There is a 70’s Big Workshop in Alpharetta, GA this Saturday (near Atlanta), and you can still sign up by going here. The price is $85 and we will start at 10:00 AM. E-mail me if you have any questions.
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The Super Total is this month’s challenge. Some of you dudes were being a pain in the ass about stuff not being heavy enough in the challenges, so now is your chance to do a challenging lifting day. The details for the Super Total are here.
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Since I haven’t been talking about it, I’ll extend the 70’s Big Face Picture Challenge until Labor Day weekend. To learn how to make the face, go here, and go here for info on the picture submission contest (including where to send the picture). Winners will receive posters from Killustrated.com.
Also, you can receive a 10% discount on any order over $25 at Killustrated.com by using the code “70BG” when you check out. There are some sweet posters and cool shirts.
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PR Friday
Let us know if you’ve had any PR’s whether you think you are strong or not. If you don’t have any PR’s, let everyone know how your training is going. The discussion probably makes everyone’s work day go faster on a Friday.
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Random Video — Kendrick Farris clean and jerking 211kg in training.
Mikhail Koklyaev is an impressive human being. He is crazy strong in every lift you can think of, powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting. Watch the following demonstration where he does a 270kg behind-the-neck jerk, deadlifts 400kg for a triple, does a 290kg NO HAND squat, and a 190kg snatch. Egad.
His best snatch is 210kg and his best clean and jerk is 250kg. Those numbers would put him among the best in the world in the super heavyweight category, and if he trained the lifts exclusively he probably could win a gold medal. Look at this video of him push pressing 220kg (to clarify, that’s 484 lbs.):
He also has some pretty damn good powerlifting numbers. His bests are a 365kg squat, a 240kg bench, and a 415kg deadlift — all raw. In pounds that is 803, 528, and 913! He could be a top contender in powerlifting too! Here is a video of him deadlifting 415kg:
Koklyaev is a good strongman competitor — he finished on the podium for all the IFSA World Championships and has done well at the Arnold Strongman Classic (5 finishes in the top 5) and has won a lot of Strongman Champions League in Russia. Plus, he’s got some other skills. You can see more of Koklyaev’s domination of the iron at his YouTube channel.
In the 70’s Big Workshops I go into depth on the topic of conditioning and programming it in a strength program. I always mention barbell complexes and their effectiveness regarding conditioning, especially with a person who lacks conditioning.
Dan John is known for his use of complexes, and they can be traced back to Istvan “Steve” Javorek’s creativity. This article by John is a nice introduction to the complexes. Here is some stuff by Javorek, and this is a list of Dan John’s favorite complexes. A barbell complex has the lifter performing multiple reps at sub-maximal weight in different exercises. An example of one of John’s complexes is doing reps (5, for example) on a bent over row, power clean, front squat, military press, back squat, and good mornings. Running through each exercise at five reps each would be considered a “set”, and you would do 3 to 5 sets of them.
Barbell complexes are pretty useful for a few reasons. They have the lifter performing a lot of volume in a relatively short amount of time. If you did the above complex at 8 reps each, that’s almost 50 reps on your entire body. From a conditioning standpoint, complexes use a lot of musculature and keep the muscles working for 2 to 5 minutes at a time. This creates a deficit in energy substrates, and the deficit is the stress that the body adapts to over time to get conditioned. Also, the high reps on full range of motion lifts helps maintain lean body mass when in a conditioning phase, and potentially will increase the LBM as well.
Gant used barbell complexes and prowler work to condition for Judo season earlier this year to great success. Even though he dropped the big lifts (he was already strong and needed to cut to 220), he actually gained a bit of muscle while dropping body fat. Gant does really well with creating conditioning programs for combative sports, so if you ever need help, he’s the guy to talk to. He made a good point to me on the phone last night. If you are doing a complex for five sets (with roughly 50 reps per set), and each set you increase the weight 10 pounds, then you increase the tonnage by a ton (2000 lbs.) throughout the workout. And that’s not even counting the tonnage you’re doing with the movements themselves. It’s not surprising that he built some muscle doing a month of barbell complexes.
I differ from Dan John in that I don’t program barbell complexes for the sake of LBM or strength gain. Dan runs a high school weight room, so he has to have quick workouts to make progress and keep kids motivated — the logistics probably get hairy and I don’t have to worry about that. If I’m working with a person that is sedentary, de-trained, or just de-conditioned, I’ll get them strong for a few weeks and start introducing some basic conditioning where I vary up the work to rest ratio. I have used a pseudo barbell complex before, and it’s simply doing 5×5 squats, 5×5 presses, and 5×3 deadlifts at a lighter weight on the minute. This is challenging enough where the person gets a little sweaty and breathing hard, and then I once they do this a few times, I’ll make things more complicated. Generally speaking I’ll get someone strong, then use stuff like barbell complexes or interval training to start getting them conditioned.
Complexes are a great tool because of the higher rep volume the whole body receives. Because of this it can turn into a very effective conditioning tool. Plus it only requires the most basic gym equipment — a barbell. If you’re interested, try sticking in one of Dan John’s complexes after one of your training sessions. Start off lighter than you need to and take the rest breaks.
Last night I did a complex that I created. I haven’t been able to train a lot recently (lots of travel, contracting the plague, etc.) and don’t have access to a gym for a few days. I wanted some light, but thorough work on my body so that when I do get to a gym, I’m not too far behind. I also wanted to use a complex for some conditioning workout in the garage so that the Florida weather would provide extra stress. Turns out it was plenty.
I ended up doing five reps each of power cleans, front squats, presses, back squats, bent over rows, deadlifts, power jerks, back squats, and RDLs. I did that three times with 60kg (134 lbs.). The first set took me about 4 minutes. I rested 4 minutes in the garage (I wanted to have to recover in the heat/humidity), and the next set took me about 3.5 minutes, but I was sucking wind. Then I rested 5 or 6 minutes and finished the last set in about 4 minutes. Barely. Then I sprawled out in the A/C for 20 minutes.
I wouldn’t recommend doing something like that in your first conditioning workout. I have pretty good work capacity for a lifter and I also can adapt to things pretty quickly, but it still kicked my ass. If you haven’t been doing any conditioning, then it doesn’t take much stress to induce an adaptation. It’s always better to ease into things. Since my body went through that shock, I had a headache throughout last night.
In order to be “in shape”, the average lifter won’t need more than one or two conditioning workouts if you plan them well. Barbell complexes are already set up so that you don’t have to do a lot of planning or tweaking. If you have wanted to add some conditioning to your program and didn’t want to do any running, give complexes a try.
Arnold and friend hit up some barbell complexes
Gant’s note:
Complexes can be a good addition to any program. You can use them as assistance work, conditioning, or simply to add volume to your workout. Read the articles Justin linked and the list of Dan John’s complexes. If you must create your own, try to be reasonable. When I talked to Dan about them, he said “pass over your head once and don’t get stupid with the movements.” Can’t beat that.
My favorite one was Complex A for eights. I did this two ways. In one, I would work it like sets across with a five minute rest period (the minimum amount of time you get between judo matches). I can tell you now that five sets of Complex A at 60 kg will get your dander up in a big way.
The second way I did this was to do five sets and add weight each time, resting as necessary between sets. I worked up to 90kg, which was basically a three-minute slugfest.
Row x 8
Clean x 8
Front squat x 8
Military press x 8
Back squat x 8
Good mornings x 8
One of 70’s Big’s campaigns is to get people competing in something. There are a lot of mental and introspective benefits to competing and it focuses training and makes it fun. Whether you are a grizzled veteran or just starting out, you can send in videos and I’ll actually start posting them regularly. I’ll try to dip into my e-mail archives for those of you who have already sent in videos.
For all you spectators, maybe you can use this as motivation. I haven’t heard of anyone having a bad time at their first meet/competition. And for all of you daily commentors, go ahead and strike up a conversation. I leave it up to you resourceful goons to incite a riot conversation topic.
Oh, and if you find things around the internet that are relevant to 70’s Big, whether they are videos, pictures or articles, then feel free to send those on in.
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Stephen Winburn is a powerlifter competing in the 220 lb. class (presumably raw?) in Georgia. He has competed against AC before, and this is a video of him pulling 555 for a triple for a 37 lb. PR. Nice.
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Duane competed in the 110kg class at the Brute Strength Stars and Stripes USAPL competition in Norfolk, VA. His total of 587.5 kg was good enough to win the weight class by a margin of 2.5kg (the same increase he made on his third attempt squat). Nice job, Duane.
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And lastly, NolanPower from the comments did awesome at NJ states. He went 8/9, 1636 lbs. in the 220 lb. class — RAW. He caps the meet off with a 716 lb. third attempt deadlift. Fucking awesome.
Brent is a pain in the ass, so let’s pick on him today. Here is a video of him deadlifting 405 for 8. It isn’t a limit set, but it’s tough.
On a side note, Brent was asking if he looks more swole in the picture (remember, he’s been focusing on swollertrophy as of late). I really can’t tell because he’s wearing white, the one color that reduces swoleness.
Irre-fucking-gardlessly, let’s talk about some mechanics. If you watch the first few reps, you can see that Brent doesn’t get a good squeeze in his chest prior to pulling. Since he doesn’t extend his thoracic spine to the potential that he can, there is some slack that gets yanked out as he starts the pull. Brent habitually does this for some reason (I noticed it on his Olympic lifts, and he was doing it in an Olympic weightlifting meet in March to deleterious effects), and I think training alone all the time is the culprit. As you can see, Brent is strong enough that the loose starting position doesn’t prevent him from pulling the bar off the ground, affect his low back, or change the bar path. This looseness can allow the bar to swing forward as it comes off the ground, and when the bar is in front of the middle of the foot (the balance point) it’ll be exponentially harder (and cause a missed lift if it’s heavy). Letting the bar swing out front also can cause the low back to round since the lever arm is less efficient.
As Brent gets tired, you can see his hips raise before the bar gets past his knees. Ideally the back angle shouldn’t change until after the bar passes the knees. His back angle changes (hips rising, chest dropping) because his hamstrings are getting tired. The hamstrings isometrically hold the back angle in place, and since he’s doing higher reps they are getting fatigued and not doing their job. You can clearly see this as the bar passes his knees. Brent pushes his knees forward and the bar doesn’t move upward. As a result, the hips extend without applying any force to the bar, and this makes the back more vertical. In other words, the bar doesn’t move that much and the hamstrings are no longer helping, so the lockout becomes primarily a knee and back extension without including the normal hip extension.
If you’re doing a 1RM, you should pull the bar however you can. But when you’re trying to get as much musculature strong (or maximally jacked), you’d want to keep your knees back so that the hamstrings maintain their role in the movement. Brent isn’t horribly sloppy here, but if he were, there would be significant stress on the lumbar spine. If you already have back problems then you’d want to be careful with this common form fault. I’ve coached lots of people that have lumbar disc problems and they have never re-injured the existing injury. However, I’ve heard several stories recently of people hurting their backs deadlifting, and this form issue is probably the problem. Any time you change a movement mid-lift to use less muscle mass, you’ll increase the injury potential.
A coach should take care of your form faults, but if you don’t have one, a friend or camera can identify your problems. You should have already learned enough about the movement that you would be able to see major errors. Once they are identified, you can cue yourself. At most you’ll think about one or two cues. In Brent’s case, I would verbally cue him to squeeze his chest up before the lift starts. This would fix his little “hips raising” issue as well as the “pulling the slack out” issue. Since 405 is relatively lighter for him, his lack of tightness isn’t detrimental, but he looks like a poon doing it. Next, I would cue his knees to stay back on the second portion of the pull. This will prevent his knees from falling forward and will keep his hamstrings tight, thus giving him a wonderful set of hams that will create the road map for a woman’s eyes to travel up to his prominent glutes he got from FedEx and squatting.
Next I would cue him to do pull-ups in his underwear.
Brent’s roommate does a fantastic job of giving him adamantly loud, yet non-descriptive cues.
