Muscles of Iron
Strength, Health, Physical Development, Inspiration, and Know-How
Pumpin' Iron in Prison
Myths, Muscle and Misconceptions
An Excerpt from Convict Conditioning 2
The above myths are unbelievably prevalent amongst people on the outside — and even some green guys on the inside, who don't know much about training. These myths will probably still be alive and kicking long after I'm dead and gone. All the same, I still try to dispel them wherever I can. I'm all about old school calisthenics, baby! But despite my stance on the matter, it is true that a lot of guys on the outside have asked me about the weight-training routines of convicts. There seems to be an interest.
I have picked up weights a few times — I even entered a national prison powerlifting meet, on a bet (I came in third). Although weights were never my thing, I've witnessed thousands of weight-training sessions done in the yards of half-a-dozen major prisons. I've talked to a lot of big guys who were really into it, as well as some semi-pro bodybuilders and powerlifters who found themselves behind bars. As a result of all this, I can give you some of the inside dirt on the kind of training routines generally done in prison gyms.
In prisons you find a wide-range of individuals, all with different backgrounds and at differing levels of athletic development. For this reason, you will find that individual inmates follow distinctly different types of training routines. Despite this, there do seem to be a few training guidelines the bigger guys seem to follow — the guys who manage to maintain the most mass and strength over the longest periods inside.
The Prison King
Certain exercises are favoured over others, but the bench press is king. If you want respect in the weights pit, it's largely based on how much you can bench. As I mentioned above, usually there are three barbell weights available: 135lbs, 225lbs and 315lbs. That 315lbs bar is a symbol in a lot of prisons; it's seen as pretty iconic — the symbol of true strength. In more than one prison, the big ol' 315lbs barbell has its own nickname. When I was in SQ [San Quentin State Prison], they called it the Big Daddy.
The bench press is without doubt the ultimate prison lift.
The big lifters are always visible in the weights pit, so it's easy to assume that all prisoners are huge and strong. But it's not true. Not every convict is interested in working out, and of those who do only a handful are head and shoulders above the average guy on the street. As a rule of thumb, I'd say about 40% of the prison population can usually handle 135lbs for a handful of reps, and perhaps 5% of guys can bench 225lbs. It's difficult to estimate how many men can bench 315lbs for reps, but it's not many. Given the whole prison population it's certainly much less than 1%. Those who can bench the Big Daddy get a lot of respect in the joint.
Because the perception of strength is so important inside, “forced reps” are a commonly used technique. A “forced rep” is supposed to occur at the end of the set, when exhausted muscles can't push the weight any more, and your partner grabs the bar just to guide its path, taking a few pounds of pressure off so you can complete the set safely. In reality, forced reps are totally abused in prison workouts. This can be seen on a lot of exercises, but especially the bench press. You see guys trying to press way more weight than they can handle alone; the bar only moves because a friend (sometimes two people!) are lifting the bar to make their buddy appear mega-strong. I call these “fake reps”, not “forced reps”. Afterwards the guys giving the assist make a big deal about it saying stuff like, “hey, I barely touched it! It was all you!”, and other back slapping crap. It's total bullshit nine times out of ten. Often the guys helping are straining more than the guy on the bench press. But, to be fair, some of this is because there are usually only the big three big barbells in many prisons, and it's unlikely that a lifter's strength level will perfectly match one of these three.
The next favourite exercise amongst the top prison lifters seems to be pullups; sometimes weighted, sometimes not. You might expect curls to come second, as they do in the outside world; but there's an important reason why prison guys do pullups — it's seen as a “must do” exercise to improve the bench press. This might sound strange, since the bench press is a chest/triceps movement, with pullups hitting the back and biceps. But, the reason has to do with prison gyms. Most prison gyms don't have the padded metal benches you see in commercial gyms. These are expensive and they can be picked up and thrown. For this reason, the majority of prison benches over the past two decades have been made from concrete cinderblocks, cemented together. Just lying on these prison benches can be hard on the spine — imagine what it feels like while you're benching 225lbs of iron! This is why pullups are so popular. Pullups hit the lats and add beef to the muscles of the midback. More muscle on your back essentially acts as a cushion against the mercilessly hard benches when you're pressing, protecting your spine. If you don't have a thick, muscular back, you can forget about doing heavy bench presses on prison benches.
Pullups tend to favor guys at lighter bodyweights. Because of this, even some of the really strong powerlifters have trouble due to their bulky bodies. Fat guys don't have a chance. For those lifters who can't do pullups, barbell rows are popular for back training. Since the back is bigger and stronger than the chest, in theory a trained athlete should be able to row more than he can bench press. This isn't always true, however. More guys are able to row the Big Daddy than can bench press it, but this is only because while rowing you can really cheat the weight up. Another favourite for the back is reverse grip rows, where the trainee uses a curl grip rather than an overhand grip on the bar. The guys I've spoken to believe it's a better exercise for building the lats than conventional rowing. I don't know if this is true though.
The obsession with arms
After the bench press, the next obsession in the prison weights pit tends to be big arms. Most convicts seem to spend half their gym time training their guns. They love `em! In reality, the arms are one of the weakest areas of the body; they have very little horsepower compared to the real muscle engines of the legs, hips, back and chest. But because they are usually the most visible muscle group, arms are a very apparent signifier of all-over musculature and fitness. A lot of this has to do with the psychology of intimidation. Big arms to an inmate are like tusks to a bull elephant — an important image of strength and masculinity. Guys hike up their sleeves to the shoulders, and they wear T-shirts and tank tops wherever they can. There's a real culture of arms in the joint. One trick I've seen a lot of guys use is to pump up their arms in their cells before the recreation period, with a couple of sets of rapid close-grip pushups. This forces all the blood into their arm muscles, temporarily making them look much larger and more vascular — and more impressive to the other inmates.
This need to look bigger, pumped up, is a major reason guys spend so much time in the pit training their arms. Supersets are popular — biceps exercises immediately followed by triceps exercises, repeated over and over. Supersets are common in prison gyms because they are probably the best way that exists to quickly engorge the arms with blood. This endless pumping up doesn't make lifters bigger or stronger in the long-term, it only makes their arms appear bigger while they're doing it; but, that doesn't matter. It's an image thing. As any heavy duty bodybuilder will tell you, endlessly filling your arms up with blood will not make them grow — only short, sharp sessions with progressively heavier weights will make you grow. Just repeatedly filling your arms with blood for very little in the way of long-term training results may all sound vain and pointless, but remember that prisons are dangerous places. Reputation and your perceived place in the prison hierarchy are at least as important as genuine athletic ability. If the guy next to you in the yard has bigger guns, you have to pump yours up until they are bigger than his. It's an all-out arms race!
Supersets are often done with a relatively light weight. This is so that the arm workout (and the pump) can be prolonged. Depending on recovery levels and what day of the week it is, the guys who favor supersets will begin their time in the pit with straight sets of some heavier arm exercises. This is usually straight bar curls with 135lbs. That's quite a lot to curl, so expect to see a lot of cheating from the smaller guys. Only the real big dogs even attempt to curl 225lbs, and even here you'll see plenty of “forced reps” and “fake reps”. As well as the big three barbells [135, 225, and 315 lbs], some of the better-equipped gyms also have a few lighter cambered bars. These are useful for curling, as well as doing triceps presses when the 135lbs bar is just too heavy. Another common sight is guys doing towel work on arms day. This involves the trainee pulling or pushing on a towel to do an exercise, whilst his buddy holds onto the other end, applying resistance. Sometimes a thick old rope is used instead, where this is available (which is not very often due to the suicide risk). Various exercises can be done this way; curls, reverse curls, front raises, and French presses being the most common. Usually the two-arm exercises are preferred, but I've seen guys doing one-arm variations on these also. Towel or rope work is popular because the resistance can be tailored perfectly to allow the pump to be maintained — enough to pump up, but not too heavy that the workout starts to falter before the end of the recreation period.
Some of the attention to arm training is functional however. In order to be able to ace huge bench presses, strong triceps or “back arms” are required. This means that some of the more serious powerlifters eschew the supersets style of training in favor of slower paced sets built around low reps with heavy iron. The exercise the really strong guys love for powerful tris is known by the sinister name, “skullcrushers”. Lifters do skullcrushers by lying back on a bench with the bar held up with their arms locked or slightly bent. Using pure arm power, the forearms are bent back until the bar touches the forehead. The upper arms shouldn't move — only the forearms. This isolates the triceps muscles and places a massive amount of stress on the elbows. A guy has to be hugely strong to do skullcrushers with the 135lbs bar. I've heard legends of guys who can do this exercise with 225lbs, but I've never seen it myself. The powerlifters inside do a lot of heavy triceps lifting as ancillary work for the bench press, and their arms are cock diesel as a result. If you ask a guy to show you his muscles, most guys will roll up their sleeve and flex their biceps. In fact, the triceps are a far bigger, more powerful muscle than the biceps. Most guys in the weights pit spend hours pumping up their biceps in a vain attempt to get big arms. But, remember the triceps muscle at the back up the arm makes up about two thirds of the size of the upper arm. There are lessons here for all bodybuilders.
Boulder shoulders
In classic bodybuilding, broad shoulders are the hallmark of a quality physique; combined with a small waist, they create the illusion of perfect mass, the Holy Grail of esthetics. But, in prisons shoulder training tends to be little more than an afterthought following arm training. Favourite exercises seem to be upright rows, standing military presses, cleans and presses, seated presses, standing shrugs and the press-behind-neck, in that order. Upright rows are the favourite, because you can use momentum and cheat — this means that a lot of guys can handle to 135lbs bar for reps. The bigger and stronger the lifter, the more they seem to prefer seated presses. This might be for reasons of exercise technique, or it might just be because it's harder than the cheating upright row, and only the strong guys can handle the heavier weights on this lift.
Lower body lifts
Two big exercises are favoured for legs — barbell squats and deadlifts. Both exercises are done in powerlifting form; meaning that the squats are done to approximately parallel, and the deadlifts are full-range, bent-legged style. Leg training is nowhere near as popular as upper body work. A lot of guys will work upper body six or even seven days a week; squats only get a few sets as an appendix lift, usually no more than one day a week. Oddly — despite the fact that the average lifter can handle more weight on the deadlift than the squat — squats are way more popular than deadlifts.
Virtually all hardcore gyms have power racks to aid squatting. There aren't many of these in prison gyms, although there may be a few free standing squat racks chained together so it's harder to use them as cudgels. In many places even these are missing, and lifters have to pop the bar off the racks that form part of the bench used for bench pressing. Bench press racks aren't really designed for this purpose, and the big guys have to practically squash themselves under the bar to lever it up on the back of their necks. Ouch. Maybe this explains why squats aren't so popular as on the outside.
Abs usually get worked sporadically — often in-between upper body work to stretch the session out longer. They tend to get worked with knee raises and leg raises done from the chinning bar, although some prison gyms have Roman chairs for sit-ups. I've also seen tag team style ab training, where one guy stands on another's feet so he can do sit-ups; then, they switch ends. Abs get moderately high reps, and don't seem to be worked out all that hard. On the outside, ab work is important to get that six-pack the ladies love. In prison, a rippling midsection isn't that much of a priority — unless you are someone's twink.
Calf training is an important part of bodybuilding — certainly competitive bodybuilding — because on stage a bodybuilder is judged as much by his weak areas as his strong ones. But, in the joint I've seen exactly three people train calves in the weights pit over a period of about two decades. Two of those individuals were nationally-ranked bodybuilders trying to hold onto as much of their physiques as possible during their stints inside. On all three of these occasions, the exercise of choice was barbell calf raises for high reps. A reader who knows bodybuilding might assume that given the scarcity of calf machines and dumbbells in most prisons, the obvious choice for calf training would probably be donkey calf raises — where the trainee bends over and has someone straddle his back as he does calf raises off a block.
This would not be a wise choice for an exercise in a prison environment...