"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
Feeling fat, looking fat, and being fat are three separate things. You can “feel fat” without looking or being fat. I’ll hazard a guess that it's mostly emotional, but even when you’re not being particularly neurotic, you can feel fatter or leaner depending on the fit of your clothes and your posture. You can also look... Continue Reading →
Part 6 of our series "Tao of the Lazy Badass" and part 7 of our retrospective series, "Twenty Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." (Follow the links to find all previous installments.) In our last post, we talked about “fragmenting the load,” a fancy way of saying that you should chop up your workload into small, easy... Continue Reading →
Goruck Heavy (May 31 - June 1) commemorating D-Day. San Francisco. Thirteen entered (eight men, five women), ten finished. These are the lessons I learned, first about individual performance (part 1), then about us as a team (part 2), then about my gear choices (part 3). Absolute Strength and Strength-Endurance Absolute strength is essentially one-rep... Continue Reading →
Part 2 of our series "Tao of the Lazy Badass" The 5x5 is a classic approach because it is a foolproof way to accumulate volume.For liability reasons, however, you should not attempt high-volume midget lifting. Just add more plates. Exercise is a tale of two variables: Volume (how much you do) and Intensity (how hard... Continue Reading →
Part 6 in our series "20 Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." Complete table of contents here. Before Pavel came along, we did not deadlift. By “we” I mean young ironheads who wanted big muscles and got our (mis)information from dime store bodybuilding magazines. "[T]he deadlift is THE exercise of choice for anyone." In 1999 Pavel sounded... Continue Reading →
Part 5 in our series on the methods of Russian powerlifting coach Konstantin Rogozhnikov. Rogozhnikov designs his medium days as "bodybuilding" days. You “pump the muscles up with blood” with 3 sets of 8 using “a weight that you couldn’t just easily cruise through 8 reps with.” Timur Andreev, a former champion from Rogozhnikov’s stables,... Continue Reading →
Part 4 in our series on the training methods of Russian powerlifting coach Konstantin Rogozhnikov. Rogozhnikov prescribes a standard regimen of “assistance” work every day for his athletes. But is it right for you? Probably not. Powerlifters label “assistance work” any lifting outside of the three “main lifts”: the squat, bench, and deadlift. That includes... Continue Reading →
Part 4 in our series on the system of Russian powerlifting coach Konstantin Rogozhnikov. Imagine that you had a high-tech superhero suit that boosted your strength, a little like Iron Man. Where you are weaker, it would do some of the lifting for you. You would be a sort of cyborg athlete. Powerlifters evolved stuff... Continue Reading →
The third installment in our series on Russian coach Konstantin Rogozhnikov. “Bodybuilding.” Use that word carefully around ironheads, who can get every bit as prideful and pedantic about nomenclature as any hipster subculture. In particular, if you should chance to call a powerlifter a “bodybuilder,” you commit a faux pas like speaking Japanese to a... Continue Reading →
Back in the 80s, most of us were taught that you had to lift all out, every time. Boy, was that stupid. Not only were we courting injury, we were making exercise, which should be joyful, into a grim discipline. It's a wonder that any of us still likes to train. Everybody has to "cycle"... Continue Reading →