Am I Crazy???

Skip the crunches!

Sorry to hear about your back, hopefully you’re back at it soon.

I’d love to be able to say don’t do abs but you do need strong abs to help stabalize the back. Your problem is likely in the volume of ab work you did after doing a demanding back workout. Try doing lower volume earlier in the workout, like during your warmup. Balance and progression are the main points.

I’m 50 as well and my training partner is my 14 year old son.

Stu

I’m hurting bad this morning as expected but I know this pain and I’ll be ready to train again in 1-2 days.

Stu, how cool is that, to have your 14 year old son as training partner. Since he was six, I tried my son in a dozen different sports, but nothing caught on. He didn’t appear interested in weight training either, until this summer, when the bug bit. He never missed a workout with me the whole summer, and never complained one time. That’s an awesome experience as a Dad.

But I'm still I little confused on abs, which is not surprising. The only time I had a good six pack was when I spent a year cutting up after my college athletic career. Then I did a million crunches. You know, I'm not totally old school, which believes the basic power lifts build true core strength more than any ab work, but I am not sure WHICH ab work is most back-friendly, and which rep/set scheme also. 

 The comments about "progression" got me thinking. When I feel particularly strong on a given day, I tend to work up to furious intensity, trying to set a new PB set of 4-6 reps on EACH exercise. There may be a cummulative stress on the back for doing this, and clearly "throwing in" max abs at the end is asking for trouble. How do you, and any of you other over 35 lifters fit in your ab work?

What’s crazy is getting addicted to this forum after just two days and jonesing for the next post! I got my fix reading old threads and articles…what a great site. It’s like twenty years of M&F and Iron Man all collected in one place.

[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
What’s crazy is getting addicted to this forum after just two days and jonesing for the next post! I got my fix reading old threads and articles…what a great site. It’s like twenty years of M&F and Iron Man all collected in one place.[/quote]

Just what the Dr. ordered! Welcome to the site.
Jimmy T

Hi Doc! I’ve only recently started doing cleans. I always knew I needed them in my training, but never knew what I was doing. I saw an article here that helped me get going. They’re a killer full body movement! I’m looking for a lot more of those to do.

Made the mistake of doing them toward the end of my workout the other day, and crapped out after a couple sets. Help me learn what the different parts of the lift are called please.

A hanging clean is starting from the knees right? And the movement up to the chest is what? The clean?

Then the overhead press is something else?
After the overhead press, I’ve been lowering the bar back to the chest, then back down to the knees, and then the next rep starts from there. Anyway, I hoped maybe you could help me figure out what the hell I’m doing.

[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
I’m hurting bad this morning as expected but I know this pain and I’ll be ready to train again in 1-2 days.

Stu, how cool is that, to have your 14 year old son as training partner. Since he was six, I tried my son in a dozen different sports, but nothing caught on. He didn’t appear interested in weight training either, until this summer, when the bug bit. He never missed a workout with me the whole summer, and never complained one time. That’s an awesome experience as a Dad.

But I'm still I little confused on abs, which is not surprising. The only time I had a good six pack was when I spent a year cutting up after my college athletic career. Then I did a million crunches. You know, I'm not totally old school, which believes the basic power lifts build true core strength more than any ab work, but I am not sure WHICH ab work is most back-friendly, and which rep/set scheme also. 

 The comments about "progression" got me thinking. When I feel particularly strong on a given day, I tend to work up to furious intensity, trying to set a new PB set of 4-6 reps on EACH exercise. There may be a cummulative stress on the back for doing this, and clearly "throwing in" max abs at the end is asking for trouble. How do you, and any of you other over 35 lifters fit in your ab work?

[/quote]

I meant to respond to you yesterday but I wanted to wait until I got home to check a reference. I wrote a long response and then the server crashed and my post was lost.

Get this book from the library and read chapter 7:
Science and Practice of Strength Training by Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky.

The exercises easiest on your back are crunches, reverse crunches, lateral crunches and pressing the small of your back against the wall of floor. The book recommends holding the contraction for 3-5 seconds for each rep and to do them several time during the day.

The chapeter has a lot on rehab and why abs are so important to weightlifting.

My 14 year old is taking up wrestling and he’s guite good at it. He actually asked me to help him get into condition. What a rush, that he values my opinion that much. I though teenagers knew it all and us old guys were all stupid. Anyway, it’s nice that we have this in common.

Stu

Thanks, Stu, I read a bunch of stuff on abs yesterday while tending to my sore back, but what you suggested I like better, and I’ll get the book. I’m about to make one hell of a dent in my credit card, ordering a big batch of Biotest products and several books and DVD’s that look good. Training knowledge has grown exponentially while I was out of the game.

However, I know enough to train my son, and yeah, it’s really amazing how in the gym, there is zero back-talk, gratitude for suggestions, and total respect. Even at home, the attitude has gotten far better. When I played video games with him, he would forget I was his Dad and talk to me like a fellow teenager (like shit).This should be standard Training protocol for Dads-after puberty hits, take your kids to the gym!

By the way, back’s 80% better, chomping at the bit to get back to iron. I was lucky to get a high quality e-stim machine after my accident. It helps me pop back quicker. However, I don’t think it gives you abs, like the stupid rip off products you see being advertised. I wish it did-I could skip the crunches. Doc

DZ, love talking about cleans. A clean is from the floor to the chest. A power clean means you bends your knees only a little, at most your thighs are just above paralell. Squat cleans are more advanced, where the lifter catches the bar much lower, in a low squat position, and then stands up. A hang clean is done with the bar held just above the knees.

 The press is simply the pushing of the weight from shoulders overhead to lockout, with the legs kept straight. Pushing the weight up with additional leg thrust is a push-press, and a jerk involves the complex movement of splitting the legs underneath while lifting the weight overhead.

 The different components can be done separately, and invariably are in dedicated Olympic lifters and other serious weightmen. Doing the full clean and jerk, or clean and press, is a tremendous overall strength and conditioning exercise, but is very taxing on the body, especially with high volume, and shouldn't be done too often. 

 I am currently trying to figure out which combination of separate components will work best for me now. I have found that if I do more than 3-5 reps in full cleans, my back and grip start to give out. Many lifters use straps to prevent grip give-out, especially on hang cleans, as catching the bar repeatedly at the thighs can easily loosen the grip. 

Hang cleans focus more on the upper body parts of the lift than from the floor. Right now I pull two days a week, one day hangs, one day from the floor. I clean and press on a third day, but only because my clean is way ahead of my press right now. Later on, I will get back to just taking the weights off the rack for overhead presses and jerks.
Hope that helps. Doc

Doc

Of course the best ab exercises are squats and deadlifts. I hope you’ll be fit to get back to them soon.

I’ve been doing cleans lately as well but I’ve stalled out at 145#. I know it’s my technique. I don’t have anyone to show me what I’m doing wrong. I know I don’t hold the bar close enough to the body and when I try correcting this I slow down too much. I suppose lowering the weights and doing hang cleans for a while might help.

Stu

I’m not an OL coach, but I have done 10,000 cleans in my life, and I used to train with an Olympian with perfect technique, so here goes. If someone smarter than me in OL sees this and corrects me, GREAT.

First, figure out which part of the lift is hardest. Lower body dominant people will rip the bar off the floor but peter out above the waist. Upper body dominant folks tend to accelerate above the knees. If you're the first, do more high pulls keeping the bar close to the body. The second group should do more clean grip deadlifts.

I love hang cleans, with straps, and I notice a lot of football players and non OL lifters do also. Although they are great for upper back/trap mass, I believe they can deteriorate technique, tending to cause a reverse C motion of the bar to the shoulders. I catch myself still doing this sometimes. Usually I can tell because my elbows, at catch, are pointing more down than out. Hangs have their place, but when you do them, focus on a vertical pull and a rapid racking of the bar on your shoulders.

If you work on all three phases, focusing more effort on the deficient part, your clean should shoot up in no time.

Down the road, you can get more sophisticated if you want, as I plan to. The best way to check pull efficiency is to videotape the clean from the side. Watch the lightweight lifters on You Tube. From the side, the bar goes up in a perfect vertical vector with no wasted force horizontally.

 Probably TMI. Just focus on snapping those elbows under the bar and out as quickly as possible.            Doc

AHA! I make a few decent posts, most of you say nice things and cleverly assure me I’m not crazy at all WRONG!!!
Listen to this. I throw my back out two days ago, spent all day yesterday horizontal with ice, e-stim, Alleve, etc. Tonight, my son wants to go to the gym, and I secretly am hoping he asks. I say SURE. But in my mind, I’m thinking-just do light cardio, stretch, a few crunches, and maybe one weight machine.

Sounds good so far, right? So I do the stretching and light cardio, and we go to do machine benches. After a few sets, I feel good. I put it on the stack (250) and do 12 reps. No great feat, but a CPR (comeback PR) for me. So we move on to the pec deck, or whatever the hell the new age, wide grip elliptical pec contraction machine is called nowdays.

Three sets into it, I’m hating it. Pussy machine. Now, bad things happen. I start to hallucinate. A voice comes into my head…“you must power clean today, you must power clean today.” These are called command hallucinations in psychiatry and are a hallmark feature of schizophrenia.

I ask my son “Hey, wanna do cleans?” He looks at me in disbelief. “But Dad, what about your back? You couldn’t walk right yesterday.” I say “Let me just try some out, light weight, see how it feels.” I then go into some dissociative state, and the next thing I know, I am yelling while catching 280 a little out front of me.

I hold it at my chest for seemingly a minute, and then reality comes back to me, and I struggle to gingerly set the weight down on the pristine World’s gym floor which a girl nearby is eager to mop. I am temporarily too shocked at my own behavior to revel in a new clean CPR.

After doing crunches, which actually felt better than they ever had, I go home, and my back starts yelling back at me. Who knows how I’ll be tomorrow. Maybe OK, maybe crippled.
See! Crazy or stupid, one.

[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
I ask my son “Hey, wanna do cleans?” He looks at me in disbelief. “But Dad, what about your back? You couldn’t walk right yesterday.” I say “Let me just try some out, light weight, see how it feels.” [/quote]

If I were your momma, I’d give you a beating for that!
Do you want your last words to be “Hey son, watch this!!!”
Or end up like Christopher Reeve? Doctor, proctor, nobody likes a show-off.

They don’t call me Yo Momma for nothin’!!

I was about to take my time-out (let’s see, one minute for year of age, I’ll be in there a long time…) But wait, do you punish mentally ill children for bad behavior?? This really is a disease. Cleanaholism.

Oh, crap. I forgot. You DO punish mentally ill children for bad behavior. OK, gotta sign off, take my punishment. Maybe I'll do crunches while I'm in there.

Seriously, at least for a minute, I know I pushed the envelope way too far yesterday. However, luckily, I’m fine today, just good soreness. Thanks to Stu and others, I figured out what did me in the other day was the volume and progresion of the workout plus ending in an exercise that just is wrong for me-hanging knee-ups for abs.

I’m really trying not to be in denial, but cleans have never hurt me, in my whole life. I’ve been hurt doing deadlifts, incline bench, regular bench, snatches, press behind neck, and preacher curls. I remember every one of those times vividly. I’m trying to stay smart, but right now I feel like when I was 22 and got my first real car-a black Berlinetta Camaro.

I wanted to drive it fast and often. I got my body back after years of disability, and I want to drive it hard and often as well. It’s not to prove or show anything to anyone. All my best lifts I did in college, and I’ll never match them again. I just love training hard.

But I've got to take it easier, or my luck could run out.

[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
I just love training hard.

[/quote]

Nothing wrong with training hard. As long as you train smart. It’s just like driving. Any asshole can drive fast. It’s knowing how to control the car you’re in that ultimately wins the race.

Random Thoughts From A Rambling Mind

  1. Do I have to eat 30 plus grams protein for breakfast this morning?

  2. “We are all still just superstitious savages in the jungle”-Hugh Hefner

  3. My right shoulder hurts this morning-did I sleep on it wrong or was it the overhead tricep extensions I did yesterday?

  4. Do I REALLY have to eat 30 plus grams of protein this morning?

  5. Having a glass of Florida Orange juice. It is so good. I know I am really going to Glycemic Index Hell.

  6. Gave up MILK today thanks to Spurlock’s rant about pus and inflamed cow titties.

  7. Arms are really getting big-getting harder to put gel on my hair.

  8. Still got way too much bodyfat-can’t see a vein on my body except on my shin.

  9. I like this HRT a lot, but damn, today is shot day.

  10. Beautiful morning outside.

  11. Out of fish oil-damn, should I go to the store on a Sunday or just enjoy the day at home?

  12. Maybe I’ll watch Conan The Barbarian today for the 22nd time.

  13. “They will all drown in lakes of blood. Now they will know why they fear the dark. Now they will learn why they fear the night.”
    -Thulsa Doom, seriously pissed off at Conan.

  14. I’ll eat the damn protein.

Great thread so far…

Ex-power lifter here. This past year I got into Oly lifting. My knees are shot and my shoulder is less than capable but it is unacceptable for me to stop lifting. I actually found the Oly lifts to strengthen what was lacking from the power lifts. As well, they are less torturous to my body due to how dynamic they are.

What I really feel made a huge difference for me, and transitioned nicely into the big lifts are kettlebells. I am sold on these babys. I still use them as support to the lifts or just to get a super metcon spike.

My lifts are poor: snatch being just under 200 and my power clean being about 250, but it is from inconsistency more than desire. Then being inconsistent leads to technique flaws as well. I find that when I get a good couple hours to work on the pulls, my technique tightens up.

Can we post some favorite workouts?.. with poundages?.. not to measure our cocks, but to illustrate jumps in weights and rests between sets.

Laters

I’m to lazy to go back and see who wrote it, but I have a few opinions:

  • abs are not necessarilly strengthened from squats and deads, especially if you’re doing them power style. OH squats are the king, high bar squats, front squats, conventional deads, ballistic resistance (the catches), and the myriad of calesthenics/gymnastics (pick one or two) will round you out.

  • we (old and injured), as well as young newbies, should not be doing ANY single joint movements: tricep pressdowns (sorry Doc), bicep curls, leg extensions, etc.

  • guys like us, who have been trained for years to chose a high protein food item should not have to count grams. By now we instictually will grab for a steak over mac and cheese. Unless you have OCD (like my wife) you needn’t waste precious time counting grams and assuming you’re not getting enough protein.

  • fat is preferable to the body over carbs - carbs are poison (that’s my OCD kickin in)

I’ve got others, but this is what has been sparked by my reading.

Al

Oh oh, my paranoia’s really kickin in now, cause Al’s on to my OCD. How did he know? From just one sentence??? ARRGHHHH!!!

Seriously, I love protein, but some mornings I just want to eat some fruit and granola. I’ve done the math trying to see if adding yogurt to a high protein cereal gets me anywhere near a passable protein load. No cigar.

Anyway, an old story from my college days concerning OL tecnique. I lacked proper flexibility, still do, despite a lot of stretching. So I got some Olympic shoes with two inch heels-with my minimalist red lifting suit I looked like a OL hooker. So I was strong then, weighed about 275, but had not spent a ton of time on technique.

My first meet was a regional championship, and I was psyched. I started at 275 in the snatch. First attempt, catch it high but forward. I desperately thrust myself forward while standing up. This serves to launch the weight airborne, leaving my frantic grasp. The bar and weight soars up and out, flying towards the judges in the first row. They all dive for the sidelines. One split second after they escape with their lives, the bar crashes into their fold up chairs and obliterates them. I get three red lights.

I apologize to them, and on the second attempt, I launch the bar high and backwards, and it flies over my head and back towards the warm up area. One brave 300 pound guy stops the bar after one bounce. On my last attempt, I decide to power-snatch it and save the lives of those around me.

The C@J was almost as bad. I pinned myself twice with 350, but now when I threw the bar forward out of disgust, the judges were already safely hiding on the sides of the platform. I decide, once again, to power clean it, and I make the jerk. So I get that first place trophy, but one of the judges said he unsuccessfully tried to disqualify me for disgracing the sport. 
Down memory lane..............Doc