A Distraction

Right so The Biomatrix has been a bit quiet lately. Apologies for that but there's a good reason. The reason being that THE BIOMATRIX 4.1 IS ON THE WAY! Yes soon a site even more awesome will replace the Biomatrix as you know it and be far too awesome for words, and with more awesome extras than you can shake a stick at. But to keep you appeased until then we present a little discourse on 'The Sissy Squat: Squat of Champions'.

The Sissy Squat: Squat of Champions

The sissy squat is a serious misnomer, possibly being a purposeful ironic name in the same sense as you might call a really small guy 'Big Geoff'. The reason for this is that there's really nothing sissy about the sissy squat at all, which is in fact one of the most difficult exercises you're likely to attempt any time soon. Fortunately it also happens to be one of the most effective and one of the most practical to perform without equipment or much space.

The sissy squat is much like the ordinary squat and trains the legs, but the position of it makes the movement so difficult that you won't need any additional weight (though some crazy people still opt to add dumbbells to it). For the sissy squat you see, rather than having your feet placed flat on the ground as you would in an ordinary squat, you are instead on your tip toes with your knees point forwards and your back leaning backwards. The best way to describe it is that you'll look a bit like Neo dodging bullets in the matrix, or as though you're trying to touch your toes. From here you then bend at the knees keeping your back straight as though you were doing the limbo and should feel an intense burning in your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves. One of the things that makes this so difficult (other than how much muscle power required), is that it can be very hard to balance while performing this move. If you struggle then, support yourself by placing one hand on a surface. Eventually with practice it should become easier - at which point you can introduce dumbbells by holding them in your hands and having them dangle directly down by your sides.

The Experimental 12 Hour Workout

I originally created this blog with the intention of making it a place where I would describe my various dabblings in supplements, new gym routines, workouts, transhuman techologies, underground training regimes and other bodily experiments. I very nearly called it 'The Bodylab' (cool huh?) but thankfully didn't as I've mostly ended up rambling about nonsense here.
But the time is nigh where I talk about something actual relevant - an experimental 12 hour workout that my current steel-minded gym companion and I attempted. If you're a regular visitor to the site you may have read about Peary Rader's 'One Day Arm Blast'. Here he recommended working on muscle group (the biceps in the case of the article) with a single set at the end of every hour for 12 hours. We decided (fool hardedly), that this was a workout for pussies, and so we amped it up a little - by giving that muscle group (in our case pecs) a full and intense (albeit brief) workout on every hour. For us that full workout was performed on the chest press and consisted of 1 set to failure, then assisted reps - then a 10 second pause - then another set to failure, then more assisted reps... before dropping the weight and repeating. We had the added rule that if you must do 3 assisted reps, but if you managed to do one of those unassisted you then had to continue with the first set before doing the assisted reps again later. In total we dropped the weight twice meaning we did this three times overall - going past failure a minimum of 6 times in a session which took about 15 minutes in total. A great fast way to get your pecs burning on its own.
Then, just as in Peary Weider's arm blast, we would have a source of protein - either usually chicken or protein shake and then massage our titties until the next round. The theory here is sound - by continuously triggering an anabolic state followed by rest and protein we've created a micocosm of a full day's workout for that muscle group. Hyperthetically then the hope was that this would have the same benefit of 12 sessions - 12 or 6 weeks worth of training for most people - and add around half an inch over night.
What we didn't account for was quite how much it would hurt, or how constipated we would become. Nor how we would dread the top of each hour. More than anything this was a psychological challenge and we worried that we were doing more harm than good to our bodies. As we'd work out for nearly half an hour in total between us, then have to mix the shake on top of that, there was rarely time to do anything other than wait terrified like a POW for the next session. Our optimistic hopes of getting a jamming session (we're also a progressive rock band - Samsung calls Wednesdays 'Gym Jams'). Yet, being idiots, we ploughed on towards the final hour (which thanks to some bad organising was at 1am).
When it finished we were exhausted and I personally felt like I'd run the marathon. Obviously it was the next day we were worried about though (and I in particular was worried about my dump the next day after Simon had told me there was sometimes blood in it following too much protein). Surprisingly though, there was not really any severe pain in our pecs the following day (good thing too seeing as I had plans to drive to Southampton and go clubbing all night) and if anything it was my legs that ached. A bit like the bit at the start of Rocky 5 where Rocky says he feels as though something important has broken inside of him then curls up shaking in the shower. Another night's sleep though and we felt fine - and despite not pooing for around 66 hours (a record for me) there was no blood in my stool.
Stupidly we didn't think to measure ourselves before or after the workout, but I definitely at least feel bigger than I was previously and photographs seem to attest to this fact. It may be psychological, but I'd wager there's been at least a quarter of an inch of growth - which is still very impressive.
So was it a success? Maybe. Sort of. But it's really not worth and you'd be an idiot if you thought otherwise. An idiot that I respect.

This is how hard you should be working: