Six Weeks No Free Weights?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

From the end of October the weights room at my gym is going to be out of commission while they finish off the expansion/refurbishment, so that basically means I’m going to have 6 weeks where I can only train with machines… Not being able to bench, squat and deadlift for that time is not going to be fun.

Anyway, does anyone have any good ideas of how best to use that time? I was thinking of working on my hamstring and ab strength seeing as that’s my limiting factor in my squat at the moment, and also getting some soft tissue and more thorough stretching work in, but I’m a little concerned that not getting in the big 3 for 6 weeks might screw up my progress a little.

Is it as bad as I think?

2

alright first thing you needs to do:

-stretch 3 times a day

  • do legendary ab excercies 5 times a week

http://www.eyehike.com/pub/Exercise/Legendary%20Abs/Legendary%20Abs%20Revisited.pdf#search="legendary%20abs"

-you can pump up your legs by doing sprints uphill

try working on max set of pullups,pushups,handstand pushups,chins, and planche and front lever progresions.

Dont forget some verticle jumps to help ya increse jumping power.

if you tihnk you can find some weight to add to your pushups,pullups then do so. I had to go through the same thing and it worked out great.

3

Change the fucking gym.

If and when you do come back, you will have stood up to the system, which will give you a legendary bad boy aura.

If you have any game, you will then take the local fitness bunnies back to your place.

4

perfect opportunity to work on the bits you KNOW are lagging

get a sled. drag it like a mad dog. will do wonders. will feel great when returning.

6 weeks is not long. will do you more good than bad.

5

For lower body, single leg exercises! Try bulgarian squats with front foot elevated onto a 6" box. Do high step ups and various leaps and sprints. Bodyweight reverse hypers off a swiss ball, back extensions with someone holding your legs on top of a table (if your gym doesn’t have a back extension or 45 degree hyper apparatus), manual glute ham raises (done on lat pulldown or with someone holding your feet), etc.

For upper body, push ups, push ups in between benches or holding onto dumbbells to go deeper, elevated push ups, dips, handstand push ups, pull ups, chin ups, fat man pull ups, etc.

This could be a good thing. It will compel you to bring up your single leg strength, flexiblity, power and weak links. I’ve often thought that if for some reason I could only do bodyweight exercises for the rest of my life, I could hold on to most of my size and strength.

6

[quote]ninearms wrote:
Is it as bad as I think?[/quote]

No it’s actually a lot worse. It’s a catastrophe. You could vanish from losing to much muscle.
Try steroids, they’ll probably save your life.

7

Bodyweight exercises. Handstand pushups, 1 arm pushups, pistols, etc… I reccomend you check out Pavel’s shit for that. Dragondoor dot something.

or try doggcrapp training if you train solo then the machines are going to be adequate. So google doggcrapp.

But I agree, tons of soft tissue work and flexibility work.

And if you can get a dragging sled and work on that you’ll be amazed at the transformation your body makes.

EliteFts has a 70% off sale with free shipping till midnight tonight. If I were you I’d jump on that. Big time. Cause the 157 dollar bands set up is like 49 bucks. (thats a pair of every single jump stretch band).

So I’m going to be spending the money from my “protein” fund tonight probably hah.

8

join a diff gym for 6 weeks…

9

Jesus christ. Machines are not the devil.

Like Xen said, look at Doggcrapp training, it works and works well using machines for hypertrophy.

10

[quote]Ghost22 wrote:
Jesus christ. Machines are not the devil.

Like Xen said, look at Doggcrapp training, it works and works well using machines for hypertrophy.[/quote]

yeah, but arn’ the machines a little akward to pick up and use for your lifts?

I guess you could use them for some GPP training, pick up the Bicep curl machine, throw it, run to it, pick it up again and throw it.

11

[quote]ninearms wrote:
From the end of October the weights room at my gym is going to be out of commission while they finish off the expansion/refurbishment, so that basically means I’m going to have 6 weeks where I can only train with machines… Not being able to bench, squat and deadlift for that time is not going to be fun.

Anyway, does anyone have any good ideas of how best to use that time? I was thinking of working on my hamstring and ab strength seeing as that’s my limiting factor in my squat at the moment, and also getting some soft tissue and more thorough stretching work in, but I’m a little concerned that not getting in the big 3 for 6 weeks might screw up my progress a little.

Is it as bad as I think?[/quote]

Seriously just use the machines. After about a year of never using any machines I went back and tried it and it felt great. I think it actually ended up helping me. I actually got sore in a few places that I wasn’t used to. A couple weeks of doing some high rep machine work might even help build a little endurance.