Category Archives: Content

Case Study

Posted on by
22

The following is a post written by Paul, a retired USMC Colonel who had success running the S&C Program that I created a couple years ago. He’s under the guidance of Eric Montgomery, a really sharp guy who is doing an excellent job of programming and coaching. Eric’s comments are after Paul’s in italics.

It is hard to add a lot of new information to what has already been written about Justin Lascek’s program. Yet here I am adding another such story to the mix. Hopefully my experience will be helpful and motivating to someone. In just 8 weeks of following the Justin Lascek approach seasoned with a lot of Mark Rippetoe, STARTING STRENGTH, guidance I had measureable strength increase that exceeded what I had been able to gain in the previous 8 months doing CrossFit.

My basic profile is: a 52 year old male, about 6 feet tall and tip the scale today at 195. I have limited barbell experience before I started CrossFit about a year ago. I retired from the Marine Corps in 2006. After I retired I struggled to maintain any sort of fitness. Combine that with stupid things like a lot of business travel including the seemingly requisite late night meals, decadent carbs and lack of sleep, I was becoming a physical wreck, fat and old.

I was able finally to drop the endless business travel and began searching for a program to fix my sorry ass. Some colleagues pointed me at CF.com. I followed CF.com by myself at various military fitness centers for about a year mainly because it was fun and because it was completely different from the useless Marine Corps way—jog three miles slowly, do some pull-ups and crunches then go back to an office and brag about what a bad ass you were—that I had followed for decades. Being the novice that I was, I noticed some good results. I felt better, slept better and was slightly stronger. Unfortunately, I didn’t do all of CrossFit. I ignored any of the nutrition stuff and continued to eat the typical, high carb, get ready for Diabetes and cancer diet– I didn’t know any better and didn’t research.

Even though I felt better and was getting some good results, I knew that doing CF alone was probably not optimal and that any progress would be slow. Fortuitously, I ran across Trish Davis, then of CFSD, during a computer security course and she recommended CFSD. Following Trish’s recommendation, in Sept 2009, I started a Crossfit Foundations course with Nathan Stivers—then a CFSD trainer.


However, I had another health issues to deal with before I could continue. In the last part of the same month, radiologists confirmed that I had a type 1 lung cancer. I was fortunate in that it was found very early, before any metastasize—if I said that right—it appeared to not have spread anywhere. Nevertheless, the treatment was a lobectomy—surgery to chop out my left lower lung lobe.

Surgery was scheduled for October 21 of 2009. However, I continued at CFSD all the way up to the day before surgery. On October 20th, I remember doing one rep max weighted pull-ups at over 80lbs. Then the next day open chest surgery. BTW, if you can avoid surgery of any type, I highly recommend it. I got some great pain meds and overall great Navy medical care. But it still hurt like hell.


The worst part was that I couldn’t train for ten weeks. I wanted to train so bad that two days after surgery, flying high on morphine, I was trying to do air squats in the hospital bathroom. My son ratted me out to the surgeon and I was told in no uncertain terms to lay off for the full ten weeks of recovery.

Slowly the ten weeks passed, the holidays of 2009 passed and I was finally able to get at it again at CF San Diego in January of 2010. Suffice to say I was pretty much a physical wreck—again. I was doing banded pull-ups, knee pushups and overall generally just a mess. However, once I started training again things improved rapidly. I lost the bands in a few weeks and got off my knees for pushups about the same time.


This is where the real story begins that is relevant for 70s Big. I did a Crossfit total (combined weight for one rep max Squat, Press and Deadlift) in May of 2010 and scored what I thought was well considering I’d been on an operating table just a few months earlier. My CFT at that time was 750. The coach at the time made an off the cuff comment that I was on my way to 1000. Hmmm, 750 to 1000 any time soon, I doubted her veracity.

For the next several months, I followed the basic CFSD programming including following the Zone/paleo diet suggestions. I consistently attended classes and competed with my peers at the box. Yet I felt that I struggled at too many CrossFit expected movements—handstand pushups, 20 lbs wall ball, DUs, OHS etc. Then the real gut check came when my 26 year old daughter, already a Rippetoe convert, told me essentially “Dad you suck because you’re weak. You need to get strong, now! You aren’t getting any younger. Get Rippetoe’s book and get on with it.” Well she was right, I did suck and I was weak. However, the positive side was I could get Rip’s book and try to do something to get stronger.

In January 2011, I was still getting my plan together about how to incorporate a strength program while I was still playing with my friends in the CFSD morning class. Then another CFT came upon the schedule. I still showed reasonable gains. I squatted 334, deadlifted 423 and a weak press of 135. That was the second gut check; I realized that I’d never get really good numbers doing the eclectic programming that is prominent at CF boxes. BTW, CFSD is a great place and the programmers really do a good job trying to increase member’s general fitness while pleasing all the various motivations and goals of a big group of Crossfitters.

Those two gut checks did it. I quit attending classes and carved out a time on a barbell platform three days a week. I took Rip’s SS as gospel and started following it completely—for a week. The feedback I got when I talked with others about it was: “WARNING your metcons will suffer.” BTW, I’m the guy with half a lung—my metcons already sucked. Yet, I spoke about this with trainer Eric Montgomery. He suggested the Justin Lascek modification to Rip’s guidance—little slower gains, a couple more exercises and two metcons a week. Okay, if Eric tells me something, I do it. I dropped the three days a week SS program and started the Lascek 70s Big program with two short metcons for conditioning. I have followed it exactly for about 8 weeks now. I also followed closely the Rippetoe prescriptions for protein consumption, except milk, and a paleo diet with some unflavored protein powder supplement.

I did the CFT today for fun, March 31, 2011. CFT today was 1034, a 144 lbs increase from the end of January, in just 8 weeks. Squat went from 334 to 405. Deadlift went from 423 to 475. Both lifts were easy. Press increased by 19 lbs, to 154lbs. That is still weak, but a vast improvement from January. Moreover, I’ve increased muscle mass and decreased body fat. My tape measurements show my body fat is around 12%. I’d never had a body fat lower than 18% even when I weighed 15 lbs less.

So in 8 weeks following the 70s Big S&C program, I increased my CFT by 144lbs and landed in the Advanced Athlete block of the CFT chart on CF.com FAQ. That is a four lbs greater increase than I got during 8 months of CFSD basic programming.

Eric’s notes:
It’s also worth mentioning that his form is about 100% better than it used to be. As of a few months his squats in particular didn’t look that great, mainly due to some mobility issues. To the best of my knowledge he hasn’t done any intensive mobility work aside from some basic K-Star stuff—simply squatting more has fixed most of his flexibility issues and made him much better at squatting.

The other thing that Paul didn’t emphasize as much as he should have is that he did the program to an absolute T, and was 100% consistent and compliant. No fancy modifications, no skipped days, nothing. That’s not to say he blindly followed the program—he came to me with questions on a fairly regular basis, but as soon as I gave him the logic behind why the program is designed the way it is, he accepted my reasoning, put his head down, and went to work on the platform.

His progress also proves that a lifter can go from the relative novice stage to solid numbers without completely losing all his conditioning or putting on a lot of soft weight. For instance, he just posted a 4:28 Fran yesterday, which compares quite nicely to his previous PR of 7:10 set about 4 months ago. Paul looks pretty ripped right now without even really trying to, and I’d probably yell at him to gain 20lbs if his numbers gave me any indication that lack of weight gain was stalling his progress. Maybe if things slow down a bit and he decides he wants to make a push for 500lbs on his squat and 600lbs on his deadlift we’ll revisit the bodyweight issue, but as of now it’s not holding him back at all.

Despite the fact that the first two Games workouts have skewed heavily towards lightweight metcon machines, and despite the fact that he’s competing with 1.5 lungs, Paul is currently 58th out of 249 in the 50-54 age group. Expect him to start smoking non-adult males as soon as the first halfway heavy workout comes up.


Here’s a video of him squatting 156kg for a set of 5 last week. Before anyone jumps on him for it, when Paul emailed me the link he immediately noted that he needs to get about 2″ deeper on all of those reps. I did get verification that his 405lb 1RM was to legit depth though.


70’s Big Females

Posted on by
50

The following post was written by Cori and Ellee from Safe Fitness in Chicago. They are sick of the lack of leadership in the female 70’s Big community, specifically the need for better and bigger asses.

What does it mean to be a 70’s Big Female?

Easy answer, ass size must be greater than 38” around. Why does this matter? Having a big ass means you can move and squat heavy weight, preferably at least your body weight. You might ask, well what about having a fat ass, does that count? No. Being a 70’s Big Female is not just about having a dumptruck on your backside, but you must also be able to haul that dumptruck wherever life may need it to go. Example: chin ups, pull ups, overhead squats, etc. It is more about having a GREAT ass.

In Cori’s 24 years of life on this planet – nearly all of them spent in a gym (playpen positioned right next to the chalk bowl, barbell in hand) – she has seen many women who would qualify as a 70’s Big Female, but has also seen many who would not represent. These women prefer to be skinny rather than strong. SKINNY = FAIL! What they don’t understand is that training hard, squatting heavy, and lifting serious weights is sexy.

Lifting quite clearly makes you sexy (Cori as a youngster)



In addition, we have got to get other 70’s Big Females training to be to able haul their great asses off the ground from a dead hang position. This is not something that comes easily to most women, especially when you are carting around a 38” undercarriage, but with hard work, it is totally attainable. Pretty soon you’ll be cranking them out like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, doing chin-ups in the mental hospital right before she beats the shit out of those guards. Sweaty, strong, and fucking badass.

Cori’s father runs a high school Olympic weightlifting program in Minnesota and recently told us he was having problems recruiting young female lifters. He asked one of the volleyball coaches why these girls did not want to train and get better at their sport. The volleyball coach stated that the leaders on the team wanted to “look smaller” rather than be a powerhouse volleyball team. Skinny instead of winning? Come on girls, it’s all about WINNING (sorry, Charlie)! We think the skinny mentality is toxic and could spread to the rest of the team. Where are our 70’s Big Female leaders? Who can tell these young girls that sexiness and winning comes from squatting BIG, not being a twig fairy. It happens by actually putting weight on the barbell and going up and down, up and down, up and down, etc. You get the point. We would like to empower women by encouraging them to strive to be “real women”. Strong women. Thirty-eight inch ass women. 70’s Big Women.

Ellee in Sarah Conner garb, pre-rip



Last Halloween, Ellee was doing a WOD (while wearing her Sarah Connor costume) where heavy overhead squats were the main attraction. Minutes into the overhead squats, she felt some intense restriction in the ass/thigh region of her pants while performing the squats, but she decided to power-through. However, her ass could not be contained, and her left butt cheek flew out of the cheap-ass material. We are talking a clean rip of about 14” centered over the left ass. Fellas, she only wears g-strings, so she had nothing to hide behind. Ellee was a bit embarrassed, but Cori guarantees that every female in the gym was thinking, “Damn! If my ass rips out of my pants – I sure hope it looks as good as hers!” Now that is a true LEADER!

Post-rip



So 70’s Big Females, here is your challenge this week:

1 – Measure that ass and be proud!
2 – Make sure you can squat at least your bodyweight in one of your training sessions this week. Better yet, try to clean and jerk your body weight.
3 – Try to haul that ass up by working on your dead hang chin ups. Try to get one per day at first. Nothing sexier than that scene in Terminator 2.
4 – We dare you to try and blow out your pants!

Leave comments on your success! Until next time…
Cori & Ellee – 70’s Big Females

Ellee and Cori


Eye Opening

Posted on by
62

Folks, we talk a lot about barbell training on this site, but we ignore too many other forms of training out there. For instance, look at the utility in this equipment:



First, they save you $125. What you are saving it on is immaterial. Instead, look at the set-up. Yes, the actor may be a bit smaller than us, but look at his attire. He looks great! And he’s so functional — the shaking he experiences on the ring push-ups means he’s building functionality that can’t be attained anywhere else.

As far as programs go, P90X is magnificent. If you go to 1:48 in this video and watch the progress pictures, you’ll notice how P90X magnificently removed body hair from this subject. Magnificent ;-)



Lastly, a lot of you have been thinking about trying out Olympic lifting. I advise you, good sirs, to obtain optimal form with PVC pipe before attempting it with a bar. If you can’t do it with PVC, how can you do it with a load?


I am so excited to announce that it is PR Friday! I caution you “heavy eaters” out there to not post today, let’s focus on healthy eating in this PR Friday. The only people that can post are lifters who eat less than 50 grams of carbohydrates a day and squat more than 500 pounds. Also, if you don’t do everything I say, you can’t post here either. Oh, and you have to call me High Chancellor when you do it. Or else.

Paralysis by Analysis, Part 2

Posted on by
5

Most of you think that Part 1 doesn’t apply to you since I was targeting beginners, yet I’ve gotten questions on sets and rep schemes for curls and RDLs. Most programs are more complicated than they need to be. By only making a program more complicated when it has to be in order to advance strength, you’ll avoid worrying too much about it.

Yet almost all of you worry too much about your technique, particularly the low bar squat. The low bar squat isn’t as simple as going down and then coming back up; it’s harder than a power snatch or clean. But once you do some reading and research it, and the other barbell lifts, aren’t terribly hard. Don’t over complicate back angles, knee movements, and elbow positions. Most of you do, and it makes my job as the teacher via website more complicated. If I want to discuss what the knees are doing at the bottom of a squat, then all the Starting Strength fans get all worried and start analyzing their lifting footage. When I teach, I will give all of the technical details that I can, but I’ll take a step back and simplify it.

With coaching, we use “cues” to get the lifter to make a correction. Cues should apply a conceptual lesson and be a reminder for the practical lesson. All of you who have taught yourself how to squat lose out on the practical lesson and may miss out on at least half of the conceptual. But don’t worry! It’ll be okay, I promise. There are some very basic cues for each lift that will eliminate at least 75% of your problems.

Chris shows great form



Regardless of the type of squat, shove your knees out and think “mid-foot”. Shoving the knees out facilitates depth because the femur is no longer getting pushed into the Anterior Superior Iliac Spine (ASIS), or the hip pointer. Rippetoe detailed this in full in his “Active Hip” article. The femur can now move in a range of motion outside of the ASIS and get better depth. More importantly, the external rotators of the hip are contracted since the hip is in external rotation, and the adductors and, to a lesser extent, the hamstrings are stretched and under tension. Contraction in the external rotators and tension in the adductors means there is more tightness and muscle action around the hip, which makes for a stable, stronger squat. Yes, there are some frivolities between high bar and low bar (and even the wide stance high bar positioned lean-over-with-vertical-shins-as-if-we’re-wearing-a-squat-suit-even-though-we’re-lifting-raw squat, which is ridiculous), yet if all squatters focus on shoving the knees out, they are going to get stronger better than had they not. The “mid-foot” is directly in front of the heel of the foot (if you place your finger at the front (or arch side) of where your heel begins, that’s it). By imagining the load balanced on that point, the bar can track up and down over that point easier regardless of where the bar is positioned. This will help prevent backward and more specifically forward movement (that brings the lifter on their toes and jerks the knees forward at the bottom).

When deadlifting, it’s best to start with the bar over the foot and drag the bar up the shins and thighs. Getting the scapula over the bar is ideal, but that adds a third thing to think about. Instead, just set up with the bar over the mid-foot (often where the laces are tied), touch the shins to the bar, and drag it up the legs. Of course you should be squeezing your chest up and trying to have an extended back — this should be obvious — but worrying about the angle of the back and muscle activation is just going to complicate things. If the bar is dragged up the legs and doesn’t flop forward, then it’s going to be pretty damn efficient. If you can consistently do these two things (start with bar over mid-foot, drag it up legs), then you can start worrying about the frivolities. However, you’ll find there aren’t many of them.

Pressing merely requires a that your elbows are underneath or slightly in front of the bar at the start, and a vertical bar path. If you’re doing touch and go, you’ll have to think about bringing the bar straight down from the top — “keep it close” is a good cue that implies the bar should be close to the face.

These are all very simple cues. Before you even begin to think about worrying about what’s going on with your squat, make sure that you are addressing these cues. If your knees are shooting forward at the bottom of the squat, and you aren’t shoving the shit out of your knees and thinking mid-foot, then once you cue those two things, it’ll probably clear itself up. If you can’t keep the deadlift on your shins at the start of the pull, then you need to cue the “bar over mid-foot” and “drag against legs” cues. The fact that the bar is flopping away from you means that either your butt is too low or the shoulders aren’t extending, but you worrying about that is irrelevant if you’re not following the first two simple cues.

Most of you over complicate things because you try and learn how a system works by memorizing the “cause and effect” of the parts. You see the knees going forward and here an authority say, “The back angle is too vertical” so you associate all forward knee issues with a vertical torso. Or you see a thread on someone who was leaning over way too much in their squat and worry that you are too. Keep in mind that you aren’t the coach. You have to learn how the system, in this case the body as a whole, functions within each movement instead of how the body parts function in a specific scenario. In the squat and deadlift the trunk, thigh, and shin segments are all related. In the squat, a vertical torso will not have as much flexion at the bottom compared to a torso with more angle. This effects the musculature of the hip, but also the positioning and musculature around the knee. But that’s all fucking irrelevant because you’re not the coach.

Trying to make an analysis, especially on a video on the internet of someone you don’t know, is probably only going to confuse you and that person. And I’m not even getting to the situations when there are 5 things wrong in someone’s squat and the interwebz tells them how to fix 9 things. A lifter should only think about a maximum of two cues when they lift; anything else fucks things up. If the above cues are followed, then most problems will be non-existent or not a big deal.

Stop worrying so much about what your technique looks like and how it compares to other people. Just make sure it has a baseline of efficiency. You’ll be okay. I promise.

TSC Results

Posted on by
41

The DEADLINE for submitting Tactical Strength Challenge results to 70sBig.com is TONIGHT. After tonight, this post will be closed and Antigen will compile the results. Thanks to those who submitted their scores.

Post your Name, Body Weight, Division, Max Deadlift, # of pull-ups, and # of KB snatches.

Results will be compiled, and rankings will be produced. Enjoy.