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  • Nikki Shlosser 5:25 pm on May 21, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Build Up To Your First Handstand Pushup 

    By James Sjostrom, SFG II

    Let’s cut to the chase. I walk around at 6 foot 3 inches and about 240. Let’s just say that gymnastics is not exactly a gift for me. However, I have found throughout the years that the better at bodyweight exercises I become, the stronger I am with kettlebell and barbell lifts.

    I am also a trainer by trade. I work with seemingly normal people that want to get stronger, lose bodyfat, gain athleticism, feel young again, look good naked, etc. etc.

    StrongFirst is a natural fit for me even though I run a Crossfit facility. I have learned one thing since I certified under Pavel in 2004: He is always right. So, I listen and I get stronger, my students get stronger and everyone stays safe. (I am convinced most people want to get strong in the gym so they can do stupid things outside of the gym and get hurt out there.)

    So for this example of how Pavel was right, yet again: I attended a level II in 2009 or thereabout and, of course, Pavel was teaching the tactical pull-up. He taught us not to use the bands for an assist because they don’t help when we do need them and do help when we don’t need them and of course we should be weighting our pull-ups not making them easier… Use a partner assist if you must do them… He had also mentioned the band could be used for Handstand push-ups if you could figure out a way…

    Now being a former Jarhead, I have done my share of pull-ups, but handstand push-ups are just ridiculous. I might be able to do them if I were a pixie, but a real man, of real size, didn’t stand a chance. So I returned to my little gym in Salt Lake City and decided I would try a handstand push-up. And success! I could do exactly 1. So I started doing them – I could sometimes get two singles in a whole day before crumbling to the ground. If only I could lessen the load a bit…

    So, we figured out the band trick. One goes on the bar, one like a bro strap or a backpack, and voila, the right kind of assistance. Help when I need it, and less when I don’t need as much. The big guy was able to practice handstand push-ups, I got stronger, many of my students got stronger and the world was a better place.

    James Sjostrom first Certified under Pavel in 2004 and currently holds SFGII.  James owns and operates CrossFitNRG in Salt Lake City, UT.  He is still getting stronger!

     

  • Jim Wendler 7:48 pm on May 20, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Boring But Big Without a doubt, the Boring But Big is the most popular assistance template for the 5/3/1 program.  This is because it is easy to program, easy to use and great for strength and size.  There are a 2 basic ways to do the Boring But Big ...
     

  • Nikki Shlosser 3:47 pm on May 13, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    How to Get Good at Programming 

    By Pavel Tsatsouline, Chairman

    If you want to learn to write effective training plans, first you must understand the principles of program design.  They will vary from system to system.  At StrongFirst there are three meta-principles: Continuity of the Training Process, Waviness of Loads, and Specialized Variety.

    Second, you need to learn the program design tools of the given system, e.g. ladders, timed sets, etc.

    Third, you need to study successful program designs of strength coaches operating within the same training system.

    “The more you are exposed to certain patterns, the more the memory of these patterns are re-formed at lower levels,” writes Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing and Redwood Neuroscience Institute, in his book Hawkins, On Intelligence.  “This allows you to learn the relationships among higher-order objects at the top.  It’s the essence of expertise.  An expert is someone who through practice and repeated exposure can recognize patterns that are more subtle than can be recognized by a non-expert, such as the shape o a fin on a late-fifties car or the size of a spot on a seagull’s beak.  Experts recognize patterns on top of patterns.”

    Which is why you should do your best studying training plans by Master SFGs Dan John and Geoff Neupert.  These two gentlemen have written more effective and simple programs than anyone else at StrongFirst.

    Consider the following plan from Geoff’s book Kettlebell Express!:

    • Two-hand swings—20 minutes each day, 3 days per week.
    • Total time commitment: 60 minutes per week.
    • Total number of workouts: 26.
    • Use a medium-sized kettlebell.
    • Set your timer for 20 minutes.

    Workout 1: 8 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 2: 9 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 3: 10 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 4: 11 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 5: 12 reps top of the minute.

    Workout 6: 10 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 7: 11 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 8: 12 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 9: 13 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 10: 14 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 11: 15 reps top of the minute.

    Workout 12: 13 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 13: 14 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 14: 15 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 15: 16 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 16: 17 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 17: 18 reps top of the minute.

    Workout 18: 16 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 19: 17 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 20: 18 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 21: 19 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 22: 20 reps top of the minute.

    Workout 23: 18 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 24: 19 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 25: 20 reps top of the minute.
    Workout 26: 21 reps top of the minute.

    Take this plan apart, identify the patterns, then try to write another in the same vein.  Your early attempts will be little better than plagiarism.  But eventually, if you persist, you will be able to write original art.  Monet and Manet belong to the same school of impressionism—yet no one would mistake one’s painting for the other’s.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Nikki Shlosser 10:45 pm on May 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Using Barbells and Kettlebells Together 

    By Dr. Michael Hartle, DC, Master SFG

    I started training with barbells when I was 17 years old during my senior year in high school. Our weight room was the size of a large closet, which included a bench press and a Universal machine. Needless to say it wasn’t until I had graduated that I discovered powerlifting from joining a commercial gym. I was hooked! The feeling of lifting weights that were heavy was exciting! Seeing the barbell bend while sitting in the rack, waiting for me to lift it, was exhilarating to say the least!

    I started using kettlebells off and on in 2003 while I was still competing in powerlifting. I didn’t really know how to use them properly or how to integrate them with my PL training. I attended the NSCA National Conference in 2004 where I met Pavel for the first time. He invited me to attend an RKC Certification workshop. I finally took him up on the offer in April 2006. After becoming an RKC, I slowly started to integrate KB training within my PL training regimen, figuring the KB training could only help my PL training. As I got more into using the KBs, I even started to have training sessions that revolved solely around the KB, especially during the off season.

    Going into my 8th season of playing semi-pro football, PL and KB training are fully integrated within my training cycles. I could never imagine doing one without the other. They feed off of each other, helping the other perform better.

    When Pavel started StrongFirst and informed us he would not only be having KB Certs but Barbell and Bodyweight Certs as well, I was very excited! Since becoming part of the leadership back in 2007, I cannot tell you how many emails, calls, and texts that I have received asking my advice on how to combine KB, BB and BW exercises into a comprehensive training program.

    Now, with the creation and formation of StrongFirst and the addition of the Barbell (SFL) and Bodyweight (SFB) Certifications and Courses, these will help to further educate and teach all who take these certs the nuances of BB and BW training.

    Back to barbells. Before you can attend the SFL Certification, completion of an SFG Kettlebell Course or an SFG Kettlebell Instructor Level I Certification is a prerequisite.

    Why is this?

    For starters, I didn’t attend or learn any of the KB techniques or ways of training before I started lifting at age 17 and I have had a successful PL career. Yes, while this is true, knowing what I know now, I would have shaved off years of experimenting and trial and error if I had the knowledge that I do now.

    Plus, the SFL is using KB principles that are taught during the SFG Certifications/Courses that will decrease the learning curve and speed up your success with the barbell. You will get much more out of the SFL Certification building on these skills.

    I get asked a lot by SFGs why they should venture out of the KB world that they know so well. My answer is this:

    One, you should always strive to sharpen your sword, add to your existing knowledge base. You may not use it like I do, but you will nonetheless become better for it and so will your clients!

    Two, what you have already learned while becoming an SFG will serve you well during the SFL. You will see, hear and review drills and coaching cues that you already know. Based on these, you will expand on them to help you learn and become proficient with using and training with the barbell.

    Three, most SFGs want to be strong. You have already created the foundation. Attending this SFL will help make you stronger, physically and mentally. For whatever purpose you may have.

    Celebrating my 20th year of being a chiropractic physician, I can honestly tell you that being strong is a HUGE health benefit. I am not just referring to me, but I am also talking about my patients and humans in general. I have treated thousands of patients during these past 20 years and those who are stronger tend to recover faster from injuries, have a better mental attitude and stay out of the nursing home longer. I still have not found any disadvantage to being strong. It is ALWAYS an advantage in life!

    I hope to see you at one of the upcoming SFL Certifications!

    In Strength and Honor,
    Dr. Michael Hartle, DC, Master SFG

     

     

  • Nikki Shlosser 9:11 pm on May 5, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    The Blank Serenity of the Invulnerable 

    By Pavel Tsatsouline, Chairman

    “The blank serenity of the invulnerable.” Peter Benchley was writing about a barracuda but the same can be said about strong people. Unless they are attempting a world record, they are calm and unperturbed. You could swear Ed Coan got Botox.

    Neurotics stay weak. They doubt their strength to complete the rep, so they panic and cheat. They rush their rest periods because they do not want to miss the latest episode of American Idol or they just remembered that they need to pick up dry cleaning. Or because their fidgety minds cannot be still for five minutes, recover and reflect.

    The hyperactive XXI century makes it difficult to stop long before failure and take leisurely rest periods. We need to go back in time to find the patience of strength.

    How would Yul Brynner’s character from The Magnificent Seven go about his kettlebell press ladders?

    Chris slowly removed his hat and hung it up on a sun-bleached fence post. He stalked the kettlebell hiding from the burning Mexican sun under a shed, and calmly faced it. Clean—with a lighting speed and a practiced precision of a gun draw.

    The lazy body turned rock hard to accept the blow. Chris paused with a bell on his chest, the way one does when he does not question his own strength. He powerfully shoved the heavy kettlebell overhead. The abs and the grip tightened while the face remained impassive.

    An explosive hand switch and a press with the right. The gun fighter set the bell down, a spent glass on the counter. Ramrod straight, he strode over to pick up his black hat and put it back on. He leaned on the fence and surveyed the desert for several minutes without moving.

    With all the time in the world at his disposal, Chris walked over to the kettlebell. Cowboy boots may not be the best footwear for training but they do make one slow down and walk with dignity, hips first.

    Clean, press, press. Clean, press, press. The knuckles turned white and not a single facial muscle twitched.

    Chris lit up a cigar and smoked it for some time. He finally approached the bell, the cigar still between his teeth, decisively anaerobic.

    Clean, press, press, press. There was no way to gauge the difficulty of the set. The pale eyes showed nothing but “the blank serenity of the invulnerable.”

    …The shadows from the sajuaro cacti have stretched long. The sky above the mountains turned purple. Did half an hour go by? Did two hours? Did it matter?

    The Old West was history long before I was born. Or maybe it was just a legend. Regardless, I am nostalgic for that lost world of strength and reticence.

     

  • Nikki Shlosser 11:16 pm on April 28, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    When You Don’t Know What You Believe, Everything Becomes an Argument. 

    By Pavel Tsatsouline, Chairman

    “When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument.  Everything is debatable.  But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.”

    If you do not heed this insight from Messrs. Fried and Hansson in your training, you are doomed for decades of frustration.

    Consider the three leading powerlifting systems: Gallagher’s, Simmons’, and Sheyko’s.  All three operate on different sets of principles and take advantage of different physiological phenomena.

    Sheyko has you squat four times a week using very moderate weights, high volume, and stopping far from failure.

    Gallagher has you squat once a week for an all-out or nearly all-out one set.

    Sheyko’s system is an organized approach to “greasing the groove.”  Frequent submaximal practice turns the motor nerves into “superconductors,” tops off the creatine phosphate stores in the muscle, and supposedly stimulates release of growth factor IGF-1.

    Gallagher’s system, in its obstinate denial of light days and higher volume, dooms the muscle to low levels of CP, or fuel for intense contractions.  Yet recent Russian research shows how this apparent liability turns out to be an asset for a powerlifter.  It turns out that a muscle with a smaller “tank” is easier to expose to the type of microtrauma that stimulates growth.  In addition, training hard and then doing nothing makes the “undecided” muscle fibers convert into a faster subtype.

    A typical gym rat, arrogantly convinced that he is smarter than Gallagher and Sheyko, will go out of his way to create a “better” hybrid of the two.  Immediately, the Russian system will be ruined by pushing the lifter into overtraining with intensity he is used to saving for the competition day.  The American system will sputter, the very mechanisms responsible for its success disrupted by an addition of light days.  “Drives like a boat and swims like a car,” as they used to say about the car-boat hybrid several decades ago.

    Such an experiment would never occur to either Coach Team USA or Coach Team Russia.  Both have drawn very clear borders defining their systems and they are too smart to cross them.  Wise men know that failing to limit one’s options makes decisions impossible.  In the words of Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster, “A point of view is that quintessential human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum.”

    It does not mean one cannot learn from other systems; only that such learning has to be limited to the lessons that are not going to disrupt the DNA of one’s own system.  For instance, Boris Sheyko has incorporated some assistance exercises from Louie Simmons’ arsenal, such as board presses, but it would never occur to him to add a “max effort day” and a “dynamic effort day.”

    Your grandmother has said it best: “Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”

     

  • Nikki Shlosser 6:37 am on April 24, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Strength’s Greater Purpose 

    By Mark Toomey, CEO and Senior SFG Instructor

    At StrongFirst, we like to say, “Strength has a greater purpose.” It’s in the finding of that purpose we discover parts of ourselves we have either turned away from or never seen at all.

    Striving to obtain a StrongFirst Certification, like so many did this last weekend in Boston, is on its own a form of strength. Heck, with the troubles the city of Boston went through the week before the Certification, a heavy measure of determination and single-mindedness was required just to get there. Pushing aside the constant news bursts from a few towns over and focusing on the task at hand may have required as much strength mentally as it did physically. I am so proud of our new brothers and sisters in strength.

    I received an email from a seventy-one-year-old man today asking for information on attending a StrongFirst Level I Kettlebell Certification. He wrote, “I have been training… for a little over two years. My progress has, in my opinion, been dramatic. I believe that in the not to distant future I will be capable of successfully completing Level 1 certification. However, certification has no real meaning for me in that I’m seventy-one years old and have no desire to teach. I do, as a matter of principle for me, wish to have a successful completion of the certification requirements. I have been watching the streaming videos and would like to be part of that experience.”

    The part, “certification has no meaning for me,” followed by “I do, as a matter of principle…wish to have a successful completion of the…requirements” hit me like a hammer. How many of us would gladly walk away from an event with the simple satisfaction of knowing that we did everything we needed to do? How many of us seek the experience first and the accolades second? Do we strive for the paper that says we did well, or for the knowledge inside that we gave it our all? Do we hone our craft or do we collect certificates?

    Don’t get me wrong, certifications open doors. They have a practical application for everything from obtaining insurance to maintaining employment and my company is proud to present them to men and women who meet the very rigorous standards we established. Still, I have to wonder what components of those certifications last; the paper or the principle?

    Standing in my son’s office, I see the awards he received serving as a Marine. I watch the boys and girls who flock to his dojo and I wonder if those awards have any impact on how they perceive their sensei, Mr. Toomey. I prefer to believe it’s the strength of his instruction, his strength as a protector that draws them near and in many ways, gives them strength. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s a pretty skilled fighter.

    What greater purpose will your strength serve? As an example to young people or as a means of showing others that life continues at 71 and doesn’t end at 65?

    Before making the announcements of new Master SFG Instructors, I reminded the group that we are not our resumes; our lives’ purpose is not found in the having, but in the doing. Having the strength to do what others won’t even attempt is one of strength’s greater purposes.

    A conversation about strength wouldn’t be complete without some practical application, so here’s a great program designed by an operator-member of the StrongFirst community. Each day, men and women whose names we will never know give everything they have for all of us. They don’t do it for fame or money or thanks. They do it because they are called to it.

    Monday

    -Weighted pull-ups 5 sets of 5
 – Alternate the pull-ups with strict clean and military kettlebell presses using double 24kg kettlebells

    -Rock bottom front squats with a one second pause using double 32kg KBs 5 sets of 5

    -Snatch with a 32kg KB – 5 sets, hard but not to failure

    -Alternate the snatches with strict hanging leg raises completing 5 sets

    Wednesday

    -One arm clean and jerks with a 32kg KB for 10 minutes, play it by ear

    -Heavy abdominal work

    -Pullups -100 total

    -Alternate with front squats, sets of 10 with 2x24kg KBs

    -Snatches or swings with a 24kg KB

    -Alternate sets of 10-20 kettlebell swing or snatches with 100 yard jogs (not sprints! the jog is for recovery) for as long as you can handle it

    -Cough up a hairball!

    Friday

    Start over.

    After three weeks of this program, it’s important to reduce the reps by 50% and back off for a week.

     

  • Juliet 6:56 pm on April 23, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    The Book and Ebook are Here: Becoming a Supple Leopard 

    Hey Legion, First things first.  Thanks to everyone for their incredible support and patience with [...]
     

  • Jim Wendler 3:39 pm on April 17, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Some Perspective This question/answer was taken from a Private Message on the Jim Wendler Training Forum. Note: I got this private message about 2 weeks ago and have been mulling it over in my head for awhile. This is not something I get everyday and I was a bit surprised to get this. When you [...]
     

  • Kstar 9:58 pm on April 15, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Report From The Field: Blawk Hawk Pilot MWod 

    Hey Legion, Today’s episode is a great example of how our athletes are using the [...]
     

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