FC Strength

In the previous article I discussed some easy-to-make, homemade tools you can put together in an afternoon to make training from home even more beneficial than training at one of those commercial gyms. The purpose was to give those with a tight budget some awesome alternatives to buying brand spanking new equipment.

In this post I'll cover some more home gym essentials for those who have the money to deck out a serious training cave.

Again, these are strictly essentials and in no way reflect the only options out there. My intent is to steer you all away from the BS and get you right into training as quickly and effectively as possible.

Option 2: Cha Ching

For those of you who can spend some actual moolah on some kick ass equipment, there are a few things you should keep in mind before deciding to splurge on every cool-looking thing in a store or online.

The first thing to remember is don't worry if it's brand new - sometimes. What I mean is the majority of the equipment I'm going to mention can easily be found on Craigslist and can be picked up nearby. It probably won't be shiny and without wear but it'll get the job done and will be a lot cheaper than

I often get asked whether or not it's possible to get lean, mean, and brutally strong without having a gym membership?

Well I'm here to tell you it's easily MORE beneficial to train at home than in a fancy shmancy commercial gym.

In fact, in this post I'm going to outline exactly what you need to start your own kick ass garage gym and make the greatest gains in strength, muscle building, and athleticism you ever have in your entire life!!

When setting out to create a workout haven for yourself you need to capitalize on what you'll actually need. That means stop drooling over the shiny equipment that the commercial gyms have and think about what really matters - results. So, our set-up will include nothing but the bare essentials. However, I will provide 2 options: one for those with a tight budget and one for those with a little extra scrilla to spare.

So let's get started ...

Option 1: Tight Budget

Neck training has to be one of the most overlooked and underutilized facets of programming. Strengthening the neck through its ability to stabilize and resist movement is extremely important not just for athletes, but for the everday gym-goer as well.

Why Train Your Neck?

First and foremost, a strong neck will help you to avoid serious injury in a collision. This doesn't mean you should become a bull-necked behemoth and go get yourself into a car accident to test your metal, but in case you were in a car accident, having a strong neck would help you evade some serious damage.

Take a look at sports like football, MMA, and wrestling. Have you seen many pencil-necked lineman, fighters, or D1 wrestlers? I think not. There's a reason for this. In their given sports the amount of collision they get into during gameplay is huge. Lineman get smashed on every play, fighters get punched, kicked, and kneed to the head, and wrestlers get slammed and pinned to the mat. Constant impact on the neck, cervical vertebrae, and the surrounding structures. Having a weak neck in these situations isn't an option, it's a necessity.

If you haven't read Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 of this series, I suggest starting there before continuing.

The final installment of this series will include my go-to exercises for explosive power and rate of force development. Like I've said before, being strong is great and something that every single person who trains should be striving for, but strength is only as good as the speed with which you can demonstrate it. Slow strength is not as useful as explosive strength.

As with the others, we will break down our explosive movements into 3 subcategories including:

• Implement Olympic Lifts
• Medicine Ball Throws
• Jumps

I decided to only utilize these 3 subcategories because they are easy to teach and don't require any special equipment that you wouldn't be able to find in an ordinary commercial gym.

In Part 1 we covered the lower body, Part 2 covered upper body, and the next logical piece of the anatomical puzzle would be the CORE.

I really loathe using that word but technically it's in the middle and it's the direct connection between your upper and lower halves. This is a seriously important thing to remember. All of the power generated by your legs will have to pass through your core in order to reach your upper body. And this will happen in every plane of motion and at every angle possible. So keep in mind that your "core" is a lot more than just that ever-so-elusive 6 pack.

We will break down our core movements into 4 subcategories:

• Rotation/Anti-rotation
• Flexion/Anti-extension
• Lateral Flexion/Anti-lateral Flexion
• Complete Usage

In Part 1 we addressed the lower body and how we would attack its every aspect. In this article I hope to accomplish the same with the almighty upper body.

The upper body is divided into 2 main categories (as we all should know) of PUSH and PULL. We further break these down into subcategories:

• Horizontal Push (all bench variations and pushups)
• Vertical Push (all overhead press variations)
• Horizontal Pull (all row variations)
• Vertical Pull (all pullup/chinup variations)

Horizontal Push

Everyone should have a list of go-to exercises to choose from when trying to develop a strength and conditioning program. When I say list, what I really mean is a small pool of the biggest bang for your buck exercises you can just plug and play into your program.

As I love to keep things simple, here are the 4 main categories of movements:

1. Lower Body Movements
2. Upper Body Movements
3. Core (I hate this word as it entails much more than just your midsection, but for argument's sake just think of this as anything that will enhance the connection between your upper and lower body)
4. Explosive Movements

These basic categories will be broken down further into subcategories and the following will be a short series including the biggest bang for your buck exercises from each.

Lower Body Movements

Unfortunately I am writing this article out of pure personal experience. I recently was hit with some flu-like symptoms and have been out of commission for the last 3 days. I realize I won't be able to hit a good training session until I get better, so in this article I will outline my own plan of attack to get myself back to where I was before I got sick.

Where Have I Been?

For the last 12 weeks I've been hitting a variation of Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 program. In the program I was training 3 days per week hitting a full body routine all 3 days. This was going really well as I was hitting rep PRs in all of my lifts (squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press).

The workload was light and it wasn't until the end of my 2nd cycle and into my 3rd cycle that it started getting pretty heavy (for me at least). I was back squatting 3 days per week in conjunction with whatever else I had to do on those days. Granted I wasn't going for an all-out effort in the squat but one day per week, having a heavy barbell on your back that often starts to wear you down a bit.

Anywho, that's where I was. I was 12 weeks into a solid program and I was ready to readjust my numbers and continue. There were going to be a few tweaks though ...

It's a shame we can't learn more about exercise from watching kids play. They don't worry about sets and reps, perfect form, the perfect program, or having to drag themselves into the gym after a long day of work. They just go out and have fun.

There's a lot to be said there. Even though kids don't have any of the responsibilities that we do as adults (mortgages, rent, water bills, work, car insurance, putting food on the table), they have one thing we should all be envious of - that sense of "play".

Now I'm not talking about kids these days who sit in front of their computers and interact through a webcam or spend all day playing video games and eating junk food. I'm talking about the good old days when your curfew was when the street lights came on. When there was never a vacant playground. When if there weren't any footballs, basketballs, or baseballs to play with there was a game of man hunt going on. When jumping fences, swinging from monkey bars, and running over, under, and through anything was the norm.

This was REAL playing. So what can we learn from this?

Bodyweight training is an essential part of any training program, especially if you want to get big and strong.