Home Gym Secret Weapon: Grease the Groove
Alex was a top level Crossfit athlete (competed at the Games a few times) that I worked with. He came to me to help him with his strict handstand push-ups, which were his limiting factor and was the exercise that prevented him from qualifying for the Crossfit Games that year.
In 3 weeks he was able to go from 11 strict handstand push-ups to 22 strict handstand push-ups from a deficit!
What I had him do was test his max strict handstand at the beginning of the week and that number was used to determine his loading for the week.
He was instructed to accumulate handstand push-ups throughout the day, without building-up fatigue. To do that, his sets had to be 1/2 to 2/3 of his max reps. And he could never do more than 2 sets at any give time (but he was instructed to do those several times during the day).
For example, if he got 15 strict handstands on his test, he would do 1-2 sets of 7-10 reps several times a day.
I can hear you think “I’m not a Crossfit athlete, my goal is to lift heavy barbells, how is that gonna help me?”
Well, the same principle applies to strength lifts. For example, I was able to get my snatch-grip high pull from blocks from 120kg to 180kg in a bit more than 3 weeks using this approach.
Powerlifter Dr. Judd Biasiotto was also able to get his bench press to twice bodyweight by keeping a bench press and loaded bar in his kitchen, doing a few sets/reps several times a day.
GREASE THE GROOVE / SYNAPTIC FACILITATION
To understand how this secret method works we must first talk about synapses/neuromuscular junctions.
Muscles fire in response to an excitatory drive by the nervous system. The stronger the drive is, the more motor units you recruit and the faster/harder they fire. A stronger drive also leads to more fast-twitch fibers being recruited (FT fibers belong to a unit called “high threshold motor units” because they require a large signal to be recruited). Obviously, those fast-twitch fibers have the largest strength and power potential, so the more of them participate to the movement, the more force you produce.
The cool thing is that another factor can lead to a higher level of motor-units/fast-twitch fibers recruitment: synaptic response.
Synapses/neuromuscular junctions are the point where the neural drive communicate it’s signal to the muscle. Synapses are on the muscles, receive the neural drive, and initiate the muscle’s contraction in response to the signal.
The interesting thing is that you can make those synapses more responsive to the neural drive. Meaning that the more responsive a synapse is, the more motor units/fast-twitch fibers are recruited by the same neural signal. i.e. you produce more force for the same signal.
How do you make your synapses more responsive? You practice a lift more often. The more often you do a lift, the more sensitive the synapses become.
In fact, a old study on Soviet lifters found that the more experienced a lifter was, the less neural drive (estimated through muscle electrical activity) was used to press a heavy weight.
This is interesting because it both increases strength as well as make lifting heavy weights less neurologically demanding.
That’s the main reason why high-level olympic weightlifters can snatch, clean & jerk and squat daily, several times a day without building up much fatigue: their synapses are so sensitive that they don’t require a high neural drive to do their lifts; whereas a less advanced lifter will quickly get drained if he tries the same training regimen.
THRESHOLD LOAD
With synaptic facilitation/grease the groove training, it is my opinion that you want to use a load with which you will have to recruit the fast-twitch fibers but that doesn’t require an extensive warm-up (or that you can even hit without a warm-up) an that doesn’t pause a psychological stress.
Remember, the key is accumulating as many reps as possible throughout the day, without any fatigue.
That load is 75-80% of your solid, non-psyched up, 1RM.
EFFORT LEVEL
This is probably the most important element of greasing the groove. Because the goal is avoiding fatigue, we want to leave plenty of reps in the tank on all the sets.
First because it will prevent central fatigue (sometimes called CNS fatigue), which is super important because central fatigue weakens the neural drive, decreasing fast-twitch fibers recruitment, defeating the purpose of this method.
Second because it allows you to focus on perfect technique and positioning when doing your lifts. Remember, practice doesn’t make perfect, it only makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect!
As it was mentioned earlier with the handstand push-ups example, you want to do between 1/2 and 2/3 of the reps would can do with a given load.
A strength athlete will typically be able to get 6 solid reps at 80% and 8 at 75% (note that bodybuilders or athletes like hockey players, basketball players, soccer players, rugby players, Crossfitters, etc) will be normally be able to get a few more reps with 75-80% because they have better muscle-endurance than strength.
If using 80% you should do 3 reps/set, maybe 4 reps with this method.
If using 75% you can go up to 4-5 reps per set.
VOLUME AND REST
Frequency of practice is more important than volume of practice.
For example, 1 set of 3 reps 5 times per day will be superior to 2 sets of 3 reps 3 times per day (even if the later has more volume)
So the first thing you should look to increase is the daily frequency. If you specialize on only one lift we are talking about less than 5 minutes at a time, which is manageable several times a day provided that you have easy access to a barbell.
For example, doing 1 set of 3 reps, 5 times a day will require less than 20 minutes overall. It’s just about getting your ass to do it!
If you decide to do 2 sets at a time (you should not do more at any given time) you need to take a pretty long rest interval, to fully recover between sets. That’s about 3-4 minutes.
THE HOME GYM ADVANTAGE
The limiting factor with this method is equipment availability. If you do all your training at the gym, it is unpractical because you’d have to drive there a few times a day.
That’s why having a home gym kicks ass. You can easily do the grease the groove workouts 4-6 times throughout the day, even if you work as you will be at home at least 5 hours a day (not counting sleeping hours).
For example, every hour you could go do a set (it will take you less than 5, likely less than 3 minutes).
Even if you chill watching Netflix, you can take a 3-5 minutes break to go do a set.
A schedule could look like this:
- 6am - Wake-up
- 6:30am do one Grease the Groove workout
- 7:15am do your regular workout
- 8:15am Breakfast
- 8:45am go to work
- 5:30pm come back from work
- 6:00pm Supper
- 6:30pm Grease the Groove
- 7:30pm Grease the Groove
- 8:30pm Grease the Groove
- 9:30pm Grease the Groove
Having a home gym, with the pre-loaded barbell will make this super efficient.
DOING 80% COLD?
At first, hitting 80% of your max without any warm-up sets might seem counterintuitive. But unless you squat/deadlift over 700-800lbs, it is manageable. If anything, becoming good at not needing an extensive warm-up is a skill that transfers well to real life demands, especially if you are a physical labourer or a fireman, paramedic, police officer, etc.
I find that a lot of people become dependant on their extensive warm-up, but that you can gradually train yourself to require less and less warming-up. Which is a big advantage as warm-up sets or exercises, even though they are low in intensity, do represent work and create some fatigue. The less warming-up you need, the more volume you can do or the faster you can recover from your session.
If you aren’t sure about 80%, then start at 70% for a few weeks, to get used to not requiring a warm-up , then increase it to 75% then 80%.
70% is a load with which you can do 10 reps, so it’s a very manageable load even without any warm-ups.
And if you still need to loosen up, do 1-2 sets of bodyweight work (e.g. Air squat, push ups) to get the blood flowing and the joints moving.
HOW MANY LIFTS AT A TIME?
The most lifts I would recommend is two. And you keep the same two exercises for 2-4 weeks (ideally more). So pick the one (or two) that you need to improve the most.
If you pick two exercises, I suggest doing both at every Grease the Groove session, for 1 set each, with 3-4 minutes between exercises.
For example:
- Military press 1 x 3 @ 80%
- 3 min of rest
- Trap bar deadlift 1 x 3 @ 80%
End of Grease the Groove session
WHEN DO I INCREASE THE WEIGHT?
You don’t have to use progressive overload with Grease the Groove. In fact, it might make the method less effective as even the smallest weight addition might exceed the rate of strength gain, making the sets too demanding for this approach (remember, no fatigue).
I suggest a step-loading approach: keeping the same weight for around 3-4 weeks then making a jump.
Remember, you have your “normal workouts” to focus on progressive overload. Grease the Groove workouts are bonus sessions aimed at technical efficiency and neurological training, neither of which require progressive overload. You should only add weight when the loads feel too easy!
IT DOESN’T REPLACE YOUR REGULAR WORKOUTS
Grease the Groove sessions are a bonus to speed up gains in 1-2 lifts. They don’t replace your normal workouts.
But on the day you have a full workout, you can, and should decrease the number of Grease the Groove sessions (or skip them), especially if the workout was draining.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, COMMENTS OR INSULTS…
Feel free to email me at chris@ballisticmanagement.com
Good luck with your training!
