Thank You to Mike Burgener of Mike’s Gym, Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics, Eva T of CrossFit Santa Cruz, and the rest of the CrossFit folks. You guys are number one in my book.
Anybody who attended this weekends Olympic Lifting Cert. and is interested in ordering any weight equipment or have any training questions, Please email me at Sean@purestrength.com.

Thank all of you for welcoming me into your world with open arms.

–
Sean
PureStrength.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: Training Articles by Sean
No Comments »

Check out my new article about learning the Olympic Lifts on T-Nation. Here is a link to it. T-Nation

–
Sean
www.PureStrength.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: Training Articles by Sean
No Comments »

Taking the guess work out of it

Recently I took a workout at a University weight room (the University will remain nameless to protect the guilty), and I was taken back by some of the so-called weight room records.  700 lb squat, 600 lb bench, 450 lb power clean just to name a few. Upon closer examination I saw that multiple athletes had attained these numbers. I then realized I was missing a part of the story. I tracked down the strength coach and asked him his secrets, because clearly he was a genius and there was much I could learn from him. I told him “in my life I have met 6-7 athletes that could squat 700 lbs and power clean 450 lbs. You have 15 right now, how do you do it?” He told me that they had not achieved those numbers yet they were a predicted max. He went on to explain that they use 225lb until failure to determine one rep max. According to his prediction, 30 reps in the Back Squat with 225 was the same as doing 700 lbs for one.

Many programs require you to work off of a percentage of your one rep max. This is a common procedure when designing a workout. However, how you determine this max is vitally important. During your training year your overall percentage of max attempts should be very small (2.5%-5%) of your total repetitions.  That being said, you will not get many or any attempts at determining your max.  And if you are a beginner, I would strongly discourage you from making max attempts.

The How

The more repetitions you perform, the less accurate the one rep max will be. That is why I suggest using no more than 8 reps to determine your max if you are a beginner. If you are an advanced lifter, I would suggest 5 reps.

The beginning and the end of a strength or power phase are the ideal times to determine your max. Your reps should be within the 3-6 range during these phases. This rep range will enable you to obtain a fairly accurate prediction of your one rep max using the chart below.

1. Choose a weight that you can handle for approximately 5-8 reps
2. Warm up and perform the exercise
3. Take the number of reps you performed and multiply the corresponding coefficient
4. This will be your estimated one rep max.

Example:
You squat 315lbs for five repetitions
315lbs x 1.167= 367lbs predicted max 

–

Sean
www.PureStrength.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: Training Articles by Sean
No Comments »