Mark Brown
August 11, 2022
I haven’t bought a lot of equipment over the last 12 months so the rate of needing to learn how to use new equipment has evaporated quite a bit. Programming in new equipment is another thing all together. I have written before about how weaving 3 different squat bars into 1 program can be quite difficult to maintain the skill set with all of them. That is just one example of how owning multiple bars can lead to useful equipment not being employed regularly when it was bought for that reason, especially in the case of specialty bars and the like. Bars meant for pressing can have a similar effect on bench and chest press. Learning how to use the new equipment effectively allows the lifter to understand where it would fit into a program of rotating lifts to get the most benefit out of it. What makes new equipment challenging to bring into an existing lifting plan is that the march of time never ends. Existing equipment in the program gets faded out in exchange for the new stuff because time and the human body doesn’t allow for both to co-exist at the same time. This is the reason why the best programs are ones that rotate lifts and equipment in then out repeatedly throughout the year. That’s right. I said “year.” Short term goals, like meet prep, will be included at points during the year(s), but strength/skill/muscular development gain is a perpetual goal. That makes programming a constant experiment. Ideally, the off season is the best time to get down the best equipment, rotation and use of time for when prepping for a contest begins.
For those who lift in colder climates and maintain home gyms that experience outdoor conditions, there might come a time during the year that they need to take it indoors to a public gym or an indoor private gym. In both 2021 and 2022, I have done all of my lifting for at least 2 months at the the gym I am have a membership with. That has come with the challenge of adapting my program to a commercial gym setting. I handled it a lot better than I did in 2021. It got me more prepared to make the steady gains in the working sets that I have been making so far. The experiment I ran for the months of January and February of this year was how I got the most out of my time at the gym. Having all of the specialized bars, mats and other types of equipment that I have available to me in the garage makes for a unique program that is impossible to replicate in the gym setting, so I have to make sure I do one that translates well back to the garage. I experienced quite a bit of growth in the gym this past winter in squat and maintained both bench press and deadlift quite well. A big chunk of that is that I was already very familiar with the equipment. Having that knowledge of the equipment allowed me to seamlessly work into a technical and strength oriented gym program very quickly. Going from having a wide array of equipment to nigh 100% straight bars and dumbbells would have been much harder to do without the prior research and development. Furthermore, it allowed me to try new lifts so to bank more information for when garage work continued. I knew the lifts existed from social media and podcasts I listen to, but never had actually done them. In January and February, I was almost forced to give them a serious look at. Remember, it’s not enough to try new lifts out. A lifter has to make sure they are executing them properly to get the most out of them. Not executing the lifts correctly is tantamount to putting biased information into the variable portion of the scientific method.
Sharing some of my experiences with experimenting would help illustrate what I’ve written above. The amount of equipment I have bought over the last couple of years has forced me to learn how to use it, work it into a lifting program to get stronger and maintain the skill with it. That kind of experimentation has paid off quite well of late. I am familiar enough with almost of the equipment that I own or have access to in the garage to work it all into one coherent strength training program. The Fat EZ curl bar and Rogue Reverse Hyper Scout are the only 2 pieces I own that I am not currently where I should be in terms of learning curve. I started cycling lifts in and out every few weeks last fall. The transformation of my program around that concept fully happened when I returned to the garage in March 2022. Most of my lifting has focused on working in sets of 2-3 reps from 75% 1RM and up. The biggest result in general has been that all of my working sets are improving in numbers of reps and lift quality. My 1RM on bench press and deadlift hasn’t increased much. I suspect that is because I’m just so much more focused on building raw strength than getting a bigger gym total.
Using the method of doing a specific main movement for 3 weeks then switching to something else I learned from listing to Dave Tate on his podcast, Table Talk with Dave Tate. It has done exactly what he said it would do. I have bounced from regular bench press to a bench press with the shoulder saver pad, chains, bands and changing grips to emphasize different muscles during the lift. Throwing in the American Cambered Bar and the Rogue Cambered Bar on the other chest day has allowed me to really build the raw strength in my chest, triceps, shoulders and lats. I lift on Sundays with Pete and his son, so that pressing session is always a straight bar to keep things running smoothly. I am not lacking for varieties of ways to improve my straight bar bench press. The result of the wave training on my bench/chest press is that my 1RM, 2RM and 3RM are very close:
Bench Press – 1RM – 305, 2RM – 295, 3RM – 285
Narrow Grip Bench Press – 1RM – 285, 2RM and 3RM – 275
Bench Press with Shoulder Saver Pad – 1RM, 2RM and 3RM – 305
Bench Press with Chains, about 45 pounds adde – 1RM – 265, 2RM – 255, 3RM – 245
Bench Press with Bands – 1RM – N/A, 2RM and 3RM – 225 w/ 100 lb bands,
Cambered Bar Press – 1RM – 285, 2RM and 3RM – 275
American Cambered Bar Press, Outside Grip – 1RM, 2RM and 3RM – 248
Floor Press – 1RM – 265, 2RM and 3RM – 255
Wide Grip Press – Will be doing this soon!
What stands out to me is just how close these lifts are grouped together. There is no weak lift in that mix. It’s really nice knowing where my lifts are week to week because it allows me to plan more effectively.
The 3 week wave has also had a big impact on my working set lifting ranges on my squats and deadlifts. Moving between bars and accessories has really developed weaker lifts. The strategy used to emphasize strength and muscular development through different equipment has paid off in a way I haven’t totally expected:
Straight Bar Squat – 1RM – 435, 2RM – 415, 3RM – 405
Cambered Bar Free Squat – 1RM, 2RM – 405, 3RM – 385
Cambered Bar Box Squat – 1RM, 2RM – 415, 3RM – 405
Safety Squat Yoke Bar Free Squat – 1RM 355, 2RM, 3RM – 345
Safety Squat Yoke Bar Box Squat – 1RM, 2RM – 405, 3RM – 385
Deadlift – 1RM, 2RM, 3 RM – 405
Deadlift, Blocks 3 inches off Floor – 1RM, 2RM, 3RM – 415
Rack Pulls, Safety Straps – 1RM – 425, 2RM, 3RM – 415
Rack Pulls, with Bands – 1RM, 2RM, 3RM – Above 305 w/ 70 lb bands
Deadlifts, with Bands – 1RM – 265 w/ 70 lb bands, 2RM, 3RM – 255w/ 70 lb bands.
Sumo Deadlift – 1RM, 2RM – 355, 3RM – 345
There are a few numbers there that are positively ancient because I just haven’t done those lifts a lot. The yoke bar free squat and rack pull from safety straps are lifts I haven’t done since 2021. The former is a matter of strength. The yoke bar free squat is so, so much harder than a cambered bar or straight bar squat it’s not even funny. The yoke bar has a large learning curve. I’m only now starting to really understand it. The pressure the bar puts right down the middle of the back is a major hinderance for me. Getting the adjustable box in December 2021 changed just about everything about how I do my squatting from week to week and wave to wave. The box helps me maintain my squat depth from session to session. That has developed more hip and leg strength over the last few months as I have moved from the yoke bar to the cambered bar and back. The yoke bar box squat number is a new one as of August 9, 2022. It has been steadily increasing slowly over time but Tuesday was a big jump. Very surprising. I only occasionally squat with a straight bar because my upper back has seen a lot of development. There’s a high level of tension in my shoulder and bicep tendon when I do it. That’s why there is so much cambered bar squatting in my training logs. When I do straight bar squat it is pertly for the maintenance of the skill should I ever want to enter a competition.
On the deadlift side, the deadlift mats I got last year took the bare weight pulls out from the rack. The change has been significant and well worth it. Concentrating my heaviest pulls to being done on the mats, which are 3/4’ thick, made them more difficult than they were on the straps in the rack. First, it lowered the starting point. The lift moved from being a 15 -16” pull to being a 12” pull. That doesn’t sound like much to someone who doesn’t lift like this but it is night and day. I tried pulling 425 from the mats 6 weeks ago and couldn’t make it go at all. Second, the block pulls feel more like a deadlift because the way the deadlift bar moves. The banded pulls I’ve been doing ay back to 2020 but they left the rotation for awhile as I wasn’t as focused on the lockout part of the lift at the time. The most recent addition is the rotation has been the banded deadlifts. The 70 pound bands I have definitely have the intended effect. The bands really do add the constant tension throughout the lift. I’m flat-out not strong enough to use my 100 pound bands on deadlifts yet. The bands rip the bar out of my hands, even with straps. The number of reps I have done this year on squat and deadlift at or above 345 pounds is crazy. It’s gotta be getting close to 1,000 or above. I am very volume heavy, which some have noticed from my training logs when I have posted them, so it’s not unexpected. It will be very interesting when I decide to start focusing on pushing that gym total up.
Life Through Lifting 