You might be thinking I don't need to add muscle fast, I just want to get fit and lose a bit of weight. Well adding muscle is the fastest way to a lean and fit body. As long as you have your nutrition under control and get enough quality rest and recovery, these workouts will rip your body into shape in no time! A word of caution however, these programs are designed for people who who have plenty of strength training experience, with no injuries and are already training regularly. If you are a beginner, these workouts maybe too challenging for you at the moment. I suggest building some baseline strength with a focus of improving your skills and techniques across all movements before trying these programs. Read our article Why People Get Hurt When Starting An Exercise Program. Also if you are injured or are coming back after a long break, it would be wise to address your injury first or have a few months of regular training before you try these workouts. For the rest of you buckle in as I am going to give you some tough workouts to try out!

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most commonly injured of the four main knee ligaments, and operations to reconstruct it are becoming more common. An extremely painful injury and one that can destroy a sporting career. I should know as I tore my ACL only 5 months ago! A complete rupture will require surgery as the knee will be exposed to massive instability and without repair will lead to chronic arthritis and a lifetime of pain. But what if you partially tear the ACL? Is surgery still the best option? Well this depends on many factors but what I will share with you here is that regardless of whether you have surgery or not, have a partial tear or a full rupture adopting a Functional Movement Strength Training Program is an absolute must! Unfortunately most of the programs and information you can look up about how to do this is really bad at best and actually can make you worse not better. I read several books and became an ACL research fanatic for months looking for answers to my own questions and came up with a set of key exercises and strategies I am about to share with you. It is important to note here that these are also great ACL Prevention exercises and if you had adopted these before the injury you would not be reading this article. I had never hurt my knees in over 30 years of competitive sports, and became lazy with my training, thinking this will never happen to me. And even though I had great movement skills, strength and fitness for a 42 year old, I still should have been completing some of these exercises more consistently to ensure I prevented this painful injury.

This is one of those topics you will find on Social media all the time and strong arguments supporting both sides. I am not a cardio hater, in fact I have done all types of running, cycling and triathlons my entire life, and still do, and am very good at it too. But I do recognize there is a massive difference between being fit and being healthy and that I need strength training the most. Cardio training is great when everything is alright with your body, but if you are suffering with injury, illness or even weight problems this is not a good strategy to use to get healthy. In this article I will explain why Strength Training should be priority number 1 and what the danger of cardio training if not used correctly can be.