Videos

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Traveling today. Enjoy these videos.

Chris is getting ready for a meet in about a month. He squatted a reported easy 630 the other day (he told me he could have doubled it). I had him pull a heavier single at 640. Here it is:


Mike is competing this weekend at USAPL Military Nationals. His brother Alex is getting nice and strong again. Here’s 485×3.


Chris doesn’t like that he can’t bench well, but in January of 2009 he had a pretty serious shoulder injury in an Oly meet that probably should have had surgical attention. Instead I helped him rehab and he’s pushing towards a 400 bench. Here’s a paused single at 375.


You can send your training vids in, and feel free to post them to the comments. Get reckless.

19 thoughts on “Videos”

  2. Awesome videos. Chris can deadlift so much but still has impeccable technique. Goes against the idea that max efforts will result in use of poor form.

    On ACs PR page it says that he can bench 375×3 and has a competition bench of 380. Not so long ago there was a video of him benching 365×5. Where is he at now on the bench? Is he closer to 400 than Chris?

  3. Last night I had an option to have free consultation/training session with a trainer at my gym. I’m not one to turn down free stuff, so I decided to give it a go after my regular TM training session. I thought you guys might enjoy some of the amazing pieces of wisdom/silly bullshit I learned from that consultation:

    1) It’s bad to eat meat more than once a day; eating it more often will leave you with undigested meat all over the place inside your abdomen.
    2) Long, slow distance running/eliptical/stationary bike is the only way to really loose bodyfat, except reducing the down time between sets can do it too.
    3) It’s not necessary to lift heavier weights to get stronger. Apparently your body can learn to move heavier things by moving lighter things
    4) At 5’9″ 200 lbs my BMI is edging toward the danger zone and therefore I am at risk for chronic disease
    5) But don’t be confused, eating a high protein, high fat diet won’t help prevent chronic disease
    6) I’ll never make progress without taking supplaments like whey, amino acids, etc. Creatine might be dangerous so I might want to quit it, maybe.
    7) I should consier becoming a vegetarian, even though the trainer admitted to having blackouts while exercising due to a super healthy vegetarian diet
    8) Drinking milk is bad because it’s loaded with hormones (irregardless of whether this is true, I mentioned I drink goat’s milk and the subject was quickly changed)
    9) It’s not possible to stretch too much
    10) Static stretching before weight lifting, sprinting, or any other activities does not reduce performance or increase injury rates, contrary to whatever controlled studies I may have cited
    11) It’s impossible to know whether static or dynamic stretching is better
    12) The smith machine is a good, safer alternative to free barbells
    13) I need to work on my “core,” an amorphous, undefined area somewhere around “here and here”
    14) Weaker people are not less useful than stronger people, regardless of whatever experience I may have being both and living on planet earth.

    In order to prove that my current training doesn’t include enough “core” strengthening, I was challenged to do a 90 second, no! 2 minute!, plank. I had already finished a 90 min TM recovery day session and hadn’t done planks in a while. Magically I was able to do the two minutes without breaking a sweat. How could this be? How could my “core” possibly be trained by holding a 350 lb barbell on my back or lifting a 380 lb barbell off the floor?

  4. Thats some inspiring shit guys. Good fucking job.

    @maslow
    Some chick at the gym my buddies and I train at told them that they were squatting too much weight one night when I wasn’t there. She also explained they were going far too low and that they needed to let the “energy flow from their knees”…whatever in the fuck that means. My friend inquired as to why she believed it was too much weight. She immediately dropped the “well I’m right because I got a degree from Stanford and humans shouldn’t lift that much” bullshit. She also had a husband that probably weighed 120 lbs and was doing bosu ball one legged squats. It never ceases to amaze me how some people try to offer the worst advice ever. Even if I see someone doing something awful (which is quite frequent) I never say a goddamned word.

  5. Can’t see the imbedded vids, blocked at work, but plan to watch later. Watching Chris squat makes me want to be like him when I grow up….in fact I may actually be older than him (I’m 28, how old is Chris) but I digress…

    Maslow, nice post full of “wisdom” that you hear at the gym all the time. It makes you wonder if other professions were out there spreading these mistruths what the work would be like. I mean as an engineer, if I was to go tell people that toilet paper is stronger than steel and all buildings should be built of TP it would make for a bad scene.

  7. @Maslow
    My gym offers the same deal of a free training session when you enroll. I’ve always been curious what a 150lb trainer was going to teach me. At only 5’9’’ 185lbs I dwarf some of them in size which is just sad. I overheard one trainer mention to his trainee “Now that I’m not playing ball anymore there is just no reason to squat. It’s too dangerous and what do I need it for?”

  8. Chris is a man. I wish he were my dad.

    @Stonkus – nice job! What type of programming have you been doing to prepare for the meet? I’m looking to do my first meet soon, and I’ve been working with a “coach” at my university, but it seems like we do way too much volume and don’t hit high intensity often enough. He constantly has us reference everything in terms a percentage of our “max”, which is set for months at a time – doesn’t really make sense.

  10. Justin,

    Can you do a blurb on Chris’ shoulder rehab? I hurt my shoulder doing bench press about a year ago, gave it a week off then started from THE bottom of the barrel (45lbs) to rehab myself. Just last week I built back up to 200lbs. It didn’t feel difficult, but I felt the tight creaking pain again, and snap… re-injured, top of the shoulder slightly more fore than aft. Not happy. Being in the military, I have a strong aversion to the Docs who generally know a little about a lot.

    Thanks.

  12. @ big_mike

    Thanks. I’ve been following a Texas Method Setup, volume (Mon.), light (Wed.), max effort (Fri.) setup. split up squat/bench and deadlift/press, rotate weekly.

    I then practice my Olympic Lifts on Tues/Sat with a coach and other lifters. Typical do a version/full lift of both C&J and Snatch + High bar squats/push press/deadlift to a max.

    I have been constantly hitting weekly PR’s (save one day where sleep was an issue the night before) with this program.

    I’m competing in our provincial meet next Saturday, attempting to qualify for nationals.

  17. @Maslow

    I’m actually having a hard time believing a couple of those, haha. I mean, we’ve all heard our share of dumb shit at our globo gyms (which is why I’ve never used those free consultations), but dear god.

  18. I totally forgot the best one: she told me she takes prenatal vitamins. She isn’t pregnant either. She takes them because she isn’t getting enough nutrition from her shitty vegetarian diet. Very logical.

  19. @stonkus A bodyweight power snatch for your first meet is not bad at all. Too bad you have to choose between 105 and super heavy as you look like you could gain another 10-20 pounds of useful weight.

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