Chest WOrkou

Im in koh samui at the moment and there are limited gyms here

the nearest one to me is a tiny little thing with dumbells that only go up to 35 kg

so I made up a routine to preexhaust my chest before doing my incline bench db press

(yes, im quite sure other people have thought of this, im not lookin to trademark it or anything)

take the dbs, elevate your feet bang out 10 reps, go deep, using the dbs as push up handles, then straight onto the bench to press to failure

3 sets

I thought as they were only 35kgs I would be repping out to about 20, but those 10 pushups first killed me

I got 15, 8, then 10 on the last set with assistance from a gym instructor

it fooken kills


I know a lot of you train at home with limited weights, give it a go and let me know how you get on

i personally think that routine sounds great--which may or may not be helpful, but if you're looking to feel the lower
rep range --and mix with your pugilistic themes...erm, not that i'd be presently up for it, but you could add burpees
to that mix. it'd be a circuit at that point, and you could toy with leaving the hardest last--or adding the burpees at the
beginning [some reasonible repeating number]. the less rest piece brings down the reps if you do it quasi crossFit.

having said that, i'm eating a ploughman's breakfast, guzzling tea with heaps of sugar and sitting on my duff watching
my 1 year old bring down things in the room...now i'm the fat PE teacher with his directive circuit head on. but i'll tell
you the truth, when i wanted to be a minimalist, nothing [ironically] was better than the circuit with little to no rest: for
time in the gym and results.

my alterior motive--and here's where i show my hand, is that you're in koh samui and the beach is nearby. if there
were a Richie voting column for working out with the criteria: time spent and results per time spent...that'd be my vote.

serious answer in spite of my propensity to add punchlines. if it ain't enough--and it sounds good already, add another
movement, and lesson the rest time. i used to add an unrelated muscle group movement 'as the rest' and not stop. in
30 minutes i'd be done/spent/flushed/pumped...etc...

my 2p--or 1p since i'm such a minimalist

Quote :

or adding the burpees at the
beginning [some reasonible repeating number]. the less rest piece brings down the reps if you do it quasi crossFit.

Im not a big fan of Crossfit or indeed of that way of training... sure its great for your cardio but it will sap all the strength out of your chest workout and will leave you feeling hormonally depleted- I mean if you want really good cardio you could hill sprint or do burpees, its task specific and wont leave you feeling "overtrained" the next day

you wont build a big strong chest like that tho - so... horses for courses, if you were a fighter with a fight coming up and you wanted to make EVERYTHING you did in the gym cardio intensive then maybe... but then again... why not just do heavy bag work with sprawls if that was your goal? in other words, why not just seperate that from your resistance training?

I think "crossfit style training" while valuable at times represents the peak of desiring variety just for its own sake

its like when people do complexes and circuits, yes, its fun, keeps your brain engaged, but are you going to "grow" like that? and how repeatable is it? you certainly cant train like that 5 days a week, unless you deliberately dont push and take it easy..

which brings us full circle back to: whats the point?

whatever your training objectives are I think "crossfit style" will have its place on occassion but Im not convinced it does anything other than add variety (which is completely valuable if it motivates you to turn up and keeps you in the gym longer)

if youre going to do your chest and want to add a bit of cardio,

then I'd say stick 5 on after the pushups and the bench, then rest for a minute or two

or even better, do your chest until its done with proper rests... then stop... then go and do some cardio.

Or leave cardio until the next day. It depends on how much energy you want to dedicate on a given day to an exercise, I think.



even the military is leaning away from crossfit (ironic seeing as thats the source of the training ethic!)

http://board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=42448

Quote :

Mr. XXXXXX, per our conversation yesterday ACC does not recommend or support CrossFit being in our facilities. CrossFit is an extreme workout program that is not for everyone (despite their claims) and goes against the exercise recommendations of the major certifying bodies in the industry (Cooper's, ACSM, NSCA). Their founder, Mr. Greg Glassman states that proper form is not a concern and is overemphasized when it comes to exercise. That is absolutely not true, because without proper form injuries occur. Not only do they not emphasize proper form while exercising, a lot of their exercises are contraindicated (risk outweighs the benefit) and they urge
people to push themselves past their capabilities. Their mascot is Pukey
the Dog and a badge of honor is to meet Pukey meaning you have pushed
yourself to the point of throwing up. This mentality has brought several
lawsuits against CrossFit. (See links).

Quote :

You are right on with crossfit. We have our reservations from both a
scientific and functional point of view. As far as the military goes, the
Marine Corps is going away from it and so is the Navy. The Navy has a
lawsuit against them right now. As far as SF, USSOCOM is going away from it
and most of my traveling is to SF Groups around the country. CAG and DEVGRU do not use crossfit. Crossfit advertises that most of these communities use this method but the truth is they are starting to pull away because of the high injury rate. When it comes to SWAT, I am on the fitness committee for the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) and they do not endorse Crossfit. There will be some articles coming out this year warning SWAT not to get caught up in the Crossffit cult.

I put the "cult" bit in bold because I do think it gained a "cult like" momentum, very popular amongst martial artists who, lets be honest with ourselves, are all sluts for variety at heart...




and a response from that forum in that line

Quote :

Higher ups generally don't like crossfit because they don't understand it. Clearly none of these people understand it.

Id Est : if you dont agree with the ideology or you think its counterproductive and/or dangerous you dont "understand" it

so by that mentality, I would fall into the category of those who who dont "understand"- which I resent, because I think a training ethic of hammering away without proper form and training to exhaustion is quite easy to understand.

I see plenty of people in gyms doing exactly that all the time. They never seem to grow and they often have injuries.

Train till you puke?



Got Macho?

interesting to see how things have changed for exercise--especially the military side. makes me think of dorian yates,
who did his workouts--in entirity, more like the one you described: one body part a day--six days of training, 30 minutes
in and that was it. the guy was as big as a brick shithouse--even amongst the steriod crew.

when i did the quasi crossfit stuff/circuit stuff, it was when i was hitting the gym twice a week...whick is probably more
where it's strengths lie.

cheers

you've opened up a whole can of worms for me with this Crossfit stuff Russ !

thanks mate, its been eye opening to say the least

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_investigative/the_truth_about_crossfit

what a big mess it is conceptually!


well one thing was true, I actually did not FULLY understand it... its far worse than I first thought: convoluted, ill concieved concepts glossed over with a machismo attitude. No thanks

top 3 shockers (any ONE of these if Id seen them before would have put me off instantly)

1. Glassman, the creator who makes ME look skinny, (I just wouldnt have the sheer effrontery, the damn BALLS to advocate this kind of cardio intense training whilst being so fat, at least the gym jones chap behind "the 300" is strong as fook and must be under 8% BF) claims Crossfit creates more hypertrophy than body building workouts

sorry I'll say that again:

he claims Crossfit, the often bodyweight focussed , cardio intesive, high repetition, circuit training and complexes regimen creates more hypertrophy than traditional BB workouts. Yes. No you read that right, re read it as many times as you like, that is what he claims.

UNLESS you use steroids.


2. and that "Life and Sport do not reward specialists".

3. the "Rhabdo" t shirts - enough said.



(I wont get into their "Body building doesn't represent functional strength training" as its a completely different can of worms and they certainly arent the only people peddling that rot.)


Sorry, but what a load of absolute nonsense.

I take back my more measured sentiments in my earlier posts.

the type of training done by "Crossfit" practitioners has value

(usually where you dont have access to proper equipment on that day, the notion of turning up to a gym that has weights and doing 300 bodyweight squats boggles my tiny mind frankly.... oh... and "100 kipping pullups"? ok ok I must stop ranting)

"Crossfit" as a brand/ political organisation? steer clear.

Im sorry I will stop now, I just have to get this off my chest first:


THIS is a "pull up"




you dont have to specify "dead hang" , its a pull up.

The end.


Kipping or jumping are not "pull ups" they are something else (they work different muscles in a different way require different attributes and LESS raw muscular strength), so CALL THEM SOMETHING ELSE.

Im not saying they dont have value... I just cant think what it might be right now.

I mean JUMPING into a pull up? Why not just have a chair underneath the bar and um.... squat yourself into the movement?
Saves all that nasty pain in your forearms, biceps and lats right? And it means you can do so much more, allowing you to post outrageously inflated PRs on "teh cybernetz".

We'll call it a "squat up".

Saying you do 100 "pull ups" in a workout is simply disingenuous

Ok then, I do 300 push ups before my chest workout

Yes I have my knees on the floor, they are still "push ups" - just because you are ignorant of the kind of pushups they are doesnt make them not pushups... they are just special... special ones called "ladies pushups"

then I do another 200 standing up against the wall.... what? they are still "push ups".


Bollocks

Absolute bollocks.



Ok Im done.

Many many moons ago I worked out out with a guy who won quite a few natural body building titles - no steroids, obviously.
Dude was even a vegetarian, lived on a dozen eggs a day and baked beans as I remember it.
We just happened to both workout early in the mornings so I ended up spotting for him, and learning all kinds of interesting stuff in the process.
He was not enormous, but had incredible definition and could flex any muscle group at will. I remember asking him what the intercostals looked like .... they are the ones between the ribs right? - and he flexed and made them all pop out independent of any other muscle group.
Anyway ..... he was the guy that first turned me on to Tai Chi. He'd started going to class, this is back in 1986, and incorporated the alignment principles and slow pace of the movements into his workouts. He used really strict form, and said he needed to use much less weight for the same effect.
Seemed to work for him .... though he was training specifically for body building, not fighting, so there was no thought of training explosivity, or working specific muscle groups that are needed for striking/grappling etc.

The whole Crossfit thing is weird. My friends do it and invited me along, but I was put off by the videos, the fact that it makes me cringe watching the bad form as I think of knees and other tendon/joints snapping, and the story my friend told me of a guy at their gym that overtrained so much that his bicep liquified or something totally ghastly, because it ate itself.

Richie said///

gym jones chap behind "the 300" is strong as fook and must be under 8% BF) claims Crossfit creates more hypertrophy than body building workouts

i always look to the guy selling the product--that would have done it for me.

and as for Maija's discription about jerky partial stength sloppy form stuff--agreed with both of you. perhaps i don't really
understand crossFit and i'm using the term liberally. anything i EVER did--with the exception of incline bench, and incline
military, for some reason had the pause at the bottom, and extremely slow form. part of me not wanting to work harder
than i needed to--in adding plates etc...even for pushups--when i instruct them now my counts sound like:
up[pause]down[pause]one; up[pause]down[pause]two...

i do this not for any special reason than the guys that claim they can do 50, generally barely if at all make it to 20. i feel
like i believe them for the 50, but if you can turn 50 into 20 and still get muscular failure, why wouldn't you? and the answer
goes back to Richie's point, MACHO.

i guess what i did was a strict slow grueling circuit twice a week with no pauses. i had my own minimalist reasons for packing
it into this time frame--but i am happy to see that the crossfit cult has been defrocked. it should have occured to me long ago because it was packaged as new and yet this is the way the military has always run a boot camp. pushups [middle energy output] jogging [low energy output] and pull ups [high intensity] not so much to show a base fitness as to put someone through the rigors and see if they're mentally up for a 'no end in sight' type month of hell.

you wont have trouble converting me mate, i'm not that dogmatic , i'm ready to behead anything if there's any proof.
it's in my nature

when i did body building as such...muscular failure was the goal...sufficient recovery time was understood. i just got stoned
by the SEAL bug like every other one time kid who looked at the SEALS and the SAS as somehow superhumans who knew
things that we couldn't possibly know. still a big fan, but let go of the apodictic nature of taking in information.

again, thanks for that. it has already influenced changes in how i will be handling PE. yes, i'm that evil guy who sets the goal
to make sedentary fluffy amoebic lads and lasses into buff self respecting fitness buffs. running, chins, pushups, calf raises,
squats [without weights] just to warm up the class. surprized i haven't been called into the dean's office yet

Quote :

but if you can turn 50 into 20 and still get muscular failure, why wouldn't you?

exactly, unless as you say the goal isnt muscular failure, its bragging rights

putting pauses in and slow the movement changes the game completely, I wonder how much these "experts" understand about resistance training if they dont know that

Maija, not surprised at all to hear your mate who who was doing tai chi advocated proper form, slowmovements and static holds its like the tai chi way of weights - but also, and more importantly, tai chi will have given him present moment awareness of what his body is experiencing - noone who has that quiet awareness or who values their long term health will put themselves through these "strain inviting" type workouts, which arent the sole domain of the "Crossfit" brand of course.

I'm using that gym again tonight, I'll focus on some of yoursuggestions here guys, re the pausing and slow pace


ps Mark Twight is the gymjones chap