Build Muscle Mass, Gain Strength, and Lose Fat with Project Physique » Training Strategies

Functional Training with Dynamic Workouts- Part 2

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:41:21 +0000

If this part of the dynamic workout series, you’ll be focusing on goal directed training using the various exercise modalities we discussed. As I stated in the last part, you can use iether of the following ot build muscle and/or lose fat.

1) copy and paste from first article

Let’s take a look at each training method. You’ll be provided with guidelines on how you can use each ot achieve your body transformation and fitness goals.

Free Weights and Machines

If you know about the law of specificity (link), you’ll know the importance of goal-oriented training. For building muscle, resistance lifted over and over again through various means of progressive overload is all what matters. Resistance could be body weight or free weights.

1) Focus on 1-2 compound exercise each workout.

2) Add 2-3 supplementary isolation exercises each workout

3) Use different rep schemes, 5-8 or 8-12 rep ranges.

4) Train 3-5 days a week with body part splits or full body workouts.

5) Employ different progressive overload methods (check out progressive overload link)

Explain compound exercises and how it works, more muscle and importance of strength foundation. exercise variations

for examples of program, specifically geared for building muscle, link to 5×5, 3×5, kelly bagget minimalist strength training articles, db training series

For fat loss, combine a series of 4-6 exercises, both compound and isolation in a circuit. This brings a high intensity focus to the workouts and keeps workouts short, brief, and intense. See HIIT and weight lifting for fat loss series. For example, combine 2 lower body and 2 upper body exercise (1 compound and 1 isolation each) with an ab movement into one circuit. Here’s an example,

dumbbell squats 12 reps ( lower body compound)

barbell curls 12 reps (upper body isolation)

leg press 12 reps ( lower body isolation)

dumbbell bench press 12 reps(upper body compound)

v-up 15 reps(abs)

Do each exercise one after the other without restig for longer than 20 seconds. That’s one circuit. rest 2 minutes in between circuits. Do 4 circuits. And this is an effective high intensity strength workout to lose fat.

Body weight Exercise

Traditionally, most people think bodyweight exercises are for endurance but you can also train for strength and muscle. Check out how Ross did it, link. The key is using additional loading and weight on the easy exercises that you can do; pushups and chinups by wearing a weight vest or attach a dip belt. This is part of what progressive overload is all about. Make your workouts harder over time. You can use more different body weight exercises. There are dozens of different variations of the basic movements.

pushups- elevated, ring, fist, finger, explosive, hindu, handstand pushups

chinups- rings, wide grip, close grip, ropes/towel, muscle-ups, one-arm, clap pllups, side to side pullups, static hang/frenchies

squats- single leg squats (pistols), lunges

check out body weight training primer

Ways to structure a body weight workout

1) String them into a circuit, HIIT

2) Straight sets

3) Density using a set time for each exercise

4) Again, alternate upper and lower body, abs with 4-6 exercises

Bodyweight and Weights Combination

Additionally, you can combine body weight and weights together. Chinups, pullups, dips, and pushups make a nice addition to free weight compounds. If the body weight is too easy, use a weight belt or weight vest to provide more weight. Follow the same rules as the weights. Here’s an excellent routine for the upper body with weights and bodyweight movements,

weighted dips 10 reps

weighted chinups 10 reps

weighted crunches 15 reps

pushups with weight vest 20 reps

dumbbell rows 10 reps

Now here’s a lower body routine,

body weight squats with weight vest 15 reps

body weight lunges with weight vest 12 reps each side

standing calf raises with wieght vest 20 reps

leg curls 15 reps

Rules

Again, you can pair upper and lower body exercises together into a circuit for fat loss or do straight sets for building muscle, strength, and conditioning.

You’re not limited to training a certain way or using a certain piece of equipment or building muscle and losing fat. The variety is there. The options are plentiful. The possibilities exist. It’s just a matter of you deciding how you will train to achieve your body transformation goals. Pick one or two exercise modalities and train hard and smart.

So don’t be afraid of coming up with your workouts as long as you stick to the fundamentals of training principles. Experiment with an exercise or two for a while. Measure the results. Test it out. Drop what doesn’t work and stick with what works.

Functional Training with Dynamic Workouts- Part 1

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:40:12 +0000

Walk into any gym and what is the typical weight workout you see? Probably some guy stacking 2 plates on each side of the barbell getting ready to bench 3 sets of 12. Then he’ll probably head over to the pec dec machine do a set or two of very light weight setting for 20 reps, followed by a few sets of dumbbell curls, tricep pushdowns, and some shoulder extensions on the cable machines. He’ll probably end the workout on the treadmill of bike for some cooling down.

Now this workout is fine if you just want to train the beach and mirror muscles, the chest, biceps, shoulders, but this type of workout can get boring very easily. And boredom is probably, in my opinion, one of the motivator killers of training. It’s also a one-dimensional way of training that doesn’t transfer training effects well to other athletic endeavors.

Ask yourself, is that how you’re currently training? Are you just going through the motions of training and winging your workouts? Because half of the people in the gym are doing just that. I’m going to say there are much funner ways of trianing. More dynamic ways of training that can be productive and effective while being fun to help you reach your body transformation, fat loss, and muscle gaining goals.

You can use different exercise modalities and different ways of training to keep your workouts fresh and force you to be more alert. Exercise modalities means you can train in many different ways: weights/strength training, body weight exercises, kettlebells, sandbags, running, biking, and other forms of cardio. Each can be used to achieve certain fitness goals and objectives to building muscle, improving conditioning, getting fitter, and losing weight. You can train lying down, sitting up, standing, bending over, and even suspending on rings and ropes.

Who says you have to stick with just jogging and lifting weights to build muscle and lose fat? Conventional wisdom doesn’t necessarily bring the best results. You can train in these different positions using machines, barbells, dumbbells, free weights, for different compound and isolation exercises. Expand your horizons for fitness and realize that you can train more dynamically with variety and to have more fun working out.

You can use bodyweight exercises. You can run, sprint, or jog. You can use resistance bands. You can climb ropes. You can combine weights with bodyweight movements. Weights with bands. You can jump rope. You can even flip tires, push cars, drag sleds, climb rocks and poles. So dynamic workouts just means you can use different equipment, tools, and ways of training if you’re creative. Just look at professional strongmen and recreational lifters 50 years ago. They didn’t have gyms with treadmills and ellipticals lined in in a perfect line back then. They found whatever heavy things they could and lifted it over and over again. Sandbags, rocks, logs, sleds, piles of rocks, wood stacks, back packs, tires, carts, shovels, etc.

And the point being is that you can train in a variety of ways. There are 4 main exercise modalities:

1) weights, includes machines and free weights

2) body weight exercise

3) combination of body weight exercises and free weights exercises

4) distance work, includes high intensity interval cardio, biking, running, jogging, sprinting, swimming, elliptical, walking, rowing, long and short distances.

You can accomplish your body transformation goals using a variety of the above exercise modalities. Variety is good. Nature loves variety, if you take action and train. The law of specificity says your training has to be specific to your goals. And building muscle requires resistance training. Your body is the resistance. Further, you can also combine body weight and free wieghts to build muscle. Additionally, you can use it to burn fat and lose weight, especially if you apply high intensity protocol to the workouts.

For example, you know heavy weights build muscle. Try a handstand pushup between 2 chairs for a deeper stretch on the bottom position. The movement produces tremendous tension on your upper back, shoulders, and triceps. You will build muscle if you’re able to crank out multiple sets of 12 reps with handstand pushups, better than if you were to do 3 sets of 12 on the bench press. And try doing a set of single legged squats while holding a 50 pounds dumbbell. You’ll build more muscle, strength, balance, and flexibility than leg presses or leg extensions.

And you don’t have to use straight sets, doing one set after another with weight workouts, You can combine a bunch of exercises together for a full body workout into circuits. Great for fat loss and building endurance while improving conditioning. Try some rest-pause sets, drop sets, strip sets, compound supersets, or other shock techniques for increasing the intensity of your workouts (link to shock article).

With distance work, you can run short intervals or long intervals (link to HIIT for fat loss) rather than a slow jogging session for an hour. You can even combine running with body weight exercises at a football park with a chinup bar or monkey bars. For example, go to your local track or park and run really fast for half a mile, then drop and do a set of 20 pushups, 10 pullups, and 10 bench dips, rest for 2 minutes by walking and take deep breaths. Then repeat 3 more times for a total of 4 circuits. The entire workout can be done in under 2 minutes. This higher intensity can help you lose more weight as it elevates metabolism several days after the workout so you end up burning more overall calories than if you were to just jog for an hour.

The main point is that there are plenty of different strategies and methods of training and working out to reach your fitness and body transformation goals if you use all your resources. For the next part, you’ll take a look at how you can use each modality to reach your goals, then in the final article of this series, I’ll list some sample programs and guidelines.

Strength and Conditioning Fitness: A Primer- Part 2

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:26:20 +0000

In the last article, I mentioned there are 3 formats of strength and conditioning: intervals, GPP, and density. There’s really no correct or right way to train when it comes to conditioning.

Intervals

Alternate exercise of high intensity (work phase) with exercise of low intensity (called active rest) using a high intensity interval training approach. Check out the HIIT article series for more info, link. The most obvious and accessible way of applying HIIT intervals training is to run, bike, or swim. For example,

run fast at almost your top speed for 30 seconds (period of high intensity exercise)

walk or jog very slowly for 30 seconds (active rest)

repeat 6 times for 6 interval circuits.

The entire interval workout takes around 6 minutes to finish. The result is faster speed times, working at a higher quality than if you were to run long distances since average speed slows down. The benefit of increased metabolism, anaerobic and aerobic endurance increases and you lose more fat as metabolism spikes up for up to 48 hours right after the workout. You condition the body to work out harder and longer the next time around.

Here’s an example of longer intervals going for distance instead,

run fast for 1/2 mile, 800 meters

walk/slowly jog half the time it takes you to run that 1/2 mile, so if it took you 4 minutes to run 1/2 mile, the active rest phase here will last 2 minutes. You would walk or slowly jog for 2 minutes as rest. Here you are using a 2:1 work to rest ratio. You can do a 1:1 ratio.

bike 400 meters, bike slowly for 400 meters, repeat 12 times

Intervals also can be used with free weights and bodyweight exercises. String 4-6 exercises together into a circuit. Remember that interval training requires high intensity exercise with active rest.

Guidelines for body wieght and weights for HIIT

1) Pick 4-6 exercises, alternate upper/lower/abs

2) Do 8-15 reps per exercise

For example, here’s a full body weight and body weight circuit routine with intervals,

full body- deadlift x 8

upper body- bench press x10

upper body- chinups x12

abs- v-ups x15

lower body- body weight lunges x 12 both legs

lower body- leg curls x 12

Either do body weight only, weights only, or combine the two with 6 exercises

General Physical Preparedness, GPP

General physical preparedness training will help you train harder and more frequently as your body adapts to increases in volume and training load, while enhancing all aspects of training. Again, you can integrate body weight and free weights movement into a GPP drill. Variety is also important.

burpees x 15 reps

crunches x 25 reps

pushups x 20 reps

knee hug x 12 reps

chinups x 12 reps

non sports specific

give guidelines

Density

take two examples from above

You see there is much overlap between the 3 formats of strength and conditioning.

Strength and Conditioning Fitness: A Primer- Part 1

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:25:58 +0000

Generally, strength and conditioning refers to exercise of different intensities and modalities with a variety of equipment aimed at a variety of fitness, performance, and body composition goals. The term, strength and conditioning, encompasses all the different types of ways you can train at high and low intensities. The transition is that you work your way up to high intensity exercising from low intensity workouts.

You condition your body workout after workout to use heavier weights, work out longer, and ultimately work out harder. And this translates into all kinds of exercises : running, biking, lifting weights, swimming, and body weight exercising. So the main goal of strength and conditioning is ot build towards high intensity exercise with various exercise modalities.

The result is increased strength qualities (strength endurance, absolute strength, anaerobic strength, aerobic and anaerobic cardio fitness). And this would help you lose more fat nad build more muscle. If you improve your conditioning, you’re able to take advantage of oxygen-debt HIIT for more fat loss. You’re able to handle heavier wieghts and work each muscle more often to create more microtrauma, more hypertrophy with an increased work capacity. So these fitness benefits are compounded as you see the value in strength and conditioning training.

So strength and conditioning is really a total approach to training where the ultimate goal is toget fitter and in better shape, lose fat, build muscle, and ultimately change the way you look physically and your outlook on the fitness lifestyle. It’s also a more fun way of training. You don’t have to stick to one type of exercise. There’s no rule that says you must do this or do that to lose fat and build muscle.

For athletes, they may use sports-specific strength and conditioning workouts to be more explosive and get stronger. For boxers, they will use intervals in their boxing drills and speed work to mimic real life boxing fight. Ask any fighter or combat athlete when they lost what was one of their top reasons and they’d replied wishing they had more conditioning to last through the fight.

For example, a boxer who fights in 3 minute rounds will use 3 minute intervals in his training to match the intensity and time of the fight. He could combine a series of punch-out bag drills, body weight explosive exercises, jumping rope, and running to train various aspects of strength and conditioning to get ready for his fight. The workout, which combines sports-specific skill training with non-sports training, would look something like this,

punch-out bag drills for 30 seconds, do high speed punches all out for 30 seconds without resting, mix in straight punches, jabs, and hooks,

then rest 30 seconds,

repeat the bag drill 6 times, total of 3 minutes

burpees 10 reps, rest 30 seconds, repeat 4 times, rest 1 minute,then

go out and run a half mile as fast as you an

Each phase of this strength and conditioning workout takes approximately 3 minutes to complete, 3 minute intervals. These workouts are short but intense. The above workout should take you no longer than 12 minutes to finish.

And if you’re ever bored of your current workouts, dig into the strength and conditioning arsenal and find some other types of workouts and exercises you may like. You can train to lose fat. You can build muscle without using conventional weights.

insert video of s and c workout

There are 3 general formats for a strength and conditioning workout,

1) Intervals

2) General Physical Preparedness, GPP

3) Density

In the next article, we’ll take a look at what exercises are involved in each format, some examples of strength and conditioning workouts and how you can come up with your own strength and conditioning routines.

Build Bigger Biceps

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:57:53 +0000

Picture your arms, specifically your biceps busting the short sleeve of an extra large t shirt as you give a double back biceps pose. Chances are if you’re reading this article, you may not have the massive biceps and peaked yt with some time, dedication, and lots of effort and training you can beef up tose flat bis to impress Jane from next door and turn heads at the beach

Bicep training seems to be a lost art one by since the days of Larry Scott and Vince Gironda. Walk into the gym and rarely will you see a guy with biceps that stand out. Most guys who train the “mirror” muscles will do dozens of high repetition sets of concentration curls, barbell curls, dumbbell curls, you name it. Endless sets and reps of curls and they still don’t have biceps that make you jealous.

Doing curls alone just isn’t going to cut it. If only curls worked by itself, we’d all be sporting 20 inches pythons. There are 4 sure-fire tactics to help you build bigger biceps. Use them in your bodybuilding program and you’ll guarantee yourself results. Biceps can be a very stubborn muscle group if you don’t know how to train it and make it grow the right way.

Eat More

Eating big to get big still holds true, true for any body part of muscle group. The body likes to grow proportionately with weight gain. Rarely will you see a 225 lbs plus at 10% bf or under with small biceps. From thousands of empirical case studies and evidence and bodybuilding observations, it’s estimated that for every 10 lbs of muscle you gain, you will gain a 3/4 to an inch on your arms. And since about 2/3 of your arm is triceps, that translates into a 1/3 to 1/4 inch on your biceps for every 10 lbs of muscle gain.

You can’t grow bigger muscles if you’re not gaining muscle weight. And to gain muscle weight you’ll have to eat a lot. And you want to gain weight if you’re not eating enough for that calories surplus.

Get Stronger

What makes your muscles grow in the first place? What is the stimulus or drives of growth for any muscles of the body? Microtrauma, and to create microtrauma you have to lift weights. The connection between muscle growth and light weight boils down to how much microtrauma you can create in a given workout. The stronger you are, the heavier the weights you can handle, and the more microtrauma you create for muscle growth.

Now, in science speak, this process isn’t exact. Take a look at the real world. How many guyys you see who can bench 400 plus pounds and have small arms and chest? On the contrary, have you seen a 130 lbs. kidwith hardly any muscle deadlift or squat 500 plus pounds?

Greater strength, more muscle built. You have to have the strength foundation to build more muscle. More muscle results in greater strength gains. Greater strength gains results in more muscle built. One condition would not exist without the other. Even pure neural training with powerlifting techniques and programs have their limit.

So the bottom line is that if you want big biceps muscles, you have to get stronger. If you can strap 2 45 lbs plates to your waist and do 10 reps of chinups or pullups on multiple sets, do you think you will still have small biceps?

Focus on Back Exercises

This goes back to getting stronger with chinups, pullups, and deadlifts. In all back lifts, your biceps come heavily into play. Take the barbell row for example. When you pull the bar up to your stomach, you recruit your biceps, especially if you’re using an underhand grip. Any movement that involves you to pull your body or a weight resistance up recuits the bicep muscles, like chinups, pullups, deadlifts.

Work up to using heavy weights with these compound back movements and your biceps will grow,

Here are some of the best pulling exercises,

barbell and dumbbell rows, both overhand and underhand grip

chinups and pullups, do them weighted, on rings and on ropes

upright rows,

deadlift

Exercise variations, include curls

Putting it together

So now you know that you have to get stronger and use compound back lifts that involves both the back and biceps in a pulling motion, you need to know how to put together a bicep routine with that basic framework. Here are the rules,

Put focus on barbell or dumbbell rows, chose 1 main movement, 4 sets of 5-8 reps, then pick 2 supplementary exercises like barbell and db curls, 2-3 sets of 10-12,

if setting a body part split routine, work the back and biceps together on its own day.

focus on weight progression (link) and give example,

this covers all bases of strength foundation and rest pause (link to shock article) and post fatigue, give examples of both, use shock techniques only once a week,

use exercise variations to rotate different exercise when you hit a plateau

Eventually your back and biceps will get bigger and stronger. Your work capacity will increase. This means that you can work biceps more often for even more growth. The results are compounded.

Build Bigger Chest Muscles

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:57:04 +0000

Building a bigger chest seems to be a problem for a lot of people who have much stronger triceps or shoulders. Often the tris and shoulders overpower the chest muscles in compound pushing lifts like bench press and dumbbell press. If you’re tricep dominant, those muscles will tire out first before your chest muscles are sufficiently stimulated.

Instead, your pecs are under-stimulated. It’ll always be lagging behind your shoulder and triceps. And that’s not what you want to happen if you’re looking to build a bigger chest.

One solution is to use the post fatigue super sets (see shock article). Using post-fatigue super sets, you’ll combine a compound and isolation exercise together. You’ll do the compound lift first, then apply a chest-specific isolation lift that limits the shoulders and triceps to further work your chest in creating more microtrauma. The compound lift will leave some fresh muscle fibers needing more work.

The idea is to recruit more muscle fibers. More recruitment and activation means ore muscles worked, more growth. The compound lift will leave some fresh muscle fibers needing more work. And that’s where the isolation exercise comes in.

Combine a low rep and high rep approah. For example,

flat barbell bench press 3 sets of 6-8 reps

dumbbell flies 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Do one set of bench press first, then immediately more to dumbbell flies, without taking more than 20 seconds of rest, and crank out a set of 10-12 reps. Do 2-4 sets of this once a week and you will start seeing better gains.

Mix this with other body parts of do it on its own chest day, if you’re on a body part split program.

Use heavier weights

weight progression but cycle weights down and up

ex of weight cycling

recommend picking up pavel PTP for examples of different weight and load progression schemes with cycling, includes linear cycling, step cycling, ladder cycling

The approach of cycling weights is old school lifting, getting back to basics. A lot of muscle and strength is basically built through generations with this type of lifting.

Use dumbbells instead of babells

Exercise variation is important. Even with using weight progression as a means of progressive overload, there will come a time where you will stop getting stronger and plateau. The solution would be to swap exercises.

Use different exercises or variations of the main movements. Use dbs instead of barbells. You can do bench preses with 2 dumbbells instead of an olympic barbell. Here’s a list of the alternate list,

db bench press in flat, incline, decline positions

single arm db press- increases core balance and stresses the stabilizer muscles. You will find you will be able to handle more weight.

Build Bigger Leg Muscles

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:55:14 +0000

More than half of all lifters and gym-goers never train or work their legs in the gym. If your primary goal is to build massive amounts of muscle, then you have got to train your legs, specifically your entire lower body. This includes abs, lower back, quads/thighs, hamstrings, and calves. The single squat movement works over 200 muscles in the body. You’ll be neglecting half your body if you don’t train your legs. Build muscle in your legs and you’ll bump up in body weight.

Leg training also stimulates more natural growth hormones, HGH release, and that allows you to build more muscle all over your body. This is where the idea of squats building biceps comes from.

Don’t be one of those guys in the gym who only does bench press and curls. Train your legs. Train your entire body as a single unit. So here are 3 rules to pay attention to if you want to build bigger legs and gain lower body strength,

1) Use Compound Exercises

These exercises include squats, deadlift, and their variations. Here’s a list of what I believe to be the most effective lower body exercises for building muscle and strength,

squats, hack squats, db squats, box squats, front squat, single leg squat

deadlift, stiff leg deadlift, rack deadlift, sumo deadlift, trap-bar deadlift, suitcase deadlfit, dumbbell deadlift

glute ham raises

leg press

Your leg routine, if you’re relatively new to lifting, should focus on either the squat or deadlift.

2) Progressive Overload

Like any exercise or workouts you do, you have to progressively overload your body and make your body work harder and harder over a period of time (see progressive overload article). The best way to do this is to use repetition and weight progression. Let’s take the squat as an example,

Starting weight at 150 lbs or squat for 2 sets of 5-8 reps. Your goal is to get both sets of 8 reps using rep progression first with 5 reps being the minimum, then increase the weight by 5 lbs through weight progression and work your way back up to 8 reps for both sets.

workout 1- 150 lbs 8, 6

workout 2- 150 lbs 8, 7

workout 3- 150 lbs 8, 8, you did 2 sets of 8, now add 5 lbs or the next workout

workout 4- 155 lbs 8, 6

workout 5- 155 lbs 8, 7

workout 6- 155 lbs 8, 8

So in 6 workouts you went from 150 lbs with 8, reps to 155 lbs with 2 sets of 8. This is just a hypothetical example and your workouts might not go as smoth since you might hit a stumbling block and it might take you a little longer than 5 workouts to add 5 lbs to the bar. But the idea is the same. Use both weight and repetition progression for your lower body workouts.

Repetition Schemes

And you can take the progressive overload methods and use it with multiple rep ranges. If you’ve just starting out, go with 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps or 10-12 rep schemes. Then when you’ve adapted to the exercises, us ea heavier 5-8 or even 3-5 rep range.

A common but basic program used to build up the legs and lower body is the 5×5 program (link to 5×5 article) since each day focuses on squats and deadlift.

Build a Thicker and Wider Back

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:54:24 +0000

Most casual lifters don’t spend the same amount of time training their back then they do their chest and biceps. And that’s a big mistake if you want a proportional muscular body because an impressive wide and thick back..It increases your chest circumference measurements and gives you that “power” look from the side and back. You don’t have to walk around flaring your arms out anymore if you have a decent-sized back to match your chest proportionately. So learn how to train it correctly and build a bigger back.

The back muscles comprise of 3 main sections; Latissimus Dorsi (middle back), Trapezius, and Rhomboids. Together they are responsible for the pulling motion of resistance through your arms as the primary extension involved. So when you do a dumbbell or barbell rows, you are really pulling the weight over a distance. Your biceps activate and contract to initiate the pulling movement over that distance and the back bears the brunt of the load as the primary mover, when the exercise is done correctly.

So training the back and biceps isn’t mutually exclusive. This is why it’s recommended you build up to using the big poundages with back compound lifts if you want bigger biceps (see bigger biceps article). And if you’ve paid attention to the body part series, you will know to focus on compound lifts.

There are 2 different types of back exercises, categorized into vertical pull and horizontal pull back exercises.

Vertical Pull

Vertical pull are exercises that involves you to pull the weight while standing up or hanging in a vertical position from a bar or lever. The exercises include

upright rows

chinups and pullups

lateral pulldown

deadlift

You will find that you’re able to handle less weight with these movements because you have no platform or weight bench to support your body. Your body is the support itself. Deadlifts, chinups and pullups can also be considered full body movements.

Horizontal Pull

Horizontal pulling exercises require bending over or lying on a support, like a weight bench, or being suspended horizontally with rings, so the torso is parallel or near parallel to the floor. Exercises include,

dumbbell and barbell rows

t-bar rows

bench rows

body rows on rings

These 8 exercises are the primary horizontal pull and vertical pull lifts for getting a bigger and thicker back. Your back routine should consist primarily of these main movements or variations of these lifts for building a strong and muscular back. Use different rep schemes within the bodybuilding ranges, 5-8 reps and 8-12 reps. Alternate reps of 5-8, 8-10, and 10-12 reps and even going heavier to 3-5 reps on occassion through different training cycles.

Use shock techniques (see shock article). Use controlled and good form. Lift explosively on the concentric or “up” phase but keep it controlled on the eccentric or “down” phase of any back lift. Focus on squeezing and contracting your back muscles as you pull up.

Progressive Overload

The back responds very well to heavy weights. Look up to barbell rowing with good form using 300 lbs or deadlifting 400 lbs and I guarantee you’ll have a big back to match your strength.

How to Lose Body Fat with the 100 Burpees Challenge

admin — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:39:40 +0000

If your goal is to lose fat, improve fitness level, get fit, look no further than the workout I’m about to reveal. You might be struggling to find a good exercise training method for how to lose body fat in the most efficient way possible.

The most simple exercise method, from my experience, to lose fat easily is to tackle the 100 burpees challenge, recenlty popularized and “rediscovered” by the highly regarded trainer Ross Enamait from Rosstraining.com. The challenge is short, brief, and lasts no more than 10-15 minutes. You can definitely get a lung-busting, fat burning workout in a short amount of time without all the high tech exercise machines and equipment you see at the gym. Weight loss is easy if you make it out to be easy.

Burpees

Burpees are one of many different body weight exercises that can be done anywhere to lose fat. They are highly effective at targeting your fat burning zone since you’ll be training in intervals. We’ll apply high intensity interval training with body weight movements like burpees for maximum fat loss. If you doubt the effectiveness of body weight movements, then do this experiment.

Drop down on the floor and crank out pushups, chinups, and crunches and situps back to back without any rest periods of pauses between each exercise, all to positive failure (failure means do as many continuous reps as you can until you can’t do another one). Better yet, set a time of 10 minutes for each exercise and do as many reps as you can in the alloted time. Break it down into sets. Minimize the rest to no more than 30 seconds between sets. I bet you’ll have a much different view of simple bodyweight workouts.

Here’s a step-by-step rundown of executing a burpee:

1) Stand erect with both feet (in shoulder width position) planted on the floor, squat down with your fingers touching the floor.

2) Kick your legs back as if you’re doing a squat thrust and put palms on the floor. Now you’re in the up or top position of a pushup. Keep your back straight.

3) Now do a pushup. Press down until upper arms are parallel or near parallel to the floor, then press up. That’s one pushup.

4) As you press up, kick your feet back to the starting position from step 1. Now squat up and jump in one dynamic and fluid motion. Just as high as you can in place. You may either keep your arms by your side or raise them to make this portion harder.

5) Land on your feet. Do not land on your heels. Rather, shift the weight to your toes and front for your feet. This is one rep. Then return to squatting position in step 1 again and repeat the movement until desired number of reps.

The entire burpee movement has to be dynamic and very fluid without stopping along the way. However, if this is your first time learning the exercise, practice it slowly first a few times until you get the hang of it. Then speed it up.

You can even bring your arms overhead rather than keeping them by your side to make the exercise more difficult.

Quality over Quantity

Always think quality over quantity. When all else fails, take a minimalist and no-nonsense approach to training. Don’t underestimate burpees. Now here’s the 100 burpees challenge in detail.

Your goal is to perform 100 reps of burpees as fast as you can with as little rest as possible. You’ll minimize the rest periods. Break the routine down into sets of 5, 10, 12, 15 or whatever amount of reps you can choose or handle. You could do something like 6 reps, 6 reps, 6 reps, 6 reps, 6 reps, then 4 reps, 4 reps, 4 reps, 4 reps, 4 reps, then 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps. That’s 100 total reps.

Let’s say you rest 30 seconds between each of those sets. You’ve got a fat burning workout right there that will help you lose weight and lose fat. But your main goal is to complete all 100 repetitions fast, preferably in under 10 minutes. When you first start out, you’ll likely go over 20 minutes as you body isn’t conditioned enough to handle the increased work capacity. But over time, you level of condition and interval fitness will improve allowing you to finish the workout in under 10 minutes.

The interval , “lose fat” element comes into play when you break down the workout in successive sets of 5, 7, 10, etc. You’re alternating a high work rate with short rest periods to keep the heart rate high. This increases and raises metabolism post workout for up to 49 hours, much more so than traditional steady state or slow cardio, despite burning less calories.

Here’s a video of an 8-year old doing the 100 burpees challenge,

Use Good Form

Use good form on burpees. Don’t bounce on the pushup portion or cheat yourself by not jumping high. Check out bodybuilding.com’s exercise database for a demonstration of the burpees or go to Ross’ site at Rosstraining.com for a video demonstration. You can also look up their articles database on how to lose body fat.

100 burpees looks and sounds easy but don’t trust me on word-of-mouth. It’s one of the best fitness exercise workouts at home that gets really addicting. It is an exceptional workout that shows you how to lose fat the correct way with high intensity interval workouts. Get training.

Train Hard. Train Safely. Train Smart.

If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to leave a message below or email me at ZQH245@gmail.com or ZQH250@gmail.com

How the heck does this guy drop below 4% bodyfat without drugs or supplements?

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder who regularly competes at 4% bodyfat and below. The fact is, there are probably very few people who truly understand fat loss better than Tom does, simply because he doesn’t just research it or write about it – he lives it! (and has the ripped abs to prove it!)

What Tom reveals in his best-seller e-book, Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle, is essential knowledge if you want to get really, really lean, and until you understand these principles, you can’t even hope to get lean enough to see your abs – which is what we all want right? Find out how it’s done by visiting Tom’s website at:

www.burnthefat.com

4 Easy Ways to Build Muscle

admin — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:34:18 +0000

No matter how you train using whatever methods and techniques to build muscle, the number one rule is to stay consistent with maintaining a high level of intensity. Unless you’re training at a high intensity level (over the long term), maximum muscular growth cannot be accomplished and you will not reach your potential for strength and size.

To build muscle mass, you must sustain a level of intensity conducive to growth. But maintaining high intensity workouts will eventually lead to overtraining so be sure to get adequate sleep, rest, and eat tons.

Manage Fatigue

Once you manage fatigue, you can start experimenting with intensity techniques to supercharge your muscle building efforts. Here are 5 “easy” ways to build muscle mass faster and more effectively. These 4 techniques are designed to flush the muscles through the feel-good “pump”. The pump is considered to be the number one important motivator for most professional bodybuilders. If they experienced a good pump in their workouts, they’ll know they’ve gotten a good workout. They will build muscle mass.

1) Increasing volume

Volume is defined as the number of sets times the number of reps per set times the amount of weight used. You can increase volume by either increasing the weight used, increasing the number of reps, or increasing the number of sets per workout. Increasing volume is a method of progression. An example would be to go from doing 3 sets of 8 reps to 5 sets of 8 reps.

2) Use negatives

Negatives are the lowering phase of an exercise. When lowering a weight in an exercise, lower it very slowly. Make sure it lasts at least 4 seconds. For example, when doing dips, count from one to five as you lower to the bottom position until upper arms are near parallel to the floor. While emphasizing the negative will greatly reduce the amount of weight you can use, your target muscles (chest, triceps, and shoulders for dip example) works harder, which ultimately will result in better gains. Less weight, more gains.

3) Use drop sets

Drop sets allow you to squeeze a little more intensity out of your movements. When you reach positive failure on an exercise for a set, strip off some weight from the bar, take 3 deep breaths and continue doing reps until failure again, then drop some more weight and do another set to failure. Do 3-4 drops per drop set. Drop sets allow you to fatigue muscle fibers which may have been missed during the regular set.

4) Use compound free weight lifting exercises

Compound free weight lifting exercises are multi-jointed movements that work more than 1 major muscle group at a time. Examples include mass building exercises like the bench press, deadlift, squats, military dips, chinups/pullups, and dips. The main movements also includes the variations.

Here’s a list of compound variations:

Bench Press: incline, flat, decline, floor

dips: rings, parallel bar, v-bar, muscle-up addition

chinups/pullups: width grip variations (close, shoulder, wide grip), rings, rope, one-arm, muscle-up addition

deadlift: rack dead, dimel dead, suitcase dead, finger dead, one arm dead, SLDL

military press: barbell, db, arnold press

rows: bench rows, bb rows, db rows, one arm bb or db rows, t-bar rows

And why work each muscle group separately when you can work 2 or more groups at the same time. You are also able to handle heavier weights with compound movements. Lift more weights and build muscle mass. It’s as simple as that.

These 4 methods aren’t actually “easy” by strength training means but they’re easy in the common sense of training. Try them today.

Train Hard. Train Safely. Train Smart.

If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below or email me at ZQH245@gmail.com or ZQH250@gmail.com

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Get No Nonsense Muscle Building, the #1 best selling skinny guy muscle building e-book which teaches you how to build muscle and gain weight quickly without supplements or drugs. Learn from a Canadian Fitness Model champion how to defeat ‘muscle unfriendly genes’ and build a body you can be proud of by visiting http://www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com