Too late to edit. I now noticed he uses studies of the spine in vitro to justify the "number of cycles" a body has for flexion-type movements. Wow. Really dude? Realllllllly?

I mean, it's not that I think crunches are the best things evar but some of these justifications seem really weak to me.

Bwahaha, sorry to spam your log but...case in point:
Rip answers a question about APT

The way he answers those questions, he doesn't sound like an expert to me, although Rip knows more than I do. But so does Mike. Mike sounds smarter to me, and his exercises have worked for me (pretty important imo), so I'm going to take that side of this issue.

I didn't see Rip advocate situps or crunches in that thread, but I think you said he likes weighted situps & you were doing those.

I posted that link as a PSA for anyone wanting to know more about that kind of stuff. If you don't think its good, well, you have a right to your opinion, but I don't agree with it.

Well, Rip likes to troll a bit. He actually wrote an article about abs where his theories are explained quite clearly, and where he warns against situps for many people. Here's the thread, where you can find the article and a pic of the apparatus he describes.

I don't think Mike is wrong, but I don't like it when he uses weak science to underpin his theories. And from what I can see the theories really are weak.

That being said, I think I'll vary or replace the weighted situps (where I don't use a lot of abdominal flexion) with some of the stuff I found in an article on elitefts' site. Coincidentally (...) they have a lot of the same stuff Mike does, only some harder stuff as well.

Thanks for the links. I'll read that Rip one later. I want to mention that the stuff Mike had me progressing to, and farther progressions, is pretty much the same thing as what's on that elitefts site.

Here's what I was doing for my first set of workouts:
1 - front planks
2 - side planks

second set about 6 weeks later
1 - ab wheel rollouts (these are really ****ing hard imo)
2 - tall kneeling pnf d2 flexion and tall kneeling cable chop

3rd
1 - ab wheel rollout isos (harder than regular ab wheel rollouts)
2 - tall kneeling pnf d2 flexion and tall kneeling cable lift (lift is harder than chop)

I took the progression of the ab wheel up a notch with the blast strap fallouts that I learned how to do from reading his stuff.

If you look at his youtube site, you'll see all kinds of useful stuff similar to what they do at elitefts. A lot of the stuff he writes makes reference to guys like Dave Tate (owner of elitefts) and he plugs some of their products as well. I think they're more on the same page than you realize.

http://www.youtube.com/robtrainsystems#g/u


fwiw, I learned a lot from reading SS, and I have a lot of respect for Rip.

9/10

bench press
45*15*2, 135*8, 185*5, 225*5, 255*5
strip sets - 225*3, 185*8, 135*10
The strip sets are where you remove weight and do the set immediately after the previous set with basically no rest.

blast strap rows (feet on box with pad on top ~14" elevation)
10, 8 (short rest before this set), 12 (long rest before this set)

dips
10, 10, 9
I like these. I'm paying close attention to how the shoulders feel during these, and they are doing well.

reverse grip pullups
7
I was going to replace curls with these, but they twisted my wrists in a way that I think could cause damage if I continue to do them. I cant get my hands narrow enough to make them feel good, so I'm done with these.

DB curls
50*6*2

pnfd2 - 25 lbs * 10 * 2

tall kneeling cable lift - 25lbs * 10 * 3

blast strap ab fallouts (handles 1" above floor, feet on box for 1st set, then on floor for 2nd & 3rd sets) 10*3
I moved the box back on the other side of the rack so my feet were farther back. This made the movement more stable, but I'm not ready for these yet - too hard to get a good ROM. Stretching out farther with the feet on the floor is better for now.

lat eqi - 15 lbs * 40 sec (abs fried again, so that made this harder than the flyes)
flye eqi - 15*45

Very good workout imo.

http://www.youtube.com/v/qlTz7LFrInI&hl=en_US&fs=1

This is good stuff. Thanks again for that link.

This is interesting to me now because the original trainer I had a year ago (several people here told me he didnt know wtf he was doing), had me doing all the things in this vid up to the point of front & side planks. He really was a good trainer.

The TRX fallouts shown in that vid are basically the same as the blast strap fallouts I'm doing now, but I have the handles lower, which makes them harder. It makes me feel good to know I can do those

I read that article about abs by Rip and it was interesting, but I think if he decided to think about what some of these other exercises do, like the progressions advocated by Mike R and elitefts, he might like some of those things better that his suggestion of the weighted situps in the 90 degree thingywhatever.

Yeah that's quite possible, guy's not stupid after all. I think he mostly doesn't care too much and believes doing the compound lifts are enough for most people.

I'm having a colonoscopy done this Friday. My dad died from colon cancer 21 years ago, so they recommended I get one done at age 40. After I had that one done, they told me to come back in 5 years. The worst part about this is the day and a half prior to the actual procedure - the cleaning out part. I'm probably going to lose several pounds because I cant eat anything for a couple days.

I figured with this coming up, I'm not going to do any hard workouts. I golfed 18 holes a couple days ago and did a couple small muscles shoulder exercises tonight. I'm not going to do anything that will make me sore prior to Friday. I hope to feel well enough to work out Saturday, and I'm also hoping not to lose too much strength.

I had ART done today and my chiro got my hamstring really good. He said I was getting the Adrian Peterson treatment - my chiro did the same thing on AP a few weeks ago and he's been feeling great since.

9/17

colonoscopy

I get to start drinking again at the doctors office and ate when I got home

Felt like I had DOMS and a hangover from the valium the rest of the day

Foam rolled before bed.

Weighed 223.6 when I woke up Saturday morning.

9/19

There was no way I was going to do any meaningful workout yesterday (after what I went through the past few days), so I waited until today.

DL
135*10, 225*8, 275*5, 315*5, 365*3, 405*5
The 1st 4 reps at 405 felt fairly easy. The last rep was hard, and I was spent for the rest of the workout - no energy at all.

chins
6 6

DB rows
50*10, 75*8

blast strap pushups
10 10

face pulls
75*10*2


lat eqi - 15 lbs * 40 sec
flye eqi - 15*40

Good to see you're back at it.

As a Bears fan, also glad to see you're a step closer to the title under your avatar. Can't stand #4....although I don't think we'll get to see a long, slow demise. Will be very quick. It'll go bad, and then be done.

Yeah, it will take more than a couple bad games to get rid of chilly, unfortunately, because they signed him to a long extension last year. I'm hoping we come around and play well the rest of this year. I think #4 is done after this year no matter what happens.

9/22

I'm back at close to full strength. I'll be trying some new things now. I'll be doing more max effort sets (at least with the bench) for the time being. I plan to still do DL, BP and squat as my primary exercises (one of those per workout), and I'll be changing up some of the accessory stuff depending on what I come up with that day.

I did this type of stuff way back when I could bench 300+ (~13-14 years ago), and it was effective at getting me strong. I decided this is what I want to do again after reading some stuff by Dorian Yates and some other stuff by Eric Cressey in the past few days. These workouts are not going to be what either of those guys suggest or do, but something that I'm putting together myself after getting certain ideas from both, along with a lot of the stuff I learned from Mike Robertson. I'll be doing a lot of additional accessory stuff that I learned from Mike recently to what I'm doing - so a lot of the same exercises as I've posted before will continue to appear, but there will be more variety, rather than structure, per workout.

bench press
45*15*2, 135*8, 185*5, 225*5, 245*3, 265*3, 265*4 - this last set was max effort/failure/etc. I barely got the last rep locked out. As long as my shoulders keep feeling good, I'm going to do that for my last set when I bench. Having a good spotter would be cool, but at least I have the safety bars in the rack for when I do fail to lock out my last rep.

When I got to my heaviest set of BPs, I started supersetting pulling stuff. I went back and forth between pulling and pushing exercises this whole workout (prior to the core work).

standing cable rows with straight bar, overhand grip
70*10, 105*10, 140*10, 170*10, 200*12

dips
10, 10, 10

palm forward grip pull ups (I tweaked my forearm near the elbow a few days ago doing neutral grip chins. this takes some of the stress off that area)
6, 6

flat db press
50*10

blast strap rows
8, 8

end of supersets

pnfd2 - 25 lbs * 10 * 2

tall kneeling cable lift - 25lbs * 10 * 3

blast strap ab fallouts (handles 1" above floor, feet on on floor)
10, 10, 9 - I held too long on some of these reps at the extension, so I ran out of gas at the end. I definitely got as good an ab workout as ever.

lat eqi - 15 lbs * 35 sec (abs fried again)
flye eqi - 15*40

SM - I was thinking about that vid you PM'd me while I was doing my dynamic warmups. I think I get most of the same effects from what I'm doing now, but I might work it in at some point in the future. Please post a link to that vid in your log.