Friday, November 24, 2006

Getting basic with some great information...

Thomas Furman of Physical Strategies has been coming out with some great blogs recently on very basic but very effective strength training programs - check out his blog...
www.physicalstrategies.blogspot.com

An article about Hugh Cassidy really peaked my interest - Hugh has a very simple template for improving the Squat, Bench and deadlift - Squat and bench 5 sets of 3 reps working to a peak or PR followed by 3 sets of 5 at a lighter weight - an even more abbreviated routine for the deadlift two sets of 8 reps then one set of 5 reps and one set of 3 reps. Wrap it up with some hyperextensions for 3 sets of 20 reps. Check out www.americanpowerliftevolution.net/1974/powertraining1.html for the complete article.

This was an article from 1974 and he advocates a simplified routine twice per week making sure to make long term progress and not progressing too fast. And if you start to get a bit stale you throw in a variety sets and reps for a couple of weeks and then back to the basic template. Hugh himself hit lifts of 800 Squat, 570 Bench, and 790 Dead-lift and was mentor to Marty Gallahger so the results speak for themselves.

Great stuff from Tom and a great look at old school strength routines.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

its hard to beat doing the actual lifts fairly heavy on a regular basis if thats what you want to improve. of course cassidy ate himself up to some serious bodyweight and that always helps. plevolution is a great pl history lesson eh?

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