Lift Like a Girl: Be More, Not Less
If you're about to start strength training for the first time, or you're getting back into it after a long layoff, you may think being labeled a "beginner" is not desirable. And you'd be wrong. Being a strength training beginner is awesome. The first several months of training is when linear progress is at its peak, and it’s the period when most people build muscle and burn fat simultaneously. …
[Read more...] about 7 Things That Happen When You Start Strength Training (And a Word of Caution)
Two great exercises that will build a strong, resilient back (and posterior shoulders and biceps) are the barbell row and chin-up. The problem, however, is that these two exercises are frequently performed incorrectly, so trainees don’t reap the greatest benefits possible from the movements. How to Perform Barbell Rows Barbell rows are a dying exercise in most gyms. You rarely see anyone …
[Read more...] about How to Correctly Perform Barbell Rows and Chin-ups
We’re all blithely aware of the joke that Monday is international bench press day in gyms around the world. You commonly see a couple guys training together – one using less than stellar form trying to bench press more than he can properly handle while his workout partner “spots” him while chanting, “It’s all you, bro! It’s all you! I’m barely touching the bar!” (Important service announcement: if …
[Read more...] about How to Perform The Bench Press And Standing Press (And Why You Should)
You perform the deadlift movement every day, and probably don’t even realize it. Picking up a loaded laundry basket off the floor. Picking up your kid. Picking up a box to load in your SUV because you’re the friend who has an SUV and you inevitably get asked to help everyone you know move their crap. Because you deadlift every day, in some fashion, doesn’t it stand to reason that …
[Read more...] about How to Deadlift (And Why Everyone Should)
Everyone should train the squat movement, in some form. The squat movement is as functional as exercise can get. You squat to sit in a chair or get in, and out of, a vehicle. You squat to the toilet. You squat to do lots of things. Like the book Everybody Poops – well, everybody squats. It’s a basic human movement pattern – one that can be trained, loaded, and progressed in numerous ways. …
To improve your health, build a leaner body, or establish new habits ... Sometimes the solution is to work harder. Sometimes the solution is to simply work smarter. Sometimes what you really need, is to do both. Smarter may mean being more efficient with your efforts. Or doing fewer things, but doing them better. Harder may mean putting more effort into your actions, spending more …
[Read more...] about When to Work Harder, How to Work Smarter, and When to do Both
It must be human nature. As a species we’re quite adept at taking something good and, in an effort to extract greater rewards from it, we manipulate it, mold it, stretch it to become a more extreme version of itself. And we screw it all up in the process, losing sight of what made it good in the first place. Healthy Eating Making better food choices is good. Taking eating well to an extreme …
[Read more...] about Good Things That Get Ruined When Taken to Extremes
Women who fail to achieve results from strength training usually fit into one of five categories. Pay attention to these common mistakes and discover where you may fall, and the corrections to make. The “I’m going to do ALL THE THINGS” trainee Here’s how a conversation with this type of trainee usually goes. She says something like, “The program isn’t working because I’m not getting stronger,” …
[Read more...] about 5 Mistakes Women Make With Strength Training (And How to Correct Them)
