Who doesn’t enjoy lifting weights? It’s a ripping good time—whether you be training to make yourself stronger and fulfill your potential as a man, or purely to pack on aesthetic muscle and impress the women in your life. Weight training is something we should all partake in.
And not only should you use regular old weights—if you truly want to maximize your strength and ability, you should look into odd object training!
What?
It’s exactly what it sounds like: training with oddly shaped weighted objects rather than traditional weights. While these are less regulated and quantifiable than traditional weights, their advantages lay in their irregular and odd shapes, forcing the trainee to utilize stabilizing muscles that the traditional lifts would never even touch.
They more accurately mimic the stresses of actual labor, making you stronger should you have to engage in that. And much like regular weights, the best odd objects can be lifted and manipulated in a variety of different ways and different exercises.
The Keg
There are a variety of odd objects you can use in your training, but the one I would recommend to start off with, and the one that is most likely the easiest to obtain is the humble 50 liter/15.5 gallon keg. Empty, it weighs somewhere in the ballpark of 30 pounds, and difficulty can be increased by adding water—or if you’re a glutton for punishment, sand, BBs, or even molten lead or some other soft metal (for the truly insane).
No matter what you fill it with, the substance sloshing around will force your stabilizer muscles to compensate for the extra movement, making the exercise more difficult.
Seeing as a fresh keg from the liquor store will probably run you more than a 100 dollars, I would not recommend buying a new one. Instead, you can do something akin to what I did to get my keg:
Go to your nearest college campus early on a Sunday morning, and poke around the fraternity houses for an empty keg from last night’s party. Yes, technically they’re supposed to bring it back to the liquor store, but to hell with them, you have more important things to be doing with it then drinking Natural Ice or some other cheap pisswater while chasing after pudgy sluts.
Alternatively, go to a bar or liquor store and dig around the dumpster to see if there is an empty keg—or hell, you could probably ask if they have any old kegs laying around and get it cheap.
Then bring your keg home—you are going to have to modify it to make it “workout capable”. And that modification mainly involves taking out the spear, depressurizing the keg, and emptying it if need be.
The Spear
Removing The Spear
If you’re lucky, your keg will be empty and weigh only 30 pounds, making transport a breeze. If you’re unlucky—and I *was*—then the keg will be full or nearly so.
A fully loaded keg weighs 160 pounds, and if you must know, the keg that I currently use to work out with weighed 102 pounds when I first brought it home—and carrying that thing home (I live very close to a college campus, and found the keg while out for a walk) was a workout in and of itself!
To open up the keg safely, you will need needle nose pliers, a flathead screwdriver, and an adjustable wrench or vice grip.
Bring the keg outside—unless you enjoy the smell of crappy domestic beer permeating your home—and rest it on its side with the top pointing away from you.
Now you need to release the air pressure. Take your screwdriver, and push it into the release valve in the center of the center column (that column is the spear). Jam it in real hard. You will most likely get an explosive reaction. Aim away from your face and when the spraying stops, you can move on.
Once the keg’s depressurized, you need to remove the retaining ring from the top of the spear. Find one of the two notches from the top of the spear, pry the ring up with a screwdriver and remove it with your pliers.
And finally, use your wrench to rotate the spear clockwise, after which it’ll come out when you pull up.
Then, do what you will with the beer inside. Once it’s empty, you can leave it as is or fill it up with whatever you want. Make sure you get a sizable bung to plug up the hole. Remember that a keg is 50 liters, and 1 liter is equivalent to 1 kilogram is equivalent to 2.2 pounds. You can adjust the weight easily once you remember that formula.
Three Keg Exercises
Because I like you a lot, here are three exercises to do with a keg.
1. Keg stand pushup
The old reliable from your college days, use the keg as a defacto set of parallel bars and do handstand pushups with it, making sure to go into a deeper range of motion than floor handstand pushups. You can use the wall to balance yourself if need be.
2. Keg Clean And Jerk
A little bit different than the Olympic style clean and jerk—put the keg on its side and lift it up to your hips. Due to the shape of the keg, you should be able to keep your back even straighter than you would doing a proper form deadlift, so throwing out your back is not likely as long as you do it with proper form.
Once it is off the ground, keep your back straight and roll it up to your chest and shoulders. Then lift it up and over your head.
3. Keg Toss
Simple—just put your hands under it and toss it backwards and over your head. MUCH easier said than done.
And with that, you can get a great, total body workout with a keg. Get to it!
Read More: Mainstream Media Applauds Actor And Globalist Mouthpiece Jesse Williams For Racist Tirade
Why don’t we just lift Jooz and see how many reps we can do. And when you reach a new all-time rep high, they go “oy vey!” in a real nasally voice.
Since Larsen loves them so much.
Hahaha!
“How to train with a keg”
Pick up keg, take drink, put back down???
My life impacting and paradigm shifting comments haven’t been showing up on several threads for the past few days. {{{Someone}}} is butthurt.
To be fair. Although he is still purple pill on the matter He did critique the J in his previous article on points the {{chosen}} get very upset about and hate having exposed
He may have a few {{enemies}} now that troll his articles.
Troy Francis, its been a long time since you posted an article to this site.
I might find a keg but whys with the crappy domestic beer crack you got something against Merican beer must a elitist douche
Nothing beats an ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon.
I get a twelve pack for $8.99 at Stop ‘n Shop.
It is even better on tap. But my favorite is Schaefer.
Peopl talk about “stabilizing” muscles and what not but it’s not based on anything but hearsay someone heard some time somewhere and it’s been repeated ever since.
You cannot rely on an exercise to build anything but the muscles it’s actively engaging. Dumbbell pec flyes use the bicep as a stabilizer or even as a synergist but who expects that to grow their biceps? No bodybuilder ever did. Another thing is that when it comes to circus exercises, nobody can pinpoint what those extra muscles are; specificity is key to bodybuilding. If you don’t know what you are training, what kind of training is that? Know what you are doing and do it controlled. Stay away from body english lifts, explosive clown lifts and anything that forces you to give up a neutral spine (basic deadlifts, standing bent over rows) once you’re a grown man who cannot fuck around anymore without getting hurt.
Another advantage of barbells is that you can keep the weight close to your center. When you press the barbell to your waist standing up, the weight is not sitting somewhere far ahead of your center but close to you; the plates are at your sides. Why is this important? Well the farther away you have to reach and the farther away from your body the weight is situated the more pressure there will be on your spine and the more strength you need to keep the object in position. The same principles is in use in arm wrestling and jiujitsu; the closer your arms are to your center, the stronger you are, the farther your arms are pulled away from your body, the more vulnerable you become. Bringing your arms out straight in front of you is OK when it’s done controlled with very small weights (as in anterior raises with dumbbells) and a fully neutral spine is maintained but if you expose yourself to a similar position with massive weights, you’re going to need body english, lean forwards and the pressure on your intervertebral disks will be great, easily leading to debilitating hernias in the long run. Barbells are ergonomic and odd objects are anti-ergonomic. Not to mention you cannot just add microplates to your odd object to track your progress intelligently.
Odd object lifting was more in vogue in world’s strongest man competitions decades ago and some close calls were witnessed where people could have been killed because holding to an odd object is difficult and a slip could be fateful. Nowadays it’s a bit more safety oriented.
I think the point is made that to change up your routine sometimes with odd objects, this might be in order.
Maybe that was the point but there is no hard evidence for the benefits stated in the article.
Kind of brings me back to the days when I would be scratching my head as a novice wondering who to believe; so many articles online, so many tall claims and even shaming (“squat deep durrrr!”)
I’m still learning about the iron game but at least I’ve learned something about what to avoid and what to include.
Anyway there’s certainly room in the fitness world for trying out new things for the sake of experience. I’ve tried military fitness, yoga, all sorts of dancing, boxing etc. but I don’t expect any of this to make my arms look bigger and better a year from now; you do that for the knowledge and memories, not lasting gains. That comes from tiny incremental improvements in barbell and dumbbell lifts.
Old School exercises are better than weights to build real strength. Weights just puff up the muscles to try and impress others it hampers the fine motor skills necessary for fighting.
Cavalier, the burden of proof is on you for saying things like “real strength”. Strength is always somewhat movement and angle specific I’ll give you that but in no way does that mean some strength is more “unreal” than some other type of strength.
Fighting is mostly about gross motor skills. Knitting is about fine motor skills. There is zero evidence that lifting weights in any way hurts your motor skills in any way.
Seriously dude you’re just throwing shit on the wall hoping some of it might stick.
Just my personal experience. Lifted heavy at one time. My strength training consists primarily of Indian mace and Indian clubs. I have fenced, boxed, wrestled, kendo, traditional Japanese sword, ridden hunt seat equitation and practiced longbow. I feel weightlifting did not enhance any of these activities for me. I was more pumped but now I am solid like iron. Just wanted to give a counter perspective, everyone is so obsessed with weights. Old timers like the boxer John Sullivan and strongmen like Eugene Sandow used training techniques akin to the one in the article.
To Cavalier,
Nothing wrong with doing what you like but sure enough, different skills are different. Bodybuilding may not do anything for your kendo or boxing but it does not have to do any of that to be worth doing. It’s a separate sphere with separate gains and benefits.
These martial arts guys start out slamming their shins against pads and fists against mitts from day one and they do the same thing when they’re 30, 40, 50 etc. and their progress in physical ability stalls within months. Once those guys are mid 30’s it’s all downhill for them but their minds will adjust in a way where they won’t notice it much. A bodybuilder might peak in his late 30’s. I would argue that a lot of these martial arts guys start going downhill in some ways even in their 20’s because they have many completely dormant muscles. When you break down the function of a muscle, it becomes apparent. What does your bicep do? It curls your lower arm up against the upper arm (among smaller functions). How could your bicep get better and stronger at doing what it’s meant to do? By curling your arm more and more with resistance. What does your calf do? It propels your steps and helps you get on your tiptoes. So do that then if you want strong calves. Still you have guys that say they are doing “functional training” when what they are doing is allowing their muscles to sit dormant and simply train movements they imagine to be “functional” without paying attention to what muscles are allowed to be worked throughout their natural range of motion; how is allowing your muscle to sit idle being functional? Shot putters don’t spend all day training the competition movement because they understand that the movement is made up of multiple muscles working in unison and the competition movement alone does not make them much stronger. Your legs don’t get any stronger but they need strong legs too. The pecs and arms don’t get any stronger so they do benching and what not in the gym. You cannot concentrate solely on the end product which is the competition or you’ll just get worse every year after your late 20’s or early 30’s. It’s similar to pick-up: you can be uneducated, fat, horribly dressed, no social skills and walk up to girls and say “HEY!” year after year and your results will stagnate quickly. You have to work the individual parts of the foundation in isolation just like bodybuilding.
The amount of resistance in boxing, salsa dancing or soccer is always the same so there’s no need for the body to adapt and get stronger over time. You retain a basic form of healthy fitness but you’re not on a journey to greatness except for great skill gains of course.
So it’s apples and oranges; if you want to be an awesome martial artist, do martial arts a lot but don’t expect it to give you an incredible body. Similarly with bodybuilding you won’t learn new skills as such but you’ll get a body that just keeps getting better and it DOES greatly increase your self-defense ability as opposed to self-defense skill (a gorilla does not have skills but he has the ability to kill a man). No need to pit these different realms of self-improvement against each other.
This is a good article, I will probably get one and do some exercises.
If you actually do it you are either braindead or a faggot
I do 40 oz curls myself…
Not only are you advocating straight up theft by “poking around” behind bars and people’s houses on campus, but disassembling a pressurized keg can be fatal if not done correctly by a trained expert. You dumbasses deserve to be sued for posting an article like this.
IMHO, the best type of “odd object lifting” for functional strength would be training in judo/wrestling/BJJ…but that’s just one middle-aged white man’s opinion.
And it’s probably best if you can get a large aggressive beeyotch to charge at you in a screaming rage.
I’m in agreement with the guys defending more traditional forms of weight lifting using dumbbells and barbells using core movements such as squat, deadlift, bench and overhead press, bent over rows and perhaps pull ups. Finding a true 1RM, lifting a % of that max for various reps/sets/rest etc in those core exercises with a care for form vs weight amount in conjunction with proper rest and ideal nutrition will take a beginner very and could easily serve as a basic lifelong foundation of lifting unless you’re a bodybuilder. I’m 35 and a year or so ago I dropped 55lbs and got back into extremely lean muscular shape in 7 months mostly because I had a foundation of mmuscle beneath it from lifting in my 20s. Quite frankly I don’t feel any older than I did when I was in my 20s and I am stronger on every lift with proper form consistently without injury and just as lean with slightly more dense muscle, as well. I’m not a bodybuilder. Depending on what percentage of my 1RM I train, rest between workouts and thus # of workouts a week varies. The most crucial thing is your diet and I base mine on a high amount of red meat and not much else. Learning to develop this type of basic consistency in our modern era where weightlifting is more accessible than ever (I assume), any and every benefits who does. Statistically, we lose testosterone in small percentages after 30. Lifting and diet are crucial to delaying or outright stopping the loss of T and at least maintaining muscle mass at a realistic level with low body fat.
Learn the basics over fluff if you want real gains. Fix your diet.
Workouts like what’s in this article should be nothing but fuckin around that happens to be fun and physical. Yeah, watch your form doing these awkward things. Personally, I mountain bike because it’s fun but I would never really on it to help me get strong/in shape except maybe cardio. I don’t even consider it a quality replacement for leg day. It hurts my knees and lower back after prolonged rough rides which is also why I wouldn’t rely on it as a main fitness tool.
Do what works for you but this article is def not what you build the foundation of your strength on.
Finally, a non-shill good article.
Please, sing me more the song of your people.
Better: buy one set of 50 to 70 lb hex dumbells off of craigslist and begin doing:
1. deadlifts
2. Sumo deadlifts
3. straight leg deadlifts
To keep it simple.
5-10 sets of 10-15 reps (or more if you start outgrowing the weight), inclusive of all three exercises (not 5-10 sets each). Or just go until you get a sense of your muscle fatigue and soreness tolerance. Its fairly easy to gauge after a short time.
This will be cheap enough to be inconsequential, will be more effective, will be less smelly, and will be much less cumbersome (and wet).
As you get more money, invest in a set of adjustable dumbells, preferably expandable to at least 90 lbs, and broaden your exercise routine.