As one of the main finishers for upper body conditioning we do at Genesis Athletic Performance, Battling Ropes have become pretty popular. They have been around for a while, but are just now starting to take off. Someone even told me they saw it on an episode of The Biggest Loser a few weeks ago. Battling Ropes are a great exercise that have multiple variations and uses which is why they are incorporated into our athlete’s training frequently.
Here is an example of one of the ways we have used Battling Ropes at the facility.
You can use them for conditioning, as part of a Tabata style workout (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, repeat), to correct muscle imbalances (especially in the upper back), to teach glute and hip activation instead of moving the ropes with just your arms and shoulders, for grip strength (especially the thicker the rope), as a great way to work the core, and much more.
The problem is that it is hard to find a 50ft or longer rope that will last and is thick enough so your body has to work hard to control it. Your local building supply store doesn’t offer them, and if you purchase them online you are going to pay a few hundred bucks depending on the quality, length, and thickness you get and that isn’t even including shipping.
Because of this and me not wanting people to have to spend money to get results, I decided to do some hunting and brain storming and come up with a cheap or free alternative to use instead of ropes. After asking clients and friends for ideas and searching the internet, I discovered this excellent alternative. Continue reading »
The best results I ever achieved physique wise throughout the years didn’t occur based off what exercises I was doing (as long as I was still doing basic big compound movements), how much I was lifting, or how many sets or reps I was doing, but instead how closely I was paying attention to my rest periods.
When people concentrate on adding lb’s to a lift or purely on strength, they watch their rest intervals to make sure they are recovering enough but not cooling down between sets. But people always seem to forget about rest periods the more they focus on their physique.
Rest is one of the easiest ways to manipulate a workout so it relates more to your goals, but no one ever pays attention to it or thinks of ways to change it. You take basically any workout and by adjusting the rest periods it can change from a muscle gaining program to a fat burning program without touching an exercise.
Everyone is always looking for the best exercises to achieve a certain physique, when in reality, sticking with your big compound movements and worrying about your rest periods is the easiest way to find a program that works for you.
For example, let’s take a workout from a basic 5 x 5 template and see how we can modify it to accomplish multiple goals by just manipulating rest periods. Continue reading »
The number one question I get from my athletes (and basically everyone else as well) is, “How can I put on some much needed muscle?” Unfortunately, there are many ways to do it, but they’re all generally dependent on three things: keeping one’s diet in check, genetics, and rest. (There are many, many other factors as well, but elaborating on them all would be way too long for this post.) Because of the dominance of these three, non-exercise related factors; I am always looking for short cuts or little tricks that can be added into any strength program to help with muscle gain for the majority of people out there.
One of the main tricks I use with my own athletes are timed sets. I try to stick a variation of this method in every one of my undersized athlete training programs, and it has yet to fail me or them. There are many different types of timed set variations out there, but the one I’m going to elaborate on is designed either to pack on overall muscle or to bring up some muscle on a lagging body part. (The latter for you body-builder types.)
Sitting down and watching the 2010 NFL Combine this past week really demonstrated this principle in action. Let’s take bench press for example: While watching all the guys at the NFL Combine do their 225 rep max test, you’ll notice that it doesn’t really matter if a given athlete got 8 or 38 reps. Regardless of total reps, the time each athlete spent moving the weight was about the same: between the 25-30 second mark.
When was the last time you got under a bar and did a burn out bench press set at any weight? For the most part, the body starts fatiguing in terms of lifting right around the 30 second mark regardless of the weight or rep range. So how do you use this observation to build some solid muscle? You can do this simply by increasing the time your body can move that weight without changing the weight used.
For my athletes, we try to use a weight that they can normally rep 12-15 times, and on the first week of doing timed set training, I’ll have them take that weight and try to get as many reps as possible in 30 seconds with one goal in mind: keeping the bar moving. I don’t care how many reps they get in those 30 seconds, (unless they are hitting 25+ for all the sets) but instead, I’m concentrating on having them keeping bar moving the entire 30 seconds. I’ll have them do this for 3 sets with roughly 90-120 seconds of rest between each set. When they get back to that exercise again the next week, I’ll have them do another timed set, but this time I’ll up the time to 35 seconds for 3 sets with the same rest period. We’ll then add 5 seconds to each set every week until they work up to 45 second sets. The weight stays the same every week. Additionally, I stick this timed set routine it in the middle of their regular training cycle to act as a supplement to their traditional power and strength work.
Depending on the athlete’s specific needs, I’ll change how many exercises I have them perform using this cycle. But for the most part, everyone starts with one timed exercise each training day that either relates directly to their sport or a lagging body part. Continue reading »
