Saturday Workouts Get Crazy
June 11, 2010 by Admin: Joe Hashey, CSCS
Filed under Strength Training
At my new gym, we have instituted just insane Saturday workouts. In the short 3 months we have had people drive from around the northeast to join us – and even a person fly in from the Midwest!
Typical Saturday Workout
- Based on strongman exercises
- Heavy
- Innovative conditioning
- Awesome group training environment
- Zero complaining
After a long week of training clients, this is the perfect way for us to unwind. I did video a recent Saturday workout where two Brockport football players made the 2+ hr drive to lift.
Both are extremely strong guys – dead lifting over 600 lbs and benching 400+
However, that doesn’t always prepare you for how crazy hour Saturdays get with the multiple planes of motion and unconventional movements.
The video ended up being 12 minutes long, so I had my friends on Facebook vote on whether I should break it up or leave it as a longer video. Most people wanted shorter videos to give them time to see what is going on – so here is Crazy Saturday Workouts Part One (Sorry for the average video quality, the new flip cam HD has really been letting me down!).
Nothing fancy – just raw training footage for a change.
Exercises performed: atlas stone lifts, tire flipping, farmers walk, rope climbing, thick bar deadlift, tire battling and a few others to come out in the next two parts!
We used the small tire for quick flips. Unfortunately the width is too narrow to really set our feet back like a “real” tire flip. Instead we just worked tossing it around for duration.
Shoot me an email at joehashey (at) gmail (dot) com if you want to check availabilty and join us for a session.
- Joe Hashey, CSCS -
PS. I had a person “inform” me that strongman workouts do not add muscle – they just burn fat. I guess that explains all the super lean, no muscle, strongman competitors out there….
PPS. I am still giving away Mobility 2.0 until I reach 2500 YouTube subscribers – which should in in a couple days! Check out this video on how to get your copy – Free Mobility 2.0
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Joe, usually I find your workouts to be pretty insane (in a good way!), but the great pyramid is just stupid in my opinion.
It sounds very similar to a crossfit workout, especially with the overload on olympic lifts (powercleans). A powerclean is an explosive exercise, not meant for lots of reps. Trying to do more reps than one can do with good form only leads to injury. Just my opinion, although its shared with many Oly lifters in reference to crossfit or exercises with multiple reps of olympic lifts.
I hear ya Brian. I used to think the same way – that any oly lifts for reps was ineffective.
However I have come to a middle ground.
Is it going to make someone really explosive? Nope. Is going to kill their conditioning? Yes.
BUT as you mentioned there has to be some degree of of sanity for the sake of injury prevention and efficiency.
Here is my middle ground after swinging from both sides of the arguments and experimenting with both. I consider oly lifts UNDER 10 reps and UNDER 70% of the 1RM to be an effective and safe way to condition.
The Great Pyramid was 6 reps of a Power Clean, followed by a front squat as a “buffer” between exercises then a push press. Since my max power clean is great than 315 and I condition regularly, I wouldn’t consider this to be a safety issue.
Anyways, I hope that clarifies a little bit of the reasoning behind the great pyramid.
Joe
PS. I forgot to mention – I figured other people would have the same apprehension so even though the complex I filmed today did have a power clean in it, it was 135 for only 5 reps.
Your comment helps re-affirm that – thanks for taking the time to chime in!
Joe
makes sense now Joe, thanks for clarifying. In that aspect I agree with you (well below 1rm).
No problem Brian – thanks for calling that out! I’m sure other people were thinking similar things.
If you ever feel like you need to call me out, by all means! If I don’t have a reason for it, I’d be doing a crappy job.
Joe