Sebastian Strobl

Category: fitness

  • So you ran yourself into the ground?

    So you ran yourself into the ground?

    So you wear eager on following through with your high intensity high volume approach, but somehow life got in the way. Kids birthday, working overtime, stressful projects, a vacation trip or even just a cold. Sometimes life has a habit of throwing panned or unplanned stuff at us, that tend to derail our efforts in the quest for size, strength and cuts.

    So maybe you tried really hard to workout 3-5 times a week, and everything was running smoothly for 2 or even 3 weeks, but for most of us, fully committed adults with kids one of the following things happens:

    • You run out of steam and get sick/tired
    • Your schedule implodes and training needs to take a setback

    But don‘t be to hard on yourself, those high commitment fitness routines are not really meant for you. Think of small spurts and enjoy them as long as they keep working. You can always throttle back a little, without losing progress and even continuing to progress along the way, if you change things up a bit and keep the effort high.

    I suggest you check out the writings of Stuart McRobert (Beyond Brawn) or Martin Berkhan form leangains.com or even Dan John’s blog. You can easily make progress no matter if on a diet or tying to bulk up, with just 2 to 3 short sessions in the week.

    High intensity, low volume training on an abbreviated routine that is. So for the zines when life is extra demanding, cut training days and training time but up the intensity and the weight lifted to get the most out of it.

    Exercise selection will be key, so I encourage you to look for one push and one pulling movement in the two major planes for upper and lower body and distribute those out evenly over two to three workout days.

    How does that look like? I‘ll give you two examples, so for a 3 day split routine, like leangains it might look somewhat like:

    Monday:

    • Deadlift 3 sets 5 to 8 reps
    • Standing Shoulder press 3 sets 8 to 12 reps

    Wednesday

    • Benchpress 3 sets 5 to 8 reps
    • Rowing movement 3 sets 8 to 12 reps

    Friday

    • Squat 3 sets 8 to 12 reps
    • Pullups (weighted) 3 sets 8 to 12 reps

    For me at least, I like to keep reps in deadlifts and benchpresses low, and the other exercises a bit higher, since it tends to feel good, but you might be different. Try it for 2 to 3 weeks, see if you can get stronger and how you feel, then adjust for the next 3 week block. High repetition benching hurts my rotator cuff more, than moving bigger weights for example. But low reps squats fry my my lower back completely, while I have no issue doing heavy singles in the deadlift. What can I say, touching 40 so maybe it’s good thing that nothing needed surgery just yet.

    If three days feel like a bit too Abiturient, even if you are only working out 30 minutes each session, you can always go with twice a week, think one of those days on the weekend, where you might have some time to yourself.

    Could look like this:

    Day one

    • Deadlift
    • Benchpress
    • Rowing movement

    Day two

    • Squat
    • Pull-up
    • Overhead press

    With 3 sets per exercise and 3 to 5 minutes rest, you should be out of the gym in under 45 minutes still.

    And of course, if you have a little extra time, or extra energy you can always add two exercises for arms per week, but don‘t let it impact the major movements!

    And with that, enjoy your lifting, give it a shot.

    There are a lot of ways to skin a cat. Main focus should be, to be in it for a lifetime!

  • On training down or how to get shredded for the summer

    On training down or how to get shredded for the summer

    With nearly endless information on the topic floating around the internet, why exactly should you bother reading yet another article on losing weight for the summer body and acquiring outstanding definition?

    Since there is nothing new under the sun, I want to recap a training regime that not only worked for hundreds of people including famous movie actors of several decades, but also worked quite well for me in different decades of my life. So let‘s start of with paying respects to the man who told Arnold the following straight to the face, right after Joe Weider brought him over to the US.

    You look like a at fuck to me

    I‘m obviously talking about the iron guru himself, Vince Gironda, how not only trained the first Mr. Olympia ever but a boatload of other bodybuilders and Hollywood actors and didn‘t look to shabby himself up till old age.

    So what’s the method, to get into shape the fastet way possible? Easy: train one exercise for every body part you want to improve with 8 repetitions for a total amount of 8 sets and repeat 3 times a week.

    There are nearly as many split schedules and exercise selections for 8by8 out there as there are fad diets, but I think the original schedule had you workout 5 days in a row, alternating upper and lower body days.

    Below is my selection of exercises, that is different from what Vince was prescribing, since I have limited choice (training from home) and I don‘t quite like the trap-less, v-shape look he was after.

    What to do

    Upper Body days (Monday, Wednesday and Friday)

    • Behind the neck press with a wide grip for triceps & shoulder girdle
    • Barbell Bicep Curls
    • Barbell Upright row with a very narrow grip (really feeling those in the traps during peak contraction)
    • Barbell Bench Press (narrower grip, arms nearly parallel to the torso, since wide grip is bothering my rotator cuffs)
    • Barbell Bent over Row (narrow or even underhand grip, try to feel it in the lower last, when the barbell hits your stomach)

    Lower body days (Tuesday and Thursday)

    • Barbell Squat (I‘m using front squats, since I don‘t have a squatrack in our new home yet)
    • Stiff-legged Deadlifts (try standing on a block for better stretch)
    • Standing Barbell Calf raises
    • Hanging Leg Raises

    How to do it

    As mentioned earlier , you will be doing 8 sets of every exercise for 8 reps, except for lower body days. Here Vince was suggesting 8 total sets per muscle group for 20 repetitions each.

    Choose a weight you can handle for 3 sets of 8 pretty comfortably. Move quickly and try to feel the muscles contracting, that you are working. No need for extreme yanking the weights, controlled movements with a full range of motion. But no need to think about timing or cadences. This isn‘t an overly scientific HIT workout!

    If you never trained some high volume program like 8×8, German Volume Training (10×10) or even a CrossFitesque schedule, I recommend easing into the workout by starting with 3 sets per exercise and moving up one set in each per workout for the first weeks.

    Once you are getting all the 8 reps in all the 8 sets, it‘s time to increase the weight slightly.

    Nutrition

    As for nutrition, you want to aim for maintenance calories or slightly less, stay active overall and maybe just reduce portion sizes a bit, or have less side dishes. You will need a whole lot of protein to really melt the fat but not overly loose the muscles you built during your personal winter arc. If you are over 30, I would recommend you do two easy runs a week, just for overall health benefits.

    And of course go easy on the drinking and partying, unless you are as legendary as Zabo Koszewski was in his days.

    Enjoy your lifting & enjoy your days, one never knows how many are left. Find bliss & happiness in the hardworking.

  • Nutrition for the busy adult

    Nutrition for the busy adult

    Who wants to look great, not only wearing a suit but also when hitting the beach.

    Where to start..?

    It‘s easy to dig yourself into a never ending rabbithole, when researching diet and nutrition. There are more diets and successful reviews of those, than anybody ever could count and even nutrition-styles are never ending, circling around with ever changing popularities and oftentimes contradicting dogmas.

    So as with clothes and exercise, simple always trumps complexity and moderation might be the right approach in the long run on any given day. Don‘t go for extremes, don’t take what sounds too good to be true for a real shortcut, just apply common sense and be consistent with it.

    After all, human are omnivores, no buzzwords will ever change that.

    Start with a balanced diet, eating a bit of everything, just skip heavily processed foods and sweets.

    I really like the French approach, of eating till you are around 80% full.

    What to eat..?

    As mentioned above, you should eat a very balanced diet, that fits your local customs and habits, don’t try to copy a Mediterranean diet, if you are Japanese and vice versa. Local food might be the right for you, genetically speaking. But don‘t condemn adding olive oil or coconut milk either. Please, just try not being dogmatic about anything.

    So what’s a balanced diet, as you might be aware of, there are mainly 4 different macronutrients, where your calories can come from. Protein, from meat, fish and every other food category derived from livestock, like cheese, milk, cottage cheese, skyr and so on. Then there are carbohydrates, from vegetables, rice potatoes, pasta, fruit and every other sugary treat you can think of. Fats, which are really good for you by the way, again meets and fish, butter, nuts and so on. Lastly there fourth and most important macro nutrient, alcohol, preferably consume through red wine, added to each meal, after working hours, or even before, if tolerated in your workplace of course. This is the only one positively affecting your soul and outlook on your day to day life. Hope you got that I‘m joking, but coming back to that dogmatic comments before, a glass of wine from time to time won’t hurt, and might be beneficial for longevity.

    Try to have a even distribution of macronutrients in every meal and throughout the day, maybe slightly in favor of protein, won‘t hurt, if you want to build some muscle, or carbohydrates, since you won’t overeat as easily and portion sizes can be bigger compared with fat (4kcal vs 9kcal per gram). I would suggest, your calories should come from 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat, or the other way round for protein & carbs.

    How to put it all together

    Try to have a protein source with every meal, add some kind of carbohydrates and some vegetables or salat & fat will mostly take care of itself. Eat two to three times a day, with balanced portion sizes, if you are older, you might want to aim for 2 and skip either supper or breakfast, just to have less calorie intake in total and maybe benefit a bit from the addition to your natural fasting window. If you don‘t trust the French 80% rule or really want to build muscle, use some kind of tracking app for a while, just to get a feeling of how many calories you are eating. After several weeks you should be able to eyeball the portion sizes and still make progress.

    If you are a parent like me, working a demanding full time job, logging your food can push you right over the cliff of burnout.

    To find out how much you should be eating, there are great calculators on the interwebs, go for the easiest ones, the results will be good enough.

    I really like this one.

    Perfect combination of the four macronutrients
    Looks like 40%/40%/30% and 12.5% to me

  • Build your own Gym

    Build your own Gym

    Why to start..?

    We already discussed, why strength training is paramount, for dressing well. Now let‘s have a look how to do it as cost and time efficient as possible. If you are as busy as most people are in our era, you can save a lot of time and money building your own gym. No monthly fees, no commute to a gym, no waiting in line after work, to use one of the two squat racks that are available to 100 eager trainees.

    To start a new habit, in this case lifting consistently, you have to minimize resistance. Make it as easy as possible to get going, by having your personal gym in your own place. You don’t need a lot of space, cellar, balcony, spare room, terrace everything works, if you want to.

    But where to start..?

    Cheapest way to get going and get the most out of your first investment, buy/ make yourself a pull-up and a dip bar. You can go a long way with pull-ups, dips and air squats before you need to add any weight.

    Next up would be a sturdy Olympic barbell, even if you don’t want to learn the Olympic lifts, the spin is pretty nice for power cleans, and those will give you a lot in reward, easy to learn, easy to progress, pretty low risk & huge potential for overall body mass & speed. if you have very limited space, you can go with a 1.5m or 1.8m long bar as well, search for one that can be loaded for ~250kg that will be sufficient for a long time.

    Get some bumper plates next, 50mm bore with a metal socket to fit the Olympic bar. The rubber coating will keep training more quiet & your neighbors will stay your friends, even after picking of lifting as your new favorite pastime. Get enough weights to do challenging deadlifts and rows, get smaller plates for curls and extensions as well (5kg or sth.) but try to get those in the same diameter as the heavier ones, this makes changing and adding weights easier. Don‘t worry about the money you spend on weights to much, those are better than gold or silver. Price only goes up over time, so when you decide to sell your equipment, you will make some profit and in the meantime they will support you on your way to become your best self.

    After having a bar and weights you can already do most of the stuff that will get you jacked, joked or toned or whatever you want. You can substitute benchpresses for floorpresses like the Oldtimers, you can do front or zercher squats instead of back squats.

    If you want more variety in your training and make things easier and safer, if you are pushing yourself with maximum weights, I suggest you look into getting a power-rack or squat stands and a bench next. Lock for sturdy stuff, don‘t be so cheap, that you hurt yourself because you saved some 20€!

    With that you can workout for years to come and make progress forever.

    If you are stalled after reaching an intermediate level, you might want to add fractural plates, to keep progressing in weight. 0.25kg 0.5kg and so one, make small additions in weight possible when the next 5 or 10kg jump just is not manageable.

    If having a barbell gets boring start looking into kettlebells and dumbbells or even rubber bands. Depending on space available of course. But a barbell and some plates might be all you need. Simple always trumps complicated and keep in mind consistency is key here, enjoy the way to your dream physique, enjoy clothes starting to fit better, enjoy the additional strength in your day to day life, be it when helping a friend move, or throwing you kids around in the pool. Being physically capable is the one capability improving all the others, and all other aspects of your life, if you are in it till the end.

    And with another motivational picture of Arthur Saxon, enjoy your lifting!

  • Why you might want to start working out

    Why you might want to start working out

    Pictured above: Steve Reeves, on of the golden era bodybuilders, moving on to Hollywood to be the main actor in the Hercules movies, long before Arnold hit the stage.

    Why to start?

    As we already learned, some of us the hard way, the most important feature to looking dapper/ dashing/ stylish or whatever is not buying a fancy brand or clothes that maybe men’s health advertises, it’s how the things you own will fit you. Now maybe you did hit the genetic lottery and have a very well developed physique from doing next to nothing but my guess is, there will be areas you want to improve no matter what. Who doesn’t dream from wide shoulders, thick arms and a narrow waist. If you grew up in the 80s/90s like me chances are your idols were Arnold, Sly, Bruce Willis and the likes, as well. And man had the characters in those blockbusters style back than, before a t-shirt and a pair of jeans or joggers became the official uniform for next to everybody.

    But I’m derailing the article so back to hitting the (home-)gym.

    Where to start

    For health and wellness, as for the quest of building muscles the same principles are true as in fashion, less is often more and simple is most of the time more beneficial. So please just don’t show up in the next globogym or cleverfit or any other cheap franchise and do what the instructors are suggesting. You won’t need to train 5-6 times a week, you don’t need to do 365 different exercises for your biceps and stay away from machines, if you are healthy and somewhat flexible. Either write your own plan, or google starting strength, leangains method or Madcow’s 5by5, those are great low volume starting points that can transform you into your own marvel superhuman fantasy. If the ironbug really did hit your hard, check out the tan tight slacks of dezo ban, with enough resources from the golden-era and the old-timers, to keep you reading and evolving for serval years.

    And now, just start

    If you made it this far I want to give you some actionable things to start with, so first two workouts, I tend to always circle back to, when life gets busy (and it is most of the times).

    The Powerlook, originally from John McCallum.

    • Backsquat 3 sets of 3 repetitions into 3 sets of 1 single repetition progressing in weight from set to set after some warmup sets
    • Benchpress sets and repetitions like above
    • Bent-over barbell row 5 sets of 5 repetitions, start with the highest possible weight and then back down a bit, use momentum/drive
    • Progressive Pulls
      • Powercleans 3 sets for 3 repetitions increasing in weight, when the weight get’s to heavy to clean it, switch to
      • High pulls another 3 sets for 3 repetitions, increasing weight from set to set & when the bar doesn’t move quickly enough, switch to
      • Deadlifts, 3 more sets of 3 repetitions, if you still got something left in your tank after that, do some singles

    It’s recommended to do this workout on three non-consecutive days per week. For me this is too much volume to recover from, so I personally would suggest 2x a week, Maybe Monday/ Thusday, or Tuesday& Saturday, depending on your schedule.

    Maurice Jones’ Supersetting

    You will go back and forth between two exercises with close to no rest at all, after the second exercise you rest enough to catch you breath and continue with the next round. Do 3 rounds in total for the first to exercise bundles and keep the repetitions in a range you feel comfortable with, I would suggest 6 to 12.

    • Military or behind the neck presses with a barbell
    • Standing barbell curls
    • Barbell benchpress
    • Barbell bent-over row

    Finish your workout with one set of squats, with a challenging weight for around 12 repetitions followed by one set of heavy stiff legged deadlifts also for 12 reps.

    Do this workout on 3 days a week and you will not only feel great, but look great as well.

    Conditioning & cardiovascular health

    If you are starting out and are closer to 20 than you are to 50, don’t even bother with running, biking or anything else, you can get away without that and still have great health and enough cardiovascular capacity. Plus you can get & stay very lean with diet alone.

    If you are closer to the second half of your life, run. Two to three times a week on days you are not weight-training. If you life close to the mountains go for a hike twice a week, but running might be the more cost efficient way. Don’t kill yourself, if you want to progress with weights and in muscular size and eat enough real food, skip the candy-bars and donuts.

    As for most things in life, don’t expect magic to happen over night. Good things take time and for weightlifting and staying healthy the two key ingredients are patience and being consistent.