Best strength training routine? Thoughts?

VonMeister

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No, people study this stuff.

Chronic injuries to the capsulolabral complex of the shoulder can plague any overhead athlete, including weightlifters. Researchers have found that 36% of injuries in the weightlifting population occur at the shoulder complex.8, 26

Most authors agree that chronic repetitive loading of the shoulder complex leads to capsular strain, occult instability, and persistent pain. Upper extremity resistance training exercises place emphasis on large muscle groups to create strength and hypertrophy while neglecting smaller muscles responsible for upper extremity joint stabilization. Specifically, exercises that emphasize larger muscle groups may create an imbalance of the internal versus external rotator cuff musculature, rotator cuff-deltoid force couple, and periscapular musculature. These imbalances have been associated with shoulder injury in various investigations.27, 28, 29 The combination of repetitive loading, unfavorable positioning, and biased exercise selection creates joint and muscle imbalances that increase the strength trainer’s risk of labral tears, labro-capsular junction dysfunction, and shoulder instability, which can precipitate RTC disease.8, 30, 31

Given the propensity for shoulder dysfunction in weightlifters, it is paramount that participants understand the risks that certain exercises pose and the modifications that can be made to prevent injury. While chronic shoulder problems are a common affliction of weightlifters, the mainstay of treatment is modification of the training regimen and conservative treatment with symptomatic management and guided physical therapy. Avoidance of high-risk exercises and strengthening of shoulder stabilizers obviates the need for surgical intervention in the vast majority of cases.

Bench pressers may be predisposed to rotator cuff tears because of the unfavorable position of the rotator cuff during lifting and the pursuit of higher one-repetition maximum lifts. Furthermore, there is a rapid alternation between eccentric and concentric muscle contraction with this motion.32 One study stated that during maximal bench press, repetitive forces lead to eventual avulsion of the posterior scapular periosteum which may necessitate posterior labral repair to resume pain-free weightlifting.33 Bilateral anterior glenohumeral dislocations have been reported as a result of bench-pressing.34, 35
The last sentence is noteworthy in it's absolute nonsense and makes my quoted post even more relevant.

As with everything physical; how do you mitigate injury risk? With managed control. Specific to what we do, we strictly manage form and load in both volume and resistance. Little things like retracting the scapula to relieve tension in the shoulder is something 99+% of people bench pressing will never consider....we do.

Everything in life carries risk. To try and completely dismiss anything with associated risk will not even allow you to do nothing. Bench pressing carries lower risk to the shoulder joint than surfing/swimming, baseball, basketball, football, wrestling/grappling and so on and so on.I't strange that you are fixated on this.
 

PRCD

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Bench pressers may be predisposed to rotator cuff tears because of the unfavorable position of the rotator cuff during lifting and the pursuit of higher one-repetition maximum lifts. Furthermore, there is a rapid alternation between eccentric and concentric muscle contraction with this motion.32 One study stated that during maximal bench press, repetitive forces lead to eventual avulsion of the posterior scapular periosteum which may necessitate posterior labral repair to resume pain-free weightlifting.33 Bilateral anterior glenohumeral dislocations have been reported as a result of bench-pressing.34, 35
Don't do 1RM benches unless you're a competitive powerlifter.
 
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Autoprax

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One study stated that during maximal bench press, repetitive forces lead to eventual avulsion of the posterior scapular periosteum which may necessitate posterior labral repair to resume pain-free weightlifting.
It's too much weight and too much volume that is the culprit.

Just be moderate and enjoy the benefits of the lift.

The problem is when you get strong you want MOAR!
 

VonMeister

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Is it really that bad to drink beer and lift?

Asking for a friend…
My biggest problem with alcohol is it completely demotivates me. The next day I have no desire to do anything. I just drag ass and go through the motions of being alive.

They say alcohol can effect your bodies hormone levels and being less anabolic would be less than optimal for strength gains....but studies also have shown than a middle aged man with a testosterone level of 200 does not suffer negative performance outcomes when compared to a man on TRT with a level of 800. I would guess the difference specific to athletic performance is immeasurable.

....or did you mean drink beer before or during lifting?
 

VonMeister

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Here's a synopsis of several studies.


Managed testosterone replacement therapy offers much more benefits to emotional well being than physical improvement. While undergoing TRT you aren't just flooding the body with hormones, you are acutely managing levels to find the therapeutic level necessary to resolve a diagnosed ailment such as hypogonadism or resolve an emotional ailment and provide the patient relief. Even then there is nothing conclusive about treating "well being" with TRT except that millions of men swear they feel and perform better day to day and this shouldn't be ignored. Also it's proven that things like libido improve drastically while undergoing TRT. At therapeutic levels still inside the normal range (which is very broad BTW) you aren't getting the physical benefits or side effects that a person would get from abusing hormones or precursor drugs. Could there be some improvement? maybe but it depends on a number of things. Just increasing total testosterone from 200 to 1000 doesn't provide benefit if the testosterone is just converted to free and excreted through urine. Can your body achieve the levels of SHBG necessary to attach these new increases in hormones? Are you blessed with the concentration of androgenic receptors necessary to benefit this increase in testosterone? These are based on genetics, you can't buy them.
 

Sharky

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....or did you mean drink beer before or during lifting?
I was kind of kidding. I spent a lot of years post-sparring hitting a punching board a couple of hundred times as I killed a six pack. It was a good wind-down. (shitty for rehydration though) The guy who introduced me to that concept was a bit of a handful. His concept was the place you are most likely to get into a fight at was a bar. Therefore one should occasionally train drunk. :roflmao:

Drinking beer now, I might as well pour it into a ziplock bag and tape it directly to my gut. But at the end of a day, nothing washes the foam dust out of your throat like a cold beer. But I mostly resist now.

I'm interested in this minimalist 2 day a week Squat, deadlift, bench, OH press concept.

I'm assuming a full body workout as opposed to a split.

How do you arrange it? First squat and then deadlift? Then bench and pre exhaust things before OH press? 4-5 sets of 6-10 reps? My goal is primarily to hold ground and make my body go as far as possible. Stronger is good, but it takes me longer to heal and recover now. IMO there's a changing risk/reward ratio as you get older. So adjust, adapt and keep moving.
 

grapedrink

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I'm interested in this minimalist 2 day a week Squat, deadlift, bench, OH press concept.

I'm assuming a full body workout as opposed to a split.

How do you arrange it? First squat and then deadlift? Then bench and pre exhaust things before OH press? 4-5 sets of 6-10 reps? My goal is primarily to hold ground and make my body go as far as possible. Stronger is good, but it takes me longer to heal and recover now. IMO there's a changing risk/reward ratio as you get older. So adjust, adapt and keep moving.
This is how I split it up:
1) Squat, Bench, Row
2) Deadlift, OHP, Pull Up

Doing squat or deadlifts first gets the most taxing stuff out of the way, aka "eat the frog first thing in the day" mentality. I still have plenty of energy for the more upper body centric lifts afterwards. Plus I like training the opposite movement back-to-back on the same day. Nothing is getting overtaxed, unlike the way most people did things on "back/biceps" or "leg" where you do 15-20+ sets spread across 3-5 exercises that target the same group of muscles. This ends up being both overtaxing and under addressing all body parts because you are only hitting stuff once per week, even though you are training several times a week. It's a poor use of time.

Some programs have you do a single set of deadlifts after squats. I see the value in this, but the times I've tried this I've been too taxed from squats to really do a solid set of deadlifts. I might revisit this.

You can maintain with a lot less effort than it takes to gain. Lots of studies to support this. A recent one I heard about said 1/9th the effort. Which sounds almost too goo to be true, but who doesn't like some confirmation bias when it suits them? :ROFLMAO: :beer:
 

VonMeister

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I was kind of kidding. I spent a lot of years post-sparring hitting a punching board a couple of hundred times as I killed a six pack. It was a good wind-down. (shitty for rehydration though) The guy who introduced me to that concept was a bit of a handful. His concept was the place you are most likely to get into a fight at was a bar. Therefore one should occasionally train drunk. :roflmao:

Drinking beer now, I might as well pour it into a ziplock bag and tape it directly to my gut. But at the end of a day, nothing washes the foam dust out of your throat like a cold beer. But I mostly resist now.

I'm interested in this minimalist 2 day a week Squat, deadlift, bench, OH press concept.

I'm assuming a full body workout as opposed to a split.

How do you arrange it? First squat and then deadlift? Then bench and pre exhaust things before OH press? 4-5 sets of 6-10 reps? My goal is primarily to hold ground and make my body go as far as possible. Stronger is good, but it takes me longer to heal and recover now. IMO there's a changing risk/reward ratio as you get older. So adjust, adapt and keep moving.
For a person who wasn't looking to drive totals and just wanted to improve their health and physical performance I would start with the following for a 2-4 weeks and see how the trainee felt and haw progress was going. This is a time to focus on form and feeling...learning what RPE feels like. While RPE is an advanced concept I use it with beginners because its a valuable tool that they need to learn at some point, it keeps them involved in their training program, and due to the drastic increases in beginning trainees from session to session due to familiarity and form improvements that drive efficiency it's sill to pre-program a weight. it allows the trainee to meet their potential where it stands on that day. I use rep ranges that will limit intensity in order to manage fatigue and risk of overshooting RPE...overshooting RPE on the tenth rep of a ten rep set is much less intense than overshooting on the fifth of a five rep set.

Day 1

Squat 1 set 5 reps @ RPE 6, 1x5 @ RPE 7, 1x5 @ RPE 8 (4-5 increasing warm up sets all at 5 reps. Weight increase between last warm up set and first working set 5-10%. Difference in weight between working sets should generally not exceed 10% but in the beginning this is fungible.
OHP 1 set 8 reps @ RPE 6, 1x8 @ RPE 7, 1x8 @ RPE 8 (same rule as squat)
Deadlift 1 set 5 reps @ RPE 6, 1x5 @ RPE 7, 1x5 @ RPE 8 (same rule as squat)

Day 2
Squat 1 set 10 reps @ RPE 6, 1x10 @ RPE 7, 1x10 @ RPE 8
Bench 1 set 8 reps @ RPE 6, 1x8 @ RPE 7, 1x8 @ RPE 8
Deadlift 1 set 8 reps @ RPE 6, 1x8 @ RPE 7, 1x8 @ RPE 8

During the week get minimum 60 minutes less than to slightly annoying aerobic activity..walks, surfing, hitting a heavy bag...whatever.

We'll make an adjustment around week 4-6 based on how your training went and your new goals as I guarantee after 4 weeks they will change. At the 3-4 week mark we would normally begin adding things like pull ups, curls tricep extension etc. No hard and fast rule, just some work.
 
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Autoprax

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I was kind of kidding. I spent a lot of years post-sparring hitting a punching board a couple of hundred times as I killed a six pack. It was a good wind-down. (shitty for rehydration though) The guy who introduced me to that concept was a bit of a handful. His concept was the place you are most likely to get into a fight at was a bar. Therefore one should occasionally train drunk. :roflmao:

Drinking beer now, I might as well pour it into a ziplock bag and tape it directly to my gut. But at the end of a day, nothing washes the foam dust out of your throat like a cold beer. But I mostly resist now.

I'm interested in this minimalist 2 day a week Squat, deadlift, bench, OH press concept.

I'm assuming a full body workout as opposed to a split.

How do you arrange it? First squat and then deadlift? Then bench and pre exhaust things before OH press? 4-5 sets of 6-10 reps? My goal is primarily to hold ground and make my body go as far as possible. Stronger is good, but it takes me longer to heal and recover now. IMO there's a changing risk/reward ratio as you get older. So adjust, adapt and keep moving.
A long time ago. I was dead lifting one work set of 5 reps once a week. I bought micro plates so I could go up in weight a 1-2 pounds per week when things got heavy.

I started off with the bar because of my back issue and got up to 385, which is low for a weight lifter but for the average chump on the street it's heavy.

I had to stop because I was working 14 hour shifts in a warehouse and my back couldn't take both stressors.

Might point of my boring story is you can make great gains dead lifting once a week one work set.

My posterior chain was HUGE!
 
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