The Anterior and Posterior Workout Part I
Like most people who eat healthy, lift weights, walk, run, hike, swim, and bike, I get into heated arguments with my family and friends who neither eat healthy nor live healthy lifestyles. The insecurity and immaturity of our loved ones shows through their inability to be adults and healthily nourish, stretch, and exercise their minds, bodies, and souls like adults. These same loved ones claim to be adults, but they only eat what they like instead of eating what they need to eat. What are you like five? Let me guess, I can’t tell you what to do, because you’re an “adult.”
What are you thirteen? Grow up! I use the toilet, because I am an adult. I do laundry, because I am an adult. I shower every day, because I am an adult. I eat healthily and exercise, because I am an adult. Liking the things I need to do in order to be a happy and healthy adult has nothing to do with doing the things I need to in order to be a happy and healthy adult. Besides, these same loved ones claim to be Christians, and yet they do NOT treat their bodies as God’s temples.
Happy wife, happy life, right? If you and your wife eat healthily and exercise, how do you think your sex-life and heath of your marriage will be? If your wife and you argue, because you are both fat and insecure, because all you do is sit on your fat asses and stuff your fat faces, then you’re going to be miserable. If you and your wife do the things in order to be happy whether you are rich or poor, then you will be happy whether you are rich or poor.
I do not work out what I want to work out; I work out my entire body, every muscle with same intensity and dedication in order to create even and proportional muscle growth. If we do not build our muscles uniformly, strong muscles pull on our weak muscles, which results in joint and back pain. If we don’t balance muscle growth, we get injured. The anterior and posterior workout simply works anterior and posterior muscles. That is to say, work out biceps and triceps, chest and back, abs and glutes [and lower back], and shoulders and legs. Shoulders and legs are multiple muscle groups with various ranges of motion, so getting anterior or posterior muscular break downs are difficult, which is why I do them on the same day. There are more than three major muscle groups in our shoulders and our leg muscles are enormous with no muscles in our shins, so I put shoulders together with quads, hamstrings, and calves. Never mind, the glutes and lower back are more opposite of abs and lower abs than legs. I used to rotate the muscle groupings, which has some muscle growth benefits, especially if you’re at a plateau, but I stick to the lifestyle, because The Artistic Lifestyle keeps it simple. Sometimes I’ll split muscle groups into two days because of time. Sometimes I’ll do one muscle group per day for a couple weeks.
When I began working out, like most people, I was insecure about admitting I knew nothing about working out. The ego in us all prevents us from learning to do reps properly. Like most people, when I began to eat healthy I was insecure about my diet and lacked the courage and discipline to adhere to my dietary lifestyle. I find the easiest way to teach an exercise program and diet is to follow philosophies instead of individual regiments. My mission is to keep my muscles balanced. It doesn’t matter if we’re men or women, the anterior-posterior workout will distribute muscle mass evenly through out the body in order to achieve lifelong fitness. Diet will increase or decrease muscle mass, which will decrease or increase my weight. If I want to be lean, I eat less and lean, and if I want to be more muscular, I eat more. I don’t change what I eat. I change how much. I keep my workout more less the same, because I want the muscle mass and strength without the muscular and skeletal side effects of too much muscle mass. There’s a reason why Ronnie Coleman is a cripple and Rich Piana is dead. Unfortunately, the human body wasn’t made to live like roid-heads and eat ten thousand calories daily. I want to lift weights into my nineties and hundreds, so I train my muscles, eat a diet, and live a lifestyle to have abs at ninety or a hundred.
Personally, I cannot work out only five days a week, because I have difficulty returning to routines after a day off, let alone two days off. To me, it’s just easier to lift weights every day and either run, swim, or bike every day and walk my dog every day. I don’t plan days off, because something always comes up to take a day or two per week. However, I do love lifting and running like forty or fifty consecutive days of lifting and running without a break. A lot of people think you need rest days. I rest my biceps and triceps three days like I rest abs three days like I rest my glutes three days. Yes, I use them all to run. I take a break from running by biking or swimming. But if we look on my phone, I have averaged six miles daily for at least five years straight. Some years I averaged over seven miles per day. That’s over twenty-five hundred miles every year. My Appalachian Trail thru-hike was literally what I do daily, month after month, year after year. Our bodies will tell us when to take off. Listen. But for the most part there’s always something that comes up to take an off day.
Eating healthy is a part of being adult. If we eat what we want, our childish minds kill our minds, bodies, and souls in more ways than one. I eat the same thing every day but it is diverse every day. I eat or drink a fruit salad. I eat a vegetable, herb, and mushroom salad. I eat carbs. I eat lots and lots of carbs. Of course, I leave out the fact I eat over fifty plants daily. I make salads with twenty or thirty different plants. My dietary philosophy is to eat as many different kinds of plants. Iceberg lettuce, cucumber slices, and tomato slices with ranch dressing and croutons isn’t a salad. My salads start with at least five greens, and I season my salads better than people season their steaks. My seasoning strategy is simple, I put a little bit of everything on everything. You won’t taste the cinnamon or nutmeg, but only cinnamon or nutmeg give our bodies the plants’ unique DNA, which we absorb into the new DNA our bodies make during cellular replication, therefore providing cells with the greatest variety to build DNA. If all you eat is beaf and potatoes, then that’s all our bodies have to rebuild our DNA. Not to mention the fact, dietary variety stimulates and actives taste buds and neurons making us smarter and more creative.
Over the years, I have experimented with different numbers of reps. I have lifted heavy weights at low reps, and I have lifted light weights at higher reps, but I have never really, been able to lift over twelve reps regularly. Even my ab workout is designed to be under twelve reps. Personally, I can’t pay attention or focus enough to pop out twenty squats and rather than working on this character defect, I’ve decided to punt. Most body builders will tell you it’s pointless. I don’t see the point except for extreme endurance, which is sport specific. Whether it’s twenty squats with zero weight or one hundred and thirty-five pounds or two hundred and twenty-five pounds, I am not squatting twenty times in a regular work out. Now, if I am doing a max set of pull-ups or dips or squats I’ll keep going, but when I could do fifty-eight pull-ups, I only did twenty or less during my workouts. But now that I have no reason to do a max set of fifty-eight pull-ups I keep my set in the eight to twelve rep range like I do everything else. When training, doing the proper reps is more important than the number, and I recommend doing the reps slowly at almost like yoga with weights. There are little muscles holding and rotating the body will engage muscles. Think how body builders flex. You want to engage the triceps like the various bodybuilding poses. Essentially we want to flex and hold each rep like body builders holding weight instead of body weight like yoga.
Generally, I do supersets, but my super sets are the sets themselves. I will do four sets of biceps and then four sets of triceps. I will do four more sets of biceps, and then fours sets of triceps. Whether it’s bicep and tricep day or chest and back day, I super set the anterior and posterior muscles in order to get uniform pull on the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Powerlifters and a lot of body builders will devote a day to each muscle group, however, they all have joint and tendon issues. Like I said, I want to have abs and muscles until I’m at least eighty or ninety years old. Besides, I am six foot two and nearly two hundred pounds without supplements and without performance enhancers. I don’t even eat meat every week. Everyone buys all these supplements, but they really don’t do a damn thing. Diet is everything. Micro nutrients is key to healthy immune systems and our mind; meanwhile, macro nutrients focus energy and muscle recovery.
Unlike most athlete’s workouts, I split up my glutes and lower back workouts from my leg (hamstring, quadriceps, and calves) workouts in order to achieve balance pull on my abs and lower abs, and lower backs and glutes. This way legs days aren’t three hours of squats and deadlifts. I don’t get it; I don’t do deadlifts at all, but I can deadlift three hundred and fifty pounds any day of the year. The reason is my anterior and posterior workout creates insane core strength. I train my body like a weapon system that gets its strength from my core, which means I get my core off the ground and do my abs and lower back workouts from pull-up and dip bars. I do zero ab exercises on the ground. I do zero exercises on the ground, because the only time we are on the ground is if we are asleep or dead. Instead of doing dead lifts, I use dip bars, rings, chairs, or hands on the ground I go completely horizontal. I rather hold this pose for thirty seconds or a minute than do deadlifts and risking injury. I can turn a hotel chair into what equates to three hundred and fifty pound deadlift. How do I know? Once a year I deadlifts to make sure my program does what I say it does.
Like I said, I focus on the smaller muscle groups and work out muscles from different angles. For example, I will work the inner and outer thighs on both the inner and outer thigh machines, and the cable machines with a foot strap. When I use the inner-outer thigh machines, I lift myself off the seat so my glutes are not squashed by sitting on them. One of my rules is if you squish a muscle, then you are doing it wrong, so you can’t lift your ass muscles while on your ass. It’s kind of common sense, right? Another example would be doing tricep extensions with the triceps on a pad or the most common crunches. Some women will turn around on the inner-outer thigh machine do this exercise with their dairyer in the air. However, some find this exercise inappropriate publicly or gay for men. Generally speaking, I do more than four sets of each of these if I am not using the cable. That is to say, I do about six to eight sets of the inner and outer thighs and six to eight for glute press if I do not use cables too. If I am doing both the machines and cables, I generally do two to four sets of each. If I were training for a competition I would do six to eight and then four sets of each.
Once you can do all your ab and lower back workouts from a pull bar and dip bar, abs get to be less of a pain in the ass and more fun. What do I mean? I can go completely horizontal and do windshield wipers. I don’t have to do deadlifts, because I am deadlifting my body and using physics to increase strength to do holds. I don’t do ten deadlifts. I do one lift for thirty seconds. I don’t do one hundred or one thousand or ten thousand crunches. I have done and I do a lot of one rep sets when it comes to body weight exercise and endurance holds.
My abs and lower back workout consist of L-hangs from a pull-up bar or leg lift and hold from a captain’s chair or dip bars, and then flipping over and doing the opposite, so instead of lifting our legs and holding them using our abs we are pulling them up and holding them using our glutes and lower back. Essentially, it’s an inverted dead lift using our body weight and physics to create the strength created from weighted deadlifts. Do you see why I stopped doing deadlifts? My entire ab and lower back workout are true supersets or a two and two, because it’s the model, the epitome of the anterior and posterior workout in action.
The L-hang is supersetted with horizontal planks. The double legged lift is super-setted with horizontal plank leg lifts. Then I will superset alternating leg lifts from the anterior and posterior positions. Then in-and-outs from the anterior and posterior positions. Then bicycle kicks from the anterior and posterior positions. Hello-dollies from the anterior and posterior positions. I will also move both legs left and right from both the anterior and posterior positions, which will provide more strength than side bends, but I will admit I do four to six sets of side bends with a forty-five pound weight for about twenty repetitions on each side. When I do sidebands, I engage the core, and try to flex my abs into the crevices as I bend left and right.
Most people can’t do L-hangs or go horizontal on dip bars, so most people have to start on the ground for some exercises, and in captains chair for others. The goal is to get off the ground on pull-up bars and dip bars as soon as possible, because core strength will explode and the definition is deep. When I’m on the ground, I do planks instead of the posterior workout on the dip bars, and the anterior workout on the dip bars, and the anterior workout can be done from the ground, but its better in a captains chair. When I’m in transition from the posterior on the ground to the dip bars, I have to cheat using my head as leverage on the back pad to pull my legs up and horizontal.
I do a lot of different kind of shoulder exercises, because they’re a lot of different muscles and ranges of motions in our shoulders. Women can do the exact same workouts adjusting heaviness and diet in order to achieve desired outcome. Personally, I just workout and eat within the confines of my lifestyle, and the desired results would happen. If a woman were to live my lifestyle, she would look like me, but muscle mass would change locations from my shoulders, chest, and back being top heavy to her glutes and legs being bottom heavy. My workouts are designed to maximize strength and endurance without causing structural, nerve, bone, and ligament injuries. The goal is abs and muscles at ninety, so I try to hit the maximum muscle mass with minimal body fat that I can sustain year-round. I didn’t have abs until I was thirty-three, and I lost them during my Appalachian Trail thru-hike, covid lockdowns, and during my traveling the country investigating Nuremberg II at thirty-eight, but I have them back at forty-one.
Yes it is difficult to keep abs, while you’re traveling the country during a pandemic, but it can be done. However, even though I lost my abs’ looks I dint’t lose my abdominal strength. It’s been six months since I wrote that statement, and I totally forgot about the exercises outside my prescribed work out. I do all that crazy ab stuff you see with pull up bars and dip bars. I love the seven o’clock to four o’clock windshield wipers and hold it. Here’s the the thing, the reps really are low, but if I go beyond my capabilities I’ll rip some ab muscles. I’ve seen people’s ligaments, muscle fibers, and even bones snap. Currently, I am about six months into writing this workout, and I am trying to max out bench, pull-ups, 3-mile run, and 6-mile run. I’m shooting for my personal records, but I know it’s not likely for me to bench three hundred and fifty pounds or run a 5k in under eighteen minutes or run a 10k in under forty minutes.
My shoulder workouts came from the physical rehabilitation strengthening exercises I had shoulder surgery, but I replaced the elastic bands with weights and cable weights. I lift A’s, I’s, V’s, Y’s, /’s and \’s . You can do these exercises as prescribed above, and I do two sets of eight, sometimes three or four sets depending on weight. I do front raises with palms up for two sets, palms down for two sets, and vertical for two sets, and then do the same for lateral raises. The shoulder muscles need to be worked from multiple starting and finishing positions.
Most people’s leg workouts are squats, deadlifts, and leg press heavy. The Artistic Lifestyle’s Anterior-Posterior Workout focuses on the smaller muscle groups divided by the legs into hamstring, quadriceps, and calfs. Like I said, I chose to put glutes and lower back on ab day. Another reason why we don’t include back squats and straight leg deadlifts in our work outs is the length of rest required to reset in between sets. The Artistic Lifestyle’s anterior and posterior workout is meant to be long and slow repetitions, with thirty to sixty seconds of rest, which is not much, but the goals is thirty second rests.
On back and chest day, I do true super sets between pull-ups and cable crossovers. I do a lot more than other exercises, because I do ten different angles on the flys. Most people do large muscle groups without much variety, but the same people who preach bench, squat, and deadlift focused workouts always have bone and joint issues. My goal is to develop all my muscles equally and in a manner to not put stress on joints, bones, and ligaments. If all I have is a pull-up bar, I will superset twenty pushups with five to ten pull-ups and do twenty sets. This was my go-to during the covid lockdowns. But mostly I use adjustable cable equipment with a pull-up bar on top, so even though I will be doing flies and pull-ups for awhile, my chest gets a rest when I’m doing pull-ups, and my back gets rest when I’m doing flies, so I don’t take more than fifteen to thirty seconds in between sets. Now, if I am short on chest equipment, I will add twenty pushups to the flys and pull-ups, and I can go slow or I can go fast, but doing ten sets of pull-ups, twenty pushups, and ten reps of twenty pound flies is killer.
Most people start heavy and go light. I go with what’s available, so I generally start all my workouts with the gym specific most desired equipment, which is usually cables and then the pectoral deck or back and chest fly. Variety and diversity confuses the muscles in order to exercises under varied workouts. Some workouts I start with dumbbell incline bench. Sometimes I start with pull-ups. Sometimes I start with pec deck and flys. Generally I start with a few plates, crank out eight, add a plate, crank out eight, add a weight, crank out eight, and I keep going until I get down to only being able to do three-to-five with a minimum of four sets. So if I can only do five pounds, I will shoot for five pounds eight reps/set, but if I get four reps for four sets, then so be it.
During normal training, I do incline, decline, and flat bench dumbbell or bar and cable or machine for bench and then pull down and row individual or together. Right now, I’m generally doing dumbbells and or barbell incline and flat bench with barbell decline, and then I do incline, flat, and decline on hammers. If there’s two different kinds like at my current gym, I’ll do both, and then I try to do incline, decline, flat on the machines. I try to do four sets of eight of them all, but it depends equipment availability, time, and all that good jazz. When I worked out at Planet Fitness primarily, I went through all the back and chest machines, did flies, and pull-ups, flat and incline dumbbell bench, flat and incline barbell bench, back cable machines, and deep dips. I’m currently having an issue getting my dips to move, but I engage all these muscles nonstop.
Welt, that’s the first draft of The Artistic Lifestyle’s anterior-posterior workout, which will become a book with pictures, graphics, and charts outlining each exercise, while providing educational texts, videos, and other means of physical training. I will be posting more about this program as I continue to write the book. It’s important to be smart and strong, which is why I live at the gym and in books, so get your fat ass in the gym and your eyes in a book.