40 days stronger

I just finished my 40 days challenge and I'm very satisfied with the results. I had some free time in the summer and I thought I would consider that like athletes off season. The whole idea is simple enough and goes as follow :

-Pick 5 lifts: 1 big posterior chain movement (deadlift is the right answer), 1 big upper body push, 1 big upper body pull, 1 explosive movement, 1 anterior chain movement.
-Max 5 reps per set (big lifts)
-Around 10 reps total (big lifts)
-Between 10 and 20 reps for the explosive move.
-5 reps total for the anterior move.
-3-5 min rest in between sets
-Never train to failure
-It should feel easy! At the end of a workout, you should feel ready to do some swing outs on a fast tempo!

Here's a list of my moves, previous best attempt and goals:

-Conventional deadlift 350lbs ~ 405 lbs
-Bench press 165lbs ~ 225 lbs
-Bent row 115lbs (hypothetical, never done it) ~ ?
-Power snatch ? Lbs (I learned it and could not do it at first!) ~ ?
-Torture twist (as instructed by Barry Ross) ~ N/A

Yesterday, after 3 days of rest after my last session, but not enough sleep due to previous night partying, I accomplished this :

-Conventional deadlift 405lbs (+55 lbs)
-Bench press 205lbs (+40lbs)
-Bent row 165lbs (+50lbs)
-Power snatch 135 lbs

Observations

-It sounds like little effort,  but it very time consuming since you must show up to the gym every day.
-Keeping it easy is harder than you might think. I never bring my ego to the gym and I have never been so close to get hurt during a program, for you never completely recover. I would recommend it only for intermediate / Advance lifters.
-It really changes your views from a workout to a practice.
-The first time you do it, it's basically a lead of faith. You make quick progress at first, then it's harder to notice them until you take a break.
-I put on about 9-10 lbs
-I failed 1 deadlift at 395lbs in my 6th week.
-I set unreachable goals for the deadlift and bench press and I'm surprised that I reached 1 of them. I couldn't believe it when I actually pulled those 4 plates off the ground. I wished I would have push more on the bench press. I really thought my problem was the lack of practice and that it would explode with that kind of protocol. Well +40lbs is not that bad, but I still bench like a little girl!

Next steps

I'm getting closer to my basic strength standards (or Pavel's):
-Bench press 1.5 x bodyweight
-Squat 2 x bodyweight
-Deadlift 2.5 bodyweight

My goal would be in the next 6-12 month to reach those results with the bench and the deadlift and as long as my squatting pattern in functional, I would be pretty happy.

First, I'm going to change my routine and get back to my kettlebells for the next 12 weeks at least with the RKC challenge and add some dumbbells pressing and front squatting once or twice a week. The only advice I haven't listened to improve my bench is to build some more muscle. I don't feel like giving up just yet!

Fred

Wisdom from Pavel

‘’Someone has made an observation that lawyers tend to be a lot more successful in strength sports than artists. Because the former can deal with the boredom of repetitive but necessary tasks.’’,Pavel Tsatsouline, Enter the Kettlebell p.136

On deadlifting

Many coaches in a variety of disciplines will swear almost soly by deadlifts as long as strength is concerned. I love that quote!

Elliott Hulse:  Deadlifts.  If there's only one thing that everyone does, it's deadlifts.  When you deadlift, you're using every single muscle in your body, and you have to use every single muscle properly in order to perform the deadlift.  Deadlifts are not one of those exercises where you can fake it for very long.  The minute you get down to put your hands on that bar, you don't even have to lift it, I know where you're screwed up.  I can tell if your ankles are tight, if your low back is weak, or if your neck is tense and tight.  I can tell you anything you need to know about your body the minute you bend down to touch that bar to pick it up.  And once you can get your deadlift looking good—and it doesn't even need to be heavy—and when you can move in a proper pattern, then everything is where it needs to be and the sky is the limit. 

Read the full article here.

Being your own coach: micro managing to failure

After a while of strength training, I would feel stronger, but I would still bench press like a little girl. I was watching Elliot Hulse on Youtube and realized my head was not in the workout I was doing, but already thinking about what I should change, adjust, important exercises I was missing and so on. Elliot also said something else that stuck into my head. There are a lot of great programs out there, so I should just pick one proven to work and stick to it. I had to think about my priorities:

<![if !supportLists]>·         <![endif]>Focus on strength and power

<![if !supportLists]>·         <![endif]>Not to time consuming, I need time to dance!

<![if !supportLists]>·         <![endif]>Not too tiring, I need to be able to dance right after workout.

From there I switched to a 5/3/1 program (explained in detail here). Basically, this program focuses on 4 lifts: Squat, Deadlift, Bench press and Overhead press. In 5/3/1, we workout with ridiculously sub maximal weight most of the time and lift 90% of 90% 1RM once every 4 weeks for 1 rep. I finish every workout fresher than when I started it! Also, You can pick freely all accessory exercises which accommodate my burning desire for customization and in the end, as the author put it, there are just accessory then don’t matter as much as the main lifts. Plus, beside the fact that I need to go at the gym 4 times/week, my training session can be super short between 25 and 45 min.

The math can be quite intimidating at first glance, but all I did was to automate a calculation sheet on Google drive and I add weight every 4 weeks, that’s it! I always carry my phone to the gym anyway and I was already keeping track of my training session on a calculation sheet. I got myself a program I’m not allowed to customize in the essence and that works itself up.

It got me thinking. What if I was doing exactly the same thing with my dance training. What if I keep changing my focus, so it limits my ability to improve over the time through deep practice? I usually start every session with aerial/dip/lift training, for this is exhausting. I will stop before my partner or I is tired, so we can keep practicing after that, avoid injury and keep the best form possible. Then, I will choose a random theme (such as rhythms, moves, lines, jams, etc.) and work on it for the entire session, but if I can’t work on it because of my partner’s limitations. In that case, I will select some drills to work on the specific difficulty we encountered and get back to whatever we were doing if possible.

Because you can’t quantify dancing, we need to rely on subjective results such as videos, feeling and memory. What if I avoid what I should be working on, because it’s easier this way? I definitely do that with solo dancing! Everybody has a tendency to surf over difficulties especially when nobody is pointing them out. Automating my practices and tracking actual results, that’s what I still need to improve.

If you are interested to follow my day to day workouts and dance practices, I suggest you take a look at my Google+ Page where I post personal videos almost everyday.

Keep on working!

Fred

Balboa guy, fitness guy, massage guy, nutrition guy...or about being labeled.

Over the last couple of years, I received several labels. Truth is, labels are often there for a reason, but just part of the portrait. 

Because I have never seriously competed into Lindy Hop, I still known mainly as a Balboa dancer even if I practice just as much in Lindy Hop, Ballrooming and other minor specialities such as Collegiate Shag, Break Away and Charleston 20'.

Because I started to develop an more athletic vision of the path of the Swing, people starting calling me fitness guy. I admit that I know a lot now about athletic development and how a dancer should train for peak performance, but fitness as never been my final goal.

Fitness lead me on the nutrition topic, fat loss and peak athletic performance, and I got deep into it as usual. Shortly after that, I became nutrition guy!

Pain releasing techniques, anatomy, fitness, nutrition, those are all tools any athlete should be aware of, including Swing dancers. I only decided to school and educate myself and keep doing it everyday.

+Frédéric Barbe 

What have I been doing last fall?

I know I have been more busy than ever. Here's a recap video of last September. Other clips should come up eventually! 

Understanding the system part 1: follow the money

Why does capitalism works so well? Because it is based on self preservation and fulfilling self interest. I will do as I usually do and use my sledgehammer which seems to be the only tool I know how to use properly.

I will start with a neutral example. If you go and consult a massage therapist to help you with a pain in your lower back, what do you think would be in his best interest? Businesswise, a returning customer brings you a lot more money than having to find new costumers all the time. Of course, the treatment has somehow to seem effective, or else you will find someone else to heal you. If the therapist wants to make as much money as possible, he should then offer the best  temporary release and help you to rationalize why you need to come back later for another treatment.

Of course, this the coldest hypothetical situation, but the truth remains, this is a system relying on good faith. I like to think that most people would consciously rather step on their self interest for the greater good, but what is going on unconsciously, that we will never know.

This is in fact a typical scenario in the martial arts world. The master will only show his secrets to his most advanced students to keep them as long as possible. What do you think happens when a student is as good as the master? Not only will he stop taking classes with his former master, but he might also become a new competitor in the same area.

Is the system very different in swing dancing? The short answer is no!  Why do people keep on doing swing dancing? Because it satisfies certain needs. A short list would look like this:

• Feeling like part of a group and position yourself within that group.
• Having a good time
• Easier to socialize and meet people.
• Impression of exercising.
• Getting better at something or being on the impression of.

I don’t think most locals classes, weekend workshops or even private classes are design to help people reaching the top, but rather to give them the impression they are on the right track. Don’t get me wrong, those settings are great from what I observed for pre-advanced dancers. Also, I believed everybody is well intended and nobody really has an evil agenda of any sort.

Follow the money! It is in everybody’s interest, both instructors and promoters, to keep students at that level where they fulfill all their needs and they have the impression the product/service they’re buying is what will help them getting better. There are two ways to drop retention: people who quit and people who get so good they don’t need the products/services anymore. The level system also contribute to that illusion. Of course one feels like he progressed since last year, for he used to be in Intermediate and he is now in Intermediate/Advance.

We can easily notice how few new superstars, full time instructors, there are in the swing dancing world in the past 5 years or so even with that many more very good dancers around. Beside few dancers who got their game above everybody else, most of them are now obviously interchangeable. Do the new guys really have a shot in the current settings, maybe if they play their cards right, but they will most likely try really hard to make a name for themselves until they fail and quit. The system however will keep making them believe that all they need is another year of competing, just another year…

+Frédéric Barbe 

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