Bryan's Amazing Inefficient Use of Time

[BryanM]

Well, here's the crap I'm doing right now, everything save chinups in sets of four, one workset:

Day A
Bench
Chinup
Squat

Day B
Press
Row
Nap

Additionally I do some sprints on the stationary bike for some heart work. It helps make me feel less like a sack of shit, while at the same time doesn't eat away hours of my soul.

Cycle contains four sessions before I take an extra rest day, so it goes: A - Rest - B - Rest - A - Rest - B - Rest - Rest. A 3/7 cycle allows leaves me feeling extra stiff/weak every time I start it, which is the primary reason I do 4/9. In theory 4/9 would also provide very slightly faster progress, which is a bonus.

Talking about fours, I've done programs with sets of 5 and sets of 3, both of which I would call "too heavy", though in different ways. I'm a practitioner of the cult of four, is what I'm getting at.

Warm-ups, I've gotten to the "warmup for your empty bar warmup with a couple reps of the empty bar" level. Maybe a bit paranoid, but I take going from brittle and weak to fluid and strong very seriously. Better to err on caution than fail a set and blow out a tire on the road to progress.

Deadlifts, I've come to believe them to not be worth it. Maybe if I was an olympic lifter, or even had the gear to power clean, I would feel differently. As is, I'm of the "why do an exercise that takes more than it gives back" school of thought; they do feel very redundant to the squat, and never gave much when I tried them exclusively.

Progress is at a ludicrously slow rate: +1/2 a pound per press session. At times I've seriously been tempted to add +1 pound in a session ("c'mon! The last time you did this, it was cake, bitch!"), and every time I talk myself down reminding myself how much I've screwed myself with greed in the past. Then the set feels like dying and I pat myself on the head for not being stupid.

In the magical world of gumpdrops and magical rainbow ponies, this would yield +40.5 pounds to my press and bench press in a year. Realistically, I expect to get between the 30 and 35lb range.

So in a year without yet more disruptions, I'd be able to press 200lb for reps, becoming as strong as an 18 year old girl. And in two years, at least be within reach of the 300lb bench. Around the level I think I would consider "strong enough".

Meat has been an issue; in my mind I wonder if I'd be doing better if I got a pound of flesh on top of my diet I'd be doing much better. Yet again, $.

It goes without saying that shifting to a proper intermediate routine has been on my mind, and only conservatism is keeping me on the path I'm on. Going out on a limb with progression measured in cycles, not per session, for around six weeks is outright terrifying. If someone else has milked out linear progression of +1lb a session, and switched to intermediate, I'd love to hear how much and how long your rates of progress were.

And to cap off this adventure of silliness, anyone have experience with this style of grippers?

[Mark E. Hurling]

That, sir as you probably already know is an Ivanko gripper since you bought it. I have one and I have to say I don't like it all that much. It's mainly a question of taste on my part. No criticism implied on your judgment. You can get a chart to incrementally load them by adjusting the springs. Just look up Ivanko and frankly I can't remember the rest but a few tries with things like spring adjustment ought to do it. My beef with them is the increments the adjustments produce are from 1-4 lbs. The variability drove me crazy.

But indulge me and let me ask you this question. What are your goals and objectives in grip training? I do some myself and it's based around the martial arts I do to be able crush the various and sundry danglies the human body has, or the trachea, or pinch grip and rip some even slightly loose skin to produce a cattle prod-like shock to disrupt the CNS and attention momentarily for some follow up. So I do pinch grips and claw grips. The latter with some webbing I got from Ironmind. I can load incrementally a pound at a time and both work quite well for me. Ironmind has some good grip tools that I think can meet any objective you have. I'd suggest thinking over why you want this grip and what you intend to do with it. John Brookfield has some good books on the subject.

Hope this was useful.

[tertius]

Don't be so hard on deadlifts. I personally find them more useful that squatting, but we're all different.
I'm not sure how well they'd respond to the sort of training you're doing, though.

[BryanM]

That, sir as you probably already know is an Ivanko gripper since you bought it.

Haven't ordered one yet; I'm a beacon of paranoid frugality.

My beef with them is the increments the adjustments produce are from 1-4 lbs. The variability drove me crazy.

It... does seem incredibly douchey they wouldn't just write tiny numbers (even if they were just sweet lies) next to each slot. And I see what you mean about the uneven increments, that would drive me nuts too. I was just wondering how they compared in value to CoC grippers and other options I don't even know about.

But indulge me and let me ask you this question. What are your goals and objectives in grip training?

As you can imagine, low volume chins and rows don't come close to pushing my grip strength, and I think it's something worth experimenting with - an additional few minutes of effort might go a long way. In a practical day-to-day sense, I have little logical reasons to be interested in it: in my mind the harder I squeeze the hell out of the bar, the easier it seems to be to lift, but that's probably delusion; and in tennis, off center hits don't happen that frequently.

My desire for the 200lb press is just as illogical I should point out; I'm never going to Wimbledon and unless society collapses utterly, I'll never become a Street Fighter. (Be eaten by dogs or killed by the first guy with a shovel anyway.)

What I'm looking for, is something with progress that's easily measured (versus say farmer walk for time) and won't thrash the spine (managing how beat up my back feels is always a concern. It's always in some state of angry.). Preferably crush grip over pinch/support.

The latter with some webbing I got from Ironmind. I can load incrementally a pound at a time and both work quite well for me. Ironmind has some good grip tools that I think can meet any objective you have. I'd suggest thinking over why you want this grip and what you intend to do with it. John Brookfield has some good books on the subject.

Hope this was useful.

A direction to look into, things to read, it has been. Thank you.