The Cono Gym

Gents,

Tim and I were talking a lot about strength training with a few of you, so I thought I'd share what i've been up to.

I've decided to avoid the gym for as long as possible. Mostly because cashing my paychecks from the US has become more exhausting than the work I'm doing and gym membership is pricey seeing as i don't need to do Body Pump with Kieren 3 times per week. Having said that, I'm not avoiding strength workouts.

I live on the corner of Queen St. and Oxford st. in Woollahra, and kitty corner to my home is Centennial Park.

So 2x/week i've been trying to head across and do similar workouts to the ones we were doing in the Stanford gym a couple years ago. (In the coming weeks I'm also going to start running in a more regimented way.) I decided that I already had the muscle memory for good technique in a lot of the power lifting so throwing rocks around in what Boothy calls "the Rocky workout" would be a good start. As i progress I will probably need to hit up a gym, but for now everything i need is right across the road.

The core of the program was developed with the help of a couple stanford football trainers who created strength training programs for us that were based on the Gridiron wide receiver programs used by the college kids. The general idea is that most of your jump actually comes from, or should come from, your hips. Activating your glutes and hamstrings. It's called a hip snap, and it's pretty important in these exercises that the bar/rock/woman is being displaced by the snap of your hips and the upward thrust of your pelvis, not by your arms or upper body.

The trainers gave us a bunch of exercises to do and we implemented them with the help of a fitness trainer as we saw fit. We varied it depending on what was heading our way early in the year.

My average strength workout involves the following:

Warm up jog and plyos: I use the warm up that most west coast US teams use, but just do whatever you want as long as you're warm.

One armed Snatch: I find rocks that I can palm in one hand and do 3 sets of 10 with each arm. I can't do it with a bar like this fella, but i do speak russian*



Some days, depending on how fatigued I am, my form drops off, and that is the perfect place to stop the exercise. With such large movements it's very easy to strain your muscles if you continue past exhaustion. So between sets, I take fairly long breaks (1 or 2 minutes), just to assess how i'm feeling.

Hang Cleans: I do these with a stick for now, and need to come up with a better method to add more resistance, but it'll do while I'm still just trying to strengthen my technique for the next week or so. These use similar muscle groups to the one armed snatch, so they definitely affect each other in terms of performance.

Here's a video on Hang Clean technique:



and one of a fella getting fired up after lifting 400lbs:



Overhead Cleans: So these are a little easier to master than the hanging cleans, because the bar finishes above your head and you're pushing the bar to it's limit, rather than stopping it somewhere in the middle of its range. It's the same technique, hip snap pushing the bar/rock overhead, but you just try to push the bar through the roof.

The bar starts on your upper chest (the end point for a hanging clean), and finishes above your head.

This video is very, very stupid, even compared to the others, but you get the idea:



Box Jumps: These are my favourites. I once saw my buddy Turtle do a 40 inch** box jump 6 times then crash off of the box with a thud. About 40 people in the gym turned around at hearing the sound of him hitting the deck and them watched in amazement while he just got up and did 6 more. It's the little things that get you through the gym workouts.

I usually superset the Box Jumps with the Cleans, just because box jumps don't really take a tonne of focus, it's just springing as hard as you can.

I do 3x 15, but i start on the box (weathered sandstone in my case), drop off of it, and spring back up as fast and as hard as i can. If i over-balance backwards and have to come off the box, that's fine i just step back up.

The theory behind starting on the box is that you develop strength in your eccentric (muscle lengthening contractions) faster than . . . It's been too long since I used my physiology degree, there's something to do with reflexes in there and golgi tendon organs inhibiting muscle activation, i think. I do trust my source that they're worthwhile doing that way.

Deadlift: Lucas Meaney from WA used to say that deadlifting was the solution to all injuries. I'm not so sure about that, but it does prevent me from getting a sore lower back after playing frisbee.




Squats: I'm not really sure why I do these last, they're less explosive and a slower movement, so perhaps that's why, but I have generally always finished with squats.

What do i use for a weight? I throw Jo over my shoulders and squat her. My mate bruss and i used to call it the caveman squat. With these it's important to get your ass as low to the ground as possible. I take them really slow and squeeze out a stretch in my groin. I have fairly tight hips, I was told recently by the physio, so this should help me loosen them and increase my ROM.


Some things to remember:

1. Some of these exercises involve fairly big movements, and I can't stress enough how easy it is to hurt yourself on them if you're not a. warm and b. focussed.

2. It's best to do the cleans and snatches early, and work on more localized movements later, like deadlifts and bicep curls or dips.

3. NEVER work out in this way past exhaustion, it's about developing good clean technique that will lead to strength improvements. See Cuni Booth's post for more info on that.

4. If you want to develop a strength training program and jump out of the gym then make sure you're doing it right. I'd be more than happy to help any of you, as I'm sure tim would be and anyone else on the team who has experience with this sort of thing.

5. THE SILVER BACK: You know those silly leather belts people wear in gyms? that's to prevent them from bending their back while lifting heavy weights. The thing is, that unless they have some kind of injury, it means that their entire bodies are not strong enough to handle the kind of weights they are lifting. Which is definitely not what we want to be doing. So, while doing these exercise, to prevent bending from your back, pretend you're a silverback gorrilla. Keep that back beyond straight at all times. If you can't keep your back straight, the weight you're lifting is too great, so you should drop down, work on your technique and build your core strength.

6. As Tim said, variation is the key to staying keen and motivated. I don't do the same workout everytime i go out, but these are the exercises i choose from while working on strength. Some of them overlap, and a few are adjusted to the limitations of working out in centennial park.

So that's it, sorry for the big gay videos, but i hope they help any of you who were thinking about doing anything similar. I can't stress enough how important proper technique is, and I'm no expert, but i slogged it out for months trying to get it all right, and ended up pretty decent at some of them, so don't hesitate to ask me for a hand.

What's next for me? Footwork. It's something that a lot of the teams train, and it became apparent to me whilst marking up on big tommy of the condors, that their footwork training pays off. I'll write another, hopefully less wordy, blog entry on what i'm doing to improve my footwork. Although, you soccer players out there probably have much more to offer on this than i do.

Stephen

* I don't speak Russian
** Approximately 2 cubits