Mid-way through 2013, I blogged about a few of my "go to" workouts, and then earlier this year I posted a few more.
The original idea was quick workouts with a lot of bang-for-buck for when I'm short of time or for when I can only get to the gym once a week, if at all,, so following some kind of program isn't really worth the time. Well, I've been going through one of those periods recently, which will continue until January, so here's a few more!
Push Press Volume and Farmer's Walks
In these sessions, most of my time is spent doing push presses. And there's really no rules as far as how much volume to do. Last time I did this I worked up to a very heavy single, then did a few drop sets of triples, and then dropped the weight a bit more to do a max-effort rep-out and then I worked back up to a heavy single, attempting to hit the original heavy single from the start of the workout (I missed it).
The rest of my energy is spent doing farmer's walks. Farmer's walks are an awesome conditioner and will help build and strengthen the upper-back and traps, which means I can combine my upper-back and my conditioning work together. I mean, it may not be perfectly ideal, but it'll get the job done. Heavy, light, short, long, sprints or waddles... it doesn't really matter how you do them. Just do them. At the moment I prefer to do 8-10 short sprints (around 20m) and/or 2-3 longer walks (at least 50m) to finish it off.
Squat, Bench, DB Rows
The holy trinity of strength training? When I haven't trained for an extended period of time (I'm talking weeks or months), this is the thing I do the first time I step into the gym again.
I prefer to squat narrow and deep with a high-bar position, I prefer bench with a close grip, and I much prefer dumbbell rows over any other kind of upper-back work. Done for high volume, these three are my go-to mass-builders and a solid way to kick off a high-volume training block.
It seems weird, given that I usually prefer any kind of overhead pressing to bench pressing, but I just feel like the bench fits better here.
Kettlebell Snatches
Whether I only have a few minutes to get some conditioning in at the end of a training session, or if I can't get to the gym at all and need to do get some solid work done in the backyard at home, I can always depend on the cannonball with a handle, i.e. a kettlebell.
After reading about the Secret Service Snatch Test in Pavel's book Enter The Kettlebell, I've been doing 2-5 minute continuous snatch-fests with my 20kg kettlebell as a way to build my conditioning, and it has worked pretty damn well, anecdotally. One day I'd love to work up to 10 continuous minutes with a 24kg bell.
It's actually really convenient for something to do at home while dinner's slowly cooking in the oven or on the stove.
Usually when asked by friends what piece of gym equipment they should buy to "get fit" at home, a kettlebell (and Pavel's book) is my first recommendation.
