WHY TIGHTNESS IS THE KEY TO GETTING STRONGER

STRENGTH
or watched the champs and copied what they saw. ANDY BOLtON: Exactly. Heres an example of how to get tightand, therefore, lift the most weight you are capable ofwhen bench pressing: Assume your bench press set-up, and do the following: D  rive your heels into the ground as hard as possible. F  orce your knees out as hard as possible. S  queeze your glutes as tightly as you can. F  lex your lats hard. Death-grip the bar.  Now, while keeping that level of tightness, unrack the bar and perform your set. You will be stronger. M&F: Tightness also makes you safer when you lift weights. Can you explain that? PT: It works the same way that tensing your stomach protects you from a punch. In addition, tensing before you get under the bar takes the slack out of your tendons. Lifting a heavy barbell is like towing a traileryou need to take the slack out of the cable before hitting the accelerator. Incidentally, Russian studies show that this pre-tension increases strength by up to 20%. Thats due, in part, to a psychological feeling of lightness and invincibility. AB: Many lifters injure their lower backs when performing squats, deadlifts and military presses. To avoid doing this, lift with a neutral spine and get as tight as possible to maintain that neutral spine. Focus on flexing your glutes, lats and abs as hard as possible. Do this properly and you cannot lose neutral spine. M&F: How can we learn to tense up? PT: Practise. Tension is a skill. Ernie Frantz, a powerlifting legend, used to practise tensing his whole body throughout the day. There are many sophisticated techniques that teach you to get tighter and tighter. I have researched the topic and experimented for almost two decades.

KINGS OF

ANDY BOLTON AND PaVEL TSaTSOULINE ARE TWO OF THE WORLDS PREMIER STRENGTH EXPERTS. BOLTON WAS THE FIRST MAN EVER TO DEADLIFT 1,000 LbS IN COMPETITION. TSATSOULINE IS A FORMER SOVIET SPECIAL FORCES INSTRUCTOR AND CONSULTANT TO ELITE UNITS OF THE US MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT.
n this new series, weve brought the two kings of strength together for a roundtable discussion in which they share the secrets to getting a stronger physique. This month, they discuss the importance of tightness. MUSCLE & FITNESS: Any serious strength athlete knows that tightness is the key to strength yet many gym rats dont. Can you explain why its important to be able to get tight, if you want to get strong? PAVEL TSAtSOULINE: Tension is strength, its as simple as that. A muscle produces force by tensing. Tensing stabilising muscles fires up the prime movers. Through the phenomenon of irradiation this tension spills over. Its especially obvious when you tense your abs, glutes, and grip. Test this on the basic barbell curl; I guarantee that you will immediately and noticeably get stronger. All elite lifters learned to get extremely tight early in their careers. Some are born athletes and figured it out naturally. Others have been coached

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A researcher, Bret Contreras, compared the recruitment of various muscles of the midsection in the traditional plank and in the plank I designed. The EMG (electromyography) measurements showed that the latter activated the internal obliques, the abs, and the external obliques 200%, 300%, and 400% respectively. In the book Deadlift Dynamite, that Andy and I co-authored, there are detailed descriptions of this special plank. AB: One of the big mistakes I seeeven from accomplished liftersis performing all their warm-up sets with sloppy, loose form. This ingrains bad habits. To really learn how to get tight, treat every set as if it were a one-rep max. Even your lightest warm-up sets. This gives you many sets in every workout to practise getting tight. M&F: Two exercises frequently recommended for teaching tightness are the double kettlebell front squat and the kettlebell bottoms-up press. What are your thoughts on these exercises? PT: The double kettlebell front squat is a great tension teacher. Due to the particular load placement, the lower back muscles dont have much leverage to stabilise the spine and the diaphragm and the abs have to take over. Some of you strong guys might sneer that kettlebells are too light for squats. Well, go try it. 1,200-pound squatter Donnie Thompson has found 3x8 with a pair of

88-pound kettlebells sufficient. In this case, it isnt about the weight but its placement. And no, the barbell front squat does not have the same effect because, as Dan John has pointed out, it stacks the weight nicely on top of the skeletal structure. So use two kettlebells. AB: Theres a young guy I know who can bench 240 kg raw. Hes a monster. But when he tried the single arm kettlebell bottoms up press he was surprised to find he could only do 24 kg for a couple of very shaky reps. This showed he didnt know how to get as tight as possible. If he worked on it, and learned to generate maximal tension, hed bench even more weight a scary thought. Heres how you perform the exercise: S  imply press a kettlebell overhead, but do it with the cannonball above the handle (not with the cannonball resting of the back of the forearm as a kettlebell is usually pressed). This makes it really unstable. T  o stabilise the weight you must tense every muscle in your body extremely hard. Its quite a challenge. As a bonus, and for reasons beyond the scope of this article, its also a very safe press for the shoulders. M&F: Many lifters are constantly searching for the perfect training programme, but we all know that doesnt exist. Can you give us your most foolproof programme for building strength and muscle?

PT: It has to be powerlifting-style cycling. Former powerlifter Bill Starr recalls how periodised Russian weightlifting programmes made their way into the United States in the sixties. Out of this rather complicated systemcame a much simpler form of the same idea. The simple idea was starting light and building up to heavy lifts in a linear fashion while simultaneously reducing the volume, then backing off and starting again after competition. That was the American way of abiding by Prof. Matveyevs tenets of periodisation. This practice would become known as cycling. Many top lifters, Andy included, have broken seemingly impossible records by following this deceptively simple methodology. If mass rather than strength is your goal, the answer remains the same. AB: I agree 100%. Cycling built my 1214 lbs squat and helped me to become the first man in history to deadlift over 1000 lbs. Heres an example of how it works. Lets say you have a 3-rep max on the bench press of 120 kg. You want to run a six-week cycle and set yourself the goal of pressing 125 kg x 3a solid gain of 5 kg. HERES YOUR CYCLE: Week 1: 100 kg x 3 Week 2: 105 kg x 3 Week 3: 110 kg x 3 Week 4: 115 kg x 3 Week 5: 120 kg x 3 Week 6: 125 kg x 3 (a new personal record) It goes without saying that you perform several warm-up sets before your top weight. If you like, you can add a second top set using 90% of the top set weight. For instance, on week 5, youd perform 120 kg x 3, then rest 3 minutes. Then do 107.5 kg x 3. M&F
Pavel Tsatsouline has trained elite military forces in Russia and the United States and is credited as the man who popularised the kettlebell in the West. For more information visit: strongfirst.com Andy Bolton is a multiple world champion powerlifter and world record holder. He was the first man to deadlift more than 1,000 lbs. andyboltonstrength.org Get more tips on improving strength from Andy Boltons e-books. Go to muscle-fitness.co.uk/andybolton

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