Results matching “Bird”

Via Fight Geek : Grab the first issue of Muay Thai magazine Nak Muay. Free download - enjoy.

Over to Personal Trainer Joe Sarti.

Blaine and I will be kicking off 2008 with a series on Fitness and Food - taking a look at the many ways in which diet can support your training.

This week Blaine takes a look at the 'Grain of the Gods' - Quinoa. What it is, why it needs to be part of your diet; how to use it. Good stuff.

If you missed the previous article in this series on Fitness and Food, you can grab it here :

• How to make your own Protein Bars

Smitty has a good article up on Mens Fitness regarding fat loss the real way - without cardio. Enjoy.

There is some outstanding equipment out there to help you build your hand strength to inhuman levels. However, sometimes price tags can intimidate athletes who are just discovering the importance of specialized Grip training.

To benefit those who are just starting out, I am going to periodically post on STTB examples of some of the home-made devices we've come up with over the years at Diesel Crew.

The first device I'd like to introduce is excellent for training open-hand strength. All you need is a ball (preferably a baseball or softball - I use a softball because it is bigger; and the larger the ball, the tougher the lifts will be), duct tape or electrical tape, a threaded eye bolt, and a carabiner or an S-hook.

First, take the ball and wrap the tape around it. Be careful when you apply the tape. If you take your time, you can make the tape very smooth and it will feel almost like lifting a steel object. If you haphazardly wrap the tape around the ball, there will be a texture on the ball that will make lifts easier.

Next, screw the eye bolt into the ball. A baseball or softball is perfect because they are not made out of a hard or dense material. You may need to start the hole with a screwdriver, especially if the bolt is flat at the end. Mine is pointed and it worked itself into the ball pretty easily. Once you have the eye-bolt screwed in, you can attach the S-hook or carabiner. Then, the set-up can easily be attached to a loading pin or other source of resistance.

Here, I am performing a simple deadlift using the implement I described, connected to a loading pin. This implement is extremely versatile and you can attach it to a cable set-up to replace the conventional handle used to perform pull downs, rows, and other lifts with cable stack machines.

Here is a close-up of the Grip I suggest when training with this implement. Keep your hand on the top of the implement, centering your palm on the top of the ball. If your fingers slide down near the bolt, it makes the lift, pull, or row much easier and defeats the purpose of the lift.

You can get a lot of mileage out of this home-made implement. It was originally put together in 2003 and has never worn out. This is something you can stick into your bag and carry with you to the gym for Grip training.

No chalk allowed at your gym? No problem, because chalk on slick tape like this doesn’t help you at all anyway.

Any questions on Grip training? Feel free to check out the site: www.DieselCrew.com, and our blogs: http://dieselcrew.blogspot.com & http://napalmjedd.blogspot.com.

Napalm Jedd Johnson

This is a guest post by bodybuilder, writer and weightlifting aficionado Kat 'The Mighty Kat' Ricker - DIY Band Crossover Rig. Enjoy.

Bands are great tools for resistance training - flexible, portable, lightweight, inexpensive, infinitely useful. Anchoring them at ground level puts them ready for any number of exercises, and you can fix the the anchor points at your optimum distance for crossover moves, like a customized cable crossover machine. There are so many exercises you can do on your crossover rig - chest press, tricep ext., bicep curls, lat rows - you're limited only by your imagination (and biomechanics).

At my studio, we bolted two rounded garage door handles into the concrete garage floor. They needed to clear more height in order for the handles to fit undernearth easily, so we stacked washers under each end. This works great! And nobody's ever going to move them or block them.

This is a guest post by All-round Strength Training's Sally (perhaps better known as Gubernatrix) : Get the best out of your heavy sessions. Enjoy.

Heavy sessions: for many, the highlight of the training week. A session to be approached with both excitement and trepidation. However, it is easy to fall into a routine with heavy sessions, get a bit slap-dash and thereby start to lose some of the benefits. So if your progress has slowed of late, run through this checklist to kickstart your progress once more.

• Get plenty of good quality rest before and after a heavy day and stay hydrated. If you don’t sleep well the night before, you might not be lifting at your best.
• Be afraid! You ought to be a little bit scared about your heavy day. If you’re not, perhaps you are not pushing yourself hard enough. A max effort day is always a step into the unknown. Also, being nervous serves another useful purpose: it stops you doing anything stupid. If you are nervous, you’ll take more care.
• Warm up properly. Use exercises similar to those in your session, or do a full body exercise such as dumbbell snatch. Not only is it good to warm up your muscles and bring your heartrate up, but you’ll also get the chance to mentally prepare and get your body in the lifting groove.
• Use a spotter, or at least a power rack. The safer you feel, the more confident you will be in going heavy. Without a spotter you will always stop before you reach your true maximum – unless you are an absolute nutcase. It’s not only safety, a good spotter will shout out encouragement at just the right moment, which can be the difference between making it and not making it. If you don’t have a training partner, grab one of the gym instructors (what else are they doing, after all?)
• Minimise accessories such as straps, belts, gloves. If you start using a lifting aid to cover a weakness, then that weakness will stay with you. If grip is a limiting factor, for example, don’t go straight for the straps but try lifting lighter for a few weeks and allow your grip to catch up. Otherwise, it never will.
• Video your lifts or get someone knowledgeable to check your form. Even if you think your form is perfect, you will be surprised at how certain aspects can deteriorate if you are not keeping an eye on them. Heavy day is not the day to get lazy about form.
• Keep a record of your lifts and add notes on how you performed. Each session, look back on the notes from last session and try to improve on them. Note when, for instance, you didn’t achieve sufficient range of motion or something felt awry, so that you can correct it next time.
• Know when to call it a day. If you destroy yourself now, you won’t be able to lift well next time.
• Add more volume to your session by performing a lighter back-off set after your last heavy set, particularly if using very low rep ranges, such as 1-3 reps. Use, say, two-thirds of the weight and complete either 10 reps or as many as you can. Having done heavy sets with low reps, your body will be primed to lift more than if you worked up to this weight from scratch or used higher reps.
• Have a good balanced meal and get an early night!

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Written for Straight to the Bar by Gubernatrix – on a mission to find the best in all-round strength training.

Paul Anderson's idea of a partial squat. Beautiful.

Kat has a nice piece up at Jen's Gym, which includes the following observation :

In elementary school, I was the only girl who could climb the knotted rope at the fire station, and I did the flexed-arm hang for longer than any girl in the county, they said. I did the hand-over-handle bars until I grew too tall.

(I mention these things because there are kids out there like this right now, and maybe you can spot them and guide them to opportunity. I think adults take kids’ playing for granted, especially girls, and can overlook natural inclinations that could blossom with the right environment. So I pass on this tiny flag.)

Definitely something to think about.

This is good stuff. Over to Dave Tate.