Once you’ve been training more than a few years the need to deload on a somewhat regular basis becomes more and more prevalent.
How often you do so depends on your training age, strength levels and injury history. Eastern Bloc countries and countless other successful lifters have had great results by training hard for three weeks and deloading on the fourth week.
It’s a pretty widely accepted formula and has been proven time and time again. So there’s really no need to try and reinvent the wheel. Three weeks hard, one week deload is my standard go-to-recommendation.
There are other options, however, and if you have only been training for a couple of years you won’t need to worry about deloading just yet. Beginners can go a few years without deloading. Eventually you’ll want to start with 12 weeks then work your way down to 10 and so on. When you get a little more advanced some people might be able to go 6-8 weeks hard before deloading. If you’re more of an early intermediate lifter, eight weeks may be a better option for you. If you’re more advanced and go eight weeks you might want to consider deloading for… …continue reading.
If you know me you know I like to keep things simple. I’m a big believer in the 80/20 rule. Focusing on too many things and making too many changes at once is always a recipe for disaster and will undoubtedly lead to lackluster results.
So when people ask me for some tips on how to get lean I tell them two things- diet and sprint. Pretty simple stuff.
Diet is really 80% of getting lean but that’s another topic entirely. Today we’re simply gonna focus on hill sprints for fat loss. Mainly because not enough people are doing them and many of those who are, are doing them all wrong.
If you are new to sprinting you need to take it easy. I mean reeeeaaaally easy. If the last time you ran a sprint was the week before senior prom you need to be very cautious or you’ll probably get hurt.
If this describes you I’d start with hill sprints. Why hill sprints? Well, firstly, because Walter Payton did them. And most of us should strongly consider doing whatever Walter Payton did just because he was that awesome. Because he was my favorite athlete growing up (along with Michael… …continue reading.
1. Have a clearly defined goal. You can’t put 50 pounds on your squat, lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 50 pounds of muscle at the same time, while simultaneously training for a bodybuilding contest and a world record in the hammer throw.
2. Train for performance increases from workout to workout. It’s very hard to see size gains or even fat loss gains from day to day but you can see performance improvements on a regular basis, if you train properly.
3. Set PR’s as often as possible. You can’t do the same thing over and over and expect to see any results. Setting PR’s ensures results and fun.
4. But know when to back off. Deload weeks should be taken after 3-8 weeks of intense training.
5. Do fewer things better. ADD is a very bad thing. Pick the most productive exercises and methods and get good at them. It’s the best way to make long term progress.
6. Foam roll or use a PVC pipe before training. Hit the quads, hams, IT bands, glutes, inner thighs, calves, lower and upper back.
7. If you are going to static stretch because you… …continue reading.
Today’s guest post is from David Jarzebowski, a member of the Renegade Inner Circle.
Ok, so a high school friend of mine got married in Buffalo, NY, over the weekend. When I was booking the ticket, the only option from London was to fly via Newark. Given how close this was to Renegade Gym, I decided to extend my trip by a day and try to squeeze in a training session at Renegade. Jay was kind enough to agree, and so I booked the flights and hotel at Newark airport.
I arrived from London at 1pm local time (6pm UK time) and got to my hotel around 2:30pm. I was starting to get a little nervous about the training session, and also about how I was going to get to Watchung itself.
I spoke to the hotel staff and they told me it was not possible to walk to 0.75 miles from the hotel to the bus stop. So I had to order a taxi. This was a mistake, as apparently there is a flat $20 fee from the hotel to Newark. The hotel told me about this in advance, but I didn’t know what else to… …continue reading.
Probably my biggest weakness is my grip strength. That’s why I always check out anything Jedd Johnson has to say on the subject. He is the master when it comes to this topic and today I have an awesome guest post from the man, himself. Check it out…
Grip and Forearm Strength is an important aspect for anyone who trains with weights or competes in sports. This is true for many reasons.
Grip Strength helps your other lifts go up, in turn improving your weights lifted. The way this happens is by a concept called Radiant Tension.
To demonstrate this, let’s look at the bench press. When you bench, the more stable the bar is the better. With a strong grip on the bar, you will have better control of it throughout the length of the bar path. The way Radiant Tension works is when your hand squeezes onto the bar, tension begins to radiate through your wrist, down your forearm, across the elbow and into the shoulder. This tension helps you get more weight and more repetitions in your set.
To test this, lie down on the bench and perform the movement with your hands relaxed around the bar. … …continue reading.
Training’s been going pretty well lately. The shoulder still bothers me but has been feeling a lot better and is coming along. Now I have a new injury to deal with. I’m a big fan of overdoing things. Well, lemme rephrase that actually… I am not so much a fan of it as I am someone who routinely overdoes things. It’s one of the many things I have in common with Clark Griswold.
I’ve been doing a lot of running lately. Hill sprints, flat ground sprints, sled sprints and cone/agility drills. Because I have a habit of getting overzealous and pushing too hard, too fast I added in too much volume when I knew I shouldn’t have.
We’d been getting seemingly endless streaks of rain here in NJ (somewhere my friend, Chad Waterbury is smiling) which were driving me insane and causing me to restart my search for a place to live in Southern Cali. So when the sun finally started shining and the ground dried up I couldn’t get outside often enough.
My calf started bothering me and tightening up from the excessive volume that I wasn’t ready for. I should have listened and taken another day off but… …continue reading.
In part 6 of my interview with Craig we discuss how I set up programs in order to maximize muscle building, strength & power development, conditioning and overall tissue and joint health.
Craig Ballantyne: Can you walk us through a typical Renegade style training session. Is it always goingto be total body training with conditioning at the end?
Jason Ferruggia: More or less. We don’t really isolate muscles and every workout involves the total body. There may be an upper or lower focus on certain days but we are still using exercises and drills that involve the entire body for the most part.
Everyone gets in ten minutes early and foam rolls and stretches first before the dynamic warm up begins. I know some people are vehemently opposed to static stretching and believe that it’s unnatural and does nothing. They’re probably right. BUT… if you have a guy who can’t get into the bottom position of a squat without his lower back rounding, often times five to ten minutes of stretching the hip flexors and other tight muscle groups may be a quick fix. It’s not a long term solution and there are other… …continue reading.
Here’s the next installment of my interview with CB…
Craig Ballantyne: Now, I know you don’t specialize in fat loss, per se, but over the 15 plus years of training people, what have you noticed and what lessons have you learned from training athletes that might help average people and some of my readers lose fat more efficiently?
Jason Ferruggia: Athletes that train intelligently always seem to be able to get down to single digit body fat fairly easily. Then you have the average guy going to the gym struggling and he’s always stuck at 20 or 18 percent body fat.
He’s doing the same things and making the same mistakes a lot of average gym goers make…
He’s on the treadmill, the stair climber, the elliptical. As you know, cardio is very ineffective for most people. A lot of power athletes, a field athlete like a football player, for example, can’t afford to do traditional cardio or steady state aerobic activity because that will pretty much destroy his fast twitch muscle fibers and make him slower and less explosive.
They really don’t even have that option, first of all.
They’re forced to just stick with high intensity training… …continue reading.
In Part 4 of the interview I did for Craig Ballantyne last month we discuss training females and a few random business tips for trainers and strength coaches.
Craig Ballantyne: Let’s transition back into some training stuff. Now, your gym isn’t just for guys, right? There are girls that train there also, correct?
Jason Ferruggia: There are a few girls, but that’s not my focus or main specialty. My first priority and focus is getting guys bigger, stronger and faster and just improving their overall performance. That is my true passion. We really only try to appeal to males and any marketing we may do is always done with guys in mind. But if high school or college female athletes want to come in and train for improved performance, and they can hang, they are more than welcome. In fact, they often earn a lot of respect from the guys when they do.
In our old gym we had only one female athlete in more than a dozen years, that was able to hang and actually made it more than three months. She went on to have great success. Others came and went but none made it more… …continue reading.
Here is part 2 of the recent interview I did for Craig Ballantyne. Click HERE for part 1.
Craig Ballantyne: Tell us a little bit about some of the unique conditioning that you do? Obviously you’ve got the prowler, you guys do sprints, but what else do you have in Renegade Gym that you guys do?
Jason Ferruggia: First of all, it should be noted that not everyone needs to do conditioning. Typically the most explosive athletes do the least amount of conditioning. These would usually be throwers. But if you want to be in shape or play a sport you are going to need to do some conditioning. The key is not to overdo it. Or do it just for the sake of doing it.
As I said, we do zero cardio. Traditional cardio goes against evolution. You weren’t designed to do that and it’s counterproductive; meaning it causes cortisol release, over use injuries and saps your power.
As far as the methods we DO use- the prowler is one of the BEST things you can do. We use that quite a bit. You really have to experience it to even appreciate it. You do… …continue reading.
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