Training Manifesto

Before we dive into this Epic Doctrine of my training style let me first tell you a few things to stop fuckheaded comments. I do not have any credentials or degrees in the information I am going to share. I read a lot of open source documents from authors who are highly respected in their communities. Gentlemen like Greg Everett, Kenny Powers, Mark Rippetoe and Louie Simmons. I am a staunch believer in the teachings of Jon North and am a member of the Attitude Nation. Tyson Hips Baby! So now that you know that I am not a professional, merely a guy who likes to learn new things and pass on that information to others, lets begin.

Training Manifesto I by Reece Messerly

1. Find your thing and follow it. There are people out there that believe it or not love to run. They do this shit for hours and hours a day. Crazy right? My thing is Olympic Weightlifting. Which means I bang weights off the floor of a gym hidden in a valley somewhere in Southern California. What do me and the people who I mentioned have in common? We are active and we enjoy our sports. (Yes running a long fucking way is sport) You have got to find that thing that keeps you going back to the gym everyday. That Olympic Weightlifting thing will be the base for the rest of this doctrine.

2. Lift Heavy Every Day

Heavy is a relative term. Heavy for you. Of course that runner won't do this, but for my training I must lift heavy. Since Olympic Weightlifting Competition requires you to lift heavy six times it does me no good to lift light weight a bunch of times. That means the Snatch and Clean and Jerk, front squats and back squats are taken to max every day.

3. Squat four or five times a week. Your legs are the base of almost every athletic movement. I want to train my legs to support all movements required during the competititon lifts. This means I squat most days that I train.

4. Fix your weaknesses.

This is where we must be honest with ourselves. I've got super poor overhead stability due to the fact that I don't pinch my should blades together. Noted. I'm fixing it. My shoulders aren't that flexible. Noted. My leg strength is lacking. Noted. (see 2 and 3) I would also like to improve shoulder strength. Noted. The point behind this is we all have weak points in our game and to be successful we must correct them, sometimes painfully. You just have to make that weakness a strength then move on.

5. On to the programming.

I don't do cycles or programs anymore. I can't stay focused long enough. I do the competition lifts every day and heavy. After each of the competition lifts I perform back off sets. I do one or two supplementary exercises. With the supplementary exercises I do let me say this. I am beginning strength training for Weightlifting. I bet you are looking at the computer screen like there is a giant dick growing out of it. I recently picked up a piece of Literature from Mark Ripetoe that made sense to me. So, in order to get strong and better at weightlifting I am going to strength train the slow movement for it. I then squat (front or back) heavy. Then I throw in some ab and lower back work, stretch and call it a day. Its really a simple formula. There it is. I would love to discuss this with anyone. The above is really kind of an experiment I am doing on myself. Good luck, train hard!