T Nation

Makin gup your own exercises

Supplements and Nutrition
#1

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…

#2

The Fat Dog Front Squat :slight_smile:

#3

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

Dan “Deadlifts” McVicker

#4

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

#5

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

#6

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

Nathan

#7

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

Istavan Javourek has few 100 complexes :slight_smile:

#8

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?

#9

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?

#10

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).

#11

Goldberg… Spring cleaning 2 months too soon???

#12

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.

#13

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)
#14

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

#15

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!

#16

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 ^^

#17

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

#18

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.

#19

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

#20

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: