In Autumn When the Leaves Fall, the Sandbag is Carried, and the Thick Bars are Taken Outside With fall upon us—though it doesn’t feel particularly fall-like here in west-central Alabama, where I live on a few acres down a little-traveled gravel road—I thought I’d return to an essay that I wrote three years ago, and originally titled “Outdoor Lifting in the Fall.” Initially, I thought I’d just repost it as a “Thursday Throwback” piece, since I haven’t posted one of those in quite some time. As I was reading over it, however, I realized that it could be fleshed out even more, so I’ve added additional, brand-new workouts, and I combined the original article with another fall training essay on outdoor training challenges that I wrote a couple years ago, about a year after the first one. Perhaps it will give you some ideas for your autumn training… “What should be sad in the falling of spent leaves, of leav...
Bottom-Position Training for New Gains in Size, Strength, and Power Once you reach a certain level of strength, you need to do at least some bottom-position training to ensure continued progress. For many lifters, the only bottom-position training they do is on lifts that naturally start from the bottom position, such as any “pull” lift—deadlifts and the quick lifts, for example. The deadlift is called that for a reason—you start the movement from a “dead” stop. But you’ll mightily increase your strength on bench pressing and squatting movements if you also start those lifts from a dead stop; i.e. the bottom-position. Some lifters decide to give bottom-position training a try, only to stop because of how weak they are on them. You might be able to squat 315 pounds, only to find that you can’t do more than 250 from the bottom-position. Same thing with the bench press, a lift many gym-goers pride th...