Dinosaur Training

For those of you doing dinosaur style movements in your training ala Brooks Kubik and Steve Justa (including Chris Shugart), do you think it would be better to follow a Poliquin 5 day split (MTT) with a dino training day devoted completely to lifting heavy awkward objects on Saturday…OR a Ian King MTTF split…doing just one finisher at the end of each training session?

BTW, the Steve Justa book Rock Iron Steel is great…gonna start his barrel lifting course as soon as i can find some barrels…

I’ve thrown in some dino training in just about every way you mentioned. The key is to avoid overtraining. A dino day isn’t really an “off day”. I’ve done farmer’s walks with my 175 pound rails before and gotten so sore in the shoulder/trap area that it screwed up my scheduled workout on Monday. (I do dino stuff, plus boxing and ancillary work on Sundays.) One idea might be to stop a rep or two short of failure in each movement to avoid excessive soreness.

As for barrels, I have three. One is a beer keg and the other two are plastic barrels I bought at an Army Surplus store. All are filled with water.

For those that have no idea what we’re talking about, read my article called “The Lost Art of the Finisher” in the T-mag previous issues section.

Hope this helps.

stuff with no eccentric or minimal eccentrics if you dont wanna get sore- thats what WSB does anyway.

Thanks Chris…i was thinking of setting Saturday aside for Dino training becaue it’s a hassle getting home from the gym to begin training on dino movements…farmers walks with 175 pound rails sounds impressive…can only do about 100 pounds at the moment…

Chris, just one more thing…if you’re doing dino training and ancilary movements on Sunday…won’t that screw up your training on Monday cause of the strain…thought it would be better to have an off day both before and after.

You may want to try it using a 5 day split but substituting arm day for dino day., you may need an extra day (i.e., a 6 day split).Just conform it to your recovery needs.

Tan- I started with 100s too. Then we had “steel suitcases” made out of pieces of railroad beams. We just welded fat handles onto them basically.

You’re right about Monday. I did that a few times and had to skip Monday’s workout because I overdid the dino day. Now I can usually work around any problem. For example, if I’m doing legs on Monday then I’ll try not to hit them much on Sunday. (No truck pushing and pulling or squats with kegs, in other words.) Not going all the way to failure helps, too. Ideally, it is a good idea to take off the day before and the day after a dino day. You could also just use one “finisher” after each workout, just monitor your recovery.

If the movement is explosive and requires balance and stability (clean and presses with a half filled keg) you could even do that before your regular workout.

I really like this functional aspect to strength training and would advise everyone to incorporate some of this stuff into their training. I’ve noticed I feel really solid in my regular exercises when I’m consistant with my dino stuff. After all, if you can walk up stadium steps with a sloshing keg of water, then barbell lunges are no problem.

Since i train at a commercial gym, is it ok for me too come home…get a postworkout shake and then do a movement like sandbag carrying…or would my androgen levels be too depleted since it is more than an hour?..the reason i’m asking is because my gym won’t allow me to bring my 100 pound sandbags in…and as such the only dino movement i’m able to do at the moment is farmers walks with dumbbells…I must say, people stare at me like i’m crazy when i walk around the gym panting with 2 dumbbells dangling from my hands…funny, it’s usually the people doing wussy movements like triceps kickbacks and pressdowns that do the staring…

Chris…other than the dino day…do you also use the MTTF split with a quad dominant day and hip dominant day…i was thinking of sticking to the following split:

Monday - Chest and Back
Tuesday - Quads, Shoulders and Calves
Wednesday - Rest
Thursday - Arms and Forearms
Friday - Hams, Traps and Calves
Sat - Dino Day
Sunday Off

Does anyone have any opinions on the above split…i know conventional methodology says that i shouldn’t train 3 days in a row…but considering that dino training is a strength endurance workout…would rather rest on Sunday before starting the whole cycle again on Monday.