Check It Out: Power to the People

Pavel Tsatsouline is nothing if not prolific. Over the past few months, I've already read a couple of his books (Enter the Kettlebell and The Naked Warrior), but a quick glance at his online store makes clear that there's no end in sight to his "Evil Russian"-style brand of training advice. 

I'm now making my way through Tsatsouline's "Power to the People," a book focused on building raw strength through daily practice of just two exercises: deadlifts and presses.

The "Russian strength secret" that Tsatsouline teaches in "Power to the People" can be summarized in one sentence: "Train heavy, but keep the volume, or the total number of reps per workout, low." Why? So we can "minimize the amount of 'torn down' muscle -- and the reconstruction that follows." 

This approach won't turn anyone into a bodybuilder because the point isn't to grow big-ass muscles. Rather, the focus is on gaining "wiry strength" such that "[m]ost likely your measurements will not increase, while your weight will go up a few pounds. the packing density of your muscles' contractile proteins has increased, the first thing to happen when 'real' muscle growth takes place." By periodizing and increasing the amount of weight that's being lifted but without going to exhaustion, Tsatsouline says, you can steadily enhance your full-body strength without constantly destroying and rebuilding the muscles in your body

Sounds good to me. My health and fitness goals don't include bulking up or becoming a bodybuilder. I do, however, want to get stronger, and I definitely want to improve my deadlift. So this program sounds like it's worth a shot.

Whole9 modified/customized Tsatsouline's "Power to the People" program by adding some warm-ups and metcons to the deadlifts and presses. It's simple and easy to follow, which is a big part of why I've decided to try it starting today. On the days I don't head to my CrossFit class, I'm going to follow the Whole9 program and see where it can take me in 2-3 months' time.

Hence, my workout today was cribbed directly from Whole9:

DAY ONE

Buy-in: 3 rounds of 0:20 handstand hold + 15 KB swings (Russian) + 10 plyo box jumps

Deadlift: Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight

• Set 1: 60% of 1RM, 3-5 reps
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 3-5 reps

Press: Warm up with some presses at lighter weight

• Set 1: 60% of 1RM, 3-5 reps
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 3-5 reps

Cash out: 3 rounds for time of 30 Double-Unders + 15 Hanging Knees-to-Elbows

I followed Whole9's directions carefully and used weights that felt too light for me. I'm sure it'll get harder as the program progresses, but right now, I can't see how this is going to get me that much stronger.

Still, the full workout wiped me out completely. I'm nodding off while typing this. Time for bed.

Round 2 / Day 64: P90X Chest & Back + Ab Ripper X

Just for kicks, and feeling inspired by "The Naked Warrior," I decided to up my weights and lowered my reps during this morning's Chest & Back workout. For example, I chained a weight plate to my belt before doing my pull-ups, but did only five per set. Cranking up the intensity level, I actually felt like I worked harder than normal. Still, none of the moves were done to exhaustion, and at the end of the hour, I wasn't completely exhausted. I could really get used to not feeling like I'm going to pass out at the end of a P90X session.

I'm Greasing My Groove

As I mentioned last week, I'm reading Pavel Tsatsouline's "Enter the Kettlebell!" to get myself psyched up for swinging a big-ass cast iron ball around. But Pavel's no one-trick pony: He's written a few other fitness manuals, including "The Naked Warrior," a book that promises to teach readers "exactly what it takes to be super-strong in minimum time" using nothing but gravity and body weight. I'm reading this one, too.

What's fascinating about "The Naked Warrior" is what it doesn't do: It doesn't provide instruction on how to do dozens of different body weight exercises, nor does it ask that readers crank out rep after rep until exhaustion. Instead, Pavel commands: "DO FEWER EXERCISES BETTER."

In fact, "The Naked Warrior" routine consists of just two exercises: Pistol Squats and One-Arm/One-Leg Push-Ups. The rest of the book focuses on techniques for tensing your body and "power breathing" to enhance your strength. Pavel also spends some time discussing a training method called "Grease the Groove" -- a low rep, high-intensity, high-frequency approach to achieving personal bests.

Fitness Ninja's greasing the groove (with a newborn, no less!), and just yesterday, he linked to Pavel's description of this strength-building method here. As Pavel puts it:

Specificity + frequent practice = success. It is so obvious, most people don’t get it. Once I came across a question posted on a popular powerlifting website by a young Marine: how should he train to be able to do more chin-ups? I was amused when I read the arcane and non-specific advice the trooper had received: straight-arm pull-downs, reverse curls, avoiding the negative part of the chin-up every third workout… I had a radical thought: if you want to get good at chin-ups, why not try to do… a lot of chin-ups?

Just a couple of months earlier I had put my father-in-law Roger Antonson, incidentally an ex-Marine, on a program which required him to do an easy five chins every time he went down to his basement. Each day he would total between twenty-five and a hundred chin-ups hardly breaking a sweat. Every month or so Roger would take a few days off and then test himself. Before you knew it, the old leatherneck could knock off twenty consecutive chins, more than he could do forty years ago during his service with the few good men!

Sounds good to me. As an experiment, I've started doing five weighted pull-ups (using a weight chained to a weightlifting belt) ever time I step into my garage. After P90X, my personal best was 18  pull-ups in a row -- and I'm not sure I can match that now -- but let's see if "greasing the groove" can push me over 20. (Or if it's going to make me want to avoid stepping foot in my garage.)