COMBINATION UPPER-BODY/LOWERBODY EXERCISES

WHAT THEY ARE Most human movements involve a combination of upper- and lower-body actions. But in the gym, we have a bias toward bisection-treating our bodies as if they could function perfectly well if we sawed them in half somewhere between the ribs and pelvis. The exercises in the previous sections involve your upper body as a supporting player, usually as a kind of scaffold for whatever weights you're using to build lower-body muscles. The two exercises in this section make you move the weights with coordinated action of your northern and southern hemispheres. Of course that involves more muscle mass, which means it burns more calories. But it also helps you develop balance and coordination, which translate into more overall strength, power, and physical grace. If you've ever admired the way an athlete moves, you know what I mean. WHICH MUSCLES THEY USE The muscles involved in an overhead press and snatch are described in the next section. And the lower-body muscles used in these two exercises are the ones described earlier-pretty much all of them, in other words. The difference with these two exercises is the way you use the same muscles. Whereas the exercises in the rest of this chapter are meant to be done at a deliberate pace-usually 3 to 4 seconds per repetition-these are meant to be done with fast, explosive actions. Your goal is to develop muscle power, which is related to muscle strength but has a slightly different context. Strength is the ability to exert force-to move something heavy, regardless of the speed at which it's moved. Power is the ability to move something as fast as possible, and it matters more than most of us realize. As you get older it declines faster than strength or muscle mass. Some of the really smart people I 've spoken to over the years think that the loss of power has the biggest impact on our quality of life as we get older. It's impossible to separate strength and power entirely-the strongest people tend to be able to generate the most power. For that matter, muscle mass and strength are generally correlated, as well. But there 's something about the ability to generate power that sets it apart-the faster we lose that ability, the faster we get old and frail. That's why the most forward-thinking coaches, like Alwyn, include power-generating exercises like push presses and snatches in their training programs, even if the trainee has no ambitions to run faster, jump higher, or throw a ball harder. We're all going to get old, if we 're lucky enough to live that long. And we' re all going to die. But if it's within our power to make those things happen later, instead of sooner, why not use exercises like these to put the brakes on the aging process? Front squat/push press GET READY • Set up a barbell on the uprights in a squat rack. You want it lower than your setting for the back squat, probably at about your midchest. • Grab the barbell with an overhand grip that's just beyond shoulder width. • As you lift it off the rack, lift your elbows straight up in front of your torso; your upper arms and torso should form a gO-degree angle at the shoulders, with your upper arms perpendicular to your torso. This sets the barbell in a natural groove formed by the front parts of your deltoid muscles. • Allow the bar to roll from your palms to your fingers. It seems awkward at first, but it's the best way to hold the bar in the proper position. • Step back as you would for a typical barbell squat, with your feet shoulder-width apart, toes pointed forward, and eyes focused straight ahead. DESCEND • Lower yourself until your upper thighs are parallel to the floor. • Keep your torso as upright as possible. (I don't really need to remind you of this. The slightest forward lean throws off your balance, which becomes immediately apparent the first time you try the exercise. Your body will catch on fast.) LIFT • Push back up to the starting position. • As you get near the top, before your knees are straight, start to press the barbell straight up overhead, moving your head back just enough for the bar to get past it. Unlike a regular shoulder press, you want to use your momentum from the squat to get the bar moving up off your shoulders. • To do the press, you'll need to lower your elbows, which will allow the bar to roll back down to your palms. • Straighten your knees, and use your upward momentum to rise up onto your toes. It's as if you were trying to throw the weight up through the ceiling, although you'd be insane to let go of the bar at this point. • Pause with your arms fully extended overhead, then lower the bar to your shoulders and immediately descend for the next repetition. Barbell Romanian deadliftlbent -over row GET READY • Load a barbell and set it on the floor. • Stand over the bar with your feet shoulder-width apart, and grab it with an overhand, shoulder-width grip. • Lift as you would a deadlift, and stand with the bar at arm's length against your front thighs. DESCEND • Lower the bar along your thighs until it's just below your knees. • Keep your back in its natural arch by pushing your hips back and allowing your knees to bend a bit. LIFT • Pull the bar to your upper abdomen, keeping your torso and lower body in the same positions. • Slowly lower the bar until it's just below your knees again. • Push your hips forward as you straighten your torso and pull the bar back to the front of your thighs. • That's one repetition. Repeat by lowering the bar as you push your hips back and bend your knees. -- One-armed dumbbell snatch GET STARTED • Grab a dumbbell with your nondominant hand, and make sure you have a little elbow room. You don't want to be crowded when you're moving a weight at full speed. • Set your feet shoulder-width apart, toes pointed forward. • Squat down, holding the dumbbell between your legs with a straight arm. (Your nondominant hand can do whatever feels natural to improve your balance.) LIFT • Jump, or at least push yourself up so fast you come all the way up on your toes. • Keep your arm loose, and let the force generated by your jump get the dumbbell moving up the front of your torso. • Steer the dumbbell until it's straight up over your head. Don't think about the muscles you're using to make this happen. As with the push press, it's as if you were throwing the weight overhead, without actually letting go. (Please don't let go of the weight.) DESCEND • Once your arm is fully extended overhead, hold for a second to make sure your body is stable. Then lower the dumbbell, and drop down into the starting position. • Do all your reps with your nondominant arm, then repeat with your other arm. PRESSING EXERCISES WHAT THEY ARE If you push a weight away from your body, it falls into one of three broad categories: • Chest presses, in which you push the weight away from your body at an angle perpendicular to your torso. • Dips, in which you push down to move your body up. (This exercise can be tough on your shoulders, which is one reason why Alwyn doesn't include it in these programs.) • Shoulder presses, in which you push a weight straight up from your shoulders. WHAT MUSCLES THEY WORK In truth, all presses are "shoulder" presses, in that most of the muscles involved act on the major joints of the shoulder complex. We call the overhead press a "shoulder" press because it has the most direct effect on your deltoids, the muscles that cover your ball-and-socket shoulder joint. When you lift your arms up and away from your torso, the deltoids are the most obvious muscles involved. A chest press works your pectoral muscles, although the front part of the deltoid helps pull your arms up and out over your torso. You complete these movements by straightening your elbows, an action provided by your triceps. The final bit of muscular magic involves your shoulder blades, which are pulled out away from each other on a chest press, and rotate out and up on an overhead press. The actions of the shoulder blades-the scapulae, if you don't mind some gratuitous Latin-are important to everything we do, but they get hardly any attention at all. They float freely over the back of your rib cage, pulled up, down, together, and apart by some of your body's strongest muscles. The trapezius, which I described in the "Deadlift" section, is the main one, but there are many more, with names that sound like a mix of Gregorian chant and Jurassic Park. (Seriously, I bet that if a trainer told his client that a new exercise would work his Dominus vobiscum, with support from his Tyrannosaurus minor, he could pull it off.) Speaking of the shoulder blades, here's one of my pet peeves: When you approach the dumbbell rack of any gym in America, you see a bunch of people doing a bunch of lifts with their backs fully supported by exercise benches-a technique that hinders the movement of the shoulder blades. I suspect a lot of the people doing back-supported shoulder presses have never once tried a shoulder press without back support, much less standing on their own two feet. The shoulder blades are crucial to everything you do with your shoulders, which is to say everything you do with your upper body. Exercises like standing shoulder presses allow them to move freely and do their jobs. Blocking their actions, as you would in a back-supported shoulder press, forces all your working parts to move in unnatural ways to make up for the inaction of the shoulder blades. I just can't understand why anyone thinks that's a good idea.