I realize some of you have an aversion to conditioning because of a disdain for CrossFit. Others consider conditioning a waste of time because they are primarily strength athletes — powerlifters, weightlifters, strongman competitors, or just someone who wants to be strong. Well, it’s time to stop being a baby and avoiding something that can help your strength training, your health, and your horizontal rumba.

“Conditioning” is a term that I use to represent “Endurance”. The latter is most often associated with long, slow distance (LSD) training, so I typically avoid using it. “Conditioning” technically also means “conditioning structures like muscles, tendons, bones, and ligaments to a stress”, so the term is actually too broad to use. Because of that, in FIT we used the phrase, “high intensity endurance training” to more properly define “high intensity conditioning”. High Intensity Endurance Training is what I’m referring to here when I say “conditioning”, and it can help a lifter.

At the very least, conditioning can help improve a lifter’s ability to recover in between sets. If a set of five is a strain on “conditioning capability”, then that’s problematic in a training program. Not only are the muscle fibers and motor neurons having to recover for the set, but the energy systems as well. If that same lifter had better conditioning capability, then the demand for the energy systems to recover would be removed, and they’d have quicker recovery between sets. That means they would be fresher to apply more force properly in the actual set, yet it would also help initiate overall recovery for the next workout because they are causing a lower overall stress.

Justin, Luiz, and Chris do some conditioning on Camel Back Mountain

Conditioning is also something that regulates body fat. The “why” is because of how high intensity conditioning causes a deficit in substrates. The body adapts in a way that it can handle that deficit of substrates again in the future, and one of the adaptations is lowering body fat in the long term. A skeptic can just look at the waif-like, yet lean figures in the men’s CrossFit population (the part that doesn’t strength train). Obviously there are more variables that go into body composition, but conditioning is something that improves performance but also can lower body fat. Compare that to something like “fasted cardio”; it’s only performed to decrease body fat and actually has some negative side effects (e.g. being on your feet and walking for 5 to 8 hours a week).

The cardiovascular and respiratory adaptations to conditioning training will also help acute and long-term health. It helps improve recovery between sets. Being able to sustain higher rates of work or sustain a given rate of work for longer will only augment your horizontal ramba capability, though it won’t improve your skill. There are many benefits a strength athlete can gain from conditioning, but the fear is that it will hurt the strength training or overall strength.

Chris has had this fear for a while. We talked about including two days a week of conditioning after the Arnold, but it wasn’t really implemented. As we visited together, I emphasized that conditioning — especially when placed in a program properly — won’t be debilitating to heavy strength training. We proved that this past weekend in Arizona. Chris had numerous factors that were negatively effecting his training: sleeping on a couch for a week, not eating good quantities or qualities of food, travelling, and being in the sun a lot. Then on Friday night, we climbed Camel Back Mountain with our buddy Luiz. Chris hasn’t climbed a mountain in five years and doesn’t really do conditioning. There were times when he had to stop to catch his breath on the climb, not to mention the hundreds of “lunges” he did going up and all of the eccentric work on his knees on the way down. Nevertheless, he came into the gym the next day (after more travelling) to squat up to 615 and 620 (video below). If there was a set of circumstances that would result in ruining his strength or strength training, it would have been what he went through in the last week.

The point? When conditioning is properly programmed, it will augment your health and training. It won’t be debilitating to your heavy days. Conditioning is relative to what a person is adapted to, and in the future we’ll look at how to determine what to do and how to do it.

Today is a travel day after a long, yet enjoyable weekend in Arizona. Chris and I stayed in both Phoenix and Tucson for the 70’s Big Seminar at Evolution Fitness. I’d like to thank Chris F. and Tyler for acting as lovable hosts throughout the weekend. I’d like to thank all of the attendees for being a good crowd, eager to learn, and for laughing at my jokes. It takes a lot of energy to be “on” for an entire weekend, but it’s always worth when it’s for top notch folks. I’d also like to thank my homies Chris and Luiz for having good shit, good shit.

Here’s a sweet video we made that will give you an idea of the time we had.


Here’s a sweet picture from when we ate at a cowboy steak house and then watched a live action wild west show that included gunshots, blood, explosions, and a guy fucking falling off of a roof. We’re posing with the actors.

L to R: Tyler, Cowboy, Renee, Elizabeth, Justin, Bad Cowboy, Chris, Luiz, Chris, Cowboy

PR Friday

As always, post your training PR’s and updates to the comments. Last week I set a goal for everyone: “meet your daily protein intake with primarily meat; only allow 25 to 50g of whey protein for your daily allotment.” Did any of you do it? It requires a bit more planning to eat mostly meat, but it’ll put better quality protein into your body instead of insulin-spiking whey. Something to think about.

Next week’s goal: Aim to do heavy farmer’s walks at the end of at least two of your training sessions next week. Next Friday you’ll post your weight and estimated distance.

Weekly Recap

Monday we celebrated Memorial Day and paid tribute to those that have sacrificed their own freedom or life to preserve American way of life. Tuesday we reviewed why it’s such a good idea to compete and looked at how one of the female 70’s Big readers did so successfully. Wednesday continued a much needed discussion on mobility and put an emphasis on a tool called The Stick. Thursday I traveled and just posted the pictures that veterans sent me on Memorial Day (in case you didn’t see them on Facebook or Twitter).

When I was in Australia I met a guy named Dayne who runs a fitness/bodybuilding YouTube channel. He interviewed me for his site at the Aussie fitness expo in Sydney. I remember not being funny enough.

Q&A

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On Memorial Day I asked FB and Twitter users to submit pictures of themselves serving. These are what I received. I don’t have time to set up a fan vote (travelling to Arizona), so everyone argue which picture is the best in the comments.

From Facebook:

"Muscle Beach, OP Restrepo, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 2007

Ryan E., Iraq, 2007

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Last week we started talking generally about mobility and then focused on “The Stick” as a tool that can help with soft tissue work. To fully maximize the use out of The Stick, or any other tool used for soft tissue work, it helps to have an understanding of how and why they work.

First, you would need a decent understanding of musculoskeletal anatomy. Knowing how and where muscles attach to bones and how they function in movement lays the foundation for what we work on. For example, knowing where muscles attach would help us figure out why a person has poor overhead position or why they have pain when racking a low bar squat.

Second, knowing the structure and positioning of muscle fibers would help us understand where and how to apply force on the tissues. In most cases the force will be applied along the muscle belly instead of across it, but there are some instances where the latter is used.

Third, given all of these specifics, we can look at the musculoskeletal system as a whole. If a muscle or a collection of muscles are tight, then they are shortened. If they are shortened, then there is more tension at their attachment sites. Attachment sites are almost always joints, and therefore joint pain is prevalent when muscle bellies are tight. Doing mobility exercises helps alleviate tension on these muscles to relieve the multi-angled tension at joints. This, in turn, will decrease pain at the joint or along a chain of attachments (e.g. relieving tension at the hip from all angles will decrease lower back and sacral pain).

This is why The Stick is an effective tool because it allows for a more pin pointed application of greater force. The following video is the second half of the video I made with Mike Hom in showing how The Stick can be used. We focus on serratus anterior, the posterior shoulder, calves/achilles, and hamstrings but allude to other ways The Stick can be used. Notice that the stick is used on segments to alleviate tension in the muscle to lessen tension at joints, as described above.