Olympic Lift Variations Worth Doing: Part 2

What variations of olympic lifts would I use?

1) Unilateral Dumbell Snatches.

It's much like the kettlebell swing. Quick learning curve. Athletes learn how to load their hips. It's unilateral so your strengthening and reinforcing good movement patterns. The gripping hand and the opposing hip are having to work synergistically to move the weight in an explosive manner. It's plain and simple a great exercise.

2) Unilateral Dumbell Jerk

I wouldn't use this as a max effort movement, I'd think of this exercise as more of a core exercise. Being on one side displaces the lift so you load your hips differently providing a change in stimuli.

3) If I were to do Snatches w/ a barbell

I have a client I've worked w/ for a long time, and he loves doing cleans and snatches. So like I said in Part 1, if your main goal is a PR in cleans and snatches then great, do them.

But I'd make one little change. Bring your hands in. The only reason a wide grip is to decrease the distance the bar has to travel and so the catch is easier when sitting deep underneath. That's it.

See what I mean? Grip width doesn't really matter until you start maxing out.

So make your hands the same width as your shoulders, just like a clean grip. You'll go down in weight a bit but this will really save you and your shoulders a ton of headache.. Then once a month whether it's just to practice or actually max out take your normal wide grip again.

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Beyond conventional upper body work

There’s something to be said for doing upper body closed chain exercises. Beyond Pullups and pushups.

Football players, wrestlers and sports that involve your eyes listen up. The two sports where I see athletes getting the greatest gain from this are the previously mentioned sports but from an experiential standpoint walking on your hands, standing on your head, doing wheel barrels are invaluable to performance and under appreciated.

I’m not saying it needs to be a cornerstone of your programming but an athlete that can walk on his hands is going to have excellent shoulder stability, incredible core and upper body strength, as well as amazing overall proprioception an kinesthetic awareness and in the case I mean his/her awareness of and body control. It also has huge ability to increase hand eye coordination and reactive ability.

When I was a freshman in high school I dislocated my shoulder and cracked the growth plate. It was a bad deal. My scapular stabilizers were terribly weak, and I had horrible scapular winging. Eventually physical therapists made me crawl w/ my hands on a treadmill to work on this. Does this sound like a wheel barrow race?

Think about, what do we do before we walk? We crawl, there is a physiological reason for this. For one we don’t have the balance, strength and coordination to walk yet, but that is the point. Our bodies must learn to move and react in a complete different fashion than we are used to.

Now think of grappling and pumbling. Both are mainstays in wrestling and football (blocking). Both are affective for a reason, much like walking on your hands can be.

Try it out w/ your athletes. Pick one day and do it for 4 weeks, make a competition out of it. Let me know how it goes.

If I could only pick 2.....Top 2 exercises

Who would win, Superman or Flash?

Conan the Barbarian or Conan O'brian?

The Rock or Barack?

And the real question would be, The Incredible Hulk or Hulk Hogan???

Well that one's no contest. Hulkamania forever

But really, if it came down to a winner takes all exercise, what would I pick? Well this is very tough, and very general, and I actually consider it pretty stupid to boot. Who cares, you'll always be able to use other stuff. But anyway, just because I can I decided to ponder this query. Here you go.

If I had to only pick 2. They would be

1. Reverse lunge
2. Renegade Row

Both are ground based, compound movements that use a ton of energy (calories) and are completely functional. Both are great for the core and can be loaded to meet anyone at any level. Don't underestimate their difficulty either. They'll knock the shit out of you.

These two can meet Reggie Bush as well as your junior high athlete.

The reverse lunge is (if done correctly) post chain and hip dominant. Works through a large range of motion of which should stretch out the entire hip region, hip flexors and gluteals. It's unilateral so you're taking care of your bodies asymetries (problems caused over time by repeatedly using only one side of your body, or due to compensations). Balance is going to come into play as well here, of which will improve greatly with strength. Developing strength in this manner has been proven multiple times to improve balance and therefore also decrease injury rates and improve performance. This is why sitting on your wuss bosu ball isn't doing you any good.

This girl does a decent job. I don't enjoy her choice of shoes nor do I agree with the depth but you get the idea.

The renegade row is a true look at bracing through the core, but that's not all it's great for. You're also building strength through your entire back. The pulling motion is excellent for building strength through the upper back and healthy shoulders. Then there is also the stabilization that the opposite shoulder and arm is having to perform. Overall great exercise.

There you have it. Go try em out.

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Diesel Crew worthy Core Training

Just to let you all know. Yours' truly was just featured by Diesel Crew and more specifically Jim Smith (author of Combat Core). For those of you that don't know this is a group of guys made up of some of the best minds in the nation as pertains to Strength and Conditioning but they also practice what they preach. They're all strong as hell. But this it.

A New Look at Planks

May 12th, 2009

My boy Adam Rees just posted a very important new video.  Adam takes a unique new look at planks.  It is something I explored in great detail with my Chaos Training manual.

If you consider the conventional execution of a plank there are 4 stability points, both feet and both hands.  Adam performs a conventional plank BUT takes away one stability point.

In doing so, his body must transfer the “even” tension that was distributed through each point to the remaining three.  This shift requires muscular coordination, an adjustment in breathing and a forceful bracing of the abdominals and back musculature.

In addition to this modification, Adam is performing full range side rows (pulls).  This increases the tension and improves coordination, ie. one side of his body is rigid and the other side is engaging movement.

Great job Adam, great innovation!

For more “out of the box”, innovative strength training check out my Chaos Training manual.  It is over 700 pages and took me over 2 years to write, and 15 years to discover.