Fitness

Everybody knows that squats, deads and presses get you huge and that bodyweight training is just for conditioning, right? Wrong. One look at rings gymnasts or a quick YouTube search of dudes dominating chin up bars in every park in New York City will show you that bodyweight training can get you jacked. That’s because exercises that force you to move your body through space have a higher level of neuromuscular activation than those where you are simply moving your limbs. It’s one of the reasons why back squats are better than leg presses. Some of my favorite bodyweight exercises… continue reading.

Guest Post By Renegade Inner Circle Member Kevin Cassidy I was lost. For seven years of my life I was living in chaos, pollution of my body, and destruction of my mind. My life was in a downward spiral leading to my bottom. I started off with the world in my hands, and became willing to give it all away for another drink. I have been involved in athletics my entire life. I grew up playing football, roller hockey, ice hockey, basketball, baseball, and soccer with my friends. When I grew older my love for the game… continue reading.

There aren’t many things worse than being an un-athletic doofus. But a lot of times that what we let ourselves become in our quest to get bigger and stronger. You freak out and obsess over size and strength gains and you let your movement efficiency and conditioning go down the crapper. A lot of that comes from heeding the old “hardgainer” advice of doing no more than two or three short workouts per week and laying on the couch the rest of the time. Yeah, that sounds like the epitome of health and fitness. continue reading.

As a strength training newbie, if you do everything right you can gain twenty pounds of muscle in your first year of proper training. In some rare cases I’ve even seen some gifted kids gain thirty. But to gain thirty you have to also be growing at that time anyway, with or without strength training. That means it’s only gonna happen if you’re 16-22, maybe even up to 25. Gaining much more than that is going to be damn near impossible. That’s not a defeatist statement but rather a reality check so that you don’t frustrate yourself and get disappointed. continue reading.

Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite show muscle today; the pecs. You can’t train them like every other muscle group. The reason being that they’re made up of predominantly fast twitch fibers. Fast twitch fibers have the greatest potential for growth, but also fatigue quickly. They respond best to lower duration sets with heavy weights. They thrive on explosive contractions.  They can’t handle as much volume and need more rest. They’re “performance muscles.” Not every muscle group is like that. Some are slow twitch, meaning you train them… continue reading.

Guest Post by Natural Bodybuilding Champion, Tyler English The “Renegade Way” as I’ve come to understand it, has given me more then ever imagined. Since stumbling upon this blog after graduating college, it’s been a combination of the way in which I approach my life, training and business, in which one could deem, the Renegade Way. To say this happened overnight would be a fallacy, much like my approach to training, life, bodybuilding and business, it’s been a natural progression of growth. And it’s taken me a few years. My progression continues today and this growth will continue until the… continue reading.

Renegade Strength Club member, Michael Hodge sent us this message recently: *** My name is Michael Hodge, and I have been a member of the Renegade Strength Club for over 5 years. In October of 2011 I was weak and skinny fat, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out a way to break through my “plateau.” After finding Jason, I discovered that there was no plateau, and I was, in fact, just training the wrong way. Since I had seemingly tried everything else, I figured I… continue reading.

I got an email and very impressive before and after pics from Renegade Strength Club member, Mike Bulin. He said… “I started following the Renegade Strength Club programs 3 years ago. I must say they changed my life. I used to go into the weight room with zero guidance and zero confidence. Then I stumbled across Jay. I read a bunch of his articles and I was convinced he knew his stuff so I spent the money to join the club. I saw great results immediately. continue reading.

Everyone’s over-thinking and over-complicating this whole training and nutrition thing. You should see some of the questions I get on a daily basis. It’s mind boggling. It doesn’t have to be this hard, my friends. Lift heavy, get strong, get a pump at the end. Sprint hard, do some lower intensity conditioning. Eat more carbs on training days, less on off days. Unless you’re skinny and ripped. In that case eat a shitload of carbs every day. Sleep eight hours a night, take a nap if you can, do your best to eliminate stress. Use a foam roller and… continue reading.

Its summer so a lot of people get all concerned about having their pretty little abs showing at the beach. Because of this they crank up their conditioning and cut down on carbs. That’s all well and good but that shouldn’t be the only reason you condition regularly. You should do it all the time with passion and intensity because it makes you more of a badass. A guy who is big or can squat a lot of weight is pretty useless if he can’t make it up a flight of stairs or play some flag football or volleyball at… continue reading.

It was on a trip out to California many years ago that Diamond first taught me the importance of staying tight and how it could bulletproof me against injuries and instantly add 20-40 pounds to all of my lifts. I arrived from Newark Airport on a Wednesday night in LA and was scheduled to meet Diamond at Gold’s Gym in Venice the next morning at 10am. His name was Darren but everyone called him Diamond. Apparently it had something to do with his time playing for numerous baseball teams in the minor leagues. Diamond was about 230 and ripped at… continue reading.

You want to lose fat fast. So what do you do? Find a hill and run up it. Today. Seriously. Do it. You don’t have to go balls out like you’re trying to beat Usain Bolt in a race, just run fairly hard. About 75% of your top speed would be a good start. Walk back down, catch your breath and do it again. Then go home. That’s it for Day 1. No need to kill yourself or get injured. Only clowns train themselves into the ground like that. Smart people take the time necessary to prepare and adapt. Two… continue reading.

Over the course of the three years Daryl had transformed himself into one strong dude. That’s because Daryl was smart enough to know not waste time pussyfooting around with little foo-foo exercises. He focused on big, manly exercises like squats, deadlifts and presses. Progressive overload was all that mattered to Daryl so he added weight or reps and gradually built up his strength to a very impressive level. Of course, with that added strength comes a lot of added size, too. The best way to get bigger is to get stronger. We all know that by now. There are no… continue reading.

Training first thing in the morning is never going to be ideal. In a perfect world you’d be up for a few hours so that you give your body temperature a chance to get elevated and get the fluid moving that has settled in your discs overnight. But we don’t live in a perfect world and a lot of people have to train first thing in the morning or they’ll never get their workouts done. If that describes you I have some advice that could help you out. First of all you really need to be awake for an hour… continue reading.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Road Warriors back in 1984. I was ten at the time and my friend Lance had slept over the night before. We always watched WWF wrestling on Saturday mornings but on this day we happened to catch some AWA action on ESPN. Iron Man by Black Sabbath played and the two most jacked up, badass looking mofo’s I’d ever seen, wearing face pain and spiked shoulder pads ran to the ring. I didn’t even know what traps were called at the time but I knew that Hawk looked cool as hell… continue reading.