"Go to" Workouts

This was originally posted on my tumblr, but I decided to put it here.

I was chatting to a guy at the gym the other day about what our “go to" workouts are for those days where you walk in with no plan other than “I’m benching today", or when you don’t have enough time to do what you had originally planned, but still want to get something done that could be considered good training.

These are a few of mine.

Max Out, Back Off

This is my usual “go to" for benching and overhead pressing and is something I took from the Iron Sport Strength Method; max out, and then drop the weight to 80% and do three AMRAP sets.

The only “twist" I put on this is that on the last AMRAP set, I must hit more reps than on the second AMRAP set. I’m usually a bit lazy on the second set, so this is my punishment.

Maxing out can be for a 1RM, 3RM or 5RM.

Assistance work is always pretty standard; lots of DB rows and maybe some direct triceps and biceps work if there’s time.

5x5

I started lifting on a 5x5 program, and probably stopped using it sooner than I should have. None the less, occasionally I’ll look at what I’ve done around the 6-8RM mark and have at it.

Leaves me good and sore for a couple of days.

Front Squats and Deadlifts

I like this combo a lot. The front squats aren’t hard to recover from, and doing them first seems to prime me for deadlifts.

There isn’t much to it; I usually do the front squats for triples, and the deadlifts for sets of 3-5.

If I do anything else after this, it’s usually kettlebell swings until I’m nearly dead.

And that’s all I can think of off the top of my head at the moment!

Sandwiches; The Ultimate Manly Food

There's something special about meat and vegetables and cheese wrapped in some kind of bread. I think it's because you hold in you bare hands while you tear it apart with your mouth. By that logic, I guess ribs and wings fall into that camp too. It's just downright manly.

A few years ago, when I first started lifting weights, I used to train on Sunday mornings with a couple of mates for anywhere from from 2-4 hours, doing everything from lifting weights to sprinting and all kinds of cross-training at a nearby school.

And every Sunday afternoon, while totally exhausted and dying from hunger, I would fill one piece of lebanese flat bread with anything I could find in the fridge; ham, chicken, avocado, tomato, lettuce, greek yogurt, olives, cheese... anything! And I would eat it, right there in the kitchen. I wouldn't even go and sit down. I still don't.

Sometimes, we'd all eat together and buy a vienna loaf and fill it with bacon and eggs while we chatted about how painful our legs felt after doing walking lunges up and down a basketball court for half an hour.

It was a favorite post-workout meal in the beginning, and it's a favorite meal today. After strongman events training, there's not much more satisfying than a burger with a couple of beef patties, bacon, cheese and ton of lettuce stuffed into it.

That's about all I have to say. On Saturday morning I fly over to the US, the land of sandwiches, for a holiday with my girlfriend, and I've been hanging around in /r/eatsandwiches a little too much lately, so I have sandwiches on my mind.