If you’ve read this blog long enough you may know by now that, next to training, music is my biggest obsession in life. I go to dozens of concerts and live performances per year and could single handedly keep iTunes in business. Here’s a list of some of the newer stuff we’ve been rocking in the gym over the last few months. Some of it is recent and some of it is just stuff that I have recently gotten into or have had renewed love affair with as of late. I’ll try not to repeat any recommendations I have made in the past.
Pearl Jam- There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t listen to some Pearl Jam. They are my all time favorite band by a mile (Public Enemy is second, for those keeping score). I’ve seen them over 50 times live and will see them at least another 50-100 more times. The two best training tracks off the new record are Got Some and Gonna See My Friend.
La Coka Nostra- This is the original three members of House of Pain along with a couple other lesser known friends of theirs. As far as… …continue reading.
Guys, I’ve been saying it for years- you gotta train old school and you gotta train like an athlete, no matter what your goal. Someone who wholeheartedly agrees with me is my buddy and professional strongman competitor Elliot Hulse, who is also the co-creator of the Lean Hybrid Muscle System (which is on sale for 50% off until tomorrow, by the way).
Check out this killer post by Elliot below…
If you’re like me, you probably want nothing more than to feel like a ’super-stud’ every time you take your shirt off in public. You want to have the confidence to say, ‘Boy, this sweaty shirt is chaffin’ me’, then reach over your shoulder and tear your shirt off like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. When you know that your pecs look like two soup bowls inserted beneath your skin, and your abs are as hard the asphalt you stand on, it’s tough to keep your shirt on!
Today you are gonna learn the top 5 training principles that you MUST implement in order to make your physique and performance goals… a reality. But, before I open the info-floodgates, there is something you’ve got to understand. Men… all… …continue reading.
Let’s say you’re training someone who’s fat and weak but their goal is to get lean. They aren’t obese but they have 25-35 pounds to lose. Pretty much like every average American. Since fat loss is the goal you might be inclined to put them on a typical “fat loss workout.” This means that they would do a total body, circuit style workout, alternating upper, lower and full body exercises with moderately high reps (8-20) and minimal rest periods (0-60).
Sounds like a decent plan.
Except for the fact that they are too weak to get anything out of it. Their heart rate won’t get elevated anywhere near as high as it should and they’ll hardly break a sweat.
Why? Like I said, they’re too weak. When you’re too weak you can’t get much out of bodyweight exercises and the weights you lift are hardly heavy enough to do anything. Weak people can’t recruit anywhere near the same amount of muscle fibers that strong people can. Therefore the same number of sets and reps is nowhere near as taxing for them.
While it is completely counterintuitive, what this person needs to do is actually get strong first. They should actually… …continue reading.
Stop over thinking. That’s it. That’s one very important key to fast muscle growth. It’s that simple. Stop doing that and instead focus on what’s really important and you’ll grow a hell of a lot faster.
Every day people ask me what angle they should set the incline bench to, should they do hill sprints or sled sprints, whether they should wait two hours or two and half hours between meals, if they should do six reps or eight reps on dumbbell presses, if they should rest between arms when doing 1 arm rows or do both arms and then rest.
It’s all way too much thinking and over analyzing. Stop stressing yourself out over all the minute details that make very little difference in the big picture.
The majority of people who fail to gain any appreciable amounts of size and strength do so because they over think, over analyze and bang away on the keyboard more than they actually eat, sleep and train.
Simplify it all and your results will come much faster. Not to mention the fact that your life will be a lot less stressful.
Muscles get bigger when you apply a stress they are… …continue reading.
Recently a lot of friends have been asking where I’ve been. Regular readers have been asking why I haven’t been updating the site as much.
The reason will become clear this Monday when, after two years of hard work, trial and error and endless experimentation, I finally release Triple Threat Muscle. I haven’t come out with anything new since I released Muscle Gaining Secrets a few years back because I didn’t have anything this exciting to share.
Two years ago I decided to start experimenting on a large number of my clients and coaching group members. I wanted to see if I could create an athletic based muscle building system and help average guys get the same kind of results elite athletes get from their training. The only difference is the average guy doesn’t have the genetics, recovery ability or schedule of a professional athlete. But they all want to look like them.
So I took it upon myself to create the ultimate system that would help Average Joe’s and weekend warriors get a little bit closer to looking and performing like Reggie Bush or Georges St. Pierre.
I know how to help skinny guys get jacked.… …continue reading.
As you may know, I suffered a pretty bad shoulder injury a while back that required surgery. This was the result of me being stupid in the gym. My high school teachers were right; I am a knucklehead, and I take full responsibility for my actions.
I went into the hospital weighing 227 pounds and after a few months of being laid up and unable to train I was down to 179!!! This was devastating to say the least. Friends were horrified by the site of me and thought there was something wrong with me.
Which, come to think of it, is no different than the reaction they have every time they see me, no matter what I weigh.
Because of my extreme hardgainer genetics I lose size quicker than anyone I’ve ever met. And if I didn’t know exactly how to train, eat and recover properly it would take me forever to build muscle.
Being that small, weak and skinny was very depressing. I had worked my whole life to get away from that look and that feeling. During my rehab I hated to even leave the house because I didn’t want people to see me. For the first… …continue reading.
To build muscle fast you need to present the body with a stimulus that it isn’t used to. This stress will cause the body to adapt by building itself up bigger and stronger.
Where most people go wrong is that they think they need to annihilate the muscle in order to elicit any type of response. This is counterproductive. When you annihilate the muscle with tons of sets, reps and constantly train to failure and beyon you drastically increase your recovery time. The problem with that is that training frequency is very important. So when you increase your recovery time you have to decrease your training frequency. You’re shooting yourself in the foot.
The key is to do just enough to stimulate size and strength gains but not annihilate yourself so that it takes forever to recover, or worse- that you put yourself in a state of overtraining.
If you want to make consistent size gains you have to make consistent strength gains (in a hypertrophy rep range), while eating enough food and allowing enough time for recovery.
The body will respond to any given stimulus one time and one time only. If you place the same demands on… …continue reading.
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