scottyg said:
Haha Kratos is enraged...yeah I do every muscle type, you wanted to talk about how you only bench so I figured we stay on topic...keep doing it your way, I am sure it will work out for you
And for someone who takes no one's advice you sure seem to follow "Mr. Rippetoe" and other people down to the T...
This thread is sad.
I'm not enraged.
I don't only train my bench by benching. I help improve my bench by doing upper back and tricep work.
You're right, it will work for me, as it has worked for many people before me. It comes back to the pudding thing.
I follow no one down to a tee. You don't even know who Mark Rippetoe is, nor do you know what either of the Starting Strength books are about, so I don't see how you can comment on that.
Also, I keep an online training log, at a place where people pass information back and forth. Many people have success with varying sorts of programming. Receiving input from all angles, from people who have been successful, to compile something that works for you is not following someone to a tee.
Overwatch Downunder said:
The quality of a thread is what you make of it. You and Kratos should both give your heads a shake.
If you think you'll have all this extra time on your hands during your recruit training, you've got a big suprise coming.
OWDU
I'm not looking to join the military anymore.
It really doesn't fit with my lifestyle, passions or interests. No sense in trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
Stymiest said:
This thread is a mess; however, Kratos did bring up some good points, albeit it got lost in all the BS
The biggest one was his contestation that the army way of fitness aka running, situps, pushups, will take you to the end of the earth.
I am of the same ilk and I believe this is the biggest mistake the army is making with is indoctrinating new recruits into a mentality that pushups, situps, and running are all that is required.
The only reason the army does this is because these exercises are easy and any average joe blow can do them. However, basing your entire fitness model of this is incredibly stupid in my opinion and seeing tonnes of soldiers walking around with collapsed chests and crapped out backs is providing me with evidence that I am right.
Do I necessarily think that we should scrap what we do now, no of course not, however, we should be encouraging members to attain a higher level of fitness then they presently have and introduce them to superior methods of training.
Making powerlifting and strength training an integral part of the fitness component in the military would not only benefit the forces from an operational perspective as we would have stronger more capable soldiers who aren't broken by the time they are thirty because they didn't condition their body properly, it would also cut down on the endless trips to the MIR of soldiers complaining of back injuries, mostly attributed to the fact that they have severe muscular imbalances brought on by a combination of factors, one of which is improper physical conditioning.
I would like to see squats, pullups, and benchpress implemented into the CF Expres test as I believe strength is an important physical fitness component which the CF has, much to my chagrin, overlooked.
Nice post.
I don't really know much to comment, but I don't think the military would go through that trouble. Teaching people how to squat properly can be an arduous task, especially if the instructors themselves cannot perform a proper squat.
I completely agree, though, regarding the volume of certain types of training, mainly push ups. When they have these kids constantly pumping out a high number of push ups, are they considering what they could be creating. Sure, do massive amounts of push ups with no back work at all.
Let's see if we can have all these kids' pecs guitar string tight and their shoulders hunched over. Maybe after this, we can have them do more physical activity, putting weight over their head to see if we can tear any rotator cuffs.
ballz said:
Maybe we should keep in perspective costs here too... It doesn't cost a cent to provide the equipment for soldiers to run, do pushups, situps, burpees, planks, supermans, and other bodyweight exercises and circuits, and for the most part plyometrics. It is also time efficient as you can have as many people doing them at one time as you want.
I have been told that most of the PT on CAP will be crossfit (Stymiest, you will know more than I if this is true), and a guy doing BIQ in Wainwright told me crossfit is a large part of their PT. These are high-intensity high-speed workouts that have a large strength component to them. They aren't powerlifting by any means but that's a whole other ball game. I also know that the PPCLI do crossfit regularly.
However, it would be very impractical and costly for St. Jean to put all of the people going through it's magical green doors on a weight training program and provide them the necessary time and equipment required. It would also be dangerous to put a lot of people on any serious lifting programs and because a lot of people have never lifted before. It certainly would be dangerous to start making new recruits to do heavy, compound lifts for 3 reps. And who is to teach them this superior knowledge? the PSP staff? Kratos already made his opinion clear on personal trainers and the like. I don't think the PSP would be very good when it comes to powerlifting, or at least not the one at St. Jean...
After a while, you have to introduce resistance, or else your progress will stagnate. What are you going to do, keep increasing the time on planks until you're doing them for ten minutes? Even during training, they could have recruits perform sit ups holding a ruck sack behind there heads and push ups and pull/chin ups with a weighted pack on their back.
Personally, I hate Crossfit. For the most part, it seems to be: "Here, do this random workout, perform a bazillion reps and hope your don't injure yourself."
Oh, please pay our outrageous gym fees.
Though I believe heavy compounds are a major factor in the training equation, there are also other things that can be added on top. I agree that it would be unwise to put recruits through this during training, but it would be cool if the information was provided for them to maybe look into later, in their own time.
I'm not talking about powerlifitng specifically, just the addition of heavy compound movements to strengthen the entire body. Who can't benefit from that?
These days, everything can be learned on the internet, through YouTube videos and online reading.
Stymiest said:
I agree with basically everything you say above, it would be cost prohibitive; potentially what could be done is give an introductory course to powerlifting (this actually occurs on CAP albeit its only a day long and you don't practice with any actual weight)
With this being said though, I am a firm believer that atleast for the Infantry Corps a greater emphasis needs to be placed on strength training. I was just thinking about all the useless morning PT I have done and how a few of those mornings could of been put to good use teaching people how to properly train with weights etc.
I think everyone should know how to and properly perform the squat, deadlift and overhead press. Bench isn't really necessary, especially for general strength training. Something the majority of people don't understand is that the bench press is actually a very technical, full body lift and you can really destroy your shoulders benching improperly. I hear guys in the gym complaining about it all the time. It's not just flop down on the bench and unrack the weight.
That being said, you can severely injure yourself squatting and deadlifting too, but if you learn the proper form and start light, there won't be any issues.