A few words on keeping the shoulders healthy

As a dude that lifts with a permanently separated shoulder that also had shoulder problems for years, I can tell you a few things that I have done, or do, to keep them at bay and/or some of the changes I have made in training certain movements.

For bench - Close grip only. Yes, you can bench more with a wider grip, but you can also get a look at a t-bone by sticking your head up a butchers ass......wait, wait. Anyway, If you plan on lifting for a long time and want to save your shoulders, bring your grip in. My grip is 15" between the index fingers. This usually puts me right on the outside of the inner smooth of the bar. You don't have to go this close, but bringing your grip in will take a lot of strain off the shoulders and rotator cuffs.

For incline - As John Meadows just posted recently, when you do inclines and lower all the way down, it places much more strain on the cuff. Many years ago, I read about Flex Wheeler and Chris Cormier doing inclines where they lower to right below the chin. Seeing how inclines always made my shoulders feel like shit, I tried this out and to my surprise, I had no pain with it. I've stuck with it ever since. Of course, keyboard warriors will tell you "you didn't touch your chest" but I've never seen an incline press done at a powerlifting meet. And I also don't think that inch difference is going to make that big of a difference in how much you can press. If anything, I always found it harder, but easier on the shoulders. So a win/win. Also, incline tends to give good carryover to both your overhead work, AND the bench. My grip on incline is not narrow, but it's definitely not wide either.

Press behind the neck - The behind the neck press has gotten a bad rap for YEARS. Why? Because of people who lack the shoulder flexibility to do it. Think about that for a minute. Does that make the movement dangerous, or just dangerous if you try to overload on it, while you aren't flexible enough to do it?

Most people, when they start lifting, aren't flexible enough to squat properly either. However, we're not in the business of telling people not to squat deep because they lack the flexibility to do it are we? No, because we're not certified personal trainers. We're lifters. If we suck at something, we work to get better at it, rather than feeding a handicap.

I remember years ago when I was doing DC style training, Dante had guys with shitty shoulders doing shoulder "dislocates" with a broom or band. They RAVED about how great their shoulders felt after getting good enough to do them. I was able to do them right out of the gate, and it never made my shoulders feel better. You know why? Because I was still doing press behind the neck. Shoulder dislocates don't look a whole lot different than press behind the necks really. And all the guys from the 70's and 80's loved them some PBN and I don't remember any of them having their shoulders explode out of socket like something out of a Die Hard scene. The difference with the press behind the neck as opposed to benching, is that you need to get your grip WIDE. Not close.

You don't have to go snatch grip wide, however the wrists will need to be well outside of the elbows, not in line with them.

It goes without saying that you need to do cuff work. You should throw in some easy cuff work before any pressing, and after as well if your shit is really bad.

Let me also add, that I think pressing twice a week is enough. Most guys can eventually gain strength just fine on once a week. The whole premise that you need to press 3+ times a week seems like a sure fire route to shoulder problems, and the majority of really strong pressers I know, don't train the press more than twice a week AT MOST. And plenty of them train it once a week.

I hope this helps some guys out, and may you use it in your pressing programming to get better.

Another PR story

Just thought you should know I hit a full 100 lb raw competition PR on my 18" DL after running two rounds of the SLL strongman DL protocol and a strong15 short cycle. Also hit a 5 pound pr on log clean and press and 35 lb pr on the clean portion (missed locking it out) -- Cody Neal

Training - Press (heavier day)

Bodyweight - 248

Close Grips -
bar x 50,30
135x15
225x5
275x4
315x3
365x2
405x1

365x3,3,3

Incline -
225x5
315x5,5
365x3

Seated Db Press - 100's x 14

Notes - This was the heavier pressing day that is an option.  The 365 double and 405 single were incredibly fast so I went with the heavier day.  The triples at 365 was stupid stupid fast and easy.  On the last set, it was so light  I stopped after the first rep because I legit wondered if I had taken the 25's off the side and that it was 315.

All in all, a good pressing day.  Very strong 80%er.

Training - Skwats

Bodyweight - 249

Leg Ext -
25x20
50x20
75x20
100x20
75x20
50x20
25x30

Fronts -
135x3x5
225x5,5
275x5,5,5
315x5,5

Squats -
315x5,5
365x5,5
405x5,5

Notes - Ugh.  Total -10% session in that everything felt awkward and tight.  Awkward and tight might be a good way to describe the first time being in your virgin girlfriends poonanny however, it's not how you want fronts and back squats to feel.  Chalk it up to doing all the cardio and other work I have been doing.

Podcast with Capt. Kirk

No intro, no outro because one is not needed.

This is a podcast with the Captain.  My favorite powerlifter of all time, Kirk Karwoski.

Very little bullshit here, lots of training and eating talk, pure training shit.

There are some times when his call breaks up because a massive storm was raging but you'll survive somehow.

Some highlights -

Spent his "offseason" doing 8's
Tried to maintain explosiveness through whole training cycle (no grinding)
Ate FOOD to both grow, and get lean.  Not basing his diet around shakes.
Trained 16 weeks for meet training with very few misses ever in training.

Enjoy.



http://www.4shared.com/mp3/GDasq_Hc/LRB_Podcast_-_Capt_Kirk_Editio.html

Thoughts about life, crap, training, and stuff - Foot and heart syndrome edition

So tonight if I can get the stars aligned correctly, I should be able to get in a podcast with the great Kirk Karwoski, who has been my favorite powerlifter for quite some time.  I've had a chance to talk with Kirk on the phone a few times now, and he's a really cool dude and much like myself, talks a lot.  Jim Steel said we'd get along famously and so far that's been the case.  I already have quite the list of questions lined up and I can tell you from the times we've spoken, it's going to be awesome.  If I don't get it done, it's because Kirk is in and out a lot, however it will happen.  So stay tuned.

On a dieting note, for those that are following 365 and doing the keto, let's be clear here.  Fried foods are not low carb.  I can't fucking believe I saw this shit more than once this week.  Several times I read or saw pics of fried dishes and people talking about "low carb meals" or "no carb meals".

What the fuck?

Here is the nutritional info for Hooters chicken strips........

46 grams of carbs.  This is NOT low or no carb, obviously.  Most fried foods involved batter, which is full of bread crumbs and sometimes they even glaze the shit with sugar.  Anything slathered in bar-b-q sauce is out as well.  So I don't get why people think that ANY kind of meat is keto, because how it is prepared and cooked does matter.

Before you go spouting off about what a nutritional guru you are (which I am not, so I defer to John Meadows and Kiefer about this shit), you might to make sure that you actually know what you are talking about first.  Fried foods are not a keto food anymore than tootsie rolls or bread sticks from Olive Garden are.  A great way to approach keto is to shoot for zero carbs and you'll probably end up around the 20 grams per day range overall.

This vid of CT Flether has been making the rounds on the interwebs.  I really like this guy.  Mainly because he's obviously very stupid (he uses curse words, and I've read a lot lately that profanity obviously is a sign of low intelligence).  However, what jumps out at me about this WHOLE thing, is that he avoided steroids so he could say he was natural.  So what did he do instead?  Ate hims some MACDonalds, and got fat as shit.

20 years of 4 big macs, 4 fries, 2 shakes, and 4 apple pies at lunch.  Which put him in the ER too many times to count, and with major heart issues.

All to avoid steroids.

Let's do some MAFF!

4 big mac's = 2160 calories
4 orders of fries (super sized I assume) = 2440 calories
2 shakes = 1000 calories
4 apple pies = 1000 calories

Survey says?  

6600 calories for lunch.  I'm not doing the macro breakdown but we should all know it probably doesn't look like what 6600 calories from chicken breast, grass fed beef, brown rice, oatmeal, and sweet potatoes looks like.

 

I think it's insane, how guys will do this to themselves personally.  Both with food, and drugs.  The natural guy will fuck himself up to the hilt health wise with food in the "offseason" like this, and the drug user will fuck himself up to the hilt with bigger cycle after bigger cycle because whatever it was he was taking obviously wasn't the answer.  

On the flip side, some people want to be the best.  If sacrificing their health and well being means they have to do that, then so be it.  There was an article I read a while back about Jason Taylor, former defensive end for the Phins, and all the shit he went through while playing.  I linked it, however some quotes really jumped out at me.......

He had torn tissues in the bottom of both of them. But he wanted to play. He always wanted to play. So he went to a private room inside the football stadium.

“Like a dungeon,” he says now. “One light bulb swaying back and forth. There was a damp, musty smell. It was like the basement in Pulp Fiction.”

The doctors handed him a towel. For his mouth. To keep him from biting his tongue. And to muffle his screaming.

“It is the worst ever,” he says. “By far. All the nerve endings in your feet.”

That wasn’t the ailment. No, that was the cure. A needle has to go in that foot, and there aren’t a lot of soft, friendly places for a big needle in a foot. That foot pain is there for a reason, of course. It is your body screaming to your brain for help. A warning. The needle mutes the screaming and the warning.

“The first shot is ridiculous,” Taylor says. “Ridiculously horrible. Excruciating.”

But the first shot to the foot wasn’t even the remedy. The first shot was just to numb the area … in preparation for the second shot, which was worse.
He won defensive player of the year that year, by the way.  Also let me add, I've had stitches in the bottom of my foot.  It was incredibly excruciating.   

What I'm getting at here with both of these stories is, maybe you can be a champion, and maybe you can't.  Whatever endeavour you decide to undertake, genetics will be involved in playing a part in that.  However, the rest is determined by how much you are willing to give up and sacrifice.  

Your time?

Your relationships?

Your money?  

Your feet?  

Your heart?  

Your life?  

Who knows.  

That's your call.  Taylor says in that article, in the end it was worth it.  Good on him that he can feel that way.  

CT doesn't really say if he felt like it was worth it, but he says that you don't really have any excuses for not making the minimum effort to get better.  

The difference in the two stories about being the best is that, Taylor didn't choose for his feet to be fucked up.  CT chose to make decisions to fuck his health up.  So I do see a line between the two stories.  If you have extenuating circumstances that are completely out of your control that you have to make a choice to fight through, that isn't quite the same to me as making conscious choices that you will pay for later.  It's like being condomless while the not so "clean" hot chic is begging you to bang her.  You want to hit it, but you know you could pay for it later.  

Again, it really all comes back to how badly you really want something, and the sacrifices you will have to make to attain it.  Life is going to be filled with these kinds of decisions, and in the end everything comes back to two very simple things.  

1.  Priorities 

2.  Level of effort

#2 there will tell you everything you need to know about #1.  

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/13/3179926/dan-le-batard-jason-taylors-pain.html#storylink=cp

Training and podcast with Capt. Kirk

Bodyweight - 250

Seated Db Press 

100's x 17, 10

That's it.  Awful.  Tired as hell.  

I am scheduled to do a podcast with Capt. Kirk tomorrow night.  Pretty fucking excited as Kirk has been my fave powerlifter for a long time.