Thursday 090604
Ha, so much for trying to post daily. I have been telling myself the last two or three days, “just post tonight” but I never end up doing it. Well, here goes catch up.
Let’s talk about being stuck on an island. Let’s say that for some odd reason you were even in the vicinity of an island and somehow you got stuck there. Now let’s say that you could have one piece of equipment for exercise. What would would you choose?
It’s kind of an interesting question isn’t it? If I had a choice, knowing what I know, I would definitely put my stock into a barbell (mind you that the barbell comes with a full set of bumpers, the rainbow if you will). I could prepare myself for the CrossFit games with just this piece of equipment. First off, you have an indispensable amount of body-weight exercises at your disposal. Second, you could pretty much replicate any weighted exercise with the bumpers by themselves. For example, swings, weighted lunges, weighted pushups, weighted pull-ups of branches, etc, etc. The thing is that you will be hard to find anything that can efficiently replicate barbell lifts. The barbell lifts are magnificent in their execution and ability to produce power, strength, agility, accuracy, speed, cardio-respiratory endurance, stamina, balance, functional flexibility, and coordination. You could clean, jerk, snatch, dead-lift, front squat, back squat, overhead squat, zercher squat, goodmornings, press, throw, and a whole host of assistance exercises. The barbell is king. I guess, what I am trying to say is that on the road to greatness, you need only a barbell and your body-weight. If you are starting a home gym, make sure you have a barbell and some bumpers. If you have money for all the nice things like kettle bells, dumbbells, medicine balls, etc., then by all means, purchase those things. If you only have a few funds, then put your money on a nice barbell and some bumpers.
For a lot of years, I didn’t do a lot of handstand pushups, or burpees, or wall balls, or slams, or stuff like that. All I did was barbell lifts and sprint. I did some pushups and pull-ups but I also did a lot of rows or horizontal pulling. These were mainly used to bring up my barbell lifts. I put all my money into cleans, snatches, back squatting, front squatting, overhead squatting, benching, and push pressing. I would then go outside and sprint. 10 yards, 20 yards, 40 yards, 100’s, 200’s, 300 yard shuttles, 60 yard shuttles, etc. You name it, I did it. When CrossFit came along, it just screamed at me to bring up my other areas that hadn’t gotten so much attention. The good thing was though that the barbell lifts made the other areas easy to bring up. For example, if your holy grail is body-weight exercise and/or kettle bells and that is all you do your life and then a competition comes up where there is a multitude of fitness modalities, you will excel at the body-weight and kettle bell stuff but will suffer greatly at the barbell and heavy stuff (more often than not). Now, if you come from and strength and power background, a couple of runs at the body-weight stuff and kettle bell stuff should suffice for you to be competitive in those events and you will smoke the the barbell and heavy stuff. Get my drift?
I am not saying don’t just put all your stuff into barbell lifts because if you can, you should be attacking all weaknesses. That’s only common sense. What I am saying is that you give yourself a better chance at competing if you only did barbell lifts as compared to only doing other stuff independently. Now, I get that there will be those that say it takes too much time to learn a lot of those movements or that the injury rate is much lower with body-weight/kettle bell/dumbbell’s, or a whole host of other counter-points but the fact remains that barbell lifts are king. It does take some time to properly learn these movements but no one learned to walk in one day and we didn’t stay with crawling because it was too tough to or too unsafe to learn how to walk. I mean, crawling still got us from point A to point B but we decided it wasn’t efficient movement. And machines? Don’t get me started on those. That’s like walking with a cane or walker. Do your own work people!
So in the end, get yourself a barbell and a set of bumpers. You only have a few minutes a day? Learn the barbell lifts and perform them. Learn them and follow a nice linear and then undulating program to develop your strength and power all while mixing and matching these movements with body-weight movements and sprinting for your metabolic conditioning. So maybe you Squat heavy and then perform a nice little met-con of cleans and pushups. It really is simple. No frills. Just get strong as hell and develop a fierce, metabolic heart and you will be untouchable. The rest is just baggage.
Today WOD
Front Squat 3-3-3-3-3 reps
132×3
176×3
220×3
242×3
262×3
277×3
As many rounds in 15 minutes of:
110 yard sprint
7 DB Weighted Pull-ups, 50 pound dumbbell
Rounds: 1 pull-up short of 6 rounds
Wednesday’s WOD
Rest Day
Tuesday’s WOD
5 rounds for time of:
5 Push Presses, 185 pounds
400 meter run
Time: 10:19
Monday’s WOD
3 DB Front squats, 50 pound dumbbells
6 Pushups
9 Box Jumps, 20 inch box
Rest 1 minute between 3 minute cycles
As many rounds as possible in 3 minutes of the above triplet, repeat cycle 5 times.
5 rounds/5 rounds/5 rounds/5 rounds/5 rounds
Sunday’s WOD
7 rounds for time of:
3 Power cleans, 200 pounds
40 yard sprint
Time: 4:30 or 4:40 something. Don’t remember.
