[VincentVinturi]

A friend of mine who is freakishly strong claims that bending nails had a distinct effect on his CNS that has stayed with him and improved tightness.

He's also into calisthenics and bodyweight stuff, tricking, outdoor gym stuff, unilateral movements, kettlebells, gymnastics, etc.

He obviously can lift a lot of weight and I find myself wondering whether these auxiliary activities improve the traditional powerlifts and if so, how and to what degree?

I've found that pistol squats and kettlebell exercises (swings, TGUs) really help improve tightness, breath control and balance and it *seems* to translate to the powerlifts but what do I know.

What do you guys think?

[CaptainChardonnay]

You can do some lifts at 50% weight for speed. Only do reps until you start to slow down. Using this technique helped my DL and SQ

[Beyond Borders]

Taking more days off.

[Hannibal]

Moderately heavy strength conditioning exercises that have a similar movement pattern are very helpful for increasing strength.

Finnish logcutters used to dominate the world at deadlifting for this reason because they would strap themselves to the logs and drag them back to camp. I imagine a stone mason would also have a serious head start on a great deadlift compared to a guy who plays pickup basketball on the weekends.

Paul Carter likes to do stiff legged deadlift to build up the muscle required to improve his regular deadlift. Incline bench has carryover to regular bench and overhead press for most folks, too. Build the muscle, then work the movement pattern.

There is nothing special about the powerlifts in particular. Like any other resistance exercise, they are a stimulus for growth.

Gymnasts for example don't even train with weights, yet a gymnast who can perform a planche pushup can likely bench press double bodyweight once they figure out the movement.

One of Coach Sommers' best students deadlifted 400 lbs at a bodyweight of 135 the first time he performed the lift. He was also already very strong at gymnastic movements (he could perform a Maltese). It doesn't mean that you need to learn how to do a Manna to achieve a good deadlift, but a strong core can't hurt either.

Two years ago I did a gymnastic program for 6 months and I chumped a double bodyweight deadlift with a double overhand grip (not even a hook grip) without touching a weight during that whole time. At the time it was a 35 lb PR. I probably could have done more with a mixed grip.

I once did a whole bunch of band work for three months and my pullups went from 8 in a set to 14 without specifically training for them.

[Hannibal]

As far as your friend, yes, bending nails would have some carryover to the powerlifts because they both require concentration and full body tension.

It might not be a huge carryover, but it's in the realm of "can't hurt".

Any form of resistance is going to have some carryover. As much as I think kettlebelling is stupid compared to barbell training (doing hundreds of snatches with 53 lbs, lol), kettlebell-centric movements, which are heavy in pull volume and emphasize explosive hip hinging, are going to have great carryover to the deadlift and all the overhead work will definitely help out benching.

All things equal, a kettlebeller who trains for a year isn't going to be as good of a bencher as the guy who hits bench two or three times a week for the same amount of time, but he should be building a muscular base so that, if he chooses to do so, he can jump right into a benching program and experience some easy gains for a while until he hits a wall.

This is why I encourage folks to have fitness equipment at home. Things like a

• pullup bar
• dip station (with a dip belt and a few weights)
• T handle or kettlebell
• resistance bands
• heavy adjustable dumbbell
• odd objects like sandbags
  

will allow you to get stronger and build muscle without being married to the squat rack across town. This is why I don't feel bad when I can't do perform a certain lift (barbell squats for example), because I can work weighted pistol squats in the meantime.

Last October I hadn't been able to do barbell squats, so I did weighted pistols a few times a week. Once I got back to the gym, I tested out my barbell squat and put 10 pounds on my old max without having touched the lift for three months.

If you have been hammering on the same three lifts for a while, it's usually not a bad idea to switch it out for something else and hammer on that until it gets stale, or take a break from training strength entirely and focus on building mass. Sometimes when your lifts have been stuck in the same place, you just have to give your nervous system a rest and get bigger.

[H1N1]

I'm a big believer in unilateral work for the lower body, and grip work.

Unilateral work really does seem to be king for athleticism and joint stability.

Grip strength to me is extremely important - much of our ability to generate tension or apply our upper body strength depends on the strength and stability of our hands and wrists. It is telling that a guy like Golovkin swears by, and spends a lot of time training, his grip, hand and wrist strength, so that at the point of impact no force is lost through a weak point in the chain.

[NewMeta]

After a year of training gymnastic style handstands I broke my long running (2 years or so) bench plateau. It continued to increase for a couple of weeks before hitting another ceiling at which point it has stayed there just a little over 1.5x my body weight.

Might have also been other stuff, I've trained skills like front, back and one arm elbow lever, planche, dynamic bridge stuff, ring strict muscle ups (which included ring dips).

I removed deadlifts from the equation completely after a year of no improvements and lack of energy, I still attempted a 1RM recently and it is still the same, haven't lost any strength there at all but also no improvement so cant comment here.

Squats havent tried any assistance outside squat variations (pistol, front, box), I don't think there is much here that benefits from other activities.

[Foolsgo1d]

- Wood cutting, moving timber around warehouses
- Construction site work
- Stone wall building
- Pushing heavy shit (anything really)

I find the gym to be a place where you refine things in your body but on the outside you're able to use it. See what works.

Are you realistically going to move stuff in excess of 200kg from a dead stop without help? At work? I more or less preferred to use sledges, putting chains on my upper body and going up elevated platforms, pulling tyres.

[Kieran]

High rep bodyweight dips are by far the most effective assistance I've ever done for bench and OHP. Unfortunately my shoulders don't like them.

To the poster that didn't deadlift for a year and then pulled the same weight, I'd say you've almost certainly made progress if you didn't train the movement in that time, and I'm sure that if you trained it for a cycle or two you'd comfortably hit a new PR.

[NewMeta]

(03-29-2016 12:24 PM)Kieran Wrote:  

High rep bodyweight dips are by far the most effective assistance I've ever done for bench and OHP. Unfortunately my shoulders don't like them.

To the poster that didn't deadlift for a year and then pulled the same weight, I'd say you've almost certainly made progress if you didn't train the movement in that time, and I'm sure that if you trained it for a cycle or two you'd comfortably hit a new PR.

Maybe but its no longer a goal of mine, adding it in the cycle means i sacrifice my other goals, but aye you make sense.

[Mentavious]

Sprinting workouts.

[realologist]

Lower body:

Sprinting, jumps (broad, box. Weighted and unweighted): Squats

Stiffed legged deadlift: Deadlift

Core: Planks, hanging legs raises feet to bar, sit-ups with medicine ball toss and catch: All lifts

Upper body:
monkey bars, grip training, pyramid pull ups(ex: 1, 2, 3, 2, 1): Deadlift, pull ups

dips, gorilla press: Bench, military press

outside work(raking, mowing, shoveling, picking things up): Grip, deadlift

All those helped a lot with everything.

[alexdagr81]

Deloading.

[Dominance]

Using a massage ball/lacrosse ball on triggerpoints. Which is basically rolling it around and finding the really sore spots in your back/shoulders/side/wherever and keeping it there around 15 seconds as a warmup before the workout while breathing deep or 30-60 seconds other days. This was recommended as doing it longer before a workout can loosen you up too much.

It's increased my lifts a little since i'm less tight and move better.

[Swell]

Pounding pussy, keeps my lumbar loose.

[rhodey]

(03-29-2016 01:38 AM)VincentVinturi Wrote:  

A friend of mine who is freakishly strong claims that bending nails had a distinct effect on his CNS that has stayed with him and improved tightness.

He's also into calisthenics and bodyweight stuff, tricking, outdoor gym stuff, unilateral movements, kettlebells, gymnastics, etc.

He obviously can lift a lot of weight and I find myself wondering whether these auxiliary activities improve the traditional powerlifts and if so, how and to what degree?

I've found that pistol squats and kettlebell exercises (swings, TGUs) really help improve tightness, breath control and balance and it *seems* to translate to the powerlifts but what do I know.

What do you guys think?

Front Squats - carried over to Deads.

[sparks]

Gymnastics did wonders to me. I found a source where you can make your own gymnastics leotard because I got a little bigger than it's allowed for an athlete, but my personal coach sounds promising. Now I practice both: gymnastics and powerlifting. Though with the latter one I'm still a newbie

[Adonis]

Weighted lunges have specifically helped me with balance in my squat game. When lifting at 1-3 RM I wobble/lose balance much less. Lunges with the bar in the front rack position has also helped me receive the bar and with coming out of the hole on the clean. I try and incorporate a circuit of lunges each week.

[Rain]

I agree with the poster above who mentioned sprinting workouts. Whenever I make a serious commitment to doing HIIT sprints at least twice a week, my energy levels skyrocket and I'm much more up for pushing myself that bit further in the gym. Not to mention the legs get a good workout and this helps with squats and calf raises.

I'm trying to get back into playing football (i.e. soccer) and this guy's workouts are really helping me (excuse the Eurodance)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1BkgSaQdeQ

[SteezeySteve]

Gymnastics strength training has some good carry over to weight lifting. I use coach sommer's progressions from 'building the gymnastic body' https://proyectoderecho2.files.wordpress...1/btgb.pdf (Coach sommer is a big shot usa national team gymnastics coach who knows his shit) and despite not using external resistance other than a set or two of weighted dips and chinups I do not feel I have lost any strength in my traditional strength movements. (I'm not super strong though. Some of my lifts are incline bench 70lbs dumbells for 3 reps,105 ohp for 5 reps,115 bent over row for 5 reps,75 lbs dumbell row for 5 reps @ 5'6-5'7 148 lbs
If you are a big ass dude with numbers worth bragging about it might be a different story)

For lower body the single leg squat will have some carry over to barbell squats and makes a good assistance movement to target your stabilizers instead of the prime movers; other fun exercises for strong legs are sled pushes/pulls and farmers carries.
If you care about longevity and you want healthy hips the natural leg curl,and glute ham raise are worth doing. Our lifestyles can cause these muscles to be weak and these can lead to a wide variety of problems like anterior pelvic tilt,and pulled hamstrings; isolating there glutes and hamstrings helps keeps the pelvis balanced.(Lots of power lifters use glute ham raises as an assistance movement)

Jumping /sprinting can help with rate of force development,but I think olympic lifts and power lifts will help with jumping and sprinting more than the other way around.

I think its funny how fitness is right now; it seems like on one end you have the obsession with barbells as the answer for everyone including people who do not compete in barbell sports and on the other end you have functional strenghtards/crossshit who suck at program design, make up retarded shit ,and chase the idea of functional strength and don't get very far because its not a concrete thing.

[Hannibal]

Did you use the killroy70 template?

Also, the gymnastic bodies website has a top notch program out now, it's called the Foundation series.

There are more than that, but foundation is supposed to be the strength foundation on which all other programs rely on.

[General Stalin]

Stretching and foam rolling. Generally increasing muscle mobility can have a huge impact on your ability to move weights.