Makin gup your own exercises

Hey folks:

Any of you guys out of boredom or sheer inspiration ever make up your own exercises ?

For me I came up with the idea to combine 4 exercises into a grueling multi-monster set… Using a barbell it goes something like this:

10 reps bent over barbell row,
followed immediately by 10 reps clean and presses, then completed by 10 deep squats… then racking the weiht to do bench press… 3 or 4 sets, around 135 lbs. on the bar.

It is very intense and really puts you through the grinder but is great when you’re focused and short on time… The looks I get from doing this are pretty funny.
I’m trying to get into a flow by incorporating overhead squats with the barbell held at shoulder’s length overhead… but I find my lower back takes too much of a beating when I go mental like that…

Another variation is on the high/low pulleys on a cable stack; I use the high AND low to create a cross effect on chest flyes… sort of a diagonal flye, if you will; really feel the burn across the pecs…

Any of you guys/gals have any exercises that you just made up and got good results from ? I’d love to hear them and possibly work them into my routines to mix it up…

The Fat Dog Front Squat :slight_smile:

Apparently, I am the originator of the heavy deadlift, as I never see anyone else doing them.

Dan “Deadlifts” McVicker

I think John Davies has one on here called The Bear. It combines the clean followed by a front squat, followed by a push press or jerk, followed by a back squat, followed by another push press/jerk, back to starting position. That’s one rep!! He has his athletes do sets of 6 of thos bad boys.

Nathan

Davies didnt make up the bear…he just published an article about it.

Same thing. So who did make it up. It’s pretty cool.

Nathan

Olylifters do all kinds of complexed sequences like that, imagination is the limit.

Istavan Javourek has few 100 complexes :slight_smile:

I made this up today. I took my couch and picked it up ten times. Then did 20 squat thrusts. then i picked up the coffee table and dragged it across the floor for 10 trips. Then I did 100 box squats with just my bodyweight. Anybody else see what Im getting at?

The Bear goes way, way back. Coach Davies is the latest in a long string of popularizers. Even so, how many of us would have heard of the Bear were it not for the Coach?

S-lifter,
Anyone who read Javorek articles, went through boot camp, played football, or other organized sports (squat thrust, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, star jumps, repeat a couple hundred times then barf and do it some more).

Goldberg… Spring cleaning 2 months too soon???

I’m not a powerlifter, but a BB. Over the years, I have certainly made-up excercises that I felt worked better than the “standard” fare.

Personally I don’t make up many of my own exercises anymore, however, when I was a newbie, I made up a TON that are still around today.

  1. The hip flexor bicep curl
  2. The barstool squat (Go down as far as a barstool will allow)
  3. The Chest Bounce Bench
  4. Deadlift Bench Press (You bench while your partner deadlifts however much you can’t)

I don’t like most of these types of complexes because you can’t use enough resistance to stress your muscles or your nervous system.

That said, when I was a lowly bodybuilder, I used a superset of bent rows and deadlifts that is guaranteed to pack meat on your back. I would use a heavy rowing weight, like only 3-4 reps, making sure to squeeze the bar to my body at the top, then as soon as I was done rowing, I would deadlift the weight until failure. Not very scientific, but it worked.

Your back is the secret to size,
Ryan

Let’s not forget the lateral raise high pull, where you do a lateral raise but with so much momentum your delts are just along for the ride. But damn, you can use some big weights!

ACTUALLY, I do have a “neat” little trick I normally do inbetween set of heavy deadlifts to relax my CNS…

See, I take about… five or six mat and stack them up onto each other to make a huge “cushion.” Then I hop onto a bench and jump off that bench, do whatever flips or splits in the air, and comfortably land onto the mats. Best for active recovery days too ^^

Fat Panda,
It works better if you land on a Swiss Ball!

I like to “jerk” a barbell overhead with about 130% of what I can military press, and then perform controlled excentric lowering of the bar. It can be traumatic for the rotator cuffs though, but for me it’s a darn good excentric.

LOL at your responses… Especially GOldberg’s… Irregular object lifting is cool but as another reply stated, “you are only limited by your imagination”.

haktOne: Did you write a book about those exercises or something? I see just about everybody in my gym doing one or more of them… I can’t believe how popular they are! I think it’s cool that I finally found out who started the hip-flexor bicep curl. I’m gonna tell all the punk kids at my gym that they’re just haktOne wannabes! :slight_smile: