Posts Tagged ‘Weight Training’
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Don’t let Your Workouts Get Stale!
Going to the gym and doing the same workout over and over again is a sure way to prevent progress when it comes on to muscle growth. Repetition is a surefire way to make progress… in moderation. Too much repetition will leave you tired, bored, sore, lazy, and overtrained. Enough emphasis cannot be placed on the necessity of having a properly designed fitness program.

Don’t let your progress plateau like this guy. |
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Tags: 101, basics, exercise, fitness, plateau, tips, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Fitness Tips, Motivation, Weight Training | 4 Comments »
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
For those who still don’t believe Werewolf Muscle Training works, here is more support of my theory that increased frequency combined with stopping short of fatigue, produces equal if not better results that training a muscle once a week for an hour, with a ton of volume, going to failure on most sets.
The central nervous system is extremely important for performance, and should be stimulated aggressively and frequently, but should not often be fatigued. This also helps explain why you can train muscles when they’re sore… it works just as long as the CNS has recovered.
In this video you will find Christian Thibaudeau from T-Nation. He is way stronger than you or I, and he is just about as ripped as I could ever hope to be. A true inspiration.
“Never Chase Fatigue, Chase Performance”
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Tags: build muscle, build strength, fatigue, gain muscle, gain strength, muscle, performance, strength, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Bodybuilding, Fitness Tips, Quote of the Day, Videos, Weight Training | 2 Comments »
Monday, September 19th, 2011
While navigating a fitness website or browsing through a fitness supplement store, you may notice various muscle building supplements. You may wonder whether any of these 10,000 products really work to build quality muscles and enhance strength, or will they merely flush into the toilet? The answer is both yes and no.
The answer is ‘No’ for people who do not have patience and want fast results while they opt for an unhealthy approach. However, the answer is ‘Yes’ for people who go for the right kind of supplement, use proper exercises and diet, and wait for weeks or sometimes months to see the result.
Fortunately, you have a couple of good supplements which guarantee good results. These supplements for fast muscle growth can deliver the desired result within a short span of time. These include Whey Protein, Nitric Oxide and Creatine. Which happens to be the right choice for you?
Have a look in detail about the three supplements given below:
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Tags: bodybuilding, build muscle, build strength, gain muscle, gain strength, muscle gains, strength gains, Supplements, weight lifting, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Bodybuilding, Supplements | 8 Comments »
Monday, August 1st, 2011
How to Effectively Combine HIIT Sessions with Endurance Cardio
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please: walking or jogging for hours on the treadmill, peddling for hours on the stationary bike, climbing a mountain on the StairMaster, and plodding away on the elliptical trainer is NOT the best way to burn calories!
We’ve seen a hundred studies telling us that high intensity interval training (HIIT) burns more calories and fat, speeds up your metabolism, and is less catabolic than hours of endurance cardio. HIIT can also be far less boring, will actually help you build more muscle tissue, and increases your resting metabolic rate.
HIIT: Twenty minutes of HIIT cardio improves your VO2 max, burns a ton of calories, increases your metabolism, and maintains or builds muscle tissue all at once.
vs.
Endurance Cardio: Sixty minutes of endurance cardio is not only boring as hell, it also increases cortisol, burns muscle tissue (protein) for energy, and halts protein synthesis.
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Tags: cardio, cardiovascular, endurance, exercise, fat loss, hiit, lifting, lose fat, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Conditioning, Fitness Tips, HIIT Routines | 11 Comments »
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.
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Tags: back, exericse, fitness, injury, mistakes, spine, Sports, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Exercise Technique, Weight Training | 1 Comment »
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 »
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
Should Bodybuilders Do Cardio After Weight Training?
Spend some time in a corporate gym and you will see hundreds of bodybuilders lifting moderately heavy weight for sets of 10-15 reps, then you’ll see them hop on a StairMaster or elliptical machine for about 20-30 minutes of moderate intensity endurance cardio. There are many reasons for this behavior, the most common being that weight training is just a hell of a lot more fun than cardio.
Apparently the weights-first-cardio-second protocol is considered the most effective way for bodybuilders to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. But is it?
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Tags: bodybuilding, cardio, cardiovascular, Diet, endurance, exercise, fat loss, hiit, lifting, lose fat, myth, myths, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | 9 Comments »
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 »
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 | 9 Comments »
Monday, April 25th, 2011
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 »