If so, you should consider adding assistance exercises into your training programme.

Good morning - a superior assistance exercise

What are assistance exercises?

Assistance exercises develop movements and parts of the body associated with the events in your sport or the main exercises in your programme if you are not training for a particular sport.

For example, in Mark Rippetoe’s popular Starting Strength programme, the main exercises are squat, bench press, deadlift, press and power clean. If you are a powerlifter, your events are squat, bench press and deadlift. If your sport is Olympic weightlifting, the events are snatch and clean and jerk, and the squat would be an assistance exercise. If you play rugby or badminton or do triathlon then any strength training is going to be assistance.

Why do assistance exercises?

Dip

If you are completely new to training, the main exercises such as those mentioned above are plenty to begin with.

They are the main exercises for a reason: full body movements working every aspect of your physical capability and quite a lot of your mental capability too. They are the foundation for all strength training, indeed for daily life itself.

However there will come a point in training when your initial progress slows down and perhaps even plateaus, since your body has adapted to the demands of these exercises. You’ve learned the technique and developed the necessary mobility to perform the exercises well and efficiently; you’ve developed enough strength and energy to perform a number of reps at a decent weight. The point at which this happens is different for everyone. It might take months, it might take years.

Something else that happens is that your body learns to perform the exercise using the path of least resistance. You might be using good technique, but if there is any weakness in the system the body will automatically compensate. For example, if you happen to have much stronger legs than back, your body will work this out pretty quickly and will perhaps use more leg strength in, say, the deadlift than back strength. Your technique might be perfectly acceptable from the outside, but your body is still compensating for a weakness, therefore this area might lag behind in development.

This happens to everyone, it is because the body is highly efficient and adaptable. Mostly this efficiency is to be celebrated but sometimes we need to get in there and override this tendency in order to progress even further.

To use the deadlift example, if you’ve reached a point where the relative paucity of back strength is preventing you from making progress, this is a good time to consider introducing assistance work. Consider it Continuing Professional Development for the back. Send it on a training course and get it a certificate so that it can contribute more to the team and feel better about itself.

You can do assistance work right from the start of your training career but most trainers will try to give their clients a good grounding in the basic exercises first, otherwise you’re just overloading the programme with stuff you don’t really need. There’s no point taking advanced calculus if you haven’t mastered long division yet.

Types of assistance

Assistance exercises can assist in various ways.

• They can focus on a particular area involved in the main exercise, for example focussing on the hamstrings, which are a vital component of squatting and deadlifting.
• They can focus on a particular part of the event exercise where you are weak. For example, if you are finding it hard to lock out your deadlifts, you might start doing partial deadlifts (like rack pulls) to strengthen this part of the lift.
• Assistance exercises can also be those that complement the main exercise by working the same muscles or body parts in a slightly different way – for example, an overhead press or a dip to assist the bench press.

What type of assistance exercise you choose depends on the problems you are trying to fix and the aspects you want to develop.

If you are training for general strength and fitness, you could even argue that for you there is no such thing as assistance exercises and main exercises – all good exercises have equal standing. That’s cool, I’m happy with that too.

But if you have any kind of specialisation or bias, you’ll probably end up with a programme that has key exercises or events that you particularly want to improve and other exercises that have a more supporting role.

Favourite assistance exercises

We are a la carte rather than prix fixe where assistance exercises are concerned and it is an extensive menu. When I was putting together my current, powerlifting-specific programme I came up with 32 assistance exercises (see end of this post) – and these were just my favourites!

I can’t tell you which assistance exercises to choose as it depends on your goals and your own assessment of what you need. Don’t let this faze you, enjoy it as a learning opportunity.

What I can do, however, is tell you which exercises I think give you the most bang for your buck. The table below shows these exercises and what they can help with.

There really are so many more but I don’t think you can go wrong with these eight unless you have very specific requirements.

Unusual assistance exercises

Is this all meat and potatoes to you? Well here are some exercises you may not have tried

• Bent press
• Windmill
• Farmers walks/carries
• Tire flipping/crash mat flipping
• Box squats
• Adding bands and chains to your main exercises for extra resistance

All of the above will challenge your body in many useful ways. You’ll notice that many of the exercises are taken from or inspired by strongman training (bent press, farmers walks) or use objects such as mats, boxes or chains to enhance the basic exercises.

Add kettlebells, clubs or gymnastic rings into the mix and you have even more options. There is a mind-boggling array of movements you can do to increase strength, fitness and prowess in your chosen sport or active past-time. There is no reason ever to be bored or jaded in the gym.

This post isn’t the place to go through every assistance exercise in detail. And if I did that it would spoil the fun for you. My second favourite thing in strength training is discovering a new exercise (you can guess what my first is, can’t you?) so let’s leave a bit of mystery and intrigue in place. There are some links at the bottom of this post to help you on your way.

How to use assistance exercises in training

You can either simply add in a variety of assistance work to improve everything or attempt to identify specific weaknesses and choose exercises to improve these. Both methods are sensible.

If you are not sure which exercises would be best, try some and see whether they help. Honestly, even experienced coaches need to do the trial-and-error approach sometimes. Choose some exercises, do them for a few weeks, then test your main event/outcome. Did it improve?

I find with powerlifting assistance work that you can generally tell whether something is working in about four weeks. It’s not always the case, but that’s a rule of thumb I would recommend.

There are a number of ways you can incorporate assistance exercises into your training sessions. Here are a few ideas

• Add unweighted or light exercises into your warm up, such as one legged bodyweight squats
• Do your main lift, then do one or two assistance exercises related to the main lift, for example squat and then front squat and romanian deadlift
• Pick a handful of exercises and make a workout from them. Do them in a circuit or one after the other. The popular Crossfit workout Fran is basically front squat, push press and pull up done in sequence.
• How about picking one new exercise to try per session? If you train three times a week, that’s three new exercises, three new challenges for the body.

If you are curious, these are the assistance exercises I identified for my current powerlifting programme.

Resources from gubernatrix

Bodyweight or bust! – all of the exercises in this article can be used as assistance

Speed work – a useful way to enhance performance

Best exercises for core – I’ll give you a clue: not sit ups

Strength Rituals DVD – a cornucopia of new lifts, movements and combinations (especially the oldtime strongman stuff)

Elite Fitness Manual ebook – a smorgasbord of exercise instruction, including Crossfit skills

I’ve never seen anything that has made me want to run out and train so much! It’s got all my favourite toys in it – barbells, kettlebells, sleds, tyres, bodyweight, leverage clubs….actually I’ve only ever handled a club once but after seeing this film it could easily become my new favourite thing!

What is this film?

Strength Rituals is a 2-disc DVD from Bodytribe, the brainchild of trainer and gym owner Chip Conrad. Between the two discs there is well over two hours of content and you can’t help thinking that there was loads more that could have been included but, like all canny filmmakers, Chip is probably saving that for the sequel.

Structurally the film consists of a series of episodes featuring particular movements, combinations and workouts performed by Conrad and other members of Bodytribe. These are exciting, always tough and often original. The one rep max effort Turkish get-up sequence made me want to jump off the sofa and join in!

Over the film is a narration by Conrad which is lively and full of personality. Part commentary, part lecture, I found it appealing. To someone rather less in love with language it might occasionally sound excessively wordy and convoluted. Still, I think using a voiceover makes for a more polished presentation than pieces straight to camera, which are notoriously difficult to get right.

This documentary format allows Conrad’s narration to range easily from the particular workouts we are seeing on screen to his approach, methods and general philosophy of training. He talks a lot – but there’s real passion behind the prose.

What’s good about this film?

Cool kettlebell combos!

Sheer inventiveness
I’ve been in this game for a few years and I like to think I am close to the cutting edge when it comes to fitness methods and techniques. If it’s weird, wacky or ‘out there’ I’ve had a go. But there’s still plenty of stuff in this film that I haven’t seen before.

It’s not that it’s new exactly. In fact, some of it is very old indeed. Chip Conrad acknowledges that very little of what you see is per se original – but he puts it all together in creative and inventive ways and all the way through the film is exhorting the audience to do the same.

“There is no magic in a single tool, a single program or a single principle. The Bodytribe template is license for creativity, allowing you to escape dogmas by embracing and manipulating the many malleable factors that we can use to forge our strength.”

The kettlebell combos on the second disc are particularly inspiring and they are going to be keeping me busy for some time to come.

Production
Content is important but production will make or break a movie. If you’ve ever seen movie B-roll you’ll know what I mean. Films are made in the edit suite.

This film is really well put together. Everything is a ‘character’ in this film, from the locations to the music to the animals (wild and domestic) that wander in and out of shot. It’s very well edited and the occasional cheesy/ironic use of a special effect makes it more interesting for the viewer.

The production values are budget and some of the camera work is a little shakey but that is all part of the charm.

If the content was superb but the production was crap, 99% of people wouldn’t sit through more than ten minutes of this film, or any film. It’s testament to Chip Conrad’s artistic instincts that he understands this and has put a lot of effort into making this film watchable.

Audience

This is not a film for beginners. Thank god! We don’t need more instructional DVDs, we need films to inspire and this is certainly one of those.

To get the most out of this film you need to have a good grasp of the key movements like squat and deadlift. It also helps to be reasonably adept with the major tools such as barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells.

There is some instruction in the film, particularly on the more unusual tools and exercises such as leveragae clubs or the Steinborn Lift. There are also tips on form for the more conventional exercises but you wouldn’t, say, learn the squat from scratch with this DVD.

Conclusion

Essentially the film helps you to build on what you know and get creative with your training. There’s a logical framework, a method of programming which is simple to grasp but powerful and extendable.

Conrad stands on the shoulders of giants (Dan John, Westside Barbell, Mel Siff) but he also has his own original take on training and, like Dan John, his view is an all-encompassing one. He talks about training in terms of who you are, what you stand for, how you live your life.

Conrad’s writing and ideas are not as easily accessible as the likes of Dan John. I’ve been a reader of his effusive prose, on his blog and elsewhere, for a while without really ‘getting it’. So putting it all together in this rich, visual format is a good move – nay, a triumph.

I might even read his book now.

Update: good news for UK and European readers! I am getting in a bunch of the Strength Rituals DVD to ship from the UK, saving you £££s on postage. They’ll be available in the shop from next week!

Photo by listenmissy

What happened to summer?! Here in the UK we’re into August and still hardly any sunshine. I usually train outdoors but even the hardiest of fitness fanatics would have been discouraged by the downpoars we have been experiencing recently.

So I got in a quick workout indoors in my tiny flat and I thought I would share it with you. It’s useful for several reasons:

• it can be done in a very small space
• it can be done either as a finisher to blast the arms or as a workout on its own
• it is very quick if you don’t have much time
• it involves no equipment
• it is fun and challenging

You can make this workout as easy or as hard as you like. If the push up variations are too easy for you, choose a different variation or simply put your feet higher. I have poor overhead pressing strength (I’m working on it!!) so shoulder push ups are hard for me and I chose the easiest variation. You don’t have to sink to my level.

Whatever variation you choose, concentrate on getting the form as good as possible – use this as an opportunity to practise technique. And get 100 push ups done.

Quick and dirty push ups

10 burpees (with a push up and jump)

5 tricep push ups (arms stay close into sides, hands underneath shoulders)

5 shoulder push ups (the higher the feet, the harder they are)

5 rounds for time
Watch the video demo

More from gubernatrix

• No more girly push ups!
• How to: Handstand push up
• Fun with press ups!

My problem is that I get bored doing the same routine over and over again but I don’t have time to sit around making up long complicated circuits.

I used to get around this by going to circuit classes and training with groups – all the thinking and motivation is done for you. But what happens when there isn’t a suitable group or class available?

Enter the Deck of Cards circuit. I have recently started using it in my own training and I am an instant convert! It is brilliantly simple and performs the essential function of keeping my fitness and cardio endurance levels high.

With the Deck of Cards format you get a long workout (anything from 25 to 45 minutes) in a circuit training style without having to rack your brains for loads of exercises.

You keep your heart rate elevated for long enough to improve fitness and endurance and there is also the element of surprise to keep you motivated – you never quite know what’s coming next!

Here’s how it works

Take an ordinary deck of cards. Assign one exercise to each suit. So for example you might choose

• burpees for spades
• push ups for diamonds
• squat jumps for hearts
• jumping jacks for clubs

Then you simply go through the deck performing every single card, according to the exercise you assigned to that suit and the number on the card. If you turn over the 8 of spades, perform 8 burpees.

With 52 cards – or 54 if you are using the jokers – you have a pretty long workout and you never know what is coming next. Part of the fun (if you can call it fun) is turning over the next card and seeing what torture is in store!

The beauty of the deck of cards is that no two workouts are ever the same – well, unless you don’t shuffle the pack.

See more exercise combinations in the comments below!

So what about the face cards and the jokers? Well do what you like, there are no rules. Some people treat all face cards as 10, others increment by one so that Jacks are 11, Queens are 12 and Kings are 13. Some people assign a particularly high number to Aces and Jokers, just for some extra pain.

Here’s a video clip of me performing one of my favourite Deck of Cards variations.

Having to work through the deck keeps you pushing forward and once you’ve decided what exercises you are going to do, there’s very little thought that needs to go into it. Which is a good thing because you’ll be able to think of little else except the effort you are putting in!

There’s no denying that a Deck of Cards workout is tough. The first time you do the workout it will probably seem like it is going on forever! But it is a great way to get a long hard workout done on your own.

Gym membership, expensive clothing, shiny new kit, supplements – they all cost money. But there are many ways to get fit, look great and stay strong quite cheaply.

The good news is that the alternatives can be just as good as or even better than the things we pay huge amounts of money for.  What’s more, you won’t be able to kid yourself that you are succeeding simply by throwing money at the issue.

So if you don’t feel you are getting value for money, try swopping an expensive method for a cheaper and quite possibly better alternative.

Swop: Lifting weights in the gym
For: Sandbags and bodyweight exercises

British Military Fitness shows how tough the press-up can be

Many people underestimate the amount of strength that can be gained from bodyweight exercises. Most people when they think of ‘bodyweight exercises’ immediately think of press-ups. Well, they haven’t done the Marines any harm. But as Matthew Potak puts it in Another 30 Days Without Weights, “Don’t just do a bunch of pushups and situps to failure…You have to try things that you can’t or almost can’t do.” Check his article to find out how.

Sandbags are a great way to train the power or Olympic lifts at home without investing in expensive kit. You can make your own or buy one ready made. In fact there is all sorts of kit you can make at home, from medicine balls to the latest trendy fitness accessory – the slosh pipe. You get the same training effect that you do from the shiny toys in the gym without the cost – or the annoying music.

If anyone has doubts that real strength can be gained outside the gym, just look at the sport of strongman. It’s all about picking up very heavy and awkwardly shaped objects that are just lying around (well, they are if you live on a farm).

Swop: Cardio machines at the gym
For: Joining a running club

When times are hard one of the first things to be considered for the chop is the gym membership. Although it’s convenient and weather resilient you don’t get any expertise or training for your money, just a free towel and a bored look from the 12-year-old behind the counter.

Running clubs by contrast are usually very cheap and include coaching sessions in the price. In the UK you pay a modest annual subscription (£20-30 a year) and perhaps a token amount each session you attend (my running club for example is 50p a session). You get the companionship and motivation from being in a group, you get instruction as most running clubs will have track days or coached sessions and you get another facet to your social life.

You don’t have to be a serious racer either. Most running clubs have beginner sessions and not everybody competes for the club. Many people are there just to lose a bit of weight or for the social side. On the other hand, if you do want to get serious about running you are perfectly placed to take advantage of the coaching and competitive atmosphere.

Swop: Expensive training shoes
For: Bare feet

We’ve known for a while that weight training in bare feet is perfectly acceptable, if not preferable to shoes as weight training is best performed on a flat, stable surface – although you’d have a hard time persuading health clubs of this fact since they are convinced that wearing trainers protects your feet if you drop a dumbbell on them. However now it turns out that bare feet are ideal for walking and running too! Recent research shows that shoes work against our natural gait and make the foot less efficient.

Sportswear companies have jumped on these new findings as an excuse to bring out new types of shoes such as the Nike Free, Vibram Five Fingers or Clarke’s Vivo. Which is all very exciting but you can of course just go barefoot. Remember when you were a kid and you couldn’t wait to kick your shoes off and run around in bare feet?

There has always been some amused or hippyish interest in the issue and people remember barefoot runners like Zola Budd. But it seems that only now is the research being widely disseminated to show exactly why bare feet (or shoes that closely mimic the bare foot) could be better. There are a few longtime barefoot runners out there who were ahead of the curve. Of these, many seem to have taken it up because they were getting injuries from running in shoes, and barefoot running solved their problems.

It takes time to adapt to barefoot running so introduce it gradually. Start with a comfortable surface like short grass and don’t run for too long. You will certainly feel it in your calves the next day, but you will get used to it. There is some good advice about getting started with barefoot running at the end of this article.

Swop: Text Books
For: Ebooks

There are some excellent strength and fitness books out there but they can be expensive and lengthy. But now there are popular and proven titles available for free or low cost online as ebooks.

Ebooks are often focussed more on the practical than the theoretical. For people who want a good, easy-to-follow programme or a clear explanation of training technique, an ebook is ideal.

Here are some ebook suggestions for a range of different goals and topics:

What these ebooks have in common is a clear explanation of basic principles together with techniques and programmes that can immediately be put to use in the training environment. They obviously vary in production quality but I wouldn’t be recommending them unless I was convinced of the quality of the content.

Swop: supplements and mass produced food
For: catching your own or buying locally

Wild food is popular at the moment. It seems that people have begun to feel too mollycoddled by the conveniences of modern life. Add to this the concerns over modern intensive farming methods, the ethics of food production and supermarket meat and fish can leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

Not everybody can go completely ‘back to nature’ but it is worth considering whether hunting, fishing or keeping a few chickens is something you could try. It could be a cheap source of tasty protein. Fishing is fairly easy to get into – you can get a complete starter kit for around £50, which would pay for itself in fish quite quickly. You can even go on an organised fishing trip if you don’t feel confident trying it yourself.

Conclusion

Everything I have suggested in this article is something I have done myself so I know it is possible. I love spending money on new stuff as much as the next person but there’s a difference between treating yourself to a luxury and believing that you can’t get fit without the latest kit.

Many people have got into the habit of spending money on their fitness without stopping to think whether they are actually gettting fitter and reaching their goals. If your kit or your gym membership isn’t delivering, there are genuine alternatives.

Do you train on a budget? What money-saving ideas would you recommend?

More from gubernatrix

• Bodyweight or bust
• Improve your running mile
• Improve weaknesses with unilateral exercises
• Myths about food

Further reading

• Your body is a barbell
• 30 days without weights
• The rise of sandbag training by Josh Henkin
• Go barefoot to get stronger
• How to get fit and save money

Since the beginning of 2009 I have been incorporating speed work into my training and it has brought a valuable new dimension to my powerlifting.

Speed work has been around for many years and has been popular in the powerlifting world since it was so enthusiastically utilised by Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell. However I have noticed that it is starting to seep into non-powerlifting training and is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. This is no bad thing and I suspect that everyone who lifts weights can benefit from this type of training.

What is speed work?

Speed work is all about moving the bar as fast as possible. It is not about performing a workout as fast as you can, it is about moving the bar from A to B as fast and explosively as possible.

Being able to move the bar fast helps in a number of ways. If you are lifting weights to develop strength for sport, speed work will improve your power, which is essential for many athletes. If you are trying to lift heavier weights, being able to exert force explosively will make it easier to get a heavy weight moving.

Speed work also helps to improve rate of force development – in other words, how fast your neurological system can get your muscles to full strength. It can take up to several seconds for full strength to be reached but the faster this happens, the quicker you will be able to overcome gravity and get a very heavy weight moving.

Speed training protocols

The methods of Westside Barbell are a useful way into speed work, especially if you train in a powerlifting style. Westside Barbell utilises very low reps per set, say 2 or 3, performed with 50-60% of one rep max. Several sets are performed with brief rest intervals, say 30-60 seconds. An example of this would be:

8 sets of 3 reps at 55% of one rep max with 30 seconds rest between sets

The aim is to execute each lift as explosively as possible. To be precise, in the case of the squat and bench press it is the concentric (upward) portion of the lift that is to be performed explosively. The eccentric (downward) part of the lift should be controlled although not excessively slow.

Westside Barbell uses speed work with box squats to train lifters to explode off the box, but you can do speed work without a box too.

Prilepin’s table

The protocols used by Westside Barbell are based on the research of A. S. Prilepin, who came up with a way of quantifying optimal volume and intensity for lifting. His research was based on Olympic weightlifting but Louie Simmons has amply demonstrated that it is applicable to powerlifting as well. In 1974 Prilepin published a now famous table using percentage of one rep max as his measure of intensity:

The emphasis was more on the total number of reps to be performed in a session - the optimal total – rather than the precise number of reps per set.

Westside Barbell simplified its use of this table by using mainly the lightest and the heaviest intensities. On their dynamic effort (speed training) days lifters focussed on 50-60% of max and on max effort days they focussed on 90% of max.

The reason for this is that in powerlifting significant speed is only possible at the lighter weights, such as 50-60% of max. In the 70-80% range it is difficult to get the bar moving fast, so the exercise is less beneficial from the point of view of technique. Once you get to 90% the aim is not actually to move the bar fast – it’s too heavy – but to use the technique developed by speed work to improve the efficiency of your neurological system. The intent to move the bar fast actually improves the performance of the lift.

Another factor to take into account is that speed work at heavy loads is very taxing. It is much easier to recover from 50-60% loading than 80% loading and this should be factored into your overall programme. Working at 70-80% of one rep max is not necessarily less beneficial, but it does depend on your set and rep protocol, your level of experience and your overall programme. Programmes that utilise 5×5 for example might be more suitable for a 70-85% loading. For Olympic lifters the issues are slightly different since all their lifts are performed fast, whether they are at 50% or 90% of max.

Force development

One aim of speed work is to improve both the amount and rate of force development. The amount of force a muscle can produce depends upon the number of motor units (muscle fibres and their motor neuron) that can be recruited.

A beginner may only be able to recruit around 70% of their available motor units. An advanced lifter by contrast may be able to recruit in excess of 95% of the available motor units. Training at high speeds will over time improve this motor unit recruitment, which makes you stronger.

Rate of force development is how quickly you can reach maximum force or maximum recruitment. It actually takes up to several seconds for a muscle to achieve maximum force. The quicker you can make this process, the easier it is to get a heavy bar moving.

Lifting slowly

For anyone who has come into free weight training through the normal gym route, lifting fast goes against everything we have been told by gym instructors. Trainees up and down the country are instructed to lift in a slow and controlled fashion, no matter what their training aims or abilities. As Rippetoe points out in Practical Programming, this is immensely convenient for the owners of health clubs but not very helpful for training purposes.

There is an argument to be made that those completely new to lifting should not undertake speed work until they have embedded good technique. But once that good technique has been learned, lifting fast and explosively is as safe as lifting in a slow and controlled manner – and in some cases is even safer. Lifting explosively is essential for developing power and is required for common exercises such as the clean or push press.

Starting speed work

Speed work isn’t as complicated as it sounds. If you have been lifting for a while and are confident in your technique, you are probably ready to try it. Stick to the protocols in Prilepin’s table and you can’t go far wrong.

If you don’t know what your one rep max is, now is a great time to find out. It is useful information for you and it is better in the long run to determine a true one rep max, rather than extrapolate from, say, your five rep max. Once you have established your training one rep max, you can use this information to establish your weights for speed work.

Some people do one or two speed days per week, other people will alternate within a session – such as doing speed squats and heavy deadlifts one session, and speed deadlifts and heavy squats the next. Some may only do speed training every other week.

Do the speed work early on in your session, after you have warmed up. If you feel like doing triples or doubles after your speed work, this shouldn’t be a problem but be aware that despite the light weights the speed work will have pre-exhausted you. It’s probably not worth going for singles and if you do they are likely to be less than your best.

Doing the power lifts fast and explosively can feel strange at first. It may take you a few sessions to get used to performing the lifts like this. I’m sure it almost goes without saying that you must maintain good form throughout and don’t allow fatigue to cause your form to deteriorate.

Soon you should start to see carryover when you perform your heavy lifts. Your ability to get past your sticking points and overcome inertia will gradually improve.

Further reading

Speed training for size by Matthew Perryman on EliteFTS
The importance of volume by Louie Simmons
The evolution of Westside Barbell training by Mark Riefkind on Dragon Door
How to warm up for a one rep max by Tim Henriques from T-Nation

Dan John is one of the few strength pundits who is both teacher and pupil. He has a clear, engaging prose style and everything he writes is ‘big picture’. When you read a Dan John article, you understand what it’s all about and why do it in the first place.

I like Dan’s approach because he is first and foremost a sportsman (field events, Olympic lifting, highland games etc) and therefore more performance-oriented than size-oriented. He is also a straight talking kind of guy who has no desire to make things sound more complex or esoteric than they actually are, just to boost his own ego. As the man himself puts it:

“I feel good about things like helping people with a clear goal, strength training, winning things and defeating evil.”

So naturally when I wanted some help and inspiration for my latest programme, I looked up some of Dan John’s articles. I was not disappointed! Here are the ones that resonated the most with me:

The Philosophy of Physical Capital

This article is about finding the right training programme and adapting it for your own use. What is refreshing about John’s approach is that, rather than looking at training programmes from the outside, he shows that you first need to be honest about your own abilities and commitment (physical capital) and find a programme that fits those aspects.

He discusses his ‘highly scientific’ terms for the concept of the max lift: Sorta Max, Max, Max Max and Max Max Max. I have no hesitation in saying that his explanation will change the way you think about your “max” lift forever!

Nautilus, Crossfit and “Hihi”

This is one of the best of John’s teacher-as-pupil articles. He talks about his different training experiences over the years and what he has learnt from them. He admits that he gets ‘sucked in’ but says that he enjoys trying out new ideas or new pieces of equipment.

There is a tendency in the fitness world to elevate people who espouse a single idea constituting their life’s mission, and to be suspicious of those who have changed their minds or tried different systems. Politicians have the same problem: they can never change their minds for fear of being accused of flip-flopping or u-turning.

This, of course, is nonsense. As the body of knowledge ‘out there’ grows and changes, we ought to grow and change with it. And in case you were wondering, Dan John does eventually boil his years of learning into a useful concept that you can take away and apply to your own training.

Two tips on goal setting

If you’ve read the above articles, you will understand where Dan John is coming from in these two pithy tips about goal setting.

Goals v Behaviours by Dan John

Two goal setting tips by Dan John

Read more

• Dan John’s Q&A forum
• List of articles by Dan John
• From the Ground up – Dan John’s ebook on olympic weightlifting

You can set the timer to go off at regular intervals, such as every minute. This would allow you, for example, to do a circuit that involved changing exercises every minute without having to worry about looking at a clock or a watch. This is extremely useful if, like me, you do a lot of your circuit training on your own or outside where you are not in sight of a clock.

Moreover, the Gymboss allows you to set two interval lengths, so you can use it to do tabatas – where you need one interval of 20 seconds and one interval of 10 seconds.

I’ve been using a Gymboss interval timer for several months and I think the product is so useful that I have decided to host some links to the site. If you decide to get one too, you can give your much-needed support to this site by purchasing your Gymboss via the banners and links here.

Workouts using a Gymboss

Interval timers like Gymboss make a whole host of conditioning workouts much easier, especially if you work out on your own.

1. Tabata protocol

The Tabata protocol consists of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This cycle is repeated 8 times, for a total of 4 minutes. Tabatas can be performed using any exercise. The key is to perform at maximum intensity, which has the effect of increasing aerobic capacity and raising the body’s metabolic rate for long after the exercise itself has finished.

If you have never tried tabatas, you are in for a surprise! 20 seconds doesn’t sound like a very long time, but the body fatigues more quickly than you expect, especially if you are not used to high intensity work. Whatever exercise you choose, whether squats, press-ups, burpees or something else, count the number of reps you do in the first 20-second interval and try to get the same number of reps in each of the subsequent intervals. It’s a lot harder than you think.

Read more:

Ross Enamait on the effectiveness of tabatas

2. Crossfit Workouts

Some Crossfit workouts involve timed intervals, such as the popular Fight Gone Bad. In this workout there are five stations:

1. Wall ball
2. Sumo deadlift high pull
3. Box Jump
4. Push press
5. Row

You perform each exercise for one minute before moving on to the next without a break. When all five exercises are complete, you rest for one minute, then start round two. Fight Gone Bad is usually performed in either three- or five-round versions.

Read more:

Gubernatrix does Fight Gone Bad with Crossfit London

3. Circuit training

You can use the Gymboss to put together your own circuits for high intensity workouts. A favourite circuit of mine is:

1 minute row
1 minute thrusters (front squat followed by push press)
x 3 rounds

Simple, tough but very rewarding!

Read more:

Ross Enamait has some more ideas for timed intervals that he has summarised in this guest post for Workout Routines.

Now that summer is over (did it ever really begin?) I am planning my autumn/winter training. This is a process that starts with ideas and goal-setting and ends up with a weekly training schedule. Because I am involved in so many sports and activities, this process can take quite a lot of mulling as I attempt to prioritise and be honest with myself, along the lines of “Gubes, there’s no point scheduling a run at 6am three times a week because you won’t get out of bed!”When I am developing a new schedule, I stick to a few basic principles:

• Set achievable goals
• Set a timescale that is neither too short or too long; around three months is good
• Allow sufficient recovery
• Don’t do too much too soon, build gradually
• At Christmas ask Santa for new kit

But every season is also an opportunity to do things a little differently. Here are a few ideas that I have tried in the past, with varying degrees of success. Got any others you want to share?

1. Plan over a two-week cycle instead of a one-week cycle

I adopted this when I was doing a lot of power-lifting and was having trouble fitting in enough recovery time from heavy sessions around the other things I wanted to do. I decided to alternate between a heavy week and a lighter week. In the heavy week I had more recovery, and in the lighter week I was able to do more cardio, sports and so on.

How well did it work? It was ok but it made the planning and scheduling more complicated. There was some trial and error before I found a cycle I was happy with. It was useful when training for different goals simultaneously, e.g. doing cross-country running races and trying to increase my deadlift.

2. Training twice a day

This is useful when you have several training goals or if you are doing a multi-sport event. Rather than one long session, break up your training into shorter sessions, such as one in the morning and one in the evening. I have used this when maintaining (as opposed to significantly improving) multiple skills and activities. For example, a ring training session at lunchtime followed by a run or a row in the evening. Training twice a day needs to be approached with care. It is possible to develop little injuries and niggles or just become over-tired. Scaling back every few weeks is a good idea.

How well did it work? Psychologically it is good because you feel like you are getting a lot done. But although I started well, I found it hard to keep up. Firstly, it was time-consuming from a logistical point of view: if I was doing two sessions in a day but not coming home between sessions, I needed to make sure I had all the right equipment and clothing with me. This method is probably easier for people who always train from home or those who have the ability to get changed or store things at work; basically anything that makes the logistics easier. I also think that this method works better for short, sharp training sessions such as a 10-minute met-con. ‘Normal’ length sessions twice a day do tell on you eventually.

3. Coaching

Consider getting some coaching or lessons to set you on your way or give some pointers for improvement. It may save time and effort in the long run. I have got myself some coaching in the past for activities that I find technically challenging, such as Olympic weightlifting and swimming.

How well did it work? It made a big difference. Even a single session can solve some key problems and set you on the right track. One or two coaching sessions won’t break the bank and could save months of struggling to make progress. It’s good to be honest with yourself about where you need help and what you would get out of it. You can find coaching either through a local club or through the sport’s governing body. A personal trainer or a group class can also be useful if the instructor really knows their stuff.

4. Getting diet and recovery right

When I am planning a new training period, I try to take account of my diet, supplements, rest and sleep as well. I usually plan my diet, rather than making vague promises to myself to “eat more vegetables” or “drink less alcohol”. I also avoid drastic measures such as giving up caffeine (which is drastic for me) as I don’t want them to be a two-week flash in the pan. I try my best to get as much sleep as possible. Strength coach Dan John says,

“Sleep…is the single best weight loss too, muscle gain tool, training tool, life tool, I have ever encountered…It is free, try it!”

How well does it work? It is essential to consider these aspects and it makes an enormous difference. Often I end up letting one aspect slide, such as not getting enough sleep, and my performance suffers as a result. Diet is also more significant than many people think. Cutting down on starchy carbohydrate and upping the vegetables, for example, seems to give one more energy. Diet and supplementation might take a bit of trial and error to get right but is worth the effort.

5. Do what is hard

I’ve talked about this before, but I find that the most progress is made when you do stuff that is hard and horrible and even scares you a little bit! The success of a training plan is based on how often you train when you really don’t want to or don’t feel like it. You develop motivation reminders and cues to make sure that you do your sessions.  My mental cue for when it gets hard is “this is where it counts”. The easy stuff is not what makes the difference.

How well did it work? I don’t want to sound weird about it, but when I eventually (after a few years of what I thought was training) learnt what it felt like to push yourself harder than you thought possible and come out the other side, it was a revelation. Training-wise, I haven’t looked back.There is no doubt that if you want to make serious progress you need to go through a bit of pain. There is nothing wrong with training for fun, but you also need to push yourself otherwise you are running just to stand still. As Coach Rippetoe says,

“Only people willing to work to the point of discomfort on a regular basis using effective means to produce that discomfort will actually look like they have been other-than-comfortable most of the time. You can thank the muscle magazines for these persistent misconceptions, along with the natural tendency of all normal humans to seek reasons to avoid hard physical exertion.”

Read more

• Create  your own programme
• Training programmes
• Your thoughts: supplements?
• Zone diet: episode 1
• Benchmark your strength and fitness

The nervousness starts several hours beforehand and kicks in with about an hour to go. Then suddenly I can’t wait to get to the gym, just to get the bloody thing over and done with – the nervousness is killing me!

On the way to the gym, the adrenalin starts pumping, I start getting a bit excited and have to remind myself to warm up properly. Right before the workout, whether it is heavy lifting or high intensity conditioning, the nerves briefly reappear and I faff about making sure everything is set up just so.

Then all of a sudden it’s into the workout and all systems go. Finally, I am having some fun! Yes, it is usually painful, messy, infuriating and desperate but there’s no way I’m going to stop until it’s done or I hurt something.

Some days I really feel that I am pushing myself to the limit. Other times I am working really hard, but I know deep down that I am not pushing myself as hard as I can go. What makes me push myself harder? Competition, definitely! Other people watching, other people shouting encouragement, good music.

Unfortunately most of the time I don’t have any of this. I like to think it is character-building, trying to push yourself to the limit while all around you people are chatting and pec-dec-ing while cheap music video channels pump out ‘hits of the nineties’.

I finish and either collapse in a heap or sit down and try not to faint (if it’s a max strength day). After about a minute, when the recovery has kicked in, I am already re-writing history and thinking “dammit, I could have done that quicker/heavier/better!’

But I always leave the workout on a high and the buzz lasts for the rest of the day.

How about you? How does your training make you feel?

Related posts

• What lengths do you go to for your training?
• How to be hard as nails
• Do your workouts scare you?