6 Pack Says…(motivational quotes w/ pics)

 

 

 

Strongman pulls WW2 Bomber airplane (6 Pack on Canada’s Got Talent)

Strength videos: World’s Strongest feats gallary

4 facts you need to know about gaining mass & strength!

One of the biggest problems people run into is the idea that you max out in the gym regularly to strength train. This is actually the best way to plateau!

The Central Nervous System is your engine!

It does not matter if you are training the bench press, deadlift, bent over rows, etc. Your body is run by a central nervous system. This is like the engine of your car. If you red line it every time you are in the gym you are running down the engine and actually weakening your body by over training.

The key is volume within 50% to 90% of your max.

If you like to work up to a heavy single that is your max every week, than you can expect that heavy single to remain your max for here on out. Same if you want to work up to a heavy double, but you need a spot on that second lift. Don’t expect to keep pushing that number higher and higher unless you are adding weight to your body. To gain actual strength you need to work within a specific range.

Sets of 5X5 (60% of your max), 4X4 (70% max), 5X3 (80-85% max), 6X2 (90% max)

It is much better to mix workouts of 60% of your max with 5 sets of 5 reps, 70% of your max with 4 sets of 4 reps, and 80-85% of your max for 5 sets of triples. Then you can get heavy with 6 sets of doubles at 90% of your max, but that should be as heavy as you go! Leading up to those working sets of 5X5, 5X4, and 5X3 I would suggest 3-4 sets of progressively heavier weights, starting with a low warm up weight.

To gain strength your body needs to lift for an extended period of time within a workable percentage of your max. You will find though the percentage is lower than your max, the volume of lifting will be higher and you will struggle mightily during training. It is the extra reps and work that will get your stronger.

If you want to go heavier, use partial movements!

2 time Olympic Silver Medalist Adam Nelson performing partial Squats (lock outs)

To get the body lifting even heavier, you can go over 100% of your max in partial lifts. Do deadlifts from the knees off the safety pins, and quarters squats with the safety pins high. Or put a few 2X4 boards on your chest and do board pressing (where you bench press, lowering the bar to the 2X4s and then pressing). Floor presses, bench pressing while laying on the floor in a squat rack also works to decrease the range of motion while increasing the weight.

This should be use WITH full range of motion lifting and not REPLACE of! You need full reps to gain size and strength! Heavy partials are only a piece of the puzzle!

****The author, 6 Pack Lapadat, is a National Powerlifting Champion and Guinness World Record holder in the Squats. See bio section for more info on him!****

10 exercises for Mass & Strength building!

1) The Squat

The King of exercises? It just might be! For the bang for your buck you don’t get much better than the squat. Proven when done repeated to raise your test levels naturally, the squat recruits all the major muscles groups. When done with proper technique it takes all your shoulders, arms, abs and back to keep up straight with the weight. It also takes all your lower body to push the weight from the bottom. From top to bottom, you can’t get much better an exercise to work out your body for strength and mass building. If you could only do one exercise the rest of your life and it was squats, you would still be huge and strong!

2) The Bench Press

Is there a better upper body exercise out there? I think not. When executed properly the bench press also has the lifter using their legs and glutes as well (though that might be for only seasoned bodybuilders and powerlifters). The best upper body mass builder and strength builder. If you could only do one upper body exercise for mass and strength, it would surely be the bench press…and you would still be in great shape! It takes chest, shoulders, and triceps to push the weight. However, a seasoned powerlifter who knows how to incorporate all his muscles necessary to get the most out of his bench also recruits his back, glute and leg muscles! The King of upper body exercises!

3) The Clean

Speed is power, and you must learn to use speed to generate maximum power. The Clean is the best exercise you can use to harness speed and power at the same time. It makes your body adapt to moving weights in a much more athletic sense, and functional. You can’t do cleans slowly ala bodybuilding. You must move the weights with conviction and technique. With time, you can move hundreds of pounds free weight in this exercise. Whenever that is the case, you know you are onto something special 😉

4) The Deadlift

If ever the Squat had a rival for the Kind of exercises title, it was with this fella here! The Deadlift requires unmatched stabilizing from the upper body, core, and legs to perform. Those who do this exercise improperly likely see it as a lower back exercise. That is blasphemy! If you let your lower back do all the lifting, or the majority of it, you are not doing it properly. When done with the right form you are keeping your upper body in position (which takes lots of core strength in abs, lower back, upper back, and should blades) and pulling with your lower half of your body (your legs and glutes). This exercise gets your test levels through the roof naturally when done often enough (at least weekly!)

5) The Military Press

While this cannot replace the bench press, it is definitely second place to it above all other “upper body” exercises. This free weight exercise requires the lifter to use the shoulders (no kiddin), upper chest, triceps, and even some of your upper back for stabilizing. Some have mastered the shoulder press to hundreds of pounds in the same range as the bench press.

6) The Bent Over Row

You want to thicken out your back and add strength? Grab yourself a bar bell and rep off a few of these babies. No need to touch a machine. Nothing quite hits your back and widens you out as a bent over row. You can do them light and fast, light and slow, or go heavy. Either way, your back and core get blast, thicker, and of course stronger! This is not just a bodybuilding exercise!

7) Good Mornings

There is nothing friendly about this good morning! These babies will load up your central nervous system for handling heavy weights. You can go even heavier with these than you can with squats and deadlifts! That being said, make sure you know what you are doing. If you are the guy at the gym bending forward at the waist,  instead of pushing your butt backward with your back arched, than you should stop doing them or find some help! If you do these right, they will thicken out your body and build tons of core strength!

8) Lunges

These are not just for the ladies! Doing a lot of squats and deadlifts can wreak havoc on your hips and the muscles running up the outsides of your legs. To help even things out, do some lunges. You will benefit from keeping you body upright (taking considerable upper body strength) as well as tax your legs and glutes in a more isolated way that differs from the squat and deadlift. A great addition to those lifts!

9) Shoulder shrugs

These sweethearts will put a massive amount of weight in your hands. Though done free weight with a bar bell or dumb bells it is true that you don’t have a great range of motion these still are greatly beneficial. You gain invaluable grip strength, and because the range of motion is small you can load up the weight. This will acclimatize your body to lifting heavy loads. It will also thicken up your shoulders, in particular your traps!

10) Chin ups

Who says you need to lift weights to gain strength and size? The classic exercise that modern science just can’t top. Use your own body weight and rip off a few of these bad boys with any grip width. Do close grip for attacking the biceps, or spread them out to hit the back. You will be amazed how it does wonders for your shoulder blades and biceps while at he same time hitting your upper back. A great upper body workout all round! Add some weight to them if you need to, or just add more reps!

****The author, 6 Pack Lapadat, is a National Powerlifting Champion and Guinness World Record holder in the Squats. See bio section for more info on him!****

The Sport of Powerlifting

The Beginning

The sport of Powerlifting began as the “Odd lifts”. Olympic Weightlifters who participated in the Clean and Jerk, Snatch, and Clean and Press in the Olympics often did Squats, Deadlifts, Bench Press, Military Press, Arm curl, and several other weightlifting exercises in training.

Soon enough, Olympic Weightlifters began focusing on these lifts so much they began perfecting them and comparing their results. It got competitive. They noticed that 3 lifts in particular of all the “Odd Lifts” were the best 3 events to measure a person’s power. Even the 3 lifts that were in the Olympic Weightlifting program did not quite measure the human power the same. They relied more on speed and agility. Just like the Olympic lifts, these 3 power lifts required a lot of technique to maximize the lifters efforts. However, unlike the Olympic lifts, these 3 power lifts relied heavily on brute strength with much less emphasis on agility, and speed as the Olympic lifts. Originally called the “Odd lifts”, consisting of many exercises, these lifts were eventually narrowed down to the Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlift, and the sport of Powerlifting was formed.

Developing into a Sport

Many famous Olympic Weightlifting Champions such as Paul Anderson and Doug Hepburn (both recognized as the “World’s Strongest Man” in their respective primes) would eventually adopt power lifts as their favorite, and become equally known for their power lifts as Olympic Weight lifts. Doug Hepburn became the best Bench Presser in the World, and Paul Anderson the best Squatter.

Powerlifting as a sport is born

With its roots in the sport of Olympic Weightlifting, Powerlifting has many of the same rules. Each lifter has three attempts in each event (Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlifts, always in that order), with the best successful attempt going towards their total weight lifted. The lifter’s total determines their placing in the competition. If a lifter attempts a weight and fails they must attempt that weight again or go higher up in weight. Under no circumstances can a lifter go down in weight for an attempt; failing to record a successful lift in the three attempts given for one of the events results in a disqualification of the lifter. This makes for exciting outcomes when a close competition can have lifters fail at a weight three times in a row and “bomb” out of the competition.

To advance from the Squat event to the Bench Press means the lifter must have at least one successful Squat attempt to continue. The same goes for advancing from the Bench Press event to the Deadlift event. At the World stage, in highly competitive tournaments were the lifters are pushed to the max in every lift, “bomb outs” are frequent enough. It is the wild card that keeps the sport interesting as any lifter can move up in placing due to an unexpected bomb out.

These events are also held as single event competitions, with the Bench Press being by far the most popular.

Powerlifting Today

Today, the sport has grown to have more members than Olympic Weightlifting. Powerlifting is recognized by the International Olympic Committee and a part of the World Games. The sport has spread to a total of 115 countries, stretching 5 continents, and has become part of modern culture. In every gym you can find people Bench Pressing, Squatting, and Deadlifting. These exercises have become much more commonly practiced than the Clean and Jerk and Snatch. Strike up a conversation with some one from a local gym and they are inevitably going to ask, “How much ya bench?”

Doug Hepburn would be proud.

***6 Pack Lapadat is a Champion Powerlifter and Guinness World Record holder for feats of strength. He performs his feats to raise money for sick children. To learn more about 6 Pack Lapadat/or help donate towards the cause you can browse through this site.

10 quick steps to gain strength!

1) Volume with your weight lifting!

 

It is proven that to increase your testosterone levels naturally through weight lifting you need to lift for an extended period of time. Lifting weights 5 times a week is great, but you may get more out of your week if you lifted only 3 times when those session were longer. Powerlifters increase their strength by lifting 3 days a week, with 2 and a half to 3 hour lifting sessions. Sound crazy? That is the norm with strength routines!

2) Use core exercises!

You can do isolation curls all you want, do the pec deck, or leg curls on machines, but in the end you are kidding yourself if you think you are gaining power. For true power you need exercises that recruit your whole body. These are mainly the powerlifts (bench press, squats, and deadlift) but also the Olympic lifts (cleans and snatches). No leg machine or chest machine can replace any of these lifts. And if some one tells you that squats is for legs and bench presses are for chest, you know right off the bat they are doing them wrong and don’t know how to strength train. These are full body workouts.

4) Use freeweights!

Doing squats on the smith machine, or bench press on the smith machine, or deadlifts on the smith machine (or any bastardized version of these lifts on any machine) is not the same. I won’t say don’t do the Olympic lifts on a machine cause I can’t picture a machine that would allow you to. But sure as hellfire don’t do your strength exercises on a machine. You will not get the same results. It takes away from the full body gains you get, and you can’t to them properly. Learn how to do them free weight. If it takes you a bit to master them, take the time. (Or read my previous articles on how to squat and bench press)

5) Keep your weight you are using fluctuating!

between 50% of your max to 90% of your max. Don’t go into the gym and max out every day. That is the best way to plateau. You should actually not fail in the gym. Most strength routines worth their salt will keep you lifting around 80% of your max and working with that weight in volume. Some people want to go heavy all the time with their lifts and think it will get them stronger. Your central nervous system is the engine of your body, and you can’t rev that engine every day and think it will keep in max performance.

6) Less cardio!

I know for some this is a hard trade-off, but the more cardio you do the more your strength will go down. Your energy reserves get spent on whatever exercises you do in a day. If you budget your energy for strength, than that is where you will see your gains. Some would like to think that cardio and strength will increase together. In a perfect World this would be true. Fact is, your over all strength lifts at the gym will go down with an increase in cardio. Depending on your sport of choice, or personal goals, may be to an extent this is a fair trade-off. If you are solely strength training, I would suggest cutting the cardio all together. Diet and proper weight training can lead to a more muscular body. The more you focus on running, and less on weight lifting, the more you loose muscle mass. Sprinters incorporate weight training and are the thickest competitive runners. Marathon runners rely the least on weight training, and run much longer distances. The picture above shows the difference in their builds.

7) Proper diet!

You need to ingest calories to support a high volume weight training routine. Your body will run through these calories like a car runs through gas. To pack on size and strength you need to eat more calories than you burn in a day. This depends on the size of the person and training that is being done. To that extent this part is personalized.

8) Plenty of sleep!

When the body is at rest at night is when it recharges the batteries so to speak. Your muscles repair and you re-energize for the next day. Getting a good 8 hours (give or take an hour) of sleep will keep you full of energy for your workouts and also give your body enough rest to repair.

9) Full range of motion in your lifts!

If your training program calls for squats, don’t do anything less than a full squat (that is break parallel). If your training program calls for bench pressing, touch your chest with the bar. If you deadlift, do it from the floor not off of a rack and bouncing the weight off the floor (this is much easier and takes away from the deadlift). Getting a full range of motion is how these exercises were meant to be, and how you will get the most out of them. That being said…

10) Partial movements with freeweights!

2-time Olympic Silver Medalist in Weightlifting performing partial Squats

To ADD to your full range of motion freeweight exercises like squats and bench press, you can do heavyweight partials. I stress that these are used to add to your full range of motion lifts, and not to be used in place of them. For some people, heavy partials is all they do, and they don’t recognize them as partials at all but fool themselves into believing they are doing actual squats and bench pressing.

Putting on the safety pins for a quarter squat that is past your max will get your central nervous system use to handling heavy weight. You can do the same with floor presses and board presses for bench press, and deadlifting off of the safety pins in a squat rack from your knees (or deadlifting to your knees and not locking it out).

Added bonus tip…DON’T USE WRAPS!!!

I would like to throw in there that you should never use wraps when training! They are the best way to weaken your grip strength. It is annoying to hear people talk about how their grip gives out because they go so heavy with deadlifts, so they need them. Try to explain theory to a powerlifter who deadlifts 3 times their bodyweight without wraps. Using chalk is fine, but if you are using wraps you are not getting the proper strength training in. Telling yourself you need them is just a way of setting your own limits. If you tell yourself you go so heavy you need them try taking a look on the net to see how heavy the human body can do without wraps. You are stronger than you think, so stop selling yourself short! NO WRAPS!!!!

***The author, 6 Pack Lapadat, is a National Powerlifting Champion and Guinness World Record holder in the squat. He raises money for sick kids by pulling school buses, airplanes, and flipping cars***

6 Pack Lapadat on twitter!

You can follow me on twitter @6PackLapadat (http://twitter.com/6PackLapadat)!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll keep you up to date on my training, recording, public appearances, World records, weightlifting competitions, motivational speaking, TV and radio appearances, song releases, etc. etc.

Don’t miss out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

World Records set by Canadians!

The Canadian team bringing it home

By the time team Canada arrived to the US to do battle, the team had been cut in half. Late cuts to Jared Rowntree and Jason Fabbian severely hurt the team.

The remaining three members were Alex Drolc, new comer Zbigniew Zatek (originally from Poland), and 6 Pack Lapadat.

The bench press was the first event.

Alex got things off to a fast start in the 220 pound weight class with a solid 407 pound bench press. Ron Wisdom of the US was nipping at his heels with an equally impressive 402 pound press. Lester Mumley fell behind with a 352 bench.

6 Pack had the second highest bench for the 181 pound weight class with 325 pounds, trailing Daniel Henson of the USA (330 pound bench) and narrowly putting him ahead of Nick Apseloff (320 pound bench).

The most impressive of the benching that day was Zbigniew Zatek of Canada. Zbigniew, in the 198 pound class, crushed the World Record for masters with a 451 pound bench press. It was easily the biggest eye opener of the bench press event.

Next was the deadlift.

Alex Drolc seperated himself from the pack and solidified his win with an impressive 661 pound deadlift. For his US counterparts, it put the competition out of reach. Lester would surpass Ron Wisdom (who was a 220 pounder in the master’s division) in the deadlift, but still be over a hundred pounds behind Alex in total. In a forth attempt that is allowed to competitors who are attempting a World record, Alex got a World record deadlift up to his knees before dropping the weight.

6 Pack was the only lifter in his weight class to register a deadlift, as the others opted to leave the competition with bench only. The show must go on, and 6 Pack took all three attempts, netting himself a 451 pound deadlift.

Zbigniew Zatek of Hamilton would not deadlift that day, sticking with the bench press event only.

As it turned out, Zatek would come in handy for Canada when he won the body weight bench press for reps competition. Zatek was head and shoulders above the rest of the competition with a huge 47 reps at a body weight of 198 pounds.

In the strict curl event the Canadians once again shined.

Alex Drolc got the heaviest curl of the day with a 160 pound strict curl. In a forth attempt Alex went for a World record but was spent. Having been dissappointed in his deadlift, 6 Pack looked to make a statement in the curl event.

Nailing his first three attempts with ease, 6 Pack opted for a fourth attempt at a World Record in the Curls. 6 Pack would have to lift the same weight that Chris Desanto and Ted Brooks (both over 275 pounds!) had curled if he was to break the record.

With a titanic lift, the World record would fall, and 6 Pack would bring the final victory to Canada. Below is a video clip of 6 Pack bringing the World Record to Canada.

Team Canada leaves for the US to do battle

6 Pack and Alex, Canadian representatives at the Can-Am meet

In the past week this site has had over a thousand hits. I have to thank every one for spreading the word and helping out. I can’t say enough how important it is to have people generous enough to donate to this cause.

The Canadian lifters going to the US has been cut yet again as of yesterday. First Jared Rowntree pulled out, now Jason Fabbian has also decided to not compete. Both have personal reasons that prohibit them from competing against the Americans this weekend. Canada’s representation at this tournament is going to be extremely small as a result of these last minute cuts to our team.

But that is fine, cause when you step onto that stage to do your lifts you are alone anyways. My goal of setting a Canadian curl record is still embedded in my head. No matter how many Canadians are with me in competition, I still have to worry about my own lifts. So in that aspect nothing has changed.

I’ll do my best for my team mates who couldn’t make the trip, and for those who have poured in to support me. The support is overwhelming. I appreciate it. When I get back I’ll have a full write up of how it all went.

Now lets go crush some Yankees…