Ground Up Strength

Olympic Weightlifting Basics with Travis Ortmayer

Travis Ortmayer, top international strongman and owner of Athletic Nation gives a tutorial on the snatch lift in this video.

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BASIC Progression and Bulgarian Split Squats

I am always bringing up, obsessively you might say, how there are many different ways to progress in strength training. And, in fact, how many different things we do and achieve represent progression that we don't even recognize.

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Strength Consolidation: An Example

All strength athletes, at certain times, must consolidate their gains and they will do this instinctually by adding reps to their present limit. As a matter of fact this is an "old-school" way of training and it is still prevalent. There is not a NEW way that is better by virtue of science or Russian periodization. The ways that work haven't changed…our attitudes and expectations have.¹

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Strength Training with Single, Double and Triple Progression

The only other person, besides myself, that I've known to speak in-depth about single, double, and triple progression is Anthony Ditillo. However, to be frank, most of what he said about it makes no sense to me and he seems to have been applying the terms to established styles of training as an alternative to what others had named their training methods, such as "the pyramid system".

When Ditillo spoke of single and double progression he seems to have meant simply allowing yourself to use more than one way to progress. Or in other words to manipulate more than one parameter. This should be common sense.

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Ninety Second Rest Periods For Strength? Are You Kidding Me?

Ok, you are at your favorite forum or you are talking to one of the trainers in the gym and you want to know about rest periods.

"How long should I rest between sets", you ask.

Here is the typical first response you will get from the forum:

"What's your stats?"

Now you'd get that response from the forum whether you asked about rest periods or whether most people prefer chocolate chip over macaroons. "What's your stats" is bro-lingo 101 so we have to get that out of the way.

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The Gripper Guide

As a follow up to my last blog post, and to satisfy my obsession with crushing grip strength, I'm going to lay out a guide for torsion spring grippers. I'll make it as comprehensive as I can and it will contain information for people with and without experience with grippers.

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If You Can't Grip It, You Can't Rip It

I came across the title of this post while I was looking around youtube (I feel compelled to watch weightlifting vids or strongman events sometimes) and not only is it a classic line but it also reminded me of something I've never really sat down and talked about: Grip Strength! Just like the title says if you can't hang onto the bar or the handles then you can't perform that exercise. You COULD use wrist straps, but where's the fun in that.

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The Honeymoon Period

Everybody loves the bench press. Hey. no wonder. How many exercises let you lie down while training and then get to boast about it?

Let's examine two different hypothetical training situations, both novice lifters beginning their first real strength training program, to see how they learn the lifts.

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Teaching Versus Learning The Lifts

You know I love how the words 'teach' and 'learn' get mixed up. Provided you are concentrating on just a particular exercise rather than a general technique overview, you can teach a person a basic slow lift in 10 to 20 minutes.

Meaning, you can INSTRUCT them on it it that time frame and have them go through the motions, correct the mistakes, etc.

That doesn't mean they have LEARNED the lift. That means they have received instruction on the lift and gone through an initial training session with it.

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Strength: Simple But Difficult?

QUALIFIED.

That is a very important word. A reason I avoid using terse, oversimplified statements, which I refer to as aphorisms, is because for them to be useful they usually need to be qualified. That is, a set of conditions and explanation have to be put in place so that they fit a general audience. So that they are not taken too far.

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Misconceptions Abound: Strength, Fatloss, Skills, and Progression

This page is a blog page. That means that I am not going to provide a bunch of scholarly references at the end. I am not going to do a week of research to prepare. I might have done a little cross checking but these pages are meant to be informal reactions, opinions..me drawing on my experience, etc. And HOPEFULLY, to stimulate discussion of ANY kind.

That is my idea for this particular blog. Many others use blogs with many different models.

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The House of Cards

Very recently I came across someone, and more importantly their training, and it warrants some blog attention.

This whole mess stems from single's training, which I dare say I know a thing or two about, and volume. The jist of the discussion is that if you perform more than one, or two, singles you are headed down the road to overtraining. This person went from one extreme end, overtraining, to the other, barely getting a training effect, and after posting a few comments and opinions I realized it was over before it began.

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Importance Of Progression

In my opinion, Progression is the key to strength training. There is no point in hammering away at an exercise without progressing on it. But this is not new knowledge. This is simply an observation – an observation made by many strength specialists and this has recently gained a lot of momentum with online mention. But, I want to highlight how each exercise you have adopted into your training should be treated – or can be treated, differently in terms of progression.

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Is Your "Strength Training" Actually Strength Training:Part 1

Continue Reading » Is Your "Strength Training" Actually Strength Training:Part 1

Anderson Half Squat

Any of you that have been following my Journal here (Strength Journal) will know that I recently included the infamous 4 squat workout into my routine. This delightful little routine consists of 4 exercises, each with 4 sets (5,4,3, and 2 reps respectively).

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