Strength Training for Singles 2014: Eight-Week Workout Cycle I

Ok Mr macho man.
Fact one : I never said nor think that squats are bad for the knees on the contrary but I do think that bad form is.
You know that allowing your knees go past the toes is bad-do we agree?
Happy about your running though.

 

The guy's last name should be a clue to you to not follow on his bad form-Mr Rip toe
Kidding aside be careful .
And about my long running being bad for me well, it's not going as well as I would like, June and July were great running months as far as distance running.
September was not so good too much traveling and a little bit of laziness and this month just pure laziness I have only 10 miles for this week and I am doing a half marathon this Sunday which I signed up for last Sunday(don't know what was I thinking).
I would like to drop by more often but there are times that it's just not possible. Anyways.

 

greetings. i am a long-time lurker (yes, i've probably read all 60 of those archive pages...) who has been drawn out of hiding by bare lee's plea for more participants in the discussion.

allow me to introduce myself:

i am a mid-thirties guy who is happily time-constrained by wife, small kids, and something approximating a "real job" (though i get to work from home which helps immensely with scheduling flexibility).

since it is difficult to make a plan without an objective, here are my seemingly contradictory objectives which have (so far) been unexpectedly harmonious:

1) i aspire to be able to finish 50-mile races, under the time limits, without suffering, in full skin-to-gravel mode. my next attempt will be in about 3 1/2 weeks, so we'll see.

2) i play indoor volleyball with my friends on a couple park-district-league teams. being reasonably tall, i usually play middle blocker. thus, i aspire to the unattainable goal of "jumping higher" (since there are few things in sports more fun than blocking cocky hitters into the ground). i have, of course, moved from the inch and a half of foam wedges under my feet to playing barefoot (in the league that lets me) or in five-finger shoes (in the whiney league). my aerial game seems to have only improved as a result (possibly better loading of the calves/tendons/etc makes up for the loss of the shoe height?).

anyways, i am a skinny fellow (you know you're skinny when you're visiting germany and your hosts see you in a bathing suit and immediately note that you look like you were just liberated from a concentration camp) and tend toward endurance things. hence, i have previously avoided strength training my legs due to the usual propaganda.

under the influence of you guys, i bought some "fancy" squat stands to go with the barbell weights my wife found at an estate sale. and so it is that i realized that despite my "incredible" jumping ability and past cycling exploits and more recent running habit, that i could properly *curl* more weight than i could squat. and since my curl is nothing to write home about, i figured, "uh, maybe it would be profitable to try to improve my squatting ability...".

so, here i am.

 

Welcome broadarrow, don't sweat the curling more than you can squat. I can actually bench more than I squat, but I try to make up for it in my deadilft.
Anyway feel free to post your weekly workouts and runs, I'd be curious to see how your weight training affects your ultras and VB games.

 

Dama be nice! Just a little background about my post, at this time the general consensus for squatting safely is that your knees need to track over your feet. Like Lee posted the how far forward your knee extends is a result of the bar position and in order to keep balanced your knees may extend further past your toes.
Anyway thats why I like the knees out cue as it usually keeps the tracking correct and it also works abduction muscles which hopefully balances the adduction resulting from running too much. On another note it looks like Lee has longer femurs too so his knees will almost always be past his toes unless he goes really wide stance and low bar position.

 

Been thinking a bit about my next cycle coming up in a week, and I think I might adjust the plan a little to incorporate an upper/mid/lower mix through the week. I think 3 leg days with running and biking is too much and twice a week should be sufficient. Core would mainly be ab roll outs and stabilizations like farmers walks etc.

Legs / Upper pull focus
Upper push focus / Core
Legs / Upper mixed / Core (friday f%$* around day)

 

I think your form is fine. The angle of the camera is a little behind so it distorts where the bar is sitting exactly. Honestly if thats comfortable don't drop the bar down unless you think its easier on the neck.

I don't like going wider than jumping stance because it irritates my knees, but its always good to try it out first. Somethign I noticed when I was watching Rip squat was how slow he goes between each rep. I wonder if that might help some?

 

Yeah that was the video he takes a breath between reps. Maybe I should slow my sets down like that.

I like in that second video about maintaining your torso angle that would make it less like a good morning.

I don't have much experience with these type of squats a high bar deep squat has always felt more comfortable for me. I know people like doing box squats to drill the patterning maybe try that to focus on the hips back motion.

He's also wearing squat shoes which seem like they arr making him lead forward more vs what Rip is doing.

Now you have me interested I might try to do a legit low bar next week.

 

thanks for the welcome.

i don't know if pushing weights around will actually help my volleyball or not. i think i'm serving into the net less, so maybe that tiny bit of arm strength is putting me over the top... on the other hand, last night we got destroyed (as usual in that league) and i didn't feel like i was getting off the ground very well. maybe it has something to do with coming off of two weights days combined with 20 miles of running. i thought i would be clever and do a shorter run since it was volleyball day but somehow ended up with over 6 miles....

i have pretty much despaired of anything actually affecting my jumping ability for ill or for gain, so the weight training is the last (false) hope. one reason is that i moved from IL to DC for three years. during that time i didn't do any running, sports, or anything. only walking from the subway to work and up and down the escalators. and carrying my children around in baby carriers. after we moved back and i fell in with my volleyball buddies, i found that my "leap" was exactly where it had been before (and the same as the previous 15 years). i have a physical therapist friend who gave me her "jumping into plyometrics" book on permanent loan. so, i have given that a go a couple times. i've only found it to improve my confidence and steadiness, but not performance. even doing pretty high volumes of pretty intense versions of box jumps doesn't seem to faze my legs.

of course, it is documented in the book that in the good old days, the trainers wanted people to be able to do like a 1.5 or preferably double bodyweight squat before getting into the plyometrics. while i can apparently do a few one-legged squats, that somehow doesn't translate into doing two-legged ones.

so, my current logic is that the most likely weak spot is the raw strength (specifically, the lack thereof). my recent foray into squats hasn't translated into more vertical (yet; although the max you can hope for is what? a 10 or 20% improvement? that's like 2-4 inches, so i'm not sure how noticable it would be anyway). they don't seem to interfere with running at this point since i seem to be running faster for longer than ever before (or is that just that i've been running for two years now?).

anyways, even though this seems like the semi-official super-long-post thread, perhaps i'll follow this up with a separate post with my current "super-awesome" workout plan for your scorning pleasure....

 

my current plan is an oversimplification of my understanding of you guys' oversimplification of the rippetoe oversimplification of "starting strength" (since i'm way too lame to chase down the book). i include the weight values in hopes that many moons from now, i will be able to do slightly better. also: to bring smiles to readers' faces when they realize that they aren't the weakest person in the world.

(all weights in pounds)

sunday:
press 2x5 (light warmup: currently about 40lbs)
press 5x5 (currently maxed out at about 80)
deadlift 2x5 (light warmup: 125)
deadlift 5x5 (currently 165 with room to keep moving up)

monday:
volleyball day

tuesday:
pullups 3x? (to failure: currently 9/8/6)
squats 2x5 (light warmup: 70)
squats 5x5 (currently 120 with a little room to move up)

wednesday:
repeat of sunday: press & deadlift

thursday:
volleyball day

friday:
repeat of tuesday: pullups & squats

saturday:
completely off day (i'm a saturday church kind of guy. although, during the fall/winter [i.e., starting about now], i may move the friday workout to saturday night to accommodate a sundown-to-sundown definition for the rest day...)

notes....

timing: i tend to do the workouts at night right before bed since that is when the kiddies are out of the way and (hopefully) sleeping. which, as we all know, can push it pretty late....

inter-set rests: being more of an endurance person, i have a tendency to move directly from one set to another. since trying out this stripped down plan, i've been using a timer to force myself to stand around for 2 minutes for the warmup sets and 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 minutes between "real" sets. to make it tolerable, i either clean the room or have a book sitting open and get some reading in to keep me on the straight/strait and narrow. i guess the rest is good for making sure you have a shot at putting up "heavy" weights, but it sure does drag out a two exercise workout into a 45min or an hour proposition.

press: i take it off the squat racks rather than picking it up off the floor. this is so i don't have to pay to rebuild the floor if i screw something up, i guess. i like to kick my elbows out to the side, but i should probably figure out what the proper ways to pushing the bar up are and choose a comfortable one. i put my hands so my thumbs are basically at the outside edge of my shoulders.

deadlift: i tend toward straighter legs and try to minimize the leg movement. i figure i'm trying to get the deadlift to work the back more (whatever that means) and the squats to work the legs.

pullups: hands on the same side of the bar as my face. (fascinating, i know...)

squats: i'm trying to do that max-range-of-motion/super-deep style. fortunately, i'm so skinny that i can go pretty far down before i get the calves pushing against the hamstrings thing that is supposed to put weird stresses on your knees. i want to keep my back fairly vertical, so pursuant to the recent discussion, i guess i should try to keep the bar as high as reasonable to keep my combined center of gravity forward, so, so, so...

so far, i've managed to keep this going for two weeks starting a little below what i think i can do and doing the "add 5 pounds each time" thing. i'm pretty sure i've bumped up against my current max for press, getting close on the squats, but there's still a little ways to go for the deadlifts.

i've been keeping up a decent running volume, aiming for 5 or 6 days a week. basically, i try to get in as much as possible and then let life interfere. so this week was 40.9 mi in 5 runs and last week was 36.5 in 5 runs. so far, i seem to do better with running all the time rather than having off days (and yes, i have an inscrutable spreadsheet keeping track...).

if history is any guide, i will not be gaining any weight, but, hopefully i'll get a little stronger. between the weights and the running, i seem to spend my whole day eating and have to decide between eating the 8th meal of the day or going to bed....

since i am signed up for a 50-miler in 3 weeks as well as having maxed out the press for the moment, i am thinking of resetting the weight loads back down a little. it should also allow me to make sure i am using decent form and range of motion.

so, perhaps:
press -> 65
deadlift -> 160
squats -> 110

that's my flavor of the moment.

 

well, if i'm really that strong, maybe i can join your deadlift challenge on a weight-adjusted, time-delayed basis. at 150 pounds, i guess i've already won! (not quite.)

i don't have bench or rows for a couple reasons. i don't have a bench on which to recline (even though it would work great with my squat stands that have little bench press rests and even possibly useful safety thingees). i have a cable&stack machine that has a bench press kind of thing on it. but, it necessarily has a particular range of motion determined by the geometry of the giant lever. over the previous few months, i have hit it with a little progress and am near the capacity of the machine. prior to this current formulation, i was doing a sort of backward push-up thing (putting the bar 3 feet off the ground, putting heels on a stool or something; and then pulling until my chest/neck touches the bar). it was hard to keep a consistent load and stay inspired. and apparently, i don't really know they should be done.

i guess my theory is that the pull-ups are supposed to do the non-static upper back thing that rows might help with. and then i got inspired by some mark rippetoe tirade about the "press". and truly, how often do you find yourself flat on your back with a car parked on top of you? more often you're trying to squeeze that last box through the entrance to the attic or loft your children to great heights. plus, i already have a beautiful wife, so impressing the ladies isn't so much of a priority (if it were even a possibility at all). and anyways, i've never heard a girl brag about her boyfriend's pecs, but i *have* heard them brag about how their boyfriend can do handstand pushups without the wall....

already, it takes me forever to get through a workout session, so i'm trying to do simple and stick to what seems like the highest return on time investment exercises.

in theory, i guess i'm worried about putting on mass, but not really because: a) it ain't gonna happen and b) as long as the added pound pushes harder than 1 pound, you're faster/higher/stronger.