Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Brooks D. Kubik
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 2 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION ............................................................................... 3 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION .......................................................................... 6 CHAPTER ONE: THE DINOSAUR ALTERNATIVE......................................................... 7 CHAPTER TWO: PRODUCTIVE TRAINING.................................................................. 13 CHAPTER THREE: AN OUTLINE OF DINOSAUR TRAINING .................................... 17 CHAPTER FOUR: HARD WORK .................................................................................... 26 CHAPTER FIVE: DINOSAUR EXERCISES .................................................................... 33 CHAPTER SIX: ABBREVIATED TRAINING .................................................................. 39 CHAPTER SEVEN: HEAVY WEIGHTS .......................................................................... 43 CHAPTER EIGHT: POUNDAGE PROGRESSION .......................................................... 50 CHAPTER NINE: DEATH SETS ...................................................................................... 56 CHAPTER TEN: MULTIPLE SETS OF LOW REPS ........................................................ 59 CHAPTER ELEVEN: SINGLES ....................................................................................... 63 CHAPTER TWELVE: THICK BARS ............................................................................... 67 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: GRIP WORK, PART ONE ........................................................ 70 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: GRIP WORK, PART TWO....................................................... 76 CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LOGS, BARRELS AND HEAVY BAGS ...................................... 84 CHAPTER SIXTEEN: POWER RACK TRAINING ......................................................... 91 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A BASIC STRENGTH TRAINING PROGRAM .................... 99 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: KEEP IT SIMPLE! .................................................................. 106 CHAPTER NINETEEN: CONCENTRATE! ................................................................... 115 CHAPTER TWENTY: MORE ON THE MENTAL ASPECTS OF TRAINING .............. 122 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: DO IT FOR YOURSELF ................................................... 132 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: PERSISTENCE ................................................................ 135 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE IRON WILL TO SUCCEED ................................ 139 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: FADS, FALLACIES AND PITFALLS ........................... 145 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: JUST DO IT! .................................................................... 149 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: NO EXCUSES .................................................................... 152 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: EXCEED YOUR EXPECTATIONS ............................. 156
INTRODUCTION
-- by William F. Hinbern, World Famous Weight Training Authority, author, collector and seller of Strongman memorabilia, books, courses, etc. Here is the long-awaited strength training manual by Brooks Kubik National Bench Press Champion and popular magazine writer for the blue bloods of the strength training world. Written for those of us who are interested in STRENGTH rather than the APPEARANCE of strength, here for the first time, he details in one volume many of the most result producing methods for not only packing on the beef but for developing truly useful slabs of muscle in the grand tradition of the oldtime strongmen. If you are looking for an alternative style of training for real honest-to-goodness strength, then this is the ticket! Somehow in our quest for size and strength we in the Iron Game have lost direction. We float aimlessly like balloons, caught and carried by any vagrant breeze or new training system, always changing direction, always moving and never getting anywhere. The author grabs us by the ankles, pulls us back to earth, slaps us across the face like a cold shower, and gives us a refreshing insight, a redefined approach to training for massive, brute strength. He doesn't claim to have invented anything new; rather, he has rediscovered and unearthed the training methods of the old masters, our forefathers in methodical, progressive resistance training. Educational, inspirational, practical, this training manual is destined to be a classic strength training textbook and will find a hallowed place in the archives of every serious strength athlete. If you are serious like me, you will order two copies. One to set on your strength library book shelf and one to use constantly as a source of inspiration till it's dog eared! After digesting this huge iron pill, I now await my second dose. Volume two. ~William F. Hinbern
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THE TURKISH GET-UP Next, use the sandbag to work your trunk muscles. Lie on your back, roll the sandbag onto your chest, then press it to arm's length over your chest (as though you were doing a bench press) and then STAND UP WITH THE SANDBAG without letting it touch the ground! How do you do this? Well, you transfer the bag (carefully!) to one arm, turn to the side, brace the free hand against the ground, draw up your knees and push with the free hand. The oldtimers referred to this exercise as the Turkish get-up. Some of them - Otto Arco, for example could do the Turkish get-up with a barbell or dumbbell heavier than their own body weight. Alternatively, lower the bag to the upper thighs, sit up, curl (or roll) the bag to the shoulders, get your legs underneath you and stand up with it. Other ways may occur to you as you try the exercise. The point is, any way you do it, moving from your back to your feet with a heavy sandbag in your hands is going to work the trunk muscles hard and heavy. How many times do you do the sandbag exercise? It depends on the weight of the bag. With a light or medium heavy bag, do reps - perhaps shooting for a certain number of reps in a specified period of time, such as one or two minutes. With a heavier bag, you might stick to a couple of single rep efforts. GRIP WORK After the sandbag exercise, do some grip work. Start by looping a two inch thick rope over your chinning bar. (If you can't find 2 thick rope, use a large, extra strong bath towel rolled up into a rope, and covered with heavy duct tape.) Hold the ends in each hand and do as many chins as possible. When you cannot do any more chins, hang. Hang until you fall off. (Try to land on your feet when you hit the floor.) Do one set. Next, loop your pieces of webbing over the chin bar, hold the webbing with the pliers and hang from the chin bar by the pliers. Do chins from that position if possible - if not, just hang until you fall off. Do one set. For the third grip exercise of the day, use a lever bar or heavy sledge hammer. You want something with a handle of 24 to 30, with five to eight pounds at the end. Lay the bar or hammer on the floor, kneel down and try to lift it off the floor and up to a position where it is extended at arm's length, parallel to the floor. Use one hand, holding the handle as far away from the weighted end as possible. Do singles at first (assuming you can even lift the bar in this fashion - if you cannot, use a lighter or shorter leverage bar and work up), then do reps as you get stronger. Alternatively, use two hands and hold the bar at the end, like a baseball or cricket bat, and do the exercise that way. This works the heck out of the forearms and wrists. SESSION NO. 3 PARTIAL DEADLIFTS Use the same warmup sequence used on the other days, then do six progressively heavier sets of three reps in the partial deadlift. Pull the bar from roughly knee height. Use blocks or a power rack to position the bar if you train with a straight bar. If you use a trap bar, position the bar on sturdy blocks to raise it to the correct height. Do four progressively heavier warmup sets and two sets with your top poundage. For example, you might do 135 x 3, 225 x 3, 315 x 3, 405 x 3 and 495 x 2 x 3. Work your deadlifts very, very hard. The deadlifts develop rugged total body strength, including, above all, the hips and lower back. The hips and lower back are critical areas for a dinosaur. Harry Paschall used to hammer on this point in his writing. In his outstanding book, THE DEVELOPMENT OF STRENGTH (now available in a reprinted edition through Bill Hinbern), Paschall wrote: The training of a man who is seeking strength will be considerably different from that of a man who is merely molding a shapely physique. In the latter case, a great deal of attention is paid to individual muscles and to the front of the body (possibly because the front is the
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Perserverance, patience and determination will be repaid in untold wealth, health, strength, self-reliance and fortitude. George F. Jowett Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity. ~Johann Kasper Lavater
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