Marty Gallagher

Journey to the Center of the Physiological Universe

December 2, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 3 Comments

Journey to the Center of the Physiological Universe

“We here in the Western world are top-heavy. ‘Shoulders back! Chest out! Stomach in!’ Thus the center of gravity becomes elevated. In zazen, Zen training, the tanden (or hara) is the source and foundation of deep meditation. When moving, the tanden is the source of bodily strength. Abdominal breathing generates strength: we live from this centremost point of gravity. This is Zen breathing. Sekai tanden means spiritual field. The tanden is located below the navel. Here, in the Western world, we don’t think in terms of having a singular point of gravity, a vital center; in Zen this vital center is our wellspring source.”

Tanden: Source of Spiritual Strength, Kongo Langlois, Roshi

Since 1970 I have been pondering this odd oriental concept of “the body’s singular point of gravity.” Why was this concept so important in meditation and certain martial arts? This exact center of balance even has a name; it is called the hara, or tanden in Japan, in Chinese medicine and Taoist martial arts the exact same thing is called the dantian. Conceptually, the idea was to initiate the breath from that epicenter of balance. This center of gravity exists within every human body at all times. Whether we are aware of (or attuned to) this bodily gyroscope is another matter entirely.

I got some high level schooling from an elite martial master very early on. I was first trained in dantian breathing when as a 20 year old, I began five years of study under America’s foremost expert on the Chinese “internal” martial arts, Robert Smith. Bob was, at the time, 50ish, a famed author, a hardcore judo man, a former CIA station chief, a sophisticated yet earthy man fluent in several Chinese dialects, brilliant, funny as hell, ingratiating and never off-putting. He was an amazing dude that just happened to live in my neighborhood.

I trained with him twice a week for many years. After each session I took home what he taught me to work on in lone solo sessions. On Thursday night and Saturday morning he taught me the three interrelated internal martial arts of Pa kua, Hsing I and Tai Chi. Bob Smith was singlehandedly bringing attention and western scholarship to these obscure fighting styles.

During our training sessions he would talk endlessly and incessantly about the concepts of “rooting” and “sinking,” and “breathing deep and low from the dantian.” He preferred the Taoist phrase and would place his hands on his own lower ab area and make it throb to demonstrate that his “chi” breathing originated at his “exact center of balance.”

Even during the execution of lightning fast, highly exertive Hsing I katas, he expected the athletes to attain, maintain and retain deep abdominal breathing; nose breathing went out the window with the fast and intense stuff as we couldn’t pull in enough oxygen (using nose-breathing) to forestall oxygen debt and the resultant lactic acid build-up. Though we had to breathe through our mouths, we were still expected to use diaphragm breathing, though no one called it that back then. Linking the concentrated breathing with form and movement was far easier to successfully attain when engaging in slow-motion tai chi.

While I preferred the dynamic and circular Pa Kua and the slashing and linear Hsing I, I found it far easier to get “into the zone” and successfully sync deep and concentrated breathing with precision glide-path tai chi. I would practice alone in my basement and would repeat the first third of the 36-posture sequence endlessly; I would really get lost in the whole thing and eventually I “got it.” I knew I had gotten it when one day (a year in) he looked at me and did a double-take. He laughed, “Hey, you got it!”

Tai Chi Chart

Smith was a famed writer, a great writer in fact and a huge influence on my emerging writing style. He was a fabulous alpha male role model: smart, a genuine bad ass, simultaneously erudite and streetwise, he was formidable but approachable. He put me in mind of a soldier of fortune character out of a John LeCarre novel set in Hong Kong. He was getting a kick out of teaching earnest locals right in his own backyard and he had the writer’s ability to communicate verbal concepts with crystal clarity. Vladimir Nabokov once marveled, “To me, spontaneous eloquence is miraculous.” When Bob Smith instructed you, it seemed miraculous.

I learned all about rooting my feet, sinking and relaxing. I learned to breath in such a way as to expand my “orb of chi.” Regardless if we were “walking the circle” in Pa Kua, throwing the “five fists” in Hsing I or floating across the landscape using his sublime tai chi style, we were always expected to be breathing from the “expanding and contracting” dantian.

Before each training session, as a group we would stand at relaxed attention, performing “quiet standing” with our heels together, sinking down into the soles of the feet. We focused on the mechanics of breath. He would speak to us as we stood in mute, relaxed, erect, alert attention…

“When Cheng Man-Cheng accepted Ben Lo as a student he made the youngster do quiet standing—and nothing else—for one hour each day seven days a week for one year. Why? This is a rhetorical question so please allow me to answer: the Master was teaching the neophyte about root and about how to truly relax and really sink and how to access dantian breathing. At the end of the year Cheng taught Ben the actual forms and Lo mastered all of them effortlessly and quickly. When asked how this was possible Cheng said, ‘Because all the hard and important work was done that first year.’”

Smith was an expert explainer of the concepts that prefigured technique…

“Imagine a steel rod running through your body at hip level. One end of the rod starts at the absolute center of your right hip joint. A thin chrome rod runs through your abdomen and ends in the exact center of your left hip-joint. Now imagine that at the absolute epicenter of this thin steel rod that runs right through the middle of your body, that there is a round chrome orb, a ball the size of a golf ball. As you inhale this orb swells to the size of a tennis ball. As you slowly exhale, the tennis ball-sized orb shrinks back down to the size of a golf ball. This is your dantian powering the breath process.”

I loved that image. It enabled me to conceptualize was being asked of me: I could attain low breathing via the dantian because I now understood it and could mimic the image using his imaging. Smith would pace between our rows, talking to us as he inspected our quiet standing posture. He would stop to make minute adjustments to our shoulder or arm position. I remember him always adjusting my elbows. His voice sounded like Charleston Heston playing God…

“Expand the waistline outward in a level and even fashion…push the bottom of the belly downward…actually you create a vacuum effect, similar to the downstroke of a piston drawing fuel into the cylinder of an internal combustion engine…pull the breath into the body with mouth closed…pull air in through the nostrils. Listen to the sound, the noise the air makes around the nostrils. This requires close attention.”

You could hear a pin drop as he talked us into breathing just right. Unbeknownst to us, he was also maneuvering us into a placid headspace.

“Contemplate the breath with the care and attention it deserves…observe it with complete focus on both inhalation and exhalation. No need for thinking or thoughts…breath deep and low from the dantian…relax…sink…stay focused please. No passengers, everyone is a participant.”

He was the personification of Nabokov’s spontaneous eloquence; he said things that I have never heard said before or since…

“Pay particularly close attention to the breath at the ‘turnarounds,’ the little dead space that appears in short gap at the end of each breath, that transitory instant when inhalation becomes exhalation and again when exhalation becomes inhalation. Stray thoughts love to slip into these crevices and attach and germinate and take root inside these tiny gaps of inattention…every breath has four parts: inhalation, turnaround, exhalation, turnaround; draw the breath from down deep, using an expanding and contracting dantian to power everything.”

He could tell when a person had lost focus just by looking at their posture.

“If you engage in internal conversation, you ruin the quiet standing effort. If a stray thought arises, note it and let it pass by. Just because a thought drops by doesn’t mean you have to invite it in for a cup of coffee.”

When he was satisfied that we as a group had the requisite focus, he would set us in motion; guiding us through the circles and “palm changes” of Pa Kua, the straight-line power slams of Hsing I or his unique and stylized brand of tai chi, with its combination of grace, power, flow and relaxation. He had specific techniques for each posture and every transition. He was a superstar in that world.

Diaphragm breathing is a relatively popular topic (deservedly) in the world of high-level fitness. This strategy has deep roots in meditation and martial arts. In formal Taoist, Zen or Hindu meditation, deep breathing, low breathing, is always a foundational technique and a core principle. Breath and mind always seem to walk hand in hand. Where there is meditative breathing invariably and quite naturally (and not coincidentally) “mindfulness” invariably appears.

There is tremendous interest in the subject of mindfulness. Almost without exception, mindfulness books, articles, strategies and tactics emphasis some type of focused attention on the mechanics of breathing. To be able to concentrate fully and completely on breath for an extended period is the surest way to attain true mindfulness. But there are pitfalls: as someone noted, “Mindfulness has become the new folk religion of the secular elite.” It seems everyone everywhere has leapt on the mindfulness bandwagon.

For those of us that have been on the mindfulness bandwagon for decades, our initial amusement at its newfound popularity has been replaced with successive emotional phases of puzzlement, befuddlement and repulsion. The repulsion comes from the ultimate awareness that money and financial gain have successfully corrupted and diluted the effectiveness of true mindfulness. Mindfulness-lite is watered down, user-friendly, anemic and ineffectual. But the ease of the method and the wildly exaggerated promised results makes faux mindfulness eternally popular.

We were mindful before mindful was hip. We achieved our mindfulness without striving for it; it was a by-product of what we were after: improved performance in the martial arts. Our mindfulness was attained by focusing 100% of our attention on the mechanics of breath. In our meditational sitting, during our quiet standing, or while performing martial katas, we focused on breath with every fiber of our being. In doing so we become mindfulness personified.

A smart trainee expropriates Smith’s concept of the physiological epicentre, the expanding and shrinking dantian orb. Use this image to find your physiological center of balance. Sync breath with posture and simultaneously acquire the mindfulness mindset. How appropriate that Smith’s ancient martial strategy of “breath before everything” turns out to be the perfect gateway into modern mindfulness. The fact that his forgotten lessons are still relevant and important seems weirdly appropriate. I am happy to pass along even a sliver of his iconic wisdom.

Mr. Smith joined the U.S. Marines in 1944 at age 17, served overseas in the Pacific theater with the Fifth Division as a combat rifleman at Peleliu and Guam. He was among the first troops into defeated Japan. Mr. Smith received his undergraduate degree in History from the University of Illinois and his master’s degree in Far Eastern and Russian Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1955, he joined the CIA as an intelligence officer, going to Taiwan four years later in 1959. There he continued his pursuit of martial arts practice and research. During this time he went to Tokyo and won his third degree black belt in Judo at the Kodokan, the international Judo headquarters.

***

Marty Gallagher is the author of Strong Medicine, The Purposeful Primitive and Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method. Gallagher coached the United States team that won the IPF powerlifting world team title in 1991. He is a 6-time national masters champion and national record holder. He was the IFF world master powerlifting champion in 1992. He currently works with elite athletes, spec ops military and governmental agencies.

Folding Inner Space, Part III – Pure Awareness and Deep Athletics in Action

October 29, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 4 Comments

Folding Inner Space part three Mark Chaillet

Mark Chaillet, world record holder, world champion: Mark is shown in 1980 deadlifting 800-pounds. He weighs 219 in the picture and is badly out of position, struggling to finish the lift. His shoulders have gotten in front of the bar during the upward pull and now, with legs already straightened; he must finish locking out this ponderous poundage with pure reverse hip-hinge power.

He has shot off all his muscular guns and the only tricks left in his trick bag are his python-like spinal erectors and a grip like eagle talons. He pulled this lift to completion, but a controversial decision, the three judges turn the lift down, 2 to 1, thereby costing him the national title.

Mark was my training partner for six years. He fine-tuned my deadlift technique. We were both narrow-stance conventional deadlifters and both were taught by world champion Hugh Cassidy. We both used Hugh’s technique. Mark’s face and physique shows the degree of pure physical effort needed to experience exercise-induced altered states of consciousness. Nothing less than superhuman effort will fold inner space.

The Inner Astronaut
“An exercise-induced acid trip”

I walked towards my garage gym with a head full of minor troubles. I was distracted and out of sorts. I was really considering punting the workout to another day; my head was really not into it. I was really not feeling up to butting heads with a heavy barbell. As jazz tenor saxophonist John Coltrane once noted in an interview, “I feel the closest to hell when I am dealing with money.” I second that emotion. I was tired and drained, not from any physical toil, rather from mental stress related to life and making a living.

I had myself half convinced to lie back down (it was 6AM) and read some Evelyn Waugh or Kinsley Amis and fall back asleep. I’d wake back up in an hour or so with a whole new fresh and vibrant perspective and start all over. I wrestled with my thoughts. “When a man’s head is not into the game, distraction prefigures injury,” I thought to myself. This was an excellent argument for blowing off the workout.

My conscientious right-thinking mind knew it was losing the internal argument so it decided to try a new approach. “Why not compromise? How about if you just squat light–nothing heavy, nothing ambitious, just some pristine, precise, technical bon mots–we won’t even pay any attention to the poundage. What say you, other self?” I had played the guilt card on myself and it had carried the day. I would ‘do the right thing’ (the right thing is always something I don’t want to do) and train, but train minimally and lightly and precisely in what I envisioned as a crispy technique day. Who cared if I was weak? Who cared if “light” training was about as exciting as kissing your sister?

Some training is better than no training, “an inch of meditation is an inch of the Buddha” and all of those other exhortations for mediocrity. I walked into the garage and took a look at the big clock. It was 6:18. I didn’t intend to be here long. I turned on my iPod and pulled up something mellow; I save the intense music for my strongest days, when I am fired up and ready to rip into it. Not today. Today I wanted something to keep me calm.

I selected a breezy mystical piece of music, a rare Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar album called, West meets East, recorded in 1970. I clicked on “Raga Inanda Biaravra” and the sitar and Stradivarius began riffing atop an Indian drone tuned to B♭. It was a good musical choice: I had forgotten how strange and passionate and technically superb this odd, old, and for me, recently rediscovered music was.

I loaded a 45-pound plate on each side of the Olympic barbell, already set at shoulder height in the power rack. I checked the gym clock yet again; I wanted to see how long the actual workout would take, not rushing or hurrying. It was 6:21. I ducked under the 135-pound bar, affixed it behind my neck; stood erect and stepped back. I “set up” (took adjustment steps) the squat and unlocked my knees to commence my first rep.

My body felt creaky and stiff and awkward as I lowered down. The weight felt heavy. I felt like the tin woodsman before being oiled. By the fourth out of eight reps, I had broken through my stiffness and awoken my central nervous system. My muscles were being forcibly stretched and warmed, flushed with blood, like it or not, ready or not.

The 135-pound squat set shocked my body awake on every level. It was as if I had jumped into a freezing river. My body, brain and central nervous system were bitch-slapped. I racked the weight. As was my recent habit, immediately after every set of light squats I would perform a slow and precise set of lying leg curls. After eight slo-mo leg curl reps, I immediately performed a set of calf raises. These were done one leg at a time on a stair-step while holding a 40-pound dumbbell in one hand while using the other hand as a support for balance.

On every rep of every calf raise I would stretch as far down as possible then rise up onto the ball of the foot, ending in a ballet-dancer toe extension flexion. I would go to failure with each leg and then immediately “rep out” with both legs. I would do three “tri-sets” (squat, leg curl, calf raise) and rest two to three minutes between each tri-set. I would add a little bit of poundage on the leg curls and use a slightly heavier dumbbell on each successive calf raise set.

The sequence would go: squat, leg curl, calf raises, rest. I would take the 135-pounds one more time for a second 8-rep warm-up set. This one was a delight compared to the first. Loose and warm, I got looser and warmer the deeper into the second set I got. The music was sounding good, appropriate for the early morning dawn. The door was wide open and the October backyard was lush and green with dew on the grass. It was truly picturesque and suddenly I felt good.

OctoberOutdoors

I was really listening to the music, trying hard to follow the lightning fast arpeggio riffs. During Swara, the dappled sunlight was pouring into the gym; the 65-degree temperature was perfect for iron slinging, the music was pulsing and I was starting to get swept away.

For my third squat set, I would handle 185 for six reps. I felt the telltale tinkle of an adrenaline dump as I ducked under the squat bar for the 185-pound set. I snapped it out of the supports, stepped back, set it up and performed six perfect reps. The weight felt incredibly light. This further amplified my burgeoning psych. I did my final tri-set. I had performed 9 total sets in five minutes. My body and legs were vibrant and awake. From this point forward, I would squat and squat only. I had gotten in my three “to failure sets” of the leg curl and calf raise, now 100% of my energy and effort would be directed at the remaining four squat sets.

In quick succession I hit 225, 255 and 285-pounds, all for a single repetition. The idea was to not waste any strength performing a lot of reps on warm-up sets. The single rep sets, spaced a few minutes apart, allowed me to “feel” increasingly heavier weight on my back, yet without frittering away any precious strength or energy best saved for the final, all out set. Each rep felt “snappy” i.e. I was able to accelerate upward and to a dramatic degree on each single.

The last set, the final set, was the only set that mattered: all the good stuff, all the strength increases, all the muscle hypertrophy, occurred during the final squat set. As Cassidy, my Zen lifting mentor used to say, “Everything before the top set is just throat-clearing and windup. Don’t blow your wad on the warm-up sets and preliminary sets.”

Warm, centered and ready, I loaded the barbell to 315-pounds. I felt my “wordless” psych coming on strong. I could “feel” my focus sharpen as I became increasingly focused and aggressive in immediate anticipation of the final all-out squat effort. Five days ago I had done 305 for 6 reps and the final two reps had been hell and barely made–but made nonetheless. Now, on a supposed “off day” (remember, I almost blew off the workout on account of distraction and stress) I felt good enough to attempt ten more pounds.

I knew myself and I knew the difference between real preparedness and feigned or superficial preparedness. I could not afford to tackle this poundage with fake, pretend or faux readiness. The nagging problems that had been bothering me before, the money and people woes, had long since evaporated.

It was Go Time. I switched to some hard, hard music, violent, visceral and aggressive. I began my psych ritual by pacing. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my body. I could feel the fight-or-flight switch being thrown. The hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms stood up as a cocktail of hormones were fuel-injected into my bloodstream. It was time to storm the barricades.

I wheeled and strode to the bar; I got under the bar ASAP, set up and snapped the barbell out of the racks. In my state of excitation, the 315 felt lighter than the previous 285-pound effort; a great sign. I stepped back and set up. I broke my knees to begin the first rep. I eased downward, feeling the weight every inch of the descent. It felt as if it took forever to bottom out. I made sure I was perfectly positioned on the descent. Now it was time to come erect. Above all else, I would NOT fudge on the depth–every rep had to be ‘bottomed out,’ taken as deep as humanly possible, 6-10 inches below parallel.

I threw my knees out hard as I bottomed out and powered upward. I stood with real acceleration, the first few reps felt powerful and relatively easy. I became instantly elated; electricity was shooting through my central nervous system. On every inch of every squat rep I focused my eyes on a spot on the wall at eye level directly in front of me: it was as if I was trying to use X-ray vision to burn a hole through a quarter-sized hole on the wall. This intense visual focus kept me balanced by providing a stable reference point as I dipped and arose with a body-crushing weight on my back.

If my eyes wandered I would become unstable and instantly lose my balance. Psychologically, the intense visual focus provided my consciousness with a simplistic fundamental task that was critically important: if my eyes wandered for a split second I would lose the rep. This critical task kept a portion of my brain engaged at a high level and continual level, one lapse and I would collapse. I could not let my excitation and psych create slop and chaos. The 2^th rep was effortless. Mind and body had successfully unified in order to cope with the severity of the effort

For the first three reps, a single aggressive breath between reps was all that was needed. Rep # 4 slowed a bit as I experienced a definite power stall at the top. No problem, I stood erect and fully locked out. I now forced three huge breathes. I held the third breath, broke my knees and descended for rep five. Rep #5 felt heavy going down and felt heavier still standing erect. High-end acceleration was suddenly replaced by grind; high-end horsepower was replaced with low-end torque. I shifted into four-wheel low and ground number 5 to lockout.

I pushed through the sticking point and stood erect. One more to go; I stood and inhaled “as if trying to suck all of the air out of the room.” I unlocked my knees and began the final rep. While rep six was more difficult than rep five, the final result was never in doubt: the barbell never stalled on its upward trajectory and I never lost my laser eye focus. I locked out rep six and re-racked the barbell with great care. I had given 105%.

I peeled myself off the barbell carefully. I was huffing and puffing and held onto the squat bar with two hands in case I fainted or fell down. I glanced at the clock: it was 6:42. The entire torture-fest squat session, a total of seven sets, (plus six sets of calfs and hams) had taken a grand total of 21-minutes. My legs felt shaky as I wobbled to the nearby flat bench and sat down.

I immediately turned off the music. The violent battle music soundtrack was suddenly inappropriate. I took stock: I was physically shattered; my body was shaking; yet I was elated. As I sat, I noticed all five sense-gates (smell, hear, feel, touch, see, conscious awareness) were wide open and hyper-receptive. I felt like a nuclear isotope, generating heat, glowing. I felt perfect. No thoughts were needed; no commentary could do justice to what I was feeling. I purposefully sunk further into this exercise-induced acid trip. Suddenly an old nonsensical Zen koan made perfect sense to me, “Iron Mountains, Silver Cliffs–Soaring!”

Once again I had entered into this exercise-induced state of altered consciousness: It was Iron Zen, a satori-state, the Zen of pure physical effort. I sat on the exercise bench facing the open doorway in perfect stillness and deeply satisfied equanimity. I sat like a mountain as I gazed out from within my skull with divine mental silence and a relaxed “soft eye” I was taking in everything at once. Another Zen koan came to mind, “Stoned…Immaculate…” that one from Zen Grand Maestro, Jimi Hendrix.

The beautiful orange-leafed Japanese maple, statuesque and perfectly framed in the doorway was contrasted with the most luscious green grass, grass that glistened with diamond dew. I put back the mystical Indian music back on and placed my hands in the cosmic mudra in my lap. I would sit in this wordless bliss for another perfect 30 minutes.

I felt myself start to slump and fuzz out, so I stood, stretched, yawned and headed back into the house. Still enveloped in quietude, I mindfully made myself a nutrient-dense post-workout regenerative shake. My concoction consisted of protein powder, raw peanut butter and raw milk and was unbelievably delicious, particularly while still in the throes of a heightened sense of taste. This “meal in a glass” was ideal for healing a shattered body. I laid down on my futon in the living room and immediately fell into a narcoleptic power nap. For 40 minutes I was in a deep sleep coma. I swear I could feel my body growing as I bathed in deep, dreamless REM.

I awoke refreshed, drank some potent coffee and admonished myself: and to think, I came within a whisker of blowing off the transcendental workout. What did I learn? The hard lesson might be, “How you feel is a lie.”

***

Folding Inner Space, Part II – Cessation of Thought and Super-Human Effort

October 15, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 2 Comments

Folding Inner Space Part II Lead Photo

Hormonal Nitrous Oxide

Body-shocking physical effort, maximum effort of a very specific type and kind births an exercised-induced altered state of pure awareness that elite athletes routinely experience, yet fail to identify. Access to this exercise-induced zone of pure awareness can only be attained when the degree of difficulty is sufficient to cross a hormonal threshold.

How difficult is difficult? In progressive resistance training difficult means exerting to a degree equal to or surpassing whatever you are currently capable of. To enter exercise-induced Nirvana, you must equal or exceed your current physical limit in some way, shape or form, in some manner or fashion.

I have been self-inducing this physiological phenomena for fifty years and can say with the certainty that comes with half a century of concentrated practice that 100% maximal physical effort, and preferably 102% or 105% effort, is necessary to gain entry into the post-workout bliss-zone.

I am an athlete in a sport of complete mathematical certainty: I have been a national champion in both Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting. My sports are all about pounds lifted. It is a universe of numbers: sets, reps, frequency, duration, time under tension–everything in the elite strength world can and is assigned a numerical value. The iron elite create complex training matrices using cold logic and empirical data; this approach is the apogee of sophisticated rational thought applied to progressive resistance training.

How metaphysically ironic that we utilize the Yang rational left-brain, with its Spock-like coldness, its numerical and mathematical certainties, its science and logic to create the savage training regimens that unlocks the ethereal, intuitive artistic consciousness that lies dormant in the Yin right brain.

The rational goal of powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting is to increase the sheer amount of poundage lifted in the three powerlifts or two Olympic lifts. This can be accomplished by honing technique and/or by becoming stronger. The way in which we become stronger is to stress the body to such a degree that we invoke an adaptive response. We traumatize the body in a deliberate and systematic fashion in order to elicit a specific and desired physiological reaction.

When the body is purposefully stressed–and stressed to a dramatic degree, new muscle tissue is constructed: cells split and divide and strength increases; all as protective response to the self-inflicted trauma of an expertly applied progressive resistance training session. If the degree of difficulty is sufficiently intense, a hormonal threshold is crossed and a tsunami of hormones are released into the bloodstream: endorphins, adrenaline, cortisol, growth hormone are shot into the bloodstream like hormonal nitrous oxide.

A productive training session is a body-shocking event. The sheer physicality of the effort is so muscularly exhaustive that it completely depletes and drains the human body. There is a concurrent hormonal floodtide. Somewhere in the immediate aftermath, the mind grows silent and the shattered body becomes enveloped in a relaxed and blissful state of pure awareness and contentment.

In this post-workout state, clarity, vividness and cognition are amplified. Effortlessly, without suppression, the conscious observer ceases its endless babbling inside the athlete’s skull. As my mental mentor, Krishnamurti noted, “The cessation of thought is the awakening of intelligence.” When the never-ending unceasing internal dialogue ceases, the athlete is able to experience the electric crackle that imbues the very atmosphere of the instantaneous present.

As the exhausted yet elated athlete basks in his endorphin afterglow, he looks out at the gym from inside his head without the inky film of thought blurring his vision; every thing, every object, every person, every object and color is vibrant and enhanced, visually amplified. The athlete glows and basks in his centered, peaceful post-workout state of intense quietude: he is content, he is exhausted, he is at peace and centered. This post-workout glow, the beatific state-of-being bears many overt and subtle similarities to the amplified states of consciousness achieved in sitting meditation.

Like base jumping, big wave surfing, skydiving or cliff jumping, big poundage teaches with a big stick. Any man that attempts more than he is capable of, via psych and preparation and sheer effort, must learn how to create a totality of effort–nothing less will accomplish a muscular task that exceeds current capabilities and capacities.

On the other hand, dare to struggle, dare to win. No one ever improved by doing the same thing, over and over in the same way. To approach, equal or (optimally) exceed current physical capacity, the athlete must successfully achieve a synergistic melding of mind and body. We seek something profound: we seek to perform past all rational and realistic expectations. To do so will require more than human effort, it will require superhuman effort. Superhuman effort can only occur if a mind/body melding has already occurred.

Psych and Artificially-Inducing “Fight-or-Flight”

Elite athletes access modified consciousness by self-inflicting a cataclysmic event in the form of a body-shocking training session. They train so hard, so intensely and so fiercely that the body is “tricked” into invoking the primal “fight-or-flight” syndrome. We force a mind/body synergistic melding by subjecting our own body to a task that is so physically demanding, so difficult, so outrageous, that it can only be accomplished by exerting a 100% effort.

Any physical effort at or above 100% of realistic capacity demands that mind and body enter into a unified partnership in order to successfully cope. Only through a successful mind-body melding can we make the body do that which it is currently incapable of. If successful, we set a new performance benchmark and simultaneously acquire all the physiological benefits associated with progressive resistance training.

Humans are no longer chased by bears, attacked by invaders, forced to hunt and kill to eat. Only on rare occasions does modern man invoke the fight-or-flight response. Athletes rekindle and reawaken the dormant fight-or-flight impulse, they hotwire it, like stealing a car. Any athlete performs better, light-years better, when aroused, centered, focused, fierce, alert, highly combative and possessing an overall heightened sense of awareness.

The athlete convinces the mind that it is fighting for its life. How? By subjecting the body to a 100% all-out physical effort. The degree of struggle and effort are the tripwire mechanism. The body realizes it is about to be pulverized and the fight-or-flight response awakens in order to cope.

*The nervous system’s response should be the same…*

So instead of having a saber tooth tiger leap out of the woods, the athlete voluntarily attempts to exceed a previous best in an exercise, set and rep benchmark. Once the brain becomes convinced that, yes, we have a genuine fight-or-flight situation, the brain declares Defcon 5 and triggers an adrenaline dump–which is felt immediately. When the adrenaline begins coursing through the bloodstream, we throw hormonal gasoline on the mental fire.

Excitation combines with emotion and if channeled properly enables the lifter to lift 5% to 10% more than if they performed the identical lift without a proper psych. The best athletic psychers are getting a full 10% over their non-psyched self. Think of elite athlete “super psych” as the bottled, formalized, artificial version of the 140-pound lady who lifts the back end of the car off her child that is pinned underneath the vehicle. The elite strength athlete is a psych master. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be elite.

Normal fitness trainees are oblivious to the degree of effort needed to forcibly morph the human body: only in response to self-inflicted trauma does the adaptive response trigger; only in response to superhuman effort does the body build new muscle. Elite athletes have performance benchmarks that they continually seek to improve upon. By continually expanding our limits, the body is forced to transform. The human body will not and does not grow new muscle (hypertrophy) or acquire more strength by exerting sub-maximally.

Sub-maximal exertion, can, at best, serve to retain the physical status quo. The body will not radically transform in response to sub-maximal exertion.
Exceeding capacity requires the mind and body unify and assist one another–otherwise the total effort is insufficient to accomplish the task.

Please be aware that you are not expected to perform one-rep maximum single reps in all your progressive resistance sessions. The man with the 400×1 back squat will have a 5-rep personal best of say, 350-pounds, a triple max of 370, a 10-rep PR of 315-pounds, and so on. In any session the trainee can select from an infinite variety of capacity benchmarks. Capacity can have a myriad of expressions.

A trainee that seeks extraordinary results must exert extraordinary effort, superhuman effort; mere human effort can only maintain what has been achieved already. Continually assault the limits. This implies that you have limits to assault. Establish benchmarks; embrace struggle and embrace difficulty. Do so and reap the optimal physiological and psychological benefit: a transformed body and a transformed mind.

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Folding Inner Space: Part I – Iron Zen: Exercise-Induced Altered States

October 1, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 12 Comments

Iron Zen

Tibetan Lama Dungse Jampol is the son of a Tibetan meditation master. At a young age he asked his father to explain to him, “What is the nature of the mind?” and “What is ‘pure existence” and what is the meaning of “enlightenment?” His father sat down and said to the boy, “Come closer.” The boy came within arms length of the father who gestured him even closer by wagging his finger. When the boy’s forehead was within six inches of the father, the elder lama unleashed a blood-curdling scream that literally sent the youngster reeling. Dungse recalled, “That scream was so loud and so intense and so unexpected that I was paralyzed; shocked, my mind was completely cleared of everything – instantly. My father excitedly said, “See! There it is! There it is!”

It is my contention that intense physical effort, the kind of effort generated during limit-exceeding weight training sessions, offers an entranceway into higher realms of consciousness. My Zen master friend, Ken O’Neil, and I have talked frequently about this phenomenon at length and in depth. I have long sought out others that have experienced this Iron Satori in my ongoing effort to bring attention to this rarified and refined quality of consciousness attained during “Iron Zazen.”

Exercise-induced altered consciousness, or, alternatively and more poetically, The Zen of Pure Physical Effort, is a higher awareness induced by intense physical exercise. Superhuman effort opens the “heavy door with rusted hinges.”

I have been a hardcore weight trainer for 54 years and a meditator for 43 years. Nietzsche once noted “true greatness requires long obedience in the same direction.” To which I would add, over time and with continual repetition the ability to enter into exercise-induced altered states of consciousness becomes easier. The longer and more often the athlete enters these zones of heightened sensory awareness, the deeper the experience becomes and the easier it is accessed: vividness and clarity magnify with repeated visitations.

The exercise-induced altered mindset offers a “shortcut” method, a meditational way in which to fold inner space.

We can jump the beginning meditator ahead; throw them into the deep end of the pool, metaphorically speaking, through the precise application of Iron Zen. Intense physical effort shortens the meditation learning curve, depositing the Iron Zen adherent into an advanced state-of-being. Entry is dependent on the quality of the individual workout: if the effort is deep enough, sincere enough, intense enough, Huxley’s Doors of Perception swing open and the exerciser is predictably enveloped in blissful state of exercise-induced nirvana.

Conscious thought is the enemy, the destroyer of optimal human performance. The elite athlete understands this fact: they embrace and inhabit a wordless state that characterizes optimal human performance. Intense physical effort attacks the human body on a variety of fronts in a variety of ways: we self-inflict body trauma in order to induce beneficial stresses. The optimal workout creates stress. The poison is in the dose.

Our subtle task is to create sufficient stress to invoke the adaptive response–this in order to reap all the considerable benefit associated with expertly applied progressive resistance training. Too little self-induced stress and nothing of any physical or psychological consequence occur. What are the stress categories?

Mental stress
Hormonal stress
Central nervous system stress
Muscular stress
Internal organ stress

How do we create beneficial stresses and not overdo or under-do the dose?

The requisite stress dose appears when we approach, equal or exceed some measure, some current performance benchmark. Hypertrophy, strength, power and exercise-induced satori do not and cannot appear or occur in response to sub-maximal effort. Pushing up to or past capacity–in some way, shape or form–is what triggers all the good stuff.

The elite athlete is able to will his body to perform past its realistic capacity. This ability is one of the contributing factors to why the elite are the elite. At the highest levels of athletics, regardless the sport, everyone has the genetics and everyone has the work ethic, everyone is fast, everyone is strong and agile–so what separates 1^st form 5^th place?

In most cases superior or inferior placing correlates to the mental attributes (or lack there of) of the athlete. Some athletes are natural competitors and rise to the competitive occasion while others shrink and fall apart at the actual competition.

Human Nervous System

The elite athlete is willfully able to invoke the primordial fight-or-flight response, the necessary precursor to extraordinary effort. Successfully triggering the flight-or-flight response sets in motion everything of benefit that follows. How does one “artificially” invoke fight-or-flight? They create a system of psych.

Successful superhuman effort requires a singularity of mind. A person does not casually exert superhuman effort.

Elite athletes develop individualized mental methods by which they psych themselves up in order to achieve superhuman levels of performance. Athletes do not care one wit about attaining higher levels of consciousness; elite athletes only care about improved performance. An experienced, mature, seasoned athlete uses a highly developed psych designed to elevate the quality of the individual workout and elevate performance in actual competitions.

Recalibrating the mind is the necessary precursor to elevating performance. The “Psych” is a conscious, willful act. The athlete executes a mental checklist that they have developed over time. They recalibrate their mindset to prepare for the training session. Once the actual training session is underway, a highly individualized psych-up routine is used repeatedly in each exercise, drill or protocol.

By consciously focusing, concentrating and using tunnel-vision focus, the seasoned athlete optimizes their capacities and abilities. This singularity of purpose improves the quality of, and results derived from, the workout. The key to continual improvement is being able to string together long series of quality workouts, like pearls strung together on a necklace strand.

***

Back in the Coaching Saddle… After a Twenty Year Hiatus

July 23, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 6 Comments

Marty Gallagher and Cristi Bartlett

I stopped coaching at the national and international level when my superstar powerlifter, Kirk Karwoski, retired in 1996. After a ten-year rocket ride with the Kirk, the undisputed King of powerlifting, anything subsequent would have been anticlimactic. Kirk crushed the best with yawning nonchalance: he won seven straight national titles in three different weight divisions. He steamrolled to six straight world titles and set 20 + world records, including an all-time squat record of 1,003 pounds that remains unsurpassed to this day, 18 years after being set. He was widely considered to have had the strongest legs in the history of powerlifting and he built his unprecedented leg power using a strength system I introduced him to. He and I, coach and athlete, refined and fine-tuned this simplistic approach over the next decade. With each succeeding year he got substantially better.

We called our power approach “The Modified Cassidy” because this unique strength strategy was based on an approach first devised by world champion Hugh Cassidy. Hugh’s template was brutal yet effective, a minimalistic approach towards strength training (and eating) that we customized for Kirk. We were heavily influenced by innovative modifications made to the same system we used by power immortals Ed Coan and Doug Furnas. I talked to Coan weekly for years; we were like two lab scientists discussing a mutual science project—which happened to be Kirk. He was the baby gorilla we were raising in captivity: each week I would tell Coan what Karwoski had done in training and listen to Ed’s feedback. We had this ongoing three-way conversation and eventually settled on a system that caused Kirk to skyrocket. It took five years of dues paying before Kirk won his first national title. That same year he took second place at the world championships when Kristo Vilmi of Finland, edged him by 5-pounds. After that, Karwoski went on a rampage: Vilmi was the last man to beat Kirk, ever.

Kirk and I were a coach/athlete partnership: we thought long and hard each successive competitive year about what new wrinkles we would add, what modifications we would apply, how would we hone and refine our core strength system to make it better. We had a viewpoint, a philosophic strength strategy and our report card was how we did at the national and world championships. For seven years he was the best in the world—by a country mile. He didn’t defeat the competition; he annihilated the competition. He was our champion and we campaigned a specific method, a defined strength philosophy. Kirk was the best in the world for a long, long time and he could have won five more world titles had he not become bored with it all.

I did a lot of coaching at nosebleed levels, including coaching the United States to the IPF world team title at the 1991 world championships in Orebro, Sweden. Like Kirk, I too got burnt out. Truth be known, I didn’t miss coaching. I did so much of it for so long and with such a high caliber of athlete that the idea of coaching again held zero appeal. That all changed when I got a load of Cristi Bartlett. Naturally I heard about her before I met her. She was a protégé of Jim Steel, the no-nonsense, Old School, hardcore strength coach at University of Pennsylvania. Jimmy has been at Penn going on 15 years and oversees a 20-million dollar facility with responsibilities for twenty + collegiate sport teams. He needs help and Cristi worked for Jim as an assistant coach. He began telling me about her years ago and a few years back I met her.

I was really impressed with how she looked and how she moved. She was a muscled-up 190-pounds, which sounds huge, but on her it looked quite normal. She moved like a panther and had “elite athlete” stamped all over her. I was hardly surprised when told she’d been a collegiate basketball player and held a Masters degree in exercise science. Cream rises to the top and genetics, brains and youth are always a good combination in an athlete. While I was not surprised at her athletic pedigree or academic degree, I was quite surprised (shocked, actually) at how “spot-on” her deadlift technique was: she deadlifted as if she’d come straight out of the same Hugh Cassidy technical deadlift boot camp that world champions Mark Dimiduk, Mark Chaillet, Marty Gallagher, Kirk Karwoski and Don Mills were schooled in.

She had intuitively taught herself how to pull using the same technique we were taught: narrow stance, upright torso, bust it from the floor using leg power, finish off the pull with a steel-coil hip hinge held in reserve until that special instant. “Where’d you learn to pull like that?” It was the first question I ever asked her. “Oh, I sort of figured it out on my own. It seemed logical.” Now that was the right answer. She had excellent body proportions; a positive indicator for future balanced lifting. Most good female powerlifters are short and squat; they usually have good squats and good bench presses and are piss-poor deadlifters. Cristi is the rare breed: world level bench presser and deadlifter. She is also a 100% lifetime drug-free athlete.

I asked around a bit about the national and world records in the newly minted USAPL and IPF “raw” divisions. Raw powerlifting is done without any supportive gear, other than a weightlifting belt. The explosion of CrossFit has been a shot in the arm for raw powerlifting competitions. Nowadays the raw national championships might attract 400 + lifters. The USAPL and IPF are strictly judged; squats have to be below parallel; and they practice out-of-competition drug testing. Strict judging and strict drug testing work in Ms. Bartlett’s favor. Her training lifts were at or above world record level. For the first time in decades I sensed that here was an athlete capable of going all the way: become the best in the world. Few knew those “all the way” ropes better than me.

She was receptive to the idea of going to the USAPL national powerlifting championships. That competition would be held close by, in Scranton, and would occur in October, a long time off. We agreed in principle to “go for it.” She needed to compete in a qualifying meet in order to be eligible to compete at the nationals. We found a USAPL competition in suburban Baltimore on July 12^th and worked together for eight weeks leading up to the Baltimore competition. The web is a wonderful training tool: each week she would video tape her “top set” in the squat or deadlift and e-mail it to me. I would review it, critique it and then, based on all the combined factors, we would make the poundage/rep call for the subsequent workout. It was agreed that the key to her ultimate powerlifting success would be lie in increasing her leg strength.

She was already world level in both bench pressing and deadlifting but she was 100 pounds off the pace in the squat. Champions don’t continually play to their strengths; instead they attack their weakness. That is where the dramatic improvement lies. Ergo, it only stood to reason that she would concentrate on bringing up her squat: to do so would make her invincible. Rome would not be built in a day and we would treat the Baltimore meet as a mere workout, she would lift conservatively: no close misses.

Cristi Bartlett Deadlift

The actual competition turned out to be a madhouse as 100 lifters were lifting. The 28-year old exhibited coolness in her competitive demeanor; she was aggressive yet upbeat, engaged but unfazed, she was alternately in one of two states: totally relaxed sitting in the audience with her dad and Tracey, her training partner, or prior to a lift, concentrated and focused. In her squats, her first attempt was with 295-pounds and she buried the lift a full three inches below parallel. It was a “three-white-light” success. Her 315-pound second attempt squat was easier than the first. She roared out and methodically dispatched a perfect 3^rd attempt with 330. Each squat was a cookie-cutter replication of the previous perfect squat.

In the bench press she was nursing a shoulder injury, a serious injury that caused her to train light. She was not at her benching best. The competitive bench press has to be paused on the chest and then pressed evenly and perfectly: she perfectly pressed 205, 231 and finally a very easy 248. We were unaware that the national record was 252-pounds, or we would have taken 256 on her 3^rd attempt. Six lifts, three squats, three bench presses, eighteen white lights; she was perfection in motion.

In the deadlift, she hit her first (and only) snag of the day when on her 1^st attempt deadlift with 440-pounds she drew a lone red light; the side judge said she did not have her shoulders all the way back at lockout. Two judges passed the lift. She asked for 485 pounds on her second attempt deadlift. The current national record was 473 pounds. After seeing the slump-shouldered 440 opening deadlift, I secretly thought 45 pounds might be a bridge to far. Plus the competition was dragging on and on and cumulative fatigue was a real factor; Cristi had taken her first squat warm-up at 9:30 am and now it was 2:30 pm. That is a long time to maintain an edge.

To my surprise and delight, she strode out and after a long, hard pull locked out 485 pounds to set the new national record. What a GRIP! Mark Chaillet had the strongest set of hands I’ve ever seen and he could just tug and tug and tug on an 850 + pound deadlift all day long—Cristi has that same powerhouse type of “kung fu grip.”

After she locked the weight out and accepted the thunderous applause, she came off stage and I congratulated her. “That’s it—right? You don’t want a 3^rd do you?” After seeing how tough the 485 was, after seeing the adrenaline dump and the excitation of that national record, I was convinced she was done. “Whoa!” she said, “How about a 3^rd attempt?” I was puzzled, “Really?” I looked deep in her eyes; she was smiling but serious. I didn’t say it but thought; if you worked that hard with 485, what are we going for on the 3^rd, 486??? “Sure!” I said, “What’s the number?” She didn’t hesitate. “500!”

She would need to find a deeper well somewhere. To make a long story short, it was as if everything in the competition leading up to this point was the preliminary stuff. By now it was apparent to everyone in the oversized, stuffed to capacity gym, that this woman, pound for pound, was the best lifter in the entire competition, female or male. This deadlift would be more than the male class winner in the 184-pound class and it would exceed her just-set national record. It would also exceed the current 496-pound IPF world record in the deadlift.

https://youtu.be/V3eGtpDQaW4

She crushed 500. 485 was light years better than 440 and 500 was light years easier than 485. She had racked up nine perfect lifts and made 26 out of a possible 27 white lights. She ended with a world record-exceeding lift in her second-ever powerlifting competition. It was exciting as hell. It triggered a feeling in me I hadn’t felt since Kirk hung it up. As my old boss at the Washington Post, Vic Sussman used to say, “Let the facts speak for themselves.” Here is a fact: Cristi Bartlett got me back into coaching…and I am excited to see how far she can go. If she caught fire she could become the female Ed Coan, she’s that talented.

***

Roots and Mentors: Mac McCallum’s Profound Insights Are Still Relevant

June 25, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 8 Comments

John McCallum: our mentors had to walk the walk before we listened when they talked the talk. He wrote 100 + articles; he gave us our marching orders every month.

There is no school like Old School!
“Train, eat, sleep, grow – repeat!”

John “Mac” McCallum was a hugely influential figure that burst onto the muscle and strength scene in the 1960s. He built a cult following with his superb column in Strength & Health magazine. The “Keys to Progress” series ran for years and presented a viewpoint and tone that struck a resonant chord with alpha males worldwide. Mac was a man’s man, he offered up a vision of the idealized man—then provided a blueprint for morphing yourself into that ideal. In Mac’s way of thinking, the ideal man was large, muscular, athletic and smart. He loved the rugged, functional physiques of the Olympic weightlifter. Mac was generally dismissive of bodybuilders: they were too effete, preening, egotistical and un-athletic. But, having said that, he worshiped the “power bodybuilders” as exemplified by Reg Park and Bill Pearl.

First and foremost, Mac’s goal was to become strong. The key to transforming into the idealized alpha male was to grow dramatically stronger. Everything flowed from strength; in order to grow stronger, Mac championed the strategy of getting bigger. How did a man grow bigger and stronger? He first and foremost lifted weights in a very specific and disciplined fashion. Secondly, the acolyte purposefully ate a massive amount of food. The goal was to lift weights hard, heavy, often and with incredible training intensity, or “effort,” as he called it. To “support” the intense lifting Mac wanted athletes to eat big and eat often. The emphasis was on protein but his nutritional approach was the “seafood diet,” i.e. see food, eat it. When it came to packing on muscle size, intense lifting and intense eating will grow a body.

He was also a huge proponent of rest, and deep sleep. He rightly believed that if a man shatters himself to the required degree in weight training—lifting long and often—food and rest are needed to recover and grow. The entire growth equation was simple: lift, eat, sleep, grow. Genius.

Mac’s strategy was lift hardcore and eat like a ravenous animal—purposefully and repeatedly, unapologetically… What a profoundly fun, easy and delightful philosophy for a young man to follow! Eat as many calories as possible from the time you get up until the time you go to bed. Protein was favored over all nutrients; McCallum had one article entitled, “Protein is King! But other calories were welcome too”. One particularly awesome Strength & Health article circa 1966, but not a Mac column, described the successful “bulk up” strategy of an air force sergeant stationed in a hut by himself at the North Pole monitoring the missile-detecting DEW line. He had a 500-pound set of weights, unlimited amounts of food, and nothing to do for six straight months in 1965. His inspired tale told of how he spent his time: he lifted weights daily in marathon sessions, and why not? There was nothing else to do! He actually had some metabolism-spiking cardio activity as each day he had to slog around outside in sub-zero temperatures and 60 mph winds for hours each and every day. Then he would come inside, eat like a starving wolf, and sleep for as long and a soundly as he liked. The radio was his only company. Six months later he came back to civilization having gained 100 pounds. That man was a hero to me—I longed to be sent to Greenland, exiled with my books, LP records, weights and unlimited amounts of delicious food.

As a stud high school athlete, I ate two lunches and drank four pints of milk for less than a dollar. Being an alpha male leader of boys, I routinely had food offerings from other students dropped off in front of me. Whatever class followed lunch I predictably went narcoleptic. I was forcefully morphing my body. I engaged in lots of aerobic sports activities which kept my metabolism kicking. The lifting built muscle and the copious calories supported recovery and growth. Shot full of teen testosterone and training hard enough to trigger hypertrophy, I grew muscle—lots of muscle. I was burning thousands of calories in sports activities and eating thousands of calories of all types. I had hit upon a metabolic nirvana. I inadvertently combined my immersion into hardcore weight training with a hormonal growth spurt manifested by dramatically elevated levels of testosterone. The results were immediate and sensational. By age 14, I was a regional weightlifting champion. By age 17, I weighed 200-pounds at 8% body fat. I set my first national records and won my first national championships. Only awful grades prevented me from attending a Division I school on a football scholarship. All of my progress was rooted in the profound teachings of Mac.

Forced Evolution

The goal was forced evolution; we would morph ourselves by exerting our iron will. We would faithfully combine copious and indiscriminant consumption of calories with hardcore weight training. We sought to morph from human to inhuman, from normal into abnormal, from forgettable into gargantuan. We would not become another cog in societal machinery; we sought distinction from our fellow man. We were of the warrior caste. This martial mentality dug its talons deep into me, and by the time I was 14 years old I had been into the hardcore progressive resistance scene for nearly four years. I took my training cues from heavyweights like Bill Pearl, Norbert Schemansky, Reg Park, Paul Anderson, John Grimek, Bill Starr, Terry Todd, Tommy Suggs, Pat Casey and Morris Weisbrott—not in person, but through the pithy, informative, no-bullshit, all-man training articles untainted by any whiff of commercialism.

The Mac Daddy communicator was Mac: a folksy writer who made his bones by engineering his own radical physical transformation. Mac was both the curator and repository of the cutting-edge philosophic protocols of the day. Yet he was no dry academic; he taught his lessons using a storyteller’s approach. Like an Iron Aesop, he beguiled us while relating profundities.

“Nobody knew much about squats twenty odd years ago. {Written in 1965} Nobody bothered with them and bodybuilding standards were way down. If you had a fifteen-inch arm you looked like the village blacksmith and a 40-inch chest would bring out the beast in your old lady…you can solve all of your muscle and size problems with squats alone. You can make gains you never dreamed of before. You can build unbelievable size and power.”

Prose like that put me on the squat bandwagon right then and there. Fifty years later, I can tell you that everything Mac said about squats was and is true: mastery of squats opens the door to everything of value in resistance training. McCallum pointed his acolytes down the right pathway on a dozen interrelated topics. In his “Keys to Progress” article, “The Time Factor”, he inadvertently outlined the generalized workout schematic I would use for the next half century…

“There aren’t many exercises in this {resistance} training program. Work hard on every one. Work out three times a week—no more! Don’t touch the weights at all on your in-between days. When you finish your workout, take a shower and forget all about weight training until your next training day. Get plenty of sleep and rest and eat lots of good food.”

Mac had Boy Scout earnestness, a lack of irony and a great, Mark Twain-like sense of humor. His lessons were all about building power and how power begets muscle. The idea of morphing from whatever you are into a muscle monster has motivated men for eons. McCallum’s modus operandi was purposeful primitivism: Mac was the first one to get us to stress the 5-rep set in all our exercises. I am not quite sure how or why he came to the conclusion that 5-reps strikes the perfect balance between low rep power and torque acquisition, but per usual he was prophetic. I think it no accident that “the five” became universally practiced in powerlifting. Mac’s was the first to say, “Men, seriously, concentrate on 5-rep sets in all the big movements.”

He was a big fan (deservedly) of Reg Park and the preference for the 5-rep set might have originated with the Englishman. Other possibilities include Maurice Jones or Bill Pearl. Bill loved 6-rep sets, a miniscule yet significant differentiation. The mystery of Mac and the 5-rep set was buried with him—all I can attest to is that based on his advice (which we slavishly adhered to) we began subsisting on 5-rep sets in squats, overhead presses, bench press, deadlift and power cleans. Our Olympic lifts used lower reps and our arm work used higher reps. He wrote in an era before there were warning labels on cigarette packs, seat belts in cars, computers or access to information we now take for granted in this day and age. This makes the rightness (to this day) of his prognostications all the more impressive. If you’d like to read the collected works of Mac, Randy Strossen at Iron Mind has collected all the Keys to Progress columns and placed them sequentially between two covers of a book. Genius.

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Norbert Schemansky: World & Olympic Champion, Transitional Strength Figure, Mentor to My Mentor…

June 18, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 10 Comments

How it was done: Norb lays back, stands partially erect in photo three, before laying back a second time as shown in photo four. He eventually pressed 420 using this style.

The press photo sequence above is of Ski pressing 396 at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games where he went on to take the bronze medal. He stood 5’11” and in this photo weighed a rock hard 260 pounds. At his awesome peak he was capable of a 420 press, a 370 snatch and a 460-pound clean and jerk. He could squat 650 for reps. Norb was the prototypical modern power athlete, both physiologically and psychologically. We want to relate (and embellish) a strength parable that was first told in Strength & Health magazine in 1966 by Bill Starr. The tale bears retelling because the lessons it aimed to teach are still valid in 2015.

The year is 1966 and a young trainee approached Norbert Schemansky—world and Olympic champion—with great trepidation. The Polish-American lifter from Detroit was infamous for brusqueness; he did not suffer fools lightly, particularly if he was interrupted when training. And at the moment Ski was training and not in a particularly jovial mood. The setting was the venerable and ancient York gym on a typical Saturday. Most every Saturday in the 50s and 60s, a mini-Olympic weightlifting competition was conducted in the York gym. The public was welcome and you could see a veritable cavalcade of national and world champion weightlifters in action. Lifting acolytes from around the country made their way to this American lifting equivalent of the Haj in Mecca. The vast majority of the onlookers were lifters seeking tips and tactics that would improve their own weightlifting efforts.

On this particular day, Norb was midway through the overhead press portion of his extended workout. An 18-year-old regional weightlifting champion had driven to York with two training partners. The young men were positively enthralled and agog, absorbing new data about lifting that they would use in their own herculean efforts; they could barely wait to return home and put into practice all the new training protocols and lifting techniques they had gleaned and observed. Our earnest protagonist knew that he and his pals would have to leave for home in the next hour in order to return in time to meet their parental curfews.

The youngster was bursting at the seams to ask Schemansky some pointed questions about tactics and training. The problem was Ski had been training for a long time and looked as if he might continue for quite a while longer. Under normal circumstances, the clean-cut young man would never bother Ski, or any other elite lifter while they trained. A training session was sacred, and amongst the Iron Elite interrupting the sacrosanct training atmosphere with mindless blather was considered sacrilege.

The youngster was impaled on the horns of an irresolvable dilemma: interrupt the fearsome Schemansky’s workout and risk incurring the legendary wrath—he’d been known to get physical with those who irritated him—or miss the opportunity to ask Ski questions. If his burning questions were left unanswered, it would haunt him forever. Summoning up his courage, the young lifter took in a sharp breath and strode to where the champ sat between sets on a steel folding chair.

Ski caught the youngster approaching him out of the corner of his eye and thought, “Oh Hell no!” He mumbled and muttered under his breath; he knew what was about to happen. Schemansky was a month out from competing at the American National Championships; his last major competition had been the 1964 Olympic games, where he’d taken the 3rd place bronze medal behind the legendary Soviet world and Olympic champions Yuri Vlasov and newcomer Leonid Zhabotinsky. An uncontrollable scowl spread across his already dour face as the well-built boy pulled up to a halt four feet in front of Ski and stood wordlessly at attention. After a long silent pause, the youngster said in a single breath…

“Mr. Schemansky, Sir! I am sorry to interrupt you, my press has been stuck at 205 for the past six months. Could you be so kind as to give me some advice about how I might increase my press?”

Ski exhaled a cooling breath and proceeded to talk himself out of the trees; he was NOT going to go off, explode, or go ape-shit on this earnest young man. Ski was trying to turn over a new leaf and would not resort to cussing this kid out—as he would have in the not-too-distant-past. Truth be known, as Ski looked the kid up and down like an expensive side-dish he hadn’t ordered—despite wanting to hate all interlopers—he got a good vibe from the boy.

Norbert takes 3rd place at the 1960 Olympic games: A fantastic-looking Yuri Vlasov wins for Russia with America’s Jim Bradford in second place. Bradford lived and lifted in Washington, DC. He and my mentor Hugh “Huge” Cassidy would periodically train together. Bradford could clean and strict press 400 pounds. What a great trio.

Ski had a secondary motive: despite the pure joy he derived from going off on a civilian, any emotional outbursts—while terrifically satisfying (a guilty pleasure)—would derail and destroy the workout. He had eleven training sessions before leaving for the national championships and every single session needed to count; each week he had to show tangible improvement.

He decided to be tolerant and understanding with this clean-cut polite boy—no yelling, profanity, or rebuffs; he would avoid ‘leaking’ any of his precious emotional psych. Plus there was something oddly endearing about the bearing, manner, and presence of the youngster who stood in front of him. The boy was deferential and reverential, akin to a young soldier addressing a general. Ski always and forever had a place in his heart for the military man so he grunted a reply…

“FIRST OFF it is RUDE to interrupt a man prepping for a national championship—WHAT is so GODDAMNED IMPORTANT!”

Schemansky was pleased with himself. He considered that a measured response and quite restrained, compared to previous “alleged” incidents. The boy literally quaked, shook, and was on the verge of peeing himself; his training partners slunk backwards four steps. Norbert then switched gears and said,

“Son, if you want to improve your press—PRESS!”

Ski deliberately made eye contact with the youngster. A look of confusion and consternation spread across the boy’s face. Puzzled, but elated by the fact that he had not been physically assaulted, the youngster decided to press his luck and posed a second question.

“Mr. Schemansky, sir! Any suggestions on how to improve my snatch would be greatly appreciated. I have been stalled…”

Ski decided to reinforce a point. “Do I look like a give a Tinker’s damn if your snatch is stalled?” It was a rhetorical question. “If you want to improve your snatch THEN SNATCH!”

The rugged champion leaned back in his chair and drilled his eyes into the youngster until the boy winced and wilted. Yet, instead of skittering away, the youngster gathered himself admirably; he knew he was pressing his luck, but plunged onward anyway. “How about my clean and jerk, sir? Please sir, my jerk stinks and yours is great—no, incredible—what can I do to improve my clean and jerk, sir?

“More Clean and Jerks, son!” Norb was warming to the kid.

“Squat?”

This actually made Norbert laugh. The boy had big balls. He looked at the boy and with a quick jerk of the head wordlessly indicated that the audience was over. The boy, being smart and perceptive got that he was being dismissed. He wanted to express his gratitude for the great man’s time.

“Thank you sir.” He extended a limp, damp hand that hung there suspended in space for the longest time before Ski sighed and engulfed the boy’s hand with his own callused hand and gave the youngster a real man’s handshake, a small jolt, just a taste of his raw power, transmitted through a crushing handshake. The boy winced in pain. He would remember those 15 minutes for the rest of his life.

50 years later the strength elite would still talk about and marvel at the Zen wisdom and sparse economy of Norb’s precise answers. There was (and remains) so much truth in his advice.

Ski spikes 440. He came back from back surgery to snatch a world record

There is a famous Zen Koan: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” The answer is a hard slap across the face. The student poses the question and the Roshi slaps the taste out of the acolyte’s mouth. Often that unexpected slap would jolt the Zen student out of his conscious mind, allowing him to attain the level of consciousness that cannot be reasoned out. Ski’s irreducible answers were akin to the Zen face slap.

Truly, as Ski succinctly noted, if a man is serious about improving his press, snatch, clean and jerk, squat, deadlift or any other major resistance training exercise—the best possible way to improve is to do that specific lift—repeatedly. Remember Aristotle’s truism: “We are what we do repeatedly.” Sport specificity applies to strength training movements. As my old lifting coach Hugh Cassidy would say, “The best way to improve in any lift is to do that lift and do it a whole lot.”

Further, the best assistance exercises (adjunct lifts) for any of the three powerlifts most closely resemble the core lift. Hence, the best assistance exercise for bench press is the bench press with a wide grip or a narrow grip; in keeping with Cassidy’s timeless axiom, variations on flat benching are superior assistance exercises to say, incline bench press or decline bench press.

There is tremendous wisdom hidden deep within Schemansky and Cassidy’s pithy pronouncements. Schemansky classic power strategy for improving strength could be described as “doing fewer things better.” This old school philosophy could be summarized as, “Perform the major lifts and do them often—and do very little else.” Old pros knew that a universe of variety and variation exists within the core four lifts and their assistance-lift brethren.

In this day and age, it is very chic and fashionable to avoid doing the lifts. The prevailing wisdom in our information age is that you can improve the squat, bench or deadlift without doing the actual lifts. You can get just as strong, stronger in fact, by using bands, boards, chains, board presses, box squats—anything to avoid the harsh starkness of that most primal and ancient of strategies… “Just do the lifts.” Ski and Cassidy (and John Kuc, Jon Vole, Kaz, Pacifico, and all the other all-time greats of the 1960s and 1970s) would do the three Olympic lifts or the three powerlifts—and little if anything else. It would never occur to these powerhouse men NOT to do the core lifts.

How did we arrive at this upside-down bizarro world? It think it is no coincidence that the physiques of Doug Young, Kaz, Gamble, Cash, Roger Estep, and all the other muscled-to-the-max men of yesteryear blow away the physiques of today’s “smarter” athletes. The ancients bore the weight, embraced the sticking points, and did full and deep lifts. They performed the ultra-basics over and over and over and over, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. How do you get really good at doing the core lifts? By doing them repeatedly, world without end, amen.

Perfect pull technique: Man mountain Roger Estep at the exact instant he launches a 744-pound conventional deadlift. He uses leg power to break the bar from the floor and will fire his hip-hinge (purposefully held in reserve) as the bar approaches his knees. Estep stood 5’6” and lifted in the 198-pound class. A nuclear engineer from West Virginia, he died early from cancer. He had the prototypical power physique; the kind that can only be built by a man who has mastered all three power lifts.

Lift performance, the classical report card, has been inflated through the use of supportive gear, the mono-lift and corrupted judging. It appeared that lifts were skyrocketing and all as a result of this get-better-at-the-lift-without-doing-the-lift philosophy. Actually, if you strip the modern lifter of his lifting apparel, make him do below parallel squats and bench presses without wearing the bench shirt, then guess what? The modern “athlete” is weaker than the ancients. Talk about an inconvenient truth…

Ski and Cassidy, Rigert and Pacifico, Mel Hennessey and Roger Estep knew that in order to get really good at a thing, you needed to do that thing, endlessly. By doing the lifts to near exclusion, they built physiques and levels of raw power and strength which are unrivaled and unmatched to this day. Those lessons have been lost to history: in our age, everyone is looking for the next new thing. However in the universe of radical physical transformation—more muscle, more strength, more power, radically reduced body fat percentile—the answers lie in the deep and primal past.

The smart trainee needs to look backwards for breakthrough strength strategies; back to the ancients and their “plain vanilla” training strategies that relied more on effort and degree of difficulty than in sophisticated user-friendliness. These stark, barebones training strategies discovered by the ancients need to be resurrected. Those who tell you that modern strength and power strategies trump what came before are false prophets speaking with forked tongues. It is time we destroyed the golden calf of delusion and get back on the Old School good foot: to get super-strong become super-simplistic.

Ski was “the sophisticated brute,” fast as lighting on his split cleans and split snatches. Here he pulls 330—look at the balletic athletic poetry of this bottom position. He would whip the snatch bar to sternum height, then dive under the barbell in an eye-blink, attaining this precarious position at the low point. From here he would “recover” and stand erect. Ski snatched a 363-pound world record at age 38.

Norb Schemansky was born in 1924. The Detroit native learned his fundamentals early. He came into his own during the post-war period. Norbert stayed at the top of the strength world from the 1940s all the way into the late 1960s. He cut his teeth on simplistic pre-war training templates and over time modified them; he grew larger and stronger as he got older. Norb set the world record in the snatch, 363lbs at age 38, some twenty years into his competitive career. Norb adapted and adopted, yet he always retained the simplistic sophistication that earmarked his training strategies. Even as he matured, he never lost his pre-war, depression-era work ethic.

Norb become the first weightlifter in history to earn four Olympic medals, despite missing the 1956 Olympic games due to back problems. Norbert won an Olympic gold medal; a silver medal and two bronze medals spread over four games. He won the world championship three times and won the Pan American Games. He was the Olympic champion in 1952. He set an all-time world record in the snatch in 1962 when he split-snatched a seemingly miraculous 363-pounds. Norb set 75 national, world, and Olympic records.

According to his biographer Richard Back, Schemansky related that the most impressive feat of strength he ever witnessed took place at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games during a rare joint training session when the American and the Russian lifters were both in the same training hall at the same time. Trench-coated KGB secret police lined the walls of the training hall just in case a desperate communist athlete dared try and dash for sanctuary and freedom. This stuff was real and Ski saw the Big Red sport machine up close and personal for decades.

Ski’s number one competitor in 1952 was the 180-pound Soviet champion Gregory Novak. Novak held the press record at 309 pounds and during the joint training session the stumpy, thick Russian effortlessly pressed 281 pounds, and then—no doubt for Norbert’s benefit (Novak was well aware that Schemansky was watching)—pulled a psych maneuver that blew Ski’s mind.

“First he presses 281 and I am impressed with the strictness and lack of backbend. I mean back then (1952) a press was still a press.” Norb then related, “Then, just for the hell of it, Novak lowers the 281 pound weight down behind his neck and presses it three times! I’m thinking, I better have a damn good snatch and jerk because I surer than hell was not going to beat this beast in a pressing contest.”

Rare photo of Russian powerhouse Gregory Novak; this photo was taken with his two sons 20 years after his retirement. Reportedly, even at age 50, he was still capable of a strict 130 kilo (286 pound) clean and press.

Schemansky struggled with life outside of weightlifting. He stayed in Detroit and was reduced to working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet between national and world championships. While Big Daddy Hoffman would cover the expense of sending Norb to the national and world championships, between those trips and excursions Ski had to pump gas and scrub toilets. It became so bad that Sports Illustrated magazine ran a feature article called, “Looking for a Lift,” an expose’ on the hard times that had befallen one of America’s premier Olympic athletes.

This wasn’t some retrospective on how some former great was now laid low—Norbert was on the national, world and Olympic teams at the time, winning and placing at the highest levels of the sport. In the SI magazine photo, Norb stood desolate, wire scrub brush in hand in front of a commode he was about to scrub. This was a MAN, a man with a wife and kids who in his spare time was kicking ass internationally for his country. At home he was a pathetic nobody, always two paychecks away from disaster, destitution and homelessness.

Despite the feature in SI describing his plight, no sugar daddy, organization or corporation stepped forward to offer Ski any relief. In nearly every retrospective written on him, the phrase “bitter” enters into the article. Ski was once asked what he was most bitter about and he wryly commented he was “bitterest about always being portrayed as bitter.” It was yet another one of his barbed comments about an athletic career that was nothing less than astounding contrasted with compensation nothing short of pathetic.

Indirectly, Norbert heavily influenced the fledgling sport of powerlifting. Norbert trained in Detroit with a young engineer named Glen Middleton. When Bechtel transferred Middleton to Washington, DC, Glenn sought out and began training with Hugh Cassidy. Hugh was taken with Middleton’s urbane sophistication and his intellectual approach towards strength training. Hugh, another intellectual with a first-rate brain, appropriated the essence of the Schemansky approach—a simplified exercise menu, ferocity in training, singularity of purpose, preplanning (a revolutionary concept at the time) and the idea that over time a lifter needed to grow more muscle.

Ski rose to national prominence as a 180-pound lifter and finished out his career weighing a massive yet lean 260 pounds. Hugh took the lessons learned from Ski, via Glenn, added his own empirical-based technical and tactical modifications and won national and world championships. In turn, he mentored national and world champions. Cassidy’s teachings were passed to me and I passed them along to others. In turn, I created world champion athletes who set all-time world records using these primal Ski/Cassidy techniques and tactics.

We need go back to the future and revisit the methods of Iron Immortals; their simplistic, primal approach towards transformational strength training is so much more effective and applicable for today’s time-pressed individual than the “revolutionary” power and strength methods pedaled by modern day fitness hucksters seeking to turn a profit. As my own cliché goes: There is no school like Old School.

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Cardio Revolution: Melding an Old Protocol with a New Tool – Part II

June 4, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 6 Comments

Strong Medicine Cardio Revolution Part Two

The Fan Bike has been around for decades. All mechanical, this cardio push/pull device has stood the test of time. It is the technological equivalent of a diesel locomotive engine and has the obvious advantage of making the arms equal partners in creating the sum total of the aerobic/anaerobic effort. The Fan Bike also allows the trainee to encounter the requisite resistance as they go backwards, this effectively doubles the number of Fan Bike exercises. One can pedal using ‘legs only’ forward, or push using ‘arms only.’ We can even use a single limb at a time. Pace possibilities are endless: we can push, we can pull, we can push and pull. We can pedal forward and backward, with and without the arms. We can vary our speed, duration and pace. The modern fan bike has the ability to monitor rpms (at any given instant) and watts generated. These two readouts make it possible for the user to create cardio categories and establish performance benchmarks.

When we are able to categorize and establish performance personal bests we can periodize our cardio efforts. Using the watts readout, the Fan Bike user can have personal best efforts (expressed in watts generated) in each of the various exercise drills. For example, while pedaling forward, arms and legs together, work up to 100% all-out effort–then make note of the highest watts reading you are able to generate. You now have a personal record for that particular drill, something you can seek to improve upon.

Once you have a concrete benchmark, a number expressing watts or RPMs (or heart rate, or all of them) the gains lie in attempting to equal or exceed these current personal bests. You can establish numeric benchmarks in over a dozen separate and distinct Fan Bike arm or leg possibilities.

Over time, this continual striving to exceed current limits has proven to be the true path for obtaining real results. Long-term adherence to a serious Len Schwartz-inspired aerobic protocol, wedded to a Fan Bike, has proven to be an inspired pairing, a “long strength” marriage-made-in-heaven.

fan bikes Airdyne and Assault Air Bike — The original Schwinn Airdyne was the forerunner to the modern Fan Bike. It was the model of simplicity and a brutally effective cardio tool. Unfortunately the classic Airdyne is no longer made. We are currently using the Assault Air Bike for our protocols. It is an updated industrial-grade cardio monster inspired by the original Airdyne.

We can use the Fan Bike in every imaginable way, establish mathematical benchmarks in every imaginable category; and then seek to continually approach, equal or exceed these benchmarks in some way. We will go 100% in every training session. Adhere to this protocol for a protracted period and reap radical increases and improvements in endurance and sustained strength. Cardio capacity will improve dramatically; the metabolism will accelerate.

If your nutrition is in sync with the exercise, body fat will be mobilized and oxidized at an astounding rate. The body, through skillful blending of nutrition and exercise will “relearn” how to use stored body fat as fuel, and drain the various fat storage areas of the human body.

Muscles subjected to intense cardio for protracted periods will reconfigure themselves in response to the intense and continual self-inflicted stress. Mitochondria are cellular blast furnaces that live within every muscle. Nature allots us a certain “mitochondrial density” at birth. Over time, as we age and abuse ourselves, the mitochondria will start to “flame out” and die. Science indicates that sedentary individuals experience premature mitochondrial flame out. Conversely, those who engage in intense physical exertion, profound and prolonged, forestall burnout. Further, if the exercise is intense, prolonged and consistent, new mitochondria are actually created to deal with the continual stresses. New cellular blast furnaces are constructed within the muscles that are constantly worked and stressed.

Mild and moderate cardio efforts are insufficiently intense to cause the creation of new mitochondria and the resulting muscle reconfiguration. When we exceed capacities and establish new performance levels when we train with intensity and consistency, the body is compelled to construct new cellular blast furnaces. Nature intended and designed the human body to possess strong, powerful muscles with a high mitochondrial density to enable a muscle to operate at optimal physiological efficiency. We can really get after “it” when we use the Fan Bike. By going fast and in multiple directions with all our limbs, we derive maximum benefit from our cardio efforts.

Why This Tool?

The Len Schwartz HeavyHands-inspired protocol was as dead as Sanskrit scrolls–it was an ancient, long forgotten strategy. Now, we will resurrect his approach and match it up with a “modern” tool. The venerable Fan Bike is not really modern, but it is the perfect cardio tool for reenacting and reviving the defunct (yet still potent) HeavyHands strategies. Like HeavyHands, the Fan Bike allows and enables the trainee to stress one, two, three or all four limbs, individually or together, forwards or backwards. The cardio effort can be “shuttled” around the body in a very strategic and calculated fashion.

The underlying, unifying concept is to work up to 100% of exertion max in a wide range of aerobic exercises and drills, all done on the Fan Bike. We will work the arms and legs separately, or together, we can alternate cardio “zones,” we can be clever and innovative in our exercise sequencing. Once they grasp the fundamental concepts, the athlete is then able to create their own exercise templates. Once the techniques and tactics are mastered, the trainee then purposefully modulate the exercise intensity to create the desired cardio inroad and achieve the overall desired physiological effect.

Quad-Limb Fan Bike Core Protocol

For each Fan Bike exercise, the procedure is the same, regardless of the drill:

Warm-up gradually: pedal and/or push-pull, light and easy…
Gradually pick up the pace: warm-up to and maintain 50% of capacity…
Allow the body to acclimate at each subsequent intensity level
Move to 70% of capacity: the body is now completely awake and alert
Move to 85%
Move to 100% of what you are currently capable of–today, at this time
Hold 100% for as long as is comfortable
Be cognizant that capacity is a shifting target and will shift, session to session
Gains occur when we equal or exceed these (diminished or enhanced) capacities
Log the watts, RPMs, and, if possible, heart rate, when attaining 100% max

Once we achieve a 100% all-out max effort in an exercise, we relax and go into the slowest, easiest warm-up iteration of the next sequenced exercise in the cardio chain. Our procedure is to hit 100% of capacity in each exercise, and then immediately shift into the easiest version of the next exercise. We sequence exercises in such a fashion that whatever muscle or muscle-groups are taxed to 100% are rested as another “section” of the body takes over the cardio effort. We again and again hit a 100% effort. Our report card is the watts, the RPMs and the heart rate monitor reading.

100% means that you go as fast as you can go, at that instant of time. Your capacities might be diminished, normal, or enhanced. After a thorough warm-up, exert to 100% in each of the selected exercises.
We can continually assault our limits, safely and effectively if we train smart. All 100% efforts need to be preceded by a comprehensive warm-up. We do all that we can do (safely and sanely) on this particular day at this time.
The gains we seek (improved endurance, increased athletic performance, better body fat percentile, quicker, lighter and healthier, a radically improved physique) are attained by equaling or exceeding current limits.

Specific body parts are taxed maximally, then rested while other body parts are bought online and taxed maximally in turn; the rotation goes on and on without repeating. This strategy allows us to repeatedly exert maximally. Over the course of the entire cycle, this particular Fan Bike protocol requires the trainee hit a 100% maximum twenty times in a row.

Fan Bike Training Template: The 20-Exercise “Cycle”

Arms and legs forward
Legs only forward
Legs only backwards
Arms only push (bench press the handles)
Arms only pull (over-grip row)
Arms only pull (under-grip row)
Arms only push and pull (burn it out, fast as possible)
Legs only forward
Legs only backward
Legs & arms forward (standing up)
Legs & arms backwards (standing up)
Left leg forward
Right leg forward
Left leg backwards
Right leg backwards
Right arm forward (push)
Left arm forward
Right arm backwards (pull)
Arms & legs forward
Arms & legs forward (stand)

Cool Down: arms & legs forward

Work up to a 100% push or pull max on every exercise. This cycle will take between 10-15 minutes to complete. In each instance we seek to go as fast as we can go (within safe, sane and rational limits) then immediately shift into the next exercise. Use the slow ramp up in each exercise. Starting a new exercise is the recovery period from the previous exercise. In about the time the athlete fully recovers, it is time to push the accelerator to the floorboard for the current exercise: twenty times we “max out”, cool down, recover, then hit it again.

Check out the video below as Chris demonstrates a portion of the Fan Bike protocol.

“Cardio zone” training strategically rotates training stress: sometimes we work all four limbs, sometime we work them in pairs or singly–we “spread out” the cardio effort. We rotate the exercises in an effort to keep the intensity high for an extended period of time. We can attack all four limbs simultaneously, we can blast the legs while resting the arms, we can blast the rested arms while resting the blasted legs. Further, we can attack one limb at a time while purposefully resting the other three. Finally we can do all of this magical stuff backwards–doubling our exercise universe. The sheer number of possibilities is positively mind-blowing.

Compelling and Persuasive

Knowing what you now know, why would anyone remotely interested in purchasing a cardio training device select an aerobic tool that could only go in one direction, forward, and that only uses the legs to generate 100% of the cardio effort?

Aerobic tools that depend on legs alone to create the totality of the exercise effort are woefully inadequate when compared to the astounding possibilities of quad-limbed cardio. Single-limb cardio and reverse-direction cardio are exciting new avenues of potential progress.

Consistent and intense cardio, cardio with a purposeful muscular effort included, builds locomotive-like endurance while infusing muscles with new mitochondria. The quality of the aerobic and anaerobic effort generated (using a multitude of exercise variations combined with the 100% effort) is designed to exponentially magnify endurance, release endorphins, build mitochondria and burn off stored body fat. That is a mighty list of highly desirable benefits!

Intense cardio triggers the release of endorphins, a telltale precursor of the adaptive response. The appearance of endorphins is a positive indicator that the training effort was productive. Intense cardio improves internal plumbing, flushes arterial walls, power-washes clinging plaque and sludge as torrents of blood rip through veins in a supercharged circulatory rush. The heart muscle accelerates, and toxins are removed as nutrients are carried to the muscle while the athlete achieves Len’s ideal of “optimal aerobic efficiency”.

Cardio exercise is a critical component in the eternal quest to physically transform. The need for cardio exercise is not in question–what is in question is the optimal tool, mode, and method. We feel the Fan Bike is a fabulous tool (not the only tool, but a valid tool for our fitness toolbox) and when paired with Len’s particular and unique protocols, we can create an exceedingly effective way to obtain optimal results from our cardio efforts.

Comparing a contemporary stationary bike, a standard treadmill or any “legs only” cardio device to a Fan Bike is akin to comparing checkers to chess. Why be purposefully stuck with a one-dimensional workout tool when you can explore four dimensions and open up an exciting new cardio universe?

Editor’s Note:

The Fan Bike will give you all that you can handle as a cardio tool. Marty’s protocol can be very taxing. Keep in mind the daily state of your “Stress Cup” (see Strong Medicine for more on this) and feel free to alter the order of exercise and volume to suit your daily needs. Adequate recovery is just as important as exercise intensity. I filmed the above video the day after a hard jiu jitsu session. Five minutes was about all that I needed (and could handle) to get a beneficial adaptive response while also avoiding overtraining. In Part III, I am going to discuss some of the science behind the benefits of four-limb cardio and specific advantages of using the Fan Bike.

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Cardio Revolution: Melding an Old Protocol with a New Tool – Part I

May 28, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 19 Comments

Cardio Revolution by Marty Gallagher Part I

During the 1990s, I had the great fortune to become an aerobic disciple of Dr. Leonard Schwartz, medical doctor, psychiatrist and exercise genius. Len was in his sixties when we met. His “mission” was to devise a new fitness exercise system, one that suited his personality and psychology, one capable of transforming the human body in new and unique ways. Len came onto the scene in the 1980s and found the state of exercise and fitness sadly lacking; the bodybuilder/weight trainer contingent ignored cardio considerations while the joggers, distance runners and Jane Fonda exercise class types ignored any and all strength considerations. Len wanted both and decided to devise a system that would inject a purposeful element of strength into a decidedly cardio format. He called his endurance/strength approach “long strength,” which he described as the ability to perform light to moderate muscular exertions over extended periods of time: muscular contractions of various intensities were placed into an aerobic format.

Doctor Len Schwartz, MD, psychiatrist, fitness visionary

With one foot in the cardio camp and another in the muscle and strength camp, Len sought to devise a fitness training system that paid homage to both. Len wanted his cardio/strength regimen to utilize all of the limbs—not just legs—to generate the totality of the effort. Using Sherlock Holmes-like powers of logic and deductive reasoning, Len reverse-engineered an entire fitness system within his massive brain. Len took his philosophic musings to the University of Pittsburgh’s Sports Performance Laboratory where he put theory into practice. Len approached fitness with no preconceptions: he would go wherever his research results took him. Len found conventional fitness thinking dogmatic, overly commercialized and one-dimensional; he filled a vacuum with his outside-the-box thinking.

I interviewed him repeatedly for cutting-edge articles about aerobics for use in bodybuilding when I was the lead training writer at Muscle & Fitness magazine. We talked for many years and I repeatedly quizzed the hell out of Len on all things cardio, medical, scientific and what we collectively called “brain-train”. We talked at length about the optimal psychological mindset for sports and training. He and I would talk several times a week and did so for years. I quizzed him mercilessly about his approach; he loved talking with someone that “got it.” We talked as two theoretical scientists would, and his ideas were so scientifically grounded that they blew everything else out of the water from an exercise/philosophic standpoint. His reasoning and science were irrefutable—and his conclusions and solutions were unique. In response to his experimentation, he devised a new method of exercise and training.

Len was a fascinating dude. In addition to being a top-flight psychiatrist, he wrote poetry, played classical guitar extremely well and sculpted. He lived in a beautiful old section of Pittsburgh, right across the street from Steeler’s owner Art Rooney. When Len turned his undivided attention towards “fitness,” his conclusions proved to be as as unique as the man. He began with a stated goal, to remake and rebuild the human body—starting with his. He sought to create a healthy, functional body: lean and fat-free, yet strong, flexible, capable and athletic. He sought to create the optimal body. To build the optimal body he saw in his mind’s eye, Len needed a system that built both endurance and strength.

Len felt the ideal body should be lean and muscled—but lightly muscled—like Michelangelo’s David. I argued the ideal male should look like the thickly muscled Farnese Hercules. I championed a heavier, thicker, more powerful man, a rhino to Len’s gazelle. “The Farnese Hercules would kick David’s ass!” I would taunt him. “That presupposes Herc could catch David before gassing out.” Len would counter. Touché Len! He was a physician, a healer, a mentor and a life coach. Philosophical by nature, he would muse and debate with me about “the ultimate goal of fitness.” He wanted a fit and muscled body—but had qualified this with the provision, “a lightly muscled body.” I was a big-muscle guy from M&F magazine and a “short strength expert,” as he labeled my 800-pound squat ability. He was the master of “long strength” and by dubbing me as a master of “short strength” we had lots to talk about. He wanted to know all about our pure power methods and I wanted to understand this “power cardio” approach which was at odds with the super popular steady-state, low intensity, leg-only cardio modes and methods so prevalent back then (and now).

His cardio/strength feats were incredible. At age 70, he could pump a pair of ten-pound hand weights to forehead height (on every rep) for a solid hour—while power walking and squatting every ten paces. Small at 145 pounds, Len possessed a 3% walking around body-fat percentile—despite eating like a starved prisoner let loose at a buffet. His long strength cardio training built his metabolism into a blast furnace and he was the best possible example of the benefits of his “HeavyHands” system.

His light bulb moment came when he was comparing all-time best athletic VO2 max readings. He could not help but notice how far ahead the cross-country skiers were from the rest of the pack. What differentiated the skiers from the runners? The skiers used their arms; they pumped hard and exerted mightily with their arms using their ski poles as they propelled forward on every stride stroke. The cross-country skier will use legs and arms for propulsion and often amp up the effort with a dramatic folding forward at the waist—further increasing the degree of difficulty. The sport creates the physique of the athlete and to a man, the elite cross-country skiers have off-the-chart aerobic capacities and lean, muscled-up physiques. Len pondered the possibility of creating a fitness protocol that replicated results achieved by cross-country skiing—but without skiing.

Nordic (Cross Country) Skiing—the archetype of four-limb cardio

He needed a tool that could load the arms, like the arms of a cross-country skier. He needed a tool would enable quad-limb cardio. Len wanted the totality of aerobic effort spread, semi-equally across all four limbs. At the end of a Len-protocol training session, all four limbs, arms and legs, will have performed the same amount of work. During the total training time in his cardio session, each limb will receive approximately 25% of the session allotment. The vast majority of aerobic machines and devices only use the legs—two limbs—to generate 100% of the aerobic effort. By distributing the cardio effort and working all four limbs, the body benefits to a far greater degree on a multitude of levels. “Leg only” cardio was and is decidedly and demonstrably inferior to quad-limbed cardio. Yet, virtually every aerobic format used (and uses) the legs, exclusively, to generate 100% of the cardio effort.

For Len, the goal was to create a new type of training that would create a new archetypical physique: lean and light, yet muscular and strong. His “ideal human” would be light in bodyweight, yet extremely fit, they would possess incredible endurance and have shapely, functional muscles chock full of mitochondria. Tight adherence to the embryonic “Heavy Hands” tools and protocols transformed Len’s own physique to a dramatic degree and extremely quickly. He was his own test lab and achieved incredible results even though he began at the advanced age of 54.

Len “loaded” his hands; he made them “heavy.” Once he made his hands heavy, he began creating drills by improvising and experimenting with different training modalities and ideas. He checked his results with blood work and the VO2 scientific monitoring he used at the Pitt Sports Lab. He was testing his theories with his new type of training and logging actual results. Could he replicate the VO2 Max readings generated by the Finnish, Norwegian and Russian cross-country skiers without skiing? Could he create a new fitness system that used all four limbs and built strength and endurance?

Len sought a system in which both cardio inefficiency and cardio efficiency could coexist. Efficient steady-state cardio, had its place as a valid tactic in Len’s HeavyHands arsenal; but so did purposefully inefficient, burst or interval cardio, with its extreme demands on the body. Len wanted to create a system that would allow the athlete to effortlessly modulate the degree and type of aerobic intensity using an arsenal of variables. He created “intensity enhancers” that included how high the weighted hands were raised on each stride-step; Len could modulate the pace of the exercise, he could alter the type and kind of movement pattern selected. The effects of each exercise would change when paired with heavier or lighter poundage. The tweaking, modulation and intensity amping possibilities were virtually limitless.

Len’s magus opus was his seminal book, HeavyHands, which is still available on Amazon and still worthy of a read. In his book, he explains the science behind HH. He talks about METs and mitochondrial density; he lays out exacting techniques and shares precise protocols. HeavyHands, at its popular peak, was available in every major sporting goods store in every mall in the county. Women’s aerobic dance classes, the biggest fitness craze in the history of fitness, began using HeavyHands. Sales shot through the roof.

Unfortunately, HeavyHands died. Sales plummeted when it became unfairly categorized as just another bad 80s fad, like parachute pants, head bands, the Miami Vice look, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Pintos and pet rocks. HeavyHands got washed out to sea, considered faddish, ineffectual and passé.

Old Wine in New Bottles; the Son of HeavyHands

HeavyHands went from pop fad to premature death. There were a lot of reasons for its demise, but first and foremost, HeavyHands never caught on with the male population. I was Len’s true friend, but there was no way I would perform any of his dance routine protocols. If you look at commercial cardio protocols, the cardio system most successful in enticing males to participate was Billy Blanks’s Tae Bo. Men flocked to Tae Bo classes to take part in the martial art katas; the punches and kicks. The clenched fists and exertion grunts made Tae Bo a cardio dance class acceptable for men. Plus, Billy was a real man; his Alpha credentials were beyond reproach. The martial core of Tae Bo made it hip for guys to perform. True men could now go to cardio class, heads held high.

Not so with HeavyHands. Group HeavyHands classes were more akin to the cardio dance class format. Real men were not going to be involved in anything vaguely resembling a Jane Fonda/Richard Simmons style aerobic dance class. Unfortunately, HeavyHands group protocols definitely resembled dance class cardio, so men opted out. Ironically, in the 1990s a new cardio tool emerged that captured the hearts and minds of alpha male worldwide: the kettlebell. Isn’t the kettlebell yet another way to load the hands and make them “heavier”? Indeed, classical and current kettlebell protocols favor heavier payloads and shorter durations; still I maintain the gruesome orb, the kettlebell, is the only begotten son of HeavyHands.

Most kettlebell experts would balk at the iron orb being labeled as an “aerobic” tool. Yet, when it comes to creating the deepest possible cardio inroad, creating strength/endurance, and adhering to “long strength” philosophies, the kettlebell—properly used—sets the Gold Standard. The unwieldy device can create the optimal cardio effect: a perfect balance can be struck between pure endurance and sustained strength. A kettlebell, in the hands of a true expert, is the optimal tool for inducing the deepest possible cardio inroad and triggering the maximal adaptive response.

The final deathblow for HeavyHands occurred when the public ignored Len’s protocols. It was critically important that the little hand weights, regardless the poundage, be raised to predetermined heights: low, medium or high. The height selected was used to create the cardio intensity needed to achieve the desired training effect. The public turned HeavyHands into “CarryHands”. The red-handled dumbbells were seen everywhere, yet despite their popularity, no one got the promised gains. The lack of results was directly attributable to the total disregard of Len’s protocols: instead of pumping the arms to any height, the public speed-walked or jogged with HHs, carrying them like heavy suitcases at the end of a long trip or clutched to the chest of the jogger/runner in a death-grip.

The “CarryHands” protocol actually reduced arm motion and diminished results. Now, the immobile and frozen arms actually contributed less then if walker/jogger was empty handed, swinging their un-weighted arms normally. Naturally, no one got results from “CarryHands” and it killed HeavyHands.

In 2015, we’re resurrecting Len’s “old wine” theories, strategies and protocols. The first order of business was to select a new tool. We found a retro tool, the Fan Bike, that allowed us to invoke Schwartz’s strategies in a manner and fashion that could equal or exceed results derived from HeavyHands or kettlebells. The retro Fan Bike allows the user to tax both arms and legs in two directions: forward and backward. We place old wine (Schwartz’s philosophies and protocols) into a new bottle (a modern retro tool that enables us to maximally tax ourselves to the desired degree.) The end result is an exciting new avenue of progress for the informed and enlightened fitness seeker.

The Fan Bike: the successor to HeavyHands for 4-limb cardio

End of Part I

Editor’s comment:

After many discussions, Marty and I decided that the Fan Bike would be our tool of choice for our “cardio” protocols. It meets the requirement for capability of delivering high intensity workouts involving all four limbs, but also allows those with orthopedic limitations/conditions to fully participate in the protocols. In Part II, Marty will outline an excellent protocol for metabolic conditioning using the Fan Bike. I will follow up in Part III delving into some of the foundational science supporting high intensity 4-limb cardio for health and performance, as well as specific benefits found exclusively with the Fan Bike.

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How to Squat: Re-learning the Ultra-Basics You Never Learned to Begin with…

May 7, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 20 Comments

Goblet Squat

As my old powerlifting coach used to say about squatting, “If it’s excruciating, you’re likely doing it right.” He was addressing the idea that there is a fair amount of discomfort involved with proper squatting. Note I didn’t say “pain.” The word pain is so loosely used in fitness and it has lost its meaning. When the meatheads say, “No pain, no gain!” What they really mean to say is “there should be a certain amount of physiological discomfort accompanying most any effective progressive resistance exercise. When we exert maximally, as we should, there is discomfort, and it can be intensely “uncomfortable.” But our factual explanation doesn’t sound near as taunt or sexy as No Pain! No Gain!

Pain is accidentally slamming your hand in a car door or cutting yourself while dicing onions: grinding out the 5^th rep of a result-producing hypertrophy-inducing set of goblet squats is extreme discomfort – not pain. We learn how to exert maximally without need to self-inflict a hernia or a stroke from strain. We need learn how to exert maximally, yet exert safely. There are three rules to remember when it comes to exerting with maximum effort in any hardcore progressive resistance training exercise….

Push or pull evenly and always stay within the precise technical boundaries: most weight training injuries occur when the lifter strays outside the proscribed techniques for the specific exercise. We have archetypical techniques for all the major and minor exercises. Adhere as closely as possible to these technical ideals. The lifts are archetypical because the leverage is optimal and the push/pull position stable.
Never twist, heave, contort or jerk on a weight: real iron pros use a smooth application of power to attain 100% (or more) of capacity. Push or pull maximally while braced internally; tight and muscled, exert with great deliberation and evenness. Those that break form, usually to slip or slide through a sticking point, get injured. Nothing gets you hurt quicker that jerking or contorting or trying to be cute with maximum poundage.
Learn how to miss a rep safely: those that lift long enough and lift heavy enough will sooner or later miss a repetition. No big deal on a standing curl using a 60-pound barbell; it can be a very big deal if you miss the 5^th rep in the back squat ¾ of the way up with 315 draped across your neck. There are real safety issues: hardcore resistance training can be injurious.

Stance: the first step in learning how to squat is “playing with” the squat stance width. The goal is to find a width that allows the squatter (you) to descend and ascend while adhering to our technical ideal: we seek to squat with vertical shins and a vertical torso, ideally only the femurs move as we rise and fall; moving with great deliberation and precision over an exaggerated range-of-motion. Every one has an ideal stance width that allows us to attain and maintain this signature squat stance width technique.

More than likely, when you find the correct stance width, one that allows you to sit upright in a bottommost squat position, when you go to arise, you will be weak as a kitten, likely unable to arise from the ultra-deep relaxed squat position without breaking form or without some sort of assistance. We do nothing in the course of living our normal lives that gives us power and strength in this extremely disadvantaged position.

However, by identifying the archetype, by finding that stance width particular to you and your particular bodily proportion, you are now ready for the next step: strengthening our legs by concentrating all our effort at getting stronger in this one very specific exercise, done a very specific way. Maximal squat difficulty results in maximum squat benefit: that which does not kill me makes me stronger – and gives me powerhouse, tree-trunk legs. So we squat using this weak-as-a-kitten stance and we hammer away and improve, one excruciating squat session at a time.

Self-administered forced reps: our squat motto is, “better to fail with integrity than succeed by breaking form.” Other squat school teach ways in which to slip and slide past squat sticking points: the easiest way in which to make squats easier is to make them “shallow,” barely dip down, barely bend the knees on each rep. This strategy could be summed up as, how do we “make heavy weights light,” whereas our philosophy is to use strictness, extreme ROM and other “intensity enhancers” in order to make “light weights heavy.” We say, don’t avoid sticking points, seek them out; slogging through sticking points is where the gains lie.

The dilemma for the athlete new to this weak-as-a-kitten stance width is how do I train? What do I do and how do I do it?

Initially, very few people are able to perform more than one or two super-strict ultra-deep bodyweight squats using the wider stance. The solution is not to shorten or “fudge” on the squat depth; rather than compromise on the technique, the solution is to squat perfectly but with assistance. How do we do that? We start with bodyweight squats and in order to attain perfection on every rep, give yourself as much “arm assistance” as is needed to enable you to perform a perfect squat rep on every single rep.

You might need to give yourself a little help, you might need to give yourself a lot of help, on some reps you might not need to give yourself any help – whatever is needed, to whatever degree, should be used to ensure that technical perfection is adhered to on each and every squat rep. We swear allegiance to the technique: poundage and muscle invariably comes in time.

The self-administered forced rep: Stand in front of a vertical pole or in a door frame. Place the hands at waist height on the pole and squat down. At the bottommost point, sit erect and come erect; pull upwards with the hands with as much force as is needed to assist your thighs. Complete the assigned reps for the set. All the reps might need varying degrees of assist, but all the reps were technically perfect.

Self-Assisted Squat

Perfect sets of five: the iron elite, top strength athletes, loves the five-rep set. A balls-to-the-ball set of fives strikes the perfect balance. At one extreme is the sarcoplasmic inflation associated with high, 10 to 15 rep sets. At the other rep extreme are the pure strength attributes associated by performing heavy triples, doubles and singles.

The kettlebell or dumbbell goblet squat: we seek to find the optimal stance that allows us to adhere to our bodyweight squat technical archetype. Over time we worked up to 3 sets of 10 perfect ultra-deep bodyweight squats. Time now to up the ante: a person could choose to continue down the rep road, perhaps work 3×10 in the bodyweight squat up to 3×15 and eventually 2×20. However, past 10 reps and we veer out of the realm of absolute strength and into the realm of strength-endurance; suffice to say, higher reps invoke a different physiological effect. Here’s how we break into “real” goblet squatting using poundage…

Session	Payload	Sets and Reps
1.	10-pound dumbbell	3 sets of 3 reps
2.	“ “	3 sets of 5 reps
3.	“ “	3 sets of 8 reps
4.	“ “	2 sets of 10 reps
5.	15-pound dumbbell	3 sets of 3 reps…repeat the process

This is a basic periodization (preplanning) approach to squatting.

Goblet Squat Hell: making light weights heavy- a properly performed set of ultra-deep goblet squats will tax even the seasoned competitive back squatter. Goblet squat technique has to be exacting if results are to be optimal…

Tuck the dumbbell or kettlebell tight under the chin and tight to the torso
Inhale as you descend, initiated with a hip hinge and knee bend
Do just free-fall, pull yourself downward, contract hams and glutes
As you lower down and hit parallel, exhale, relax and sink further
Maintain an upright (though relaxed) torso; don’t’ collapse forward
Relax the leg muscles and allow the weight to push you downward
Knees are pinned out, shins are vertical, torso erect, position is perfect
Pause briefly
Time to rise up out of the bottom
Start the rep maximally relaxed and “pre-stretched”
In the bottommost position, inhale, push down with feet, knees pushed out
Transition from relaxation to generating maximal tension before movement out of the bottom
Optimally, while arising, nothing changes except the upper thighs, opening the angle relative to the upright torso (ie the butt does not rise before the torso starts to move)
The squat rep ends in a “hard” lockout at the top

The lifter then inhales and commences the next rep…

The editor demonstrates the ultra-deep goblet squat sequence: Photo #3 shows the bottom position with tension maintained. Photo #4 shows the new bottom position after exhalation/relaxation. Notice how the gluteals drop further in relation to the rock in this photo. The few more inches of depth results in significantly more physical demand to rise “out of the hole” during the ascent. This translates into a bigger neuromuscular load and resulting adaptive response.

King Squat: The ultra-deep goblet squat, done deep and upright, will tax the mightiest of squatters: a good rule of thumb, a strong squatter, say a man capable of 315 for five reps, ultra-deep back squat without gear will be mightily taxed by a single 75-pound dumbbell in the 5-rep goblet squat. Let us ponder this for a moment and soak up the implications.

Riddle me this: a strong man is taxed maximally by goblet squatting a 75-pound dumbbell for five excruciating reps. That same man is taxed maximally front squatting 185-pounds for 5 rep and has to exert, all out, in order to make 255 for 5 reps in the hi-bar back squat. So here is the question – why bother to front squat or back squat? If all three squat variation are equally difficult, and, more importantly, that the results obtained from each is identical, then somebody please remind me why I am messing around with a 250-pound barbell on by shoulders?

If results from the three technically identical, equally taxing squat styles are identical, then henceforth why not just stick to ultra-deep goblet squatting with a lone, modest-sized dumbbell tucked up under my chin?

Current Best	High-Bar Back Squat	Front Squat	Goblet Squat
	155 x 5 reps	95 x 5 reps	40 x 5 reps
	205 x 5	115 x 5	50 x 5
	275 x 5	205 x 5	75 x 5
	315 x 5	255 x 5	85 x 5
	365 x 5	275 x 5	100 x 5
	405 x 5	315 x 5	120 x 5

These are realistic “spreads” between the three types of squatting; a balanced lifter executing their squats as technically intended will exhibit the balance shown above.

What if? So here is the tantalizing question: what if the man capable of (initially) performing 50 x 5 in the ultra-deep goblet squat, and ergo, is also capable of a 115×5 paused front squat and a 205×5 capacity in the back squat. What if, over time, that same athlete worked their goblet squat from 50 x 5 up to 100 x 5? Let us further assume the lifter works the goblet squat exclusively. Now here is the question: that lifter originally had lifts of 50 x 5 in the ultra-deep goblet squat and that level of strength normally indicates 205 x 5 in the back squat and 115 x 5 in the front squat. If he successfully works up to 5 perfect goblet squats with a 100, does that mean that he also is capable of 365 x 5 in the back squat and 275 x 5 in the front squat, all as a result of radically increasing his goblet squat capability?

Would that not be profound? We would be able to use smaller, much more manageable payloads in ways so clever and so excruciating as to be maximally effective. Why go to the trouble of handling a barbell quadruple in weight? If results are equal, I myself would prefer to wrestle with a kettlebell or dumbbell held in front of me, not on me or above me. If we need to bail mid-rep (it happens occasionally when you push with all your might) you simply drop the dumbbell or kettlebell on the ground in front of you.

If you do them right, on the final reps of a top squat set, it feels as if the blood in your veins is chemically transforming into gasoline and a spark ignites the gasoline; your veins have fire coursing through them, searing lactic acid sets the squatters thighs on fire. No pain, no gain! (That rolls off the tongue so much better than, “No discomfort, no hypertrophic-adaptive response!”)

Editor’s note:

Many of you may think the exhalation and relaxation at the bottom of an ultra deep goblet squat is technique sacrilege. Keep in mind that we are using very light poundage and any posterior pelvic tilt with exhalation at the bottom will not put you at risk of spinal injury, especially if you keep your torso vertical. The idea is to place you at a very mechanically disadvantaged position from which to start the squat ascent, at a depth most of you have not achieved at the bottom of a squat. A controlled ascent using pristine technique from this deepest of bottom positions is what makes “light weights heavy” and gives a potent neurological stimulus for growth with minimal risk of injury. Check your egos at the door and try the ultra deep squat cycle that Marty has prescribed starting with bodyweight only and progressing to the goblet squat. Going back to your traditional squat depth and technique after this program will seem like commutation of a life prison sentence. You will emerge stronger and more resilient.

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