Andy Goddard Postal

by Steve Gardner

MEET ANNOUNCEMENT

Andy Goddard Tribute Postal Competition 2011

The Andy Goddard Tribute competition this year will be on two different lifts: (Alt Grip Bench Press – Straddle Deadlift) but still based around the Bench Press – Deadlift theme (they were Andy’s favourite lifts).  As last year, this competition will be open to all and everyone who wants their name and results to be listed in Andy’s memory.  Lifters can be listed in the official IAWA members record claim set of results, or in the listings for those not current members who just want to take part.

BUT…

1) All results must be sent in to Steve Gardner (steve-g@powerful.co.uk) by the END OF MARCH

2) All results must be clearly recorded to show if the lifter is

a) a current IAWA member or not, and

b) If the lifts were performed before 2 or 3 referees (which will be good for record claims) or

c) If the lifts were performed before just one referee which will be acceptable for the competition (but not record claims)

Good luck and lets get lifting in Andy’s memory!

Time to Cast Your Vote

by Al Myers

Who's going to win a set of my Hanging Dumbbell Handles??? It's up to YOU!!

It’s now time to vote!!!  All submitted stories have been ran in the USAWA Daily News over the past four days.  A set of my hanging dumbbell handles are at stake for the winner – so chose wisely!!!  It will be  hard to decide – mainly because all of the stories are so good.  That is why I am leaving it up to the USAWA membership to vote.  That’s right – the USAWA membership!   There are LOTS of “perks” to being a USAWA member, like getting to be part of this big decision!!   The list of choices:

1.  Hand and Thigh, Neck Training Tips by Joe Garcia

2.  Art’s Big Hook by John McKean

3.  Row Row Your Back!!! by Scott Tully

4.   Two Ounces of Prevention by Thom Van Vleck

Please send in your vote to me at amyers@usawa.com by next Friday (February 11th).  The winner will be announced on the 12th.   I promise to keep all votes confidential – so don’t worry about that!!!   I’m sure this will be a close vote so EVERY VOTE counts!!

Two Ounces of Prevention

by Thom Van Vleck

As we are all aware, Big Al has created a contest where we are supposed to write a story on a training “secret” we have that would benefit others.  This was a difficult thing for me to do as I don’t keep secrets.  I share everything I have with anyone willing to listen.  I’ve always been that way.  So I really don’t have any secrets…..but I looked at what I do and came up with something I do almost every workout.  It’s something I think has allowed me to compete at a high level as I head into my 47th year and 34th as a weightlifter.

Al & Chad executing a very complicated two man stretch of the spine. Now really, do you have the time for this or for that matter would you be caught dead in such a compromising position???

A healthy back is essential to weight training.  If you lift weights and have never hurt your back, you are either a very good liar, you’ve never pushed yourself, or you just started yesterday.  Back injuries are a part of the sport.  Especially if you are a master lifter over 40, and most USAWA lifters are over 40…..some WELL over 40!  If you’ve had a back injury, you’ve probably tried to rehab it in different ways.  Some of these with drugs like anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, or pain medication.  You may have seen a doctor, a chiropractor,  a massage therapist, or maybe an Osteopath.  You’ve probably been given stretching exercises, yoga exercises, or whatever the latest fad is.  You may have went so far to invest in some equipment, such as a stability ball, rubber bands, or went really expensive with a reverse hyper, or an inversion table!  You also may have found some really complicated and difficult ways to do what all these things try and do…..decompress your spine.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've had a little fun at Al & Chad's expense. These are great exercises, but their problem is the practicality of doing them every workout.

I’m going to share two very simple and basic stretches that require very little investment of time or money.  They can be very helpful in rehabbing a bad or injured back, but I would encourage you to do these EVERY TIME YOU WORK OUT to help keep your back healthy and prevent injuries!

First, there’s the good ol’ bar hang.  Sure, we’ve all heard of it and probably done it.  You hang from a chin up bar.  I know what your are thinking.  “Geez, Thom, I thought you were going to give us some great secret!  Well, I am.  Sometimes the best things are the simplest things and they are the things we tend to ignore.  Like squats, which is a really great exercise, and yet there’s been a hundred ways developed to avoid squatting each one more complicated than the last!  Now, here is a real secret.  When you hang from the bar, put your heels on something about a foot or two in front of you.  Why?  Because you want to tilt your hips forward.  This will straighten out the lower spine.  Otherwise, if you just hang there the weight of your legs will pull you hips back and bend your spin inward in your lower back.  As a result, the weight of your legs will bend your spine and true decompression does not occur!  You also need to relax everything except your grip (and another thing, this can be a tremendous grip exercise, an added benefit).  If you can’t hang for at least a minute, then use straps until your grip gets to where you can.  Total investment:  A chin up bar.

Now, the only problem with the bar hang is it only decompresses the lower half of your spine.  While this is where most injuries occur, it is only half the picture.   Plus, most guys don’t think much about this, but your spine is more than your back, it’s you neck as well!  Many weight lifters will injure their neck and it’s also an area that gets a lot more abuse than you realize.  Why, because it holds up your fat head!  Seriously, the head is always FORWARD on the neck so any time you are not lying down with your neck supported it is being leveraged with pressure from that bowling ball that’s sitting on top if it!  Also, many of us will injure our neck at some point lifting, playing sports, or doing something stupid (most guys that train tend to be risk takers….admit it, you’ve done something stupid with your body).   And as for the upper back, it gets injured much more rarely than the lower, as a result, how often do we decompress our upper back and neck?

So, this leads me to the second “secret” exercise.  Like I said before, if you got loads of cash, you can spend it on a personal massuese and an inversion table….but if you don’t this will work just as well.  Maybe better because it is so easy you will do it more often!

Neck and upper back stretch....and yes, I used a photo of a pretty girl to "sell" this and influence the vote! Really, would you want to see me doing this or her! Vote for my article!

The second exercise involves sitting in a chair and letting your head and shoulders fall between you knees.  There’s an added benefit that if you get good at this exercise you can also use it to kiss your rear goodbye when you do some of the aforementioned “stupid” stuff.  But seriously, you sit in a chair and let your arms fall between you legs while sitting right on the edge of the chair.  I was taught to let my arms fall relaxed and then let my head fall forward relaxing it as much as possible.  If you do this enough you can fell you vertebrae relax.  I now fell a “pop-pop-pop” in my upper back when I do this.  Again, you want to stay in this position for about a minute.  I also do the added exercise of  doing some head rolls once I sit back up, this will seem to always pop my neck a couple times.  Total investment:  a chair.

So, there you have it.  Two exercises, two minutes, cheap, easy and I would argue for the amount of time and money invested you will do your spine more good than any of that other stuff.  Call this, 2 ounces of prevention!

Row Row Your Back!!

by Scott Tully

Scott Tully training one arm dumbbell rows with 175 pounds using a dumbbell handle specifically made for rowing.

I’m going to start this off by letting you know I’m not a writer, ha ha.  I want to write this about something that has helped me a lot in my overall training, and also want to let you know how we have tried to come up with a new handle to allow you to get even better Upper back and trapezius strength and gains.  When I started training at the Dino Gym almost 10 years ago, I had mainly competed in Olympic lifting and strongman.  One area of major weakness for me was the top end of my deadlift.   I also noticed weakness in my strongman training with stone loading,  as I could lap heavy stones but had a hard time transitioning to the load.  Al Myers and my training partners can attest I would miss many deadlifts over the knee.  We talked extensively about how to fix this.  Rack pulls  helped a little, but it seemed there was another issue.  Al recommended I add in more upper back and trap work.   I had always done lat pulls, but never that heavy and always for high reps, and very rarely any rows.  I thought I got enough of that type of work from strongman training, well I was wrong.  After we had this conversation, I started adding in heavy lat pulls,  not shying away from heavy sets of 5, and added in 4-5 sets of rows.  Rows included standing 45 degree dumbbell rows,  bent over dynamic rows (Pendlay or Russian Rows),  chest supported dumbbell rows on a incline bench, and seated cable rows.

A close up picture of the Dino Row Dumbbell Handle.

Over the years I’ve been able to make this an area of strength. It’s still not what I’d like it to be, but at least it’s  not a glaring weakness. I truly believe that I get the most out of standing 45 degree and chest supported rows with dumbbells.  The problem that myself and a lot of others run into is being able to use a heavy enough weight.  At the one gym I train at our DB’s go up to 120, and at the Dino Gym they go to 150.  The other problem with a DB is that often the plates hit your body before your elbow is far enough back to engage the lats all the way and being that a DB is totally fixed, it doesn’t rotate in your hand at all to allow the elbows up and to be able to pull back.  So I found an idea on the net for a handle and got a hold of Al, and 3 days later we had the Dino Row handle.  The problem with the one I had the pic for was that there was not enough room to add the weight needed, mind you, because I wanted to be able to shrug with these also.  We  were able to make the handle the exact height away from the loading shaft that we needed.  After using these and testing them out I think it’s the most effective way to hit your lats in a rowing movement.  This handle can go as low as 25lbs, and as high as around 250lbs.  One thing I mentioned above was hitting the traps.  The problem I have with barbell shrugs is that they wreck my lower back.  I had a microdiskectomy of my L-4 and L-5 in 2006 and a few movements still bother it, but with these handles I can hold them out to my side and take the pressure off the lower back and  extend the shrug higher. By hitting the Lats  more specifically with the rows I have taken my deadlift from the low 500’s before my back surgery to a 617 in competition and a 650 in training, and rarely do I ever miss a deadlift over the knees now.  There are pics included in this so you can see the handle, and if you’re at the Dino Gym you have to try this out, and the next day your lats will thank you for it.

Art’s Big Hook

by John McKean

John McKean demonstrates a band hookup for the 2-Bar Deadlift using a big S hook that attaches to his belt.

“SPROOOONG! SPLAT!!”  Those two sounds had Art Montini and the rest of the gym in stitches -complete howling laughter throughout the Ambridge VFW Barbell cavern!  The object of their mirth was this ever experimental author proving once again that some flex band set ups don’t adapt too well to certain all-round lifts!

You see, I’d looped each end of a band around the bar (braced from around my upper back) and attempted to do a pullover and push with the set up.  Overestimating the combined resistance, the push went halfway up then ROCKETED back down, the barbell being vigorously propelled by the stretched flex band!  Looking back, I think it must have appeared pretty darn funny, but at the time I felt like one of Al’s shotgunned ducks!

A close-up view of Art's Big Hook.

After that awkward episode, I became a bit more cautious toward THINKING how to best apply the advantages of bands to the individual mechanics of lifts!  And I determined that some moves can be done with a SECTIONED approach (not actually involving a wrap around the bar) to applying extra resistance.  For instance, in certain balanced moves such as one arm deadlifts, Zerchers, and two bar deadlifts the regular grips and positions can be taken, but the band pressure -sometimes considerable extra band pressure- can be simultaneously applied to just the thighs and hips. All that is necessary is a BIG “S” hook to attach the middle of a band to one’s lifting belt, leaving both ends of the band to wrap securely around the feet.  So, in a constant vigil to keep me from killing myself on our gym platform, good ole Art ,the man of steel, made one for me!

Recently I’ve been using this approach toward training the two bar deadlift.  As the above photo shows, I am free to grab the bars in a normal manner, with the bars’ delicate balance unimpeded by extra forces.  The band pressure goes just to the thighs and hips, not adding a lot of extra work, but certainly adding to the chore without necessity of hitting max poundage or leading to burn out.  Really , it’s like doing two exercises at once.  All the usual band advantages are there -this set up thwarts acceleration,yet encourages speed & finishing strong; concentration on the extra stress actually TEACHES proper form and channels power for two bar deadlifts.

OK, get yourself a big hook and add this” harnessed leg lift” into some of your pulling movements & deadlift types! Remember, you don’t want to ever shoot for an overburdening extra resistance, just enough to make the combined exercise “interesting”!

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