Uncommon Associations

 Uncommon Training Associations for More Size and Strength

Build Additional Mass and Power with Some Unique Training Combinations

     Certain objects, items, and concepts are associated with other objects, items, or concepts.  Peanut butter is associated with jelly.  Texas is associated with BBQ, longhorn cattle, and cowboy hats—and nostalgic memories of garage power workouts with Uncle Kirk while we dipped Copenhagen snuff if you’re me.  China is associated with kung-fu and acupuncture.  Japan is associated with samurai, sushi, and creating the first fuel-efficient cars.  Italy is associated with pizza and carb-laden, cheesy pastas.  And so on and so forth.  I could go on and on (and on).  We make associations without giving much thought to it, whether we know it or not.  If I ask what you associate with French fries, I bet you’d say ketchup.  Maybe salt.  Okay, if you’re from the Carolinas, you might even say “mustard” but, sorry, that’s just odd.  But sometimes we should try to think outside of the box and not use our common associations and assumptions.  Because uncommon associations can prove fruitful.  Or, heck, even tasteful.  Peanut butter is pretty good on a burger, believe it or not.  If you haven’t tried it, do so.  Fusion restaurants and foodies have proven that burritos go pretty damn well with Asian food and smoked brisket and pulled pork are more or less awesome on tortilla chips covered with nacho cheese.  Hell, Alabamians loved mayonnaise so much that we even decided to substitute it for ketchup or mustard to create our own Alabama “white BBQ” sauce.  It’s pretty tasty, too, I’ll admit.  (Though Texan by birth—or American by birth and Texan by the grace of God, as the admittedly biased saying goes—I’ve lived in Alabama long enough that I’m fine saying “we” when I talk of fellow Alabamians.)

     We make associations in training, as well.  Wrong or right, we make them.  High-repetition training goes with minimal rest between sets, maybe even circuit training.  Heavy lifting goes with low reps and resting as long as possible between sets.  Isolation exercises and machines are for high reps, supersets, tri-sets, giant sets, and the like.  Bodybuilding means high-volume, lots of exercises for each muscle group, and multi-bodypart splits.  Power training means lower volume, more full-body workouts, and minimal lifts.  I could keep on going.  It’s not that any of this is wrong.  If your only goal is to look better, then, sure, you’d do well to listen to elite bodybuilders when it comes to their training, not to mention their nutritional regimens.  But what if some of it is, at the very least, a bit misguided?

     When it comes to lifting, there are some uncommon associations that actually work.  Some of them even work better than the mainstream associations.  What follows are a few uncommon associations that actually work.

High Repetition Training + Plenty of Rest Between Sets

     I think that many bodybuilders, when they do high-rep sets that are really hard, rest too little between sets.  They could use a little more.  When a bodybuilder does a heavy, max set of squats or deadlift for 5 reps, he might rest as long as 5 minutes before doing another set, 2 or 3 minutes minimum.  But when he does a hard, “intense” set of curls for a set of 10 to 12 reps, he often rests only a minute.  Or less.  Some of the time you should try the opposite.

     An exceptionally hard set of 10 reps, particularly on a compound movement such as bench presses, is going to take more out of you than a heavier set of 5 reps on that same exercise.  For one, the workload is significantly higher.  A 225-pound bench press for 5 reps has a workload of 1,125 pounds.  A 195-pound bench press for 10 reps has a workload of 1,950 pounds.  It’s not twice the workload, but it’s close at roughly 1 and ¾.  In addition, the 10-rep set produces more lactic acid and overall fatigue.

     A lot of bodybuilders would get better results if they rested more between these sets, particularly if they are taking the set to muscular failure or close.  This is especially true if the lifter has more fast-twitch muscle fibers.  Let’s say you do a typical bodybuilding-style chest workout that consists of 3 to 4 exercises for 3 to 4 sets each, with the reps for each set in the 10-12 rep range.  Try resting 3 to 4 minutes between sets.  Do that and your workload for the entire session is going to be significantly higher than simply “chasing the pump” by resting a lot less between sets and then not being capable of using weights that are nearly as heavy.  With more rest, you stay fresh.  Which means that each one of your sets stays strong and powerful.

     I’m not saying to do this all of the time.  There is real benefit from pump training with minimal rest between sets, along with other “intensity techniques” such as rest-pause training, supersets and tri-sets.  But doing one workout where you take maximal rest between sets and following it with a 2nd workout where you race the pump (to use some silver era terminology) would be a good approach.  In the end, using this form of “heavy-light” training is ideal for most bodybuilders, particularly when  trying to gain as much mass as possible.

Low Repetition Training + Minimal Rest Between Sets

     Yep, the opposite works well, too.  Some of the best training programs that you can follow involve doing low-rep sets coupled with minimal rest time between sets.  Sure, if you’re doing some max lifts—or near max, as I prefer for most lifters—you need to rest several minutes between sets.  In my recent (and very long) essay The Fighter’s Physique, I suggested taking as long as 10 minutes between sets in order to stay strong, powerful, and fresh for one’s fighting sessions.  But there’s also some real benefits as far as improved mass and strength goes for using workouts that involve sub-maximal weights, low reps, and minimal rest.

     A little over a decade ago or so, one weekend day I was lounging around the house, scrolling mindlessly on the TV to see what shows might be on when I came across the women’s CrossFit world championships.  Hell, I don’t know if that’s the exact title.  It was something like that.  One of the events the gals were doing involved completing 30 reps as fast as possible with something like 115 pounds on power snatches.  They knew not to do as many reps as they could, otherwise they would burn out and the last few reps would be damn-near impossible.  Instead, they’d do a few reps, rest very briefly, do a few more, and so forth until they got the 30 rps in.  I thought that it looked like a pretty good workout to try.  Or something similar.  At the time, I was quite big and strong.  I was also accustomed to doing high-frequency workouts.  And at the time, I was using a workout inspired by Anthony Ditillo and his one-time training buddy Decso Ban that involved multiple sets of low reps and training each lift 2 and ½ to 3 times in a week.  So, I figured that a workout like the CrossFit women were doing would be a breeze.  Inspired by them, I stepped outside to my garage gym, and, after a couple of warm-up sets, loaded 135 on one of my Olympic bars.  To get 30 reps and keep it systematic, I decided I’d do 10 sets of 3 reps on power snatches with that weight.  I finished the snatch workout in about 10 minutes, resting as short as possible between each set, less at the start and a little more towards the end.  After completing it, I realized it was a great workout.  I had a thorough pump in my mid-back and my lats.  Fool that I was, however, I thought I’d go ahead and do the same thing on some chins.  So, I walked over to my chinning bar and cranked out another 10 sets of 3 reps in about the same amount of time.  The entire workout took maybe 25 minutes, with a few minutes of rest between the two movements.  The next day I’m pretty sure that I was more sore—or at least as sore—than I had ever been in my entire life!  And I had done a heckuva lot of workouts by that point in life, so that’s saying something.  My lats were sore from my armpits down to the bottom of their insertions and my traps, mid-back, and lumbar muscles were just as sore—in other words, my entire back.  I should have stopped after the power snatches so that I wouldn’t have been so sore but I learned an important lesson about the power of density training.

     A good method to use for density workouts is this:  Pick any exercise and load it with a weight that you would use for 3 sets of 10 reps.  Now, do 10 sets of 3 reps with it.  Take about 30 seconds between each set.  As I did with the power snatches, you can take even less time between sets at the start, and a little more towards the end of the workout.  It’s the same 30 reps as 3x10 and you’ll probably get all 30 reps in about the same amount of time, maybe less.  But each rep will be strong, powerful, and fast.  Overall, it’s a better workout than the 3x10.

     You could even try combining the two methods I’ve discussed so far.  When you finish with your 10 sets of 3 reps with minimal rest between sets, rest between 5 and 10 minutes.  Now, do 3 sets of 10 reps with that same weight on the same movement, and rest 5 minutes between those sets.

     This works well on not just triples but doubles and singles.  On any lift, after warm-ups, use a weight that is 90% of your single or double max.  Do 5 sets of singles or 5 sets of doubles with that weight, resting 30 to 60 seconds between sets.  60 seconds should be your max.  You could even combine a workout of singles, doubles, and triples.  Here’s a good lower-body workout to give you an example:

Rack squats: 5 sets of singles, 90% of your single max

Sumo deficit deadlifts: 5 sets of doubles, 90% of your 2-rep max

High-bar, close-stance pause squats: 5 sets of 3 reps, 90% of your 3-rep max

     You can also use this on a full-body split program where you train, say, squats, bench presses, and barbell curls at the 1st session and power cleans (or snatches), chins, and overhead presses at the 2nd.  Do 10 sets of 3 reps on each movement with your 3x10 weight.  Finish each session in 30 minutes to begin with.  As the program progresses, use the same weight on each lift but start decreasing the amount of time it takes you to finish the workout.  Once you can do all 3 lifts in around 20 minutes, add weight at the next session and go back to a 30-minute workout.  For anyone with time constraints, this is a great program to utilize.  You’ll not only get stronger and gain some muscle, but it will give your muscles that thick, dense look along with improving your overall conditioning.

Isolation Exercises + Heavy, Low-Rep Training

     We typically associate isolation exercises with high reps.  Concentration curls, cable crossovers, lateral raises, pullovers, sissy squats—you name it, bodybuilders usually do them at the end of a workout for high reps as a finisher to get a great pump.  I’m definitely not denying that’s a good way to train.  It is.  If you’re a bodybuilder, you should have that kind of training as part of your yearly program.  It’s the kind of workouts that the silver and golden era legends from bodybuilding’s past did, as I discuss in my recent series on golden era training.  But, believe it or not, some isolation movements are great for heavy, low-rep training.

     You can’t and shouldn’t do this on just any isolation movement.  Stay away from using it on exercises such as dumbbell flyes or any movement where you get a really deep stretch in the muscle tissue.  Doing this with those movements could lead to an injury.  But it works great for others.  As one example, I’m a big fan of thick-bar concentration curls for really low reps.  (That’s another uncommon association: thick bars + isolation exercise.)  If my back needs a break from barbell curls or standing dumbbell curls—because of my age and numerous injuries—but I still want to do multiple sets of low reps on my biceps, it’s my go to movement.  It’s great for 10 sets of 3 or even 15 sets of doubles.  With this workout, I don’t take minimal rest but, rather, train heavy and take all the rest I want between sets.

     Some other good exercises to try it on for different muscle groups:

Chest: cable crossovers (Yep, that’s another uncommon association: cables + heavy, low reps)

Lats: low cable rows, barbell or dumbbell pullovers (pullovers can also be done as part of a chest workout)

Shoulders: leaning one-arm lateral raises (cable or dumbbell)

Triceps: pushdowns, skull crushers (make sure your elbows can handle it), kickbacks

Biceps: cable curls, incline dumbbell curls

Quads: leg extensions, sissy squats (assuming you can hold a heavy-enough plate)

Hamstrings: lying leg curls, standing single-leg curls

Calves: any and all calf raises

Abdominals: weighted steep incline sit-ups

Really Low Reps + Really High Reps

     I sort of mentioned this already, in the fact that you can do 10x3 followed by 3x10, but here I’m talking about using even lower reps followed by even higher reps.  A lot of lifters will do heavy, low-rep training and exercises that involve high reps (more than 20) but they rarely do them in the same training cycle or in the same workout.

     Tom Platz was one of the rare bodybuilders who did use this technique.  For his back, he would often do T-bar rows with between 5 and 100 reps, doing a total of 30 sets on the movement.  He started with a heavy weight for low reps and as the workout proceeded, he would reduce the weight and increase the reps, finishing it off with the 100-rep sets.  That’s just one way to do this.  I think it might work even better if you do it on different movements.  An easy method for your lower body is to start your workout by doing multiple sets of heavy triples, doubles, or singles on rack squats and then finish it with sets of 50 to 100 reps on bodyweight squats, goblet squats, or kettlebell squats.

     You can also combine these 2 methods within a single week of training.  A week of workouts might look like this:

Monday:

Squats: 10 sets of singles

Deficit deadlifts (sumo or conventional): 8 sets of doubles

Tuesday:

Bench presses: 10x1

Weighted chins: 8x2

Barbell curls: 8x2

Thursday:

Double kettlebell front squats: 4x25

Double kettlebell stiff-legged deadlifts: 4x25

Saturday:

Push-ups: ladders going from 1 to 20 reps, then back down to 1 rep (that’s 420 reps total - do one “up” or “down” ladder to start for 210 reps)

Chins: 5 ladders of 2-3-5-10 (100 reps)

Cable curls: 5x25-30

   Supersetted with:

Triceps pushdowns: 5x25-30

     Throw in a loaded carry or two on a couple of the training days and some abdominal work on a couple or all of the days and you have a complete low-rep+high-rep workout.  Another benefit, if you have some kettlebells and bands at home, is that you can go to the gym for the first two sessions and do the latter two at the house.  Perfect for busy lifters who struggle to find time to make it to the gym.

Dumbbells and/or Kettlebells + Heavy, Low-Rep Training

     As with isolation movements, when it comes to dumbbell and/or kettlebell training, we often associate them with higher reps.  But as I’ve often argued elsewhere, dumbbells and kettlebells are fantastic for heavy, low-rep power training.

     In the early 20th century, before the arrival of barbell plates, most of your strongmen, bodybuilders, and lifters did their heavy, low-rep training with dumbbells.  You still see a remnant of this in strongman competitions, where they will often do one-arm dumbbell overhead presses for either max reps or a max weight.  If there’s a better power builder than the one-arm dumbbell overhead press, I don’t know what it is—maybe the thick-bar one-arm overhead press.

     Assuming you have access to dumbbells that are heavy enough for the lifts, here’s an example workout that would be great:

Dumbbell deadlifts: 5 sets of 5, 5, 3, 3, and 2 reps, adding weight with each set.  If you don’t have access to dumbbells heavy enough for these, you can do thick-bar dumbbell deadlifts.  If you can do 2 reps with a pair of 100 pound dumbbells (that’s the limit for a lot of gyms), you’re pretty dang strong.

One-arm dumbbell overhead presses: 5x3 (each arm)

One-arm dumbbell power cleans: 5x3 (each arm)

Dumbbell bench presses: 5x3

Alternate dumbbell curls: 5x3 (each arm)

     And here’s a kettlebell workout that’s good.  With the rising popularity of kettlebells this century, you’re more likely to find heavy enough kettlebells at many gyms for this workout.

Double kettlebell front squats: 5x5

Double kettlebell power cleans: 5x5

Single kettlebell overhead presses: 5x5 (each arm).  If you want, you can combine this with a clean and press on each repetition.

Single or double kettlebell curls: 5x5

Single or double kettlebell swings: 5x15-20 (as a finisher).  If you do single-arm kettlebell swings, make sure you do a set for each arm.  You can swap hands between each rep, as well.

Uncommon Bodypart or Exercise Combinations

     When training on any sort of bodypart split, we make the assumption that certain muscle groups should be trained along with others.  Chest goes with shoulders and/or triceps.  Back goes with biceps.  Maybe we train antagonistic muscle groups together, so we think that chest goes with back, quads go with hamstrings, and biceps go with triceps.  Or we think certain lifts go with others, often based on the muscle group assumptions.  Bench presses go with overhead presses or with chins or rows.  Squats go with deadlifts.  Dips go with chins.  The common combos are almost endless.

     Look over the training programs and workouts of many bodybuilders of the silver and golden eras and you might find something surprising.  Once they moved on from full-body workouts—all of them started their training with whole body sessions—to split programs, they often had some “odd” (at least to the modern lifter) combinations.  They’d train chest with legs.  Or back with shoulders.  Or legs with arms.  And so on.  I think the old-school bodybuilders were on to something.  In many ways, they were using what I call “full-body splits.”  Sure, they were splitting up their muscle groups, but lower body muscles were trained with upper body ones on one day and other lower body muscles were training with different upper body muscle groups on the next.  The more of your entire body that you can work in a session all the better.

     I think one of the best workout ideas that you can do is what I call “the two-barbell rule.”  If you’ll do two compound barbell movements at each session, you’re almost guaranteed to get great results.  But instead of training bench presses with chins, try training bench presses with deadlifts.  And then on another day train squats with chins.  Or front squats with weighted dips.  Or sumo deadlifts with overhead presses.  Or power snatches with barbell curls.  You get the point.  You can also just start your workout with the two-barbell rule and then finish it off with whatever else you want.  So, you might begin with bench presses and deadlifts for some heavy, low-rep training and then finish it off with high-rep pushups and chins.  Anything similar would work.

     If you’re a bodybuilder who trains on a multi-split routine and usually trains chest with triceps and back with biceps, try switching it up.  Train chest with biceps and back with triceps.  It’s still an "antagonistic" split, but an uncommon one.  A few of the top bodybuilders in the ‘90s trained this way such as Dave Fisher, Aaron Baker, and David Dearth.  They didn’t always follow that split but did so at times in their careers.

Summing it Up

     These are just a few of the uncommon training associations that I had rattling around in my lifting-addled brain.  Maybe I’ll think of some more down the road and write another essay called More Uncommon Associations, and then I’ll probably think of additional ones and write another titled Even More Uncommon Associations.  But this essay has gone on long enough.  We’ll leave things where they are for now.

     Don’t let the common training associations hold you back.  Give some of these uncommon ones a try.  You’ll be glad that you did.  Oh, don’t forget to slather some peanut butter on your burger, either.  And if you’re ever in ‘Bama, try some of our mayonnaise-based BBQ.  Those might be some odd associations for your palate, and it may not know what you’re subjecting it to, but your mouth will still find ‘em tasty.  You can thank me later.

     I hope you enjoyed this essay.  Perhaps it gave you some cool ideas for your upcoming workouts.  If you want even more workout ideas, then check out My Books.  Click on the link for all of my current books available for purchase.  I appreciate the support.

     As always, if you have any comments or questions about these uncommon associations, leave them in the “comments” section below or shoot me an email if you prefer a private conversation.