Minimalist resistance trainers I have known: is there anything to be learned?
2 May 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Have you ever wondered “How little can I do and still make gains?” Let’s define gains in resistance training as growing muscle. This question occurred to me as a result of recent sickness. I caught some sort of bronchial infection in February and being He-Man (Stacy’s term) I blew it off and continued my usual deep winter routine…lifting in the unheated garage and taking deep woods power walks that would tax a pack mule, hard workouts done outside. My chest cold became worse and in about the time I normally swing into my “spring campaign” I was ailing. Murphy’s Law dictated that my sickness peak when I went to the beach for four days. At the ocean my exuberance overtook my commonsense and I walked my legs off, hitting the boardwalk at 27th street then heading down to the pier and back, five miles. The distance was ill advised (get it) and amplified my health problems. I ended up with impaired breathing and a VO2 capacity reduced to that of an 80-year old retired coal miner with black lung after smoking his 36th unfiltered camel cigarette of the day. “Bronchitis!” Stacy cried, “Bird Flu!” my 14-year old cheerleader proclaimed with the aggressive assuredness of the unwittingly ignorant. I write this blurb a month later and I’m feeling much better now. I’m a little behind the fitness 8-ball, having had to take things easy for an extended period. Now it’s time to ease back into the deal. Real progress, tangible measurable gains, lies at the edge of current capacities and physical limits. Unless you push hard nothing much is going to happen. After a period of enforced inactivity, it takes very little to go to capacity or hit the limit. Now that my immune system had stabilized, I wanted to start back up lifting. But still weakened and unable to blast away at resistance training in my usual manner, I sought a milder resistance program. I was forced to take a new approach, to understand that less is better than nothing. The post-sickness battle plan was crank back on the training volume.
At this point in my iron pumping career, my mind is easily able to command my body to do something it is not capable off. My willpower exceeds my capacities and I understand that when force of will dramatically exceeds ability, injury lies around every corner and waits, ready to pounce. I determined that I needed a low volume approach and searched my memory banks for a routine that would suit my purpose: something different, not too much or too difficult. I didn’t want to risk a sickness relapse. I’d have to guard against overdoing it. I didn’t want to bitch-slap my immune system. I also didn’t want to snap or tear a muscle as a result of coming back too fast, too hard, too heavy. I searched my brain and sorted through old data. I recalled old training partners who successfully used reduced training volume yet were wildly successful. Volume, how much training is done during the week, needed to be minimal in my impaired state. High volume, training a lot, was out. Low volume, rarely and barely training, would have to do. Intensity, how hard you train, would be modulated and adjusted in each brief, infrequent workout. I would go as hard as was sensible and prudent. I thought back over the odd assortment of training partners I’d worked with over the years and of the hundreds of training partners I’ve seen in action. Two came to mind as men who obtained incredible results from radically reduced training regimens, Mark Challiet and Ken Fantano. Each man was a world record breaker and each was a minimalist trainer. Each got an incredible bounce-per-ounce insofar as return on training investment. I trained with Mark for five years at his magnificent, crazed, Gonzo, macho, strength, power and bulk palace in Temple Hills Maryland. It was a 3,000 square foot gym over top of an auto parts store in a ghetto suburb. It was a magnet, a muscle Mecca for the obsessed.
More national and world champions trained at Challiet’s gym in the 80’s than you could shake a proverbial stick at. Monday was squat and bench press day. Thursday was deadlift day. I once counted 13 men, gathered to lift, each having had deadlifted 700 or more pounds. They were clustered around the elevated main lifting platform, awaiting their turn to lift or simply watching. Mark stood 5-10 and weighed 285 pounds with 10% body fat percentile. He had the widest shoulders and the biggest hands on any man 5-10 I’ve ever seen. Mark had best lifts of 1000 in the squat, 550 in the bench press and 880 in the deadlift. He was really good at powerlifting but didn’t really like it all that much. He was genetically predisposed to be really good at tugging and pulling on heavy objects but that didn’t mean he had to be in love with it. Mark was a minimalist: he would work up an all-out single repetition in the squat, bench press and deadlift once a week. That was it. Monday he would work up to a maximum squat wearing knee wraps, a belt and an old school George Zangas Marathon Super Suit. After squatting he would work up to a single repetition bench press max wearing a 1st generation Inzer shirt that added perhaps 30-pounds to his raw (no shirt) bench press. That was it. No back off sets, no assistance work. No nothing. On Monday a max squat and bench press and on Thursday an all-out single repetition in the deadlift. That was it. No other exercises at all. Once every 2-3 months Mark would get a wild hair and work up to an all-out set of stiff-legged deadlifts, working up to 805-825 with picture perfect technique. I once saw him do a set of curls. On impulse one day he grabbed a pair of 90-pound dumbbells and did 10 perfect curls. He was strong in every way. He was gifted.
Next:
Tags:Popularity: 2% [?]
Related Posts:
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
