- I always found it funny that there are books, movies, lectures, etc. about what women want, when one simple word can describe what men want– blowjobs. That’s it. Preferably sloppy. We’re easy. You heard the Mel Gibson tapes. That’s all he wanted. And when he didn’t get one he was none to pleased.

- Why wouldn’t homeless guys in New York walk south or even to the west coast for the winter? If you have nothing but time on your hands who cares how long it takes? You could be chillin by the beach instead of in a box on 53^rd and 2^nd. Makes no sense to me.

- Why can’t people figure out how to open and close a door at night when others in the house are sleeping? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you twist the handle all the way and pull the door until it quietly hits the stop, then slowly turn the handle back into place; instead of just pulling it straight closed without manipulating the handle, which then wakes everyone within earshot because in the dead silence of 4am that sounds like a gun going off.

- And why can’t people figure out how to unlock a door at night? Before you twist the handle to unlock the bathroom door you simply stick your thumb in the push button lock so that it doesn’t pop out loudly and again wake the entire house up. These are simple things, people…

- Girls don’t like to feel like they’re being disrespected even if it means their life. Let’s say you’re with your girl and you’re getting chased by an axe murder in a scene out of a horror film. She starts crying softly and you quickly snap in a whisper, “Shut up, he’s gonna hear us!” You can then expect her to immediately raise her voice several levels and shout, “DID YOU JUST TELL ME TO SHUT UP!?” “Why, yes I did and now we’re dead because of it. Thanks.”

- I can’t stand when people don’t acknowledge those who are serving them in a restaurant, pumping their gas, etc. If you’re having a conversation and the waiter comes over, stop, say hello and engage them. When you ask them for something say please and when they refill your water say “thanks.” It’s not that hard. That type of thing irritates me.

- Why is that when you are forced to shit in the worst public toilets it’s always a 50 wiper keeping you in there for an inordinate amount of time?

- If you make eye contact with someone out in public you should say hello to them. This simple act would make the world a much better place. And name tags. We should all wear name tags. Like Elaine suggested to Lloyd Braun who suggested it to Mayor Dinkins.

- Just no kissing. I’m not into kissing. Bro hugs, yes. Kissing, no. It’s weird, I’ll hug guys all day but can’t really get into the kissing the girls on the cheek thing. I’d rather give them a pound and a hug but then I guess your right hand would end up smack dab in the middle of their titties. So that wouldn’t work for a lot of them. But then if you just give them a straight hug they have their breasts all smashed up against you and your genitals would be in closer contact which in a way could become kind of sexual. I don’t know. It’s all very weird and confusing to me.

- No one likes a complainer. If someone asks what’s new and how you’ve been act like you just won the lottery even if you just lost your job and got diagnosed with a terminal illness. Complaining often or having a negative attitude is a fast way to lose friends and achieve very little success in life.

- I guess the tradeoff for a slightly decreased testosterone level that comes with age is an increase in productivity since you don’t have to waste as many hours of the day pounding pud anymore.

- But how much fun was that when it was brand new? I mean experimenting with new lubes, fake vaginas, real dolls…Not that I would know or anything.

- If you are going to listen to hip hop you should at least own a copy of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It’s only right.

- How sad is it that kids don’t go out and play anymore? There were no “play dates” when we were growing up. We just hit the streets and ran until mom called us in for dinner. Now you have 11 year olds spending three hours a day joining bullshit groups on FaceBook. So incredibly sad.

- I remember when nobody listened to hip hop and then it became mainstream. I felt like I was way ahead of the curve since I was down from the beginning. And when pro wrestling became the biggest thing on the planet during the late 90’s I was excited because I had been watching obsessively for years and was at WrestleMania I. Nowadays, it’s big asses. All of the sudden everyone wants a big ass and is obsessed with big asses. Once again, I feel like I was ahead of the curve because I’ve been telling everybody that for years! I was all about big asses long before big asses were cool, god damn it!

- You’ve never really experienced a stressful situation until you’ve lost your erection and had a condom slip off during sex and then tried to fish it out without the girl noticing.

- Why can’t your wang be the same size on a regular basis? It was always my luck that I hooked up with the hottest girls during one of those light switch sized phases.

- Nothing worse than catching a BJ and noticing that the girls hand looks like she’s having high tea with the queen.

- I’m always surprised that females continue to read this site. Especially after posts like this one.

Got anything to add? Any random thoughts you’d like to share? Please do so in the comments section below.

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I cringed in pain as I watched two college aged kids deadlift a couple weeks ago at the gym I’ve been training at in Cali.

“Dude, it feels like my back is gonna break.”

And indeed it was coming close.

I continued writing in my training journal and prepared for my squat workout but I couldn’t look away from the car wreck happening just off to my left.

After a few more sets I snapped out of high intensity pre workout mode and got into coaching mode.

“Can I help you guys out here?”

“Yeah, man. Please do.”

I introduced myself to Luke and Billy and proceeded to explain what they were doing wrong and went on to coach them on deadlift technique for the next thirty minutes. I’m always hesitant to do this because I don’t want to come across as a douche or insult anyone. But I couldn’t stand by in all good conscience and let these poor guys destroy their spines. They were more than receptive and couldn’t be more excited with how much better they felt after I gave them a couple of pointers.

“Oh, man, that made a huge difference! My back feels way better.”

“Good, good. Now let’s just stick with 135 and have you do more five or six more sets of five. And for the next month or two I don’t want you going above five reps per set. Just add about five pounds per workout. Maybe ten if your form is improving rapidly.”

“Ok, cool.”

This is NOT the deadlift technique I recommend

“Again, get the proper foot placement under the bar that I showed you, fill your belly with air, squat down and set your arch, load those hamstrings up with tension, squeeze the bar as tightly as you can and feel the tension radiating up through your arms and spreading throughout your entire upper body. Don’t start pulling until you maximize the tension. At that point, slowly grind the bar off the floor. When it clears your knees you can than forcefully drive your hips through. The deadlift is one of the only lifts that doesn’t start with an explosive contraction. If you do that you’ll get hurt. And you guys were well on your way there.”

“Got it. How’s that looking? Any better?”

“Much better. You got it now.”

After they finished up I finally got started on my squat workout. Unfortunately there was a mirror in front of the squat rack. Anyone who knows anything about training knows that’s a big no-no. And of course we don’t have any mirrors at Renegade, so I was a little thrown off. In fact, I was a lot thrown off. I just couldn’t get the groove right and didn’t know where to look. I kept falling forward and I could just see an injury coming at any second.

“Man, I really hope those kids aren’t still here witnessing this debacle,” I thought to myself. I coach them for thirty minutes and then can’t even squat right, myself. That would’ve been a bad look.

“Fuck it, I thought. I can’t squat til I get back to Renegade. Not worth the risk. Plus, even if I get used to squatting with a mirror I’ll be out of sorts when I get back to squatting without a mirror.”

So I decided to front squat. Why? Simple- because I never do. So I figured that I wouldn’t know the difference. I never front squat because I hate to front squat.

A lot of “functional” strength coaches prefer the front squat to the back squat but in my opinion they may be a bit misled.

One of the arguments for the front squat is that they are safer for the spine. Funny but I see just as many people, if not more, rounding forward on front squats as I do on back squats. Just as easily as you could argue that they are safer for the spine you could argue that they are more stressful to the knees just because the knees have to travel much further forward. Case in point- front squats with just 225 will bother my right knee. But I don’t feel a thing in my right knee until I hit a slightly bad rep with over 400 pounds on a back squat.

Front squats are also supposedly somehow more functional. I don’t see it.

I’m not saying the front squat’s a bad exercise, however. Not at all. In theory I like the exercise a lot. It’s just that I base my conclusions off real world observations. And most people find front squats tedious and uncomfortable. If you do them correctly the bar will be resting on your front delts and nearly crushing your throat. If you have little muscle mass this will not be fun. That means they will pretty much suck for skinny hardgainers and many females when the weights start getting somewhat heavy. They can also be stressful on the wrists and elbows as well, especially if you have big arms. Another problem is that with heavier weights form breaks down on front squats before it does on back squats and not due to the legs being fatigued.

Having said that, I still think the front squat is a good exercise in theory. One of the biggest problems, however, is that people use horrible form when performing front squats. If you want to front squat make sure you are doing so properly.

Proper front squat technique

First thing is the bar placement. It should be high. Really high. Like almost crushing your throat and choking you. Like I said, it aint comf.

The next thing to cover is how to hold the bar properly. A lot of people hold the bar like they are doing a military press. That is completely wrong and will lead to a horrible performance on the exercise.

When you grab the bar do so with only the tips of your index and middle finger. Some people will be able to get a ring finger on it as well. If you have the bar down too low on your fingers buried down near the palm of your hand you’ll be in trouble. The wrist stress will be more than you need in your life and it will be difficult to hold the bar up throughout the set. So just the tips of two or three fingers.

When you set your fingertips on the bar elevate your elbows as high as you can, so that they are about parallel to the floor. If you have big arms you can expect this position to be pretty irritating. Another option is to use wrist straps attached to the bar and just hold onto those. That works for some but it aggravates the hell out of other people’s elbows and wrists.

So if your arms are over 16 or 17 inches this may not be the exercise for you.

If you have elbow issues this is definitely not the exercise for you.

If you have wrist issues this is definitely not the exercise for you.

If you play a sport such as baseball this is definitely not the exercise for you.

Since I fall into three out of four categories there it should be obvious why I don’t front squat and why after doing them last week my left elbow is still throbbing in pain.

The other option is the crossed arms style. This is more of a bodybuilder way of doing them versus the lifter way of doing them. Personally I’ve never felt right doing them like that so I’m not a big fan. If it works for you, so be it. Dave Draper did them like that so who am I to argue?

There’s also something called the Sting Ray which is a plastic device that goes over the bar to make the arms crossed version easier. That might be something you’d want to try if you were going to start front squatting.

Anyway, if you CAN front squat let’s move on to the next step. Now that you have the proper set up it’s time to unrack the bar and start the descent. Just like with back squats you want to take a huge breath and fill your belly with air before going down. You don’t sit as far back on the front squat; it’s more of just a quick break at the hips and down. Like I said, the knees will travel further forward than they do on a back squat which will target the quads more. This is a good thing if you lack quad size or just need to strengthen them.

A few years back it seemed like all performance based training was all about focusing on the posterior chain and people forgot about the quads. Since the quads are very important muscles for acceleration and deceleration this was a big mistake. You need strong quads to perform well and the front squat targets them very effectively. That’s why you will see bodybuilders doing them after back squats or leg extensions sometimes; albeit with lighter weights in the Smith machine with their arms crossed.

When you’re coming out of the hole it’s very important to keep your elbows high. If they start dropping down that will pull you forward and you will either dump the weight or make the rep significantly harder than it should be.

As much as I personally dislike front squats I still do think they are an effective exercise for some people. There are front squat harnesses which look pretty cool and although I haven’t tried one yet I would definitely like to. Obviously, enough people hate to or can’t front squat otherwise there would never have been a front squat harness invented. If you have any experience with the harness I’d like to hear your feedback.

For the most part I will stick with back squats. But if you want to play around with some front squats here and there make sure your technique is tight, as described above. Also be wary of the problems I mentioned.

As for when to do them goes you have a few options. You could just replace back squats for a few weeks and see how you like front squatting. If you like it, feel free to stick with it. If you are already someone who loves front squatting don’t let me talk you out of doing them, either. These are simply my opinions on the lift.

Another option for those new to front squats, and what I would probably do myself, is add them in during a hypertrophy phase as a second or third exercise. Maybe start with backward sled drags or lunges and then go into front squats. That way the quads are pre exhausted so you wouldn’t have to use as much weight which would make the exercise slightly less uncomfortable.

You could also start with kettlebells and progress to a bar after a few weeks or month. The kettlebell front squat is a great assistance exercise, although it does get a bit difficult to hold after a while when you start working up to heavier weights.

Front squats alone won't build big glutes

Of course, if you replace back squats with front squats on a long term basis you need to remember to include some more posterior chain work because the front squats won’t hit those muscles as effectively as the back squat. That means for big, powerful glutes you will need to add in some extra deads, glute hams and glute bridges.

One last thing is to make sure you don’t do more than six reps on front squats. That’s because the front delts and upper back will fatigue long before the legs do.

Whichever option you choose remember that perfect form and stopping shy of failure are crucially important.

I ran into Billy and Luke yesterday at the gym right before they were heading back to school for the semester. It looked like they had each gained size since I’d seen them last and I told them so.

“Yeah, man. I’m up five pounds. All that stuff you told us about the form and holding back on our weights, not going to failure; that helped so much on every single lift. We both just set new records on everything our last week here.”

Train smart.

Please leave your comments below and let me know what you think of the front squat and if you have tried the Sting Ray or front squat harnesses.

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2) Psyche yourself up on the way to the gym by visualizing the workout in your head. See yourself going through each of your exercises and dominating the weights.

3) If you train at a public gym, where it’s more thank likely that they will be playing Usher and similar R&B tunes that will make you wanna clean out your ears with a gun, make sure you have some good training songs loaded on your iPod.

4) Train 3-4 days per week. Which one is optimal? Three always works best for beginners. For everyone else you need to determine what your schedule and recovery ability will allow. If you play a pick up sport regularly throughout the year or participate in kickboxing or surf a few days per week, three days is probably your best bet. If you do no other physical activity outside of the gym (no sprints, no walking, biking, nothing) than four days might be a better idea for you.

5) Whichever option you choose, always limit your workouts to an hour, tops. Excluding the warm up, the main strength training portion of the workout should never take more than 45 minutes. Use a stopwatch or GymBoss Interval Timer to keep yourself in check.

6) Stick with a muscle building workout plan for 12 weeks, minimum. The best way to see zero results is by jumping from one routine to the next from week to week.

7) Start each workout with a full body dynamic warm up to fire up the CNS, lubricate the joints and activate the muscles; especially those that might not always fire properly or in the right order.

8] If you have nagging injuries stay covered up and dress warm for your workouts. I always wear a few layers unless it’s over 80 degrees in the gym.

9) Knee and elbow sleeves can also be a great friend to the older beat up lifter.

Spend most of your time inside this box.

10) The bird dog is an underrated but awesome exercise to include in a pre workout warm up. Give it a try.

11) Foam rolling before a big squat or deadlift workout can be a great thing.

12) Don’t over use the foam roller, however.

13) The less experienced you are the fewer exercises you should use.

14) The more advanced you are the more exercises you can use. But you don’t have to.

15) Spend a large portion of your gym time in the power rack. This is your temple, where the greatest amounts of size and strength are built.

16) Don’t skimp on your warm ups. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. Do a good number of warm up sets, always being sure to explode each and every rep. If 405 is your starting weight on deadlifts, doing 135×5, 225×3, 315×1 and then starting is not an effective warm up. Multiple sets of low reps will better prepare you for the task at hand.
17) Beginners should use “straight weight” or “sets across.” That means that you pick a weight you could do comfortably for whatever the set and rep scheme calls for (3×10, 4×8, 5×5, etc.) and stick with that same weight throughout.

18) Advanced lifters are usually better off “working up.” That means you do a bunch of warm up sets and “work up sets” until you get to one or two heavy sets and maybe some back off sets.

19) Rarely will I have advanced guys do more than one hard work set at the same weight in the same rep range.

20) If you want to develop explosive speed and power, begin your workouts with some type of throw, jump or Olympic lift for 3-10 sets of 1-6 reps. Even if your goal is just size and strength, doing this is a good way to fire up your CNS and make the rest of your workout more effective.

21) Speed work should usually precede maximal strength work but not always. There are situations when the rules can be broken.

Captain Kirk used linear periodization with great success.

22) To develop maximal strength, use a big compound barbell lift and work up to 3-5 heavy sets across of 5 reps (beginners) or a top end set of 1-5 reps (advanced lifters). Advanced guys can even go as high as eight reps for maximal strength work at the beginning of a long cycle a la Ed Coan or Kirk Karwoski. I have used this system with many clients and have had great success- starting with eights and working down to singles.

23) Linear periodization still works. But you have to know how to do it properly. A lot of people screw it up.

24) One way to make linear periodization more effective is to make sure the cycle doesn’t last more than 12 weeks and don’t have too drastic of a reduction in reps from week 1 to week 12. Rep range for assistance exercises doesn’t necessarily have to be periodized the same way the main lifts do.

25) Don’t train for more than 4-8 weeks straight without taking a deload week.

26) There’s a difference between grip work and forearm work. Grip work is very stressful and can not be done all the time. Forearm work is not very stressful at all and can be done quite frequently. Of course, there is some overlap so you need to pick and choose the right methods and exercises.

27) Using Fat Gripz helps you get both grip and forearm work in without adding any extra training time.

28) Try to use as many bodyweight exercises as possible for assistance work. Instead of cable rows do inverted TRX rows. Instead of leg presses do split squats. Instead of pushdowns do dips.

29) Incorporate odd objects like anvils and sandbags, and strongman type exercises to build real world, functional strength and stability. If you could only pick one farmers walks would be the best.

30) Always strive for maximal muscle stimulation with minimal joint stress.

31) In theory you should be able to do full body workouts forever and make great gains. But there will come a time when the joint stress simply makes it impossible. At that point you have no choice but to reduce your frequency to twice per week instead of three times.

32) Having said that, some muscle groups or body parts will always be able to tolerate higher frequency, no matter how advanced you are.

33) For example, if you are doing an upper/lower split four times per week it would be perfectly feasible to include some type of pulling/back exercise in there each day for 2-5 sets. The guys at Westside do this quite often.

34) Heavy pressing with big weights, three times per week for months on end, however, would set you up very nicely for shoulder surgery within the year.

35) If you were advanced and dead set on pressing three times per week you could do something like 30 degree incline barbell or dumbbell pressing on Monday, high rep pushup work on Wednesday for just a set or two, and a standing barbell or dumbell press on Friday. That could work. I wouldn’t do it year round, however. And I would probably be prepared for the joint stress to creep in somewhere around the four to five week mark. When that happens you have to cut back to twice weekly, immediately. Don’t try to battle through one more week because at that point it will be too late.

36) Speaking of joint stress, be careful to avoid elbow pain. When your elbows get screwed up you will most likely have to deal with it for years. And whenever you think they have healed you will find some exercise that causes excruciating pain.

37) Never go heavy on extensions and save them for after you have done some dips, close grip benches or pushdowns.

38) Focus on compound movements but don’t be afraid to use some isolation movements if you’re a more advanced lifter. Dips and close grip benches are great but if you need more triceps work you can’t rely only on compound exercises for the simple fact that your shoulders will get destroyed. For this reason you need to add in some pushdowns and extensions from time to time.

39) The main benefit of assistance exercises is they allow you to get in some volume and train the muscle without destroying your joints or your CNS. Sure, the deadlift is a better exercise for your posterior chain than the glute ham raise. But you can’t do more than a few sets of deadlifts per week. If you’re really strong you might not be able to do more than a couple of  sets of deadlifts per month. With the glute ham you can hit it every day if need be and there is minimal joint or CNS stress.

40) If you want traps like the late, great Road Warrior Hawk you have to shrug heavy. Whatever you can deadlift for ten reps you should be able to shrug for ten reps; maybe more. I’ve never seen anyone with big traps do light perfect, extreme full range shrugs with a peak contraction. Load the bar up and heave plates.

41) Do high intensity conditioning either immediately after strength training or as a separate workout on the same day, 4-8 hours later. Low intensity conditioning methods can be used on off days. Too much high intensity training is never a good thing, so try to keep it all on the same day and give the body and CNS a chance to rest in between.

42) Before doing anything in the gym always ask yourself a couple questions. Will it help you? How? If you can’t come up with a good answer don’t do it.

43) Your goals and what you do during training should always coincide. If your number one goal is to gain 30 pounds of bodyweight and add 50 pounds each to your bench, squat and deadlift you have to ask yourself how a twenty minute circuit of battling ropes, sled and kettlebell work at the end of each workout will help you.

44) Have fun. At the end of the day most people will not continue to do something for the long haul if it’s not fun. So get a training partner or group, challenge each other, get strong and have fun.

PS. For a complete muscle building workout program check out Triple Threat Muscle.

Please leave your comments below.

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Question: Are there any natural supplements that could raise my testosterone levels? What about lifestyle choices?

Maca is a cruciferous vegetable grown in Peru that contains plant sterols which have been shown to block and control the production of estrogen as well as boost testosterone production. In the past I would have told you that for maca to be effective you need to use 3-6 tablespoons per day of the whole maca root powder, not the extracts and not capsules. However, Dr. Wong, who I have great respect for, has recently come up with an awesome new maca product in capsule form which I have found to work quite well in everyone I’ve tried it with. And taking the capsules is a lot better than choking down six tablespoons per day. You will need to stick with this regimen for at least four weeks to see a positive increase in testosterone production.  Click HERE for Dr. Wong’s new high strength maca supplement.

Zinc has also been well researched and proven to boost testosterone production. The most absorbable form of zinc is zinc citrate. To see positive effects you need 50-100 mg per day. Again, I like Dr. Wong’s zinc. Click HERE for more info.

High dose Vitamin E has been associated with an increase in male sexual hormones as well as several other positive health benefits. The problem is that all Vitamin E is made with soy. The trick is finding a brand of vitamin E that has had most of the estrogen removed and is placed in a non estrogenic oil. To see noticeable results you will need 1500-3000 mg per day. The best Vitamin E is Toco 8.

As far as lifestyle goes the following things will help: 

• Get 8-9 hours of sleep per night.
• Get to bed by 10:30 or 11 every night.
• Eat an adequate amount of healthy fats; both unsaturated AND saturated.
• Minimize your stress levels (meditation can help).
• Avoid all processed foods.
• Avoid all factory farmed animal products and non organic produce (the drugs and chemicals contained in these foods can negatively affect your hormone levels).
• Compete (competition elevates testosterone levels).
• Keep your workout short and intense.
• Focus on big compound lifts like squats and deadlifts.
• Lift heavy weights.
• Run sprints.
• Don’t do a ton of medium to high intensity, long duration, steady state cardio. This will boost your cortisol levels. Stick with short duration, high intensity conditioning methods for the most part.
• Stare at scantily clad women.
• Have sex more often.

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Since then I’ve met with a few clients, had dinner a few times with Chad Waterbury, met up with Valerie Waters another night, Dr. Chris Mohr and his wife Kara another and we spent last night with Tyler and Rob English who were in town for the Perform Better. On Saturday night we ventured up to the Hollywood area (man do I hate the 405) to watch the UFC at my friend Laura Prepon’s house where I had the pleasure of getting massaged during the fights, by her sister, Dani who I grew up with. Massage, food and UFC all at once. It was the trifecta that George Costanza would have killed for.

Dani is an awesome massage therapist with an in depth knowledge of the human body so even during a night of watching the fights I was still able to talk shop and trade ideas; which I always love doing. I’m definitely going to meet up with her again to get some more work done while I’m in town since I’ve grown accustomed to my weekly massages back home which have made a huge difference in my recovery.

On Monday I was at Muscle Beach in Venice, overseeing a photo shoot for a workout I wrote for Men’s Fitness. We were there for over four hours, during which time a short dude in blue briefs trained quads. Just quads. When I was leaving he was getting started on hamstrings with the lying leg curl. So by my guesstimation, if he was still planning on training calves, he was looking at a six and half to seven hour leg workout. Sounds awesome.

Aside from that we’ve been training at a variety of gyms (the best of which has been Iron) and at the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica where they have climbing ropes, rings, dip bars, etc. We’ve also been running sprints on the beach, walking several miles per day and swimming in the ice cold Pacific (although I haven’t gotten on a board yet, but that will change this week). The lifestyle out here is incredibly active and fitness oriented and there are more healthy restaurants than anywhere I’ve ever been. Juliano’s Planet Raw (which, as the name implies, is all raw food) is definitely my favorite but there are countless other great options and tons of places that offer local, organic produce, grass fed meat and free range poultry.

There’s even one place just down the street from us that shows every single Yankees and Giants game. Our first time in there was kinda funny because we had been stopping in several places along Main Street where everyone was incredibly nice and super friendly. When we got to the Giants/Yanks spot it was the first time we encountered anyone with an attitude since we’d landed. Turns out it was the owner who was from Jersey. I laughed. He loosened up when he found out we were from Jersey as well. But he still had the attitude, and I felt somewhat comforted by that familiar feeling of a guy giving you the “go fuck yourself” look while he talks to you about A-Rod’s 600^th home run. Feels like home.

Santa Monica also has the best farmers market I’ve ever seen, which we’ve been stocking up at every few days.

Of all the places I’ve been this is definitely the place I would like living in the most and have been wanting to move out here for years.

For the rest of our trip I have a couple more meetings booked and some opportunities to look into, and we’ll be connecting a few times with my buddies Robert Dos Remedios and Alwyn Cosgrove to exchange some training ideas and have quite a few laughs, I’m sure.

One thing I have been blessed to have in my life is a good number of friends with the most incredible, keen, quick witted senses of humor. Cosgrove is one. I chalk that up to his being Scottish like my mom.  Mike DeSanti, Todd Coker and Mike Schwalb are three of the other funniest people I know and they are all coming out to visit over the next few weeks. So there will be a ton of hilarity to come. And in case it needs turned up a notch I made a visit to the doc for my card only legal here in the wild, wild, west. I have a “chronic” condition that requires it.

So aside from a few more meetings and some training sessions with clients, I’m gonna chill as much as possible and enjoy my vacation time here.

I spent all of last summer in a hospital room with my step dad, Ed, watching him die and losing part of myself in the process. From that experience and also watching Cosgrove fight through Stage IV cancer several times I’ve learned enough to know when to relax and enjoy life. I know that working 24 hours a day like I used to isn’t healthy and isn’t worth it. As clichéd as it is, you never really know when your time is up.

I had dinner with a very motivated young entrepreneur recently and was almost overwhelmed by his intensity and passion. He reminded me of myself five years ago. I’ve mellowed out substantially since then and have been enjoying life even more. Of course, last summers experience was life changing but there have been other moments along the way as well.

When I read Tim Ferris’s book, The 4 Hour Work Week, something really hit home. Tim said to figure out exactly what your ideal lifestyle is; what you want your life to be like. For example- what kind of car do you want to drive, where do you want to live, what do you want to do on a daily basis, how many vacations do you want to take, etc. Then figure out how much money that will take. It’s usually less than you think. In your case it could be $75,000 a year. Or it could be $450,000 a year. We’re all different. But whatever it is, set that number as your goal. Then do whatever it takes to make that amount of money, but not necessarily much more than that. Too many people just work for works sake. There’s no goal. With training or sports there’s always a goal. But if your ideal lifestyle requires only $200k a year why are you working overtime to make $220? It’s something worth stopping to think about. Tim explains it better than I can so I recommend reading the book.

The point is it got my head in the right place and made me reassess what’s important in life. I’ll always be relentless and will outwork anyone to get what I want, but I won’t let it control my life and I won’t work just for works sake. I know what I want in life and what it will take to get there. When I set goals I always achieve them. But I don’t just work for more money anymore. That’s not a healthy way to live.

Well, I gotta wrap this update up and get over to the gym for some deadlifts. And then maybe cancel my flight home

Renegade West, perhaps…

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My life has changed drastically in the last few years with all of the above paling in comparison to the biggest change.

But to explain what I’m talking about let’s start back even further…

After college my obsession with strength training and fitness was growing at an astronomical rate. So much so that it really cut into my social life. There was a few year period where I barely went out and only drank a handful of times each year. That’s because I was too busy studying, training people and training myself. Plus, as a skinny punk who was trying to gain fifty pounds I really didn’t need the late nights and booze. I was dedicated to achieving my goal and wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way.

A few years later I had gained the fifty pounds I was after and decided it was time to start having some fun again. I realized that I could be letting some of the most fun times of my life slip by, so I started partying pretty hard. I’m an all or nothing kinda guy so it goes from one extreme to the other with me.

By the time I hit thirty I was working my ass off at the gym every day for 10-12 hours, seeing 50-70 clients regularly, training my balls off and partying like a rock star on weekends… and Tuesdays… and Thursdays. Eating healthy was always a secondary concern to eating for size, strength and performance. Which, knowing what I know now, makes no sense, but that’s where my head was at throughout my twenties. And just because of my rebellious nature, if every other fitness expert was recommending a protein shake followed by chicken, broccoli and brown rice after a workout I was going to eat a pizza, drink a Gatorade and follow it up with a few beers.

During the summers I would actually pride myself on being able to drink a dozen Red Bull and vodkas at a bar down the shore on a Thursday night, sleep no more than four or five hours and still be able to compete with and beat a lot of our college and pro guys on strongman days every Friday if there were uneven numbers and I had to jump in to even the teams out.

I got up early, worked late, lifted heavy, ate big, drank three or four times a week and chased girls every single night. I was the biggest and strongest I ever was, single and loving every minute of it.

But eventually that life gets old.

And you grow up.

And you realize how important your health is.

So I slowed my roll and found myself with a renewed interest in nutrition and true healthy living. I thought long and hard about moving to Southern Cali since I had been wanting to live there for at least the previous ten years. It seemed like a great place to be to eat and live a truly healthy lifestyle.

Although chasing girls was starting to get old I figured life on the West Coast might renew my passion for it. I always told myself I’d never get married, but by thirty three I softened up to the idea that maybe I would, but definitely not until I was at least forty.

Then one day I got the bright idea to meet up with this girl for a drink. A friend told me I had a ton in common with her and since the bar scene was getting old maybe I would actually like this chick and wanna settle down.

“No chance,” I said. I put it off for a few weeks but then one night, for some odd reason, I decided to give it a shot.

So I met this girl named Jen at a local restaurant on a Thursday to grab a drink and chat. I already had my escape plan in action and told my friend to text me exactly an hour into it so I can say there’s an emergency and I have to go. We started talking and a few hours later I realized that we had a ton in common. For me to be interested in a girl they have to be very open minded and obsessed with training, nutrition, sports and music. A thorough knowledge of old school hip hop and a love for Pearl Jam is also a major plus. Since I figured that girl didn’t exist I accepted the fact that I would be single for a very, very long time.

But this one… There was something different about her.

For the first time in a long time I found myself thinking, “I may actually like this girl.” Without even thinking I invited her to come into Brooklyn with a bunch of my friends on Saturday night to see a concert and she accepted.

That night in Brooklyn she hung out with six of my male friends and was totally cool. You take me out for the night with six girls I don’t know and I’ll be miiiiiiiserable. But she wasn’t. She was just like one of the guys. That was a big plus. And while we were hanging out before the show on my friends rooftop, she knew every song on my iPod. That was a HUGE plus.

Since I was kinda feelin this chick we hung out again on Sunday to watch the Giants game. At one point, during a commercial, she grabbed the TV remote.

“And just like that the potential relationship ends,” I though to myself. “Was she just pretending to be really into sports? Is the fact that she knows the name of every single member of the Giants and more about baseball than any male I know just some well rehearsed ploy to attract guys,” I wondered.

“She’s gonna put on Sex & the City or some bullshit like that, isn’t she? How could you be fooled so easily,” I asked myself.

So I immediately questioned her in a somewhat aggravated tone, “Uh… what are you doing?”

She said, “Oh, I just wanted to check the score of the Yankees game.”

I instantly got up off the couch, dropped down on one knee and proposed.

Well, not really.

But three years later, after I realized that I’d found the best girl in the world and that my life couldn’t be any better, I did.

And so the day I never thought I’d see finally came.

I got engaged.

What a difference a few years makes, huh?

Instead of going out boozing, partying and eating junk food I now stay home, cook healthy, organic food every night of the week (well, Jen does, I kinda just mosey around the kitchen pretending I’m helping), get to bed long before midnight and am far more productive on a daily basis. Having someone to share the healthy/fitness lifestyle with definitely makes things a lot easier and helps you stay on track. We keep each other motivated and focused and train together on a frequent basis.  My good friend, Craig Ballantyne always talks about the importance of social support when you’re trying to achieve something, and it doesn’t get any better than having it right in the same house next to you at all times. 

I think a lot more people would be able to get a lot closer to their goals if their significant others were on the same page and you made the whole thing more of a team effort. It’s definitely hard to eat and live healthy if the person you spend most of your time with is always eating chicken wings and Ho Ho’s or wants to go out dancing every night.

A long time ago, one of my early mentors in the Iron Game told me never to get in a relationship with a girl who wasn’t 100% into fitness and who wasn’t willing to accept and live the lifestyle. And he was right. Any relationship I was in that broke that rule never worked out.

So Big Tony’s advice to me is my piece of advice to you for the day.

Now I just gotta go figure out some way to string this engagement out another four years til I hit forty

PS. The pics above are from a recent shoot Jen did with NYC photographer, Jay Sullivan. I think they came out great but would love to hear what you guys think. Drop a comment and let me and Jen know.

Thanks, guys.

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Deload weeks are when you want to take plates OFF the bar

Once you’ve been training more than a few years the need to deload on a somewhat regular basis becomes more and more prevalent.

How often you do so depends on your training age, strength levels and injury history. Eastern Bloc countries and countless other successful lifters have had great results by training hard for three weeks and deloading on the fourth week.

It’s a pretty widely accepted formula and has been proven time and time again. So there’s really no need to try and reinvent the wheel. Three weeks hard, one week deload is my standard go-to-recommendation.

There are other options, however, and if you have only been training for a couple of years you won’t need to worry about deloading just yet. Beginners can go a few years without deloading. Eventually you’ll want to start with 12 weeks then work your way down to 10 and so on. When you get a little more advanced some people might be able to go 6-8 weeks hard before deloading. If you’re more of an early intermediate lifter, eight weeks may be a better option for you. If you’re more advanced and go eight weeks you might want to consider deloading for two weeks.

But to keep things simple let’s assume everyone is following the three to one rule. That’s the easiest thing to do since it fits nicely inside of a month.

I usually recommend reducing the total training volume per workout by 40%. So say you normally do 20 sets per workout; on your deload week you would do 12 sets at each workout.

On big barbell exercises that you do for maximal strength like a bench, squat, dead, military I recommend cutting the weight to 50% of your one rep max and just doing two sets of five. So lets say your 1RM on the bench is 315 and the previous week you were doing 255 for sets of 6-8, the deload week would be 155 (or technically 157.5) for 2×5.

The other option is to remove the lift all together for that week. I like this option for experienced guys who have a mastery of the lift and/or are also beat up from years of heavy training. The removal of the big barbell lift all together helps their joints recover. You also may kind of “lose the groove” if you do this, if you are more inexperienced, so it’s something you have to decide for yourself. But I think the benefits of taking that week off of heavy barbell lifting usually outweigh the negatives. You’ll get back in the groove in not time the following week.

For assistance exercises you have two choices. Intermediates should just do fewer sets but keep the intensity the same. You could do the same weight as the previous week or even try to go up. However, the intensiveness (not what some people mistake as intensity) should not be as high as the previous week . This means that you need to give your CNS a break on your deload week and shouldn’t be going to failure or getting overly psyched up on anything.

For guys who have been training a while and are a bit beyond the intermediate level I  recommend cutting the intensity by 20-40% on assistance exercises. So just take 20-40% off all your weights. If you did incline db presses for 10 reps with the 100′s on week three you would do 60′s- 80′s on your deload week. The stronger/more advanced/more beat up and further along in a training cycle you are the greater the drop off % should be. It also depends on the exercise. If you’re normally using 150lbs on a 1 arm row I would want to drop that down by a full 40%. But if it was just something like a face pull or curl you could easily get away with just dropping it 20%. You would do the same number of reps as the previous week but just cut the sets.

The other option is to just take the week entirely off from heavy lifting. I first did this back in the mid 90′s after a phone conversation with Ian King, and my results were awesome. My recovery dramatically improved, my testosterone went up, I was sleeping better and I had fewer nagging injuries. Like any good American I wanted more and got suckered into other stuff and got away from that for a while.

Be sure to lighten your weights on deload weeks

That was until I went to Nazareth Barbell one day for a visit and big Mike Miller told me that that’s what they did. Three weeks on of balls to the wall training, one week off entirely. They went at it hard and absolutely killed it for three weeks, then they rested. They were all monsters and I’m pretty sure Mike was the first guy to squat 1200. So it was hard to argue.

I went back to it again and had some of my over 35 year old clients doing it and they were making great progress.

Like the stubborn, glutton for punishment knucklehead that I am I have yet again gotten away from that schedule but it does work incredibly well and should strongly be considered by all those over 40 who like to go heavy and balls deep like we do. If all you do is some light bodyweight training or kettlebell stuff, deloading won’t be as important for you. But if you like moving iron and do stuff that stresses your shoulders, spine, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles regularly (like military presses, squats, farmers walks, tire flips, deadlifts- ya know, all the fun stuff) then  I would highly suggest deloading regularly.

If the over 35 crowd doesn’t want to take the week off entirely they should definitely at least reduce both the volume AND the intensity on their deload weeks. Not doing so really isn’t even an option, in my opinion, because it will keep you in the game and healthy a lot longer. Either you take the deload week and truly deload or you will be forced to deload due to an injury sooner or later.

Also, for the over 35 crowd I can’t recommend going more than 10-12 weeks without taking a complete week off entirely; with once every 8 (or fewer) weeks being an even better option. During these weeks you can stay active- walking, swimming, hiking, stretching, etc. But no lifting.

Hopefully that gave you some good ideas about how to deload properly without being too confusing.

To sum it up…
- Reduce total # of sets by 40%
- Reduce intensity on big lifts to 50% of 1RM or just eliminate them all together
- Reduce intensity on assistance work to 80% of the previous weeks weight (if that doesn’t allow enough recovery drop the % down to 75% the next cycle, and so on and so on until you decide what % works best for you)

Leave me a comment, if you liked this post, do me a favor and hit the FaceBook “Like” button for me, and let me know if you have any questions.

PS. For a complete program with the deloads built in, minus the guess work check out Triple Threat Muscle.

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We’ve known for years that muscle tissue is highly active metabolically, and it helps us burn more calories during the day. So more muscle equals better fat burn, right? Unfortunately that’s only partly true — and not to the extent we once believed. A pound of muscle is now thought to burn an extra 6 calories per hour (as opposed to the 25 or more per hour we once believed). You’d have to pack on an awful lot of beef to make much difference.

But that’s only one side of the equation. Muscle mass provides a number of other important benefits, foremost of which is better management of insulin. Insulin is your “storage” hormone. Its job is to transport fuel into your cells. The higher your ratio of fat to lean tissue, the less sensitive your lean tissue becomes to insulin. Basically, when your body fat percentage creeps too high and insulin comes knocking, your lean mass stops answering the door. If you see a vicious cycle in all of this, you’re right!

One way to encourage your muscles to start answering the door again is through resistance exercise aimed at growth. Why is it important to improve insulin sensitivity? Well, if your muscles don’t answer the door, guess who will… Yep, your fat cells are always ready with a warm welcome.

To top it all off, long slow cardio can actually cause you to LOSE muscle because it increases your level of cortisol. If you focus instead on short bursts of high intensity effort using exercises that target the entire body in all its ranges of motion, you can actually BUILD muscle while you do your cardio! Fat burning just got easier, and a lot more fun.

Turn Your Body Into A Fat Burning Machine ( for 51% off until Thursday)

To check out Scott’s Tactfit Commando program Click HERE.

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So when people ask me for some tips on how to get lean I tell them two things- diet and sprint. Pretty simple stuff.

Diet is really 80% of getting lean but that’s another topic entirely. Today we’re simply gonna focus on hill sprints for fat loss. Mainly because not enough people are doing them and many of those who are, are doing them all wrong.

If you are new to sprinting you need to take it easy. I mean reeeeaaaally easy. If the last time you ran a sprint was the week before senior prom you need to be very cautious or you’ll probably get hurt.

If this describes you I’d start with hill sprints. Why hill sprints? Well, firstly, because Walter Payton did them. And most of us should strongly consider doing whatever Walter Payton did just because he was that awesome. Because he was my favorite athlete growing up (along with Michael Jordan) I started running hill sprints way back in the 80’s when I found out that that’s what “Sweetness” did (and that poster, pictured above, was on my bedroom wall for years. You see how ripped Payton was?). When I found out a few years later that they were a major part of Jerry Rice’s off season training regimen, their greatness was reaffirmed in my mind.

Hill sprints place your body in a safer position because of the angle, so there is far less impact. The risk of pulling a hammy or popping an Achilles or something in your knee is greatly reduced. So, for most of us, this is the way to go. Another great thing about hill sprints versus other fat loss methods is that they also build muscle at the same time. Can’t really say that for the stairmaster, can you?

Now, before you get started you should warm up properly. Wearing some neoprene knee sleeves might be a good idea just to keep the knees warm. I recommend starting with about five to ten minutes of low intensity drills to get the body ready for the task at hand. A good warm up might consist of:

•    Jumping jacks

Tell me that's not the coolest picture ever...

•    Flings
•    Seal jumps
•    Ali shuffle
•    Low pogo jumps
•    High pogo jumps
•    Prisoner squats
•    Gate swings
•    Wide outs
•    Leg swings- front, back, side to side
•    Walking lunges
•    High knees
•    Butt kicks
•    Tuck jumps
•    Lateral shuffling
•    Skipping
•    Etc.

The nice thing about sprinting up a hill is that you don’t require as much of a warm up. After hitting 5-10 minutes of the drills listed above start with some lower intensity sprints. Do one at about 60%, then 70%, another at 80%, one more at 90% and then you’re ready to go. For the most part I recommend that your sprint work be done at around 95-97%. Very rarely should you go all out at 100%. I realize that the difference between 95-97% and 100% may seem very small but an athlete in tuned with his body can tell the difference. And keeping the intensity just that much lower makes a big difference in overall recovery and CNS fatigue.

Again, if it’s your first sprint session in years you need to start way easier than you think. I recommend no more than FIVE sprints of no more than 40 yards the first day. Some times I see coaches or trainers recommend starting with ten 40-50 yard sprints. When I see this it’s immediately obvious that they haven’t trained too many people and haven’t done this themselves. Or they have been sprinting for years and forgot what its like to be a beginner. Beginners need to be extremely cautious and should start at only about 85-90% for the first week or so and keep the total number of sprints very low.

See how you feel after the first session and give it a go again in about five days. Slowly increase the intensity over time. Rest periods can be as short or as long as you need them to be. You want to keep your heart rate elevated but you don’t want to rest so little that your form starts getting sloppy and you risk injury.

If you were training for speed you might be resting up to five minutes between each set. But since today’s topic is hill sprints for fat loss try to keep the rest periods a bit lower. We don’t need complete CNS recovery here.

The next thing we need to discuss is proper running mechanics. This is where most people get it all wrong. A couple weeks ago I went down to the field with my long time friend, Mike DeSanti (the creator of the recipes in the Triple Threat Muscle nutrition guide and our upcoming recipe book) and we ran some sprints. Since a qualified coach had never taught Mike how to sprint before he was just running like he always had without much thought involved.

I wanted him to feel the difference so I let him do about five or six sprints the old way. Then I taught him to run properly. His speed increased dramatically on the next one and when he hit the 50-yard line he broke out into hysterical laughter.

“I can’t believe I just learned how to sprint at thirty years old!”

“That was awesome!”

“I never moved like that in my life!”

“I was like a gazelle!”

He could barely get the words out through the laughter and since he was cracking up so hard I started dying, myself. We laughed uncontrollably the entire way back to the goal line and it continued throughout the rest of our workout.

Mike was so blown away by the difference that proper running mechanics made that he couldn’t contain himself.

So what did I show Mike that most people don’t know?

Since this is not a discussion on maximal speed training or mastering the 40 yard or 100 meter dash we won’t concern ourselves with the start so much. Instead, to be safe, we will use flying starts, meaning you start by running at less than your maximal speed and work your way up to top speed over the course of 15-20 yards.

•    Starting from the top down, the face must be relaxed. Do night clench your jaw or make any crazy faces. Relax.

•    Keep the chest up and shoulders back and down.

•    No side to side rotation of the pelvis, torso, shoulder girdle is allowed.

•    Hips remain forward toward the finish line at all times.

•    Arms should be bent ninety degrees with the hands open (no clenched fists or flailing, limp wrists).

•    When you are running the arms must pump vigorously, forward and backward. NEVER LET THE ARMS CROSS THE MIDLINE OF THE BODY. Only forward and backward. Little kids run with their arms side to side. Don’t do that or we will all make fun of you.

•    Think of pulling yourself through the air by driving your arms back as fast and hard as you can. The hands come up to a level even with the face and they come down and cross your pocket on the way back (but no further; don’t have them swinging way behind you).

•    Drive the knees high and be sure that the foot strikes directly under your body; not out in front of you (although, on a hill this may be slightly different depending on the incline).

•    Only the front portion of the foot should strike the ground; the heel should never make contact.

•    When the ball of the foot makes contact with the ground think of yourself as an animal pawing at the ground and rapidly pulling it behind you.

•    As Charlie Francis said, running takes place on the ground, sprinting takes place above it. If you do it right you should feel minimal impact or stress and should feel like you are flying effortlessly. If you’re taking a lot of pounding and it feels like a lot of work, you’re doing something wrong and should consider having someone watch or video tape you for some feedback.

What I listed above are basically the instructions for flat ground sprints but can easily be applied to the hill. A few angles will change here and there but for the most part, if you follow those recommendations you’ll be ahead of the pack and your sprints will be a lot safer and faster.

Just in case you aren’t convinced that hill sprinting isn’t the way to go just yet, consider that the current 49ers  head coach, Mike Singletary, who played most of his career with Walter Payton and had several outings against Jerry Rice, has taken a page out of the legends books and added hill sprints to the teams off season training regimen.

“There’s something about the hill,” Singletary told reporters back in mid-March 2009, after the 49ers first minicamp and the hill was on full display for the first time. “It’s beautiful to look at but what it’s going to do for our guys is it’s going to bring about something that you can’t really get in the weight room, something that you really can’t get on the track.”

“All the guys that I know that worked out on a hill, they were a cut above some of the other competition around the league and they had a long playing careers,” Singletary said. “So I’m excited about the hill and it just adds another dimension to our workout.”

So make like Payton and Rice and the entire current 49ers team and go find yourself a hill and start sprinting…

PS. Speaking of the 49ers, their Strength & Conditioning Coach, Duane Carlise, just released a new DVD set on training for football. Check it out by clicking HERE now.

And then check out this video of the great Walter Payton (they show him sprinting the hill at 2:24)

Please leave your comments below.

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Check it out…

Fat Loss Myth #1: Low intensity cardio is great for burning fat and boosting endurance.
Jogging for an hour is a complete waste of time. So is any form of cardio that forces you to do the same repetitive movement over and over. When your muscles have to continuously contract for 30, 45, or 60 minutes, that energy has to come from somewhere. The body is stubborn and doesn’t want to burn fat for energy so it eats up your muscle instead. This immediately kills your metabolism and it robs your body of strength and athleticism.

The key to quickly getting ripped is by doing exercises that stimulate your metabolism all day long. Research by Tremblay shows that high intensity cardio is significantly more effective than low intensity cardio because it forces your body to keep burning fat and calories after you stop training. And research by Tabata proves that just a few minutes of intense cardio will boost your anaerobic and aerobic conditioning.

Solution: Do short, quick circuits of body weight exercises such as split jacks, jumping jacks, and burpees.

Fat Loss Myth #2:  You should lift for high reps to failure to burn fat.
It’s easy to think that lifting weights for a ton of reps is making your body burn fat, but it’s not, and research tells us why. You see, the key to really cranking up your metabolism hinges on recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible with each set by following the law of Henneman’s size principle. When you do high rep training you’re only working the smallest, weakest muscle fibers that have little to no impact on boosting your metabolism. You must target all your muscle fibers when you lift weights or you’ll never get results.

Solution:  Do full body circuits that consist of an upper body pull, an upper body push, and a squat or lunge because they’ll stimulate all your muscle fibers. Also, keep the rest periods short and accelerate all lifts.

Fat Loss Myth #3: You don’t need to get stronger to get leaner.
The stronger you are, the more muscle fibers you can recruit. Stimulating all your muscle fibers with each set catapults the metabolic cost of your workouts. Metabolic cost is a measure exercise scientists use to determine how many calories you’re burning through exercise. The higher the metabolic cost, the better.

Furthermore, recent research by McBride et al proves that getting stronger makes you run faster. And the faster you can move, the more fat you’ll burn through exercise. That’s because research by Mazetti et al shows that people who lift fastest burn the most calories.

Solution: Lift weights that don’t allow more than 12 reps per set. For body weight exercise circuits, move as quickly as possible to stimulate your metabolism.

Myth #4: Just eat less and you’ll lose weight.
Your metabolism is primarily stimulated by nutrients, not just calories. When you drastically cut calories it brings your metabolism to a screeching halt because your body is not getting the essential nutrients it needs: amino acids, vitamins, minerals, omega-3s, etc.  If you just eat less, the only thing you’ll lose is muscle, and this destroys your metabolism so you end up fatter than you were before. Sound familiar?

Solution: Replace low-quality foods such as bread, pasta, and rice with nutrient-dense foods such as berries, green vegetables, and fish. Be sure the berries and vegetables are organic (preferably from a farmer’s market) and only eat wild fish, not farm-raised, since they all contain the most nutrients.

Myth #5: You must workout every day to see results.
Training every day doesn’t allow your body the time it needs to recover, so you get overtrained very quickly. You know what happens when you’re overtrained? Fat-storing hormones flood your system! Now you know why the people you see in the gym every day aren’t getting results. Plus, being overtrained zaps your motivation and makes you more susceptible to illness and injury.

Solution: Train no more than four days per week. If four workouts per week doesn’t change your body fast, your program stinks!

Today is the last day to get Chad’s new Body of F.I.R.E. fat loss system at the introductory discounted rate. Check it out by clicking HERE now.

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