Dave Draper Articles for BFM/BFI Programs Weekly
There are basically two types of people who use weight training for fitness. Type A, the driven and type B, the not-so-driven. Though the degrees of difference vary, I know that for those of you of the A type, it would be an act of cruelty to keep you from your workout - an absolute impossibility, like stopping the movement of a glacier or the stampede of wild horses.
And then there are amongst you of the B type, neither lazy nor irresponsible, who can't seem to make it to the gym (or the garage) on a regular basis. You have a long list of reasons why you can't and some of them are even pretty good. It is to this larger half of the population to whom I speak.
To be effective, exercise must be consistent. This is the first and foremost precept of physical conditioning. If there's a secret, it's consistency. Don't quote me on this, but I believe bad exercise, badly executed consistently is far better than no exercise at all. Getting to the gym whether you want to or not, even for a short appearance, a salute or a bow is vitally important to the health of your fitness lifestyle. A break in consistency leads to the erosion of your training foundations, and without sound foundations no structure will stand.
How do we train consistently, especially if we don't have a milligram of discipline or patience? To be consistent, training must be desirable, not drudgery, not dull, boring or fruitless. It must and can be exciting. I bought my first set of weights when I was ten years old, haven't put them down since, and still find them fun and fulfilling. (Embarrassing - that I don't have any brains has nothing to do with it!)
For training to be productive, you must look forward to it with enthusiasm and confidence. Merely doing it is not good enough. Train with steady pace, moving from set to set, breathing fully to oxygenize and psychologically prepare for the set to follow. Get involved with the flow of your exercise, always focused on your immediate task and surroundings. Concentrate on the muscle's action, the burn, the pump, the extension and contractions. This is not advanced thinking reserved for champions and pros. No time is too soon to think in these terms. If you're brand new in the gym, practicing your exercises with these obscure thoughts in mind will speed your progress. Always keep your eye on your goal, knowing you'll eventually achieve it and savor the time spent along the way.
Absence is erosive. In fact, your presence in the gym can be restoring, even bring you out of depression, solve a problem, squash stress or inspire you to have the best workout of your life. Try it! Just go to the gym when all roads lead elsewhere, maybe nowhere.
Basically, you'll want to settle into a sound exercise program for at least 6-8 weeks to provide your mind with order and discipline. It also provides time to understand each exercise separately and collectively and to afford the healthy overload to the muscles so they respond by growing strong.
Remember, while we're all alone (which helps make this one of the most fulfilling sports), we're also all in this together. And in the gym there's probably nothing you're going through that we haven't all gone through at one time or another. It's the peaks and valleys...
How about the easy intro? Anyone who's never done squats before, stand up. Seriously, just stand up right there in front of your monitor and let's go through this.
Move your feet so they're just slightly wider than shoulder width apart. Point your toes out, just slightly. After you've played around with this, you can adjust your foot positioning to suit your structure.
Grab your legs near the lower quads, right hand on right leg, left hand on left - in other words, put your hands slightly above your knees. Take a deep breath of air, filling your chest. This forces your back into a straight line from neck to tailbone as you don't want a rounded back when squatting.
Looking straight ahead, raise your hands out straight in front of you.
Keeping your weight on your heels and your feet flat on the floor, lower yourself another 10 inches.
With your hands still in front of you, lift yourself to an upright position using your upper leg muscles.
Lower yourself and repeat. Perfect squats. There's absolutely no better way to learn or teach squats than from the BOTTOM UP as opposed to the top down.
To change this from well-formed deep knee bends to barbell squats, position the safety bars of the squat rack at a spot just slightly below your shoulders. If you're using a solid pin squat rack, put the bar on the pins nearest your shoulder height. Remember the movements we did in front of the computer and perform them now, without the bar, both to remember the motion and to warm up your knees, hips, ankles and leg muscles.
Step up to the empty bar and wrap your hands around the bar in a comfortable spot. Most people end up with their hands about a foot wider than their shoulders, usually using the bar's knurled edge or grip ring to find an even position so that your body is centered under the bar. For back squats, step under the bar and bring your upper body backwards into contact with the bar, knees slightly bent. Shuffle around slightly - leave the bar on the rack but schooch (hmmm?) around until you find that sweet spot where the bar just sits on the shelf created by your traps when your arms, elbows and chest are all held high from concentration and a big breath of air.
Straightening your knees to bring your body upright and the bar off the rack, back away from the pins so you're a couple of feet away. Position your feet again - slightly wider than shoulders, toes pointed out. Look up, chest high, elbows high, big air and lower yourself into a deep knee bend. Your first squat will not be very deep, but as you become more comfortable with the bar on your back and your ability to come back up, you'll move deeper and deeper into what the powerlifters call "the hole."
Your flexibility will increase fairly quickly, your confidence even quicker. Your muscles will become conditioned to the movement within a few sessions and your ankles, hips and knees will get stronger over the next month or so, when you'll find yourself with the desire to ADD MORE WEIGHT!
Main thing to remember: how far you go down should be dictated by your ability to come up... no! that's not what I meant to say!!... Seriously, how far you go down should be dictated by your ability to keep your back straight. I'm not referring to upright, but forming what's called a neutral spine - a straight line from neck to tail bone. Start back up just before the point when you round your back. This point will be lower and lower as time goes by - as your back gets stronger and your flexibility increases. A little patience here will save your back from injury.
Another thing I'm trying to be aware of is the difference between pushing thru the heel and pushing thru the ankle. To help a new squatter hold their balance, we usually say, "push thru the heel" to keep their weight back, rather than forward onto the toes. More accurate would be to press thru the ankle, which will better distribute the force of the weight during the movement.
There's an extraordinary mixture of people out there training, and every one trains with purpose. Locally, as I look out over the gym floor, observe the variety of activity and listen to the range of questions thrown my way, I'm convinced that the flow and continuity in our training should be encouraged from the very beginning. Once we're past the first week or two of introductory exercises and we get the feel for the equipment, muscle resistance and our level of condition, we're ready to practice interesting exercise combinations that piece our workouts together. This style of training is called supersetting, where two or more exercises that complement each other are performed one after another to enhance our output. This multi-set training not only condenses our workout time, but increases our productivity considerably.
Single-set training has its place in our workouts and should be retained for strength and mass building. However, a routine blended with superset combinations adds excitement and dimension to our daily workouts. A highly gratifying and inspiring muscle pump is achieved as blood ladened with oxygen and tissue building nutrients fills the individual muscles, causing greater muscle growth.
Supersetting is a technique I've applied for over 30 years - one I put into use long before reading a muscle magazine or going to a gym. I instinctively gravitated toward a non-stop training style to maintain enthusiasm and momentum. Without the down-time between sets, you become more involved in your training. There's no time for daydreaming, wishing you were somewhere else or becoming bored. In fact, a most desirable attitude of training develops, one that we wrongly think is reserved for athletes on the fringe of competition. This attitude of training is a valuable tool of confidence and provides a very real psychological benefit.
With a little time and a little practice your training becomes more athletic as you more through the gym from one exercise to another. Your heart rate remains higher, you stay warmer and you near the edge of aerobic training. Concentration becomes automatic and the harmony of movements will lure you onward.
Supersets are for everyone. They'll trim your workouts down and lift your spirits!
As we move along in our training and vigorously apply the six basic keys, we need to be aware of the various bodybuilding snags and pitfalls. At any and every level of training our deadliest and most subtle enemy is overtraining. Muscular gains come slowly at best and only from a lot of hard work. We therefore conclude that the harder we work, the greater our growth. This faulty "more is better" logic will surely lead us to a discouraging deadend. In our eagerness to build muscle , we exceed our training limitations and tear down more muscle tissue that the body is able to repair.
The symptoms of overtraining are chronic fatigue, insomnia, loss of appetite, proneness to injury and illness and the inability to achieve a pump. You may think you have the flu as muscles ache, bodyweight and strength drop and you have a nagging loss of interest in your training.
If any of these symptoms of overtraining heap up on you, back off your training immediately and take time out to re-evaluate yourself and your workouts. Recovery from overtraining is often brought about by decreasing your training levels, either the number of workouts, number of exercises or number of sets.
This may be a good time to be creative. Try something new or alter your training to reactivate your interest. Check out your diet. Make sure you're getting plenty of muscle building protein and carbohydrate before and after your workouts. The body feeds off its own tissue as an energy source if not adequately supplied by food intake. It's vital to keep your attitude up and seek encouragement from partners and friends. This healthy sharing and introspection furthers your learning experience and overall awareness.
You may wisely choose to take a layoff entirely, giving the body a chance to recuperate and your mind the needed time away from the gym. You'll come back after a few days mentally and physically refreshed and with renewed enthusiasm.
PLATEAUS AND STICKING POINTS
Closely tied to overtraining is the puzzle of sticking points of plateaus. Gains come fast at first. The sport is new, hopes are high and there's victory in achieving your goals. Increase in muscle size, strength and tone are evident. However, as growth begins to normalize, progress slows down to what seems like a screeching halt. Here time groans by and the less serious lifters are taken to the mat.
Be assured that providing you're vigorously applying the basics, improvement is always taking place. It's here where the qualities of discipline, perseverance, determination and patience are developed and are called upon. And here is where real growth takes place in your soul and in your physical self.
Chances are you've become anxious, too close to yourself and far too critical. Changes in muscle density and skin tone are very subtle and often appear only after you become weary of examining yourself. Have faith and press on. Don't submit to a child's disappointment and don't give up the front line trenches.
Bodybuilding curiously parallels all of life itself. Each one of us faces these periods of struggle and stagnation and it's from them that we learn and grow.
As we train, overtrain and push through plateaus, we're bound to stumble across some injuries. They come in all shapes and sizes, and range from muscle tears to tendonitus. Failure to warm up, sudden cooling off, overload, improper movement and poor nutrition all contribute to injury, one of the masters of the training experience.
Pain demands our attention and causes us to totally focus on the injured area. Using the focus of pain, learn to "feel out" the injury, feel its depths and discern its severity. Learn to separate the positive pain of deep muscular burn from the warning pain of injury. Develop sensitivity toward the quality of pain, its varying levels and degrees.
In working an injured area, use lights weights and high repetitions. Slow and concentrated reps will enable you to pinpoint the injury and determine your body's limitations. This also warms up the area and provides the support of blood with its life giving oxygen and nutrients.
Unless the injury is radical, I work through it and around it. Enduring the pain and not wanting to further abuse the area, I begin to compromise and, in compromising, discover new movements. I find I'm able to arrange a groove to work just outside the direct pain area. This often requires an abbreviated movement, a subtle change of angle or grip that I may enjoy and retain as a standard in my workout.
An injury can be the result of accumulative tears not repairing, with one rep serving as the final overload. Or it can be the result of doing a movement improperly with poor form, or from not warming up. Any injury is a learning experience, and if you let it will teach you its lessons. Slow down and re-evaluate your movements and the manner in which you perform them. In wanting to work the muscle in spite of the injury, you learn to really focus and not abuse the injured area. It reveals to you a degree of your perseverance, the ability and willingness to work through pain - carefully and hopefully.
Certainly to a bodybuilder an injury means an immediate loss of hard earned gains, but is also seem to be the only time I truly learn anything new about my body. I wish I could be as attentive during all my training as I am when I'm working an injured area.
An injury brings about a new appreciation for the muscle, and when you are healed and can life full bore, it offers a new thankfulness with less taken for granted. The new awareness for the muscle is never lost and remains as a reflection of your training forever.
Having noticed sound muscular progress, feel free to form your own patterns of exercise. Begin as soon as possible to train instinctively. Recognize your own body feelings and needs. This can be the most enjoyable and productive time in your training life, as you begin to train for yourself and with methods and styles you've begun to develop.
You're maturing in your training and gaining a new level of mind-body coordination. Each of us has a different personality and style and it should be expressed in your training. Make a statement with each workout. Strive for quality and learn to use the entire body with each movement - like a Clydesdale draft horse pulling a heavy load. Look for full range for motion in each exercise, thereby involving the entire muscle to assure full development and strength.
At some point, you'll want and need to increase your pace to overload your muscles and to satisfy your increasing enthusiasm. The best way to accomplish this is to perform a combination of either two or three exercises the complement each other. With these vigorous supersets or trisets you condense your workout, intensify your focus, quicken your pace and gain a better muscle pump. The increased pace and muscle pump bring more nutrients and oxygen to the muscle tissue and force more blood into the finer capillaries. This causes finer tissue development and increased growth, while providing quality to the workout.
Superset training will improve your endurance, keeping your heart rate consistently higher through the workout. With the blood flow more constant to the muscle, I sense a greater purging of impurities, toxins and lactic acid from the system. Supersetting provides the capacity for greater output as your endurance increases. Almost aerobic, it's a more athletic way to train, allowing you to gain more physical fitness, and a more practical and useful body. I find my superset and triset workouts are more interesting, exciting and involving of the mind and body, and certainly more fulfilling than single set/rest routines.
The most common supersetting is the training of the same bodypart with similar exercises, for instance bench presses followed by flys. This type of intense training, though very effective, should only be done periodically and only for a couple of weeks at a time as it tends to cause burnout.
My favorite type of superset program involves opposing bodyparts, antagonistic muscle groups such as biceps and triceps. In this training, you allow one bodypart to rest while working another. I've trained this way for many years and have never burned out on it - as a matter of fact, for me, it's the most successful way to get a good workout and a fast and full pump.
With opposing bodypart superset training, you can move more quickly through the workout, exhausting the entire body, push to exhaustion one bodypart, but still having energy and endurance to work another. This provides momentum and rhythmic style, a greater burn in the muscles and less workout interruptions.
As you complete your first exercise, immediately shift into the next. After your second set, rest briefly — the recuperation from both exercises leading to anticipation of the next superset. As you finish your first group of supersets, begin setting up the next pieces of equipment, allowing no idle time.