Strong 101 Seminar Review Day 2

March 2, 2009

Articles

Day 2 of the seminar started with Mike going through his general warm up which he also used to assess new athletes. All of the exercises. excluding the jump rope and abdominals, require the use of a band.

Jump rope 2-5 min
Face pulls
Pull aparts
Overhead pull aparts
Squat
Bent over row
Push ups
Single arm military press
Front raise
Bicep curl
Straight arm shoulder rotations
Tricep extensions
Abdominals; leg lifts, knee ups, or crunches

After the general warm up was complete Mike went into the specific warm up which targeted the lower body.

Walking lunge forward
Walking lunge backward
Walking lunge dropping elbow to same side ankle
Crab walk (what he called a low lateral shuffle)
Knee up walks
Lying single leg hamstring raises
Lying knees side-to-side
Rollover to V-sit
Fire hydrants (on all fours)
Straight leg abduction (on all fours)

Matt Holmes added a few exercises and said he only does only a few during his warm up due to the time constrains of training. He added a few sets of:

Skips forward
Skips backward
Butt kicks

When we were done with the lower body specific warm up we were ready to train our legs. Mike likes to start with a double leg movement and then go to single legs after. We performed a few sets of:

Zercher squats
Bulgarian split squats with front foot elevated on a cinder block
D. Bell step ups
K. Bell single leg RDL with foot elevated on a cinder block

After that we went outside to watch a few of the strongman athletes train for their upcoming competition. They were training the overhead medley with some crazy weight that I use to deadlift. After that they did some semitruck pulling which we were all able to participate in, it made for a great training opportunity and video.

Lower body was done, truck was pulled, and lunch was eaten it was now time for Mike and Matt to get us through an upper body routine.

Floor press
Floor press drop sets with chains
Double K. Bell [runway] rows (40, 35, 32, 27, 24 kgs)
Spiderman push ups
Wheelbarrow walks
Wall walk ups (with and without handstand push ups)
Battle ropes

Matt brought in some of his heavy sand bags and demonstrated some of his favorite exercises;

Deadlift
Clean
Clean to press
Shouldering

After we completed all of our training we did an Q&A session where Mike and Matt talked about everything from training to the business side of their work.

I have always thought that the best seminars are the ones where they throw you into their environment and you learn directly from the trainers with the exercises they do and in the gym in environment they train. Mike and Matt delivered a great seminar that makes you want to train harder than ever before and come back to learn more.

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