042 : 008 “Functional Bodybuilding”
Session #001
‘The Antagonists’
Breathing ramp-up
Warm-up
Then...
EMOM 16 (alternating)
- 8-12 x Incline DB chest press
- 8-12 x Chest support DB row
Then...
20-15-10-5 of: - Dips
- Chins
- Push-ups
- DB box step-overs
Then..
100 x wall leaning bicep curls @ 25% bodyweight Immediately into...
Walking or seated down-regulation Until you reach a comfortable nasal: 4-6-8-0 breathing cadence.
The Ramp Up
3 rounds of-
5 x Triangle breathing 7:7:7:0 20 x Power breathing 1:0:1:0 1 x Full inhale
1 x Max hold
1 x Full exhale
1 x Max hold
You may think that what your breath is or isn’t doing may is entirely redundant in the context of a ‘bodybuilding’ session, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Asides from the fact that a functional breathing pattern will help to maintain a balance of blood gases that will help you to keep going for longer, ultimately contributing to all the major factors necessary for hypertrophy, if not simply progressive overload alone; the breath also gives you a subtle but powerful ‘in road’ to connecting with your body, as well as somewhere concrete to lay your attention when things start to get a bit spicy, and your mind is liable to start spiralling out. So get familiar with that connection here. Dial in.
Inhale, focus on filling from the bottom up; use your nose an breathe deep into the bottom of your trunk and lower back, before working your way up into your chest and then your upper back. Your rib cage should expand in all directions. For power breathing execute a quick but full and powerful inhale through your nose, then simply open your mouth wide and ‘dump’ the air out on the exhale. Get into a quick rhythm. After 20 reps perform 1 final full inhale through the nose, filling your trunk, and then hold. Pay attention to air hunger cues— little tremors, swallowing, fidgeting. Before they get too strong, perform a long exhale under control through your nose, completely emptying the tank, then hold until you feel strong air hunger. Return to triangle breathing and repeat for 3 rounds
Antagonistic Supersets (and a short word on the myth of functional bodybuilding)
Many years ago I was commissioned to write a piece on ‘functional’ training. I wrote a 2000+ word essay, which was most likely cut down to around 600, and at the end of which I sat back and watched my thoughts— after considering many angles, arguments and definition— collapse into one sentence ‘any training that’s intention isn’t solely geared towards cultivating visual changes alone’.
There are a lot of arguments you can make for what makes training truly ‘functional’, and a lot of arguments that you’ll also hear for how all training is functional in some way or another. The debate itself tends to just go round in circles. For me, as I’ve said, I think the term ‘functional’ is better defined by what it isn’t than what it is. It isn’t about aesthetics alone. A balancing of form and, well, function.
In a more recent piece of writing, in the wake of the rise and rise of ‘functional bodybuilding’, I drilled down a little more on my thoughts on both functionality and aesthetics—
“Functional bodybuilding exists in many different forms, to my eye many of these systems overcomplicate the merger of the two styles of training by trying to weave both ‘form and function’ in to individual sessions in too much of a ‘hybrid’ manner, giving you something that doesn’t much look, or feel, like either. You’ll still get results, no doubt, but if you enjoy either bodybuilding or ‘functional’ training for the style of the sessions— for how they make you feel— as opposed to the results you achieve, you may well end up feeling like something is missing.
I don’t think these styles of training need to be ‘mashed together’ so much as they simply need to be combined in a more partitioned fashion. This is something most Crossfit programming does brilliantly with strength and conditioning: “Here’s one or two big strength or olympic lifts where we focus on load, quality of movement and rest, now here’s a relevant metcon. finally, we might throw in some auxiliary work.” It’s a great formula that allows the focus to be the focus , without compromising to shoehorn in another stimulus or capacity. So why not just tweak that formula, performing a ‘find and replace’; swapping out ‘absolute strength’ (or skill) for hypertrophy?”
But even with that said, I recognise that what makes up ‘good bodybuilding training’ is as just as hard to pin down (I don’t actually believe it can be pinned down) as defining the word ‘functional’. But, what we do have are a LOT of battle worn styles, techniques and protocols that have led to very concrete aesthetic improvements.
Over the coming months we will be exploring the variety of different forms that successful and well-worn hypertrophy eliciting techniques and protocol can take; partitioned from, but combined with some more ‘functional’ work, with the goal of giving you a broad surface area of training styles to choose from, should you ever wish to pull together your own dedicated hypertrophy phase.
This week let’s look at a staple lauded by the likes of Charles Poliquin, ’antagonistic supersets’; the back-to-back combination of opposing muscle groups, the idea being that whilst one muscle- group is working, the opposite muscle group is able to rest optimally thanks to the effects of ‘reciprocal inhibition’, and also thanks to the obvious fact that you’re enabling muscle-groups to rest for longer between efforts by pairing them up.
Warm-up thoroughly and choose weights for each movement that you could perform no more than 15 reps with, but no less than 10, when fresh. Use the same weights across the entire EMOM (the weights for either movement can be different). The aim is to hit the higher end of the rep range across all sets. To use this protocol progressively, once you can hit the top end of the range for all sets (ie 8x12 in this case), simply add weight in the following session. To use a double progression, add 2 minutes (2 sets) each set, also, regardless of whether or not you add weight. If you can balance the two though, and with intelligent weight selection, recovery, and of course liberal effort, you’ll have two opportunities to progress each week. The EMOM protocol, whilst keeping your rest relative brief, will keep it consistent across weeks.
Control the eccentric of each movement, inhaling as you do so over a 2-3 second count, feel for a deep stretch of the working muscle group at the bottom of each rep, before explosively exhaling, performing the concentric and aiming for a hard squeeze at the top of each rep. Push until your tempo on the concentric slows to a grind.
As you can see these movements are designed to mostly complement the stimulus (namely the muscle groups worked) of the EMOM, but the protocol itself could also quite happily act as a standalone ‘functional conditioning’ piece.
Note your weights, reps and at what point your tempo began to falter. These are the elements you’d look back upon and attempt to ‘beat’ in subsequent sessions.
The Conditioning
I’ll keep this brief, work through all reps as quickly as possible (20 of each movement, 15 of each, 10 of each etc...) whilst maintaining impeccable form, following the same breathing and form pointers as above. The goal moving forward would be to aim towards completing all sets faster, and unbroken, and then adding weight.
Finish by complete 100 barbell bicep curls, @ 25% of your bodyweight, with your upper back pressed flat against a wall. Focus on a full contraction and a big squeeze at the top Get through all 100 reps in as few sets as possible. Each time you break take 15 deep breaths and then jump back on the bar.
Recovery/ Down Regulation
Immediately after your final bout of curls, come into laying or seated position with your hips raised above your knees if you can. If not, simply move slowly and deliberately as you transition into whatever’s next in your day. Wrap your full attention around your breath, observe where it’s at and begin to slowly nudge it downwards with a gentle but deliberate inhale, creating a little bit of space at the top of the breath, before slowly letting it back out under full control. Aim to work towards a breathing cadence of 4-6-8-0 and spend as long here as you can spare.
