With me and my wife's new baby girl Reese having arrived on April 8, you could say I'm pretty much stuck at home these days. Sure, I run out to get diapers, Chinese food for dinner and for the weekly grocery shopping trip, but other than that I'm gladly hanging around the house with little Reese and Melissa (my wife), trying my best to be a good dad. Being on virtual house arrest like I am, getting to the gym is a challenge. Honestly, I'd rather not drive 10-15 minutes each way to the gym, work out for 45-60 minutes and be gone for 90 minutes or so total.

 

My solution, of course, is training at home. And fortunately, it doesn't take much equipment to get the job done. A pair of adjustable dumbbells (I own a pair of Powerblocks; PowerBlock.com) and a bench does the trick, and they take up a bare minimum of space in my garage.

 

Lately, I've been splitting up my training with upper body (chest, back and shoulders) one day, legs the next and arms another day. I'll typically do the upper body and leg workouts twice each week (upper body Monday and Thursday, legs Tuesday and Friday) and do arms just once (usually Saturday). Here's the upper body workout I did recently - again, with nothing more than my Powerblocks and bench - and it was a killer. It consisted of two different three-exercise circuits, where I did four circuits through of the first trio of moves before moving onto the second trio. Next time you're trapped at home with no ability, or desire, to commute to the gym, give this punishing Powerblock chest/back/shoulders routine a try.

 

 

Exercise                                  Reps

                                                Circuit 1  Circuit 2   Circuit 3  Circuit 4

Dumbbell Military Press         12             10              8               6

Dumbbell Bent-Over Row       12             10             8               6

Dumbbell Incline Press            12             10             8               6

Minimal rest between exercises, and resting 2-3 minutes between circuits (each circuit consisting of the above three exercises). Increase weight on each exercise every circuit.

 

Exercise                               Reps

                                            Circuit 1   Circuit 2    Circuit 3   Circuit 4

Dumbbell Push-Ups*          to failure    to failure    to failure    to failure

One-Arm Dumbbell Row    15              12               10               8

Dumbbell Lateral Raise       15              12               10               8

Minimal rest between exercises, and resting 2-3 minutes between circuits. Increase weight on each circuit if possible (push-ups done with only bodyweight each time).

*Hands on the handles of the Powerblocks sitting on the floor, rather than hands on the floor.

 

I recently interviewed Dan John for an upcoming article I'm writing for the February 2010 issue of M&F. John is a competitive lifter (powerlifting and Olympic lifting) in addition to being the strength coach and head track coach at Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper, Utah. Let me tell you, Dan John knows his stuff. The guy flat out knows training - both how to do it and how to teach it. He gave me some great insights in our 25-30-minute conversation. I'll have to save most of those insights for the February issue, but I thought I'd let you in on one workout he shared with me.

 

John loves training with kettlebells. He's RKC (Russian Kettlebell Certfication) certified and regards KBs as one of the best training tools out there. His favorite kettlebell exercise is the double kettlebell (overhead) press, and here's what he had to say about it:

 

"It's the exercise where, when people see me, they say, 'Your shoulders have gotten huge! What do you do for them?' What I do is double kettlebell presses. If you want to add size [to your shoulders], here's a series to do: do a set of 2, then a set of 3, then a set of 5, then a set of 10, and repeat that [up to four more times]. Use the same weight throughout and minimize rest between sets. If you repeat that series five times, you've done 100 kettlebell presses, and that's a huge workout. It's just a marvelous workout for building size."

Once again, that's 2/3/5/10 using the same weight for all 20 reps and resting as little as possible -- up to five times through. Feel free to take a break between each series, though. You'll need it.

 

I tried that workout myself, and he's right, it's marvelous. The sets of two and three don't feel that tough, but the set of five reps does and the 10 is downright brutal. Five times through and your shoulders will be spent. For many people, a 16- or 20-kg set of KBs will suffice for this workout, but if you're really strong, you may want to bump that up a bit. If you're a beginner, you'd probably be best served to start out lighter than 16 kg, just to be safe. You can always go up from there. Either way, give it a try sometime. You won't be disappointed.

 

If you're not sure how to do double presses, look it up on YouTube to find video. Here's a written description of how to perform it:

 

Double Kettlebell Press

Stand holding a pair of kettlebells in front of your shoulders with your palms facing each other and the bells on the outsides of your forearms. Keeping a slight bend in your knees, press the bells straight overhead so that your elbows are fully extended and the bells are hanging behind your forearms at the top. Slowly lower the kettlebells back to the start position. Repeat for reps.

 

To get more acquainted with Dan John, check out his website, DanJohn.org. I'm telling you, this guy knows what he's doing and knows what he's talking about.

 

Have a good one, everyone...

I don't know about you, but I'm not a huge fan of running on a treadmill or spending 30 minutes plus on an elliptical machine. Some people get into training for a marathon or triathlon (and more power to them), but that's just not me. In my younger years, playing basketball and football took care of my cardiovascular conditioning, but I retired from such high impact, knee and lower back pounding sports long ago. Now, it's a little tougher to find an activity to keep me lean that I actually enjoy.

I guess I'm just not a big cardio guy -- that is, cardio in the traditional sense. Luckily, you can get a great fat-burning workout by lifting weights (something I actually enjoy -- nice!). Pretty much any form of lifting will help boost your metabolism and keep you lean, but high-intensity interval training (HIIT) will maximize cardiovascular benefits and your body's potential to burn fat. Lately, I've been doing a lot of full body, explosive movements using relatively light weights and high reps to keep the bodyfat off -- barbell and one-arm dumbbell cleans, one-arm dumbbell snatches, even deadlifts (the deadlift is more of a strength move than a power one, but still). All this in addition to my normal lifting with heavier weights and reps in the 6-12 range to induce hypertrophy (muscle growth).

My point is, I think you all should check out page 216 of our October issue. It's our Unchained department in the Training Notebook section. This particular installment includes a great HIIT lifting circuit designed by our very own Rob Fitzgerald. It's a tough routine, but, as Fitzgerald once told me, "It's works like crazy." What more could you want?

Give Fitz's workout a try. I can almost promise you'll like it. That is, unless running on a treadmill for 45 minutes sounds more enjoyable to you.

Have a good workout...  

 
 

Hello everyone... I just recently traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for our October cover story on Cleveland Browns quarterback Brady Quinn. Football fans out there, you might remember Quinn's days at Notre Dame. He's going into his third season Cleveland and should have a good shot at the starting QB spot. He's a really good kid and he trains real, real hard. He's also good about his diet and supplements. He endorses EAS products, which you've probably seen through TV commercials and print ads. His trainer at EAS is Robert Williams. I spoke with Williams for a few hours while in Columbus (EAS headquarters are there), and he really knows his stuff. When it comes to training an aspiring Pro Bowl quarterback like Brady Quinn, and most any other NFL athlete, here's some of what Williams had to say:

"Speed kills, strength punishes and flexibility saves the body. Hands down. When it comes to athletics, we want to make our athletes faster, we want to make them stronger, and we want to make sure they're more resilient. And when it comes down to increasing muscle mass, the more muscle mass you have, the higher potential you have to build strength and to develop speed. Because when you increase the cross-sectional area of the muscle, now you have more muscle fibers that can contribute to any type of movement. If I have more muscle fibers available, that means I'm going to have a higher potential to be faster in regard to overall athletic movement."

Just thought I'd give you a sneak peak of the story, even if just a small one. I talked a lot, of course, to Brady Quinn, as well as his high school coach at Dublin Coffman High School, Mark Crabtree. Just a great bunch of guys, all of them. Quinn is a really humble, hard-working guy, and he's definitely worth rooting for come Sundays in the fall, even if you're not necessarily a Browns fan.

Again, that story will be in the October issue of M&F, our football issue. We'll also have a great story in that issue on the Florida Gators football team and how they train, written by Jon Finkel. Check that out too.

Until next time...

In my inaugural blog, I think it makes sense to tell you all a little about myself and what lead me to M&F in the first place, so here goes...

I started high school as a 5-foot-11, 130-pound beanpole of a wide receiver who ran the 40-yard dash in 5.7 seconds (which means I was getting lapped by O-linemen). I was pretty much a weakling in the weight room. Some of my lifting PRs as a freshman: bench press, 95 pounds; power clean, 75 pounds; 3 dips; one, maybe two, pull-ups. (Hold the applause for later, please.) I was fairly ignorant about lifting weights too. Example: On the wall of the weight room, there was a stenciled list of students that had achieved a 300-pound bench press or a 500-pound half squat, and I thought nothing of it that guys were actually rewarded for horrible range of motion when training their legs. My senior year, I finally broke 200 pounds on bench (215, actually), but I was just as skinny as before -- 6'5", 170 pounds. Frankly, I was tired of being skinny, and I liked the thought of girls actually finding me attractive.

I went off to college in Colorado and played football at a D-II school (Western State College). That's when I started lifting obsessively and gained over 30 pounds of muscle and actually got up to 215 pounds or so. Back then, the term 'overtraining' didn't register with me. Lifting six days a week for two hours a pop seemed perfectly normal. And maybe my social life suffered a bit because of it, but oh well.

Long story short, I arrived at M&F in 2002 and have since stopped overtraining, thanks to the tutelage of guys like Jim Stoppani and the infamous former Flex magazine science editor Jim Wright, who was always happy to dispense his One Golden Rule of Bodybuilding: "Everything works, nothing works forever." If any of you ever figure out what that means, please let me know. 

I can't say exactly what direction my blog will take going forward. If I happen to stumble across a cool gym or find a good workout, I'll probably write about it. I'm a fairly obsessive sports fan (Bears, Cubs and Univ. of Illinois mostly), so I'll probably blog about ballgames every so often too. At this point, it's wide open, but please feel free to drop me a line with any questions or to comment on any recent article I've written.

Thanks for checking out our new M&F blogs. Talk to you later.

Joe