Expanders

[Old Cable Puller]

Best free guide I have ever seen covering cable pulling. Fatman's Guide to Cable Training v2 93 page pdf listing lots of exercises and guide to creating routines.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17713382/Fatm ... Training-2

or

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrJ61q ... StC4C8z.Q-

[peter yates]

Yes, well researched and presented information.
Regards,Peter.

[Tom K]

I found a very good Reg Park fan website, that had his expanders course on it.

http://forum.regpark.eu/index.php?topic=376.0

A full list of Reg Park articles available on the site, here

http://www.regpark.eu/articulos.html

A lot of hard work put into this site and too few people finding it!

[peter yates]

Hey Tom, when anyone asks me if expanders are really useful i point to Reg Park,Steve Stanko, Chuck Sipes, Bud Jeffries and David Horne as examples of big, strongmen who have all used and promoted the use of expanders in their training.Great site by the way.Nice to hear from you again.
Regards,Peter.

[Handson]

Hi All
One of the subsections of this website :-

http://www.regpark.eu/articulos.html

Makes this claim:-
How I developed my things, by Reg Park (1952)
« on: November 19, 2016, 12:06:39 PM »

Interesting, but this is a family forum please!

Regards
Handson

[peter yates]

Just seeking balance and symmetry.

[Tom K]

I have been using the sierra strand set for lock down training and its been quite effective at keeping my strength.

I have also made some concrete weights and a scaffold pole barbel for training in the garden. The expanders and the back garden "dinosaur training" have been quite effective to reignite progress.

I think Vince Gironda once said something like "the more you know about training the less equipment you need".

Also using a scaffold pole without rotating collars like a conventional barbel produces quite a different training effect. Less weight is needed to feel "hard" and it creates a bigger pump.

I've been using the sierra strands and attaching them to the Pullup bar to recreate flyes, seated presses, tricep work etc.

Very useful equipment. Equipment prices have gone through the roof since the lock down, but a few bags of concrete poured into home made moulds and the sierra strand kit is really all you need, plus it's cheap.

I've found the unusual training has reignited my training which had gone stale.

[peter yates]

Hi Tom, glad to hear you are making the most of this time. You are right, you do not need much to get the job done and terrific physiques have been built with just what you have at hand right now.I know because i have seen them. I have trained all over the world in way out places with the crudest of equipment,some of the guys i trained with were incredible. Once i was working in the outback in Australia and the "gym" was a wooden deck,a home made set of wooden squat stands and concrete weights on 1.5" galvanized pipe.DBs were cans of various sizes filled with concrete and shorter pipes. We trained at night to beat the heat and had some belting sessions with that set up.Glad you are enjoying the HOOK setup, it is very versatile. My feeling is that unless you are training for a specific discipline such as bodybuilding or powerlifting etc. then you have a lot of freedom to experiment and mix things up. This not only keeps enthusiasm up but also challenges the body in different planes of motion and creates a more balanced and efficient development. Stay motivated, stay safe.
Regards,Peter.

[peter yates]

One of the things about using makeshift weight is it gives something of a sense of how it was for the old timers lifting the solid globe barbells of the past.Sticks and i always said we preferred training on a regular exercise bar than an Olympic bar.He for powerlifing and i for Olympic lifting.We both noted that we could lift more on an Olympic bar,which meant it was harder with the regular bar and hence more effective training wise.When training make it harder,when competing make it easier.We were not alone in that, as Bill Hunt told me that when he went down to London to try out for the British weightlifting team prior to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games, he had never lifted on an Olympic bar before, he was 20-30lb up on all his lifts. By the way he was way above anyone else in his weight class and was selected to represent Great Britain.Unfortunately athletes had to pay their own way so Bill was unable to go but had been in with a good chance of a medal.Strongman/wrestler and winner of some weightlifting competitions,Carl Linich also told me he preferred using a 6' exercise bar for training.Let's not forget the great John Davies who trained in the basement of a church with an old exercise bar and weights. Didn't do him much harm did it?
Regards,Peter.

[Harry Hayfield]

I am not sure if this counts as an expander in the traditional sense, but it is certainly the one that most people will recognise. Richard King, a personal trainer from the north west of England, is like a lot of people currently in lockdown on the advice of the UK government and has been posting some of his improvised workouts on social media. Today's workout was with a Bullworker expander (similar to those that reached commercial success in the 1980's) around the time he started training at his high school gym and if you needed any evidence as to how intense a Bullworker session can be, you only have to look at this video

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_F4_t9jBRM/