I have a really low ceiling in my home gym so I am thinking of doing some heavy barbell work outside today. It's pretty nice, but 56 degrees (Farenheit). Other than wearing long pants and sleeves for comfort any issues with this? I can't think of any but I've never tried it.

Just make sure it is hard ground, unless you like sinking :lol:.

There's nothing worse than having an ant crawling up your inner thigh when you're in the middle of a heavy-negative Flat bench...:(

Well, it's going sort of badly. I have no way to rack the bar more than about 12" off the ground, and I was hoping to do heavy step ups. I've sort of gotten past the point of doing step ups with weight I can clean. I tried cleaning 225# but even off the blocks I missed badly enough to know that there's no way I'm mounting that bar from the ground even if I do clean it. And I really would like to work in the 275#-315# range for step ups. I'm particularly annoyed because I have this great 10" stone step set up, and I hauled a bunch of plates down from the workout room. I'm not going to come away empty handed.

Looks like the choices are

Light step ups for reps
Bulgarians
Deadlifts

My wife has a bunch of sewing equipment in my squat rack in the workout room. (It is also the sewing room).

I perform all of my olympic overhead lifts outside because of a low ceiling. I'm going to need to buy a rack for outside so I can rack jerks instead of trying to clean the weight up.

Walking lunges anyone? :)

You should be able to just walk back and forth across the yard. Check for holes and dog poop prior to your first set though.

You could try a deadlift step up type thing, although your grip would fail way before your legs, :blank:.

My neighbors already think I'm crazy with some of my yard projects as it is, but walking lunges with my aerator spike sandals on would be efficient....hmmm
I wonder what else I can multitask between yard work and workouts...

I perform all of my olympic overhead lifts outside because of a low ceiling. I'm going to need to buy a rack for outside so I can rack jerks instead of trying to clean the weight up.

Yeah my workout room has a very low ceiling too. It's one reason I was going outside.

Walking lunges anyone? :)

You should be able to just walk back and forth across the yard. Check for holes and dog poop prior to your first set though.

Sort of gotten to the point where I have to mount a pretty heavy bar to get any reasonable lunge work; with dumbells that just ends up as grip training. And I don't have anywhere near the grip to handle the weight I would want to lunge. So that one ends up at the same place - I need to mount more than I can clean and press from the ground.

Do you ever do parallel step ups? You seem to be moving a ton of weight. Do you push off with the other leg at all, or go dead-stop uni-leg?

You could try a deadlift step up type thing, although your grip would fail way before your legs, :blank:.

I actually thought of that. Even with hooks, trouble is the bar would be in the way of the front leg. I would have to curl it or something to make room for the step; and there's no chance I can curl a bar that I can't clean.

Likewise I thought maybe lunge deadlifting onto a step would work, but I figured too good a chance of taking out the back kneecap if the bar got swinging.

In the end I did this:

70x155# step-ups
3x405# deadlift
75x135# step-ups

The trouble with such a light weight is that it's easy to lose count:

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Sort of gotten to the point where I have to mount a pretty heavy bar to get any reasonable lunge work; with dumbells that just ends up as grip training. And I don't have anywhere near the grip to handle the weight I would want to lunge. So that one ends up at the same place - I need to mount more than I can clean and press from the ground.
I get a great workout with just the 35s on each end of the barbell. :o

How about reverse lunges? Same deal with the weight/mount issue?

I'm liking the step up idea. How about step up with a knee lift at the top?

Do you ever do parallel step ups? You seem to be moving a ton of weight. Do you push off with the other leg at all, or go dead-stop uni-leg?

The parallelism of the step up is determined by the height of the step. Today I had a 10.5" step which is not quite parallel. I could have, and probably should have stuck another stone on the pile to get just about parallel.

Step ups have two functions. If you are going for leg development, then you want all the work to be done by the lead leg, and the back leg provides no assistance on the concentric - either by flexing to get momentum starting the bar up, or by adding a calf raise. On the eccentric, it's ok to have the back leg do a bit of eccentric calf raise to add balance, stability, and reduce shock load.

If you are just going for cardio (which is pretty much what I got today) then it's not that important to restrict the form as much, just keep that bar going up and down.

Here's with the knee lift:

http://www.defrancostraining.com/pics/images/pics/female/barbell-stepup.jpg

Or reverse lunges with the front foot elevated:

http://www.defrancostraining.com/pics/images/pics/male-college-pro/pic_burt-lunge.jpg

Or how about the stepups done a little differently? How about do all reps with the left foot (leave it on the step the whole duration of the set), then switch feet and do all reps with the right foot. That style seems better (for me anyway) with the knee lift added at the top.

How about reverse lunges? Same deal with the weight/mount issue?

I'm liking the step up idea. How about step up with a knee lift at the top?

Yeah reverse lunges are pretty much the same weight wise - with the exception of the reverse lunge with Bulgarian recovery - that is a reverse lunge, but as soon as you start the recovery, the back foot is lifted off the ground so the entire concentric is on the front leg. It's slightly worse than a Bulgarian squat, but it's a great exercise.

When you go light with step-ups, the knee lift, (and calf raise if you want), can be added to the top. If you really want to add energy, dumbell step ups with knee lift, calf raise, and curl and press, and don't let the back foot more than just tap the ground with the ball of the foot. Those are conditioning reps.

But when you go heavy, the knee lift isn't that big a deal, and I'm a bit leary about putting that calf raise at the top - although it actually should be a good exercise, I'm a little concerned about safety with that. Maybe I should be less conservative.

But step ups are an incredibly versatile and effective exercise. One reason I made the video of today's step ups is to have an example of how to do cardio with just a barbell and a step, and build muscle at the same time.