Minimalist resistance trainers I have known Part II…more Mark
5 May 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Sessions took forever. Challiet thought nothing of “resting” 5-10 minutes between sets. Mark Challiet would talk on his portable phone between sets…laughing, carrying on with whoever was on the other end of the phone…really engaged…totally forgetting that he was midway through a killer workout. Meanwhile, as he talked away on the phone, Mark’s trolls were loading 920 onto the barbell for his final squat of the day. He’d tell the caller to hang on a minute and put the phone down. He wander over, get his knees wrapped, pull up his two squat suit shoulder straps, put on his power belt, snort a giant whiff of ammonia, bellow like a wounded stentorian, stride to the bar and push or pull the poundage to completion. He de-belt, un-wrap and head-back to the phone. He’d get real serious 12-weeks before a competition and each successive week he’d add poundage to the previous week’s best. He’d be successful on average 10 out of 12 weeks in every training cycle and always ended up with 900-plus squats, 500-plus benches and 840-880 deadlifts. He was consistent and methodical and had a great core support group. It was nothing for twenty people to travel with Mark to one of Larry Pacifico’s incredible power competitions. Wild times I can assure you. I was Mark’s pit crew chief and saw everything up close and personal both in training and competition. Mark was the best conventional deadlifter I ever had the pleasure of training with and was open and sharp and superbly instructive on his unique approach. His techniques were priceless but I disagreed with him philosophically on training. He had a hard time recovering between sessions so he didn’t train much. I thought with his gifts he could have been the greatest lifter of all time had he tried different training regimens. He used one method from the start to the finish of his power career and that was that.
He would work up to an all out single repetition in each of three lifts one time a week. Can’t get much more minimal than that! Each training session was a mini-powerlifting competition. A Challiet deadlift routine on a good day might go as follows… 255×3 reps, 455×1, 635×1, 725×1 then the top, heaviest set of the day, 815×1. I saw him pull 850 a dozen times, pull 880 once and get 900 over his knees. His entire workout could consist of five or six sets with between seven and ten cumulative reps. See you next week! Worked for him and worked for quite a few of his acolytes. Is his way the way to train? No single mode or method trumps all others. Challiet’s method, for me, is another valid arrow in my training quiver. I might use his approach (minus supportive gear) for 4-5 weeks once in awhile when appropriate: like now. Hobbled with sickness, short on stamina, I thought that a “modified Mark” might be a way for someone with Bird Flu to get back into the resistance training mix. My solution was to rip a page from Chaillet’s thin playbook: work up to a comfortable single in each lift one time a week. Then quit. I would perform a series of snappy singles one lift a day, one lift per session, three training days a week. Uber-basic and minimal, I would be performing less than 50-cumulative reps a week! I would purposefully use an extended range of motion in all lifts; this would make the lifts harder and cause me to obtain excellent results with reduced poundage. In the squat I would go all the way down and pause before exploding erect…in the bench press I’d use long chest pauses. I would seek to be explosive on the deadlifts. Since I don’t talk on the phone during training and don’t need to work up to 850-pounds, I was able to complete 4 to 5 sets of singles in 15-20 minutes. This approach has another significant advantage for a man in my weakened condition: it is gentle on the immune system.
Interestingly, over the last four weeks I have been able to push the baseline benchmark up in each of the three lifts. I’ve steadily improved. I combined Mark’s minimalist 3-day a week all single rep approach with a short cardio regimen; 30-40 minutes per session, walking, 2-3 times a week, staying on the flat grades and avoiding the steep, lung-searing mountain grades. A little bit of everything but not a whole lot of any one thing; nothing intense, a little weight training, a little cardio. I tightened up my food selections. Bottomline? Many roads lead to Rome and as long as you don’t turn any one fitness approach or philosophy into a religion, I say - try new things out! Test ride new ideas and see where they lead. Don’t be gullible: the bottom line is all about results: tangible, definable, measurable results…oxidize body fat, add new muscle tissue, acquire more vigor, more energy and more vitality. With any new idea or program watch carefully and monitor progress – or lack of progress. If nothing of any physical significance occurs after four or five weeks, cut your loses and curtail the program. Let’s not delude ourselves. There are so many effective systems out there, let’s not waste time trying to make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. If you have a big trick bag you can mix and match your way out of any fitness dilemma. Try and find the right combination of exercises, sets and reps then nail down an appropriate training volume. Be creative and innovative; don’t fall into the trap of doing the same thing in the same way every single session. It’s nice to have a low volume/high intensity approach like Mark’s in our trick bag of training systems. It’s nice to have an opposite approach in our repertoire of routines, i.e., a high-volume/low intensity approach. Master these extremes and all points in between. Be open minded and expansive, not close-minded and pedantic.
I’ll talk a little about the Ken Fantano next time, another high-intensity, low-volume proponent who got maximum mileage on his time investment.
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