Posts Tagged ‘Weight Training’

P90X Male Weight Loss Testimonials

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Order P90XWith so many at-home cookie-cutter workout routines out there, I figured it would be a great idea to discuss one of the best: P90X. After all, P90X is pretty cheap compared to paying a gym membership and hiring a personal trainer.

Will P90X turn you into a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, an Olympic gymnast, a marathon runner, or a sport-specific athlete? Oh, hell no!

Could P90X possibly get you in the best shape of your life with a minimal initial investment? Could P90X strengthen your body, improve your cardiovascular fitness, help heal nagging injuries, and dial in your 6-pack abs for summer? Oh, hell yes!

Click here to check out all of the Project Swole P90X articles, tips, tricks, hints, and reviews.

P90X Has Transformed These Five Men

Dale Bramall, Altaf Rahamatulla, Kellend Brookover, Nick Baker, and Derek Wheatley all have written testimonials about their motivation for and their journey using P90X workout DVD and their full weight loss program, which is a 90 day program with an exercise DVD, training in how to portion foods, which foods to choose, and a coaching system that has worked very well for all five of these men.

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The P90X Fit Test

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Order P90X

With so many at-home cookie-cutter workout routines out there, I figured it would be a great idea to discuss one of the best: P90X. After all, P90X is pretty cheap compared to paying a gym membership and hiring a personal trainer. This P90X fit test will let you know if you are prepared to try the P90X workout, the Insanity workout, or any of the higher intensity Beach Body programs.

Will P90X turn you into a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, an Olympic gymnast, a marathon runner, or a sport-specific athlete? Oh, hell no!

Could P90X possibly get you in the best shape of your life with minimal initial investment? Could P90X strengthen your body, improve your cardiovascular fitness, help heal nagging injuries, and dial in your 6-pack abs for summer? Oh, hell yes!

Click here to check out all of the Project Swole P90X articles, tips, tricks, hints, and reviews.

The P90X Fit Test

P90X is an intense workout program. Not everyone is able to keep up. Want to make sure you can handle P90X before you commit? Simply use the free P90X Fit Test. It only takes about half an hour to do the test.

While the majority of people will pass, and you can still use P90X if you’re determined, it is recommended that if you fail you try an easier program first. Now here is a quick summary of what to do.

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The Psychology of a Max Effort Attempt

Thursday, February 10th, 2011
Visualization
Visualization

The technique of using visualization in sports training has become increasingly popular in recent years. While some people may question its effectiveness, research has found visualization can be quite successful.

A study conducted by Guang Yue, a psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation, found that non-professional people gained 13.5 percent muscle strength just by carrying out mental exercises. Luckily, you don’t have to earn a psychology degree to understand or practice visualization; read on to learn how you can use this technique to psych yourself up to hit the gym and set a new personal record.

How to Use Imagery and Visualization

Over the years, many professional sportsmen have made use of visualization to achieve great success. For example, world champion golfer Jack Nicklaus, states that he never fires a shot, even while in practice, until he visualizes it clearly in his head. Muhammad Ali is also known to have used varying mental exercises to help improve his performance.

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What is Overtraining?

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

How Do I Know if I am Overtraining?

Over Trained
Over Trained

Overtraining is not good. Your performance and quality of life will suffer if you are chronically overtrained. Beware!

Navigation

How to Detect Overtraining
Physical Signs & Symptoms
Psychological Signs & Symptoms
Impaired Athletic Performance
Immunological Signs & Symptoms
Biochemical Signs & Symptoms
Contributing Factors
How to Avoid Overtraining
How to Recover from Overtraining

There are plenty of signs be aware of when it comes to your body’s signals about pushing yourself too far. Over training your body will cause you to plateau or worse – regress.

The most common sign of overtraining is the total loss of motivation to train, and exhaustion mixed with some the symptoms listed below.
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How to Overhead Squat

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

How to Perform Overhead Squats

How to Overhead Squat
How to Overhead Squat

Among the best exercises for strength, size, speed, and power, are squats – no exceptions. Front squats, jump squats, and overhead squats are all great alternatives to the king of squat exercises – the barbell back squat.

Squatting will help you develop powerful legs and a rigid core, have no doubt, but when we get creative we can mix and match exercises for an even more effective exercise that trains the whole body.

Sometimes we must think about our upper body as well and there is no better way to look and feel jacked, than to build massively strong shoulders. And there is no better way to feel sexy as a female, than to have sleek, strong, healthy shoulders. It is also equally important to build structurally invincible shoulders to proactively protect yourself from injury.

Combine everything together that I’ve just mentioned, and you get the overhead barbell squat. Let’s see how to do them correctly.

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The Taylor Lautner Workout for Twilight: Eclipse

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

The Taylor Lautner Workout

Here we go again! The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is coming out at the end of the month – June 30th if I’m not mistaken, so it is time to examine the developments in the physique of our buddy Taylor Lautner for this, the third installment of the Twilight Saga.

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How to Make Chin Ups Easier

Monday, May 24th, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips

Here’s a tip I read last week when I was reading about pull-ups and chin-ups. Apparently by using this tip, chin-ups will “feel” easier. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you. Check it out:

Rather than thinking about pulling yourself up when you do chin-ups, imagine pulling your elbows down instead. In theory, this will make the exercise seem “easier”.

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A Tip to Improve Your Biceps Training

Monday, March 22nd, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips

Arnold’s Bis

As most of you know, I am not a huge advocate of biceps training. I think the biceps get worked pretty hard in you train your back correctly using pull ups, chin ups, and various rows. See my post on the top 5 best back exercises.

In reality you probably only like 4-6 total sets of biceps training a week. That would be 2 sets for 2 or 3 exercises a week, spread out over the course of the week. Choose your biceps exercises based on my list of the top 5 best biceps exercises.

At least if you are going to train your bis, whether twice a week or with a dedicated arms day consisting of 8 biceps exercises, let me tell you how to get the most out of each rep.

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How to Stay Motivated to Train

Monday, March 15th, 2010

The best way I have found to stay motivated to train, is to keep track of my stats.

Here are some statistics you can use to measure your progress at the gym:

Motivation
Motivation
  • Pictures of your body.
  • Videos of you posing or training.
  • Measurements using a tape measure:
    • Neck
    • Shoulders
    • Chest/Back
    • Arms
    • Waist at belt level
    • Waist at belly button
    • Hips
    • Quads
    • Hamstrings
    • Calves
  • (more…)

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How to Double the Size of Your Calves

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips

Double Your Calf Size with These Two Simple Tips

Big Calves
Big Calves

Calves tend to be a bodybuilding problem spot. Even Arnold used to worry about the size of his calves in relation to the rest of his body.

Here is a simple tip to double the size of your calves in no time:

Since your calves are made up of two muscle groups, you will need to train your calves in a standing and seated position. Most calf exercises can be tweaked to include straight-knee and bent-knee variations. Use them both.

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How to Train with an Arm Injury

Monday, March 8th, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips
Broken Arm
Broken Arm

How to Train with a Busted Arm or Leg

When you hurt one of your arms, you shouldn’t necessarily stop exercising the healthy arm.

A study at the University of Oklahoma suggests that when you train a single arm (or leg), the muscle nerve fibers in the opposite appendage are stimulated. This means you will still get the benefits of Central Nervous System (CNS) adaptations in an injured limb as long as you train the opposite healthy limb, over a short period of time.

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How to Find Your Weak Spot

Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips

Is there an exercise that you hate? For some people it’s squats, for some it’s deadlifts, and for others it could be something that most of us consider fun, like dips or the ab wheel.

An Entire Exercise Could Be Your Weak Spot

Weak Spot
Find Your Weak Spot

If you any any particular exercise because it is hard, awkward, or uncomfortable, then you have probably found your weak spot.

Depending on the exercise, the main muscle used and/or the ancillary muscles used, are probably weak points for you. There is likely a muscle imbalance, or at least a weak muscle that should be prioritized for a couple months.

The best exercise you can do to bring up your weak point, is the exercise that you hate.

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How to Train Your Back Muscles

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips

Trying to build a rippling, powerful, V-shaped back?

Trying to max out rear-view sexiness for bikini season?

If you said “Yes!” then you should use these tips for isolating your back muscles when training with pull-ups, pull-downs, and rows.

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When to Choose Dumbbells, Barbells, and Machines

Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Swole Fitness Tips

There are so many choices out there for exercise equipment, sometimes it is hard to know what to choose. Free weights are always best – barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, odd objects, and even bodyweight. Machines have their place, but they don’t usually belong in your main training routine.

So how can you choose your equipment based on your training history, goals, and injuries?

Exercise Equipment
Exercise Equipment

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A Killer HIRT Circuit by CrossFit’s Willie Albert

Friday, February 12th, 2010

At a body weight of 180 lbs, Willie Albert of Iron Will Strength and Fitness in Ottawa Ontario Canada performs 10 total rounds of barbell back squat with 445 lbs, standing military press with 135 lbs, and barbell deadlift with 425 lbs. He was attempting to complete this circuit for time and finished in 4:35.

For all you math geniuses, that would be a total of 10500 lbs of work in less than 5 minutes. He’s not lifting elite powerlifting numbers, but to complete 10 rounds of this in 4 and a half minutes is impressive to me. I bet if he were going for a 1 rm, he’d be squatting and pulling in the 600s, and would be shoulder pressing 200+.

Keep reading to view his video…

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Full Body Fat Loss Workout Logs in an Excel Spreadsheet

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Now you can download the Full Body Plus HIIT for Fat Loss workout routines in Excel spreadsheet format. You can use these files to print out the routine and take it to the gym on a clipboard, keep track of your progress on the computer, or both.

The Full Body Plus HIIT Fat Loss Routine for Men can be found here:

Click this link to go to the download section of the post so you can download your spreadsheet!

The Full Body Plus HIIT Fat Loss Routine for Women can be found here:

Click this link to go to the download section of the post so you can download your spreadsheet!

I made some changes to the programs as well. Going through them I realized that there will almost always be time to complete those optional sets at the end of the routine, so I made the “e” exercises mandatory and added an additional abdominal exercise to make a super-set.

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Fat Loss for Men: A 7 Day Full Body Routine Plus HIIT

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Build Muscle, Burn Fat, Get Ripped

Originally posted: 1/27/10
Updates:
2/1/10 updated routine, added Excel spreadsheet workout logs)
3/8/10 added example HIIT routines for days 2, 4, and 6.

Fat Loss for Men
Fat Loss for Men

Many of you are asking for a full body workout routine to burn fat, so here you go.

I have even customized the program for both men and women.

You can skip the details and go straight to the routines if you wish:

The Program

We are integrating 3 full body training sessions with 3 HIIT routines and taking the 7th day off. Since the goal is fat loss, we are striving to add some muscle mass, maintain strength, and burn as many calories as possible.

This is accomplished by staying in a slightly higher rep range than we would normally use for strictly strength training, while using super-sets for most of our exercises. We add an optional set to the end of each workout in case you are able to finish the workout early.

Major compound exercises are rotated to prioritize a different muscle group on each of the 3 training sessions each week.

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Fat Loss for Women: A 7 Day Full Body Routine Plus HIIT

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Build Muscle, Burn Fat, Get Ripped

Originally posted: 1/26/10
Updates:
2/1/10 updated routine, added Excel spreadsheet workout logs)
3/8/10 added example HIIT routines for days 2, 4, and 6.

Fat Loss for Women
Fat Loss for Women

Many of you are asking for a full body workout routine to burn fat, so here you go.

I have even customized the program for both men and women.

You can skip the details and go straight to the routines if you wish:

The Program

We are integrating 3 full body training sessions with 3 HIIT routines and taking the 7th day off. Since the goal is fat loss, we are striving to add some muscle mass, maintain strength, and burn as many calories as possible.

This is accomplished by staying in a slightly higher rep range than we would normally use for strictly strength training, while using super-sets for most of our exercises. We add an optional set to the end of each workout in case you are able to finish the workout early.

Major compound exercises are rotated to prioritize a different muscle group on each of the 3 training sessions each week.

(more…)

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NSCA and ACSM Proclaims Strength Training is Good for Kids

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Strength Training is Good For Kids!

It’s official! After many long years of arguing with fools, I am validated! Based on hundreds of studies and thousands of hours of research, the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) have finally taken the position that age-appropriate resistance training is not only good for kids, but recommended.

Strong Kid
Strong Kid

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Werewolf Training 2: A Weightlifting Routine to Gain Strength

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Werewolf Training
Werewolf Training

Gain Strength

Originally posted: 12/31/09
Updated: 1/20/10 (update rest time on HIRT circuits, added Excel spreadsheet workout logs)

This training routine is designed for you to gain strength. That’s it.

So you have already been through two or three Werewolf Training for Muscle Gain cycles. You gained 5-10 pounds of muscle in that time and you got a little stronger. You are psyched about your progress but you’re a little bored with the program.

It is time to change up your training a little bit, but you know you can’t jump right into a strict fat loss phase, or you risk losing most of your new muscle. What to do? What to do?

Use this menu to skip to:

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