'Have it all': Bryce Lane's 50/20

Aris DeMarco

part 1
part 2

Continuing with the 'simple progressions' series; here's another entry on maximizing training efficiency with minimal equipment: density training. There are many ways to go about it, but basically, density training involves doing maximum work in a minimum time period, thus creating a high 'density' of work done. Going by my previous blog entry, most density formats would be high volume, moderate intensity, and moderate to low frequency. However, some versions can be set up with relatively high volume, and also high intensity, making them tremendously potent for fast progress--but also creating the risk of a quick burnout and stagnating progress. 50/20 is one of these.

Bryce Lane, who came up with 50/20, freely admits that he got the idea from Charles Staley's EDT/escalating density training formats. These generally involve two lifts or exercises supersetted in 15 minute blocks, with maximum repetitions of each done in that time period. (For those interested, here is Staley's website, and T-nation has several of Staley's articles about EDT.) Lane's version is a bit different--more focused, and more bare-bones, whereas most of Staley's versions are tailored for bodybuilding.

Staley walking the walk. 

Personally, I prefer Bryce Lane's version. Here's the basic idea: pick a big compound exercise that can be loaded pretty heavily. Take a set weight and do 50 total repetitions in 20 minutes using any set/rep/rest combination. Bryce writes "I have thought many times about one workout that could give you 'it all' or as close to it as possible. A simple, short, to the point workout where you would get stronger in a very practical sense, increase your work capacity and conditioning level and add bulk if you eat like you mean it... [this is] aimed at people who want 'the big picture', and the bigger the better.... Here's how it works. For twenty minutes do as many reps as you can of your chosen compound exercise, squats, deadlifts, power cleans or snatches, clean & presses etc. You do this twice a week. You use the same weight throughout the twenty minutes. About 75-80% of your gym-maximum in good clean form is fine to start. Begin with something you can easily do and add as you can."

That's the program in a nutshell, and if all you had were those guidelines you'd have a piece of training info worth its weight in gold. Really--this thing works. It worked for Bryce very well, in fact it was one of the programs he used over and over again and he was a complete and utter beast physically. (I'll probably end up doing one of those 'lifter profile' blogs on him and his training at some point.) It's worked for me, and almost everyone who's tried it got something very useful out of it. 50 reps with your 10-rep maximum or thereabouts is, as Pavel might say, "a very powerful stimulus." Doing it on a twenty-minute timer with a big compound exercise ups the intensity factor even more. If you really emphasize good form and a full range of motion instead of allowing your technique to fall apart in order to get more reps (never do this, especially with something as demanding as the 50/20 program) you'll be getting plenty of practice in your chosen movement as well and 'greasing the groove' very efficiently. The GTG factor, by the way, is one reason the gains come fast and hard with this routine.Take something you can hit for 10 reps with a struggle in the olympic-style full squat and work up to doing that for 50 reps in a fast workout. The end result? A bigger, stronger, better conditioned version of yourself who's had a ton of practice doing squats. 

The key to making it work: do it only twice a week, and do just that one big exercise for the twenty minute time period. Sure you can do 'extras' but they really have to be kept to a minimum. As you can see, the basic idea is somewhat similar to Pavel's 'Bear' version of 'power to the people' and similar guidelines must be followed as far as recovery goes. 

Here are some of Bryce's basic suggestions: 

Day 1: Barbell clean and press

Day 2: full back squat

that's it. Each twice weekly, so C&P Monday/Thursday and SQ Tuesday/Friday. Or: 

Day 1: barbell deadlift

Day 2: barbell bench press

Hill sprints or cycling go well with that variant if you want to round things out with a bit more conditioning and lower body work. 

Something Bryce did several times, it's a bit more demanding but if you have plenty of time to sleep, and a lot of food lying around it can be done: 

Day 1: bench press

Day 2: weighted chinup

Day 3: barbell squat OR romanian deadlift (alternate each time)

Day 4: off, then repeat day 1. 

Now, 50/20 works well with a barbell but I believe it's even better suited to bodyweight movements, or kettlebells, or a sandbag. Bryce wrote about doing it with odd objects too, saying that "things like this, you just don't get bored with. The implement just begs you into the fight." 

The level of strength shouldering 260 pounds of loose, dead weight requires is... significant, to say the least. This fellow shouldered a 200-pound (his own weight) bag for 55 reps in 20 minutes. 

Moreover, density training formats are uniquely suited to objects that are difficult to adjust. With your own bodyweight, a kettlebell, or a sandbag it's not really possible to set up a detailed progression plan like you can do with a barbell--5 or even 2.5-pound increases, or percentage-based cycling plans just can't be done. 50/20 offers a simpler progression. Being able to bang out 50 reps in twenty minutes means you can manhandle a certain weight fairly well; so moving up to the next harder variant, or next kettlebell size, or adding 25 pounds to your sandbag, should be pretty doable. At this point you'd probably be stopped dead with, say, 30 reps in twenty minutes at your next workout, but eventually work back up to 50. As Bryce says, "50 reps is the goal, not the starting point [though the first time you try this, definitely start out light] what usually happens is that you get 28-32 reps/20m the first time (after a 10% increase) then up to 42-45 reps then you get the 50r and then comes more weight. You just have to fight this thing through and it's just not 'on' every day."

So, here's a sample progression with bodyweight: You start out doing bodyweight lunges. At first, 5 reps at a time is tough for you, you stumble around, and can barely get your 50 reps (each leg) in 20 minutes. Eventually you work it out so that you're doing 5 reps each leg, every other minute and 'clockwork' it out that way. You try moving on to box pistols (one legged squats sitting back onto a bench or box) but don't feel quite ready yet so you go past 50/20 with the lunges, doing as many as you can every set and doing sets as often as you can. Eventually, you nail 80 reps each leg in 20 minutes. At this point, you feel ready to move on so you take a week off to recuperate and start in on the box pistols. At first it's tough, of course, but eventually you hit 50/20 each leg with the box pistols and lower the box... guess what, in a few months you'll be doing 50 reps in twenty minutes, with each leg, of full pistol squats. Your leg strength and endurance, as well as hip and ankle flexibility, and balance, will have greatly improved and if you're a guy who's been eating plenty of solid, protein rich food you might have some decent leg size gains on top of it. 

Here's another example with a kettlebell. You can clean and press your 16kg for 10 reps but only get the 24kg for one on a good day, with your strong arm. So, you set out to hit 50/20 with your 16kg. Twice a week, you just go to town on one arm C&Ps with your 16. Eventually you hit 50/20 each arm and you try the 24. You've basically been doing very concentrated, intense 'practice', maybe gotten a little bigger in the shoulder girdle too, so now the 24 can go up a bit easier and with each arm. You don't have any interim weights so back you go to the 16 and try a harder press variant instead of the simple C&P (savickas presses or bottoms-up presses would work well here) and when you finally hit 50/20 with that, the 24 should be much easier. At this point, you can probably try to use your 24 for 50/20, perhaps starting with push presses and gradually working towards doing full strict presses. 

Once you've got 'the groove' down, don't be afraid of higher reps!

As for exercise choices, two exercises is the base program (upper and lower). A push, pull and squat, or a push and two pulls (upper and lower) could work well too. Depending on what you have available, chins and dips on day one (this is where you can use a more Staley-esque supersetted deal) and pistols on day two is one option. One arm pushup progressions and deadlifts; sandbag bearhug squats and divebomber pushups, one arm kettlebell C&Ps and shrimp squats, double kettlebell presses (one clean for each set of presses) and double kettlebell front squats... all good options. Bryce Lane had one beast of a program idea that had a trainee doing handstand pushups on day one and sandbag shouldering on day two. I introduced it to several guys I know and they've had great improvements--I will try and get their feedback on a future blog. 

That should be more than enough for anyone who's interested to get started with this. For the next 'simple progressions' blog I'll continue writing about 50/20 and density training (because the possibilities really are nearly limitless with this kind of format and it's VERY useful for busy people who want solid results): how and when to deload, proper exercise choices, and manipulating the volume, intensity, and time variables. Perhaps in another blog after that I'll write about some options for preserving and improving a 1RM while using this program: perhaps the only complaints of people who have run it are that 1. they burn out quickly and 2. they do not always get a good gain on their 1-rep max after doing 50/20 or a similar density routine. Both problems have rather simple fixes... but that's a subject for next time. 

Part two 

As always--I hope you enjoyed this article and find some useful information for your own training! If you have questions, comment below or email be at affectinggravity@gmail.com. 

A sensible method for customizing training programs

Aris DeMarco

In part one of this series I outlined some of the many, many factors that intelligent individuals may wish to consider when designing their training programs: goals, time frame, limitations, personal preferences, and past experiences. In part two I gave an example from my own training showing how one can juggle some of these different factors in order to optimize your workout routines for whatever goals you have at a given time.

One of the most important things for any trainee to learn is how to properly apply their training. Doing too much will result in less progress, frustration, possible injury--in short, things going wrong. Doing too little can also result in less (or negative) progression, as well as possible injury later on, if rigorous activities are attempted in a detrained state. Plus, of course, progression is the name of the game here and more is always better. Again--more reps, heavier weights, deeper stretches, faster times or farther runs, more muscular bodyweight added or more bodyfat lost, and so forth. And a great deal of this desired efficiency and success in training progress comes as a result of not only proper planning, but proper implementation.

Prussian military officer Helmuth von Moltke is commonly credited with the quote "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

This dude. Looks to know a thing or two about scrapping, eh?

When it comes to properly customizing your training (if you desire to do so--and I really encourage it, at least eventually, for most individuals) you'll live by this quote. After devising a specific plan for your goals, you'll generally have to go through a period of time where you play with it a bit until you get it 'right' according to your circumstances at the time--recovery abilities, stress, amount of time to train, amount of effort you're willing to put in, and so on. Maybe you try a new training plan and think "I should do a bit more if I want to make progress." Or, perhaps after a few weeks you realize that you're pushing too hard, and have to back off. Here's a good way to think about it.

Measure your training by its frequency, its volume, and its intensity. Balance the three, adding or subtracting from each aspect as needed. Eventually, you'll get close to that 'ideal' training plan, the shortest point between where you are and where you want to be pretty soon; the plan that's specific for your goals, progressive, that contains elements you know to be effective for you, and that you enjoy doing.

Frequency: How often you do something. Want to improve your strict pullup numbers? Doing a 'daily max' set every day, or sometimes even twice daily, would be a high frequency plan.

Volume: How much of something you do, when you do do it. Let's say you realize that you need to do a lot of pullups to get better at them. Doing 100 total strict pullups every time would be a high volume program (for most people--for others, 50 or even just 20 total reps might be high volume).

Intensity: How hard you work at what you're doing. When working on your pullups, maybe you like pushing yourself really hard and going all out on every set until you're forced to drop from the bar. Doing every set all-out would be an example of high intensity.I like to define 'intensity' as a percentage of effort, though others prefer to define it solely as a percentage of your single-repetition max... more on this in the next blog entry.

So, looking at these three elements, there are clear limitations. You can't do 100 pullups, every day, with every single set taken to the point where you simply can't do any more and fall off the bar. It'd be hell on your recovery and you'd probably either stop progressing, lose gains, or get injured.

A roughly double bodyweight log lift onto a platform even just for fun was pretty much an all out effort for me (intensity). I wouldn't be able to do many of these in one day (volume), or many days in a week (frequency), no matter how much I might want to. 

The basic rule of thumb here is that you can have 'high' levels of one aspect but the other two have to be 'medium' or 'light'. So, you can go all out on every set of pullups (high intensity) but maybe only twice weekly (low frequency) and for three sets (moderate volume). Or, you could do 100 total reps (high volume) three times weekly (moderate frequency) in sets of 5, when you can do 15 consecutively (low intensity--only ~30% effort). Make sense? Good, because here's the next level of complexity. 

Each lift plays by different rules. I'll have another blog up in the future explaining some of the many reasons this is the case, but for every unique individual, lifts and exercises are simply... unique. They are easier or more difficult to progress in, they respond positively, in terms of progression, to different things, and can be done to different degrees when it comes to frequency, volume, and intensity. This should be pretty easy to wrap your head around--obviously, a 150-pound skinny guy is going to be able to run much more often, even if he's just starting out, than a 300-pound chubby fellow who's the same height. The light runner's ankles, knees, hips, and spine will probably be better able to deal with the new strain, for one thing. On the other hand, if our two subjects start lifting barbells, the second guy will almost definitely make better progress--his shorter limbs and thicker joints provide better leverages for many lifts and make progression easier in terms of the most weight he can move. 

Zydrunas Savickas: arguably the strongest man ever lived. Probably not a great runner. 

Here's where you have to experiment a bit and put your thinking cap on. Each lift and exercise and activity you do will respond a bit differently and you have to find out how to juggle them effectively. Back to the pullup example. For over a year I did weighted pullups 3 to 4 times weekly with basically all-out sets of 3 to 4 reps. This to me was moderate frequency (and high intensity and low volume). If I tried to do weighted pullups more often I'd have to drop back on frequency or volume to keep progressing. On the other hand, deadlifting 3 to 4 times a week would be VERY high frequency for me and I'd have to use stupidly light weights and easy sets to pull that often. To make your training for each goal as efficient as possible, you'll have to treat each goal as an individual entity, as long as it doesn't interfere with your other goals. This is very important. You'll have to make sure that your goals are more or less compatible with each other, as discussed in part one, if you want the best results. 

Of course, if you compete in a sport things are a bit different; and balancing things out becomes even more important. For a particular powerlifter, squatting thrice weekly might be the best thing he could ever do for his squat. But he also has to train his bench press and deadlift regularly so 3x/week squatting is out, except maybe for specialization periods between competitions. Another example--a football team has to get strong in the weight room, but during the season their plays rough the team up too much to add big poundages to their lifts. Thus, many teams go heavy in the offseason when they don't have to worry about hard practices and harder games on top of time with the weights. 

Balance is important. 

So, quick summary here:

1. Think about your training in terms of frequency, volume, and intensity

2. Remember that each lift, exercise and activity will have different levels corresponding to 'high', 'low', and 'medium', in terms of #1. 

3. Balance things out, and ensure that your goals are more or less compatible. 

4. Be reasonable. This also goes back to part one (link up top). You'll have to make a lot of sacrifices if you want to jack up the volume, frequency, and intensity simultaneously (using the smolov squat program, for example). Don't try to do everything at once. Your training should make sense. 

5. Keep the other stuff in mind--specific goals, doing what you enjoy, all that good stuff. 

I'll probably have an article concerning another subject (either 'simple progressions' or another historical 'lifter profile') up next. But keep an eye out for the next entry in the program design series--I'll write about how to measure intensity (and why), why it's best to look at lifts individually, and other good stuff. 

As always, hope you enjoyed the article! Drop me a line at affectinggravity@gmail.com, or comment below with any questions. 

Lillian Leitzel

Aris DeMarco

part one
part two

Continuing with the 'athlete profile' series, I figured it was time to introduce a woman into the mix and spare everyone another blog post featuring men in gladiator sandals.

Not sure if this is any better, but you can't say I don't try...

...our heroine is on the far left of the picture

In the early 20th century, strength-based physical culture was beginning to spread rapidly among the male populations of both Europe and the United States. However, among women it was virtually nonexistent, the traditional arts of dance and acrobatics were still basically the only athletic pursuits females engaged in. Aerial performers (ring and trapeze artists) were the big draw at circuses and many of these artists, like the performing strongmen, pushed their boundaries to do something new or exciting in order to succeed.

At the time, though the rings were not nearly as sophisticated in terms of needing pure strength as in today's gymnastics (I believe that change came with Albert Azaryan's cross obsession a few decades later) they were still very much a 'male' art, requiring more strength than most women had or cared to develop.

Azaryan.

Lillian Leitzel was born in 1892 as Leopoldina Alitza Pelikan and brought up by her grandparents in Germany. She was trained in music and dance and became fluent in several languages--several of her instructors believed she would go on to become a professional pianist. However, she began teaching herself acrobatics and at the tender age of 14 joined her family in the circus, performing with her mother and two aunts. She cared nothing for her stereotypical role as a female aerialist, though, and eventually created something a bit more demanding as a performance routine. 

Leitzel putting me and Alex to shame with (what appears to be) a one arm lockoff on a rope

In 1910, Leitzel moved to the United States and performed with Barnum & Bailey. Her primary routine was done on the rings like those of the male performers, but unlike most other routines hers was done fifty or more feet in the air, without safety nets and only a thin rubber pad to break her fall--of course, from that height, most mats would be doing more breaking than padding, so such a safety measure was dismissive at best! 

Leitzel quickly became known for her quick temper, flirtatious performing style, and tremendous strength. She was reputedly able to do 250 'back revolutions' (a sort of 'one arm dislocate', or momentum-aided 'skin-the-cat', seen at 1.40 in the video). One of her crowd-stealers was to encourage her audiences to count each repetition with her as she did them, swinging around and around in quick succession. She could also do 27 consecutive one arm pullups on one of the rings; David Willoughby states that these one arm chins were undoubtedly done with a high degree of swing or 'kip', but that Leitzel could probably do, at most, 6 strict one arm chins (he worked this out by comparing her to a contemporary male gymnast with one of his typically complicated mathematical formulas). This is still mindblowing, of course, for a female athlete--an excellent effort for any athlete, for that matter, and would make Leitzel perhaps the most capable female athlete of all time when considering this particular feat of strength. 

Something else worth noting is Leitzel's 'behind the back holds' (seen at 1.03) which also seems to be a typical move for male acrobats--I've seen cirque du soleil extraordinaire Igor Zaripov do it in several of his performances: 

Taken together, Lillian's feats show that she had a very high degree of strength and flexibility throughout her shoulder girdle, arms, and hands (though I'm assuming she used straps to hold onto the rings for some movements) as well as excellent coordination and flexibility throughout her entire body; and, of course, a complete lack of regard for heights. Moreover, they show that she can be favorably compared to a male acrobat in terms of ability for many movements, which is insanely impressive for an athletic endeavor that mainly involves upper body strength. 

As far as her personal life is concerned, I wasn't able to find out much just through the internet. Apparently she married several men (in succession) out of a constant line of suitors, never bore any children, and eventually died during a performance in Copenhagen when she was 39--through no fault of her own, I might add--the rope holding her snapped at its base. I suppose adding a safety net to her performances at some point would have been prudent, but Leitzel doesn't seem the sort to have cared for that kind of thing at all.

In short: Lillian Leitzel was smart, talented, succeeded in a highly competitive field of showbiz through nothing but her own raw talent and hard work, eschewed the commonly accepted limitations of female physical ability, and continued performing in front of adoring crowds until she was nearly 40. 

Get after it, ladies. 

Sources:

Willoughby, David P. The Super-Athletes. 

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/29/195971072/lillian-leitzel-the-tiny-high-flying-queen-of-the-circus 

http://www.ringling.com/ContentPage.aspx?id=45835&section=45825 

http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/587705 

Wikipedia. 

Simple Strength Cycles: A "Power to the People!" Routine.

Josh Trammell

“Gosh dang it!!” After months of working on getting my first One-Arm Chin, I finally pushed myself too far. My left elbow just completely pooped out on me, rendering me unable to do any sort of upper body strength training for the next 2 months. What’s a man to do in this situation?

After getting a pretty severe case of tendinitis, all I could do was work on my legs. The routine I’m about to lay out may seem TOO simple at first look; however, two years have passed since I’ve worked this routine and it is still one of the most successful short cycles I have ever laid out. If an injury has completely derailed your upper/lower body training, or if you are looking to specialize on a specific body part or area in which you’re weak, this routine is perfect for you.

Adapted from Pavel Tsatsouline’s “Power to the People!”, within just 11 weight training sessions, I took my Front Squat 5RM from 225lbs x 5 to 250lbs x 5.

- Two years ago...

The Set-Up:

• Pick a lift/area of the body you want to work on. In my case, all I could do was Front Squat.
• Train this lift 4 days/week as the first lift in your training session.
• Work up to a heavy (but doable) set of 1x5; take 80% of that weight and do another set of 1x5. So, if you did 1x5 @225lbs, you would do another 1x5 @ 180lbs (80% of 225).
•  Every 2 sessions, up the amount of weight used on the first set by 5 lbs. For example: Monday and Tuesday, you did 1x5 @ 225lbs; Thursday and Friday, you will do 1x5 @ 230lbs, and take 80% of that for another set of 1x5.

     Do this for approximately 8-12 sessions (8 sessions = 4 increases in weight; 12 sessions = 6 increases in weight).

      After 12 sessions, you can do one of two things:

1. Deload, keeping the intensity at about 90% of your best lift, for a week. Cut the volume in half and do just ONE set of 5. Do not do the 80% lift.  Then, add 5-10lbs to your FIRST set of 5 in that cycle (what you did that first session), and restart the cycle. While not a hard and fast rule, I would add 5 lbs to any upper body lifts, and 10lbs to the lower body lifts.
2. Move onto a different cycle.

While this routine is incredibly simple, if you suck at a lift, are weak in an area, or can’t do anything else, this will skyrocket your progress – especially if you’ve never messed around with High Frequency Training before.

If you’re confused on how the routine is set-up or have any comments/questions, shoot us an email at affectinggravity@gmail.com or comment below. 

training the grip

Alex


I like to be able to try new exercises whenever I want and still be good at them. I pulled a 160 kg / 352 pound deadlift the other day with no real deadlift training prior to it. That was fun since it's 2.5 times my bodyweight almost. I also managed a 5 rep dip with +40 kg in a belt with no specific training. I love to be able to just jump in and try fun stuff here and there, so here's my thoughts.

I have good core strength, I have a good healthy shoulder girdle and I have a good grip, so I credit the feats to those abilities.

Build that base and training can become much more fun and experimental. Right now, I have no training program, I simply have a list of many exercises that I like and I just pick a few and hammer them for low, medium or high reps for as long as I like.
Let's talk grip training. It's one quality that I think will make or break you when trying new stuff for training. If your grip is super strong, you will be able to learn new exercises faster. A heavy deadlift can be trained without assistance. One arm chins can be built up to. High rep stuff like kettlebell swings or dumbbell rows can be done without worrying about dropping the weight.
here's a great weekly routine to get a good grip, this will be done on your regular sessions as a compliment.

workout one:
- when you do your pullups, use a towel to hang on to, or rather two towels spaced shoulder width apart. Go for heavy loads here and shoot for 6-8 sets of 3-5 reps with as high weight as you can.
- finish the session with some reverse barbell curls for the extensors. Go for pump, 3-4 sets of 10-15 reps and just make sure to move slow.


workout two:
- train you fingers using a climbers hang board, metolius rock rings, iron mind eagle loops or simply an edge on a door frame. If you cannot find this, use a fat pullup bar (fat gripz or wrap a towel around the bar to make it thick). Do either timed hangs (7 sets of 7 seconds with 3 s rest is a classic) or do pullups on your device of choice, but for a bit higher reps. I recommend quite high volume here so take your time and make room for this session in your time plan. Add weight as you get stronger.


workout three:
- thick object holds. Use a thick dumbbell/barbell or wrap a towel around a regular one. Do holds for time. I suggest doing a few shorter holds that are really heavy (5-10 s) and finish it with one or two longer sets of about one minute.
- wrist curls: take a barbell and lay your forearms on a bench. Wrist curl for high reps, I suggest 30-50 reps and really pump it up. 3-4 sets will do!


Next post from me will be an exposé of some of these exercises!