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| Back in the late 1930's and early 1940's, Philadelphia's Louis Abele was one of the strongest men in the world - and one of the most massive and muscular. He often did ten heavy singles in his workouts. |
Hail to the Dinosaurs!
Three quick notes and then we'll talk
iron.
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| Brooklyn's John Davis - a six-time World Champion and two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner in weightlifting! |
1. Black Iron: The John Davis
Story
I thought I was out of copies, but I
found 12 of them in a box back in
the corner of our storage unit.
One's taken, so there are 11 left.
I'm not going to reprint it, so these
are the last ones I have.
The price is $34.95 plus shipping
and handling.
Email if you want to grab one. I'm
at info@brookskubik.com.
2. The NEW Old-School Strength
Site
John Wood has done a massive
upgrade on his Old-Time Strongman
site.
Go check it out:
https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/
John also did a huge upgrade of
his Old Time Strongman Blog -
and it's definitely worth a look:
https://www.oldtimestrongman.com/blog/
BTW - when you go to the Blog, be sure
to look for the photo of "Nino" and the
Carousel Lift - you won't believe it.
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| Strength and Health magazine - a true slice of Iron Game history. (By the way, that's another photo of Louis Abele.) |
3. Strength and Health Magazines
I'm cleaning out my duplicate strength
magazines so Trudi and I can pack up
and move to the Pacific Northwest.
That includes a ton of old Strength and
Health mags. I'm selling them in 12 issue
sets from the late 1930's through the 50's
or 60's. I don't have complete sets for all
of the years, but I have them for most
years.
Shoot me an email and ask for prices
and availability.
4. Which Is Better - 100, 30, 20, 10,
5 or 1?
I'm talking about reps.
Specifically, heavy singles.
Which is better:
Doing 100 heavy singles?
Or doing 30 heavy singles?
Or 20 heavy singles?
What about 10 heavy singles?
Five heavy singles?
Or ONE heavy single?
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| 302 pounds with a Christmas Tree Barbell - small plates with some log chain taped to the ends to get me up over 300 pounds. This was a "heavy" single - and I only did ONE single with that weight in that workout. |
I've done them all. Yes, the entire
gamut.
All the way from one heavy single
to 100 heavy singles.
Here's what I found.
1. They all work.
2. It is extremely difficult to recover
from 20 or 30 heavy singles - and
even harder (as in, almost impossible)
to recover from 100 heavy singles.
About 20 years ago, I did 100 rep
workouts in the squat and Trap Bar
DL (doing 20 sets of five), and 30
rep workouts in the bottom position
thick bar bench press in the power
rack (30 singles).
I did one exercise per workout, and
trained three times a week.
Man, was it tough - as in, insane,
over-the-top tough.
It was an experiment. An interesting
one.
Fun and challenging - but too much
for sustained, week in, week out
training.
3. It also takes a very long time to
do 20, 30 or 100 heavy singles.
As in, about two or three hours.
And that's a long time.
4. Ten singles or less are much more
manageable and more efficient.
I currently do Olympic lifting, and my
workouts usually include all singles.
I typically do a total of 10 to 20 singles
with 75 to 90 percent of my current one
rep max.
Not all at the same weight, but at
different weights, sometimes working
up in weight for the whole workout,
and sometimes doing waves.
Perhaps 5 singles at 75 percent, 5 more
at 80 percent, 5 at 85 percent and on
high energy days, another 5 at 90
percent. That's a tough workout at
age 60.
5. When I was younger, I did power
rack and powerlifting workouts all the
time. One to five heavy singles worked
GREAT!
So which is better?
I think that one to five work best for most
of us - especially if we do powerlifting
or power rack work.
For OL training, you can do more total
reps - perhaps 10 to 20, as long as you
don't go too close to your one rep max.
How about you?
What has worked best for YOU when you
do heavy singles?
Shoot in an email and let me know. I'll
share the results with your fellow Dinos.
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. My EXACT workout when I was doing
heavy powerlifting and power rack work-
outs is detailed in Strength, Muscle and
Power.
If you don't have a copy, you need one -
and you can grab it right here:
http://www.brookskubik.com/strength_muscle_power.html
P.S. 2. My other books and courses are
right here at Dino Headquarters:
Hard-copy and PDF
http://www.brookskubik.com/products.html
Kindle
http://www.brookskubik.com/kindle.html
P.S. 3. Thought for the Day
"More isn't always better. There's a
difference between drinking a glass
of water and drowning."
- Brooks Kubik
BEFORE YOU LEAVE . . .
We have more than 25 Dinosaur Training books and courses in the Kindle
bookstore - here are several of them - head on over and take a look at the others:
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