More Tips from the Weightroom Floor
by Jack Reape
Like many of you, I read all of the articles here at Testosterone, and
am always interested in the new ideas, approaches, and research
presented by the top-notch writers and coaches who contribute to the
site. It's always great to see what's working for many of their
clients, and tap into the trove of their experience and knowledge. But in my case, training is my obsession,
not my profession. So most of my "research" is personal experience, and
my only "clients" (or "victims," if you like) are me, my son, and my
powerlifting friends. Regardless, I do see a great number of
non-powerlifters in the numerous gyms I visit throughout the country,
and I think that these notes, which I've jotted down in my training log
after inspired conversations and observations, can help you out in your
training.

1. Be Like Mikey Remember that great Life Cereal commercial
a few decades ago? Two boys are arguing over a new breakfast cereal,
and neither of them wants to be the first to try it. They slide it over
to their little brother Mikey, who "hates everything." Mikey, however,
tries the new cereal, and hey, he likes it!
Mikey can afford a few high-glycemic carbs on deadlift day. The point I'm making here is that you'll never
know if Bulgarian squats, WSB, German volume training, HIT, WS4SB, one
lift a day, max recruitment training, refined physique training, front
squats, board press, and any of the zillion nutrition and supplement
approaches work until you try them for yourself. Sure,
do your homework, and check out everything you can as thoroughly as
possible, but then you gotta get to work! If you spend hours chatting
with your buddies on internet bodybuilding forums like a schoolgirl on
Myspace, then go to the gym and do the same old pyramid workout you've
done since high school, you'll be sitting on a plateau before long, if
you're not there already. Folks always ask me about the
"perfect" program. They should remember what General Patton said: "A
good plan violently executed today, is better than a perfect plan next
week." Old George would also probably bark, "quit piddling around! Just
pick a damn program, and do it!" Just like Mikey, you might like it, and if you don't, then you know that one doesn't work for you.

2. Home is Where the Hard Is For
many years, I avoided having my own workout equipment at my home. I
enjoyed the camaraderie of gyms, and didn't like working out alone. As
the years passed, and family responsibilities increased, my ability to
get to the gym 4-10 times a week has evaporated. I thought
that if I had a few weights and a glute ham raise, I could add in the
assistance I was almost always skipping, and add in those extra rehab
and prehab workouts I was missing because I ran out of time in the gym.
So over the past year I finally put together a small hardcore gym in my
garage. I don't have a monolift out there (although my really hardcore training partner Jeff -242elite does!), nor do I gear up out there all alone. However, I can
do deadlifts, chins, pull-ups, glute ham raises, raw squats, box squats
with bands, pin presses, and lighter raw benches. I can drag my sled
behind my house, or do a monster arm workout (actually, I work my arms
like I do my taxes: at the last minute, and once a year). I can do
kettlebell swings and snatches, and I even picked up a reverse hyper
that somebody was giving away. I added gymnastic rings, which my kids
love, and are great for pushups, dips, and pull-ups. I highly
recommend considering some type of home gym option if you can, but be
warned: you might get more hardcore than you intended. At home there's
no conversation, no grab-assing, no eye candy, and no juice bar. Just
the raw, hard discipline of the iron and your next set.
There are fewer distractions when you train at home. You'll find that you end up doing mostly the hard lifts that give you
gains in your home gym, and not a whole lot of triceps kickbacks and
leg curls. Working out in your own home gym also makes you confront
what you're doing and why you do it. You might find yourself dragging
your sled at 10 at night, or doing a barbell complex at 5 AM with the
garage door open for ventilation before you head to the airport for a
trip. These are workouts that force you to confront the
reasons why you train. You might come to the hard conclusion that you
don't want it that much. On the other hand, the confrontation might
make you reach that much farther inside yourself, and resolve to do
whatever it takes to achieve your goals. Let the neighbors call the
police all they want.

3. My Bench Shirt is Bigger Than Your Pec Deck and Cable Crossover Combined At
the two gyms I train at the most, the patrons are mostly military. The
pec dec is long gone, and the cable crossover has a pull-up bar over
it, so it's used very rarely. If only this were so at some of the other
gyms I've seen. I see tons of guys wailing away at the pec deck, and
even more straining at the cable crossover, grimacing in their little
wife-beater tank tops, imagining all the mass and separation they're
gaining in their chests. The sad news is, they're doing
neither. Unless you're over 200 pounds, pushing 50 inches in the chest,
bench pressing over 315, or have enough drugs coursing through you to
get invited to a Jose Canseco dinner party, you need to be doing more
heavy barbell benching and stay away from those machines. Heavy
weights and moderate volume are the baseline method of hypertrophy, so
leave the pec decks and cables to the genetic freaks in the
bodybuilding magazines. For example, if you can bench 315 raw, you
might be able to hit 315 for 3-8 reps in a loose bench shirt. This'll
give you growth in your triceps, forearms, and chest that you might not
believe. Conservatively, my loosest single ply shirt gives me
60-70 pounds carryover. Imagine repping out 50 or more pounds than you
do now. Think what that added muscle tension will do to stimulate your
upper body. What about doing 5-8 reps with your max? If you
think the bench shirt does all the work and this is a fraud, let me
give you a clue. You're dead wrong. Try one of these workouts, then
check out the feeling when you take the shirt off, and when you wake up
the next morning. Soreness isn't always a great indicator of growth,
but it is a great indicator of something you're not used to
doing. Bench pressing in a bench shirt will thicken you everywhere
above your sternum. Try it, Mikey. You just might like it.
You tell Ryan Kennelly that his shirt does all the work.
4. Today is the First Workout of the Rest of the Year There
are a lot of great workouts out there, and a lot more not so great
ones. As mentioned above, just pick one! Crafting the exact sequence of
what and how you'll do lifts, bodyparts, sets and reps, and in what
order and amount each day is greatly discussed and debated. The fact
that no one workout session or philosophy guarantees you anything gets
lost in the planning and debating. The long view is that it's
the total quality and volume of training, eating, and resting you do
over long periods of time that gives you the big results. This isn't a
shock to most folks, but they still focus on the content of one workout as part of their weekly plan. Instead, look at the entire week, or even the month
of training coming up, and then do your training in a less regular
fashion, just getting it all in when and how you can. Forget the idea
that you can't work a bodypart or exercise two days in a row, or that
you lose size after 48-72 hours between workouts! Try squatting 5 days in a row, or doing all your chest work on Sunday, then not doing it again for a week. Do some cardio every
day, or just drop it altogether for two weeks. Start every workout with
weighted chins, or finish every workout with dips and chins to one or
two reps from failure. We learn at the start of our training
lives to be disciplined and regular in our workouts, but to make great
strides after years of training, our workouts need to be much more
varied, with bigger changes and more chaos to drive our body to adapt.
Think of all the work you do over a given time period, then distribute
it much more randomly across that same time period. This
concept dawned on me as I tried to fit training into a very busy travel
schedule, and my normal four-day routine got blown out of the water.
However, I did a marathon Sheiko bench/deadlift/close grip workout one
week with no direct back work, followed the next week by bench one
day, close grips the next day, and deadlifts the next day with some
kind of chin or pull-up thrown in every day. And you know what? The
world didn't end. The same thing applies when you're in a
place with nothing decent to eat. You can eat very little one day, then
make it up the next day or over the next couple days. This doesn't work
as well with sleep, but sometimes you do what you gotta do. If
you work legs, chest, or deadlift 50 times over the next year, you'll
probably make progress, but that still leaves you 315 days off. But if
you did those same workouts 65 times, youÕd still have 300 days off,
but youÕd have increased your volume 30 percent! If you did a
second workout—same bodypart or same lift—on the day following the
first workout one week out of 3, you could pull this off and still have
a lot of recovery time. Think outside the box, namely the box around
tomorrow's date on the calendar, if you want to change your results.
Forget the "rules," and train more.