Here we are. Here we are. Week two is upon us. But let's process some things that may or may not have went down this first week back post Shelter in Place.
"Everything is heavy and I suck." Yep, lifting weights is hard. Resistance is defined as the refusal to accept or comply with something; the attempt to prevent something by action or argument. So to say there was a disagreement between you and the barbell or even the alarm clock may be an understatement. If you made your way in the gym, no matter the resistance and walked through those doors then take that win. Take it with a smile. Take it, damnit! I am here to assure you that not all is lost. You didn't lose all your strength and your months or years of training hasn't flown out the window. It's in there. You just need to get to know each other a little bit longer. This is more the reason we have opted away from the traditional Max Effort Principles. It was a 10RM for three working sets the first week. It will be an 8RM for 3 working sets this week. Just making our way ever the bit closer to building that confidence to handle that heavy weight again. I suck Sucking air, I'm sure! Why do I feel like a Polar Bear running on a treadmill? Never mind Florida's temperamental weather conditions as some days it rained, some it was hot, others the humidity was almost unbearable. Same concept as before but something you may see a resolution of sooner than later. Conditionally you are ill prepared. Your body is going through a state of distress and trauma while you are training. It's basically wondering what the hell is going on out there! It doesn't like being uncomfortable and it feels a need for change. So it is responding. That's what we want! Keep pushing. This will improve in no time. I can't feel my legs, arms, face, and where am I? Well, your body is repairing all of that trauma it just went through. Week one probably hit like a ton of bricks and your body didn't see it coming at all. Be proactive in your recovery. Use your ROMWOD, if it hurts then fight back. Hamstring on fire? Stretch, roll, smash...be proactive. Eat nutritious foods, drink plenty of water, and sleep. I wish I can say it's okay and it will all be better. But you know I won't lie to you! It's still going to be strenuous. That's in the name of improvement. We won't compromise that. Battle the Bullshit You may have had a rash of feeling overload. Totally understandable. Is it a coincidence that every time you try to do something for yourself that it seems like the universe is hell-bent on stopping you? Probably not. There is going to be a cornucopia of bullshit laid out before you. I'm going to need you to push that to the wayside. Whether it be internal or external, if it isn't your immediate loved ones, If it doesn't pay your bills, If it doesn't bring you direct happiness then it needs to go. Battle that bullshit and press on. In retrospect, during this quarantine you said things would be different. You said you wouldn't take the things you loved for granted. You said you would be better. Fulfill that promise to yourself. Do it now because no one else cares more than you. Battle the Bullshit, because the Bullshit is Bullshit. Always in Strength, Dan
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This is truly an awesome time for growth at Black Sheep. I feel that we are stepping into a unique era. As your personal fitness goals are constantly evolving some things remain true. We all want to look good. The need to look like we lift is ever apparent. Our Supplemental Cycles allow us to take a day out of the week to focus in different aspects and subjects of our training. For that reason, I hope you take advantage of this as any chance to grow mentally/physically should be done! So with that in mind, Let's start our inaugural Supplemental Cycle with ARMageddon!
This 6 week program will challenge us to push the growth in our arms. Specifically, our Forearms, Triceps, and Biceps. But let's first address some common questions or concerns. *As a female, you will not look like a man after this program. Your arms won't blow up into 22 inch pythons and your voice won't change to a deep tone. If anything you will develop that "tone" look that most females aspire towards. You can expect the shape and definition to pop out before anything. Assuming your diet is congruent with that. *You will not automatically grow your arms into gargantuan levels. You have to push your diet to help you to recover. Make sure if at anytime you push the workload that you are accomplishing the same with your recovery! This program is going to be high volume with a focus on blood flow and the contraction of the muscle. For that reason, the weights DO NOT have to be heavy. They just have to be enough to illicit the change in the muscle. Learning the mind and muscle connection with the groups you are trying to grow is such a valuable lesson that is typically overlooked. I am confident by the end of this cycle you will learn that skill very well. I look forward to seeing alot of you getting this program in! We will see you by the dumbbell rack real soon! Always in Strength, Dan
Our unique problem You may be a seasoned athlete but you are also slightly detrained into a beginner. You have been pulled away from your normal training protocol. Gyms shut down everywhere and you were forced to make due with what you had. Most of that was ALOT of bodyweight movements. Thousands of squats and push ups. If you were diligent then you have built an amazing base. Now, does this mean all is lost? Can you no longer squat a 45lbs bar when you were so close to that 300lbs mark?!?! No! But what we lack is a little bit of that Proficiency. So as a Coach it is very important that we recognize that our athletes may not be ready to do everything that they did before they left. It's our job to always push our athletes safely towards progress. All this considered we will begin our 4 week, Bedrock programming on Monday the 18th of May! Main Movements For some that just begun they will progress as needed. That could be via a dumbbell/kettlebell or just bodyweight. For those seasoned barbell warriors. It's in the rack with the power bar. Your percentages will lie to you. Expect to see a very loosely based, auto-regulated method of strength training. This will be in the form of 10RM, 8RM, 5RM, and 3RM. You will build to a "Working Set." Once found you will start your reps and sets. You will find this a very low stress way to build you back up. Proprioceptive Awareness Proprioceptive Awareness is the internal sense that tells you where your body parts are without your having to look at them. This internal body awareness relies on receptors in your joints, muscles, ligaments, and connective tissue. With this time away you may find that your athleticism will not quiet be what it was before. This is completely normal. With a little attention it will be one of the quickest markers to return. Primal Movements We need a Tune-Up! The barbell movements will help but it's not everything! We will introduce Primal Movement Patterns into our accessory work! We all use Primal movement patterns everyday. Whether its efficient or not, it's being done! This is the opportune time to refine and improve these very functional movements. All of these are done across Axis. Axes are lines, real or imaginary, along which movement takes place, and are named in relation to their orientation. As body movement occurs in a given plane, the joint moves or turns about an axis 90-degrees to that plane. Body movement occurs within a plane, the joint moves or turns about the axis 90 degrees to that plane. You will see squats, hinges, step ups, individually or in combination. Some weighted some with just bodyweight under extreme control! Our goal is to further push the gym performance to the outside performance! Speed Training Dynamic Effort Day as you know it will take a change. Specialty bars and accommodating resistance will be absent of this 4 week program. We will be learning how to move with speed under barbell weight only. The Conjugate Method uses Dynamic Effort work to push speed and force production. This was slightly adopted after the findings of the late Dr. Fred Hatfield. He was one of the first men to squat 1,000lbs in nothing more than ACE Bandage wraps. His contributions to the world of Strength and Conditioning still resonate today. We will be utilizing his CAT system for our speed work. CAT: Compensatory Acceleration Training CAT is a training methodology in which an athlete deliberately tries to accelerate the bar throughout the concentric phase of the movement (the shortening of a muscle as it acts against resistive force—i.e. the upwards phase of a back squat), instead of applying less force to a lift because the load is lighter. Sound familiar? DE Day minus bands and chains! We got this. Accessory Work Building upon small movements responsible for the structure of our larger ones is and always will be a staple at Black Sheep! It moves us into the upper echelon on strength performance while mitigating injuries. You will still see all your posterior chain accessories. Your Reverse Hypers, Inverse Curls, Sled Pulls, and abs, abs, abs! In Closing We have another unique opportunity to build a stronger base than before. Embrace it! Be open to some improvements and refinement. If its your beginning of Black Sheep Training then welcome! You couldn't have joined at a better time! Let's get to work! Always in Strength, Dan The run can be looked at in its many intricacies. But I like to simplify things. As being a Coach isn't about the big words you use or how many peer reviewed articles you can cite. It is about communication. If you can get the athlete to understand the purpose of the daily task then you can get them to reach the desired stimuli for the day.
The Run Your run can be broken in sub categories. You have the potential to create force on the ground and the speed at which you can repeat. There are many other factors such as technique, coordination, speed patterning, gait, etc. But in the effort to keep it simple let's dive into that at a later time. All you need to know is these letters. GCF and GCT. GCF Ground Contact Force is the amount of force you can apply to the ground with each stride you make in your run. How much ground do you pull behind you? Much like a skateboarder rides. He is using one leg to propel himself forward. Every step you make your posterior chain is pulling that floor further behind you, thus propelling your body forward. GCF is typically improved by resistance training. As building a squat and deadlift can help improve your Force production against the floor drastically. Your strength training helps to cover this! GCT Ground Contact Time is the amount of time your stride makes contact with the ground while it is generating force into the ground. As your stride cycling speed improves you can move from your left to your right leg in the shortest amount of time possible. My right leg drags the ground away from me and almost instantly my left leg is now doing the same. You can improve your GCT through plyometric training. As no other form of training requires the same amount of speed. Bounding, Skips, Repeated Broad Jumps help to improve this trait. In conclusion, The improvement of both of these factors will help you to put some serious speed in your arsenal. Speed is King. The one who gets there first is the one who eats first. Always in strength, Dan We are experiencing one of the most unique situations in the past decade. We have had our day to day lives shook in a way like never before. Our priorities have been re-arranged whether we know it or not.
In the matter of training, we have had our most basic idea of training re-aligned into a more "archaic" style of training. Our ergonomical tools have now been, for the most part taken from us. The Gym Building is now an abandoned structure. The sounds of plates clanging on a barbell are silenced. We have been told, "It's ok, this is a great opportunity to build upon things that we have been neglecting. Let's make the best of it and push and evolve further into our training. When this is all over we will come back even better than before!" What we want to say. Athletes and Coaches alike is... “Fuck this.” Let's break it down. The obvious For the most part, we have no external load. We have been using bodyweight movements to elicit stimulus unto our body. Some of us have kettlebells, dumbbells, or even resistance bands. But for those who don't have a garage gym it's back to the basics. Frankly, this kinda sucks...no, it really fucking sucks. If we loved doing push-ups and bodyweight squats we probably wouldn't have joined our gyms to begin with! No one cares how many bodyweight squats you can do. We want the sexy and it's not going to be bodyweight lunges. We miss the mental battle before a max effort variation. Feeling that challenge, the looming fear of failure. It has defined alot of us for so long. We want something heavy. We want something to defeat. Conditioning work sucks If I have to do another AMRAP, For time, or Interval Circuit I'm going to fucking throw up. Not because I just finished it but because I am mentally over it. I understand it's important. Our General Physical Preparedness drives up so many markers in our overall fitness. It helps recovery, vitality, reduction of fat, etc. etc. Yes, I understand. But seriously, I don't give a fuck. I'm a grown up. My main course has always been my strength work. It's my meat. That shit excites me. Throughout my day I'm looking at my training app drooling over what squat, bench, and deadlift variation I have on the agenda. I'm not doing the same for my GPP. That's the shit I got to do before I leave. I'm okay with doing that because it creates the glistening sweat on my chest and shoulders after I got that amazing pump. If it wasn't for that I wouldn’t do it. Now it’s like some fucked up dinner. I have to do my "warm up shit" as my main shit. My "have to do shit" is now my everyday shit. It’s a a dinner I didn't order but I have to force feed. Training alone is bullshit I like training. I like training around people. I can honestly say that when other people are watching me hit a heavy top set I push even harder. Call me a narcissistic ass. Call me whatever you want. I like that. It fuels me. Do I need other people to be around for me to work hard. No I do not. But you know what? I don't need wet wipes to wipe my ass. But it still works better. Give me back my training partners. They never worried about what my personal life was like. Al they cared about at that moment was all of us getting better. We battled through every rep together and when the smoke cleared we finished. Thats what mattered. I want to lift heavy shit with dope ass people. To be honest, There are alot of people I would have no problem Social Distancing from. But most of them don’t go to my gym. Let’s be positive If I learned one thing during my stint in the military it was the art of building a "Shit Sandwich." Top bread is Positive things to say, Middle portion is the Negative or Constructive things to say, The bottom is Positive once again to rear back the motivation and reassurance that we are in this together. No matter how much shit is in the middle. I have been absent of the uniform for a good amount of time so my “Sandwich Making Skills” are out of touch. During this I have given more of an Open Faced Sandwich but I will do my best to finish strong. If during this Pandemic you have wasted time, you have let your diet go to trash, you have barely trained at all. I'm here to tell you. IT'S FUCKING OKAY. No one cares if this guy over here trained everyday and read 100 books on self improvement. Good for him. If you didn't that's perfectly fine! You have the undeniably right to react anyway you want. It's your life and your time. I'm confident that anyone that really loves training will be back in the gym and back on the train of progress. This time didn't define you. Honestly, no one is much better than you because their perception of productivity is above yours. The only opinion that matters is yours. Don't beat yourself up for not getting all those home projects done or not losing that 20lbs that you said you were. Training in a lifetime is a Sine Wave. It moves up and down. Things happen and we do the best we can. That is exactly what is going on now. So hold your head up and relax. The one take away If you could pull one lesson from all of this. I hope with everything in me it's "Don't take anything for granted and enjoy things thoroughly." So... When doors finally open to those places you couldn't go. Walk through them a little bit slower. Smile a little bit wider. Enjoy it just a little bit longer. Always in Strength, Dan |
AuthorDan Schlemmer Archives
July 2020
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