As my obsession with Angry Birds gets stronger and my ability to manage time gets weaker, I find myself with less and less time to train.

However, limited time to train has not hurt my training progress, as it has forced me to quit screwing around while I am in the gym and pack a ton of quality, hard, and serious work into my training sessions.

Most days, I will train between 3 PM and 5 PM so that I am able to help out with feeding my daughter JayCee, giving her a bath, and teaching her how to play Angry Birds.

This lady gets as vicious as an Angry Bird when she is hungry.
Here, she tries to bust rip her crib apart, demanding some mushed peas…

Training at this time (3 to 5 PM) was a must during the winter months, also, because it enabled me to get downstairs and get going while the sun was still up. For whatever reason, I train better and feel stronger when the sun is out. I guess nobody can accuse me of being a vampire…

Where did my Gripper go???

Here is a rough break-down of what my training sessions have been looking like lately.

Part I – Warm-up

:05 Hard Cardboard Pipe Roller
(Foam does absolutely nothing for me. My hips actually move after using my Pipe Roller)
:10 Dynamic Flow Warm-up
(Adaptation of stuff from Scott Sonnon’s Flow & TacFit stuff and Smitty’s/DeFranco’s Amped Warm-up)
:02 – :05 Gym Movement Protocol Grip Strength Testing
(Seeing good results form this. Controversial or not, I think it is something to consider)

Part II – Primary Lift

:20 – Big Movement
This is usually Log Press, a Deadlift, a Squat, a Pull-up, or some other multi-joint movement
(I get on this stuff right away. They require more energy, so I do them early, plus, I find by doing big, fast movements early that my CNS is better charged)

Part III – Smaller Movements

:30 – Rest of Body Lifts
I split my training sessions up by Upper Body Days and Lower Body Days. I usually do 2 or 3 other movements related to my big movement. This is where I put more focus on volume, getting a pump, and taking advantage of the fact that I train by myself. I often will go look at myself in the mirror in between sets, pretend to talk to other people at the invisible water cooler, check my text messages, and on at least a weekly basis perform some sort of bicep curl in or near the squat cage, as you will see in the video at the bottom of this post.
(These are just estimates. As you’ll see, I have been able to not just whittle, but hack off huge blocks of this time using my Back-to-Back Movement Strategy, shown below. By cutting out as much time as possible in this section, I can have more time for Grip Strength Training)

Part IV – Grip

Better part of an hour
Usually whatever tested best on that day, I will proceed to slaughter it and other movements very similar to it.

Back-to-Back Finishers – Killer Results and Time Savers

As I pointed out above, I have been able to cut out a lot of time from Part III of my workouts by lining up two movements back-to-back for a finisher.

In no way am I claiming to have invented this type of training. I think I saw it every bodybuilding magazine I read from 1995 to 1999, back when I wasted my precious time reading them, back before Angry Birds was invented.

However, I do think this type of training will be a staple for me for quite some time, since it gives me more time to train Grip, and since I just found out yesterday that there is an Angry Birds Seasons that I have to dominate as well.

So, what I did recently was 5 sets of 20 reps with 405-lbs in the Shrug followed by Hammer Curls with a Black Jump Stretch Band.

Pure Evil. Check it out…

I have done this specific movement combination three times in the last 6 weeks. I have also coupled the Mini-Band Curls with other movements. I love them! Give them a try, Diesels.

(If you want to see the Finisher I posted a few weeks ago it is right here: Finisher for Big Chest, Shoulders and Triceps. )

Like I said, I like this type of training a lot. You can squeeze a lot of reps into a very small time segment of your workout, so if you are a busy person, you might want to try this one out.

As I continue to experiment, I will continue to bring you the information that seems beneficial to you and leave the less impressive stuff out.

When Angry Birds attack, you better have a strong grip!

I’d love to hear any feedback you might have on this type of training. I grow more and more jealous of other people’s sites because they get like a million comments, while the most I ever get is like 5, and half of them are me responding to someone. Boo Hoo.

All the best in your training!!!

Jedd

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Tags: "big back", biceps, bis, curls big arms, shrugs, trapezius, traps

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 5th, 2011 at 3:18 pm and is filed under how to build muscle, how to improve fitness and conditioning, muscle building nutrition build muscle mass, muscle-building-workouts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.