Iron and Lace
Dr. Ken Leistner: Training Methodologies of the 1960s
Download the full Draper here newsletter
in printable, live-link, pdf format, here.
Your attention, please! Who here watches the news? Anyone? Raise your hands.
The daily news is like an 85-pound dumbbell dropping on your foot, pinching your fingers between 45s while loading the Olympic bar, or tearing a biceps when doing cheat curls with an overloaded thick bar. The news is bad. Here's a perfect example: You're sitting front row center watching a local physique show when the posing trunks of contestant #6 explode before your eyes.
The Posing Trunks Bomber. Nuts everywhere.
I'm not paranoid, but I'm more alert than ever, which is a rather boastful statement for a B71. Why, you ask? Weightlifting works. Consistent training helps big-time. The iron experience builds. Prepping for a set, approaching the dumbbell rack, tugging the knurled grips, rattling the plates, pushing the solid steel, directing the motion and striving for the last rep before releasing the strong, screaming grasp. That's why!
It hurts and you intend it to hurt. The first rep in six, eight, 10 or 20 is an overture, a curiosity, a probe, a test, a trial run -- a fragile beginning to a courageous end, a cheap thrill, the setting of life in motion. The following reps one by one define the deed, add depth and dimension; they color the scene, guide the travel and fill your body and mind with thunder and hissing. The last rep is the sweetest.
We all search for, discover and describe joy differently.
There's pushing and there's pulling and there are the two alternately entwined. Why, you ask, deliver a little when you can produce much more? What once was hard becomes harder, and harder becomes harder yet. It never becomes easy! Easy is a forgone memory, a worthless inclination, a bad habit lost, the way of the wayward. Don't you know, it's not how much weight you lift; it's the exertion and the execution in your lifting.
Give me wisdom before sugar, knowing before a goblet of sparkling wine. A pair of apt dumbbells fitted to smart hands provides more delight to the user, greater body-mind focus, further preciseness in exercise performance, safety in handling and certainty in building muscle.
I underscore the benefits of administering light weights because light weights are all I can administer. Heavy weights either remain in the rack unfazed by my efforts to remove them, or on the floor where they belong. Frustration and disappointment in the tonnage I can no longer move has long faded. That I can gasp air, count to almost 100 and see a fuzzy reflection in the mirror is quite sufficient... almost entertaining.
Laree, is that you? Would you be a dear, prepare the tea and read Steinbeck to me? That's a good girl. Puff my pillows, perhaps.
I'll go to the gym this afternoon and focus on back. I can't push my way through a turnstile, but my pulling is good. In fact, I've been considered for a part time job at The Goznell Dental Clinic.
Though deadlifts are history, one-arm dumbbell rows make me feel like a tough guy. The leaning three-point stance with a hunky dumbbell in my mitt is good for the back, bis and body oomph, and great for my B71 liftoff. Super-setting the rows slowly but surely with stiff-arm pullovers floods my torso with heated blood. Lats and tris, pecs and abs work like a turbine producing electricity.
Pressing needs to be done this day to keep the shoulders plump and prevent the tris from evacuating the rear of my arms when I'm not looking. That's a sneaky trick abandoned muscles pull on lazy lifters. Beware, bubba baby.
Dumbbell presses on a bench the end of which is perched on a six-inch block serves me best for my particular needs. I'm needy and I'm particular... like Billy the old goat munching on the hemp bush behind the barn.
I confess to engaging light weights when it comes to pressing. But I make up for the disadvantage with high reps, movement variation, focus and all that other stuff I bluster about. The collected reps go something like this (don't laugh, I use 25s): 10-12 reps in a palm-facing-palm bent-arm fly, 6-8 reps in a palms-forward press motion, 4-6 reps in elbows-to-sky lying triceps motion, and, sitting upright, 6 reps of palms-forward alternate curls.
The gluttonous combination reminds me of stuffing myself at The Little Inn, the Swedish smorgasbord across the street from the Muscle Beach dungeon, after a feverish workout in the summer of '63. Some things you never forget.
Three rounds of this mad circuit are satisfactory, four work if my head's on crooked. This output is not to be misinterpreted as three or four sets. Though firmly connected, each rep is distinct and highly regarded, every exercise variation is a separate set, and max exertion in the last repetitions instigates each and every exercise change.
Thus, we have an omnipotent, multipurpose extended set of four individual exercises without all that walking and commotion and picking and choosing. Just the iron, focus, form and exertion.
Funny how we adapt, isn't it?
Adapt. Never submit. Thank God always...
Dave
-----
You don’t have to sign up for Facebook to read Dave’s commentary and interactions on his Facebook page. Dave is on Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/bodybuilderdavedraper
Dave is on Twitter, here:
---
Take a trip over to our
Musclebuilding Q&A Blog
... where Dave allows us a peek into his email outbox.
Did you sign up for Dave's expanded email yet?
It's free, motivating and priceless!
We'll also send you a link to Dave's free
Body Revival Tips and Hints e-report with your confirmation notice.