Gym Movement Review

If anyone actually reads this, then you might know that I have changed my way of training around a bit, since I started writing this.  I started using my biofeedback by way of what's known as the gym movement protocol, pioneered by Frankie Faires.  Briefly, the idea is to see how your body reacts to a movement.  Let us say, for instance, a deadlift.  If I want to deadlift, I will hinge my hips and mimic the weighted deadlift--though I will test it with no weight--and if it tests well, I load a bar.  How I do I know it tests well? I do a toe touch until I feel tension, and mark a line with a pen on my leg.  I test my DL, and if it's a good day, my hands will move an inch or so past the line.  If it doesn't test better like that, I will do a variation.  One legged deadlift, sumo, whatever.  When I feel like I tried to hard to complete a set, I stop.  I don't grind out the extra rep with a pained look on my face as if I got castrated, or anything.  I stop.  I get better every day this way, by way of density, volume or intensity.  If you read this blog, you should know what those variables mean.  If you do not, ask here, or find out. 

Here is why the idea appeals to me.  In guitar and piano playing, you will potentially fuck your playing up, or be sore if you are too tense.  You can also find a way that suits you better through experimentation--the fingering of a piano piece might not make sense based on the way your hand is shaped, or something like that--so you figure it out for yourself.  The same thing is true via a pre-written template program, or training for your goals and going on how you feel.  One thing I will address is a counter argument to the movement philosophy (Counter Argument) that says if you test movements you will only perform the ones you are good at, and that you will have to perform x movement if you want to get better at x movements.  Well, the fact that in order to do get better at something you have to actually do that particular something should not strike any of us as particularly odd.  And second, how the hell do you define good at something when it comes to lifting a weight?  Is my 400plus pound deadlift comparable to someone else's 600lb deadlift?  When I have pulled one or two muscles deadlifting and the 600lb deadlifter might have had hosts of other injuries to speak of deadlifting?  I am not sure.  But according to my training log, I am pretty decent at kettlebell military pressing.  I also know that if I bench press on a Monday, my military press will test like shit on Tuesday, and if you look at my training logs, you will note that some Tuesdays I did not do military presses for that reason.  So, there goes the idea that you will do only what you are good at.  The same Counter Argument also did not take into account the idea that they should not have done those movements since they did not test better. 

I think that in order for Adam Glass to offer a double money back guarantee AND let you keep the DVD of Grip and Rip 2.1, there must be something to it.  I can attest that it works.  I spent some money and Adam turned a 30 minute phone call into a long discussion about biomechanics, testing movements and what have you.  That's the sign of a guy who gives a fuck. 

Personally, in the stress of being dumped, readying myself to move again, not eating much, wondering when the fuck someone  will realize that they should hire me to teach at a private school because I possess large amounts of awesome, I am still having great training days.  The rest of the shit going on is not negatively impacting what will test well, and what will not test well.  As of late, PRing  and watching old seasons of Married with Children give me the absolute MOST enjoyment and happiness out of my life. 

Me laughing after busting my ass trying to do a pistol squat. 

In life we test things out to find the path of least resistance.  Nobody wants to learn, "the hard way."  So why should this not be applied to fitness?  Every master at a craft--music, etc.--makes the difficult look easy.  So it should be with strength training.  And with Gym Movement, the protocol is a sound way to go about it, and logically it makes sense.  And if you test something, what the hell do you have to lose? So I say this--I give Gym Movement my seal of approval, for whatever the hell it's worth.  My hat goes off to the Movement.