March 24th, 2010 | 
Author: Everyone who wants to get strong knows that there are 2 lifts that will put muscle on you quickly – the squat and the deadlift. The problem that we have seen for years is that lots of people do NEITHER correctly! I will go over a few things that will help you put pounds on the conventional deadlift in just a few weeks.
- Train your quads
You’re probably asking yourself “Why train quads to deadlift?”. Well the simple answer is that, when pulling conventional, you use a lot of quad. If you aren’t, then you aren’t doing it properly. You should be able to flex your quads and the bar will start to move for you.
A few exercises to bring your quad strength up are:
DB or BB lunges
Close stance squats
Leg press
Perform these for sets of 8-12.
- Back work
We all know that the deadlift taxes your back. What specific exercises can you to do make sure your deadlift goes up?
Chest supported rows
T-bar rows
DB rows
BB rows
Lat pulls
Chin-ups
HEAVY shrugs
High pulls
Good mornings
Reverse hyper
45deg back raise (with weight/bands)
The stronger the back and bigger the yoke, the higher the deadlift. On top of that you’ll actually LOOK like you lift some weights.
- Grip work
This is something that every athlete should have in their arsenal. Strong hands and forearms will allow you to grip a ball/stick/racquet tighter, push harder, make your opponent on the mat wish they never joined the wrestling team, etc.
Deadlift with bands.
I haven’t seen anything that works the grip more than this. Because of the progressive tension increase of the bands while performing the deadlift, you will have to squeeze the bar as hard as you can in order to lockout the weight. This will be covered in part 2 of the article.
Grip trainers
These things will build huge forearms. Do high reps twice a week and gradually work up to the next highest gripper.
Shrugs and Rows
High rep db rows (Kroc rows) and shrugs are a great way to not only build your back but increase your grip strength. Because you have to hold on to the bar or db for an extended period of time your grip will become stronger. Do not limit yourself to just DB rows though. Do all of the rows mentioned in the section at the top!
In addition to all of these things, make sure you hammer your ab work. Building a strong set of abdominals can do nothing but help increase the weight you can handle. If you are using a belt for your heavier sets, I recommend learning how to use it. Sometimes the addition of a belt can add 50lbs to your deadlift, if utilized correctly!
This covers the very basics of how to bring up your deadlift. The next section will be about foot placement and adding accommodating resistance, ie: adding bands or chains. Stay tuned!
I just read an awesome post by Elliott Hulse over at
Old School Muscle Building Advice
It talks about judging athletes on their PERFORMANCE and not strictly on their muscle size…there are many High School athletes who are not blessed with large muscles, but can run fast, hit hard, jump high, and push people around on the field or courts or your chosen sport just as good as any of the bigger guys or gals, or as this article
Old School Muscle Building Advice calls them “Artificially Swollen Muscles”. They do it by training for the sport, not training for asthetics!!!!!!!
You see, many athletes today are doing routines that are not really great at making them better, but will add muscle size…many of these will not do anything to help you get stronger or faster, only bigger. The sad thing is that many high school strength coaches are blindly leading their athletes from articles on bodybuilding forums or muscle magazines. Sure if you want a larger athlete then these will work great..but if you want a BETTER athlete then you have to do more than just train to get bigger by doing hypertrophy work…
Check out this article Old School Muscle Building Advice and if you want to get bigger AND stronger AND faster then contact us here at Elite SSP and we would be happy to guide you in the right direction with a proper routine. We can handle athletes from many different sports so what are you waiting for?
You can reach us at (540) 520-1382 or info@elitessp.com!
What are you goals and HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT? Take the important first step and contact us NOW!
Well, my wife has been wanting to join a gym for a while, and normally I train out of my garage gym at Cold Steel Barbell or another private club in the area. She has also sworn up and down she wouldnt train in the dirty dungeon garage with us too..its either too hot or too cold for her, depending on the season haha..Well she has not showed too much interest in really working out in 10 years and lately its been peaking at an all time high…so I relented and decided to go along with her and join the family so the kids have a place to swim and do other stuff when she is there…I am on this family plan as it was cheaper this way than her getting a very restricted individual membership.
Well last night, I went with Blane to lift there and help out the wife. I must say its been a while since I stepped into a setting like this..the real plus is being able to use some equipment or other amenities a couple days per week I dont have normal access too..this can only help me in the long run..but thankfully I brought my iPod with me and the expectation I would run into a bunch or weirdos or attitudes…the headphones really help me not hear or pay attention to much of the crap that goes on around me. Guys taking the last 45lb plate off the rack that you are using, like they didn’t think we would need it…we didn’t need IT after all, we needed 4 more..so we got them anyway and just kept on training. We got a good laugh out of that later on though.
The point of this article is to point out that while some of the equipment may look pretty and also be beneficial, you DON’T need a facility like this to get better at your chosen sport. While I am going to help out my wife, I will take advantage of some of the stuff, but ultimately I year to get back in the COLD dungeon gym where its just us and the spiders…
What YOU need is a true training ENVIRONMENT…not a large room full of fluff..if you are serious about improving your strength, speed, and conditioning for your chosen sport, you MUST call us at Elite Strength & Sport Performance now to get started…with football winding down, we should be getting you guys in soon to get ready for next year, whether its to prepare for high school or college level of ball..the environment we can give you with the old school underground training beliefs we use will guarantee to make you BIGGER, FASTER, and STRONGER. Email us now at info@elitessp.com or call us at (540)-904-0789.
We look forward to welcoming you to the GARAGE!
We are currently working to bring Chris Taylor to Roanoke, VA for a Bench Press Seminar.
Chris is an Elite powerlifter and 800+lb bench presser. Chris has benched 750lbs@242 in a full powerlifting meet (August 2008), as well as recently hitting 805lbs@275 in a bench only contest. Chris trained under the guidance of Dr. Ken Leistner at Iron Island Gym, and currently still trains in Long Island, NY with a group of STRONG lifters. Chris continues to set PRs in both the 242 and 275lb class in not only the bench press, but also in the squat, having recently done a 905 squat at 242. Chris is also a certified Physical Therapist Assistant with an in depth background about injury healing and prevention
If you are interested in attending the seminar, please contact me at 540-520-1382 or info@elitessp.com for more information.
We will also be doing video of the events this day and selling for those that are too far away to be here in person!
Well, today I ventured into the realm of training a girl who was not looking to be a better athlete but rather looking to get in better overall shape and lose bodyfat. I am use to training athletes to be better at their sport, so this was a little different but in a good way. This trainee is actually my 20 year old sister Kim. She is planning a wedding in December so she has the same motivation most females get for those kind of events. Needless to say, I put her through the paces today and we shall see if she sticks with it or not. She definately enjoyed it and said it beat a workout at Golds gym any day of the week. Training with Elite SSP and Cold Steel Barbell in Roanoke, VA is no fancy chrome training facility and there is only THREE rules here;
1.) NO WHINING
2.) WORK YOUR BUTT OFF
3.) See RULE #1
If your interested in joining us, call or email us now for more information! We can help you train for any sport, as well as help you achieve your non-sport related fitness goals!
We are looking at putting together a couple separate female and male Boot Camps soon, if your interested hit us up! Talk to you soon!
Mike and I came across this accidentally but it works like NO OTHER PROGRAM that we have tried. We initially thought we might actually lose some strength deadlifting twice a month instead of every week. Now that we have seen the results of this we are sticking with it!!
Here’s the basic max effort lower outline:
Week one:
day one – DE squats
day two – ME squats
Week two:
day one – ME Deadlift
day two – DE squats and work up to a heavy triple or single, ~85-90%
Doesn’t look complicated, does it? Well it isn’t supposed to be! The DE squats with bands will increase your posterior chain strength like crazy while building speed. Then, on week two, when you go to pull heavy, you do so with reverse bands, against bands, pulling off of pins, or with chains. This works well for both sumo and conventional style deadlifts.
The proof is in the pudding. My max deadlift had been 525lbs and I’d been struggling with weights as light as 455lbs. Since we found this method during my meet prep phase, I had to go with it and try to pull a personal best. Boy did I. Here’s the video:
Pulled a 75lb PR! How’s that for 4 months of training!!!
Here’s a vid of Mike and his newly found love for the deadlift:
Call or email us (about section) to schedule an appointment.
Well, its been a couple weeks since the diet ended and I would have updated this sooner had I not left for vacation at the end of the diet and then had to get caught up at work last week. But anyway here are the final results.
The diet ended on Sunday, July 5, 2009. The final tally: 25lbs in 28 days!!!!
I went all the way down to 250lbs! The lowest I have been since around 2002. Its been so long I honestly cant remember being this light. I cannot tell any noticeable muscle loss and the fat loss has been obvious to many based on the comments I have received.
The good news is I have not been on the WSFL diet for the last couple weeks, and I am still at 255 and not watching what I am eating to strictly. I am very much paying more attention to what I put into my body now that the diet is over, and I can definitely tell this has created what will hopefully be a permanent lifestyle change for me in terms of eating, but I have not been religiously following the diet since it ended and have not done a bit of cardio since then so I am happy to still be at 255 today!
I will be starting the diet again this week, but I am going to experiment with the lifting sessions this time around and try to do a mix of the interval training as well as one strength exercise per session to see how the results vary. Since my goal here is to drop to 235-240 I will make adjustments as needed if I don’t see any drops in weight after the first 10 days. I want to see how this will work while training for a powerlifting meet as I have had many of my friends in the sport ask me what would it could do. Thus I figured I would go ahead and be my own guinea pig.
In summary, I am so happy with this diet I feel personally thankful to both Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Roussell for developing something so easy to follow and something that TRULY works! For those of us who have been heavier and fatter all our lives and love to lift weights to get stronger and bigger, its nice to know there is something that we can do for 30 days and see a dramatic difference in fat loss and still not completely hamper our long term goals of strength training and competing in powerlifting or other strength sports! Thanks Alwyn and Mike!
This is just an update to the diet I am currently on. The goal was to get down from 274 to 250 in 30 days using the
Warp Speed Fatloss Routine/Diet
Well this has gone much better than I ever anticipated! In just two weeks I have gone from 274 to 256 as of this morning (June 24, 2009)!!! That is 18 POUNDS in TWO WEEKS! I am not far from my goal and the hard part of the routine is just getting started with the extra cardio coming up these last two weeks! I am very confident I will reach my goal and maybe even a little more! I have not been this light since around November 2006 or early 2007! I am carrying much less bodyfat (will get updated measurements tonight) and people are starting to call me skinny. 
The workout routine is pretty cool, it definitely gets the heart racing in a hurry and at time in the hot summer garage it can make you want to hurl. Just ask my training partner Blane who just started this diet a couple days ago how yesterday’s workout went! HAHAHA. We almost had a puke fest with Blane halfway through the workout!
The diet itself is pretty easy to follow and I am also playing around with the foods I eat that are similar but not exactly what is written down in the diet template. It has not slowed my progress one bit. I have stayed very strict with a couple exceptions last weekend while the wife and I were out at a Harley rally and there weren’t too many good choices to eat and I had forgot to pack some healthy snacks. This didn’t hurt my progress at all so it worked out in the end.
So I must say two weeks into this 30 day diet its been great and I am looking forward to seeing the final results in the two weeks! I will post again with an update when it’s all over.
In the meantime, check out Warpspeed Fat Loss now—
Those that know me, know that I am a competitive powerlifter, and usually compete in the 275lb class. Well lately I have allowed myself to get out of shape to say the lease in the quest for a bigger total…I have a few minor health issues that weight loss would definitely help, and I also have been motivated by likes of Elliott Hulse, Alwyn Cosgrove, Jason Ferruggia, and Mike Roussell via their own blog posts to lose the fat and get in better shape. I see this as having many benefits, my priorities for this weight loss are below:
1.) Healthy life
2.) Less fat
3.) Hopefully healthy enough to make sure I stick around long enough to watch my kids grow up and not leave them without a dad because he was too selfish with his own life to care about being here to be their Dad!
That last one hits home most of all, as I personally view that is my #1 priority in life right now. Powerlifting and a bigger total will have to wait until I am in better health. I also come from a family that has a history of obesity and diabetes and other ailments that go along with being FAT and I do NOT want the life they dealt themselves in that regards!
Thus, on Monday, June 8, 2009, I embarked on a mega fat loss diet and workout regimen that is pretty extreme, especially for my normal lifestyle!
Last week I bought the Warp Speed Fat Loss program from here–>
http://www.warpspeedfatloss.com
This is a program put together by Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Roussell. It claims weight loss of at least 20lbs in 30 days! Thus I figured I had nothing to lose by trying since they also offer a 60 day money back guarantee! That gives me time to basically do it twice in a row and maximize my results if I so choose.
I will tell you that the detail in this program is unreal, it contains done for you meal plans, workouts, and more! I will report back about this once its over on Sunday, July 5, 2009!
As an added bonus, I have already lost 12lbs since starting this and I still have a full three weeks to go!
So check out Warp Speed Fat Loss here!!
In the following link (http://jasonferruggia.com/5-ways-to-burn-fat-fast/) , Jason Ferruggia talks with John Alvino about the best ways to burn fat fast!
See what John has to say here–>
http://jasonferruggia.com/5-ways-to-burn-fat-fast/
It will be well worth your while to check this out if fat loss is part of your summer shred plan! 