Maximum strength, minimum size

Today’s whiteboard:

3 rounds of People’s Abs, because Dan forgot our rule that “once spoke, it can’t be unspoke”, and jokingly suggested 3 rounds.  Just another reminder of why we have that rule: sometimes we push ourselves a little harder and push the boundaries of what we thought we could do when the dreadful realization hits us that what was a funny idea now is on the whiteboard.  Adding 1 round of the People’s Abs is not a big rethinking of self-imposed limitations, but every little step counts.

Once warm, do 3×4:

• deadlift
• bent over row
• dumbbell bench press

Eric pulling 275 lbs

then 3×6:

• 1 arm snatch
• pullups + lockoffs
• overhead press

the cage lookin lively

then 2×10:

• forearm curl
• calf raise
• reverse woodchopper
• isometric hamstring ‘curls’ (aka the poor man’s hamstring curl)

The Rationale:

To get strong without adding muscle mass, you must train with heavy weights and low reps.  Here’s one explanation from a really hokey looking website, but the description is accurate.  3×4 is solidly in this range.  3×6 is pushing the boundary of the hypertrophy range, but one of those movements was a power movement, and a little bit of hypertrophy is still ok since we’ve been off weights for so long.  Going forward we probably want to move away from the hypertrophy zone if we continue to want more strength without more weight.

And, as always, the workout is balanced across muscle groups.  Plus we threw in at the end a few very climbing-specific lifts (forearm curls for rock, calf raise for ice) as well as some very non-specific movements for overall durability.

Mt Airy Duathlon

I had a really great write up of this one, which disappeared, replaced by an empty post, when I clicked “post”.  Really heart-rending, life-changing stuff had been written.  So good it couldn’t be written again, so we’ll have to settle for this post being a tribute to the greatest post in the world.

Anyways, the workout:

Bike the 4.8 miles from UC to Mt Airy Forest (about ~30 minutes), up and down hills all the way.

Then run trails for 60 minutes (we actually went 69 minutes due to some “navigational difficulties”).

The map above is amusing because we did the entirety of the trail run on the left of I-74 where there are “no trails”.  It’s bona fide forest over there though; kind of reminiscent of Red River Gorge.

Then ride the 4.8 miles back to UC (another ~30 minutes).  Straightforward, but not easy.

The WHY:

(this is where the really good stuff had been written.  Now I’ll just settle for these two links:)

Steve House says 80% of his training volume is LSD (long slow distance).

Mark Twight says endurance training begins only after 90 minutes of steady state effort.

Be you angels?

Nay! We are but men!

Rock!

“Balls” to the “wall”

Back to our little prison cell for some weightlifting.

The workout:

1 x people’s abs (3 participants)

• 10, 6 ,4 ,8 reps on deadlift.  increasing the weight till 4 then dropping for 8.
• 3×8 pullups
• 3×8 DB bench press
• 3×8 single arm snatch

then, the namesake:

• 100 reps wall ball.  throw a medicine ball (or a basketball filled with sand in our case) to a spot ~10 feet high on the wall. the “~” means it was about 10 feet high, not that you can throw the ball and “about” make it to the target.  big difference. choose a target and have the integrity to hit it 100 times.  Break it up however you need to.
• 2×30 bent over single arm row
• 4×15 X-press

then:

• 2×30 calf raises

The Why:

As always, we aim for balance among muscle groups.  Here the main strength event was deadlift though, with the buildup to some heavy weight.  Reps are mostly out of or on the edge of the hypertrophy zone, either pushing pure strength or endurance and avoiding increases in size.  We did some pushes heavy and pulls light, and others vice versa; those should be switched in a future workout to retain balance.  The choice of dumbbell bench press for a heavier, lower rep scheme was deliberate since we’ve not had access to any tools for heavy presses for a long time.

And wall balls.  A worthy foe.  Some really crushing, sadistic workouts could be drawn up around the wall ball.  Power and cardiovascular power endurance are really taxed there.  That was the first time for those so it was intended to be exploratory, to learn a little about how and when and why it might be useful.  Always learning.

The Alpine Testpiece

What’s an alpine climber in Cincinnati supposed to do for a local testpiece?  Come up with something really contrived and silly! And so we present: The Alpine Testpiece.

This is the third time we’ve done this workout.  Previous results here and here.  Click either link for the description of what it entails.  Results this time: Andy, 40:43 (a new CAT best).  Number of falls on the overhanging traverses: 1,3,2. Nick: did not finish due to tearing skin flaps off on the traverse.  Dan and Charlie did the Junior version with traverses on an easier wall, so their times don’t count.

The idea behind this as a “testpiece” is that it is actually a timed test.  It is intended to be a measurement of fitness related to alpine rock climbing.  Is it a perfect measurement?  No, definitely not.  But we think it’s a reasonable one because of its two components: scrambling, and overhanging climbing.  The ability to do both of these things fast is definitely something we aim for, and something that we think is a good indicator of one’s general ability to achieve the “fast” in “fast and light”.

I think it actually tests four aptitudes, two for each component.  The scrambling component tests both your cardiovascular capacity, and your efficiency of movement on third class terrain.  The overhanging traverse tests both your grip endurance and your movement skills on overhanging rock.  Each component tests both a “crude” fitness aptitude (cardiovascular capacity and grip endurance) and a technical fitness aptitude (movement efficiency).  This test doesn’t distinguish between the “crude” and the “technical” components, but we want all of them, so that’s not a big problem!

Lastly I should identify some assumptions we make in order to call this a good test of alpine rock fitness.  Since we’re only doing about 1200 total feet of scrambling in 3 sets which take less than 10 minutes each, this is a short workout.  A day in the mountains will be much, much longer than this.  So we are testing how “fast” you can go, assuming that you are actually adapted to go much longer (and slower) and that we are testing the very low end (with regard to duration) of your endurance range.  But to go fast over those timespans, you need cardiovascular efficiency.  So that is what we intend to measure.  Someone could conceivably be very fast on this part while operating near the high end of their endurance range (e.g. like someone trained optimally for the 1 mile run).  We assume that the fitness of the participants is aimed closer to something like a half marathon than a 1 mile run.

As for the overhanging traverse, it consists of basically one hold over and over and over.  It’s a big sloping ledge.  Recognizing that climbing fitness is specific to specific hold geometries (i.e. being strong on crimps does not necessarily make you strong on slopers), we assume that your fitness for specific hold geometries is roughly consistent across the spectrum of different holds.  So by testing one hold (which is what we happen to have access to) we think we are getting a good idea of strength overall, as long as this assumption is met.  If you did all your climbing on exactly this traverse, that assumption would not be met, and you’d probably get a great time, but suck in the alpine.  So we assume (we think reasonably) that this is not the case for any of the participants.

Return of the whiteboard!

What does the return of the whiteboard mean?  The return of lifting weights!

We’ve got a cozy little corner of a parking garage to call home.  It’s kind of ventilated to the outside so hopefully the air is not too nasty.  I forgot to take a good picture of it, so next time I’ll try to remember.

“The Cage”

2x People’s Abs

3×10:

• deadlift
• bent over single arm row
• plyometric pushups (P90X sideways line style; if you can’t do that, clap; if you can’t do that, just do an explosive pushup)

2×15:

• Single arm overhead press
• Bulgarian split squat
• half moons
• Single leg straight leg deadlift

The Rationale

The reason for lifting weights is, quite obviously, to get stronger.  Generally we aim to get stronger but not bigger.  Normally the sets and reps we chose here would cause hypertrophy, but because it’s been almost 5 months since we had regular access to weights, we need to ease back into things, and I think this is the most productive way to do it.  And if we cause a teeny bit of hypertrophy now, that’s probably ok because we’ve probably lost some muscle.  But I think because we are easing back into things (which means using lower weights), we are probably not causing much hypertrophy.

Most of our weightlifting-type workouts are balanced across all muscle groups, with an emphasis on stability and durability.  So we always use free weights, and we always use big movements which require a lot of coordination to develop dynamic balance.  Many of these lifts are not very “specific” to our goals (i.e. they don’t translate very directly), but they provide balance, durability, and some injury prevention, which make them a great foundation for lifelong fitness.  But then some of them, like deadlifts, rows, bulgarian split squats (a fantastic exercise for powering uphill), and half moons (like manhandling a backpack), do provide strength related to our goals.

We kept it a little shorter today, again to ease back into the weights.  And last week’s was a long, grinding workout, so it’s a good week to back off a tad.  Next week we may ramp it up again.

Workouts are worthless

I have seen the following played out numerous times in the context of several sports:

Some motivated but inexperienced Young Gun (YG) stumbles upon some workout (usually provided by some outside “authority”) that gets YG really worked in some way or another.  The workout is “hard”.  YG thinks this is the greatest thing and excitedly makes repeating this workout a big part of his/her overall exercise program.  YG gets a little stronger and a little better at first, but then improvements stop coming and frustration sets in…until YG discovers another great “hard” workout!  Salvation!  Small improvements, then no improvements… Rinse and repeat.

Why?  Because the focus is on the workout, or the program, and not the “why”.

I think workouts are worthless, programs are cheap, and programming knowledge is invaluable.

A great workout for a longtime marathoner to train for a fast 10K is not a great workout for a sprinter to train for a fast 10K. A great program for a longtime 10K runner to train for a marathon is not a great program for the same runner to train for a 400m dash.

What is a workout, anyway?  A set of exercises performed in one session on a particular day by a particular person with particular goals. A set of exercises within a context.  That context includes who the person is, how and what they’ve been training recently, what they’re training for, what they ate, where they are, what tools are available, and on and on and on.  Without understanding of the context, and of why the workout is appropriate in that context, a workout by itself is worthless.  The same goes for a “program”.

On the other hand, if you understand why a certain form of exercise is good preparation for a particular goal, and understand how various personal and environmental contextual variables interact with the “why”, you are well on your way to developing a smart, effective program for a particular individual to achieve a particular goal.

Granted, you will probably never understand 100% of the “why” (unless/until science develops a complete, 100% understanding of how the human body works…).  But thinking about it will set you on a direction of learning, and will focus your thinking about how to train.  In light of this view, workouts on this blog will henceforth be accompanied by a rationale provided by the person who drew up the workout.

So, do you know why you do what you do?

Death by a thousand cuts

This workout requires a hill.  Google Earth says ours was about 50 feet high and 100 yards long.

Warm up trail run

1 round people’s abs (7 participants), 10 horizontal hanging rows on nearby tree

3x:

• Piggyback carry a partner up the hill
• 8 pullups (on a nearby tree) with 3 second lockoff at the top

1 round people’s abs (5 participants – we killed 2 off!), 10 horizontal hanging rows

3x:

• Lunge up and down hill
• 3 times on the way up, and 3 times on the way down, stop to do 10 pushups
  

  pushups and lunges down the hill, total of 3x60=180 pushups

1 round people’s abs (5 participants), 10 horizontal hanging rows

3x:

• Run up hill at 70% of maximum speed (if you can still “run”)
• Bear crawl down the hill

In other news, Brian leaves this weekend to climb the Notch Couloir on Long’s Peak, and Nate leaves this weekend to climb Mt. Everest!  Goodluck and godspeed to both!