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Gorilla Training Workshop Review

August 8th, 2009 Simon Voggeneder No comments

Good night, fellow readers!

Last saturday (25.06.2009), Dominik Feischl and Karl Humer hosted the Gorilla Training Workshop in Thomasroith, Central Upper Austria. It was a true feast for everyone interested in increasing their strength in grip, pulling and lifting (as those areas are tightly interconnected).

I started my journey towards the Underground Strength Gym Thomasroith at 9 AM, calculated very sharp, as the workshop started at 11 AM and my route was planned to be exactly 2 hours (1hr 59min to be even more exact ) – I gladly arrived five minutes before time and had a very relaxed meet-and-greet with the other participants – strong and enduring athletes throughout, as they would demonstrate to be afterwards. Warm sunshine awaited me but a day with a heavy mixture of sunny heat and rainshowers promised to lie ahead of us.

Part One : Pulling and Static Holds

Part one started at Karl Humers premises, where he has built up an impressive parcours – the paradise for every athlete with aspirations in terms of grip and pulling power. Warming up was first to come, with some surprises from start on. Old Inline-Skates used as Ab Wheels, crutches as training utility and crawling on hands and knees to warm the whole body up.

The complete program consisted of the following:
Rollouts on inline skates
Full body swings with crutches
Crawling up stairs
Lat pulldown with elastic band
Side-step slalom
Rotatory exercise (on a kind of motorcycle handle bar)
Crawling down the rest of the distance

A great warmup indeed, which was complemented with stretching exercises for the wrists – they are highly exposed to strain during pulling and static holds on bars and other objects, so we better made sure they were warmed up and good to go!

The program itself started with climbing a ladder – inverse – and working along a horizontal ladder, from step to step, with the difficulty of woodblocks, which hardly enable the athlete to hold on, during the way.

We contined with a complete climbing circle – up the ladder, along the horizontal ladder, along the rings and cross over to the climbing rope which we had to conquer – I am awe struck by the performance of those who completed the circle!

Probably the hardest exercise of all was the static hold circle: We assigned eight static hold exercises, which we performed with 30 seconds work and some seconds rest thereafter. Our forearms collectively were pumped up so heavily that we were merely able to operate our fingers correctly – the forearms just felt like completely swollen!

Another key component were instructions on rope climbing, a great exercise to build strength in all of the upper body, including the abs – of course, you have to do it without your legs help working you up the rope to attain maximum results. Rope climbing has some key factors to watch over when done correctly:
Do not train too often – 2 – 3 times a week is enough!
Do not train if you are not feeling good – best case: You won’t gain anything, worst case: You inflict an injury upon yourself and are out of training for some time
Pull with one arm at a time – not with both arms. Develop pulling power for the one-armed row, hanging at the rope, to climb the rope efficiently
Proceed with a little number of but long pulls instead of a lot of short pulls
Use your legs as stabilisator when coming down from the rope – climbing down without using your feet increases the injury risk beyond reason!

I injured myself during one of the last pulling exercises, when we climbed up the ladder in push-up-position (with explosive push-ups inbetween steps) and thereafter slided down the horizontal ladder in order to hang onto it and proceed the steps from below. I let go too quickly on the descend and ripped off some skin on my palms – very annoying and hurts a lot. Kudos to Karl, treating the injury right away, so that I could still be part of the game!

The first segment was concluded with some heavy rainshowers. We expected them to vanish soon, but they only increased in intensity – that’s life on a cloudy summer day in Upper Austria! It was therefore high time for a break!

After a pause for the lunch (steaks and rice) and waiting for the sun to shine again, we finishedthe pulling and static holds part with means by which you can improve your performance with pull-ups
ABC pullups
Ladders

ABC pullups are a technique, where you do a full pushup, and then do three things
descend to arms extend at a 120° angle – which means hanging low but with tension
pull up again, descend to arms extend at a 90° angle – which means you go down only half the way and hold the position
pull up again, descend to arms extend at a 30° angle – which means you go down only a little bit from top position and hold the position

Start with around three seconds static hold for all the positions (120°, 90° and 30°) and work up to 15 seconds static hold – I promise that this will kill your pulling power. I was out of the game after just one round of five seconds – the 90° position was already impossible to maintain.

Pullup ladders are a technique, where you start with one repetition and then work up to sets of X repetitions (where X is a number of repetitions you can manage), with little breaks between sets. You can also arrange this in the form of a pyramid, descending from X to 1 repetition with every set after reaching X repetitions.

After we finished the pulling part, we proceeded to Dominiks Underground Gym, where we started the second part.

Part Two: Lifting heavy and iron grip

Dominiks Underground Gym is a great assembly of training equipment rarely seen in western gyms. Upon arriving, the eight participants (including me) were split in half, one working with Karl, one with Dominik, switching group by group.

Dominik introduced to us oldschool training equipment. Clubbells are weights in the form of a club, constructed out of water pipes and screws, filled with screws and other metal materia. They work your shoulder stability and grip strength tremendously, as they are extremely ballistic in nature and move nothing like you want them to – the stability work you have to undertake is huge! The bulgarian sand bag is a sand bag constructed out of a car pneu tube, cut in half and filled with sand, thereafter sealed. This utility is also very ballistic and useful for twisting them around in circles – a great exercise to build up strength in the upper body in general and the rotatory abs escpecially. A wrist roller is an easy training tool, built by taking a wooden pole, some thick string and fastening a weight on the other end – by wrapping the pole, you elevate the weight and train your grip strength thereby. Lastly, we tried out a Captians-of-Crush gripper, the best on the market. Nr. 1 requires around 70 kg of gripping power to compress – I almost attained this skill with one hand (the right one), as I know this tool from home.

Karl instead continued the gripping ordreal on a horizontal tree trunk and some wood blocks – both posed extreme challenges to keep yourself up and not falling down, as the grip is extremely challenged by the kind of force and structure of surface. At least, this proved to be the last pulling / gripping exercise of the day.

We went on with some farmer’s walks – a tremendous exercise to build strength in your shoulders, traps and the whole body in general – carrying a weight from position A to position B works literally every muscle in your body – if not actively, then at least passively in a static hold. We carried along weight carriers (hard to balance), a traktor wheel (around 70 kg, balance required) and a deadlift hex bar (50 kg, easiest of those). Going for speed, our breath was sure to get short! As if the carrying wouldn’t have been enough, we were encouraged to carry each other as well – a funny experience and easier than I thought. For those who liked to, we examined the campus board as well, a training utility, mainly used by climbers to build grip and pulling strength.

Thereafter, the very same traktor wheel had to be dragged using a rope – which showed to be extremely difficult, as you have to work with both your legs and arms to succeed. Again, the one-armed-pull is required, using both hands to pull at the same time was prohibited and beyond reason. A few failed attempts by me, but I finally managed to understand the technique and dragged the beast along the ground.

As the semi-last exercise, we faced each other sitting and had to be resistance force for our counterpart while holding ropes. This was going to become hard, as we did our best to build up the utmost resistance – we worked our best!

The finisher was an atypical exercise: We were presented a big rock to carry around the field for two laps – as a group! We did our best and altough participants like me weren’t able to handle the rock for too long, we surpassed the two laps and did three of them easily – nice!

Now it was time for changing clothes and smalltalk about nutrition and training – a very interesting time and hands down one of the best days in 2009 from my perspective!

Kudos to Till Sukopp for showing me the basic kettlebell techniques after the training workshop – I now have a deper understanding of how the swing should look like and work out!

As a summary, I’d like to write down what lessons I learned through the workshop
Training utilities are not necessarily hard or expensive to build – quite the opposite
Rope climbing is complex and has to obey some rules
ABC pull-ups are a tremendous way to improve strength/endurance for the pull-up
Even in circuit training, the repetition quality counts, and not so much the total repetitions
Activate your shoulders for the kettlebell swing, shins parallel, swing not too high up, weight on heels
The abdominal muscles are the most important for climbing – to keep stable and off the ground
Quality is what counts, overall

What I loved in particular about the workshop was
I was able to compare myself with others but strained from assessing them
Training in groups is a lot more motivating than training alone
The people I got to know were very nice to meet
Networking with people living nearby becomes possible
The workload gives me a tremendous feeling of mild fatigue and relaxation – I feel so un-stressed!

In general, I can wholeheartly recommend this workshop to anyone who is interested in increasing his/her strength levels and looking for new ways how to train. Dominik and Karl are great sources of innovative training concepts and will convince you, if necessary. You will have to understand German to attend, though But I guess, Dominik and Karl will bear with English speaking visitors as well – they would feel honored, actually. Dominik already had guests like Steve Maxwell visiting him, so he is used to foreigners invading the holy halls of the Underground Training Gym.

Check out this opportunity to train like a gorilla to become strong like one!

Warm regards

Simon

P.S.: A comprehensive photo gallery by Karl Humer can be found here.

Here are some excerpts
Karl Humer and Dominik Feischl