JMSB Mission Statement and Inspiration

I want to share something that I experienced yesterday that I think will help illuminate exactly what I want to accomplish with this blog, the videos I post, and the workouts I write.  I often get the sense that some people see what I do and what I put out as a cry for attention by a meathead who wants to showoff.  Hey, if you’re sitting there reading this right now and you agree with that statement, good on you, you are entitled to that opinion.  It’s completely incorrect and if that’s your point of view I don’t give a shit what you think anyway because I don’t need that negativity in my life, but as I said, it’s your opinion.

The truth is, first and foremost, this is my passion.  Everything I do and everything I produce, whether it is a blog post, a video, a workout, or something I do on the football field I do because I love it more than I could possible explain.  When I talk about weightlifting and strength and conditioning training I get excited.  My adrenaline starts pumping and all I want to do is get after it and throw heavy ass weight over my head.  I want to share that passion with friends, family, and people I don’t even know.  I want people to see how much I love what I do and follow me and experience the same happiness that I do by hopefully finding what they’re passionate about.  I don’t care if that passion is in weightlifting or Crossfit or music or whatever it is you’re into.  I want people to see the discipline, the love, and the desire that I have and bring to everything I do, and I want them to be inspired to have the same.

The other reason I do this is to make myself and those around me better.  When I was younger, I had people who pushed me, who helped me get better in athletics and in training.  Some I knew.  I had friends and family who guided me towards success.  They taught me about commitment, hard work, and persistence, and perseverance, while others who I don’t even know personally were willing to put videos and articles online to share their knowledge and passion with the world.  I’ve learned so much from just going online and finding people who are much better and much more knowledgeable than I am, and watching and listening to everything they say and do. 

Now that I am able to look back and see how important those people were to my development as a man and an athlete, I want to give some of that back.  When I train, and push my mind and body to the limits, I hope others will watch me and find inspiration in what I do.  In turn, they’ll go out and kick ass and inspire me to continue to improve myself.

That’s what “JMSB” is all about in the end.  A community of people who love training of all kinds and desperately pursue self-improvement on a daily basis while simultaneously helping others who share their passion.

Today I woke up and my teammate Rich Vazzano wrote a status on Facebook about hitting a PR push press set of 105 kg.  This record came six months after having his shoulder reconstructed.  I have no idea if he’s been following my programming at all, but I hope that I helped inspire him in some small way to push himself to get better and to train harder than the ordinary athlete.

Then, hours later while I was at work, I received a text from my good buddy and quarterback Mike Baby Toes Santos telling me he hit a huge squat of 365 pounds for 2 reps and a 45 inch box jump.  I’ve known Toes for years and he has always heard me preach about training hard, the power of squats, and that the legs make the man.  While he’s always trained hard himself, on his own and at a performance gym, I again hope that I have been able to positively influence his training and even more importantly his mindset on training in the nearly four years I’ve known him.

Finally, one of my closest friends and teammate Mike Mancino texted me and told me he cleaned 178 pounds for 5 from the hang.  Mike is one of the hardest workers and most gifted football players I’ve ever come across.  But for years he loved the bodybuilding workouts and hated squatting, cleaning, and using the legs in training.  I have tried for so long to get him to forget the bodybuilding bullshit and train like a man and athlete.  Now, he not only embraces it, but we laugh and joke about the morons in the gym doing cheat curls and thousands of chest exercises, while we share stories about big cleans, technique, hard work and heavy weight. 

After hearing about these guys working hard and conquering their training today, I knew there was no way I could wallow in self-pity about having to work six hours before rushing to the gym to lift for the last 35 minutes it would be open.  I was so hyped all day thinking about my workout from a combination of Jon North’s weightlifting talk and the inspiration I derived from my brothers sharing their training with me that when it came time to tape up and move heavy weight I couldn’t be stopped.  Just two months after having my fourth and fifth knee surgeries I SMOKED a 135 kg (297 lb) split jerk from the rack even after not having practiced the split jerk in about four months.

Experiences like this remind me exactly why I put myself out there day in and day out.  Physically my body is beat up, but I push through the pain for my own gain, and because I remember that there are others out there who might be watching, looking for guidance or inspiration.  Mentally, when I want to quit or I don’t feel like writing a workout late on a Sunday night, I remember moments like this, when the guys around me pushed me and inspired me to get better, and I fight through.  Without the support of my teammates, my family, and everyone else out there that wakes up each day with a passion and relentlessly pursues exactly what they want, it wouldn’t be possible. 

  

Join us or get the hell out of our way.  If this sounds like something you want to be a part of, let me know, otherwise take your negativity and cheat curls somewhere else.

The Importance of Failure

The young man sat, fixated on the bar, just behind the platform.  His clothes were caked in chalk, the neck of his shirt saturated with blood.  He was very aware of the challenge that lay before him.  150 kg was loaded on the bar in front of him, a clean and jerk PR that until this day, he had never lifted with even the intention of getting under the bar.  Twice he had tried it already, and twice it had buried him.  On his first attempt, he pulled the bar, and as he went under, he had no confidence that he would make the lift, and simply let the bar fall in front of him.  On his second attempt, he had gone under the bar and  was immediately spit out by the weight, to slam unceremoniously against the platform then the wall behind him.

In the corner of the room his coach leaned against a jerk box.  Once a great lifter himself, the coach was middle-aged, with a salt-and-pepper beard and short, silver hair.  He said nothing.  The coach simply stood, watching his lifter intently, arms crossed over his chest.  Even after his competitive career had ended, the coach had continued to train, and his tree-trunk legs stretched his sweatpants, while his sprawling back possessed the peaks and valleys of a mountain range. 

The lifter stood, chalked his hands, and stepped to the platform.  Calmly he pulled set his back, pulled the bar, and went under.  To his own surprise, he caught it.  He tried to stand...then again...but his legs betrayed him.  Realizing he was pinned, he pushed himself backwards and let the bar fall to the ground.  This was his third attempt, and he had made progress, but that would be all for today.  He had already successfully clean and jerked 145 kg before attempting this max effort lift.  He was exhausted, and frustrated in his inability to hit his PR.  

The young man sat back down, unstrapped his shoes, and began to remove them.

"Again."

The young man looked up, his coach's eyes trained on him, expressionless.  "Again," he repeated.  The young man sighed, and tightened his shoes.  In his mind he knew he would never make this weight today.  He was exhausted, his body ached, and his mind yearned for a meal and to lay down in his own bed.  Despite his lack of confidence, he stood, walked slowly across the room, and chalked his hands again.  He walked to the platform, set his feet, and wrapped his hook grip around the bar.  He dropped his hips, set his back, and pulled again.  This time he didn't even pull under the bar.  He violently extended as he had many times before, but instead of moving swiftly to catch the bar, he simply let go.  In one fluid motion he stumbled backwards off the platform.  The young man's head swirled, his feet numb, his vision blurred.  

This was it.  He turned to his coach, in expectation of the words, "that's it for today." Instead, all he got was his coach, expressionless, stroking his beard. 

"Again."

The young man couldn't believe it.  What good could possibly come from trying this weight again today?  He had only even caught the clean once, and if he was honest with himself he knew he had no chance of standing up on the rep.  He hadn't even gotten to the hardest part of the lift yet, the jerk.  Why couldn't he just live to fight another day?  He ignored his disbelief, and walked back to the bar.

Again and again he pulled on the bar, and again and again the massive weight defeated him.  A half hour passed, then an hour.  Finally, he caught the clean, and with all the willpower he could muster, he began to stand.  He strained against the weight, driving his heels through the floor as he desperately tried to keep his back from snapping in half.  Halfway up, he stalled, his chest fell, and the bar with it.  

The young man's hands fell to his knees.  His head was ringing as he fought he breath.  Slowly, he pushed off his legs and stood, his movements measured but awkward with the pain and soreness of his repeated failure.  He had never felt so defeated.  For over an hours he had tried time and again, and he hadn't even been able to clean the weight.

He became aware that his coach was moving towards him.  The coach stopped just in front of him, and reached out his hand.  Confused, the young man shook it.  The coach smiled, his calloused hands enveloping those of the lifter.  The coach must have seen that his pupil didn't understand.

"You pulled it," the coach said, with pride in his voice.

Just because there is a possibility that you won't be successful does not make the venture meaningless.  Finding the courage within to try time and again even when you know that failure is imminent takes strength and mental fortitude that will benefit you in everything you do in life.  Understanding the value of failure will help you find what it takes to achieve success and give you the confidence to overcome whatever obstacles you may face, no matter how insurmountable they may seem.

Strength Is a Skill

Strength is a skill.  If you want to be strong, you have to practice being strong.  Your body will only do what you prepare it to do.  Here is a story to illustrate my point.

This past spring, I came back to school after winter break having established a foundation of strength over winter break, and began to get back into weightlifting.  Weightlifting is a sport in itself, and consists of the snatch and clean and jerk.  I had trained the lifts before, with very limited success, (my previous best numbers were 85 kg snatch and 110 kg clean and jerk) but I was once again bitten by the bug.  There was something that drew me to the challenge of weightlifting, and I immediately fell in love with throwing heavy weights overhead again. 

My clean started rocketing up, but my snatch remained mediocre.  I began programming workouts directed entirely at improving my snatch and clean and jerk outside of normal football workouts.  Soon my snatch was up to 90 kg, and I had my sights set on the FDU offensive line snatch record of 98 kg.  So, I kept training.  Over, and over. 

One Saturday morning, I was training with a buddy after morning football practice.  I was feeling good so I kept pushing, and made 95 kg.  I was about to move on to the clean and jerk when my buddy said, "C'mon go for the record!"  After some prodding, I threw on 4 kg and faced down 99kg.  

Unfortunately, the weight smoked me.  I mean I had no chance.  Each try got worse and worse.  I tried once and almost got under it.  I tried twice and left it out in front.  I tried a third time and the damn bar felt so heavy I barely even pulled it.  

I told myself that I would give it one more try, then give it up for the day.  I stepped to the bar, stopped thinking, and just pulled the goddamn bar.  I made that 99 kg snatch that day.  Unofficially breaking the Oline snatch record and putting myself one kilo away from becoming a man in Russia.  

Three weeks later I made a 107.5 kg snatch, and broke the my own Oline school snatch record for the 3rd time.  I never really stopped to consider how I had improved my snatch that much in that short an amount of time.  Now, looking back, the reason I broke through and hit these PRs was simple.  I snatched.

I didn't get significantly stronger in those three weeks.  Between spring football practice, being beat up through a combination of my own lifting and football lifting, and being on my feet all day as a strength and conditioning intern at Seton Hall University, I was not doing anything special.  I was simply getting in the gym, week in and week out, and snatching.

What many people don't realize is that strength is as much a product of the central nervous system as it is muscle.  The brain is an incredibly powerful tool.  The brain controls all the functions of the human body.  This includes muscle contraction and movement.  Through training and repetition, you can teach your mind to order your body in a way that will improve technique, handle more weight, and move in a way that will achieve your goals without spending time worrying about programming or building muscle.  

I say it all the time when people ask me how to improve their pull ups.  There's an old saying, if you want to be good at something, do it every day.  If you want to be strong, you need to practice strength.  Don't stress about your programming, don't worry that you're going to be "overtrained," and don't lose your mind if you're missing maximal effort lifts.  Sometimes you just need to keep pounding at a heavy weight to teach your body how to handle it.

I heard an incredible quote from legendary American weightlifter Donny Shankle that illustrates this point.  "Learn the feeling of what heavy is and display the courage of a champion to deal with it."    

If you want to be good at the clean, you need to go to the gym and practice the clean.  If you want to improve your pull up numbers, you need to teach your central nervous system to handle your own bodyweight.  If you want to even improve something like the depth of your squat, you need to get in the gym and squat deep!  

Too many people spend too much time on the Internet looking at the hundreds of programs for the magic bullet that will take them to the promised land.  If you want to be strong, practice being strong. If you want to handle heavy weight, you need to handle that weight.  

In sports, athletes practice their craft everyday.  In football we don't worry about how sore we are or how beat up we are.  We still go out to the field every single day and beat the shit out of each other because we need to hammer in, through repetition, the techniques and strategies that will allow us to be successful.  It is no different in lifting.  Get in the gym, put in the time, and move some heavy weight!  Stop worrying about how to build your lifts through all sorts of bullshit programming and assistance movements.  Your body can only handle what you prepare it to handle.  If you want to go do something, go do it.  

Man vs. Bar--The Moment of Truth

His back is sore.  His legs are numb.  He sits alone, propped up on a small bench that rests near the gym’s right wall.  Just outside the large garage door at the front of the gym, clouds have set in.  Rain pours down, pounding the cars sitting on the gravel just outside.

The wet weather provides no relief from the oppressive heat.  The air in the gym is heavy, making it difficult to breathe.  A bead of sweat runs down his face, hanging briefly from the tip of his nose before falling to the floor to take its place alongside others, forming a small puddle.  His shirt has been completely soaked since the moment he finished lacing his shoes. 

He slowly stands, and begins to make his way over to the metal canister in the center of the gym.  He reaches in, rubbing the block of chalk against the inside of his thumb, up his index finger, and across his palms.  Across the gym the bar rests in the center of a long platform.  He never turns to look at it.  The entire time he prepares for the lift, he never looks at the bar.  The weight on the bar is irrelevant.  It doesn’t matter if it’s 80 kilos or 140.  He knows it has defeated him before and it will again unless he is able to use the technique he has been drilling day in and day out for months.

There is no crowd, aside from the other three lifters that sit, silent, scattered throughout the small room.  There are no medals or trophies.  There is no money or glory on the line today.  But even so, as he walks across the room to the platform and approaches the bar, everything stops. 

A young woman sits on a block in the far corner of the room, watching intently.  On another side of the room, a man in what was once a light blue shirt stands a bright yellow plate on its side as he directs his eyes to the platform. 

He bends down, and begins to set his grip.  The air is so moist that the chalk has already liquefied on his hands.  The tape that protects his thumb is soaked through with blood, and has begun to peel off slightly.  He tucks his thumb under the bar, ignoring the sharp pain.  Immediately the sweat on his hands makes the bar slick, but he tightens his grip anyway, rubbing the chalk on his hands into the bar. 

He drops his hips and fixes his eyes on nothing, a point somewhere out in the world just above the horizon.  His focus is sharp, and he notices none of the eyes watching him from throughout the gym, or the silence that has fallen on the room.  He exhales, and allows his hips to rise up, then takes a deep breath in, holds it, and drops his hips again.

The lift lasts seconds.  Months of training come down to this moment.  It lasts no more than three seconds, but to him, it feels like an eternity.  He notices how heavy the bar feels as he begins the first pull from the ground, but he continues to accelerate the bar anyway.  Keeping his shoulders out over the bar, he pulls harder, moving the bar into the second pull faster.  Then, his instincts take over, and he violently extends, pulling on the bar with all his strength and power, while pulling himself down and under.

It’s the moment of truth.  He snaps his upper body into place, locking in his arms and upper back, allowing his legs to relax to absorb the weights momentum.  He pauses, the bar extended over his head, squatting so low that he feels as if his ass must be inches from the floor.  For a second he feels the bar wobble, but something inside him refuses to allow the lift to slip from his grasp now.

He stands, his eyes still locked directly ahead, the bar raised triumphantly above him.  The other lifters in the gym clap and cheer, each of them able to identify with and share in his victory.  He slams the bar back to the ground, and lets out a roar.  In that moment, he is a champion.  

The Refusal To Lose

It took me years and some hard lessons to learn what it means to truly have a mindset of success.  The world is filled with people who claim they WANT greatness.  They talk a big game, but when it comes time to step up and display the tenacity inherent in those of us who refuse to lose, they fall short.  The difference is that many WANT to be great, they WANT to achieve success, but few NEED it. 

My story begins sometime in the Stone Age.  About eight years ago now, I was a junior football player at Lenape High School in Medford, New Jersey.   I had talent, and at six foot and 220 pounds played offensive guard.  I earned a varsity spot after camp as a junior, and through hard work and perseverance, became a two-way starter by the middle of my junior year. 

By senior year, I was a captain, a two-way starter, and was the teams starting kicker.  I’ve never considered myself naturally athletic.  I attribute my athletic success at the time to nothing but hard work.  By the end of my high school career I had earned 1^st Team All Conference, 1^st Team All County, and 2^nd Team All Group 4 honors.  When it came time to train in the offseason, I did EVERYTHING the coaches asked of me.  I ran sprints until I puked.  I lifted as hard as I could.  I pushed my teammates.  I refused to lose…

However, I did nothing on my own.  I went home after every training session, every camp, every practice, and just kicked back and dreaded the next one.  I HATED training, but I did it because I knew I had to, to be successful.  I look back on my high school career now, years removed, and realize that I did what I had to do to get by.

At the end of my high school career, I made the decision to go to Fairleigh Dickinson University to continue my college career.  At the same time, I had a girlfriend, and was recovering from a shoulder surgery.  I became so lazy, so embarrassingly complacent, that I ballooned up to 262 pounds, 30 pounds heavier than I’d ever been, while gaining no strength and no muscle.  I wanted to be the life of the party, I wanted to be accepted by everyone, I wanted to live it up, as I saw.  My priorities were completely fucked up, and by the time I came I entered camp at FDU I was fat, slow, cocky, and completely unprepared for what was to come.

Over the next three years, I struggled through the hardest time in my life.  My freshmen year against Delaware Valley College, I let my guard down after a blocked extra point and ended up getting clipped about 30 yards behind the play.  My cleat caught in the turf and my body kept going, leaving my knee the victim.  This was my first ACL tear, and my meniscus and MCL went with it. 

To be honest, looking back on it, I wasn’t even THAT disappointed.  I was a freshmen, I got to play in one of the greatest wins in FDU football history, as we defeated the number 14 ranked team in the nation, and now I had a battle scar as an excuse for why I could no longer participate.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was full of excuses.  I had shoulder surgery, I had to work, I had a girlfriend, and now I had a busted up knee…my life had become one big excuse for why I had all the potential in the world, and yet hadn’t achieved any real success.

Two years went by, and unfortunately, I sustained two more ACL tears, which were followed by two more wonderful ACL surgeries.  I took the opportunity to start drinking, a lot.  I justified it as just a college kid living it up and enjoying the golden years but looking back on it, I was just drinking way too damn much.  I get it.  Every kid wants to be cool.  Every kid wants to go to parties and fuck girls and get wasted and be the fucking man.  Let me promise you something.  There will ALWAYS be another party.  There will ALWAYS be another opportunity to get wasted and bang a girl you’ll regret in the morning.  But if you choose to make that your priority over your goals, you will never reach your potential.

While this period lead to some of the lowest lows in my life, it also prepped me for the maturation necessary to get me onto the path toward success.  I have no idea when it happened, but I began to develop a fire, a passion, and a hunger that pushed me towards success.  I say it all the time but “obsessed” is a term the lazy use to describe the motivated.  Let me say that again, “OBSESSED” IS A TERM THE LAZY USE TO DESCRIBE THE MOTIVATED.  Many people called me a meathead, many people called me obsessed, and many people looked at me as a loser who would rather spend my time training than drinking or partying like I should be.

I dove further and further into strength and conditioning training.  I became more and more interested in the way the body works, and how I could improve myself through physical training.  I wanted to challenge myself.  I wanted to better myself.  And most importantly I wanted to get fucking huge!  I hated the fatass me that had developed through laziness at the end of my senior year in high school.  I never wanted to let myself feel that way again.  To this day, I spend HOURS every single night reading about strength and conditioning and weightlifting and watching weightlifting videos.  I wake up everyday excited about training.  I love the feel of a heavy bar in my hands, I take pride in my lifts, and love passing on my passion to my friends.  I often have to be told to take it easy or take time off to recover, because I just refuse to sit still.  I believe if I’m not improving, I’m dying, all the while someone else is getting better than me. 

My “obsession” paid off, and as a senior I completed my first full year of college football without injury, starting 9 games at left tackle.  As a fifth year senior, I was a captain at FDU, started 9 games, was a 2^nd Team All Conference performer, and the Team MVP.

I tell this story because I want people to understand how I came to this point.  There was a time when people around me would hear about my three knee surgeries and ask, “What are you doing?  You’re still trying to play football?  Are you crazy?”  Though I never took it seriously, there were times I questioned whether I’d ever be a successful college football player.  There was a time where most of my energy was devoted to the next time I’d be getting drunk.  It was a waste of my time, a waste of my energy, and I am damn lucky that it didn’t cost me more than it did.  The only way I came out of this was to change my mindset.  I came to a point where I downright refused to lose. 

My priorities changed.  I was finally healthy, and a full season of college football became a reality to me.  I no longer cared about drinking or partying.  I devoted everything I had to the game of football.  There was and is nothing more satisfying than the feeling of spilling everything you having toward a cause.  That’s how I feel after every lifting session, that’s how I feel after every practice, and that’s how I feel after every game.  I give everything I have because I don’t know any other way.  The fact is, if you want to be successful, it can’t be a part-time job.  You can’t show up whenever you feel like it and put in some work and then say that’s enough I’m sure that’s good enough for today.  You need to push.  You need to push yourself past the point of failure every day.  You need to love and relish competition.  It doesn’t matter whom it’s with.  One day your competing on the practice field with your teammates, another day your competing against yourself in the weight room, and on another day your competing against EVERYTHING from the weather to the crowd to your opponent to your own personal exhaustion come game day.  Do not accept defeat.  Do not allow anything else to get in your way.  Attack each day like it’s the last opportunity you will have to achieve success.  Once you begin to see the world this way, you will finally be on track to achieve your goals.

The truth is, I’ve been around the Fairleigh Dickinson University football program for a long time now, and there has been a culture of losing.  Now some may say of course there is, look at the record you’ll see there is a culture of losing.  But it’s so much more than the record and the on-field performance.  It’s the athletes.

First let me just say I have met some of my best friends and some great teammates in my nearly six years in the program.  BUT, the reality is that there have been more kids that can talk a big game and do nothing to back it up than anything else.  I can’t even count the number of people that have come into the program, run their mouth, and then exited, having made no positive impact other then to burden us with lies about how great they were in the past.  I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit what you’ve done in the past.  What can you do now?  Do you refuse to lose?  Do you wake up everyday and kick ass?  Do you bring anger, a fire, and a passion to everything you do that will make not only yourself but also your teammates better?  I’m sick of teammates that care about nothing but establishing their own personal profile among their teammates.  I swear there have been more athletes on FDU’s teams that talk and talk from the sidelines, perpetually injured or forever riding the bench then I ever imagined I’d meet.  It’s unfortunate, but there are some great athletes in the program, who love the game and love the team and give their all toward the common cause of victory, but there just aren’t enough of them.  In order for a football team to be successful EVERYONE must be working toward a single goal. 

The point is, take pride in what you do.  If you make a decision to walk down a path, like football, attack it with fire in your eyes and intensity in your heart.  Don’t ever allow yourself to look back and ask, “What could have been?” or “Could I have done more?”  Those that are successful understand that success isn’t given, and it isn’t earned when things are going well.  Success is an ongoing process of trials and adversity through which one is tested to see if they possess the fortitude to be successful.  If you can get back up, regardless of what obstacles you face or failures you encounter, and outright refuse to lose, you can call yourself successful.  This is the mindset of success, and all champions possess it.  

GET UP! Improve Your Pull Up Numbers

Yes ladies and gentleman, I'm writing this post at 2:45 am sippin' on a nice cup of coffee because I'm just too excited about it to wait until tomorrow.  One of the most frequent questions I get, especially from my football teammates, is how can improve my pull up numbers.  Pull ups are, in my opinion, the best bodyweight exercise you can do, and quite possibly one of the best overall upper body builders imaginable.  But what makes them so great is also what makes them so difficult.  For many people, pulling their own bodyweight is an extremely difficult, maybe even impossible task.  I know that throughout my youth I couldn't do a single pull up.  So the question is, how do we take this weakness and make it a strength?

Anyone that knows me knows I love pull ups, and I'm damn good at them too.  I take pride in pull ups, and at a bodyweight of 230 pounds, I've done 20 straight overhand strict pull ups, I can do sets of 12 L-sit pull ups with my legs held straight out in front of me, weighted pull ups with up to 100 pounds of extra weight attached to a belt, and at one point actually began delving into more difficult gymnastics movements.  Pull ups have helped me build upper body strength and mass like no other movement I've done, and have helped me to maintain healthy shoulders by building the all-important upper back muscles that are often neglected.  If I could go from an overweight kid who couldn't even manage a flexed arm hang to walking down my hall and banging out 12+ pull ups whenever I want, you can to.  Here the three most important things to remember when trying to improve you pull ups.

1) Frequency

I truly believe when it comes to bodyweight training especially, frequency is king.  We often forget in a world where everyone is telling us to be careful about overtraining, that strength is a SKILL.  The fact is, the more you practice, the more you will improve.  While that isn't a hard and fast rule for every situation, it absolutely applies to pull ups.

The best thing that ever happened to my bodyweight training was my brother getting one of those total gym things for a gift.  While it's useless for just about anything else, it is a sturdy and reliable pull up bar that has hung in my doorway for years.  There are some days where every time I walk down the hallway, I'll hop up and bang out a set of 10.  By the time the day is over I've done well over 100 pull ups without giving it a second thought.  Other times I'll practice pause pull ups and L-sit pull ups.  When I first started getting into pull ups having a pull up bar in my house was an invaluable tool, just as it was following the numerous surgeries I've had.  It's an incredible tool that can be used nearly everyday.

Simply put, if you want to teach your body to handle its own weight, you have to practice handling your own weight.  The best tip I can give is to invest money in a pull up bar and hang it in your doorway.  Start slow, doing a few sets a day leaving a couple reps in the tank on each set.  As you improve, do more sets throughout the day, or fewer sets with more reps.  Do this every single day.  Make it part of you life just like sleeping and eating.  

Another way to increase your volume of pull ups is to do them in between your sets at the gym.  In between sets of upper body lifts, or even in between sets of lower body lifts, walk over to the pull up bar, and bang out a set.  When doing this don't push the reps anywhere near failure.  You don't want to hurt your other lifts by exhausting your body doing pull ups on the side, but rather to build volume.  For example, in between sets of overhead presses, if you can do around 10 pull ups, you would perform sets of 5.  If you perform 5 sets that 25 pull ups.  Over time this increase in volume will tremendously impact your bodyweight control and strength.

The simplest way to put this is that if you truly want to get better at pull ups, do them every day.

2) Strength

The pull up is a movement that requires tremendous strength in the upper back and abdominal muscles. The reason that so many people struggle with pull ups, aside from being overweight, which we'll get into later, is that they neglect the pulling muscles.  For some reason, men in our culture are OBSESSED with building huge chests.  I see guys spending more time on this one muscle group than I spend on an entire Olympic weightlifting workout.  Over years of training like every other guy you see in your gym, people often develop an imbalance where their pushing muscles are much stronger than their pulling muscles, (upper back musculature and biceps).  

Now you might be saying, sure I do the bodybuilding chest day, but I also do a back day.  The problem with this is, while people are willing to train their bench press heavy, they often don't understand how to train the upper back muscles for strength.  They end up spending another two hours (ridiculous) on high volume upper back work that not only doesn't build strength, but overtrains the muscles, breaking them down far past the point of progress.

So, how do you build absolute strength in the upper back that will help with pull ups.  I hate to be a broken record, but the basics are ALWAYS the best.  HEAVY deadlifts, HEAVY cleans and snatches, HEAVY barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, and machine rows, HEAVY and STRICT lat pulldowns, HEAVY ASS carries...get the picture?  I can't get into exact sets and rep ranges because programming could be an entire article in of itself.  However, some guidelines to follow are that strength is best built in the 3-7 rep range, while muscle hypertrophy (muscle building) is best developed in sets that range between 8-15 reps.  Vary your reps, vary your sets, and lift HEAVY.  

I don't care what ANYONE has told you, if you want to get stronger, you're going to have to lift some heavy ass weight at some point.

3) Body Weight

The final piece of the puzzle that people neglect is their weight.  How many fat people have you ever seen banging out high rep sets of pull ups?  The reality is that pull ups aren't just about absolute strength.  They are a product of your ability to control and handle your own bodyweight.  Therefore, the lower your bodyweight, the easier pull ups should be.  If you're carrying around excess fat, you're losing reps.

Now, I've never been in favor of dropping a ton of weight just for the sake of doing more pull ups.  It seems like a cop out to me, but the reality is, if you're badly overweight, it's time to do something about it if more pull ups is your goal.  It may be as simple as cutting out unhealthy desserts or fast foods, or it may be more difficult and you may have to pay attention more to details.

The point is, if you are carrying excess fat, that weight is in no way shape or form helping you.  Get rid of it, and feel better about yourself and your numbers.

Final Thoughts

To sum this all up, the three steps you have to take if you want to improve your numbers of this most basic of bodyweight movements are:  build volume through frequently doing pull ups, build maximal strength through heavy lifting, and eliminate excess fat that is weighing you down.  Take these three steps and I promise you with commitment and hard work you too can pull up like a champ!

The Five Best Ways to Build Mountainous Traps

This post was inspired by a big strong man I know who spends too much time doing shrugs!  Everyone wants huge, mountainous, imposing traps. Having large and developed trap muscle can give your body an overall larger appearance, and lets not kid ourselves, it's beach season.  Who doesn't want to look bigger?

What most people fail to realize though, is that the shrugs they have grown up watching every other guy in the gym do to build their traps are not the most effective way to build that no neck look.  Muscles aren't designed to be isolated and worked by themselves, they're designed to function as part of a unit.  That's why isolation movements like shrugs don't effectively build traps the way other exercises can.

First, squeeze your shoulder blades together and reach your arm back and feel just to the side of your neck while your shoulder blades are squeezed.  You should feel a lump of a muscle on each side of your neck.  This is your trap muscle, and though it looks like the traps are small muscles that just sit on your shoulders, they actually run down the back toward the spine.  Follow the muscle from your neck down your back and you'll realize it's far more than a small muscle on the shoulders used to shrug.

So, now that we have established that the traps connect to and are part of the upper back musculature, what do the muscles of the upper back serve to do?  First, they serve to help the body in pulling movements.  Pulling things into the body is a responsibility of the muscles that retract the shoulders, which are the upper back muscles.  Secondly, they provide stabilization.  When the body is tasked with picking up or carrying heavy objects, the upper back muscles contract and stabilize the upper body so that proper posture can be maintained.  

With these facts in mind, here are a list of my five best exercises for building HUGE traps.

1.  Pulls From the Ground

Exercises like deadlifts, olympic lifts (snatch/clean and jerk), and clean and snatch pulls from the ground are the best ways to build the traps.  Heavy deadlifts, olympic lifts, and pulls from the ground allow you to use heavy weight while forcing you to stabilize the upper body by contracting the upper back.  The best way to build muscle is to overload the body with heavy ass weight and these three lifts from the ground allow you to use some of the heaviest weights of any.

2.  Olympic Lifts/Pulls From the Hang

When lifting from the hang, you won't be able to use as much weight, but you get an added benefit.  Cleans, snatches, clean pulls, and snatch pulls from the hang are more difficult because they force you to deadlift the bar from the ground, then hold the bar while performing the lifts with no momentum.  However, while the weight you use will be less, you will be forced to hold the bar in the your hands for a greater period of time, which also forcers you to stabilize yourself longer.  This time under tension makes lifts from the hang a phenomenal way to build up bigger traps.

3.  Carries

The simplest way to build huge traps is to carry heavy shit.  It doesn't matter what it is.  I've done carries with kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, stones, boxes, trap bars, etc.  I've done carries overhead, suitcase style, goblet style, in the rack position, etc.  It doesn't matter.  Mix it up and find what works for you.  But if you want to build impressive traps, start adding carries two to three times a week at the end of your workouts.

4.  Overhead Work

Military presses, push presses, Klokov presses (behind neck snatch-grip press), jerks, and muscle snatches are some of the most effective ways to build not only traps, but a huge upper back and shoulder structure to match.  

5.  Heavy Rows

All of the movements I've described so far have involved the upper back as a stabilizer during the movement.  Barbell, kettlebell, and dumbbell rows for the upper back to contract to retract the shoulders and pull the weight into the body.  Heavy rows are one of the most effective ways to build a huge back and are often forgotten as a way to build huge traps as well.