Fitness

The pull up is one of the greatest muscle building exercises in existence, which is precisely why it’s been called the upper body squat. Lat pulldowns can’t even come close to comparing. Whenever you move your body through space the level of neuromuscular activation is dramatically higher. People all too often ask, “How much can ya bench?” A more appropriate question would be “How many pull ups can you do?” The pull up measures your strength to weight ratio better than almost any other exercise known to man. Below are the top 10 ways to improve your pull ups. 1)… continue reading.

Bill Starr was the first strength coach to work at both the collegiate and professional level. He was the strength coach for the Baltimore Colts when they won Super Bowl V. No matter what people may tell you about slide boards, balance training, Bosu balls, tempo training, occlusion training and simultaneously working one arm with the opposite leg, the fact of the matter is that not much has changed in the last forty years when it comes to effective strength training. In general, we can’t get guys any bigger or stronger today than we could back then. As Bill said… continue reading.

If you want to know how to build a bigger chest you’re in the right place. I’ll give you all you need to know including the best chest exercises and the ultimate chest workout. Let’s start by discussing some anatomy basics about the pecs. There’s an upper head of the pecs known as the clavicular head, and there’s a lower head of the chest known as the sternal head. There’s also a pec major and a pec minor. What you really need to know are the following two facts: 1) You can definitely target the upper pecs and… continue reading.

By Brad Pilon Flexible intermittent fasting is becoming a very popular way to use your body’s natural ability to burn lots of fat in a short period of time. Here is a list of the ways that flexible intermittent fasting will turbo charge your fat loss. 1. Increases Fat Burning Hormones Hormones are usually at the root of most of your metabolic functioning, and fat burning is no different. Growth Hormone is the most important fat burning hormone in your body. Fasting pushes growth hormone production into high gear and this makes your fat burning… continue reading.

It just wouldn’t be a party if I didn’t get at least a dozen random fitness related questions from strangers, family members or long lost pals. Kinda like the exchange I had with my old friend Kevin last week… “Hey Jay, good to see you, buddy. Glad you’re here, I have a couple questions for you.” “I probably don’t have the answers, but fire away.” “My shoulder’s been killing recently right here, when I bench press. Here, feel this clicking thing it’s doing,” he says as he places my hand on his shoulder. Another party; another guy placing my hands… continue reading.

I wish I had a guide about how to avoid elbow pain when I first started training, because I certainly have had my share of it. Although this is not my main area of expertise, and guys like Bill Hartman and Keith Scott know a lot more about this than I do, I’ve trained a lot of people for a lot of years and have seen almost every injury you can imagine. I’ve also experienced quite a few of them myself. So today I’m gonna share some tips and tricks with you about how to avoid elbow pain. And since… continue reading.

Riding a stationary bike sucks. Sure, it’s convenient and often the only option for a lot of people, but let’s be honest; enduring 30 minutes of water boarding would probably be more fun. If you can ride a stationary bike, you can ride a real bike; and that would be a much better choice. Sprinting would be far superior to either of those. Doing so on a hill or with a sled or Prowler is often even better. Below are some of my favorite conditioning drills that I do myself and with all of my clients. continue reading.

Guest Post By Brad Pilon You may not have heard of intermittent fasting, and so you may not know why it can and should be a part of your workout and fat loss plan. Intermittent fasting is the practice of abstaining from all but water for a period of usually 24 hours to help with the goals associated with fat loss and weight loss in general. The way in which it helps in this arena is by cutting out a full days caloric intake, while still being able to maintain a full workout schedule. Let’s look at… continue reading.

I always advise all beginners and hardgainers to concentrate on making linear progress (either by adding more reps or more weight) at each and every workout. Add a rep or a plate and you will make pretty consistent gains for quite a while. This is one of the key components to the Muscle Gaining Secrets program. Eventually, however, you’ll no longer be a beginner or a hardgainer and then the whole game changes. It will become more and more difficult to make linear progress on a consistent basis. This can be hard to accept at first and become quite… continue reading.

The last post I wrote about how to improve your chin ups detailed how to get from zero to one. Once you get to one you will, in time, work your way up to sets of five or even ten reps. But again, you will hit a wall at some point and be unable to make any more improvements. So today I am going to offer a very easy, completely unscientific method that will help you add more reps to your chins. One of the major problems is that for most average guys a set of chins is a… continue reading.

Now I know what you’re thinking; “What a boring ass blog post topic.” But it’s a topic I feel needs to be addressed because some people just don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing. Or maybe I just feel that way because I’m so OCD and incredibly analytic that I see and think about things that most people never do. But I promise I will do my best to make this worth your time. Go to a public gym and watch ten different people perform a set of ten reps. You may see speed reps, grinder reps, death… continue reading.

Originally written For Elite Fitness Systems in 2004 When Part One of this article was written a few years ago the focus was on college strength coaches. Unfortunately the unmaking of an athlete begins long before college. It starts at a very young age with uninformed but well intentioned parents. By doing what they think is best for their kids; many parents actually end up destroying their children’s athletic futures. For this story to be complete we have to go back to the beginning. The father of three high school aged boys I used to coach is one such example… continue reading.

This is an old article from 2004, originally written for Elite Fitness.  Since it was quite popular and many of you may have missed it, I figured I would reprint it here today… **** I sometimes wonder if there are any prerequisites at all to getting a job as college strength and conditioning coach. As the owner of my private athletic training company (Renegade Strength & Conditioning) I have had the opportunity to work with athletes from numerous colleges and universities across the country and have witnessed their disgust with their schools strength and conditioning programs. Some athletes, such… continue reading.

While everyone’s busy searching for the perfect rep scheme or newest miracle supplement, one of the greatest progress boosters of all is constantly overlooked. The concept of taking an afternoon nap is foreign to most of us yet it can do more for your training than 90% of the other minutia bullshit people waste their time obsessing on. There’s a popular MMA t-shirt that reads “Tap or Nap.” While the intended meaning of the t-shirt is obvious, this slogan can also be applied to your training. Taking naps is so important that if you don’t find the… continue reading.

Q: Jay, everyone thinks they know how to build muscle mass. But as you and I know, most people never really even get close to their true potential. What is the biggest mistake people make when trying to get big and strong? A: They follow the same old, traditional bodybuilding routine. That means they are training each body part with too much volume, not enough intensity, probably too much intensiveness, and not enough frequency. Just so everyone is on the same page, when I say intensity I am referring to percentage of one rep max. That means that they… continue reading.