[url=javascript:pager.gotoPage(0);][/url]


Blood on the Barbell is our new series describing workouts to do when
your woman left you, your momma' don't love you, and even your dog
doesn't care much for you.

Work Out, Let Go The whole incident must've taken close to an hour, but it seemed like just five minutes. I'd
taken our track and field team through Sardine Canyon on Highway 6 down
to Emery High School for a qualifying track meet. The timing system had
been based on the starting gun's flash but problems with that system in
the afternoon lighting had caused the meet to drag on and on. We
got back on the bus late and I fell asleep. Descending into just one
more of those massive curving canyons, I woke up when I heard my
athletes yelling. Off to the side of the road was a still
smoking car that had passed us not long before on another twisting
turn. It had gone out of control into oncoming traffic and spun back
across our lane and off into a canyon. A semi had jackknifed over the
edge too, just above the car. As we slowed, our bus driver
called 911 and I grabbed my first aid kit. The car was empty, all the
airbags deployed. I looked over and there was the driver lying on the
hill. I'd brought a knife to a gunfight. Popping open my
first aid kit, I realized there was just enough medical supplies to
pull out a splinter, cover a blister, and clean a paper cut. This guy
needed a helluva lot more than aspirin.
So
I pulled out some gauze, pushed back the flap of skin coming off his
skull, and just held on. As more people arrived, one guy noted a big
gash on his leg. "Do you want to look at that?" he asked me. I did the
kind of triage that Hawkeye Pierce would envy. "No, I think I'll try to
stop the bleeding from his head." Someone noted that behind
me there was a small fire starting under the car. I looked up and saw
the semi leaning down the canyon toward us, but not moving.
Fortunately, a trucker dealt with the fire and the real help showed up
to relieve me. As I climbed back up, I saw two buses filled
with teenagers looking down at all of this madness. Laid out flat next
to the buses was a dead elk the size of most cars, most likely the
cause of the accident. And then it occurred to me that both of my
daughters were in those buses as well as the children of my best
friends. That's when I realized the awesome responsibility we
put on teachers and coaches on a typical day. On a school night in a
dark canyon, miles from the nearest restroom, I organized calls to
home, food issues, homework situations, and a bathroom break. It
occurred to me not long ago that nobody prepares you for this stuff.
Marriage, kids, bills, life. I can quote Gilgamesh at length but I
don't know crap about life. So, a couple of times a week, I hide in my
gym and let it go.

Planned Spontaneity I
used to work with a woman named Maxine. Maxine lives to follow rules.
She doesn't put up Christmas stuff until Christmas day because it's
still Advent until the day of Christmas. Then, she puts up her stuff. We
all work with Maxines. If break starts at 10:15, they're the ones that
tell everyone you left early at 10:14 and, "Well, I'm not going to say
anything to anyone, but Dan John leaves at 10:14 and still returns to
his desk with the rest of us." There are times in our lives
where we live like Maxine. For many of the T-Nation audience, we live
there. If you're in school, your life is like Maxine's. The bell rings,
the clock ticks, and you move into one desk and back into another. You eat breakfast in the morning (hell, someone might even make it for you), lunch at noon, and dinner in the early evening. You watch "must see TV" and you know the characters on Heroes and Lost. Why? Because you watch those damn shows.... For
people living in the world of regular hours, regular meals, and regular
bowel movements, I have only one bit of advice: planned spontaneity. The
last thing you need in your training is more "Maxine." How can you tell
if you need a bit more "randomness" in your training? Well, look around
the gym. If everybody there is the same group you see Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday from 4:00 to 5:30 and you're all doing the same
workout, then you need some spark. You need some fun, some
play. I know that M/W/F is "International Bench Press, Curl, and Lat
Pulldown Day" but let's juggle things up a bit, shall we? Learn
some new skills. Learn the snatch and clean & jerk. Sign up and
compete in a highland games or strongman contest. Learn some new lifts.
Read the articles here at T-Nation and actually apply the concepts.
Hey, there's an idea!

The Workout Randomizer Now, someone always asks, "Dan, how do you train during track season?" You see, I don't "train." Not during track season. Instead, I storm into my home gym and "work out." Please don't read this as "workout." It's "work out." I work out my anger. I work out my rage. I work out my fears. One
of the things I do involves my "workout randomizer" trick. Simply, I
take a single die (singular of dice) and I roll it three times. The die
instantly changes my workout approach.
This is how I do it:

The Three Rolls

• Roll One: Lift of the Day • Roll Two: The Program • Roll Three: The Finisher

The First Roll: The Day's Lift Roll a one: Press Roll a two: Squat Roll a three: Snatch Roll a four: Clean (or power curl) Roll a five: Deadlift (any variation) Roll a six: Clean and Jerk

The Second Roll: The Program Roll a one: Litvinov Workout. Do eight reps with the lift, then sprint. Roll a two: 5-3-2 Roll
a three: 3 sets of 8 with one minute rest. Do two exercises with this
workout. Front squat and overhead squat; bench press and incline...that
kind of thing.) Roll a four: 3-3-2-1-1-1-1-1 Roll a five: Tabatas.
Go light, light, light here! Twenty seconds of lifting is followed by
ten seconds of rest for a total of eight circuits. Roll a
six: The Big 55. That's 55 reps of the lift you rolled. Fifty-five
singles or three sets of ten plus five sets of five, whatever. Just
make sure it adds up to 55.

The Third Roll: The Finisher Roll a one: Sled sprints
Roll a two: Sleds carrying a rock Roll a three: Rock runs Roll a four: Sleds with a heavy pack Roll a five: Sleds with a heavy pack carrying a rock Roll a six: Farmers bars to death!

Note: Feel free to do anything you like here. A lot of this depends on your equipment. So,
if my math skills are right, you have 216 workouts here. If you want to
do this three days a week, you might not repeat a workout for years!
It's just the thing for people who live in a situation where there's a
lot of structure. But, there are others who can benefit from
this too, like me during track season. Recently, my teams competed in
six track meets in twelve days. That's six long bus rides, to the venue
and back home, and six long track meets. That's enough chaos for
anybody. The last thing I need in my life is more insanity! So,
during track season, I train three days a week. I do two exercises each
workout. I rest one minute per set. I do three sets of eight. Yes, it's
the most boring program the world has ever seen. Here's exactly what I
do:

Day One: Monday
Power Clean & Press: 1 power clean and 8 presses Three
sets of eight with one minute rest between sets. If there's a single
key to the program, it's the one minute rest period. By strictly
monitoring the rest period, and obviously keeping track of the weight,
one can track progress.
Power Curls: 3 sets of 8 with one minute rest between sets Using
a curl grip, slide the weight to just above the knees and curl-clean
the bar. Let it come down under control. Again, get all eight reps in,
don't change the weights, and monitor the rest period. Finish with some kind of ab work.

Day Two: Wednesday
Power Clean and Front Squats: 1 power clean and 8 front squats Once again, 3 sets of 8 with one minute rest. Stay tall in the front squats and keep your elbows high.
Overhead Squats: 3 sets of 8 with one minute rest
Using
the wide snatch grip, lock the elbows with the weight overhead, and
squat down. Athletes who do this exercise will not only develop
flexibility, balance, and leg strength, but an incredibly strong lower
back. Again, finish with some kind of ab work.

Day Three: Friday
Whip Snatches: 3 sets of 8 with one minute rest With
a wide snatch grip, stand up and hold the bar at crotch level. Dip and
snatch the bar overhead. Continue for 8 reps. You'll be surprised how
quickly this exercise can get into your blood. If you want big traps,
this is the king.
Clean Grip Snatches: 3 sets of 8 with one minute rest With
a clean grip, stand up and dip the bar to your knees. Then explode up,
driving the bar in one basic movement overhead. It's like a clean and
press, well, without the clean. Ab work if you wish. I
get bored looking at it. But, it's exactly what I need during my crazy
times. If life is crazy, you can't have a crazy workout, too. That's my
knock against most perfect training programs: rarely do they consider
the life circumstances (social, nutritional support, just plain
reality) of the trainee. That's the genius of
one-set-to-failure machine training. It's a perfect "do this" answer to
a crazy life. Nautilus and Curves really seem to resonate with people
who want to work out but can't afford one more drop of free will. Sadly, I can't use machines. Um, let me say this nicely: I have testicles... so I can't use machines. Sorry.

"Work Out" Ideas None
of that really answers the question of how I use weights to "work out"
life's issues. It involves a bar, a kettlebell, or a sled. I have three
"work out" ideas that can serve you well when you need to vent with
weights.

1) The 100 Rep Challenge I
once entered a friendly "100 reps" competition. The rules were simple:
100 singles with an exercise. Not 10 sets of 10, mind you, 100 singles. The
first time I tried it, I did squat snatches with 165 pounds. That was
insane. I lost about six pounds the next few days after the attempt. I
think most of it was skin off my hands. Another
time, I power cleaned 205 for 100. Another, I clean and jerked 185
pounds. I also front squatted 255 for 100 singles. Unrack, squat, rack,
rinse and repeat. It will take you a few hours. You will be changed.

2) Ten Minutes of... The
next workout is based on the sport of kettlebell lifting. As I type
this, I'm reminded of last Saturday. The North American Kettlebell
Federation held its national championships here in Utah. Without
knowing what I was getting into physically, I entered the event. It's
a model of simplicity. Grab a bell. Snatch it as many times as you can
with one hand and, without putting the bell on the shoulder, ground, or
any other support, switch hands and continue. For ten minutes. The
agony of time is apparent very quickly. I'd catch an occasional peek at
the timer and wonder how right Einstein was about relativity. Every so
often, my chest would heave out a sigh that came right from my soul.
Yet, upon finishing, my mind was clear; the clutter had fled. You
can model this by taking a dumbbell or barbell, picking a big move, and
simply trying to do it for as long as you can. How about ten minutes of
jumping jacks? Oh, the next day... those are your calves. Enjoy
walking. I'm thinking that an empty Olympic bar and ten minutes of clean and press might just be the answer to all questions.

3) Fat Loss in Four Minutes, Revisited My
most misunderstood article of all time is my "Tabata front squat"
workout. It involved time. It involved hard work. After 4000 emails
that stated, "Dan, if this is so good, why not do it every day?" I
began headbutting my computer screen. I did it until I saw pixels
flying around my head. The answer, of course, is this: Did
you ever front squat for four minutes with 95 pounds with twenty
seconds "on" and ten seconds of "rest?" No? Right, because then you'd
know why you don't do this everyday! You might be able to do it if the
fate of the world was in your hands, but short of that, once every two
weeks is plenty. Yet I decided to simplify it a bit. Now I recommend this: Front squat for 8 reps (quality, deep reps only please)
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps
Rest exactly ten seconds Front squat for 8 reps Now, keel over. The
floor will feel cool. The ground is your friend. Love the ground.
Recover long enough to send me an email saying, "I think I should do
this everyday." Goals? How about 135 on the bar and deep
reps? I'd like to see the video evidence of doing 225 with this
variation. I've seen 65 pounds nearly kill a man.

Warp-Up That's
the sad thing about these workouts. They don't take long. You don't see
tempo mentioned. You don't worry about whether or not the rhomboids are
working through the full range of motion. You just try to survive. And that's the lesson here, I guess: you try to survive. The Big Book of Life
doesn't cover dead elk next to school buses. Sometimes, you have to
wing it. As I held that man's skull flap, I didn't worry about my torn
calluses anymore. Oh, I had to deal with all of this. I had
to work out some issues with a barbell and a quiet gym. For the record,
I did front squats.