Weight Training Update

[Andrew]

Hi again everyone. I've re-opened this section, now as a "Fitness" section instead of just Bodybuilding. I brought Shannon to the gym the last couple days, and it seems to have sparked some interest in him. I am looking to us working together on some ground-breaking fitness titles this year and the release of the long anticipated bodybuilding & strength training set.

I've been wanting to give an update on the progress of the workout methods I've developed. I have some good and some bad news regarding this. The good news, is it works. It not only works, it's rather incredible and has finally reached a state where I can rest confidently knowing that anyone following the program will achieve 100% of potential gains, always.

The bad news is, my main workout partner and a best friend has passed due to unknown overdose. I have others still following my guided program, but he was a huge inspiration and became a shining example of the system. Instead of compiling results between everyone, for now I'm going to just share his. The success in the development of this system is largely due to his inspiration.

I will post his beginning and end records here to honor him and for all to see his progress. This progress was made over a time of roughly 90 days and within those 90, roughly 64 twenty to twenty-five minute workouts with me... from late September until the day of his passing. He had truly reached the best shape of his life and I worked with him daily preparing him for next season's football. All of his gains, and my progress as well are all steroid and stimulant free, as always.


Treadmill Sprints: 3 separate 30 second Intervals. Measured in total time to complete intervals.
Beginning: 3 30 second intervals @ 11mph, 0 incline, 7 min 24 sec.
End: 3 30 second intervals @ 13mph, 3 incline, 3 min 0 sec.

Bench Press:
Beginning: 205 for 9 positives + 2 negatives
End: 265 for 7 positives + 2 negatives

French Press (not to be confused with Skullcrushers or Pullovers, it's a combination of both at once):
Beginning: 75 for 10 positives + 1 negative
End: 115 for 8 positives + 1 negative

Lateral Pulldown:
Beginning: 170 for 8 positives
End: 220 for 8 positives

Seated Cable Row:
Beginning: 150 for 7 positives
End: 180 for 12 positives

Supinated Dumbell Concentration Curls (one arm):
Beginning: 30 for 12 positives + 2 negatives
End: 45 for 10 positives + 2 negatives

Shoulder Press:
Beginning: 130 for 8 positives + 2 negatives
End: 190 for 10 positives + 1 negative

Trap Shrugs:
Beginning: 140 for 15 positives, 5 negatives
End: 240 for 15 positives, 5 negatives

Decline Situps:
Beginning: Body Weight + 45 pounds for 15 positives, 1 negative
End: Body Weight + 80 pounds for 12 positives, 1 negative

Side Bends:
Beginning: 60 for 15 positives
End: 100 for 12 positives

Forearm Pronated Curls:
Beginning: 45 for 15 positives
End: 70 for 12 positives

Forearm Supinated Curls:
Beginning: 90 for 12 positives
End: 135 for 10 positives

45 Sled Leg Press:
Beginning: 350 for 12 positives, 5 negatives
End: 585 for 9 positives, 3 negatives

Calf Raises:
Beginning: 270 for 15 positives, 4 negatives
End: 405 for 8 positives, 2 negatives

Both-Seated Abductor & Adductors:
Beginning: 190 for 10 positives, 2 negatives
End: 310 for 8 positives, 1 negative

Hamstring Curls:
Beginning: 130 for 12 positives, 2 negatives
End: 190 for 10 positives, 2 negatives

Back Extensions (Roman):
Beginning: 45 for 15 positives
End: 160 for 15 positives, 3 negatives

These two lifts were not part of our routine but brought him joy. I am confident before his passing he could have lifted much more due to our training.
Best recorded deadlift- 585 lb
Best recorded squat - 495 lb

[Spiral]

Whoah! those are some insane results over just 90 days. That's impressive. And man I love dead lifts.. I'm surprised it's not part of the routine!

[ALI6NMENT]

Hey Andrew!

So the bodybuilding & strength training set is a 6 stage set?

I am well interested.

[Andrew]

(01-16-2011 07:04 AM)spiralout1988 Wrote:  Whoah! those are some insane results over just 90 days. That's impressive. And man I love dead lifts.. I'm surprised it's not part of the routine!

They were very impressive. Here's the thing on squats and deadlifts... I am a semi-tall (6ft), originally ectomorph and long-limbed. Also have a unique hip structure that, when doing deadlifts and squats at high weights causes me to have to bend over far too much. So even though I can match his deadlifts, when I used to deadlift (even with a hex bar) I developed a superficial abdominal herniation. If you refer to the diagrams in the book "Strength Training Anatomy" by Frederic Delavier you'll see that certain body types just aren't built for doing these type of lifts. I wouldn't have stopped or found this out if it wasn't for the herniation. Having said that though, I fully believe full motion sled leg press with a high foot placement is a completely superior exercise to both the squat and deadlift, and there is no need to worry about accumulated spinal compression (I lost an unaccounted for 6/8ths an inch of height that has no other explanation back from when I went from no previous squats/deadlifts to doing them-also developed lower back aches for the first time in my life).

As far as quality of the compound movement though and the muscular contractions involved, not just for safety, I would say the combination of leg press and heavily weighted back extensions is completely superior to squats & deadlifts. This is not just from my personal experience but from the gains of those I train. For example when I stopped deadlifting long ago I had a laughable record of 405. After having not deadlifted in ages, only doing leg presses & back extensions, on new years to honor my friend I matched his deadlifting record (585). Except I did it drunk as **** and could have done much more sober. And yes my abdominal herniation hurt like hell the next week even with a lifting belt. But the strength developed from those two DOES transfer if you choose to use it (assuming you have previously learned good form).

For those wanting to keep their bodies for the long haul, it's a no brainer. The injury prevention and therapeutical effects of back extensions or reverse hyperextensions are well documented as well. For those wanting to increase their squats & deadlifts for whatever reason, doing leg press & back extensions DOES give significant increases.

(01-16-2011 09:28 AM)Blueness Wrote:  Hey Andrew!

So the bodybuilding & strength training set is a 6 stage set?

I am well interested.

No, I am considering 2 stages as part of it, but it will definitely be a bundle. Lifting is often a dynamic thing- you can't necessarily predict when you are going to switch from strength to mass or mass to strength. Maybe a specific sport came up and you want to switch to strength. Maybe you want to look good for the summer and switch to mass, then cut off as much body fat as possible. It will be a "bundle" in that everything you could possibly want for fitness in general will be thrown in-from sprints to powerlifting to bodybuilding. I've decided I want it to be very accessible and to have a little bit for everyone.

If you combined all the tracks, you could make it "six stage" I will discuss it with Shannon though. There are benefits to six-stage sets, but I would have to make it specific (i.e. six stage bodybuilding)

[RainbowAbyss]

Andrew, ur the first person I have heard who had transferable strength gains to squats and deadlifts from leg presses.
in college we tried to switch some huge leg pressers to squats and deads and they were ok but paltry compared
to their size and what they should have been, my interest has always been explosive power so maybe the transfer works for strength but I can't imagine it carries over the same functional explosive power as well trained squats and deadlifts. Im not a scientist as u seem to be with it, but I've trained on programs desighned from some the top in the country on sports training, Defranco, Furrigia, and kelly bagget from higher-faster-Sports and all make an expicit point tp never replace squats and deadlift witth leg press. Anyway Im not doubting u just curious to how everyone could have missed this. Im around 5'7 /5'8 and always squat but to the grass, but if Im losing height by it and could gett the same results from leg press, I wanna know about it! My goal is to dunk, right now I can grab rim with about half my hand, have a 35 Standing and 39.5 three step vertical. as long as Im doing plyos my vert has a direct correlation to my squat, u think the same would be true of the leg press,

---

Oh I just saw u said reverse hyper extention as well
now it makes sense, ur training the posterior chain without wearing out the nervous system
from heavy lifting day in and day out. Revers hypers r awesome and will make one strong as hell, I wish my gym now had one...

[Spiral]

I'm very excited for this!

[Andrew]

(01-16-2011 03:01 PM)RainbowAbyss Wrote:  Andrew, ur the first person I have heard who had transferable strength gains to squats and deadlifts from leg presses.
in college we tried to switch some huge leg pressers to squats and deads and they were ok but paltry compared
to their size and what they should have been, my interest has always been explosive power so maybe the transfer works for strength but I can't imagine it carries over the same functional explosive power as well trained squats and deadlifts. Im not a scientist as u seem to be with it, but I've trained on programs desighned from some the top in the country on sports training, Defranco, Furrigia, and kelly bagget from higher-faster-Sports and all make an expicit point tp never replace squats and deadlift witth leg press. Anyway Im not doubting u just curious to how everyone could have missed this. Im around 5'7 /5'8 and always squat but to the grass, but if Im losing height by it and could gett the same results from leg press, I wanna know about it! My goal is to dunk, right now I can grab rim with about half my hand, have a 35 Standing and 39.5 three step vertical. as long as Im doing plyos my vert has a direct correlation to my squat, u think the same would be true of the leg press,

---

Oh I just saw u said reverse hyper extention as well
now it makes sense, ur training the posterior chain without wearing out the nervous system
from heavy lifting day in and day out. Revers hypers r awesome and will make one strong as hell, I wish my gym now had one...

Hi Rainbow, you've raised some very valid points.

I don't actually do reverse hypers- I do back extensions which are similar to good morning or stiff leg deadlifts but maximize resistance at the peak of the lift instead of at the beginning. I only acknowledge reverse hypers because they have a very similar effect. I think for lifting heavy, back extensions are better because you don't wear out your glutes and can pile on much more weight. I can do back extensions while holding 120 pounds in each hand comfortably on a full 180 degree roman chair (not 45).

Doing the back extensions fills in the blank from the leg press, the much needed lower back workout.

With what you are saying about leg press, I would have to see the studies. I don't doubt you've had experience with some of the top but I hate to say that I've seen very very few of the top actually understand exercise anatomy and kinetics. There are so many generalizations and so much brotology that sticks around like fact it's infuriating. The sad thing is that weight training and the study of applied forces to the human body is a FRONTIER SCIENCE. Even Mark Rippetoe's book is riddled with flaws and incorrect assumptions. But at least he tries! And if you are questioning how I can claim to know? Well besides having my nose in books and diagrams for the past few years as well as taking many classes you'd have to either take my word for it or see for yourself.

I'll explain a bit about leg press- I see very few people doing full range of motion. This is where your knees literally collide with your rib cage before going back up. Also unless there is a high foot placement (talking 45 sled here) the "leg press" effectively becomes a quad/leg extension and puts a ton of bad strain on the knees. At the end of a set of leg presses, if you aren't half paralyzed on the seat ready to vomit and pass out, you haven't leg pressed and you haven't done the full potential of the compound movement. I think a lot of the problem is there is not as much attention to form because it's on a machine and doesn't appear to be as advanced as deadlifting or squatting. While there's less that can go wrong, the form of achieving maximum musclar contraction and the most muscles involved is a trick because no one seems to have the answer.

So here are a few things I think set it apart from conventional knowledge and if trying to increase deadlift/squat would really make it successful as I and my friends & clients have been. Now I don't know about powerlifting being transferrable. It is possibly that you could switch a couple weeks before competition so as to not try to cheat the principle of specificity. Also I am not surprised that the leg pressers couldn't dead or squat for **** for all the reasons below.

-Utilizing previous muscle memory in combination with perfect form from having previously deadlifted or squatted

-Full Range of Motion (rarely see anyone doing this)

-High Foot placement (large involvement of glutes. The lower back lifting off the pad slightly is OKAY if you have high foot placement and the back of the seat is at its lowest to the ground setting. As long as the lifter has no injuries to the sacral area the stress does NOT go to the back and does not injury it. If it does, lower the back of the leg press seat or get an anatomically correct leg press sled. There is a lot of variance among sleds)

-Outward foot rotation (rotation is necessary if there is too much stress on knees and quadriceps, this depends on everything from an individuals bone structure to amount of padding underneath the heels from shoes. Usually a slight rotation is necessary.)

-Adding heavy back extensions with a full 180 degree roman chair (you would be surprised how EXTREMELY LITTLE to NO strength deadlifters and squatters have in this movement. All the weight at the top of the movements in deads, squats, and mornings transfer into the spine and the bulk of the muscles are not activated and only through a very limited range of motion. You would think that if you did BOTH that would cover the whole thing, but from experience I have not seen any additional gains aside from back extensions. The movement in back extensions is the most "correct" and effective movement for developing lower back strength and neither squats, deads, good mornings, or anything else can touch this except for possibly reverse hypers which I haven't done much of) I am specifying a 180 degree roman chair, because the 45/135 degree roman chairs when lifting high weight put too much static stress on the hamstrings, as well as a lot of the weight being shunted back into the spine at the top of the movement.)

-(Minor) Adding hip abductions, adductions, and hamstring curls, soleus isolutions, calf and shin raises
In case you feel like you might have forgot a single muscle in the leg...finish them off with these. You will have hit every muscle that exists in the legs.

-(Minor) Grip- Don't overtrain, don't undertrain (as those leg pressers may have done)
We've never had a problem with it as long as we kept up with high-weight trap shrugs and the forearm isolations. When training deads, my grip would be completely overtrained on top of everything else every week and it was difficult to make progress.

[Shannon]

(01-16-2011 12:12 PM)Andrew Wrote:  

(01-16-2011 07:04 AM)spiralout1988 Wrote:  Whoah! those are some insane results over just 90 days. That's impressive. And man I love dead lifts.. I'm surprised it's not part of the routine!

They were very impressive. Here's the thing on squats and deadlifts... I am a semi-tall (6ft), originally ectomorph and long-limbed. Also have a unique hip structure that, when doing deadlifts and squats at high weights causes me to have to bend over far too much. So even though I can match his deadlifts, when I used to deadlift (even with a hex bar) I developed a superficial abdominal herniation. If you refer to the diagrams in the book "Strength Training Anatomy" by Frederic Delavier you'll see that certain body types just aren't built for doing these type of lifts. I wouldn't have stopped or found this out if it wasn't for the herniation. Having said that though, I fully believe full motion sled leg press with a high foot placement is a completely superior exercise to both the squat and deadlift, and there is no need to worry about accumulated spinal compression (I lost an unaccounted for 6/8ths an inch of height that has no other explanation back from when I went from no previous squats/deadlifts to doing them-also developed lower back aches for the first time in my life).

As far as quality of the compound movement though and the muscular contractions involved, not just for safety, I would say the combination of leg press and heavily weighted back extensions is completely superior to squats & deadlifts. This is not just from my personal experience but from the gains of those I train. For example when I stopped deadlifting long ago I had a laughable record of 405. After having not deadlifted in ages, only doing leg presses & back extensions, on new years to honor my friend I matched his deadlifting record (585). Except I did it drunk as **** and could have done much more sober. And yes my abdominal herniation hurt like hell the next week even with a lifting belt. But the strength developed from those two DOES transfer if you choose to use it (assuming you have previously learned good form).

For those wanting to keep their bodies for the long haul, it's a no brainer. The injury prevention and therapeutical effects of back extensions or reverse hyperextensions are well documented as well. For those wanting to increase their squats & deadlifts for whatever reason, doing leg press & back extensions DOES give significant increases.

(01-16-2011 09:28 AM)Blueness Wrote:  Hey Andrew!

So the bodybuilding & strength training set is a 6 stage set?

I am well interested.

No, I am considering 2 stages as part of it, but it will definitely be a bundle. Lifting is often a dynamic thing- you can't necessarily predict when you are going to switch from strength to mass or mass to strength. Maybe a specific sport came up and you want to switch to strength. Maybe you want to look good for the summer and switch to mass, then cut off as much body fat as possible. It will be a "bundle" in that everything you could possibly want for fitness in general will be thrown in-from sprints to powerlifting to bodybuilding. I've decided I want it to be very accessible and to have a little bit for everyone.

If you combined all the tracks, you could make it "six stage" I will discuss it with Shannon though. There are benefits to six-stage sets, but I would have to make it specific (i.e. six stage bodybuilding)

As Andrew explains it to me, a standard Six Stage Set is not the best choice for how to put this out there. We were talking about a set that is not in stages, but independent pieces, which can be used in any order and depend on what you want to do and a accomplish in particular. I am not sure I fully understand all of what he has in mind, but it definitely makes more sense as a non-linear set. How many pieces it will have, I don't know yet, but I think it would be four or five pieces, with one of them probably having two stages.

We might also be able to make a set of instructional DVDs about how to do Andrew's methods, but the when on that will depend on whether Andrew is the person in the video or not. I think doing such a video set would be a great idea.

I am also really optimistic about working out, based on what Andrew has shown me about his system. It's hard as hell for a few minutes at a time, once a week per set of muscles... but spending 20 minutes a day working out, 5 days a week, seems really do-able to me. This has also given me some ideas for how to improve the weight training sub based on some things that I was resisting in the past, such as the "day after" pain and such. I certainly do hurt right at the moment, but I'm also looking forward to doing it again. It feels good knowing I am accomplishing something.

[RainbowAbyss]

Andrew, that was a great response, it makes total sense between utilizing the total compound movement of the leg press with the right inversion and foot rotation plus 180 degree back extentions, I could see how that covers the same muscles with less strain and burnout on the body, as soon as I am done with my current routine Id love to try whatever uve created!

[Andrew]

Just to give an update- I will begin doing the rough scripts (which I'm sure Shannon will change, modify, and add to a few hundred times) once I am done with my current que of projects. Probably an ETA of about a month. At that point I will go over some of the details and hopefully get some feedback as well as some Q&A.

[ALI6NMENT]

(01-26-2011 05:06 PM)Andrew Wrote:  Just to give an update- I will begin doing the rough scripts (which I'm sure Shannon will change, modify, and add to a few hundred times) once I am done with my current que of projects. Probably an ETA of about a month. At that point I will go over some of the details and hopefully get some feedback as well as some Q&A.

Good to hear Andrew!

I thinking of using one after I finish the Alpha. Would one be able to be used along side Alpha like a module or will they be too complex?

[Andrew]

(01-27-2011 08:10 AM)Blueness Wrote:  Good to hear Andrew!

I thinking of using one after I finish the Alpha. Would one be able to be used along side Alpha like a module or will they be too complex?

That will have to be Shannon's call, with what I understand from the 4g Alpha '11 set, I don't see how anything could be used along side.

[laurahill]

I am very excited to do this...Thank for sharing.

[smithalan00]

Great Job You have done.....


Smith ALan

[Andrew]

As mentioned in the newsletter, serious work on my end to push the athletic titles to finish will begin next week

[Andrew]

(06-11-2011 03:31 PM)Andrew Wrote:  As mentioned in the newsletter, serious work on my end to push the athletic titles to finish will begin next week

Been working on this title, having to juggle multiple priorities though. Will keep you guys updated. The goal is to finish this by the end of August, possibly before then.

[Andrew]

(07-09-2011 12:59 PM)Andrew Wrote:  

(06-11-2011 03:31 PM)Andrew Wrote:  As mentioned in the newsletter, serious work on my end to push the athletic titles to finish will begin next week

Been working on this title, having to juggle multiple priorities though. Will keep you guys updated. The goal is to finish this by the end of August, possibly before then.

Going to push a first draft to Shannon hopefully by monday. Have all the supplemental workouts designed and explained. Going to need maybe 2-3 people to give me feedback on how easy it is to follow the routines and on clarity. Volunteers shoot me a PM and an email I can send PDF files to

[ALI6NMENT]

This is something I am sure I will be using. Did you get your volunteer needs met to look at the PDF? ...I will PM you my email.

[Alexbit]

I hope its best read about the Weight Training Update,.
Its useful one for the newbies bodybuilders to get right ideas about the weight training,.