Fitness | Project Swole

Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

3 More Back Training Mistakes

Monday, July 18th, 2011

I am not going to get into a long detailed post today. Instead I am going to supplement my top 6 back training mistakes post with another guest post about back training by expert Mike Robertson. I’m not cool enough to get Mike to post on my website though, so I have to link to the post from another blog entirely.

Find it here: 3 back training mistakes you could be making.

Mike tells you how people go wrong by training without a neutral spine, without a neutral pelvis, and without paying attention to detail. This is just another example of how every aspect of your physiology has to be healthy and aligned, or you risk injury.

About Mike Robertson

Mike Robertson received his Masters Degree in Sports Biomechanics from the world-renowned Human Performance Lab at Ball State University. He is also the president of Robertson Training Systems and the co-owner of Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training, which has been named one of America’s Top 10 Gyms by Men’s Health magazine in 2009 and 2010.

About Rick Kaselj

Since the guest post is actually posted on his site, this is a lead in to another awesome fitness blogger, a guy named Rick Kaselj who is an expert on sports injuries. Hopefully he will write a couple guest posts for Project Swole soon. I’ve requested some serious rehab / prehab articles and I know if he can find the time to write them, you will be amazed.

Tags: back, exericse, fitness, injury, mistakes, spine, Sports, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Exercise Technique, Weight Training | 1 Comment »

Athletes Should Only Train Sport Specific Movements

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Should Athletes Train Individual Muscles or Only Sports Movements?

As a trainer, I have to know how to train people from all walks of life. I’ve seen bodybuilders, strength athletes, middle aged men, obese housewives, trained athletes, newbies, weekend warriors, and about 100 other types of people and athletes. No one routine can be designed for everyone.

Even in niches like baseball athletes, strongmen, and Olympic lifters, there is no one-size-fits-all training routine. You can’t take a baseball pitcher and train the pitching motion for 5 hours a day, 7 days a week. It just won’t work. So how do you train athletes that only need a small variety of movements to be successful at their sport?

The Myth

A long standing myth about training for sports, is that you should only train the common movements for your sport, so that you can get better at those movements. If you know nothing about physiology, kinesiology, or basic physics, then logically that makes sense.

However if you think about how the body really works, you will realize that the body will always find a way to perform any intended movement. Have you ever bench pressed and altered your shoulder, elbow, hip, knee, or foot position in order to eek out that last rep?

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Tags: athlete, athletes, bodybuilding, exercise, fitness, Sports, train, training, weak point, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | 4 Comments »

You Have to Train Heavy to Grow

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Do Bodybuilders Have to “Max Out” to Gain Muscle?

You may have seen or heard cliche slogans like “Go heavy or go home.” You may have been asked “How much do you bench?” You may even be impressed by Olympic lifters, powerlifters, and professional strongmen, all of whom regularly use maximum effort triples and singles to prepare for competition, to try to set a personal record, or just as a component of their regular training routines.

Well guess what? None of those sports are like bodybuilding. Sure, Olympic lifters are typically pretty jacked, powerlifters and strongmen are just plain “big”, but very few of them could compete in a bodybuilding competition and hope to win, without first dieting and training like a bodybuilder for several months.

This brings us to the question – do bodybuilders ever actually have to test their 1 or 3 rep max on any exercise? Do they have to lift super-heavy?

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Tags: bodybuilding, building muscle, fitness, gain muscle, heavy, max, max effort, maximum effort, muscle growth, myth, myths, powerlifting, strength, strongman, training, weight lifting, weightlifting
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | 2 Comments »

You Shouldn’t Train When You Are Sore

Monday, July 4th, 2011

Should Bodybuilders Train When They Are Sore?

This is one of the top offending bodybuilding myths. Have you ever canceled a workout or skipped training a body part because it felt sore, even though at least 48 hours had passed since you trained it? If you said “Yes”, then after reading this post you will never make that mistake again.

Your muscles will get sore when you use:

heavy weights
slow negatives
forced negatives
assisted negatives
drop sets
high volume

Do you need to avoid these training methods completely in order to prevent soreness, so that you can train again in two days? Not necessarily.

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Tags: bodybuilding, building muscle, doms, fitness, gain muscle, heavy, max, max effort, maximum effort, muscle growth, myth, powerlifting, sore, sore muscles, soreness, strength, strongman, training, weight lifting, weightlifting
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | No Comments »

Always Stretch Before You Train

Friday, July 1st, 2011

Should Bodybuilders Use Static Stretching Before a Workout?

It’s such a simple component of your workout routine that you may not even think about it. You might just automatically hit the mats before you train, to stretch every muscle group for 20 seconds. If you haven’t been reading Project Swole or other popular fitness blogs in the last 5 years, you might even think this practice is good for you. Think again.

If you have been reading fitness blogs, websites, magazines, or keeping up to date on regular fitness news, you would know by now that this myth has been debunked. It has been decided with 100% assurance whether you should or shouldn’t stretch before weight lifting. So what is the final answer?

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Tags: dynamic stretch, fitness, Flexibility, static stretch, stretch, stretching, workout
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | 2 Comments »

All Athletes Must Train to Failure

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Should Bodybuilders Train to Failure?

“No pain, no gain!”

You hit the gym like a maniac. You want every rep to burn. Every set has to be a max rep attempt. Maybe you even enlist a spotter to help you eek out an extra rep or two. Is training to failure or past failure a good practice for bodybuilders?

The Myth

“The only rep that counts, is the one you can’t finish.”

To grow as a bodybuilder you need to push every set to failure. That’s how Arnold and all the great 70′s bodybuilders trained, right?

Some of the following techniques, called “Weider Training Principles” are used to take each set past failure:

forced reps
forced negatives
rest pause
partial reps
drop sets

This is how bodybuilders have trained for years and it’s how bodybuilders should train today. Is it right?
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Tags: athletes, body building, bodybuilding, exercise, failure, fitness, myths, train, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | 4 Comments »

How to do Barbell Rows

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Like pull ups, heavy rows are one of the best exercises to train your back. The king of rowing exercises is the standing barbell row, but the problem is that too few people perform them properly.

You might see the following common technique flaws in people executing barbell rows:

momentum - using the posterior chain to generate momentum, instead of using the muscles of the back and arms
rounded back – weakness in the lower back or hip tightness can cause your lower back to round, which is bad for the spine
standing upright - you have to bend over nearly parallel to the floor in order to work the upper back properly

As I mentioned last week, you can fix all of these issues by switching from barbell rows to inverted rows, or you can learn how to perform barbell rows correctly.

Let’s talk about how we can best use barbell rows in our training routines.

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Tags: back, back training, barbell rows, bent over rows, bodybuilding, exercise, fitness, lats, rowing, rows, strength training, traps, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Exercise Technique, Weight Training | 14 Comments »

How to do Inverted Rows

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Build Back Muscles

Along with pull ups, rowing is one of the best exercises to train the back. The king of rowing exercises is the standing barbell row, but the problem is that too few people perform them properly.

You might see the following common technique flaws in people executing barbell rows:

standing upright – you gotta bend over just short of 90 degrees
rounded back – lower back weakness or hip tightness can cause this
momentum – using the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings for momentum

You can fix all of these issues by changing your barbell row into an inverted row. The inverted row is not a perfect replacement for the barbell row – it removes posterior chain stabilization from the movement and limits the load you can use – but it is a suitable replacement if you need one, and believe it or not it gives us yet another reason to accept the existence of the Smith Machine… OK, maybe not.

Let’s find out why and how to use inverted rows in our training routines.

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Tags: back, back muscles, back strength, back training, exercise, exercise technique, fitness, inverted rowing, inverted rows, rowing, rows, technique, workout
Posted in Exercise Technique, Weight Training | 2 Comments »

How to Perform Chin Ups

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Weighted Chin-ups

How to do Chin-ups

Chin-ups are a basic exercise that you were probably taught early in your life, possibly as a kid. They are pretty simple, and fairly difficult, though not as hard as pull-ups.

To perform a chin-up, hang on to any bar, doorway, tree branch, etc… with your arms straight and your palms facing towards you. Using your back and biceps, pull yourself up until your chin passes the bar. It’s that simple.

Chin-ups can be performed on anything that allows you to hang with your arms straight and your knees not touching the floor.

Beginners usually can’t perform many chin-up, if any. This post intends to be a proper tutorial for increasing chin-up strength using optimal chin-up technique.

Proper Chin-up Technique

Now that you know how to perform a chin-up, let’s examine proper chin-up technique.

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Tags: back training, chin-ups, chinups, exercise, exercise technique, fitness, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Exercise Technique, Weight Training | 2 Comments »

Introducing the Project Swole Forums

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Allow me to direct your attention to the Project Swole Forums. Build muscle and lose fat by sharing your training secrets, diet strategies, progress updates, and supplement reviews; or discuss anything remotely related to health and fitness.

Visit the Swole Forums at forum.projectswole.com

This will be a great way for me and all you Swole readers to talk about health and fitness topics that I just don’t have time to write individual posts about. There is also an area for posting progress pics, workout routines, or anything else you can come up with to show off your goods. My only request is this: let’s not make it a sausage fest on the pics forum… if you guys are going to post progress pics, can we please get some ladies to pose and post once a in while?

Down with the Swole Contact Form!

I want to transition from using the Swole contact form to the Swole Forums, for asking questions about health and fitness. Lord knows I get way too many e-mails on a daily basis, and I just can’t keep up with them.

The Swole contact form can still be used to ask questions about advertising, guest posts, or anything extremely private, but again I can’t guarantee a timely response.

Forum Moderators Needed

Months ago I posted about the upcoming forums and had several volunteers to help moderate. Well, now that the forums are actually up and running, I will need some moderators. So, anyone who has a couple hours a week to help answer questions and/or keep the forums clean of spam and trolls, I need YOU!

Unfortunately this is 100% volunteer work. I won’t be able to pay you for your help, but you will get a ton of kudos and I’ll help promote any projects you have going on. Leave a comment on this post to volunteer, and let me know if you have any relevant experience with moderating forums, developing websites, personal training, health topics, or nutrition advice.

That’s it! Let’s get the forums rockin’ ASAP and we’ll really have a sweet community going on at Project Swole.

Visit the Swole Forums at forum.projectswole.com

I’m also going to link to the forums up on the top menu, so you don’t have to bookmark it if you don’t want.

By the way, even if you registered with the blog, you’ll still have to re-register at the forums. I’m not about to try to code a bridge between phpBB and WordPress, sorry.

Tags: community, fitness, forum, health, nutrition, progress, Weight Training
Posted in Forums, Social Networking | 7 Comments »