AC-DC & All that other Happy Horse Shit: Part II



Previously HERE I wrote about the daft stupidity of the band AC/DC and the music that gets me fired up for training, well this time I thought I would show some of the videos that leave me wanting to punch the faces of small kittens the world over, watch them, get to the gym and set a new PR, because if you don’t, you are a pussy! 

Derek Poundstone, 31 years and around 155kg of body weight, The Viper trains around his full time duties as a revenue collector. He has managed to gain 2 Arnolds Strongest Man and 3 Americas strongest man titles. Any thought that Strong Man is an illegitimate test of abilities gets completely overturned when you read his personal records in the power lifting world, at age 23 he was Benching 200 and pulling nearly 300.  Perhaps the highlight of this video for me is in the intro where he states “you can make excuses for everything, oh this hurts, that hurts, excuses will only get you so far, but they won’t get you anywhere with me”



 If there is one thing that fires me up to train it’s ‘Surviving the Cut’, these guys will make you feel weak and lazy and shit, they get sent to hell and back, made to pack march for hours, swim in pools with their hands tied behind their backs and deal with drill instructors screaming abuse for weeks on end. If that does not put your pain levels in perspective, nothing will.  



No matter how hard you try; you will never be as cool as The Rock, I tried to find his training logs. 
However, it seems he just does not post them, with the exception of the below video he tends to keep his training to himself with only a few promo-shoots for magazines and the likes. If there is anything to be taken from the below video it appears he trains with similar methodology to NFL Footballers, High Intensity, Short intervals, Lots of dynamic and agility training jumping, sprinting and performing Olympic lifts. Obviously; this is his ‘wrestling’ training and he changes to more body building specific part-for-part training before movies and photo shots but I think the take home message is; don’t be a pussy, train long, hard and don’t make excuses. Fired up? Yeah Rock gets my man crush going! 



Benedikt Magnusson is nothing short of a human freak; he has previously spoken about ‘not taking training too seriously’ yet he still manages to be the best Dead Lifter the world has ever seen. According to Power Lifting Watch his training typically involves 3 week cycles of week 1 8x2 at around 50-60%, week 2; 4-6 sets of 3 at 50-75% and then week 3 using the ‘Jeff Jet method’ where he starts with a rack pull, has training partners pull the safety rails out and then completes an entire Dead lift, His unique system is somewhat similar to Andy Bolton who also has spoken extensively about staying well below maximal weights when training the Dead lift. However, when you see him engage beast mode, you know shit’s getting real



Love or hate him, Tito Ortiz is without doubt one of the most badass mofo’s on the face of the planet, when training he would travel to ‘Big Bear’ about 3 hours drive from his home in California, Tito believed that training at 7000 feet of altitude resulted in increased V02 uptake, but mostly kept him away from the distractions of big cities, his training camps would consist of an early morning run in the snow followed by MMA and Boxing drills, Conditioning and lifting mid-afternoon, followed by Wrestling in the evenings. Still want to talk about over training? 



The human body is capable of more than we give it credit for...



Once a year all us crazy kids get together for the Limbo push pull, this year, I had no massive plans for the meet, just front up, put on a show for the punters and have a bit of fun. Leading in to this meet I had been following the Ben-Eiko-5-3-1 template [That I have mention HERE, HERE & HERE] and ticking along quite nicely, until; 3 weeks out I pulled 237.5 at training. 

Let me explain the conundrum, I always pull more in competition than I do in training, this is because

  •           A: I de-load for 14 days meaning I come in to a meet fresh like roses

  •          B: Training beats you up; whereas, in a meet you run a simple, easy warm-up then go lift on the platform.  

  •          C: Don’t ever underestimate the power of people watching, staring, just waiting for you to fail


Now, going back to the 237 pull, 237 in the gym represents about 255 on the platform. How do I come to this conclusion? 

Stay with me here, you might learn something, I use this thing called a ‘Simple Linear Regression’ to explain this, the Regression looks at your training weights ‘X’ and then your competition weights ‘Y’ based upon previous meets and draws a line to predict what you should be capable of lifting, it works particularly well with the Dead lift since there is minimal interference from equipment like knee wraps or bench shirts.  

Now just let me make a few points clear from the outset; to do this, you need to have competed a number of times. As such, this is for fairly advance lifters. Furthermore; just because the name is ‘Simple Linear Regression’ does not make it ‘Simple’ at all, don’t try and calculate it yourself, just use one of the many online calculators. 

So now the boring predictions are done, we can move on to the fun shit, lifting weights! 

I warmed up to about 225, I would have liked to gone a little bit higher but there was only stiff ABC Power Bars in the warm up area and the bar on the platform was a whippy Texas Deadlift bar, so I went out for a 250 opener, walking out after posting your training logs and videos all over Facebook I can’t begin to tell you how nervous I was for that lift. I have only competed once this year, so I guess you can say I am out-of-practice. But once I got my hands on the bar everything just fell in to place, drove through my heels, pushed my knees out and then without even thinking my hips fired through and my chin tucked. As I walked off the platform I said ‘Fuck that felt heavy’ not knowing just how fast the bar came off the floor! 



The second attempt was 257.5, the notion of putting your faith in a statistical formula that is notoriously unreliable, not to mention in attempting a raw personal best by 2.5kg made me nervous as hell, but I had to block all that shit out. I put my feet in place, contrary to the You Tube Trolls, I ran my set-up procedure, got my air, grabbed the bar, and got moving, as I drove my knees out I went in to the same epileptic style shaking I did exactly 12 months earlier at the CAPO Deadlift nationals, but somehow managed to pull through and lock out. Without doubt that was one of the toughest pulls of my life. 


 

 On the final I went out for 262.5, I got my air, grabbed the bar and instantly felt like my abdominals were not turned on like they normally are. As I began to pull it felt like something snapped in my abdominals and I had a massive stabbing pain in my lower back – Yes at that point my stress levels went through the roof, then just to rub salt in, as I stood up my foot cramped up like some kind of cruel joke from god. 



That night driving home I genuinely believed I had broken myself; the pain was well and truly present in a time where adrenaline is normally taking care of all that flap-trap. However, when I woke up the next day and felt FINE, hardly a sore muscle fiber in my body.

I guess the human body is capable of more than we give it credit for...

Ben-Eiko-5-3-1

Just a short and sharp entry to try and improve my search engine optimization; the Ben-Eiko-5-3-1 template that I first wrote about HERE is now available for FREE PDF download HERE. It's free from sarcasm or softcore porn making it very work computer screen and commercial gym friendly.

Since it is free please make sure you SHARE the sucker with your friends and have them add me on Facebook and for the love of god book at PT session!

Bitch please; make depth
Get stuck in to it and let me know how you go