Day 116 fo 365: Weighted-Vest Warmups

Here's a question for you:

How can you easily and effectively increase your overall strength?

If you read the title of today's post, I'm sure you've figured it out, but the answer is: 

Add a weight vest in the mix!

Many of you out there probably don't correlate the implementation of gymnastics movements into your workouts and achieving ridiculous overall strength.  But, I am here to tell you that performing body-weight movements - or gymnastics - has huge potential to build raw strength that will correlate to bigger pulls, massive squats, and powerful presses.  Especially when you wear a weighted vest, which technically cancels out the gymnastics out of the movement, but you get the idea.

There are a couple reasons for this, but the one that really stands out is the idea of external loading.  It's pretty simple, but often overlooked as a extremely effective way to increase strength and mass.  The idea is that as you externally load your body - which can range from a 20# vest to a 600# standing back rack, to using the lightened method to move loads exceeding your 1RM - the body and the Central Nervous System are forced to adapt to new and extreme loads place on them.  

Makes sense, right?  

If you are building a massive house you would probably build an equally stable and strong foundation for that weight to rest upon.  Your body, the amazing machine that it is, does this automatically when it is forced to.  You just have to know how to trick the machine into making those changes happen.

This is where wearing a vest comes in.  If you usually perform a gymnastics-style warmup, an easy way to stimulate your body to grow bigger and stronger is to add a weighted vest in the mix.

This will load the body effectively and, obviously, get you warm and ready to rock and roll!

Check out this warmup and test it out yourself next time you're in the gym!

Day 63 of 365: The Lightened-Method Does The Body GOOD!

I am willing to bet that most of you out there have not heard of the Lightened Method, right?  Understandable.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to "lighten" something when you're trying to get sillystrong.  But, today, at the Red Black Gym, we hit a crazy-ass SWOD centered around exploring the Lightened Method for the first time---It did not disappoint!

So, what is the Lightened Method?  Well, to put it simply, it is a form of training that allows athletes to actually lift more than what they are capable of otherwise.  This already sounds pretty badass, right?  Well, before you get too excited and run to your nearest gym, let me dive in a bit more.

I'll show you a video of us knocking out some deadlifts using this technique so that you get the idea of how to set this up.  The first time you set this up it may be a little tricky to get it just right, but once you have a system, it's all good.  

Here's are SWOD...

Looks pretty badass, right?  It also appears to be pretty straight forward if you don't have the "WHY?" that drives it, so let's talk about that right now.

You see, your body is freaking awesome in the way that it works....AND... if you train smart enough, you can use it's amazing ability to adapt to get sillystrong.  

The Lightened Method is one way that we can trick our bodies into building lean mass and increasing strength.  As far as your body is concerned, it only remembers certain segments of any lifting effort; the top or finishing position.  It remembers the external load it experienced as well as the speed at which it moved to get to the end range of motion.  So, as you are probably figuring out, by adding the bands that assist the lifter the most in the bottom and the least at the top, the athlete is able to move heavier loads than their 1RM.  Doing so allows the body to only remember holding X weight in the finish position.  This training phenomenon, when supplemented properly with the Lightened Method, stresses the body and CNS - forcing it to adapt to the new, heavy weight that it just experienced.  

Badass, right?!!!

Now, I understand that a lot of you probably don't have access to gym that accomadate this training method, but it is important that you know it's out there.  There are also other, more accessable was to get the same end result that I will share with you later, but until then....

KEEP LIFTIN' HEAVY and FAST!!!