan).

Firstly, I started performing low intensity workouts on off days to facilitate recovery and get in a bit more work to promote lard-loss. These normally consisted of walking, or very occasionally some light, light sled dragging.

Secondly, I started performing some more intense work on the same day of my weights sessions. Normally I tagged this on at the end, but sometimes did them as a separate session. The reason for this arrangement was to alternate days of high CNS stress with days of low CNS stress, an idea promoted by sprint coach Charlie Francis, among others.

The choices here are described below:

1) ‘Javorek’ complexes, done with barbell or dumbbell. These are series of exercises performed one after another with no rest, which basically kick your arse good and proper. More about these some other time maybe.
2) Almost-strongman workouts…. Armed with a sandbag and a tire on a rope, I devised various circuits that successfully made me breathe out of my arse and look like a twat in the process. Result.
3) Sprints. In keeping with my goals, I kept the work sections longish, (30-60secs) and rest intervals short, (maybe twice that).

If I had a brain, I would have started very slowly with the workouts above, and built up my conditioning gradually. But I don’t. As such I went as hard as I could until vomit or fainting stopped me going any further. I wouldn’t recommend this.

That said, after around 6 weeks of this I once again looked pretty as a picture, and while my strength levels hadn’t really progressed in any leaps and bounds, they certainly hadn’t regressed. Job done.

This approach I feel is ideal for anyone who has vague and varied goals, (eg “I just want to get in shape”) and one I will no doubt use again when my more focussed training gets stale.

Extra workouts - what I do....

Following on from my last post which probably confused as much as it enlightened, I thought I’d post some of the extra stuff I do for GPP.

I’ll keep this brief:

I do two ‘main’ extra workouts, aimed at recovery, raising work capacity and maintaining a healthy heart, (not imperative for powerlifting but fairly imperative for life). These take place on 2 ‘off’ days, and I choose from the following:

1) walking outside – sometimes with a weighted back-pack, sometimes without. If weighted, 30 mins is adequate for this, if without I try and make a morning of it.
2) Sled dragging – I keep the sled light (30kg’s max) and do various drags for 15-30 mins
3) Gym circuit – I do 15-20 mins easy cardio (I like the rower) and then follow up with some light supersets using weights or resistance bands and high reps, (20-30 per set).

I always precede these sessions with some dynamic range of motion work, and follow them with some static stretching. The latter is not particularly in vogue right now with trainers, but I feel it helps get rid of weight-induced tightness.

On top of these, I have do some extra ‘mini’ workouts on the evening of my main sessions. Normally these consist of 10 mins or so work with the resistance bands. For lower body I do sets of good mornings and some normal sit ups, and for upper body I do band pull aparts and band pushdowns for high reps. These are also aimed at recovery and increasing work capacity.

If there are any take home points from this article, they are:

1) extra workouts should assist, and not detract from your main sessions
2) don’t go too intense – these workouts should not be things to dread
3) giving a nod to general health is no bad thing.


For further reading, check out Eric Cressey's 'Cardio confusion' article at www.t-nation.com and also Louis Simmons' 'Extra Workouts' articles at www.westside-barbell.com

TTFN GF

Some notes on my current training and goals

There are few things in life that I can speak with any great authority on – fewer still if you only include those things that other people might be interested in. Whether or not this article falls in the latter category remains to be seen, but fuck it, this is my blog and I’ll be an attention whore if I want to be.

I am currently training towards the vague goal of competing in an unequipped powerlifting meet or two in 2007, and am specifically looking to get the following gym lifts before then: Bench 160kg, Squat 220kg, deadlift 230kg at a bodyweight of 95 kilo’s or so.

My current approach to training revolves around going heavy on a handful of key lifts that address strength throughout the entire body, with a particular focus on those that I feel help raise the big 3. There’s nothing remotely revolutionary or groundbreaking about this approach, but it is a constant source of amazement how many people eschew these basics in favour of more complex approaches of which they have scant understanding and even less need for.

Preamble over, lets get down to the rough outline of the template I use. Please note that this is subject to change based on how I feel that day.

Day one – heavy squat and deadlift
Nice and easy this – I work up to a heavy single or a few heavy singles on the squat and deadlift or some variation of them. Exactly how heavy depends on how I feel.

Day Two – Heavy bench
bench, board press or similar – work up to a heavy single, double or triple
DB press on incline, flat or decline bench – work up to a heavy set of 5 or 6
weighted chins – a few sets of 5 or thereabouts

Day Three – Squat/Deadlift assistance
Front squat or similar – I tend to do sets of 5’s, then 3’s, and then a back-off set of 8-15
Good mornings or Romanian deadlifts – similar to above
weighted abs – a few hard and heavy sets

Day Four – Bench assistance
Overhead press or incline bench – sets of 5 with a back-off set at the end
tricep lockout work – rack presses or board press – sets of 3-5
rows – use a barbell or dumbbell, work up to a heavy set of 5 or 6

That’s about it. I’ll add some caveats to the above that are worth mentioning:
1) I never train to failure unless I fuck up
2) ‘Heavy’ is subjective – some days are better than others, U2 said so in a song so it must be true. I don’t always attempt pr’s, the above is about getting in some heavy effort for that day. Bulgarian weightlifters have used this concept for years, and if it’s good enough for diminutive Olympians then it’s good enough for me.
3) Deload weeks are imperative to long-term progress. Even while avoiding failure, there’s only so much stress a body can take before it gets the hump with you and stops playing ball. Cliché or not – it’s better to plan an easy week than be forced into one through injury.


On top of these four workouts I add in a few extra-workouts aimed at boosting recovery or maintaining an almost-respectable level of cardiovascular fitness. While the latter may not help me raise my total, it will help me avoid an early grave through heart disease. Which is nice. I may write some more about these in a seperate article, but in the meantime would direct you towards Eric Cressey's excellent 'Cardio Confusion' article, (google it, I can't be arsed to provide the link).

TTFN GF....