Hail to the Dinosaurs!
Trudi has been dying to see “The Black Swan” – a movie about a ballerina who is chosen to perform the lead role in Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, “Swan Lake.” So we headed over to the neighborhood theater and saw the thing.
Now, normally, I’d pass on a ballet movie, but this one starred Natalie Portman, which immediately gives it high marks – and it was directed by the guy who directed Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler” a few years ago. So I was hopeful that we’d see ballet combined with a flying elbow drop from the top turnbuckle – or maybe even a cameo by Bruno Sammartino or Ric Flair.
No such luck. It was strictly a ballet film.
And one of the things it featured was the incredible training that professional dancers go through – and the resulting wear and tear on their bodies. There’s one scene where a massage therapist is giving Natalie Portman a combination chiropractic and trigger point session to relieve the aches and pains from her grueling rehearsal session – and it goes on forever – with the therapist working on the poor kid’s sore feet, sore knees, sore ankles, sore arches, sore toes, sore ribs. You name it, it’s sore.
And it’s all the result of overtraining.
Professional dancers don’t lift weights, but they train every day of the week, and they do thousands and thousands of reps of what are essentially bodyweight exercises and advanced stretches. It’s not heavy training, but it’s super high-volume training. And over time, the training takes a tremendous toll on their bodies.
Which leads me to a couple of important observations for those of us who are training to be bigger, stronger, and more powerful:
1. Weight training is the hardest, heaviest, most concentrated physical activity there is. If you do it right, a little lifting goes a very long way.
2. Unlike a professional dancer, you do NOT need to devote endless hours to your strength training. Nor do you need to do it every day. Three times a week is fine – for 45 minutes an hour. For super –advanced man, 3x per week for up to 90 minutes would be okay. But that’s it! That’s all you need if you do it right. More is neither necessary nor desirable.
3. If a 90 pound dancer can work her body into a state of utter exhaustion and injury by training too long and too often on bodyweight exercises and stretching, then imagine the kind of stress a 200 pound lifter imposes on his body when he squats and deadlifts with heavy weights?
4. One reason the dancers tear themselves up is because they diet very severely to keep their weight down. (Natalie Portman supposedly dieted down to 88 pounds for this role, which is insane.) Lifters take note – you don’t want to be fat, but if you’re training for strength you need to eat enough to support your efforts. Your body needs plenty of nutrition to recover from heavy training.
5. Professional dancers are in their 20’s, and they usually stop performing sometime in their 30’s – because their bodies just can’t take the abuse any longer. The same is true of virtually all athletes, amateur and professional. If you’re an older lifter, you need to remember that you’re training much harder and heavier than virtually anyone else your age in the entire world – and that means, you need to train SMART!
6. Many trainees believe that they can do heavy weight training three times per week and then do bodyweight training, cardio, or high rep kettlebell work on their “off days.” But most who try this fail. Why? Because those high rep and cardio workouts on their “off” days turn the “off” days into training days. Go back to the example of the dancers and the stress and strain they impose on their bodies from nothing but bodyweight workouts and stretching.
7. A much better way to include bodyweight training, cardio or high rep kettlebell work is to do it on the same day you do your heavy lifting (right after your heavy lifting) – or else train three times per week or every other day and alternate heavy workouts with the lighter “conditioning” stuff – with a day of rest between each workout.
So there you are. Seven training tips inspired by – of all things – a ballet movie. Next week, Trudi and I are going to go see a REAL movie – “True Grit.” That ought to give me plenty to write about.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a great day – and if you train today, do it Dino style: hard, heavy and serious!
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. My new book, Chalk and Sweat, gives you detailed instruction on building strength and muscle as fast as possible – with 50 different workouts for trainees at all levels of development. You really want to have this one on your bookshelf:
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