My ultra- simple 'weights routine'

Are you in a wheelchair?

 

how would I perform cleans if I was? No, I feel great. After I stretched and showered I had a marvellous feeling of cleanness and lightness which has remained with me to this moment.

 

You're performing a technical movement that is classified as an Olympic Lift.

A Compound Movement is a lift that involves a large group of muscles and are fundamental in strength and muscle mass gains. Olympic Lifts are geared more towards skill (for the lift) and power.

What it sounds like you want to be focusing on would be sets of 3-5 sets of 12 for the compound movements of squats/deadlifts (alternate days), bench press, shoulder press, pull ups and rows for about a month. This will get your body up to par in getting familiar with technique in these movements (assuming you already know how to do them correctly) and get them ready to start training for strength. Then you'll want to bump your sets to a 5 sets of 5 scheme. A key thing to note is that a set of whatever number should be an absolute struggle to get that last repetition in, but one that you're confident you'll get (unless you have a spotter). For a beginner to weight training this is going to mean your 1st set weight isn't going to be the same as your 3rd set weight.

If you just do 1 rep, wait a bit, then do another rep, then that's what you're going to get good at doing. It doesn't give significant amount of stress to your body to force it to adapt. Maybe if you did it for an hour, but not 20 or 30 minutes, and not with the weight you're doing it at. It's certainly not going to transfer well into martial arts either.

 

so more reps then?
I'm not being entirely mindless about this. If you look back to the 40s, people like peary rader were doing routines composed of 1-3 exercises. One of them is his clean and jerk routine, which only takes 10 minutes.

 

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online...g_performance/peary_raders_oldschool_training

Specialized training routines is not how 'the greats' developed their greatness, it's how they refined it.

 

Just doesn't seem like your legs are getting much meaningful work from that.

No one thinks this is mindless, I am a fan of cutting back to essentials in training, I just consider strong legs essential.

 

There are other essential body parts other than legs

 

Fair enough. My contention would be that I am performing full squats as part of the lift. I see your point that they're not really heavy enough, but what with the sprinting I do, extra leg work might not be a brilliant idea. I dunno.
But the heart of this routine is that it is an experiment. A sense of joy and discovery accompany me. I wish to prove that it can be done.

 

cleans leave the bar in the front squat rack position. if you want more leg work, just front squat?

 

I would only add extra leg work in spite of my will. I was going to write 'my better judgement' but really, how true would that have been?

 

you know what, carry on with your program and tell us if your MA and strength have gotten any better in a month or two

it's the only way to know for certain

 

three pages...guess ultra simple has different meaning for different people

 

You know of a simpler program? I thought "Clean and press. That shall be all." was the ultimate. Is there some greater, less intelligent, program of which I know not?

 

Squat. Simpler and far more effective.

 

Does that not neglect the arms? How the hell can you contend that the clean and press doesn't give the arms any work, and yet the squat does?

 

No, it doesn't. Your arms have to assist in supporting the weight. You would be surprised at the development of your entire body by just squatting heavy.

 

what you mean more simpler than trying to learn and OL lfit and comp up with the ultimate rep scheme??

yep i can think of one, load a bar with weight and pick it up, keep adding weight until you cant move it off the floor, and keep trying until you can move it

 

what, you mean like I'm proposing to do?
Do you have a useful contribution to make?
We're obviously not on the same wavelength, you see I think if you go to any building site you'll see people performing what you call 'O lifting' with bags of cement. It's only degenerate, weak, city-dwelling subhumans who have trouble with the movement.

 

Ice is an incredibly strong competitive powerlifter, nah, can't see what he'd have to offer.

 

I'm not saying he's not. Whoops I was rude about someone