WOD 7/13/10

5x3 - Push Press (Increase from last session)

Rest

4 Rounds - 1m Rest between rounds

1m Max Reps - MedBall Squat & Toss with a partner (20/14)
1m Max Reps - MedBall Sit Up & Toss with a partner (20/14)

Do your 5 sets of 3 reps of Push Press. Rest and then do the MetCon. If you have a partner and a Medicine Ball, you are in luck. If all you have is a Med Ball and access to a wall, you can still do this one. The Squat & Toss is basically wallball without a wall. You and your partner will stand about 10 feet apart from each other and drive the ball up and over, back and forth for reps. From there you will need to drop into a sit up position with your feet about 2 feet apart from each other. You will hold the MedBall on your chest in the prone position, come up and toss the ball to your partner across from you, who should then go back into a sit up and then come up and repeat the process. Do max reps for one minute. You will have 1 minute of rest between rounds.

If you are flying solo, just do Wallball and MedBall sit up tosses against the wall. If all you have is an attractive partner, perhaps you can find something else to do than this craziness... 

"Sweet racks, bro! Now what can I do with them?"

Many of you have obviously noticed the power cages in the gym over the past couple months, courtesy of BW Products in Elk Grove. These are custom made power cages to accommodate our taller folks with their presses and overhead movements inside the cage. I know some of you know how to use them, but I have also seen a few folks who are using them in a manner that basically negates their purpose and effectiveness. So, in order to keep my clients looking cool like they know what they are doing and avoiding the possibility of being laughed at by Buddy Holly, I am putting forth this primer on Power Cages.

The cages are multi dimensional in that they offer folks lifting really heavy stuff a safety factor not found in floor racks and offer more opportunity to address weaknesses that may be impossible to work on with a standard floor rack. The hooks (where the bar sits) are moveable and can be put inside or outside the rack. You can see both set ups in the picture above, although I would prefer you weren't on the outside - more on that in a second. Hook height should be slightly below start level of the movement. For presses and squat, you should have to "get under" the bar slightly to lift it off of the hooks. Some people set the hooks too high and when your spine is being compressed by a heavy load, you don't want to be trying to get up on your tippy toes trying to get the bar re-racked. This can lead to a dumb disaster by missing the  hook entirely on one side.

Underneath the hooks are the "pins", or "bailout bars", "safety bars" or whatever else you want to call them. They are your life preserver and should be used EVERY time you get into the cage to lift. As obvious as it may seem, make sure the hooks and bailout bars are even with each other prior to lifting potentially life ending weights. They are there to catch a heavy miss or to start a partial or set depth pull/press/squat from.

Okay, so now, in or out? The racks are primarily designed to be lifted inside of. It doesn't matter if the hooks are on one side or the other on the inside of the rack, as long as you are always facing the hooks and bar when working in there. Once you are inside the rack, the next thing to do is set the pin height. This means for squats they should be just a couple inches below your bottom position, so if all else goes wrong you can lean it forward, dump it off the back, or sit down and the bars will catch the loaded barbell without a spotter and/or no crashing weights into the floor. If you are pressing, push pressing, or jerking (push jerking that is...I better not catch any perverted wierdness going on inside the racks...), then the bailout bars will be set below your bottom height of shoulder level or the bottom height of your maximum dip position in the push press or push jerk. If all goes wrong, voila, the bars catch your barbell and prevent catastrophe. If you are benching, same thing. Set them just slightly below inflated chest level. If it goes to crap, you can exhale and the bar should rest on the pins and prevent you from a slow, agonizing and relatively stupid death. Then just squirm yourself out from under the bar and act like nothing happened and hope no one saw you. If the bailout bars aren't set low enough, you will find out when you bounce off of it at the bottom and it gets all crazy on you on the way up. Rack it, lower the pins, go again.

As an extra bit of safety, ALWAYS press with a fully closed grip. This means thumbs around the bar. If it goes over your head, chest or throat, grab the damn bar like your life depended on it!! The only thumbless grip we will have in our gym is while holding the bar in place during back squats where a thumb would improperly load the wrist, prevent a positive position on the scapula and can get in the way if a bar slips or dumps. Otherwise it's thumbs around the bar. Don't be the like the chucklehead football guy who dropped a fully loaded bar on his throat while bench pressing and damn near died (I still love his trainer telling everyone "I was spotting him"....yeah, okay. You did a great job there ace....how about spotting safety factors too?!) . If you are really into the whole pressing thumbless thing, I can take care of that for you with some pruning shears and get rid of that pesky thumb. Come see me after class....

Of course you can use the racks with the hooks placed on the outside of the racks, but realize you negate the safety effect of the bailout bars helping you in a bad case. If you are using really light weight, that might be acceptable. If you are lifting really heavy weights and have two very trustworthy and strong spotters who know what to do and when, then you can get away with it outside. I still think it's dumb since you would be taking up a cage from someone who might need it while you do something that could have been done on a floor rack. This is really true if you are using steel plates only or doing squats or bench press by yourself - get inside the cage and be safe! This will also avoid needless dumping of weights on the ground which pisses off my whiney neighbor and wears equipment out prematurely.

There is also a pull up bar at the top of the cage that you can use, however, I would not recommend kipping pull ups on the cages since it would probably stress the hell out of the floor anchors. Weighted or strict pull ups are all good. You can do band work in the cages, and deadlift variations in the cages as well. Come talk to one of us if you have questions about that stuff.

In regards to using the cages, please feel free to do so when others aren't using them or don't need them. You can do almost anything inside of them (except the full Oly lifts due to lack of room). Just use them correctly. That means don't be like the lamebrains at Cal Fit using the cage to do curls in - I will judo chop you in the gullett if I catch you doing that....

There you go, a full primer on how those crazy looking "towers of power" work. Now go forth and conquer!

In Memoriam

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