Pull-ups are very simple but very hard. Most people think they know how to do pull-ups but there are quite a few variations on the proper form that some hardos might frown on, but still count as legitimate pull-ups. To perform a pull-up, hang on to any bar, doorway, tree branch, etc… with your arms straight and your palms facing away from you, and pull yourself up until your chin passes the bar. That’s it.
Pull-ups can be performed on anything that allows you to hang with your arms straight and your knees not touching the floor. Beginners can’t typically do a single pull-up, so we need a proper tutorial for increasing pull-up strength.
This post will teach you how to increase your performance with pull-ups using the correct technique.
Deadlifts are one of the primary, fundamental exercises for all serious weight training programs. This important strength-based exercise works 100% of your legs and posterior chain, and it requires functional stability from 95% of the rest of the muscles on your body. Using proper form, a deadlift will help you get stronger, gain more muscle, and burn more calories than any other single exercise after the squat.
Deadlifts build lower back and hamstring strength, and they teach you to keep your lower back tight against a heavy load, which is critical to avoid injuries when lifting objects from the ground or floor. Unfortunately, this is also why deadlifts have gained a bad reputation for causing a variety of injuries, including spinal injuries and hernias.
In weight lifting, the lower back does not always receive much attention, unless it is injured. Experienced athletes know enough to include deadlifts, stiff legs, good mornings, glute-hamstring raises, and pull-throughs into their routine, but maybe that’s not always enough. That’s where we introduce a game-changing exercise called Reverse Hypers (aka Reverse Hyperextensions) into our training program.
The posterior chain is used in many pulling and lifting movements, so making it a priority to strengthen the lower back will help prevent serious injuries in the future. Aside from those listed above, one exercise that can help strengthen, rehab, and prehab the lower back, is the reverse hyper. Additionally, the reverse hyper strengthens the entire posterior chain including the hips, spinal erectors, glutes, and hamstrings.
Let’s take a few minutes to examine why reverse hypers are so good for you, how to perform reverse hypers, and how to execute the movement without specific reverse hyper equipment.
Grip training: it has to be the most ignored type of training in gyms all over the World. Seriously, how often will you see someone working on their grip in the gym? Almost never, right? No one really seems to care. How much you bench press is all that really matters anyway – which is sarcasm if you didn’t catch the drift. That can all change for you if you start using this list of best grip training exercises along with the additional tips to make the most of incorporating them into your workout.
While grip training does not really have much of an impact on how much you can lift, it still can be important. A lot of people use straps as an excuse not to work on their grip. I mean you can deadlift 600 lbs with straps, so why would you work on your grip? Well, if you are ever planning on entering some type of powerlifting competition, then you will not be allowed to use them.
How to Develop a Strong Grip
The only way to make sure you get a more effective grip is to just work on your forearms with grip training. This can be done with any type of forearm exercise really. When you are doing deadlifts, you should try to never progress without straps.
It may be a pain in the ass not being able to bust past a plateau because your grip keeps giving out, but that is why you have to keep working on it! Don’t be that guy who can deadlift 500 lbs with straps but can only deadlift 3 plates without them.
The dumbbell fly is a cornerstone exercise in strength training and bodybuilding, yet its significance often goes unrecognized. Dumbbell flyes play an instrumental role in developing chest muscles, increasing strength, improving posture, and enhancing overall wellness. Our comprehensive guide will delve into the intricacies of the dumbbell fly, shedding light on its profound impact.
We will provide a guide for performing the dumbbell fly and recognizing muscle activation during the exercise. We’ll also explore using this exercise to increase strength or build muscle. Also, look for our tips on incorporating drop sets into your routine to elevate your dumbbell chest fly sessions to new heights.
When you think of calves, you picture the part of your leg that everyone else can see when you’re wearing shorts. Sure, you can have a huge upper body and quads, but if you have the calves of a 10-year-old boy, then people may often chuckle. To get past walking around with cringe-worthy chicken legs, you better employ a few of these best calf exercises as soon as possible to kickstart your calf growth.
Women prefer to have slim, shapely calves, and these exercises can help the females to accomplish their goals too. Ladies, don’t be afraid of training your calves just like men do… strong calves will even help you to walk better in high heels.
Of course, calf development is highly dependent upon your genetics. You can have very strong lifts, but the insertion points of the calf muscles are all that matters. Judges in bodybuilding competitions often do not put a lot of weight on the calves as a judging factor, but they do matter and are always good to have. And let me tell you, for those guys who think calves aren’t important on the beach, the women DO look, and, yes, they DO judge you for it!
Never fear though, if you do not have aesthetically pleasing, low insertion points, you can still bring your calves up quite a bit.
The overhead press; also known as the press, shoulder press, barbell press, and standing press; is often confused with the military press; and is quite possibly the best upper body exercise known to man. Sure, the bench press gets all the glory, but this is only because it is easier to lift more weight benching than pressing.
In many ways, the overhead press is actually more effective than the bench press at building upper body muscle mass. With the overhead press, we are standing up rather than laying down, which already means a better workout for the back, legs, and core. And seriously, massive, powerful shoulders are far more impressive than a puffy chest.
Whether you are a guy or a girl, it is always an asset to have nice, strong glutes. The main exercise that will help you develop your glutes the most is obviously the squat. Look at those who have the highest squat numbers. ‘Nuff said. However, there are a number of additional exercises such as these 5 best glute exercises and a few honorable mentions, that can get your booty into fighting shape.
How to Get Big, Strong Glutes
As mentioned above, barbell squats are the king of glute exercises. They are without a doubt the single best exercise you can use to develop your glutes. I would even go as far as saying that you would not even need to do another single exercise for them; squats are really that good! However, there are always some other exercises that would be good to experiment with such as this list of best glute exercises.
Before going on to mention the top exercises, let’s take a look at some of the more important details about the glutes.
The calves are a serious problem area for most bodybuilders. You can win or lose a contest depending on whether or not you have put some time into building thick slabs of beef on the back of your legs. Women tend to have calf issues as well; many are sporting the dreaded “cankles”. Both sexes often suffer from skinny little twiggy leg syndrome, sometimes known as “bird legs”. What do these folks have in common? They are probably all making the same calf training mistakes day to day, week to week. So how can we fix it?
To build marvelous calves, you have to put time into training them frequently and from a variety of angles. First and foremost, you can’t make the following 6 calf training mistakes and also hope to build world-class wheels. Train your legs right and you will prosper. Make too many mistakes and they will continue to lag.
If you came to learn how to bench 700 lbs, you are better off reading Werewolf Training for Strength Gains. Although, truth to tell, you will get significantly stronger following this program.
Werewolf training is not designed to get you ripped or “toned” (::barfs::), or even super strong, but you will get stronger anyway. This is much more of a bodybuilding routine than anything else, but with great strength benefits.
Just like you should not skip leg day, you definitely shouldn’t go easy when it comes to your shoulder workout. Not that you need a dedicated “shoulder day” but at least try to hit them from all directions with proper intensity.
Properly building shoulder size and strength makes for a vital part of that lusted-after “V-Shape” body physique. That physique starts with a wide top, and big shoulders make up a wide top.
But despite the importance of training shoulders, they are often done wrong, which makes you vulnerable to injury and a frustrating lack of growth. It is very easy to stumble into a pretty severe injury if you train shoulders wrong.
The neck really is an important muscle. Think about it; unless you are wearing a turtle neck, everyone will see your neck. It can distinguish you from a bodybuilder to just a normal person. Furthermore, next to forearms and calf training in muscles being neglected, neck training is next in line. Actually, I would say that people neglect neck training more than anything else. Many people have never even heard of it or would even know what to do. This is why we are mandated to publish this list of the best neck exercises with guidance for how to build a tree trunk neck.
Serious fitness enthusiasts and athletes want to be bigger, stronger, and leaner. The number one way to make that happen? Train your legs with complex free-weight exercises such as these best leg exercises.
Your legs are the largest group of muscles in your body. They are the foundation of your strength and power. Never will you be able to bench press 315 if you can’t squat 315 first. By training your legs hard, you will be setting yourself up to gain the most progress compared to every other muscle group.
Arnold loved squatting, and look what happened to him. If you want to be Mr. Olympia, a famous Hollywood actor, and the governor of California, you need to squat! This article will give you great direction on training the quad, while our best hamstring exercises will give you some great ideas for supersetting or dividing leg day into a push and pull split.
By training your legs, you will:
Lift the most weight of all muscle groups.
Burn the most calories of all muscle groups.
Form the foundation of your body’s strength chain.
Stimulate the highest growth hormone release through training.
When you start a workout plan, you want to go all-in, but you have to plan smart if you really want to bulk up. Building muscle is about really putting in the work at the gym. If you don’t rest or eat properly though, you could sustain an injury that takes you out of the action for weeks. These injuries can be a serious setback for your muscle building lifestyle.
We compiled the best tips for setting up a workout plan that fits your
schedule and lifestyle. With these tips, you can build muscle fast and keep the
muscle on. Your perfect body is closer than you think – you just might need a
few of these pointers.
How’s your fitness regime going? In summer, most of us take our workouts a bit more seriously. But did you know that taking the right vitamins and minerals can help strengthen bone, build muscle, prevent injury, and aid recovery — ideal whether you’re into cardio or resistance training?
If you’re a regular at the gym, you need to ensure that your body takes in what it needs to perform. Don’t underestimate the importance of nutrition — check out how vitamins and minerals can help you push harder in your next work-out session.(more…)
Here is an interesting guest post by a good friend of Project Swole. He wishes to remain mostly nameless (aside from mentioning his name is Andy), but trust in me he is smart and experienced, and I think this piece will really connect with most Swole readers.
“It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
– Douglas Adams, British author, and humorist
Human beings like habits, as a rule. It’s like that old phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So, if we do something, and it works out ok, we’ll do it again.
Good or bad, habits allow us to predict the future – if I do this (exactly as I did yesterday), I know what will happen. Habits equal proven outcomes. Get on this train at this time in the morning, and I’ll be at work on time.
And if those habits are linked to a reward of some description, anything from a hit of dopamine in the brain by achieving a specific goal or, heaven forbid, one of a human being’s primary rewards – either food or sex, we’ll be back same time tomorrow, guaranteed, with our plate in our hand, as it were.
Habits provide routine, and for us, routinely provides security.
Unfortunately for us, some habits don’t sit well with others, and the rewards each brings actually off-set against one another, which kind of defeats the object. Take, for example, the diabetic cake-shop owner. You get my point. In fact, like the rest of our existence, it’s all just one big juggling act, seeing what works, what doesn’t, what affects something else, and so on, and hoping for a happy medium somewhere along the line.(more…)
Working out without music would be miserable. Workout playlists make time pass faster and help you pump yourself up for the next rep! If you’ve ever tried to workout with the wrong pair of headphones, you know just how frustrating it can be. Whether you hate dealing with a cord in your face or you sweat all over bulky over-the-ear headphones, you know you need something that can handle your level of workout.
It turns out not all headphones are created equal! Some headphones are best used for certain types of workouts, and that’s why you need to learn more about what kind is right for you. Here is a guide to the best headphones for every type of workout! Take your workout to the next level with these tips.
Are you in the gym day in and day out, but feel like you just are not seeing results like you used to? Well, it is completely possible that you might be overtraining, which is a lot more common than you might imagine.
Overtraining means that you are training so hard your body does not have the time to rest and recover, as it normally should. This condition can lead to a slew of negative side effects, like muscle atrophy, motivational loss, and mood swings.
Overtraining can even diminish the results that you worked so hard to earn, so it is imperative that you never let this happen to you. Stick to the following tips and information to ensure that you never over train.(more…)
When it comes to lifting weights, most people have the wrong perception. Weight training does not necessarily equate to bodybuilding and its benefits are not limited to aesthetic muscle growth either. It is a principle that can be used to achieve a variety of goals for both men and women. In fact, all kinds of athletes and sportsmen use different variants of weight training to boost specific aspects of their game. As the general consensus is that the only ones who lift are the people who want to get jacked, let us take a closer look at what else weight training can do to help your health.(more…)
This article is exclusively on the right exercises to improve the strength of motorcyclists and make them better riders. For the record, the exercises will yield other desirable results such as improved metabolic activities, improved body detoxing, reduced unwanted fat, improved sleeping orders, improved looks etc., but these are only peripheral perks. The sole essence is to improve the riding performance of the motorcyclists.
These exercises are great for beginner riders and veteran riders alike. If you think you are not fit enough to ride your bike and you are not motivated enough to try to get into riding shape, you can always visit sellbike.com for quick valuation of your motorbike and then unsubscribe to Project Swole, because those without ambition might not bother wasting their time reading these posts.
Lower Body Conditioning
Your lower body and ‘core’ plays the most crucial role in establishing contact with your motorcycle and balancing you on it, as a rider. Therefore, these exercises will be focused on those parts of your body.
Exercising to improve those parts of your body is essential because, while riding, there’s a need to do a number of things, some of which are the need to shift the weight of your body between opposite pegs as your motorbike tilts from side to side when negotiating bends. There’s also a need to engage your legs as props and shock absorbers while doing an off road, and so on. (more…)
Are you in the gym day in and day out, but feel like you just are not seeing results like you used to? Well, it is completely possible that you might be overtraining, which is a lot more common than you might imagine. 
This article is exclusively on the right exercises to improve the strength of motorcyclists and make them better riders. For the record, the exercises will yield other desirable results such as improved metabolic activities, improved body detoxing, reduced unwanted fat, improved sleeping orders, improved looks etc., but these are only peripheral perks. The sole essence is to improve the riding performance of the motorcyclists. 
