Four Awesome Things You Probably Aren’t Doing

Unilateral movements can be humbling. They force you to recruit the stabilizing muscles that you can work around with bilateral movements, like those adductors and abductors that you’ve been neglecting. Strengthening these muscles, though, can improve your performance with the big money lifts while correcting the imbalances that hold you back. This will also improve your balance. Greater balance, greater muscle recruitment, and it will greatly reduce the stress on your spine.

1. Single-Leg Dumbbell Deadlifts. Put a dumbbell on the floor by your left foot. Keep your left leg planted and straight and extend your right leg behind you as a counterweight as you reach down to pick up the dumbbell. Deadlift that sucker. Do the same number of reps on both sides, try not to fall over, and enjoy the stimulation in your hamstrings.

2. Walking Dumbbell Lunges. You know what these are. You’re probably not doing them for one of three reasons: (1) you don’t like to work legs because you don’t care about your Ostrich Leg Syndrome; (2) you can’t go as heavy as you can with a bilateral movement like a barbell squat; (3) you’re a little girl about hard work. Three high-rep sets (try 10-12 per leg) will have you huffing, puffing, and possibly crying. If you’re really hardk0re, try it with a barbell.

3. Pistol squats. At first, you won’t need weight for these. You’ll have a hard enough time just getting to the bottom and pushing back up without falling over. Try starting with a limited range of motion, such as with a single-leg box squat, gradually increasing the distance you travel.

4. Bulgarian Split Squats. Stand in front of a box or bench, facing away from it, with a bar across your shoulders. Place one foot on the box behind you to form a wide split lunge. Squat deep until your knee almost touches the ground, then push yourself up.

Try these and work them into your program. You’ll experience soreness in places you didn’t know you had. Bonus: you need little for most of these to work. You can do them at home or even at Planet FAIL.

Bringing It Back

My reasonably-priced but surprisingly well-equipped local gym has a noteworthy disadvantage: the radio is always set to 101.5 The Point (“The Best of the 80s and More”). Now, there is nothing wrong with 80s music. However, it could be done better. Specifically, “Eye of the Tiger” fills me with a desire to shove an olympic bar into the nearest person’s ass and snap it off.

I hereby present Music By MEEEE!!! Episode 3.

1. “You Give Love a Bad Name” – Bon Jovi
To quote the great philosopher Barney Stinson: “People often think a good mix should rise and fall, but people are wrong. It should be ALL RISE, baby!” Actually, you could probably use one of Barney’s playlists to great effect.

2. “You’re the Best” – Joe Esposito
When scrawny-ass Daniel LaRusso powered his way past the Cobra Kai intothe semi-finals in the All Valley tournament, it was clearly because this song was playing. It can work for you, too.

3. “Danger Zone” – Kenny Loggins
Top Gun is a movie about shirtless guys high-fiving each other and almost making out in the locker room. This song, though, will always be associated with hotshot fighter jocks doing recklessly awesome things in midair. It’s inspirational, really.

4. “Hot for Teacher” – Van Halen
Remember your amazingly hot grade-school teacher? The one that had almost as much of an influence on your budding sexual identity as Princess Leia in the slave bikini? Picture that while you’re driving your hips forward to lock out a deadlift. Yeah, that’s right; you showed her you’re not a little boy anymore, didn’t you?

5. “Back in the Saddle” – Aerosmith
Why this one? Because “Eat the Rich” is from the 90s.

6. “Round and Round” – Ratt
I can’t think of anything snappy to say about this, except that you look like the kind of person who needs more arena rock in his/her life.

7. “Fat Bottomed Girls” – Queen
All workout lists have one thing in common: NEED MOAR QUEEN!

8. “Yankee Rose” – DLR Band
I rode a motorcycle through an office building while blasting the crap out of everyone in sight with this song during a session of GTA Vice City. Isn’t that endorsement enough?

9. “Talk Dirty to Me” – Poison
Picture that teacher again. Yeah, you’re talking dirty to her… because you’re a fucking sweaty mess right now.

10. “Dr. Feelgood” – Motley Crue
This just seems appropriate for when you are inflicting recreational microtrauma upon yourself.

11. “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” – Judas Priest
You have another set coming, or something. I dunno.

12. “Rain of Blood” – Slayer
End big. End really big.

Valid Uses for a Smith Machine

What follows is a comprehensive, inclusive list of valid reasons to use the Smith Machine:

1. Calf raises. If your gym lacks a calf-raise machine, this is probably your best option for isolating your calves.

2. Hanging your towel. Always carry a towel.

3. Mobility drills. The Smith machine provides a horizontal bar with adjustable height. Step over, pass under… you have options, provided your gym hasn’t shoved the machine right up against the wall (like many seem to do).

4. Bodyweight reverse rows. It’s a reinforced metal bar that you can lock low to the ground, and you know for a fact it can support your weight. Go to town.

5. Bodyweight triceps exensions. Like a regular triceps extension, performed by pushing off the floor. However, you don’t have the floor to stabilize you. It’s good for your triceps AND your core!

6. Push-up progressions. You can keep altering the height, and therefore the angle. Neat!

7. Various things involving bands.I don’t really play with bands much, but they have many uses, and the adjustable height on the Smith machine makes it useful for many of these purposes.

You will note that all of the following have been excluded from the list:
Squat
Military press
Bench press
Incline bench press
Decline bench press

Yet those are the five most common uses I have seen for the machine. In all five cases, it is a bad idea.

Why do people use the Smith machine in lieu of free weights?[fn1] Because it is easier. By restricting the movement to a fixed plane of motion, it takes your stabilizers our of the equation. This limits the muscle groups that are used, thus limiting your results. For that reason, it produces unnatural movement; you are not developing functional strength.

Worse still: it forces you to move in a straight line. If you watch someone doing a proper squat, the bar doesn’t move straight up and down; there is also some horizontal movement. It forces you into a disadvantageous biomechanical position, which can aggravate knee and back problems. Sound like fun?

Using a Smith machine for compound movements won’t make you stronger, and it won’t make you bigger. It will make you a tool.

FN1: This assumes that you are presented with a choice. At many Planet FAIL locations, for example, you lack any option other than Smith machines. (Smith machines, unlike squat racks, must be judgment-free.) Consider that chain’s level of commitment to results as you ponder the wisdom of that decision.

Planet Fitness = Planet Fail

A friend was shopping around for good deals on gyms in the area, and she wanted my opinion on one called Planet Fitness. The name rang a bell, but I did not recall from where, and I agreed to check it out with her. At $10 per month, I didn’t expect anything special, but it could be worth checking out.

One of the first things I noticed was that it was the amount of space in the work-out area; it did not lack for space, and some of it even seemed a bit empty. I would soon find out what was missing. Almost immediately, I noticed was something called a Lunkhead Alarm displayed prominently on one wall, which would go off in any event of lunkheadedness. “Lunkheads” were defined as anyone who swears, judges someone, grunts, or drops a weight. Uh-oh. Next I noticed a sign on the wall proclaiming Planet Fitness to be a “Judgment-Free Zone.” Aww, shit. Alarms are going off in my head. I think I’ve heard of this chain before. It’s not good. A young lady takes us on a tour of the facility, and things don’t get better.

She explains up front (and in my memory, there was a bit of a superior attitude to how she said it) that Planet Fitness is “not a bodybuilding gym,” so the dumbbells only go up to 70 pounds. This also explains all the empty space: apparently, they believe that only bodybuilders need to be able to do bench presses (incline, flat, or decline), pull-ups (there is nothing to hang from), squats, or deadlifts (those are specifically a banned exercise throughout the chain, I later learned). Oooh, but they have a bunch of Smith machines! That should totally be enough for anyone! HATEHATEHATEHATEHATE. I guess training your stabilizers and doing functional movements makes fat people feel judged.

You know how when cultural conservatives talk about “family values,” they do not refer to love, support, and all the other good stuff that reasonable people were raised to value? The way they use the term, “family values” becomes a code for talking about how obsessed you are with talking about how other grown-ups have sex. That is what Planet Fitness is doing here with their Judgment-Free Zone; a phrase that sounds good on the surface has been twisted to mean something completely different.

Conceptually, I see a lot of merit in carving out a space that is free of judgment for training, especially for people who aren’t yet it good shape and need a place to get started without being discouraged by other people acting like douches. The problems with the Planet Fitness model are that (1) they not only decline to accommodate people who have made some progress and gotten themselves into shape, they actively look down on these people (2) they are limiting the progress that anyone can make by preventing them from doing basic, essential movements and by threatening them with embarrassment if they make a sound that naturally results from intense physical effort. In short, despite its Judgment Free Zone, this “gym” judges people for getting into shape and doing the work to get there. Think about that.

And here’s where they lose any remaining credibility: I later learned that most, if not every, Planet Fitness location feeds their members on the first Monday of every month. Okay, food is good, and so is showing appreciation for your customers. It’s a gym, where people are supposed to be healthy, so what do they feed their members? Wraps? Vegetable platters? Bananas? Fucking pizza. I am not making this up. There are also bagels and candy.

The difference between making it or breaking it is effort. As important as a good, intelligent workout plan is, it won’t do nearly as much for you unless you’re putting in the work. “Leaving it all on the track,” as it were. Whether your goal is to lose fat, get fast, get in shape, get huge, or be awesome, there’s only so much you can do unless you put in the effort. So why the hell would anyone give one red cent to a corporate chain whose very mission is to limit your effort and throttle your progress? One that fosters a culture of actually looking down on people who want to do the work? Fuck that.

If all you want is to rent a treadmill, $10/month is a reasonable fee. Have fun catabolizing your remaining muscle. If you want to make serious progress on any front using Planet Fitness, you’re going to have to make a lot of adjustments, and there are direct limits on what you can do. Are you really going to pay someone else to make you adapt to them? I thought we were paying customers. Then again, I guess I just have a different view of customer appreciation.

Do Look Back

Your back is important. Treat it right, and it will treat you well, give you a powerful V-shaped frame, and even prevent shoulder problems. Neglect it, and you court a beanpole frame, upper and mid-back pain, shoulder problems, and a hunch-back. Keep reading unless you want that.

Why men should pursue a V-shaped frame: it gives you that look of a powerful upper-body. A wide, powerful back makes you look powerful, imposing, and badass.

Why women should pursue a V-shaped frame: width up top makes your waist look smaller. It’s the top half of the hourglass. (As I’ve said multiple times before: women should not worry about getting huge. Unless you’re juicing, stop worrying.)

1. Weighted wide-grip pull-ups: three sets of 10. bring the bar down past your chin; at the bottom, retract your shoulder blades and touch the bar to your upper chest. If you can’t do weighted pull-ups, do a variant that you can do: three sets of 8 without weight, for example. Or, to recruit some help from your biceps, switch to chin-ups.

If you can’t do pull-ups, try doing them using bands to support you. Is that still not enough? Try getting a friend to give you an assist on your way up, and then do controlled negatives. Your worst-case scenario: use a lat pulldown machine. If you can’t do a single pull-up or chin-up, though, regardless of your fitness goals, getting yourself up to that point should become one of your top priorities. In that case, you should adjust your set-rep scheme to do more weight and less reps per set.

2. Seated Rows: 3 sets of 10. Be sure not to lean with this movement; that’s bad for your lumbar region. Instead, keep your spine straight and focus on pulling in toward your lower chest.

3. Face Pulls: 3 sets of 12. For how to perform this, I’m just going to shamelessly quote a strength coach from T-Nation: “Face a pulley machine and grab the rope with an overhand grip. Pulling through the elbows, take the middle of the rope in a straight line towards the bridge of your nose. The key is to make sure you fully retract the shoulder blades at the midpoint, squeeze, and then return to the starting position.” These are great for your external rotators, meaning that they can help prevent back problems. W00t!

4. Fighter’s pulldowns: 3 sets of 12-15 per side. I just learned about these, and they kick ass. Go to a pulley-based lat pulldown station, remove the bar, and attach a D-shaped handle (or any handle that lets you pull down with one hand). Pull your elbow all the way down to your hipbone, combining the pulldown with a side crunch. Unfortunately, I don’t have any good pictures of this one in action. As for why they are called fighter’s pulldowns: they are highly recommended for martial artists.

Give this a try, and go heavy. By the you’re done crying about how much your lats and rhomboids hurt, you’ll notice some real progress, both in terms of appearance and performance.

Legs

I hereby present my current legs workout, also known as the “Nice Ass Regimen.”

Before we begin, the first rule for all exercises here is: “Go heavy and go deep or go home.” You should be using enough weight to bring you to near-failure on the last set of each exercise. Note: do not actually go to failure on squats or deadlifts, or you will injure yourself.

1. Front Squat – My current rep scheme is 4 sets of 8. Go deep; You don’t want to play with high-rep schemes for front squats because your form will break down quickly if you’re using quality weight and squatting to depth. Remember: go deep. Go balls-deep.[fn1] Front squats are the best exercise for your quads that you will ever find, but they also recruit your glutes, your calves, and, as you will discover if you are going heavy and deep enough, your lateral obliques (“side abs”).

No, you cannot do leg presses instead of squats. And get the hell away from the Smith machine.

2. Romanian Deadlift – 3 sets of 10. Use straps if you need them, but only if you can’t actually hold the weight anymore. RDLs (in fact, all deadlifts) have the benefit of working your arms, especially your forearms, as long as they have to work to hold the bar up. This is a hip-powered movement; lift with your hips, not your back. Start by standing upright, holding the bar in front of you. Stick your hips back, keeping your back flat, allowing the weight to pull your torso most of the way to the floor. Lift by forcefully driving your hips forward. That’s right; push in your hips like you paid for her.

3. Leg Press – 3 sets of 10-12. You know how these work. If you use 5-pound plates for any reason, you deserve to die. Also, leg presses will never be an adequate subsitute for squats. The leg press (as used here) can be a useful supplement to your legs regimen, so long has you hold no illusions about it being the basis for a worthwhile program.

You’ll notice that there are no leg extensions listed. That is because I don’t want do fuck up my knees. I would suggest that you stay away from them, too, unless your goal is to fuck up your knees.

4. Leg curl – 3 sets of 10-12. Pick a machine that’s comfortable.

5.(a) Standing calf raise: 3 sets of 12.
5.(b) Standing calf raise, toes facing inward: 3 sets of 12.

Now, suppose that you’re feeling particularly hardk0re. This might not be enough training volume. In that case, you can add: walking dumbbell lunges. Do 3 sets of 10 (per leg). These are a good idea if you’re looking to really blast your quads and glutes, and they’re a great way to add unilateral movements to your regimen (which most of us need to focus on more, myself included). Do these after squats but before leg presses (in slot 2 or 3).

Now, let me tell you a story. No matter what I try for my calves, I’ve never broken 16 inches. I’m therefore willing to entertain suggestions. When I saw a guy in his early 40s at the gym with calves larger than my head, I naturally wondered what he had going on (besides good genetics). Here was his legs regimen: leg extensions, leg curls, and then 1/2 hour on the treadmill with an incline of 12%. That’s it. That’s all he does. For calf-building, it makes sense: walking uphill is a compound movement, and it’s a high-rep movement. Compound movements work best for building, and your calves, consisting of a lot of Type I fibers, would respond best to that kind of high-rep movement.

So, to finish it off: get on the treadmill, crank up the incline as high as it will go, and walk at least 4 MPH for as long as you can.

FN1: If your knees permit, your squats should go all the way down: “ass to grass,” as some say. No matter what, though, unless you have a diagnosed knee problem that specifically prevents you from doing so, you should be able to at least squat low enough that your thighs are parallel to the floor.

WHY?!

Two days ago, while I was loading the leg press machine, I went to get one of the 100-pound plates from the storage rack attached to the machine. First, though, I had to move a 5-pound plate out of the way, because it had been put on the same rack. My question is: why the hell is there a 5-pound plate anywhere near the leg press?

I’m a girl, so I shouldn’t do push-ups (and other things I will smack you for saying)

People have all kinds of funny excuses for not following advice and not doing what they know they should do. Other people just say stupid things. It really should be legal to hit certain people, though, just to make them stop.

1. “I’m a girl, so I shouldn’t be able to do push-ups.”
Usually said by: a female who has just asked how to get better arms.
The proper response to dipshit like this is, “Says who?” No, seriously, what authority is the basis for that statement? Did you get it from a trainer? A coach? A fitness mag? I can say with certainty from whom you did not hear this: someone who looks the way you want to look. Besides: you know full well that this kind of excuse will never fly with MEEEE!!!

2. “I like Maroon 5.”
Usually said by: 20-something females and douchebags who are actually 20-something females on the inside
This actually has nothing to do with the gym, except to the extent that it makes me want to shove you into a locker after stealing your milk money.

3. “Wine is for pussies. Real men drink beer.”
Usually said by: a guy with a substantial beer gut; the manliest thing he did all week involved his Fantasy Football picks.
As we all know, beer facilitates the conversion of testosterone into estrogen. As you may or may not know, wine (especially red wine) contains resveratrol, which inhibits that process and thus elevates your levels of free testosterone. In other words, beer decreases the hormone that makes you male and increases the hormone that makes you female. Wine has the opposite effect. That is why ale-chuggers from the British Isles tend to grow man-boobs, but you don’t find them on Frenchmen. But, hey, if you think having boobs is a sign of manliness, knock yourself out. No, seriously; hit yourself until you’re unconscious. Or I’ll do it for you.

3.(a) Corollary: “There is no valid reason for a man to know anything about wine.”
Usually said by: a guy who is 115 pounds overweight. The manliest thing he did that day was eat a giant lunch.
So, in addition to the above, you’re denigrating someone for having knowledge. Let me guess: you voted for Bush at least once, didn’t you?

4. “Who’s your supplier?” (i.e., for my steriods)
Usually said by: This usually isn’t said to me by someone at the gym. This is said by someone who hasn’t seen the inside of a gym since Nickelback was still cool* and has apparently forgotten, or never realized, two things: (1) results take hard work, and and (2) with hard work, results will come. In other words: the speaker has failed to consider the fact that the reason that I continue to improve while he remains a flabby loser with at least 30% bodyfat and nothing underneath, isn’t because I’m juicing. It’s because I go to the fucking gym. I back squat 315 lbs. for reps. I do unassisted pull-ups with 45 pounds of extra weight strapped to me. The heaviest thing you’ve lifted all month was your Costco-sized package of Twinkies, which you then fried because you are a lardass.

In fact, for this I will not smack you. I will instead shove my foot so far up your ass that you will die.

* Nickelback was never cool.

Heavy Metal

The music you listen to at the gym should be like everything else you do: heavy and hard. It should be like a deadlift where the bar sags on both sides because it is so heavy. It should not be like curling 10-pound dumbbells while standing on one leg on a squishy ball. No one ever got big, strong, or lean from doing that, but if you joined a gym just for the privilege of looking like an idiot in that particular fashion… well, it’s your money. Go fill your iPod with the latest Jonas Brothers tracks, because what follows is not for you.

Here’s the new workout playlist. It’s awesome. Music by MEEE!!! (Volume II)

1. Tool – “Stinkfist”
Tool can be difficult to work with, considering how much they love the bizarre time-signature shifts, but this song is sane enough to work. At this point, you’re probably familiar with the types of tempos and rhythms that I consider appropriate. If not, then your sense of rhythm is suspect to the point that I feel for your girlfriend. Oh, you don’t have one? Your life sucks.

2. Nine Inch Nails – “Heresy (version)”
Q: What’s cooler than a kick-ass track from NIN’s best album to date?
A: That same track remixed/reengineered by Charlie Clouser to kick even more ass. It’s from the import version of Further Down the Spiral.

3. Dream Theater – “Lie”
Another good, straightforward rocker from a group better known for its complexity. Heavy, awesome, amazingly well-performed, and once again, even the singer sounds all right on this one.

4. Ozzy Osbourne – “I Don’t Wanna Stop”
That’s good, because you’re only four songs in. Ozzy rules. Fun fact: this was the song that finally toppled “Crazy Train.”

5. Megadeth – “Trust”
Maybe not everyone likes Megadeth. Maybe you’re more comfortable with what the majority listens to and passes off as rock. So while you’re rocking out to Nickelback with your collar popped, with your bros telling you that “it’s all you” while they “spot” you by lifting the bar off of your chest after you just choked a 135-pound bench press, just remember the following: you suck, and you will probably die alone.

6. Rage Against the Machine – “Guerrilla Radio”
It’s Rage. It gets the blood pumping and fills you with the desire to break Nelson Mandella out of prison and topple the capitalist pigs. Or bust through a plateau in your bench press. Whichever.

7. Guns ‘n’ Roses – “You Could Be Mine”
Another good rocker from the real G’n'R (as opposed to the empty shell that gave us Chinese Democracy). Bonus: the Terminator 2 connection.

8. Republica – “Ready to Go (U.S. Mix)”
Do you remember Republica? Few do, with is unfortunate because the entire album ruled. This particular track, though, by virtue of the presence of guitars, seems the most gym-worthy. It’s a slightly different flavor than the other entries on this list, but variety is good.

9. White Zombie – “Thunder Kiss ‘65″
If you don’t like Rob Zombie or White Zombie, you need to go to the pawn shop and hope that you kept the claim ticket for your balls. Because if you don’t like Rob Zombie, you don’t have balls.

10. Pearl Jam – “Why Go”
Yeah, I know I previously said that Pearl Jam doesn’t work for this. Some of the older stuff does, though. I’m just sick of the big hits off of Ten. To be fair, so is Eddie Vedder.

11. Van Halen – “Aftershock”
It’s from Balance, so I can guarantee that most of you have never heard it. Give it a shot; it’s from Van Halen’s uncharacteristically serious phase. It wasn’t their most popular turn, but they did it really well. It’s a good track from their last good album. To those who live south of the Mason-Dixon line: it’s a Sammy track. Deal with it and drink one of your Miller Highlife’s or something.

12. Metallica – “Wherever I May Roam”
Whoa, what’s this? Metallica and Megadeth together on the same playlist? ZOMG, the blasphemy!!!1!one! …yeah, so I’m glad no one cares about that feud anymore. Seriously, though: if Metallica kicks you out because of your drinking problem, it’s time to get help. Anyway, this song rules.

…and on that note (see what I did there?), it’s been an hour. Go home.

Babe I’m Going to Leave You

I’m done with Tabata and am moving on. Long story short: I read this article about complexes at T-Nation, tried it, and I’m hooked.

After a week and a half of doing complexes A, E, and F (located at the end of the article), I lost 3/4 of an inch around my waist, putting me at 32 1/2 inches, 192 1/2 pounds, and 12.0% body-fat. Cut your carbs (especially the bad ones), don’t eat crap, stay away from beer, and give this a shot. My abs have never looked better.

Why do I specifically stick to A, E, and F? Because snatches are dangerous to attempt without someone to teach you how to do them right.

I will admit to one quibble with Complex E, though: it features two overhead presses, one of which is the behind the neck press, which many lifters don’t do because they’re fucking dangerous. I’m going to experiment with replacing the second set of presses with upright rows.