Holy shit, that was quite a lengthy break I took in between articles, but you all have my assurance that such Maddox-esque breaks in productivity will not continue to be the norm.  It might come as a surprise to many of that you that a person like myself might suffer from burnout, but by my estimation there was not a single week between August 1995 and February 2015 that I trained less than four times in any given week, even as I was traveling around Asia and Europe, getting surgeries, marriage, divorce, and any other ridiculous thing of which you could think.  Finally, I cracked last year and my training slipped into the abyss as I partied my ass off and watched nearly every horror movie above a D-grade available on the internet (and if you haven’t seen August Mordum Underground, do yourself a favor and call of the kinkiest motherfucker of whatever gender you feel like banging, grab a bottle of whatever you feel like drinking, every sex toy at your disposal, and a trashcan for when you throw up, and fuck your way through that gem a couple of times).

Despite my irregular training, utter lack of squatting (it’s insanely hard to squat drunk), and a diet that essentially consisted of tater tots, chicken fingers, pizza, Diet Coke, and enough vodka to drown even the staunchest Putin-supporting Russian, I managed to more or less maintain my physique and strength levels for the better part of 8 months.  Eventually the wheels fell all the way off as I found it hard to even grind through half hour workouts, and I basically quit training for a couple of months, a couple of times, over the succeeding 6 months.  Though I kind of regret having done so, I was snapping out at cashiers over nonsense when I was training because I was so irritated at having to continue to force myself through the gym every day as I had from about 2011 through the beginning of 2016.  Every workout, light or heavy, long or short, odd lifts or conventional, had become one massive mental fisting session produced in some dank German dungeon with caestus gloves… and writing about training was several times even more painful than that.

“Only he who deserves power who every day justifies it.”

TRX-Style Movements

TRX-style movements are all the rage in jails and prisons, and I highly doubt any of the inmates using that method have ever even heard of TRX.  The methods they’ve been using have likely been in use for decades, and I would not be the least bit surprised if they been the inspiration for strap systems like TRX

Rows– Using a sheet wound into a spiral (which gives it far more tensile strength), inmates hook the sheet around one of the uprights of their bunk beds or a staircase at roughly eye level, brace their feet on the ground (often using a partner’s planted foot to serve as the brace) while laying back at a fairly extreme angle, and then do rows just as they would seated with a cable stack.  Essentially, the movement is a semi-horizontal pullup with a rotating grip, roasts your midback and traps after a few sets if you keep your elbows tucked hard into your sides as you pull, and is awesome for extra volume on your back as a whole.

Face Pulls– One of my favorite accessory exercises, face pulls are awesome when done in the same manner as the sheet rows.  For these, however, you simply keep your elbows high and flared as you pull your face toward the point at which you tied the sheet.  These ill trash your traps in particular and will give you that badass look you see on some guys where it looks like they’re getting “back titties”- basically help grow what look like a sick set of pecs on your upper back.

Flys– This exercise uses the same setup as the aforementioned exercises, but the lifter faces away from the upright and does what amounts to a cable crossover.  These are an awesome finisher for a brutal Deck of Death workout mentioned in the previous installment, as well as a hell of a standalone exercise for chest if done with enough volume.

Chest Presses– A great finisher for ever set of the flys, if you want to bang out more reps after you’e hit failure on a set of flys, these simply change the movement for the flys slightly.  Pressing more level with the floor shifts the focus more to the upper pecs, 25 degrees lower moves the focus to the pecs as a whole, and 20 degrees lower shifts the focus to the lower pecs (which is more or less pointless, but if that’s your thing, do it, I guess).

Curls– These are done with the exact same setup as rows, but the movement changes in that the elbows remain stationary, locked into their sides, as the lifter curls themself itoward the uprights.  These are pretty badass, as the lifter can use a wide array of grips to shift the focus of the movement to the forearms (with a reverse grip), to the brachialis (for bicep thickness and strength using a hammer/neutral grip), the entire bicep with the usual supinated curl grip, and a mix of those grips (which is, of course, my favorite method), rotating the grip through the curl from a reverse grip to a completely supinated grip wherein the pinkies are pointed toward the outside of the biceps at peak contraction.

Tricep Extensions– These are done with the same setup again, but facing away from the upright.  This is by far and away my favorite tricep exercise, as doing these modified overhead extensions trash my triceps like they have never been trashed.  Trashed like a dead crack whore left in a forgotten dumpster filled with dogshit and left in the hot Florida sun all August kind of trashed.  Like curls, these can be tinkered with by changing the grip, and I really like doing them with a neutral grip that shifts to a slight outward push at full extension to get an extra squeeze in the outer head at peak contraction.  If you haven’t yet caught on, these are like a french press/overhead extension, leaning away from the upright with your feet braced at the bottom of the upright or near it, elbows pinned at your ears through the movement, flexing your trips to bring you to a more or less standing position at peak contraction.

Shoulder Press–  This is a badass burnout exercise, done with the same motion as the chest press, but angled higher so the press is being done in a straight line from your shoulders past your head in line with your neck (just like if you were standing upright).  The stressors feel slightly different because of the odd angle, but the effect is the same- your shoulders end up fucking pumped and fried after 10 or so sets to failure.

Though my skepticism about the TRX system upon first seeing it likely rivaled those of Hitler’s generals when they heard Hitler had demanded tanks nearly 200 tons in weight and the simultaneous conquest of three continents by a relatively small single country and its bitch-ass allies, thinking it to be retarded, trendy bullshit, I could not have been more fucking wrong.  As far as assistance work goes, you would be hard pressed to find a better way to get in a metric fuckton of work in a short period of time.  Moreover, the fact that TRX-style movements are closed-kinetic-chain movements leaves people far less susceptible to injury than with machines or dumbbells, as the movements are far more natural.  In short, you guys need to get in on this shit, as the speed with which they increase your overall muscularity and muscular endurance is nigh on fucking frightening.

Does that mean I’m suggesting you forego weights for bodyweight movements?  Certainly not- I’m simply suggesting that the addition of bodyweight movements to your regular routine could yield some seriously impressive results.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve noticed in the past that the addition of a few hundred pushups a day has contributed greatly to pushing through plateaus on the bench press, and the addition of pullups to any workout always results in more muscularity than weights alone.  Maybe that’s even a bit mental, but whatever it is about bodyweight movements, they seem to simply provide a ton of upside with very little downside, so just shut the fuck up and add some to your workouts.

Up next, we’ll cover makeshift weight/odd object work that goes on inside prison walls and their actual lifting techniques and training style lifting real iron.  While it might seem counter intuitive for the advocates of the modern day, internet-led [bitch-made, ahem] “intellectual”, double-blind study affirmed lifting regime, inmates provide an unbelievably interesting and compelling counterpoint with what amounts to a no-fucks-given, balls-out, real-world perspective.   And at the end of the day, fuck it- if it worked for Kali Muscle, it might be worth looking into.