Originally written for Elite Fitness Systems At a recent party at my moms house a friend of hers approached me and said he needed my advice. He was in his mid fifties, overweight and out of shape. He told me that he started to work out and needed to know how to use some of the machines. “I have no idea,” I told him. Thinking I was joking, he continued, “You know the one that you sit on with your chest against the pad and your hands out to the side, with your knees bent forty five degrees and…” “Mike,… continue reading.

Intervals The good- intervals allow you to burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time and keep your metabolism elevated long after you finish doing them. The bad- if you are training legs two or even three times per week, you can not do intervals more than once a week without overtraining. Let me rephrase that; you can but eventually it will lead to overtraining or at the very least slow down your strength gains. You can negate this slightly by keeping your leg training volume extremely low and doing… continue reading.

The purpose of doing cardio when trying to get bigger and stronger is to keep you lean, improve your insulin sensitivity and allow you to eat more calories. What kind of cardio will have the least negative effect on your size and strength gains? That’s a no brainer; walking. The great thing about walking is it will not impede your progress in the least, the bad thing is that you have to walk for a bare minimum of 45 minutes to really burn a decent amount of calories and you will not elevate your metabolism much after walking. That is… continue reading.

I have gotten several questions lately about doing cardio while trying to get bigger and stronger. Should it be done at all? What kind? How much? How often? What are the negatives? And what are the positives? Hopefully I can answer everyone’s questions at once with this post. Here’s the real deal on doing cardio while trying to gain size and strength… If you are a beginner who also happens to be a ripped ectomorph who has to fight for every ounce he gains (e.g. a classic hardgainer), I suggest that you lay off cardio almost entirely for at least… continue reading.

CNS intensive training is hot topic these days. Everybody always wants to talk about the CNS and the role it plays in your training. I have done so myself on several occasions but today I want to talk about the role that overthinking about CNS intensive training may be playing in your long term results. For those that don’t know, it is widely recommended that you do not do two CNS intensive workouts on back to back days. For example, you do not perform two max effort workouts on consecutive days or if you are training for speed, you… continue reading.

Originally written 8/2005 I decided to write this article a few months ago but never got around to it until recently. It wasn’t until last weekend, when I scrolled through Dave Tate’s hip hop training mix on his iPod, that I realized this article was a necessity. Too many people are listening to, and worse yet, training to bad hip hop. Before I get into my recommendations of hip hop to train to I must first tell you why I feel I am qualified to write such an article. Afterall, if I saw a hip hop article written by some… continue reading.

Nutrition expert, Mike Roussell and I sat down for an interview recently and discussed the topic of building muscle. Check it out: MR: Jason, your transformation was pretty incredible going from 147lbs to 231lbs. How much trial and error did you think you went through training wise until you found what really worked? JF: Oh man, Mike, I can’t even begin to tell you. I tried so many different methods and systems it was unbelievable. I actually started out as a beginner on a six day a week high volume body part split. This was back in the… continue reading.

I would like to thank everyone for all of the emails that have been flooding in during the last 48 hours and apologize for not being able to get back to everyone personally. I promise my staff and I are doing our best to get back to everyone and will be working around the clock today to handle all of your questions and concerns. I woke up this morning to find an email in my inbox that I wanted to share with everyone because it demonstrates one of the biggest mistakes people could ever make and essentially guarantees failure in… continue reading.

Originally published at EliteFTS.com 11/2005 Last night I closed the doors to my strength and conditioning facility for the last time. After over ten years in the same town and the same building, it was time for me to move on to new challenges. When I finished carrying the final few medicine balls out to my truck I locked the doors permanently. I pulled out of the parking lot and headed to meet a few friends for dinner. When I arrived I walked into a surprise party thrown for me by over thirty of my closest clients. I was touched… continue reading.

In the quest to get bigger, faster, and stronger many athletes overlook the most important aspect of training, which is recovery. The faster you can recover from an intense workout the faster progress will be made. Recovery does not mean just getting as much rest as possible in between training sessions. There are many steps to be taken in the road to recovery and if you want to reach your training goals it would be wise to utilize as many as possible. Perhaps the best way to aid recovery is to avoid over-training. I will not go into great detail… continue reading.

For EliteFTS- Originally written in 2004 Am I the only one who reads articles by other strength coaches and wonders if I’m losing my mind? Reading about an iso-quasi-eccentric upside down fat bar hang clean supersetted with sub-maximal dynamic effort isometric depth jumps can have the profound effect of making you tear out your own hair in an effort to figure out a way to incorporate these methods into your workouts. The sad fact is that many of the people who read these articles don’t realize that much of these methods are unnecessary and even useless. By constantly trying all… continue reading.

Originally written for EliteFTS.com in 2003 I wasn’t feeling that great and should have known better. I didn’t sleep that well the night before and had been stressed out of my mind all day. I had a million things to do and barely had time to eat since breakfast. By the time my workout rolled around shortly after 6pm, I was shot. I thought about just putting my workout off until tomorrow. That would have been the smart thing to do. Unfortunately my training partners arrived and cranked up the music and started to talk some trash. I tried to… continue reading.

I have been getting a lot of questions about how to avoid aspartame and what kind of protein powder I recommend to those that still like to drink shakes. First of all, let me point out that there are several studies which show numerous detrimental effects from artificial sweeteners, such as memory loss, birth defects, links to cancer and erectile problems in males (if all the other ones don’t scare you, I’m guessing the last one might cause you to raise an eyebrow). Mysteriously, none of these studies are conducted in the United States. I’m sure everyone can figure out… continue reading.

For EliteFTS I was born with a rebellious streak. It’s been with me just about every day of my 32-year existence. When I wake up every day, I know that I’ll probably do or say something that will probably be nothing more than an act of rebellion in some form or another against something that I see as wrong or unjust. I don’t know why that is. I just accept it as part of my nature. I can’t control it so I embrace it. It’s who I am. Just like I can’t allow society’s rules to control the way I… continue reading.

A Rant by Jon Hinds: In real life, we move our whole bodies almost 100% of the time. In sports, in martial arts, when climbing stairs or picking up kids or shoveling snow – we use our arms, our legs, our backs, our stomach muscles all together. Then why do 99% of all people who exercise, train their muscles in isolation instead of using functional fitness? What good is it to be able to bench 300 pounds with your back supported and your legs unengaged? Who cares if you can leg press the rack? These activities only train… continue reading.