A few strong things

Training is about adaptation.  Not only your body adapting to stress, but you have to adapt to your environment and situation.  John’s time is spread thin between touring with wwe and/or working on films.  This results in strange gyms and some unpredictable days.  It takes a great amount of effort to simply make it to the gym.  His training is based on percents when there can be some kind of normalcy and when there isn’t, he chooses his own weights inside certain parameters.  These are assigned through Mogy of course which is also used to track data. This was a few days just to check to see where he was strength wise after a long stint on a movie set.  With any kind of schedule, it is about picking a choosing the times to push.  If you go as hard as possible all the time, you will eventually burn out.  Once you have some training years under your belt, learn the difference between your strength when trying to maintain and your strength when you have some weeks to push yourself.

 

 

Very Basic Bench Workout

Quick clips from a workout involving heavy bench and a few other accessory exercises.  End of a minor strengthening phase to get bench press back to a normal level after shoulder surgery.

Bench press to heavy single

Close Grip triples

Incline Bench press up to a decent triple

Bent over Row sets of 6

Not shown Dips and pause chin up super sets

@johncena getting his bench back up. Details at www.hardnockssouth.com if needed.

A video posted by Hard Nocks South (@hardnockssouth) on

 

 

Strong

 

It isn’t all about your form.  Often people who ask me details on technique have trouble accepting they just aren’t strong enough.  This is especially true in the Olympic lifts.  Do you really think you will be able to clean 100kg if your front squat is 80kg?  Do you think you will be able to bench press 405lbs if you can only close grip bench 225?  To be a strong person you need strong hands and a strong back.  That is the foundation of everything.  You can’t pick up more than you can hold on to and you can’t squat more than you can support with your lower back.  Then internet has given us amazing resources to research strength but the most important message is lost.  Do the work.  Work your ass off in the gym.  Over and over.  Year after year.  I am not saying technique doesn’t matter.  It does, but people seem to be forgetting you have to be just plain strong to lift big weights.  Lift hard and rest hard.  Get stronger.  While you do that, enjoy this video of a real man doing a man thing with lots of weight.

Cena 487lbs Bench PR

In the  10 week training cycle leading up to this he only went 90% or more of his previous max for 2 weeks.  However, since the training cycle was based on a very conservative number, he never crossed 87% of his true max the entire cycle.  A PR is a nice surprise when you haven’t been training very close to it.  The stronger you are and the older you are the less you can play with near max weights on a regular basis. Train smart and you can continue to progress.