Without a doubt the Deadlift is one of the best exercises you can ever use in the gym. Whether you are a keen sporting athlete, someone recovering from injury, or even an 80 year old looking to maintain quality of life this exercise provides amazing benefits and is something we use everyday in life. Outside of the gym it is simply known as “bending”. For this reason we tend to refer to this as a foundational movement pattern first and an exercise second. As much as the benefits from learning and developing your skills with deadlift are amazing it also comes with high risk if performed poorly. Injuries such as herniated discs are so common with this movement with many of these occurring outside of a gym and from daily activities like picking up a pen off the floor. There are so many versions of this exercise it is important to know which one is best for your body right now. This article we will explain everything you need to know about deadlifts and which version works best for you.
4 Brutal High Intensity Circuit Workouts To Accelerate Strength & Fitness Gains
One of the oldest and most commonly used training concepts used in many gyms around the world today would be high intensity circuit workouts. This is a workout that involves a series of exercises performed in rotation usually with minimal to no resting time producing huge levels of fatigue in a very short time. This is a great way to combine strength and fitness methods within the same workout and for this reason are used by many sporting athletes seeking to improve strength and endurance at the same time. They are also very popular among many gyms and group training classes and are often viewed upon as a very simple way to use strength training, when in reality it is far from that when you know how to manipulate certain variables with this method. There is many ways you can utilize the circuit method to achieve different types of goals than the general strength and fitness approach. In this article, we provide you with 4 different circuit workouts you can use to challenge your body in ways it has never seen.
Why I Don’t Rate the Bench Press Very Highly As a Strength Exercise
One of the exercises I very rarely use or talk about is the bench press. It is arguably the most popular exercise used in the gym in particular with young males looking to add muscle size to the upper body. While it certainly can add some muscle to the chest and shoulders I tend to rate the bench press below several similar exercises and I believe it is highly over-rated in terms of its overall benefits, and under-rated for the risks it presents. In this article, I will explain why I don’t rate the bench press so highly and the many other exercises you can use instead that deliver a much greater result.
Which Is Better For Muscle Recovery – Whole Foods or Protein Shakes?
I think most people are aware of the need to eat quality protein to help the body build and repair muscle but one question that often comes up is whether protein shakes are better than real food. The short answer is yes protein shakes are in theory better for being a liquid form you can drink it gets to the muscles faster than eating food which needs to be broken up, digested and then distributed to the muscles. The longer answer is it is may not be the best solution for every person as there is a lot more protein than you think. In this article we look at the various things you need to consider before drinking shakes.
5 Reasons Why You Should Use The Barbell Hip Thrust To Strengthen The Glutes
There has been many times that I have been proven wrong or I have completely changed my mind about a health and fitness concept over the past 17 years as a trainer. The value of the barbell hip thrust is one of those instances where I originally thought little of this as an exercise and saw it more as a gimmick or an exercise for those who were not skilled enough to do deadlifts, squats, and single leg exercises. However, in recent times and I have suffered several health setbacks that forced me to change my training program and exercise selection that led me to experiment with this exercise. Much to my pleasant surprise I uncovered some hidden gems with the hip thrust that I never fully appreciated previously. In this article, I will share with you what these secrets are and how you can use this to great benefit in your own training.
What Are The Key Factors to Improving Bone Density & Preventing Osteoporosis?
In recent weeks I have had several discussions with people regarding the things they should do to prevent Osteoporosis. Some of these people had witnessed their parents succumb to this and were concerned that it would happen to them so they wanted to ensure they did everything they could to prevent it. Osteoporosis is a disease of the bone that makes a person’s bones weak and more likely to break and is often called a “silent disease” because you cannot feel your bones getting weaker. Many people do not even know they have osteoporosis until after they break a bone. Once you have Osteoporosis you cannot reverse it so it is vital you do everything you can to prevent it from happening by making important lifestyle choices. If you do already have it you can still do things to prevent any further bone loss and also drastically reduce the likelihood of any future bone fractures. The sooner you start the better, for research shows that how likely you are to develop osteoporosis depends partly on how much bone mass you attained in your youth. The higher your peak bone mass, the more bone you have “in the bank” and the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis as you age. In this article, I will discuss what they key factors you need to start doing now to avoid this becoming a problem later in life.
6 Reasons Why You Should NEVER Skip Legs Day
Developing incredible leg strength and power is very important for those who play sports for the muscles in your legs are the engine room that provide the ability to run, spring and jump. Spending time in the gym to build leg strength is one of the most important goals during the off-season training for many sportsmen and sportswomen. You only have to look at the thigh development of sprinters, rugby and football players to see how important leg strength and power is. However, it is an area of the body that is often neglected by many of the general population who just wants to get fit and lose a bit of weight. This is a real concern, for apart from the obvious benefits for sporting performance, strong legs can prevent many of the injuries we see today with the knee and the back. Strong quadriceps enhance knee health, and strong glutes and hamstring muscles can be real back savers when lifting heavy objects from the floor. And in terms of losing weight and obtaining that toned and athletic appearance, the strength of your legs can play a massive role in this department too. The message is clear, leg strength is critical to your overall health and daily function so it is never a good idea to skip legs day.
What Are The Best Exercises If You Have Hyper-mobile Joints?
When we experience pain or tightness in an area of our body we have been told we must stretch, massage and loosen the affected area to regain the lost mobility of the joint or muscle. This is the typical approach of health therapists, corrective exercise and most rehabilitation programs. And in most cases it is the most logical place to start, and often pain will subside and things go back to normal quite quickly with this approach. However in some cases this can be the worst thing you can do! For the person who has too much flexibility, otherwise known as hyper-mobile, they will not respond well to this approach, for they lack stability and need to be tightened up, not loosened. For 20 years I have worked with over 1000 people with all types of injuries and when I first started I rarely came across this case. However, in the past few years I have seen a huge increase in these cases, and many times people come to see me after having tried several therapists, trainers and various health modalities that did not work, or even made the condition worse. I am not sure as to why this seems more common, and I see this problem mainly in females, but I believe one big factor is the rapid growth of Yoga and Pilates style training that emphasize more flexibility. And while both these are great forms of exercise, they have the potential to ruin the joints of a hyper mobile person if not used wisely, and especially if you do not move well standing up.
Why Unilateral Strength Exercises Provide The Biggest Gains
The value of using bilateral or unilateral exercises with strength training is one of those topics that has been greatly debated in recent years. There is one school of thought believing it is preferable to predominately use bilateral heavy exercises like the bench press, squats, and deadlifts where maximum load can be lifted. And the other school of thought believing it is more beneficial to use single limb exercises that try to even out imbalance and asymmetry. There are pros and cons to using both types of exercises and I fall somewhere in the middle and often use a combination of both types of training depending on the person and the situation in front of me. I always believed the unilateral exercises were more for rehab and core stability and the bigger bilateral exercise the preferred choice for sports and increasing serious muscle and strength. However, this is not the case and in this article I will explain exactly how unilateral exercises provide greater strength gains than many realize.
Why Isometric and Eccentric Strengthening Is Used In Rehab To Improve Joint Stability
We all know that strength training is a great way to build muscle and improve the way we move. However, it does come with great risk if you move poorly or exceed your body’s ability to withstand the resistance. These risks are much greater with beginners and people recovering from injury as there is a high chance that they do not have great technique to begin with or a good understanding of how much their muscles and joints can tolerate. This is where the value of using isometric and eccentric training can be of great benefit to this population for the loads are much lighter and easier to control allowing for incredible strength gains without the risk of injury or loss of form. It also is one of the best ways to rebuild load tolerance into injured tendons and connective tissue to ensure full recovery from injury. In this article, we take a close look at several ways you can use these training methods to improve your overall strength and joint stability.