Weightlifting & Weight Training have a place in the world of fitness and I prefer the classic courses like Arthur Saxon's The Textbook Of Weightlifting or George Hackenshmidt's The Way To Live and of course Dinosaur Training by Brooks Kubik. These books are the pathway to success in how the old timers trained and what made them successful.
Now as great as weights can be, not everyone can afford to buy weights for their home and some aren't interested but would like an alternative. Resistance bands are great for this because for one, they're light to carry around and two, you can use them to workout anywhere and create your own gym experience.
Some of my favorite exercises are with the cables, specifically the Lifeline Fitness Cables such as the TNT System, the Chest Expander & the Power Push-up . Just these three alone can give you a killer workout. Some of the best athletes in the world use cable training like this and have been successful with them. The chest expander in particular is an apparatus the old time strongmen used (back then using Steel Springs) to strengthen the upper body and even developed great physiques using them. The legendary Earl Liederman used them as part of his course that included Self Resistance exercises similar to Charles Atlas' Dynamic Tension course. Even the great wrestler Lou Thesz pulled an expander in his day.
The idea of being able to travel and still train with cables is a great way to keep yourself going without always relying on the gym. My personal favorite is the TNT System from Lifeline because not only can you do quite a few exercises from having it on the ground, you can hook it up to a door attachment and do exercises like you would use a machine at the gym. The big difference is with cables, you have to be stable enough to work the muscles needed for the exercises you want to do and that creates incredible core, back and leg work in addition to doing pulls, chest presses, sit-ups and even arm wrestling type movements. For the door attachment exercises, I like to go a little heavier than normal to really target the back muscles because for the most part, I do a lot of exercises that require more of the chest and triceps, so when I work my back to even things out, it pans out great with the cables.
During some workouts, I'll go heavy as I possibly can and with the the TNT Cables, I would do as much as 240 lbs. of Resistance which is two black cables and a magenta cable in the three slots of the handles. They have helped me get stronger in other areas of training. The very best workout I would do with this system is do supersets of various cable exercises with Step Ups; say do 5 sets of 10-20 curls and 20 step ups back to back with little rest and then go into presses and step ups, attach the door increment and do sets of pulldowns and step ups. This would be done with a lighter set of cables for cardio conditioning purposes and target everything with very little rest in between rounds. Some of those workouts took as long as 40 minutes, brutal.
The heavier the resistance, the less reps you'll have to do (like that doesn't sound SO obvious) but when you start going into ranges of resistance that you can only do under 10 reps, you're swimming into some deep waters of strength training and you better be prepared to really push or pull because those cables will throw you off if you're not careful. You need a strong core to stabilize you so you're not being pulled around like a rag doll.
I made a video yesterday doing Curls with the TNT Cables that are the two black cables (100 lbs of Resistance Each) and I did about 14 total reps (7 per arm) and that was hard as hell since I really had to squeeze and pull hard in order to get them up. These bad boys are no joke and I don't know if they're many people in the world who can do this. It was quite a feat that's for sure. You don't need to go heavy in order to get in a good workout, just medium sized resistance is more than enough for most people and condition your body like a mad man (or woman) and kick ass anywhere and anytime.
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