Landmine press for shoulders and it's so safe. Just feels right in it. Just feels like the right thing to do. But that's because you've managed to take a movement that was supposed to be pressing vertically and made it go a little bit more close to a bench press.
If you lie under it like that, then just do it. I would say don't use a pre-workout. These things are false economies. But I don't agree with that.
Apart from the times when you injure yourself, which isn't usually due to the workout, it's due to something else that's going on, you almost never regret going to the gym. Another Life Facts episode, tools, techniques, and tactics for a productive and efficient life. We're going to go through a big list of things that we've used over the last couple of months and everything will be linked in a show notes below. Because it's January, we thought that we would do some special gym training, little exercises that we picked up, variations on workouts, maybe some kitchen hacks, but also probably some things from the internet and maybe some Netflix shows and such like that we've been enjoying.
So, Johnny, what have you got for us? So this is my exercise variant. Cool. So this is, I guess, if you are in a gym that doesn't necessarily have a chest press or something like that, or if you suffer from back pain consistently or aggravated lower back and find that, for example, when you're doing bench or doing dumbbell variants, that it rotates your back when it's going to crump up.
It's a pretty simple variation, but it's one that probably people outside of the like strength training will might not have tried, which is just a bench press, nor a bench press, with your feet up, not necessarily on the bench, but not like straight out, so your feet aren't on the floor, basically you aren't applying any force into the floor. And it basically turns it into chest isolation and complete your music, lower back and beat your music, your feeler body. So just a good variation limits the load and very quick to warm up for. So how does it replace a PEC machine?
It's just a bench press, right? It is, but it depends on how you would normally bench. But a lot of people, even if they're not a power lifter, you'll see them kind of as the bench gets harder, they'll sort of squirm and move around, press their feet on the ground to try and use the rest of their body to hold the weight up. When you feed down on the ground, you can't do that.
I'm guessing as well, the angle is you're a little bit more flat as opposed to decline, because you can't get that arch in, right? Exactly. Yeah. So you basically have to lie flat, which means that you can't get the lower back that sometimes happens.
It's also quite a good, like if you don't really, if you're scared of bench press and you want to use lightweight, but you want to still get something out of it, it's a good way of doing that as well. What's the reason by mechanically that this is harder? Because you can't use your lats as much, you can't recruit. Like technically legs and lower body, there's less stability, because you're not, like you're relying on balance at the same time.
Oh, okay. No force through the floor. Yeah, you aren't in it as much of an arch, if you wanted to compare it to a power lifing, bench press. Have either of you ever tried it?
Yeah. It's nice. So the only time I would have done that would have been if I was doing bench press from the floor. Like floor press?
Yeah. That's the only time that I would have done that. Do you get, do you, have you, I imagine you have yourself, well, like you're benching your back, like cramps up, seizes up. Yeah, it doesn't take much for my back to.
Yeah, I can imagine. I thought you'd have that Chris. You're not experience so far. No, so my back doesn't really seem to be too extension perturbed, but it gets.
Slaction. Yeah, yeah, a little bit worse when I go, when I go forward. Yeah, that's nice. I like it.
I need to try that. I might try that. Try and add that in this week. Seth, what have you got?
What's yours? So mine is probably one that we're all a fan of. Unfortunately, this is a sexist exercise variation. Is it barbell trust sport in Rome?
My favorite exercise in the world. So if you do have back problems or if you just find that you're in this cycle of doing bent over barbell rows or Pendley rows, and then each time you either wait, you're just like, humping it a little bit more. And then over the month, you're like, well, did I increase my row by 2.5 kilos or did I just hump 2.5 kilos more? And it gets to the point where like, if you're rowing more than your body weight, mechanically balanced wise, you can't actually keep it straight because you're just top of you over.
So there is a point where beyond 80 or 100 kilos, you're going to have to start doing some kind of chest supported variation to get a strict back workout. So just give it a go, set up a bench on, I say from flat, it's up to inclines, the two clips get the seat of the bench up as well so that you can rest your knees on it. Or if it's one of those benches that has feet, then dig your toes into the feet, make yourself as stable as possible. And then barbell with normal plates on the side so it gives you enough range.
And then each rep counts as when you touch the side of the bench with, and then it keeps it reputable. What's your reason for doing incline bench chest supported row as opposed to setting a bench up across two boxes and it being perfectly flat? You can do that as well, it's just pretty janky. Just convenience.
Yeah, most gyms I've been to don't really have a safe setup for doing a costume. That's because you continue to train out of very specific types of gyms and they're the ones that geographically. Most gyms I've been to that are within a five minute bike ride. Yeah, that's it.
Well, the only thing that I think would, I love it, I think it's a great movement. Both me and you, everyone here has had back pain at some point. And I've never been a fan of bent over rows. I think that they're too easy to cheat.
And it just feels like what am I working here? I'm working my hamstrings, my glutes, my lower back, my shoulders, my traps, my upper back. Like sometimes you'll do a set of pen laterals and you'll be like, I actually feel that most in my lower back. Yeah.
What have I done there? Yeah. I had one just attached to that, which is what you just said, which is a seal row, which is what you described. So again, when you're lying flat and you row, you basically reverse bench press.
Yeah. Yeah. And you're pulling it to like the bottom of the bench. You can get specific benches that are just a- High, high thin seal row benches.
Yeah, they're still, didn't they place an Edinburgh have one of those? You. Most likely. In fact, that's the direct upside down version of the first exercise you described, Johnny.
Yes. Like a seal completely flat. The reason it's called a seal row, I think, is as you start getting closer and closer to failure. I don't know why this is.
But your feet do the thing. You just like, oh! You know, like those red fish that you lay on your hand and make. You know what I mean?
It's like a thin piece of sea through paper. Usually a present in a Christmas cracker from 1997. Yeah. You've also got those, Chris.
No. It's like a sea through piece of plastic and it's a fish. Okay. If you know what I'm talking about, put it in the comments below.
Okay. You're like, oh my god, Chris, I can't be doing that. What about the fucking fish? But that's what you do.
Okay. Okay. I got a few here because I thought that we would have a couple each. So the first one, which is my favorite.
And I think during training with you guys, we've both done this. Skull crushes, but floor-lying skull crushes. So most of the time, if you're doing a skull crusher, which is a tricep movement, you would do it on a bench, getting yourself to the point where you have the easy curl or the barbell appear is actually a little bit awkward because, okay, do I get it passed to my hips? Then I've got to kind of hip it to my chest and I've got to push it up and then get it down.
Dumping the bar is also really difficult. It's easier for you to go past the range that you're supposed to. You can't do dead stops from it. All of this is fixed by doing skull crushes from the floor because you lie down in front of the easy curl bar.
It's already on the floor behind you. You can just put your hands behind you, take it up. If you fail a rep that you're not going to drop it on your head, you're going to just push it up a little bit away from you, drops on the floor. Plus you can do some cool stuff like it's easier for the person that's with you to do strip sets or drop sets because they can just pull the weights off more easily.
And you can do dead stop sets as well because you can just lower it to the floor, wait until it's taken all the momentum off and then go again. It's like that for the long head of the tricep is numero, uno workout exercise. Elbow pain as well. I think elbow pain is normal.
Normal skull crushes can be quite bad for people if they're consistently like passing their head. Too much extension. Yeah, well, just too much going through the elbow. So yeah, the commonality here is lots of lying down and lots of removing the lower body apart from a very specific part of the upper body.
But the good thing is lots of repeatability. All right. Excellent stuff. So, oh sorry, Johnny, it's yours.
I should have got a couple more exercise variations. I need to. I need to. I need to.
I'm going to have some more fitness stuff here. All right, hit us. My own reps. You both know what those are?
Vintage. No. I'll just use all the time, but I think a lot of people would have tried. So if you're short on time, you want to add some assistance at the end of your training session, but you're not like, I really like doing kills, for example, or like, I'm done with work or anything like that.
My reps is basically, I think it's by guy called Borsh for GIRLY. I think that's his name or something like that. So you do an initial set, which is called an activation set. It's usually like 10 to 15 reps near failure.
And then you take 10 reps and then do between three to five reps. I have done this. For you might have done 10 reps, three to five reps. And you keep doing that until you hit like a close to failure set, basically.
You just have to wait. There are like variations where you can do that, but normally if you do it properly, and this is what's so good about it, you get like five minutes in, and you've done so many reps and you're knackered. And you're like, okay, that's all of that movement done. And it removes all of the resistance and like, oh, I've got five sets of eight, or I've got three sets of 12, because it's just done before.
You really know what's happened. And you can make it into a bit of a game. So like, by week, you try and do slightly more weight, or you try and do an extra set at the end end or something like that, or do it in less time, like take a few of the rest between. They're great.
The rationale from, is it pronounced Borg or Burger? Like, like, Borg or something. Borg or something. Oh, I don't know.
But... The E-R-G-E-R. Be over the line through it, which is pronounced, so... So, it could be good.
Anyway, the idea is the rationale that you recruit the majority of your motor units at reps, seven, eight, and nine of a 10 rep set, if that's close to your max. And so you take your 12 rep max, you do 10 reps with it, you start to approach that sort of almost failure point. You then start three to five deep breaths, recycle the ATP, but you keep the kind of fiber recruitment at that point, and then you just do two or three, and then you kind of ride the wave and stay at that peri-failure state. And supposedly those 30 reps that you do end up being more effective than if you had done three sets of 10, for example.
Because in that second example, it would only be reps seven, eight, and nine of all three sets that were effective. Or sometimes even only like the final set, depending on the load you use as well. The only thing I wouldn't use this for is, so it's great for any isolation stuff, most upper body stuff, I wouldn't use it for squat, deadlift, like, or anything like that, because that gets quite hairy quite spicy. Why not for deadlift?
Just the total body overwhelm. Or if you take your 12 rep max on the left and do 10 reps with it, and then you're going to rep out with that, I think the chance of you, like, round the back. If you're going to do five by three after that, yeah, okay, I understand. With 10 reps in between as well.
It just needs to be anything that's easy to reset. If it's a complex, if it's a standing shoulder press, like, no, because you're going to have to rack it and then take it off. But if it's something that's easy if you're doing machine, if you're doing any direct arm work. Yeah, perfect machines.
Like, don't do it with like cleans or anything. Like, oh, that's CrossFit. That's not CrossFit, isn't it? It's just a long CrossFit.
And also probably better for bilateral movements rather than unilateral movements, just that you're going to be fucking about with rest periods in between. So I do it for dumbbell row. It's in my program for dumbbell row. I disagree with it.
It's in my program for dumbbell row, but it is. So I do it. And I have to basically do the full cycle on each side. So you'll be like a set of 15, 3, 3, 3, 3.
So it takes twice as long. But yeah, I would fuck. So you're doing it all right arm. Well, because if you try and do it the other way around, you end up like forgetting where you are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do I need to start with the left or the right? Yeah, I understand. Technically, you've rested twice as long per side.
Yeah. So it's kind of defeating. I get that point you're just doing dumbbell row. Yeah, just high intensity dumbbell row.
OK, yeah. So my reps, I totally forgotten about that. Dude, I'm definitely going to add that back in. Yeah, it's like a it's somewhere between a drop set.
It's a permanent drop set without the drop of the weight, isn't it? Or a rest pause? It's like a rest of the rest pause. Rest pause training.
It's something called Dogcrap training, which was sort of a similar style, but it's more of a family-friendly version, I guess. All right. Seth, what you got? So there is a place in most programs, as we were saying before, to increase the stability of the movement so that you can focus on the muscle that you're working.
So up until recently, I always did my split squats, my Bulgarian split squats, which is where you hold two dumbbells, you've got one foot in front, one re-effort resting on a bench behind you at about kind of knee height, and you're doing squats like that. They're notoriously brutal, and there's loads of memes going around. Like when your coach puts splits squats in your program, it's like tearing up the paper because people just hate them. But often when you're doing them, a lot of your bandwidth is focused on like, don't fall over because you're trying to balance laterally or sagutally rather than focusing on the muscle that you're training.
So this was a tweak from someone called Bic, who works with us. She is Australian, called Rebecca, and she's the originator of the biros, you know, the little black biros, or she invented them. But it's just to stabilize one hand. And so let's say you have your right foot forward in a split squat, left foot behind you, you'd want to hold the dumbbell in the opposite hand, so your left hand, and then just hold onto a rack or something or arrow up until you're...
This is getting very surreal. Hold onto something stable on your right side. That way you can just really focus on getting a nice, nice, glutey sensation. Do you not now...
You're going to have to hold double the weight in one hand. If you're even remotely competent, your grip's going to be a problem here, right? You could be a problem. So actually, I don't think you should go too heavy with these, because what you've done there is you've improved the quality of the movement.
You can get more out of less. It's not a movement that I think you need to load super heavy. And even holding a 30 kilogram dumbbell is going to be enough for most people to get some good stuff from. I can go up to like 15, 20 reps as well.
Mm-hmm. Single rear foot elevated split squats with... You know actually, yeah. Okay, so this is from a guy on Instagram that I follow who has some really cool infographics that explain breakdowns, Dr.
Edie Jo PhD on Instagram, and he just breaks down what the sign says about strength training. And he looked at the exercises which recruit the most muscles, most muscle fibers for glute development. So what are the exercises? And out of 100, which was the maximum of recruitment, the top three movements are all types of step ups.
So the number one, which I think was in the 90s, was step ups. Number two was like, contralateral crossbody step ups. And number three was some of the type of step ups. So basically overall, and the next closest thing was maybe RDLs or Deadlifts.
Way, way, way down were hip thrusts, fucking kickbacks, rear foot elevated splits, what's even lunges were quite in fact, lunges might have been the next closest thing after the step ups. But basically, if you want to have big glutes and if you want to develop your glutes and if you want to improve your lower back, just do step ups. And the best way that I found to do this is dumbbells held, oh, not that thing that athletes do where they go. If you have dumbbells by your sides, it means that your center of gravity is lower.
So you're actually more stable. It's easier for you to balance. You are only on one foot here as you go up and go down. I wouldn't go above, depending on how tall you are, but I wouldn't get your thigh of the stepping up leg to ever be really above parallel to the ground.
You don't need to get a super amount of range here. You can just go from there and then push to it being straight. I would also do all of one side at once. And then I wouldn't do it alternating because just resetting each time foot goes down, foot comes up.
It's too complex. Just keep one foot on. And I think that this is a hack I learned from you guys, which is when you step down to the floor during step ups, only put your heel on the ground because it means that you can't push off with your toes. You'll find yourself as you start to fail the reps wanting to give yourself a lift off at the bottom.
And I guess if you're going super, super heavy, it might give you a little bit of assistance and help you to add some more load. It's probably a pretty good movement to overload on because if you need to fail, it's quite easy. It's probably pretty safe on your lower back because you're in this perfect straight position. And also you've just got dumbbells on your hands, so it doesn't really matter.
But yeah, if you want to make it, if you want to go for the super duper hard version, only touch the heel on the ground so you can't kick off with your foot. And four by 12 on each leg. Oh, just totally disgusting. It's a card your workout disguised as a strength workout.
If you're literally going, wha-bap, wha-bap. Well, if you curl up your big toe on the first rep, so the foot's on the ground, you've got the left foot on the right front of the ground, curl up your toes and be right foot. And then load the leg that's on the box first. Yep.
And then step off so much harder. Just keep that posture. Because obviously, this is the problem with movements like this. Like if you're aiming for a number of reps, you end up just doing anything to hit that number of reps.
Which is why we need quite a movement rather than worrying about trying to load them heavily. Well, that feeds into my next half of the foot. Which is to have a split in your sessions where you have, well, if you care about how much weight you lifted or have one or two movements in the session, where you do just care about how much weight you lift. For example, if you're trying to increase your bench press or your squat or your deadlift or something like that, I don't think you should necessarily be focusing on the quality of the contraction and your glutes and your hamstrings.
You do just want to be lifting or weight hitting your rep target. But all of your assistance stuff, I think in general, you get far more mileage out of yourself, your joints, your muscles, your collective tissue and the exercise. If you say, well, okay, this rowing movement, I don't care how many plates are on the machine, I'm going to go for the best quality movement. I'm going to control the reps.
I'm going to go for maximal contraction at the top. And I'm going to use half the weight that I maybe would have done. And it's a massive ego hit, especially if you train with people. If you're using like two thirds of the weight that they are.
But if by the time you hit the weight that they are using now, almost guarantee you'll be in a much better condition than them. So just reduces your injury, rate of injury. And also how much longer you can use the exercise for as well. Do you commit to certain movements within your workout plan then being for quality rather than for load?
Yeah, so for me, it's anything that I have like four or five exercises that I care about the number. So those are ironically, we're just talking about seal row and chin up. So like a rowing movement in a vehicle pool, squat bench and deadlift. The only things that I like track how strong I am, everything else in my program, even really a lot of the assistance stuff, like a pause, squat or a pause, deadlift or a feet advance press or anything like that.
I'd rather take the hit on the load and go for it like what am I trying to do here? Like I want to feel something with. Mind muscle connection. Exactly.
This solves the problem. People always are like, oh, but I thought you have to kind of pick powerlifting or bodybuilding. And there's no in between. And you have to everything.
You're either only lifting more weight and looking fat and rubbish or just being a bodybuilder who's weak. And it's a bit of an outdated kind of mentality now, but it's okay to lift more and also look like you lift. And on average, I would say it's weak because we go through phases with this, right? I think maybe because I'm coming out the back of CrossFit.
And people, although it might not look like it on the outside, people are quite concerned about doing exercises in there when you're doing accessories really for quality. So I think on average, when I look in the gym, I see people that don't progressively overload enough. I see people that are under loaded and over lifting a lot of the time. Now, how many people are still bench pressing the same weight that they were 10 years ago?
Are still going into the gym because they've never actually committed to doing progressive overload. So I think that the way that you've got it split there, which is, okay, where am I looking to gain strength, commit to those that's for strength, and then on the other things, I'm committing to quality. I think that's a good way to do it because it allows you to still become stronger. If you did, this is what we have a friend who did a bodybuilding competition a long, long time ago and was adamant that going into the gym and doing like five reps 10 times on a single arm row, but with a 10 second eccentric was going to be the best way and stepped on stage and didn't look like he lifted because he'd been convinced by a particular type of train or some blog on the internet that this was the optimal way to do it.
And you're like, look, if you just fucking put some weight on the bar, you would have probably been fine. But you didn't. I think that the test is what would happen with this exercise if I had to really open the top to it. Like if there was a load that I'd never lifted before, I didn't really go for it.
For what I ended up doing. So if you imagine that with a barbell curl, for example, and you had to really go for a one-hour round, like it feels unsafe, doesn't it? It feels like you ended up doing like lots of stuff. Like one of those little plastic fish that you get in a Christmas cracker.
You put your fingers across the back of the air. Yeah. Right, Seth, what you got? So if you're in a gym that doesn't have a pull-down machine, that only has cables, for example, for example, if the gym is only within a couple minutes of your house and then you can get really not, in fact, I might start doing this instead of pull-downs in the future, which is just a deep lunge with the cable overhead and just doing single-arm pull-downs.
So the way that I would do it for the people who are lucky enough to see this on YouTube is in the language. You were in orange jogging bottles. Yeah, I like them. So a deep lunge arm overhead, so right foot forward, left foot, left hand forward.
In the back knee on the ground there. You can, but I'm flexible enough to just do it in a deep lunge with my foot on the floor. So your back was elevated. Backwards off the round.
Sorry, your back knee. My back knee is, yeah, just because it feels nice and stable. That's a good exercise. So everybody, Alfie, who's adamant that a kind of a similar movement, but sat on the floor with both cables attached at the top two handles and then allowing yourself to basically do a vertical, kind of like a closed grip pull-down, but because it's on the cables and because you're not locked into a seat, it allows you to play around with that angle and that stretch that you get at the very top.
That's a John Meadows exercise. Is it called? It's called stretches, yeah, lovely as well. Yeah.
You can also do that with, if there's like a seat bit, you can put your foot on there. I know what you mean. So then you can hinge while keeping it reliable. This is something that I think it was such a good cue that I was given by a cross-fit coach.
And his argument was your concentric should be quicker than the eccentric on everything that you do, that if you're doing bicec curls and you're lowering the weight down, you can lower it as slowly or as quickly as your program demands. For nine seconds. Yeah, for nine seconds like that other one. But you need to contract it quicker than that.
And I think that just generally when I've seen people training, they're forgetting about tempo, not everything needs to be a tempo movement, not everything needs to be like a four-second eccentric. But if you were to take a little bit more care about how you're lowering the weight down and then you use power on the way up, I've also seen this maybe, bro, signs, but that if power is loads, whatever, load distance and speed, pulled together, that moving a heavy weight more quickly recruits more power. So that should mean that you get more muscular. Is that how accurate am I here?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Physic. Glad that.
It's right though. That is correct. Because that's why you track your bar speed, right, Johnny? No, it's not.
But I track my bar speed because bar speed has a correlation to RPE, so how many more reps I could have done. So it's a way of managing the intensity without using percentages. Okay. What do you think about people integrating tempo better into training?
I think it can be, it can definitely be overused. So I think the rule that I would have is if you like, you're far better off with exercise in general, just progressively overloading it over time than you are worrying about, as long as your tempo isn't ridiculous. Like if you're throwing it around, I think you should have control over the weight, but you're probably going to get more mechanical tension muscle growth over time. If you just add more weight and don't try and do like three seconds down, three seconds pause, three seconds up, because the tension created from using 10 more keylives is greater than the tension with the longer eccentric and concentric.
We'll scrap tempo everything and I'm just going to put more weight on the bar. I lift it faster. And lift it faster. Okay.
Joining, I'm pulling the ejector seat and passing it on to you, because tempo everything was about an idea regarding to the two PTs in the room. Well, I've just literally just lost my... Your hack. That's so annoying.
Should I have a back knock on the car? Right. Close. It is to use a...
You both come across a land of mine attachment before. So most gyms happen, maybe not the ones within five minutes of use of this house. Mine actually does. They do.
Fantastic. So I find overhead pressing in general quite cumbersome. So barbell overhead press and Chris is ridiculously strong. Barbell overhead press, because it's just the forearms.
Forearms are the rest of the bar. But that's cumbersome. Getting dumbbells overhead is cumbersome. And also, for example, a barbell overhead press and leading back and all that sort of stuff.
So if you load a land mine up, which people don't know, it's basically a way of anchoring a barbell to a fixed point. And then it's leading away and you hold it in your hand. You're doing a one handed overhead press with a land mine is a far more natural movement, because you naturally slightly press it away from you. So it's a far more natural movement for your shoulder.
You don't have to do all these sort of weird lower back extensions to get the bar in the air. And it's far easier to progress. You can add small blades to it and load another time. And if you struggle with getting the bar into position, start with it resting on a box or resting on a bench and then you just front squire it up, basically.
Kneeling or standing? I'm a big fan of standing over kneeling. Yeah, I'm never stable enough when I'm kneeling on the ground. Because then you can do a proper one foot forward, one foot back with power stance and really go for it.
It's a shame that there must be some fancy gyms that have got a way to do that with both arms at once. If it plates a big, it might get quite air. Yeah, land mine press for shoulders. And it's so safe.
It just feels right, isn't it? It feels like the right thing to do. But that's because you've managed to take a movement that was supposed to be pressing vertically and made it go a little bit more close to a bench press. Right, so if you lie under it like that, then just do it.
It's even more right. And then if you take it out of the land mine, actually, put it into a rack. Yeah, you can just do bench press. This is a land mine press variation that you can do.
Yeah, it's back to where we all started, which is lying down. Lying down. It's not on the floor. Yeah.
Completely isolated. Bench press. Seth. This is one that I got from Elliot Hulse of all people, which is if you are having one of those days where you're just like, I just cannot be bothered to do the session that I've gotten.
It's particularly if you've been following 531 for the last seven years, as you should be, and you're long Bitcoin, then there is a point where the numbers get to the point where like, and with all experience, there's like Thursday nights before your squat day for heavy threes. And you're like, oh, I don't know if I can even face getting up in the morning because I've got this thing coming up. If you're training consistently starts to feel like that, just go in and say, right, I'm not allowed to lift more than 60 kilograms or three sets of 10 for everything. And you have to just turn up, go through the motions.
You're not allowed to get any intensity, not allowed to, like, it's literally just turn up and just go through the motions. Like, you can even have that face just. And he's right. But by the end of our session, you'll be so like fired up to actually do it properly again, that solves the problem.
Whereas if you try and push it when something in you's just like, I'm exhausted, you're only going to burn out faster. So what's the principle here that if you're struggling with motivation, reduce the load, move through the session and use the, whatever, like latent desire to train properly to, like the boredom kicks you into the next session correctly. Absolutely. Do you ever do that, Johnny?
Do you ever, because you are basically controlled by a man on the other side of the internet with your training, aren't you? It's worse than that, actually, I'm controlled by a very intricate spreadsheet that I don't understand. It's run by a man. So I tell the spreadsheet every day how I feel.
Seriously. And then the spreadsheet tells you... And the spreadsheet says, well, this is what you do. So it's kind of just an adaptive for me.
I have a, I have a one actually, my next one is very linked to that. But I like, you know... Um, this is the most overused hack of all times. So if people haven't already seen this, I'll be very surprised.
But we haven't used it before. James Smith and Suni Webster got into a fight on Twitter about who was able, sorry, on Instagram about who was able to use this first. But just if you have a barbell, which is on the floor and has a lot of plates on it, stick a small plate under the closest to the collar plate that's on the floor, roll it up and over it. And it means that you can de-load the bar so much more easily.
You'll save your lower back. And you've always been in that position, especially if you're in a gym, which isn't built for powerlifting, where the rubber gym 80 plates are something like a gold plate. And it's with rubber that makes you stick, it's like, Teflonized rubber or some shit. And it just doesn't come off.
And this is impossible to get off. Roll the barbell up, kick it onto a plate, pull everything off the end. There you go. You've only got one plate left.
Do the same on the other side. You've deluded the bar far easier. Now you could go to a gym that has a bar jack or a bar rack, like a laco thing to properly kick it up. But I actually think that this is probably quicker.
As a for a tip for people who've never been at the gym before, this is the first year they go into the gym. I've seen it happen so many times where people don't appreciate the, like if you strip all the one side of the barbell, if it's like on a rack or like an easy bar, for example, on a preacher kill, you'll see people strip one side of it. And then it goes, right that. And the end of the face.
Into someone else lying on the bench next to them or whatever. So like unload barbell when they aren't on the ground, unload them evenly. One side after the other. Then basic physics.
Very basic. Moment up. Do you know why I think this slightly forgivable is the barbell, especially 22 though, like a six foot barbell, you look at it and think that can probably be all right. Like it doesn't look immediately like that person's in imminent danger.
My ability to judge how much weight, how much weight the fulcrum or whatever needs in order to flip it over, I have no idea. Absolutely no idea. I always err on the side of caution because I've seen this happen one too many times. And that's the equivalent of being a server in a restaurant and dropping the glass.
Everyone. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just benefit. Yeah.
You've tried to push that fulcrum. Yeah. It can take two 20s on one side of that flipping. Three 20s is touching go.
So this is a fucking life hack. Explain what the limits are of a normal men's barbell, 20 on the barbell on a rack. So the way I would unload 180, right? So that's four 20s each side is as follows.
You go to one side and I strip off two 20s. Okay. Leave two 20s on. That bit's very important.
Leave two 20s on. Go round to the other side and strip all four because it will not flip. Oh, I don't go round to the other side again. How do you want it?
As proper tetris, like minimum number of strokes required to. Yeah. I think you could probably push it to like take one off and then, but you've already got to do two carrying 40 kilos. Isn't too hard.
You can tell when it's a limits the way I check it. I'm not sure it is because we're using like 25s already. Just give it a little give the other end a little bit. Okay.
Very light, you think? No, probably not for me. Like someone touches that that's going over. Before you do your one, Johnny, here's a just a thought about that thing that you did there.
So if you're struggling with motivation, we're probably going to be getting towards the stage where people are starting to hit a little bit of a limit, especially if they're used to, if they're in a new training routine, if they're training at a different time or if they're first stepping into the gym after a little bit of a break. What are some of the things that you do to get yourself motivated or in the mood for training? If you're just thinking, like I'm totally, totally not down for it today, either supplements or movements or routines or mindsets or anything. I would say don't use a pre-workout.
These things are false economies. What's that mean? They, I don't agree with that. So pre-workouts are very strong stimulants, usually with a bunch of experimental stuff in there to get you and to make sure that you don't sleep for the next two days.
So that you can lift another rep on your on your incline curl or something. But you pay the price much more on the back end of it. So I'd be very sparing with that. If you are a coffee drinker and it's before 2pm, yeah, just have a regular coffee before the thing.
Don't go and buy something that's a derivative of an amphetamine just so that you can do a couple more cable incline. I love how careful you are with civilians. You have become, remembering that we, back in the day, wouldn't have thought twice about having vodka, water and NOx blows from BSN. That was a pre-night drink for me.
Some of my best sessions were with an MR and a Metrex sample that came on the front of a Flex magazine. People just know that I had it just out of the packet because it didn't have a shaker with me and then went and trained. Yeah. I should frame this, I'm talking about this as an X abuser of all these kind of supplements.
Retire, you're a veteran. Yeah, when you just drive the three scoops of Jack 3D or whatever else. Yeah. The one- It's like the serving size of Jack 3D and thought, that doesn't happen.
Did you see if there was a video that came up on YouTube the other day, some guy did an entire tub of original Jack 3D? Oh my God. I mean, that's truly what I'm saying. I'm getting a ton of weight.
Pretty sure. I'm pretty certain that Derek from more plates of my day to do reaction video to it. About just what was going through this guy's system. Pretty fine.
I mean, I would be calling the inesthetist. Like if I had a patient that said, I'd have a tub of Jack 3D, I'd be like, right, get a couple of phone calls, make sure they're ready. What do you do? If it's, I'll get to you in a second, Johnny.
If you don't like the idea of relying on stimulants, what do you do to get yourself? Let's say it's an aggressive session. I really want to go in and crush it. What do you do?
You do? You do, sir? You're asking me? Yes.
So a lot of it is because you've got stuff at home that you're like, well, for me, it's like, I've got work, I need to finish. I've got these little bits and I can't really justify going to the gym. And then you know that on those times that you don't go and you try and stay and do the admin stuff, it's now and later on, you're like, was it really worth it? No.
So I think just knowing from past experience that whenever you try and skip the gym, the time that you would have spent otherwise is usually rubbish and the energy is still low. And so if you go and you come back and you're like, okay, I feel like I've had a frame shift, I'm re-energized. As you said, Chris, a while ago, it's the same as always more than you than the shift that you get from an eight hour night's sleep. Yeah.
Your mood changes more pre and post workout than it does when you go to bed versus when you wake up. I think no one is like putting any calendar and being like, I'm going to do it because I will. Gotta go. I think not overthinking it is probably a pretty good principle.
Okay, I just, I'm robotic here. I'm working for the boss said that I got the gym. So I got the gym. I also think that, um, apart from the times when you injure yourself, which isn't usually due to the workout, it's due to something else that's going on, you almost never regret going to the gym.
Apart from the times I've injured myself, even then I don't regret going to the gym. I regret the injury, which was caused by something else not to do with the gym. It's cold or not properly. Yeah, exactly.
I was fatigued or stressed or whatever. You almost are never going to regret a gym session and keeping that in your mind. Look, if I do this, it's something that future me will thank me for. Current me is a lying duplicitous cunt.
You cannot listen to him. Future Chris will thank you for it. Johnny, give me the justification for obsessive caffeine and stimulant use. Well, so I just, I kind of think that everybody should experience that safely once.
Because if you've never had a pre-workout before, it ends up being quite a good session. What to say? Because I haven't used a pre-workout in so you're not five years. That's me neither.
The last time I experienced anything close to it was where I didn't have coffee for a month and then had an espresso. I'm not trained and that was... Yeah. Can we all just say our story from first time you ever had a pre-workout?
Mine was that. I just had a coffee in a while. No, no. So there was a sache, like a sample sache of metrics, whatever it was.
Their vision in Jat3D. Their vision of Enoch flowed and I didn't have a shake-up with me. So I just had it as a powder. Dry.
And then went and trained and I was like, Raw. Bear back. Yeah, like that was... What was your answer?
You said, never let that again. So, yeah, it was... Chasing the... Chasing the proverbial pre-workout dragon.
It was the original Jat3D with the BMAA in it. It is. The unfetamine. And I found myself like, like, gurning.
You feel... Good news for example vision. Like, really, like listening to like New Monkey on the way to the gym. You're like, this is excellent.
My three-rap max for squats was 140 kilos at the time. And I remember turning up and I did a set of 10. So the seven-rap PB. Completely unheard of.
The biggest, like, difference PB that I've ever done in my life. I hobbled home. And was ill for a week. Like, really, really tight.
Symptoms for a week. And then I remember the next week, when I came back, I had another dose of it. And I was like, what's that? Can I try some?
She didn't lift. And I was like, yeah, sure. And so she had a scoop. And I went to the gym, came back, house was spotless.
And she was like, oh, he's having a weekend. I'll clean that last night. I'll clean that last night. I'm like, oh, okay.
Interesting. I think the fact that you're on amphetamines. But she was no stranger to her class A as well. So it's...
Crazy that they were able to sell that. Alright, Johnny, what do you do? You go and go and do a workout and you've got some pretty heavy sessions that you need to do. How do you get yourself in the mood?
So the first thing is like a planning consideration. So try and train on the same days of the week at the same time and try and plan stuff so that you can't, in the rest of your week, so that you can't move the session. So I quite like having that. I try to not let myself train less than three times a week.
I just say, this is just the standard of like, I feel like 16 year old me would be really disappointed to me if he found out that I trained less than three times a week. So I have those slots. And the fact that I have this rule of, if I'm not going to train tonight, I'm not doing that session this week, is often enough to just get me in the gym. So, and then I just have this rule of, no matter how I feel, I'll go and just do a warm up.
I'll go and just like do something. And most of the time, it ends up happening. And then like some of the sessions are happening. Stuff like having, for the long time, life hacks listeners don't know that this is a life hack and they'll be using already, but having a sacred playlist that is what you listen to when you warm up is what you listen to when you train, really helps.
Or like even just watching some stuff on YouTube, so like having a time when you finish work, especially working from home, you're like, okay, five o'clock, email's got emails, I know watching like fitness stuff on YouTube, like I'm gonna watch cross videos or powerless videos, or whatever on YouTube, so like get me in the mood, I'm gonna go to the gym. But this links into my next hack actually, just so well planned. Fire away. For people who, so either in that position, where you regularly find yourself, like I currently be bothered, I don't wanna go, or if you play around with like, you have a Woot Band or an Aurang or whatever, and you don't know what to do with that information, something I've done with clients in the past, is you have your session, so your Monday session, and you split into three, so you have like an A of B and C.
So if you're feeling really good or you have loads of time, or your Woot Band gives you a green rating, whatever, you do the full thing. If your Woot Band or whatever gives you an Amber, or you're like a bit short of time, I can't really be bothered to A and B, or you just do the A. So you chunk it into like, you're like auto-regulating based on time, mood, energy, whatever things you track, how much sleep you had last night. But the A section, the smallest bit, should always be something that like, you can always go and do.
It's like you just have a version of the 60 key, those are sets of 10, like there should always be a minimum, that you can take the box off. And it means that if you wanna use something like a Woot Band, because I think what we will struggle with in the past is, you have that, and you know. What the fuck do you do with the information? Yeah, like it's red, and it's flashing, and it's shouting that you're like, I can't really scale back your session.
At least you're doing something, you're like paying some respect to that information, if you choose to believe it. So basically taking your existing training programme, shopping each session into three sections, and then you can just adjust depending on how you feel, how much energy, how much time you have. Nice. The other frame shift for this, of just stepping back and big picture, the old, like, look out at the stars, and see how insignificant you are, is just saying, rather than, oh, I have to go and train, is I get to go and train.
There are people who would love to, but aren't able-bodied enough to do it, or what we're talking about before, they feel so intimidated by the scary gym environment, and all of their internal projections about fat phobia and everything that they can't even make the first step, and actually, it's a great privilege, a great ability to go and celebrate your body, and do that. One day you are going to be 80 in a care home, or unable to lift any heavy weights, and you go back in the day, I used to do 50 kgs, or on the floor, two scoops, first thing, and telling you, man, that'll be old people in 50 years, won't it? Listen, yeah, honestly. Talk about Jack 3D in the care home.
Rob, that was so neat. They tell you, we used to have this thing called Tigaty Talk. So my one that you touched on there, Jon, is I think the obvious solutions of the ones that people look when they need to get motivated to go and train, just find a song that completely cannot not get amped for, like, have your place as a training. Yeah, or just a few of them, right?
If you put that on, it was your pre-drinking song for uni, or it was whatever, your one-rate-max song for the gym, if you throw that on, there is, you would be amazed at the state shift before and after that. Three and a half minutes of let the bodies hit the floor. Try and tell me that you don't want to go and lift the shit out of the gym after that. It's such a state shift.
And it's so obvious. Everyone's got songs that get them amped up. All right, just use that. Use those.
Better to live on YouTube. That's your one. That's still in the first life-x. Like listening to live bands on YouTube, or live DJ sets as well, when you've got the audience in the background.
The energy's so good. I just need one of those on there. The nice thing about them as well, you get the full set, it can be the whole session. And you're finishing the session as they're doing their own core and coming back on for one final song.
It's brilliant, life-changing. What have I got here? This is just one that I've had. So, Timeside, where I try that in Newcastle, has just got a seated calf raise machine.
So, the ones that work as you sat down, you load the plates on the front, the pad sits on the top of your knees. And we just found that adding that in between, there is nothing that you're doing that can't have calfs added in between. But no one can ever be bothered to dedicate to ending stuff. All right, maybe if you're doing squats or re-felivated lunges or something like that.
But no one's looking at calf raises. In between calf raises. When you're training calf, the other thing that you should really look at is adding calfs in between sets. But if you're doing a bench press, or if you're doing anything up a body, just get four or five rounds of an easy calf machine, or set the leg press up and do calf raises on the leg press in between.
So, someone sent me, I must have tweeted something about calf training, or having small calves. And someone tweeted me a bunch of studies that are like, we compared a group of people over 16 weeks training calves heavy twice a week versus heavy three times a week, or like unhappy or progressively doing this, and all of them showed zero muscle growth. No way. No fucking way.
Across the entire study, like, and it's just basically like, so calf training is just a scam then, is it? Why is that the case? Yeah, that can't be true. Just so have, so one theory is that they're so heavily genetically determined, and that they, you basically are training them all the time, because you're getting so much loading from walking around with them, that they, that kind of muscle that have already hit their limit, unless you were to go absolutely harm on them.
Like it might just be that to get a big card, you need to do a Chris, and like between any set of anything, go and sit on the seat of calf raise. Yeah, well, it's interesting because obviously the Achilles rehab that I did, I went from having a calf that was basically, that didn't exist, total muscle wastage. So now I overshot it, and the calf of the leg that I recovered is now bigger than the calf of the leg that I didn't. Which is why I'm thinking about calves a little bit for the first time ever.
Is it? What is it? Just one of the coaches from 3D and J, Jeff Alberts has got a side-by-side comparison of like, I mean, this is probably 10 years of calf training, but he has legitimately turned very average calf into like a strong body parfait. So there's an interesting point, because Jeff Alberts is all about mind-muscle connection, isn't he?
He's Mr. Longevity, bodybuilder, like, in his... He's like, he's still going, yeah. He's all about like getting the most out of a set of 10, as you put up a chart.
How long has he been so far? 16 weeks, so all like, 18 years, like 16 years then. Yeah, just do it for longer. There definitely calves and calves are certainly one of the hardest muscle parts to train, but also probably the bottom of pretty much everybody's list.
Yeah, well, I hear it doesn't I? Who the fuck is? I heard it afterwards, I heard it's the time, and it's boring. And it's all of the above.
So add it in between sets and you'll be sweet. I think that's me out of... Yes. That's a hell of a list, though.
That's a fucking good list of some training things. Well, why don't we? Why don't we finish up with any stuff that we've watched or seen recently, any cool stuff? I got one.
I'm watching it at a moment called Dope Sick on Disney Plus. Are you worried that we've already had that? No. So it is recommended by Dan, Mr.
Digital Audio, broadcast. It's about OxyContin, the creation and distribution. Is it the Wesler family? It's the something family, isn't it?
Something family, but yeah, I can't remember the name of it. Yeah, Farn Suit Your Business produces this OxyContin drug, which is an opioid that they claim has like slow release and all sorts of stuff. It's addictive and it's about the consequences of that. It is a bit of a slow start.
Is it a documentary? No, it's a series. It's a drama series. Based on them, I'm going to guess.
Wait, that's true, right? Because you're actually based on reality. Real? I've had OxyContin.
It's a powerful drug. What's the amount of oxygen that's been called in an OxyContin? I think it's the trade name. I've never heard OxyContin being used in the UK.
It might be the slow release or formulation or something. I think that's it. What was the one, because they had to change it so that people couldn't snort it anymore? Is that the difference between OxyContin and OxyContin?
So in this OxyContin, the thing that's supposedly released is the co-op. It's the coating of the tablet that people put the tablet in their mouth for a bit. Take it out, crush it and snort it. The pharmaceutical expert thing is just a sugary coating around the edge of the pill.