Anyone who read my Work-Life balance post last week will know that I have radically changed my program. I had two main reasons:
- work-related things at the moment mean that it would be handy to have a bodyweight equipment-free workout that will be effective and which I can bring out whenever I need it – a completely new program like this needs a testing period of a few weeks to make sure it is effective and none of the exercises start to aggravate anything (eg. does it contain more push ups than my elbows can survive?); and
- I couldn’t face my workouts any more.
I was struggling to keep any momentum and after nearly five months of excellent progress on the last program my body and my mind needed a complete change.
The new program
The new program has a simple structure of an upper body and a lower body workout. I then do these two workouts twice a week with no difference between the two lower body or the two upper body workouts. Rather than explain how I got on with these this week, I thought it would help to outline what these workouts looked like.
Lower body workout
This is trying to focus on all the main muscle groups with some particular emphasis on some single leg glute-related work, since my back squats were starting to reveal an inequality between the two sides (particular weakness in my left glute). I’ve also got some quad work in there which has been a shock to the system since I’ve not done any quad-dominant work for a while.
So what does a standard workout look like?
- 10 sets of 3 reps, Pistol squats – strongly glute dependent, single leg effort and I’m currently rubbish at them (especially on my left leg) so I have to do them in a doorway and hold the doorway for balance and to get out of the hole on my left leg.
- 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Single leg curls from high bridge – taken from Scott Abel’s excellent article ‘Lighter weights, Bigger legs’, about bodyweight leg work for big size gains, though using a bench instead of a suspension system. These have been a revelation and have the benefit of working the whole posterior chain, including the glutes as well as the abs. By the end of my second leg workout I was managing rep totals of 21, 14, 8 for my three sets.
- 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Single leg knee-extension from plank position – another one from Scott Abel’s article. After everything else this is a killer since my abs are already fried and the exercise stresses my recently unexercised quads. I’ve so far only managed a rep total of 5, 3, 3 for my three sets!
- Hip thrusts, DC training style – it’s not a bodyweight exercise, but why stop doing something that has been working up until now? I have found that I needed to drop the work though after frying my glutes on the earlier exercises.
Upper body workout
This has a lot of focus on the lats and the triceps since those are my main weaknesses. Well, that and the fact that my upper back gets some work at the same time. A typical workout has the following exercises:
- 10 sets of maximum reps, Pull ups – after all the issues in my previous workouts I’m dragging these back up to sets of 4 reps.
- 10 sets of 4 reps, Press ups – I successfully completed these on a minute so I have decided to slowly work on decreasing the sets and increase the reps by a single set and rep each time. The hope is that eventually I will be doing 4 sets of 10 reps which will have meant some big strength and endurance gains on my press ups.
- 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Inverted rows on slings – I’ve set up a couple of climbing slings hanging down off the pull up bar and then use these to do inverted rows. It means I can put my hands at the angle I want to use and also means that the thing I’m pulling up to moves about for extra complexities.
- 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Reverse skull crusher on floor – An evil triceps exercise from Nick Tumminello. I could only manage sets of 5 and 3 last week. Hopefully that will quickly improve.
Grip
With all this bodyweight upper and lower body work I thought it was time to put some specific grip work back in. On my lower body workout day this involves a single set of gripper work with each hand after the second and third exercises. On my upper body workout day I’m doing a brief set of dead hangs from our fingerboard (a rock climber’s finger-strengthening workout) at the end of the workout.
Grippers - time to get some strength back
It’s noticeable that, having not done much grip work recently, my forearms have lost some size and my grip is weaker than it was a while ago. As a result this is proving to be a great opportunity to get some strength back.
How long for?
My main aim is to do this workout for long enough to ensure that it is an effective bodyweight workout and that none of the exercises cause aggravations (eg. my elbows could be affected by all the press ups). I think four weeks should provide this confirmation and, in addition, should give me a long enough break from my old workouts to motivate me back to heavy back squats.
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Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty-one (bodyweight 2) // Aug 9, 2010 at 21:02
[...] on from last week’s post this was the second week of my four week bodyweight workout [...]