Book Review: Sly Moves

Celebrity workouts are generally bad workouts. They aren't set for your goals, but those of the celebrity...and maybe not that celebrity either. They're certainly ghost-written or co-authored with the actual person who made the workout. They generally have little to offer to anyone as anything except entertainment value.

Celebrity workout books are generally worse than that.

Sly Moves is just awful.

It's 224 pages, list price $24.95...and Amazon.com has it for under $8. It's not worth that.

The book opens with some anecdotes about how hard it was for Stallone to get in shape for his various movies - the Rocky series, Cliffhanger, Rambo, etc. It's conversational and interesting, but it's only the introduction.

Next are the exercises. Some exercises are normal and useful - wrist rolling, pushups, bench presses, pullups and pulldowns. Some are odd but potentially useful - isometric hangs from pullup bars. Some are just dangerous - broomstick rotations done with a lower spine twist and smith machine half-squats for example - or just useless - leg extensions, calf raises, wrist curls. Each exercise comes with one or two pictures of the technique, usually one, plus a very short description of how to do it. These are sometimes sufficient, sometimes not, sometimes oddly modified - a chinup ends, for example, when you are eye-to-eye with the bar. A chinup that ends before you chin is up over the bar? Each also comes with a proscribed rep range, which with few exceptions is 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps. That's fine for a beginner, although not always optimal, and it never changes.

One red flag? A section called "To Squat or not to squat?" on pg 96. The same page as Smith Machine Half-Squats. "I recommend you only do controlled half-squats when first starting out." Then it goes on to say that he's squatting a lot and wrecked his knees. "You can get wonderful results doing leg exercises that are not so difficult." Right, squats are bad for your knees and they don't do anything that easier exercises don't. The painful irony here is that Smith Machine Half-Squats put the knees into a dangerous position, but barbell back squats do not.

The workouts for those exercises are lumped into Beginner and Advanced. There is also a "Superset" workout, where the same exercises are paired together. Guidance on raising weights, or even setting them, is sparse. Same with rest times. The book does recommend you get advice from an experienced friend or a trainer. But then why the book? This is pretty basic stuff that's missing. It's not even made clear when you progress from beginner to advanced, or when it makes sense to change workouts.

Next up is a Sly Moves for women section - slightly different exercises and workouts. The book gets points for saying the main workout will work for men and women, but then it goes on to give women a swiss ball-and-tiny-dumbbells workout. It's workable but both workouts are heavy on isolation exercises and skimp on anything multi-joint except pullups and bench presses and lunges. Those three alone would make a better workout than any of the ones suggested in the book.

The diet advice is equally bad. It's pretty much eat what you want, but not too much of it. Diets don't work, so don't go on a diet - okay, that makes sense, but it never presents other diets as a change of lifestyle. They're just quick-fixes that fail. Oh, and you'll always be heavy, and that's not bad, because trim and lean people look emaciated and starved. It contains judgments of other diets - Atkins, South Beach, Zone, low-carb in general, and others like it - based solely on spurious logic. It takes apart Atkins by calling the creator "Dr. Fatkins." It disposes of Barry Sear's The Zone by basing its criticism on the "palm-sized portion" advice it gives for learning to eyeball portions...as if palm size portions was the basis of the diet. It's trying to be conversational and fun, I think, but it's just inaccurate.

It closes with the usual motivation section. It's nothing new, and not very motivational.

Rating:
Substance: 1 of 5. A mediocre exercise routine with vague advice on execution, poor diet advice, and spurious justification for its bad information.
Presentation: 3 of 5. Readable, and with good photographs, but illustrations of exercise technique don't make it clear what the hell you should be doing. Pretty, but useless.

Don't get me wrong about Sly - I enjoy his movies. I loved Rocky. I liked Cop Land - he acts with Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta and doesn't seem out of place. I admire his grit in sticking to his guns with his Rocky script, refusing to sell it and starring in it himself. I think he's fine. It's just this book that's awful and useless.

Bottom line: If someone told me they were choosing between doing Sly Moves and sitting on the couch, I'd be sorely tempted to tell them to stay on the couch.

Rice Digs

One excellent grip training/hand rehab exercise is the rice dig.

All a rice dig consists of is sticking your hands into a large tub of uncooked rice and swirling them around, grabbing a handful of rice and squeezing, or otherwise moving your hands against the rice. Then you withdraw them, partly or completely, and do another repetition.

It is a very simple exercise, although it requires a specialized tool - a big bucket of rice you won't ever want to cook and eat. It's deceptively easy at first, but it's rapidly tiring. As your hands get tired, it gets harder and hard to keep the fingers together. The rice forces your fingers apart as you push down. It gets harder to grip the rice, and your fingers strain against the rice as you move them around. It provides light resistance, but just enough - more than water, much less than a gripper or thick bar exercise.

Here are two descriptions of rice digs:

Joe DeFranco on rice digs.

Dave Tate on rice digs (T-Nation, so not W/F safe).

And a nice video about them, as well, on Youtube.

It's great for strengthening your hands and for rehab as well.

Book Review: The U.S. Navy SEAL Guide to Fitness and Nutrition

The book is big (496 pages!), it's thorough, it's cheap (about $15), and it's directly targeted at active SEALs, although it does have some information for would-be SEALs getting ready for BUD/S training. All of its training information assumes the reader is a combat swimmer. Thus swimming with fins is recommended as cardio, distance walking with load-bearing equipment is recommended to acclimate to marching, rope climbs are recommended to increase ability to deal with open-grip pulling and climbing in the field. The authors are all SEALs or subject matter experts or both, and the advice is aimed squarely at its audience. There is nothing here for weekend warriors seeking "SEAL-style" training, and plenty for SEALs looking to stay in shape mission to mission.

It is full of direct, specific advice you won't find in a normal training manual - injury treatment, dealing with hypothermia and heatstroke, stowage of gear on load-bearing harnesses, etc.

The book is broken up into two sections - the first is the training section, the second is nutrition.

The training section is educational for any SEAL or would-be SEAL. It covers weight training, calisthenics, stretching (dynamic and static), injury prevention and recovery, warmup, and how to peak for a mission.

The weight training information is pretty basic, following the usual guidelines you'll find from professional associations. 6-12 reps for strength, lift slowly, etc. Five sets per exercise, less reps and more weight as you go, a classic pyramid. Free weights are recommended over machines generally, but quarter squats, leg presses, leg extensions, and other similar exercises are recommended.
Weight training is also broken out from calisthenics. This makes sense on some levels, but leads to oddities like recommending lat pulldowns to SEALs instead of, say, weighted pullups. Exercise technique is explained, mostly correctly - although it defines a parallel back squat as ending when the upper thigh is parallel to the ground, instead of the hip joint and knee joint coming into parallel alignment. That will leave even their full squats a little high.

There is a nice section on plyometric training, centered on various jumps. Team calisthenics and individual calisthenics are covered. Training to failure versus training until a sufficient training effect has been achieved is also discussed. There is even a section on training in heat vs. cold, and winter and high-heat acclimation. Where old standard exercises are no longer recommended, they are specifically discussed and reasons are given for avoiding them.

Endurance, strength-endurance, and strength training are all covered with equal weight. The advice is direct and straightforward, able to be used immediately by an operator reading the book.

The nutrition advice makes up the second half of the book. Most of it is fairly standard - 0.6-0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight, 55-60% of calories from carbohydrates, no more than 30% of calories from fats. It maintains the outdated "simple vs. complex carbs" split and some low-fat eating advice. It also makes the often-refuted claim that protein in excess of 0.8 grams per pound of body weight will result in kidney damage. It also "proves" excess is useless with some spurious logic - that 100g excess protein per day would result in a 1 pound gain of lean muscle mass per day, which doesn't happen, therefore the excess protein is useless. The book justifies this by saying muscle is 20% protein, so 100g of excess protein per day would result in the generation of 500g of muscle mass. That doesn't happen, so therefore excess protein isn't used. But this is spurious - the fact that muscle is 20% protein doesn't therefore mean that every gram of protein you eat is converted to 0.2g of muscle and if not is 100% wasted. A few similar statements are made.

Aside from this, the information seems workable. There is a nice section (repeated twice in the book, once in each section) on micronutrient needs (vitamins and minerals) and how to select and use vitamin supplements. There are details on what supplements to avoid, and a large section on anabolic steroids and harmful substances such as chewing tobacco, alchohol, and antihistamines. There is a large amount of specific detail on food macronutrient breakdowns (protein, fat, carbs) as well, plus food substitutions and how to carb-load for missions. Another very useful touch are a list of specific foods and specific snacks for different mission lengths. That's not information a SEAL is likely to find in another off-the-shelf training book.

Rating:
Substance: 4 of 5. If you are a SEAL, this book is for you. If not, it's probably only a 2 or 3.
Presentation: 2 of 5. It looks like a military field manual - blocky, photocopied pictures, hand-drawn exercise illustrations, and typos and duplicated lines.

Bottom line: If you're getting ready for BUD/S, I'd read this book. I would still recommend a different approach to weight training, but its other material is sound and it contains a lot you will want to know.

Simple tips from "The Biggest Loser."

I have to admit, I like "The Biggest Loser." I don't watch it often, but I like the idea. I especially like that they make people work hard...they don't sugar-coat the problems of weight loss. You have to dedicate yourself to eating right and working hard.

But there are simple ways to start. Here is an article and a video featuring Bob Harper, one of the trainers. Four simple ways to start eating right.

Historical Note: My first workout

I was cleaning up my mom's house today and found an old file of my papers. Amongst them was the hand-written workout given to me by a bodybuilder/boxer/karate instructor friend of mine, to use on his equipment. This was really my second workout program after deciding in August 1999 to lift again; before that I'd only done some calisthenics and worked out on a soloflex. This is the first really serious workout I did with barbells.

Here is what he had me do:

Monday
Bench Press
Behind the Neck Press
Scott Curl
Forearm Curls
Calf Machine

Wednesday
Close-grip Bench Press
Incline Fly
Lat Machine (any grip)
Barbell Press
Forearm Curls

Friday
Wide Bench Press to Neck
Barbell Curl
Barbell Row
Side Laterals
Tricep Pushdown
Calf Machine

All sets/reps were 20/10/7/5/3/2x2 with 20 and 10 being warmups. Every week I was to add another set of plates to the doubles, and try to let the weight increase cascade down the line with the lighter sets.

And that's it.

- No guidelines on rest, I suspect I rested about a minute or so if that.

- No legs except for calf raises. Maybe since I was also doing karate and biking, he didn't think it was important. He didn't have a squat rack but he had a trap bar and he did deadlifts, but he left it loaded with 2 x 100# plates so maybe he just didn't want me messing with his setup...who knows? But no legs.

- I remember doing abs, but I don't see them listed.

- Benching three times a week, including guillotines! Pressing overhead twice a week.

- Only two pulling exercises the whole workout.

Still, while I wish he'd been a "squat and then we'll talk about anything else" kind of guy, he did get me started. He wrote me the workout, showed me how to use his gear, and let me use his gym (a converted shed in his yard, filled with gear) whenever I wanted to. I'm grateful to him. My previous workout had been cribbed from a workout card Bruce Lee filled out and that was copied into a book about him. It was a little more balanced, but it was still an upper body workout. My friend had seen me workout on his stuff a few times, and may have written me a workout based on what I seemed to be doing - benching, curling, some rows, forearm exercises, etc. so at least I was doing it in the right order. It's so long ago (2000) that I've since forgotten. I just remember I'd walk the mile or so up down one steep hill and up another to lift, and then walk home after.

If you are a new lifter comes along and says "Hey, that's what my workout looks like!" maybe you'll realize it needs a lot more balance. We all started somewhere, some better than others. If you're where I was, don't stay there!

Some basic definitions: Strength Sports

Three major strength sports are Olympic lifting, powerlifting, and strongman.

Olympic Lifting or O-lifting, properly known as Weightlifting, sometimes abbreviated OL, is the weight lifting sport you see during the Summer Olympics. The competitive lifts are the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk. The Snatch consists of taking a bar from the floor in front of the lifter to overhead, and then standing up with the weight, all in a smooth motion. The Clean and Jerk involves two motions - first "cleaning" the weight to the shoulders in one motion, and then "jerking" the weight overhead. Both the snatch and the clean and jerk involve a significant amount of technique.
O-Lifting is commonly done with "bumper plates" - solid rubber or iron-cored rubber plates, all of uniform size regardless of weight. These allow for the bar to be dropped with less damage to the platform.

In the past, a third lift, the Clean and Press, was also included. But it was dropped after the 1972 games, for reasons that seem to include both increased difficulty of judging proper form and to reduce the length of competitions.

Powerlifting or PL involves three lifts - the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift. The event is scored by adding the maximum completed lift from each of the three, for a competitor's total. Various organizations exist, each with their own rules. "Raw" powerlifting involves little or no equipment (beyond the barbells, chalk, and a belt) while "equipped" lifting involves specialized squat suits, knee wraps, bench press shirts, and other gear designed to improve the maximum lift of the competitor. Ironically, while it is called "powerlifting" the lifts are all very dependent on maximal strength; O-lifting calls for more power (the ability to move a sub-maximal weight fast).

Strongman combines aspects of both OL and PL with its own unique events. Competitors demonstrate their strength, strength-endurance, and power lifting odd objects (barrels, round stones called Atlas Stones, etc.), dragging trucks, flipping tires or cars, walking with heavy weights (the Farmer's Walk), pressing logs overhead, and similar activities. A related sport, The Highland Games, are based on traditional Scottish sports and include more throwing events.

Deadlift Analysis

The Deadlift is hands-down one of the best exercises you can do. It uses almost the entire body from the neck muscles down to your feet.

Myles Kantor interviewed Mark Rippetoe for EliteFTS about the deadlift. Here is part one:
Going Deeper into the Deadlift with Mark Rippetoe, Part 1

And here is part two:
Going Deeper into the Deadlift with Mark Rippetoe, Part 2


Part two is especially interesting, because Mr. Kantor presents Mark Rippetoe with videos of successful powerlifters for analysis. You can get some useful insight into why their deadlift form is good. It's a great technique analysis of successful lifts.