New Associations, New Muscle
by Dan John

Garage Days I've
been lifting weights since my Aunt Florence died during the early
1960's. She left my brothers and me a little bit of money, so we
invested in a Sears Ted Williams Bar and started lifting weights. I'm
pretty sure our technique was poor and our programs were probably
worse, but we were lifting weights. The bar came with an
instruction manual and it outlined a variety of exercises that included
three bent-over row variations and about a dozen different ways to
press. There was little in the way of safety instruction because when I
was growing up, when you got hurt it was always your fault. Now,
forty years or so later, I think I'm starting to get the hang of some
of this stuff. I still press and I still blame myself when I get hurt. There
were some "truths" when I first started training. First, you only
lifted three days a week. Something mysterious would happen to you if
you did more. I believe the term was "overwork." According to my
father, that was impossible, of course. Second, the key in
training was simply how much you could put over your head. There was
one number and one number only: "Waddya press?" That changed too, you
might know. Finally, a high protein diet was the answer to
any and all problems. Carbs were bad and fats were the juicy parts of
steaks. So, three days a week we'd all convene in the garage and press,
press, and press, then drink a bunch of glasses of milk. Things have
changed. Some of it is for the better, but not all of it.

The Power of Associations A
few years ago, I went to a workshop about something or other and I
learned something that really opened my eyes concerning the strength
and fitness game: associations. In other words, when I'm talking about
something as basic as strength, you literally might be reading
something vastly different than what I'm referring to in this article. Okay,
what does that mean? Well, if I say "sugar" and you answer "spice," we
have a simple association. Go ahead, try it: black and white, night and
day, rich and poor, and on and on. Which is why when I say "leg work,"
I think squats while some of you think "innie and outie machine."
Not "Leg Work" In
this workshop, we learned about a trick that advertisers use to come up
with ideas and break those simple associations. I tried it with two
willing victims — my daughter, Lindsay, and my neighbor, Vance. I
asked them to come up with as many associations as they could between
"French fry" and "airplane." Now, I had my own, but I wasn't at all
ready for their answers. Lindsay noted that you need oil for both the
fries and the plane. Vance mentioned that you salt a runway in a
snowstorm and you add salt to your fries. So, from two words,
we began the process of bringing in new associations: oil and salt. I
sat back and tried to think of links between these two. My mind leaped
to the Olive Garden here in Murray. When we were seated last time to
celebrate our trip to the state championship, the young waiter poured
olive oil in a bowl, lightly salted and peppered the oil, then added
balsamic vinegar. My neighbor thought that you use salt to get the
engine oil off of the driveway, so we seem stuck in the food and
machine mode around my house. I have a real world example of
this: my brother-in-law, Geoff Hemingway, brought home an idea that
sounds awful at first, but is a pure delight. We all like peanut
butter. We all like hamburgers. Geoff's solution was to simply swipe
some peanut butter on the hamburger patty. Yep, it sounds awful, but it
tastes great. That's the key to using associations: we need
to take two good ideas and combine them in a way to make a great idea.
For the record, T-bone steaks and peanut butter are not as good as you
think. The value in this process may or may not be evident, but
if we take a look at most people's training, you may find they're
literally stuck in a box. Certainly, there's a value to doing an
exercise over and over again and perhaps even using the same weights,
but most people do the exact same weight workout over and over and over
again. In college, when everyone was doing "Arnold's
program," you could set your watch by the way some guys lifted. At
3:01, back squat 135 times 10 screaming "It's all you." At 3:09, after
a vigorous leg stretching and checking out the biceps in the mirror, a
back-off set with 115 pounds for 10. From 3:15 to 5:00, as many sets of
EZ-bar curls as possible. That was leg day. Associations are
literally what run the fitness industry. Just flip through a women's
magazine at the store. Preteen girls and/or anorexia patients are often
the models for the perfect body. This association leads some to think
that thin is popular, thin is sexy, thin is the only way to be in
America. Covert Baily wrote a book called Fit or Fat. It wasn't long after that book came out that articles were written called "Fit and
Fat," arguing that it's possible to have a healthy cardiovascular
system and a high level of adipose tissue. So, the association for many
people regarding fitness is "thin first." In strength
training, it's usually just "big." I can't tell you how many times I've
been told the following: "Dan, it's funny you throw far because those
guys are bigger than you." Yeah, funny. I think we can use
associations to really up the level of our training intensity. I think
in some ways all of my little ideas have simply been an attempt of
combining two common training practices and smashing them into a new
idea. I related the lessons of a wrist injury here at Testosterone that became the basis of one of my favorite training methods: one arm at a time. Since
writing that article, I've used this as an in-season training method
for a number of athletes, including baseball pitchers. Simply train one
arm one day, train the other arm two days later, and finish the week
with a whole body workout. So, I mixed the lessons of an injury into a
worthwhile in-season training program. When I first heard about the Tabata
protocol from Clarence Bass, my first thought was, "I'm not jumping on
an exercycle." (The original program was based on cycling. I mean,
exercycles are like lunges: it's okay if your girlfriend or mom does
them, but you know... ) So, I attempted to do military presses
with them. The first three minutes were awful and the last minute I
discovered that I could barely finish a single in each twenty-second
cluster. A week later, I tried the Tabata front squat workout and
discovered the single best quick workout I've ever tried. These
are just two examples of taking a common idea — one armed training or
the Tabata protocol — and just tweaking it enough to discover something
that radically changes my athletes. The two single-limb sessions allow
the athletes to maintain strength and continue to provide the
protection that weight lifting brings a thrower without beating up his
nervous system or further depleting recovery. The Tabata front squat
workout hits the cardiovascular system harder than any traditional
workout (jogging or whatever) and is probably the second hardest thing
I know behind the 400 meter sprint. Speaking of sprinting, here at T-Nation we had a nice article
from TC about the benefits of sprinting for hamstring development.
Charles Poliquin notes the same thing in his new editions of his books.
So, why are we still seeing people do leg curls when some forty meter
sprints would not only develop better hammies, but burn some damn fat,
too? Call
it a rut. Like Earl Nightingale said, "A rut is a grave with the ends
kicked out." If you have this kind of association: hamstring work
equals leg curls, read up on it a little! With my busy
schedule, I found myself in the past year floundering around with
enough time to train. What I'm about to say is odd, but some of our
readers will agree: I spend all day in a weightroom then follow it with
several hours at track practice, then help a few people at my home gym.
In other words, I'm around weights and fitness and training tools
literally all day long, but don't have time to train. Some of
you know what I mean. Of course, some of you poor bastards are sitting
at a computer screen at work hoping your boss won't look over your
shoulder while you scroll through the T-Vixen threads. I spend my day
in shorts and T-shirts worrying about whether we should do front squats
with one set of chains or two. Although not nearly as fun as using an
Excel spreadsheet to determine whether or not the Henderson account
will have enough widgets for the big project in Salinas, I make myself
enjoy it. As I noted recently to Alwyn Cosgrove, one thing I
can't do is coach myself. The problem is this: first, I don't need to
do my athletes' workouts. They need more repetitions and more volume to
learn the movements. Second, at fifty, I simply have needs that are
slightly different than a teenage football player. So, I need
to train and train hard, but I need to mix things up to keep my
enthusiasm high. To do this, I need to listen to others, then adapt
these great ideas into something I can do and keep fired up about doing
it again in a day or so. This is the key to changing one's associations. Let's make it simple. There are basically ten different movements that you should do as a human:
Vertical Push
Vertical Pull
Horizontal Push
Horizontal Pull
The Squatting Motion
The Posterior Chain Movement (I call it "deadlifts")
The "Anterior Chain" (sit-ups, crunches et al.)
The Twist or Torque Moves
The Total Body Explosion Exercises (If you're limited by time, these are the ones to do.) I
lump all the single limb movements into one group. Certainly, these are
important, but don't equate a lunge to a 600 pound squat, thank you
very much. Next, we have a variety of tools that you can do any
of these ten movements with in a workout. From bodyweight to machines
to kettlebells, dumbbells, and barbells, the options available to you
are basically unlimited. This is the problem for most people. Push-ups
are relegated to high school PE or boot camp, Olympic lifting is for
that thing every four years, and dumbbells are for biceps. What
I've discovered recently is that I'm the biggest offender of this
method of thinking. So, I've consciously decided to radically attack my
associations. Let's go through a couple of ideas first, then look at a
program I'm working on now.

The One Armed Bench Press I
first tried this exercise when I broke my wrist. Later, I discovered
that Ethan Reeve over at Wake Forest had come up with a "standard."
Simply, he asks his athletes to bench press 125 pounds with one arm for
five, then match it with the other arm. I laughed and said, "Hey, I
bench over this or that" so that'll be cake. I tried it. I
failed. The next morning my abs felt like I'd been in an auto accident.
What was going on here? Well, by shifting all the balance to one arm,
my body had to literally take up the slack... and I wasn't ready for
it.

Kettlebell Snatch The
same problem hit me when I took on the kettlebell challenge. As a guy
who's snatched close to 150% bodyweight, how could a little 70 pound
bell hurt me? At rep 74, my hand ripped and a piece of my skin landed
ten feet in front of me. My hands were purple and my heart, lungs, and
back were trashed.