La inclusión como una tendencia internacional en el mundo

By ClINT DARDEN

event—just to make sure that he did more than everyone else out there in training. During our hour-long conversation on the phone, he made it very clear that there was no “fix” for my press or for anyone else’s weakness. His one statement said it all—the one I can still hear coming through the ear piece, with his deep, raspy voice that sounded like every half sentence took a monster effort just to get out of his mouth: “Clint, if you want to be like all of the guys above you, then you have to do what they are doing… just more of it!”

There was no “hidden meaning” behind what he was saying.

If you want to press big, you have to press more—not less. More often, more reps, more times, more intensity, and more intelligently. How can I give advice on this when my best ever shirted bench press in a two-ply shirt and is in the mid 460s? And my best ever Axle Clean and Press is 331 pounds? Because not long ago I couldn’t bench press 400 pounds in a shirt. A year ago, I couldn’t clean and pres 220 pounds. I’ve made progress despite every injury and limitation that I have, and I think that speaks a decent amount about my knowledge on what it takes to at least “get stronger.”

One of the things that I have my clients do, and they love to hate me for it, is to greatly increase their volume—especially on their press. We can do this a variety of ways. For instance, you can add in a bench press shirt; work through a series of board presses; incorporate many different Sling Shot variations; and practice strict press, push press, jerks, etc. And this works. What is the downside? They are core movements that can also beat the heck out of you, and you can’t do them with the frequency needed to make progress.

So what do I suggest? Dumbbell Floor Presses. But not just any Dumbbell Floor Presses. I suggest you do them with at least a pair of Fat Gripz, if not Fat Gripz Extreme. The Fat Gripz take a ton of stress off of your wrists, bicep tendons, elbows, pec tendons, and shoulders. One of the keys to doing the Dumbbell Floor Press is that when your elbows are on the floor, your palms are facing you, and when you are at lockout position, you rotate your hands/elbows into a normal bench press position. This will fry your triceps!

So how do we set up a program, and on what day do we do this magical exercise?

ALL OF THEM!

It takes some intelligence to monitor volume and intensity, as well as recovery. It also takes some acceptance of the fact that you might not put up huge weights in the first couple of weeks during your training sessions.

However, it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out the principle of the Progress Puzzle.

Week 1:

Dumbbell Floor Press: 4 sets of 25 reps with 20-25 pounds (dumbbells), pre-training every session

These should hurt.

Week 2:

Dumbbell Floor Press: 4 sets of 25 with 20-25 pounds, pre- and post-training every session These should make you sore.

Week 3:

Dumbbell Floor Press: 3 sets of 15 reps with 45-55 pounds, pre- and post-training These should be hard and near failure.

Week 4:

Dumbbell Floor Press: 2 sets of 10 reps with 65-75 pounds, pre- and post-training

These should be nearing or at failure on each of these sets. Attempt to set PRs every session.

Week 5:

None OR post-training Only

OR if the program was working well for you—wash, rinse, and repeat!

Notes

Take note that you don’t need much time to complete these sets. I normally rest less than one minute between sets. For the first two weeks, I’ll only rest about 30 seconds at best. The weights that I’ve listed are for someone that can press very similarly to myself. I have quite a few clients who know my program and also watch me do these in my training. They purposely decide that they are going to be stronger than I am, so they use heavier weights than I do. I welcome and encourage it! If you can do your 4 sets of 25 reps with the 40s with little rest between sets… DO IT! If you can rep out the 100s (or better) on your sets of 10 to failure… DO IT AND LET ME KNOW!

What do I mean by EVERY SESSION? Just upper body and pressing sessions, right? Wrong! If you train four times per week, then do this four times per week! Do this before you squat, before you deadlift, before your Strongman Events, before your Axle Press, and before your cup of coffee if you decide that you are tired of having a weak press. Get them done and do them often!

Increase the volume! You will get sore and you will recover. Most of my clients hate me during the first two weeks. However, at the end of week four I will ask, “Are you feeling beat up? How are you liking the triceps volume? Ready to take a break?” And they always reply, “I could use one or two training sessions off of them… but not only am I making such good progress by doing them, but they are also getting me warmed up better to bench than whatever I was doing!”

So there you have it: Increase Your Volume to solve the Progress Puzzle!

Here is a glimpse into the training cycle I used to bring my squat from 200 pounds to 220 pounds, my bench from 95 pounds to 110 pounds, and my deadlift from 214 pounds to 240 pounds. Unfortunately, for the meet following this prep, I had a cut go very wrong and the gains were not realized on the platform. With that being said, I still felt like this cycle worked very well, and I will be revisiting it again in the near future.

I created this program because I felt that I was (1) lacking confidence under heavy weights, (2) struggling out of the hole on squats when the box was removed, and (3) lacking strength off my chest in my benches.

Thus, to correct these problem areas I: (1) added a reverse mini band single after all max effort lifts—to give my CNS a small overload without the band tension being too extreme to make hitting the weight unrealistic without the mini band, and (2 and 3) added back down pause squats and bench work on max effort days to work on building strength out of the hole and off the chest. I should also add that the assistance work listed is reflective of MY weak points, so I’m going to assume that yours and mine are not the same. So, as you read this, feel free to change out any assistance that does not serve to build your weakness and replace it with something that does. Also, it should be noted that my goal was to minimize muscle gains in this cycle and maximize strength to allow me to drop down to the 97-pound weight class. So, if your goal is to gain muscle, I would change the rep ranges on the assistance work to the 8-12 range. In addition, I only rotated assistance work every six weeks because I find that if I spend time progressively overloading my assistance work, I develop the best strength gains. However, if you are the kind of person who needs to rotate assistance work more often, then by all means do! Also, since this tends to be a very demanding cycle, I would suggest that you use contrast showers each night when you get home consisting of five rounds of a one-minute hot shower followed by a 30-second ice cold shower. This was something that really helped me recover. Finally, I want to note that my ability to adapt to volume tends to be higher than most. If you are a volume-sensitive person, it may be better for you to either cut out a set of the assistance work or cut out an entire exercise.

If you decide this is something you want to try and are confused about an exercise or anything else, feel free to shoot me an email and I will help you out!

12 Week training cycle

Before I start, I will list the warm ups I do on upper and lower days. This might be too much for some of you, so this is by no means what I think you need to do, but rather what works for me. I use the warm up to throw in some volume for my weak points. Also, I do not do mobility work beforehand because I do a TON of stretching and mobility in my free time. It is very rare that I am tight, and by a lot I’m talking upwards of nine hours of yoga a week (insert ridicule here).

Upper warm up

3x20 Terminal Knee Extensions (TKEs) against average band or 3x10 SL squats 3x10 low box squats with mini band around knees

3x10 back extension into GHR