FitnessQuests

Five tips to reduce lower back pain

It is a sad fact that according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, an estimated 85% of adults suffer from some form of lower back pain. While some occurrences are caused by contact injuries, most can be attributed to weak stabilizing muscles and a lack of core stability endurance.

Your stabilizing muscles are the beginning of every natural movement you make. If you move your arm, your stabilizers will fire first. They are your center of gravity and they are there to ensure not only balance but proper absorption and transference of all forces coming from inside and outside the body. It doesn’t matter if you’re walking down the street or riding a 2500lb bull, flipping a burger or swinging for the fences; you’re stabilizers act first in order to protect the spine.

The spine should really never have pressure on it because it should always be protected by the stabilizers but due to our sedentary lives, nutrient deficient diets, and dysfunctional breathing patterns (chest breathing), our stabilizers are weak and our spine suffers more stress than it is intended to take.

As I discussed in my last post, The truth about core workouts, many people don’t realize that your core is actually two different systems (one for movement and one for stability) so if it is realized that weak core muscles are the problem, the answer most people come up with is to start doing core work like sit ups, leg lifts, and back extensions. These movements however, are designed to strengthen the movers but not the stabilization muscles such as your transverse abdominals, multifidus, and inner obliques. Utilizing these core mover muscles without proper support from your stabilizers, just puts further pressure on an already weak spine.

If you don’t have a base of support in your muscles, your spine becomes your support. This can cause damage to the ligaments that support the vertebrae which leads to a narrowing of the opening in which the spinal nerve passes through.It also leads to further compressing of the discs between the vertebrae. If you ever slipped a disc, you know first hand why this is bad.

Furthermore, without proper support your body will make many compensations which will lead to further imbalances and more possibility for injury. For instance, if you ever see someone leading with their head in a core exercise or rotating their pelvis forward to complete a sit up, you are witnessing compensations due to weak core muscles and stabilizers and these can lead to all sorts of other problems.

Um... Nevermind...

With that said, I want to give you 5 things you should do right now to get your stabilizers up to par and to get rid of back pain for good.

1. Stop doing exercises that put pressure on the spine. There are many of these but the main ones that come to mind are weighted squats, dead lifts, and core exercises that require movement of the spine. (This isn’t permanent, just until you build some support.)
2. Stretch. Stretch several times a day if you can, pay particularly close attention to the hip flexors and hamstrings if you sit a lot.
3. Do stabilization exercises like the ones I mentioned in my last post. Do vacuums as much as possible. Remember, your stabilizers are mainly made up of type 1 slow twitch fibers so time under tension is very important. Flexing them for at least 6-20 seconds at a time will provide you with much better results than faster movements.
4. During all exercises, practice the drawing in technique. Just before you do the exercise, you can create more stability and deeper core activation by pulling in the area just under your naval toward your spine (without bending at the spine). It acts as a sort of natural weight belt.
5. Pay attention to all compensations you make during exercise. This can be knees moving inward during squats, head going forward when pulling or pushing with your arms, back arching during overhead press, lower back lifting during bench press, etc. If any of these are present, you must correct them through stretching shortened muscles and strengthening weak muscles. Your body is a chain and each compensated movement affects your core and therefore your spine. Fix them.

Here’s one more as an added bonus.

During all exercise, keep your head aligned with your body and your cervical spine neutral. Looking sideways to check out your biceps in the mirror, off at a TV across the way, or ogling the girl you’re hoping notices your impressive physique, is asking for all sorts of trouble. Your pelvo-ocular reflex (meaning your pelvis turns in the direction of your eyes) will kick in and alter your movement patterns, thus making damage to your spine very possible.

If you have serious pain in your back, you should of course get it checked out by a doctor before exercising outside of that following the steps above can go a long way in helping that nagging pain to go away. If you haven’t already, check out yesterday's post for more information about the core and why the stabilizers are so important.

Until next time,

Kris

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The truth about core workouts

What’s the best core exercise to get a six pack? Does this ab gadget work the way is say’s it does? Should I do any twisting motions in my core workout? Will sit ups make me lose this gut? So and so says not to work my core at all, do I need to?

These are all questions that I hear all the time. Honestly, for most people these questions are misplaced at best and flat out dangerous at worst. This article should shed some light on core training for both performance and aesthetics.

For the past ten years, the importance of core work has become more widely recognized amongst those trying to get fit. In response to this, we’ve had an avalanche of opinions on core workouts that can never seem to agree with each other. Add to the mix our intense want (need) to lose belly fat and exercises like the sit up have become more controversial than US politics.

Today I want to start to help you get to the bottom of it (like you haven’t heard that before, right?)

The core or lumbo-pelvic-hip complex is one of the most intricate systems in the human body. The core is made up of the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex, the 29 muscles that attach to it, the thoracic and cervical spine, and quite a bit of fascia and connective tissue. For everything to have proper alignment the muscles must be strong enough to support you, have correct length-tension relationships, have right recruitment patterns, and they must be properly aligned with your joints.

most of us don’t need to know everything about our anatomy to have a good, productive workout, I find it important to know enough to decipher the garbage information that constantly bombards us.

First thing you have to know is that there are two functions of the core that are each important:

1. To stabilize the body (distributing weight, absorbing force, transferring ground-reaction forces, and providing a base of support for proper movement, acceleration, and deceleration.)
2. Movement (twisting, side to side, and front to back)

To accommodate these two functions, you have two sets of systems.

Note: don’t worry about memorizing the next bit of information.

For stabilization you have the transversus abdominis, internal obliques, lumbar multifidus, pelvic floor muscles, diaphragm, and the transversospinalis.

For movement you have the lats, erector spinae, hip flexors (iliopsoas), hamstrings, hip adductors (adductor longus, brevis, magnus, gracilis, pectineus) the hip abductors (the gluteus minimus, medeus, TLF), the rectus abdominis, and the external obliques.

There are also several muscles such at the gluteus maximus that can be classified as both a mover and a stabilizer.

The reason why there is so much controversy regarding core training is because many people ignore the simple fact that that the core has these two distinct purposes. Yes, everyone should be doing core training, but if you can’t stabilize yourself or you have muscle imbalances, you have no business repetitively twisting and bending your spine or throwing heavy medicine balls around until you make corrections. That means lots of stretching and stability work.

I won’t go into stretching too much here except to say that most of us are under chronic hip flexion from too much sitting and need to stretch our hip flexors and hamstrings.

Stabilization exercises typically require no spine movement. The most common of these exercises would be planks and vacuums. Many of you are familiar with planks so I won’t go into that but if you aren’t, a quick YouTube search will catch you up to speed.

Vacuums I will describe as they may be harder to find. The vacuum is a simple breathing exercise. Take a deep breath into your belly and then push it out by pulling your belly button toward spine (don’t bend your spine). Once you’ve pulled your stomach in as far as you can, hold it for 8-10 seconds. For added difficulty, take rapid fire shallow breaths while holding your abs in but stop if you feel dizzy or faint. Do 10 reps for 2-3 sets.

Vacuums sound simple but please don’t discount them. They are important and very effective at working your transversus abdominis. They are the only exercise I know of that can tighten up your midsection by pulling in the muscles. It still won’t burn the fat on top though so don’t get too excited.

Once you get good at vacuums they can be done while in the plank or in the “cat vomiting” pose that Tim Ferriss describes in The 4-Hour Body, for added benefit.

While it may be tempting to pass this phase up and instead load up on tons of crunches and twists and leg lifts, I implore you not to. Doing so will only lead to greater structural imbalances, subpar strength gains, and back pain/injury. If your core isn’t stable, you’ll never see your max potential and you’ll always have little nags that affect your training even if you are fortunate enough to avoid injury. On top of that, you can kiss any chance of flat abs goodbye. Your stabilizers are your foundation and without those, your house of cards won’t get very high.

The good news is it only takes 1-2 months to build a proper foundation and once it’s built, you will be able to work harder and more efficiently than ever before, resulting in better results than ever before.

Need more reasons? How about appearance? Having a properly aligned body makes just makes your appearance better. You’ll fit into your clothes better and even out of your clothes it will make it look like you’ve added muscle and removed fat. If you have slumped over shoulders, overly arched back or tucked butt, your head’s not resting over shoulders, your feet are flaring out, and you knees are buckling in even great body composition won’t make you look fit and healthy.

Oh, as far as the questions I started this article with, there is no best ab exercise for getting a six pack, no that gadget won’t give you the results it claims, no sit ups won’t help you slim down, yes you should do core exercises as described above, and twisting is an incredibly important piece of the exercise puzzle as long as you do it correctly and your body is ready for it.

Until next time,

Kris

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My #1 stretching technique to improve movement efficiency and strength

This post gives you my best stretching technique to increase strength, movement efficiency, and to avoid injury. It’s vital that you read it if you do any exercise at all.

My biggest fitness mistake for years was my failure to stretch. Then once I began stretching, I made the mistake of only stretching the muscles I intended on using during that workout.

No matter how much I stretched these muscles however, I found that my movement patterns were still just as limited and I was still dealing with a constant flow of nags and injuries. On top of that, my strength actually seemed to be decreasing!

It wasn't until I discovered this tip below that everything changed. Within weeks I’d begun lifting heavier weights, my form and overall posture improved, and the nagging pains and injuries began to decrease dramatically.

Many of you probably aren’t doing this simple thing so listen up.

Every major muscle in your body has a group of muscles that work with it known as synergists and muscles that works directly against it called antagonists. When a muscle is tight, your nervous system avoids injury by not fully engaging that muscles antagonist (poor neuromuscular efficiency). 

So what happens you need to use one of those weakened muscles caused by a tight antagonist muscle? Because it is weakened, your body makes adjustments. Imagine the intended use muscle as being the star of a sports team. If that star player becomes sick or injured, he is pulled out and replaced by a second string player. This player can still perform the action but probably won’t perform as well or in the same way as the star player. This means a lack of overall efficiency. The body however is not a team of separate players. It's a network of nerves and joints and muscles that are all attached and have to find a way to move in sync.

A sweet picture of Animal

Your bones are designed to be moved by your muscles. Different muscles move joints in different ways and your joints are designed to efficiently move in these ways. When the wrong muscle is firing, it moves your joint but not in the way it’s designed to move. Not only is this bad for that joint but since each joint is connected to another joint and each joint has other muscles attached to them, it causes you to make further compensations in your body. If you now add weight to this equation, you have a recipe for joint/connective tissue disaster.

That’s not all though. This then causes further muscle imbalances by allowing the muscle that is supposed to be firing to get weaker while causing the compensating muscles to become over strengthened and tight.

To make matters worse, your body has movement memory that it uses for efficiency and after a bit of time it will begin to naturally bypass its prime movers (your star player) and go for the secondary muscles even if the prime mover is available. You may have to relearn how to activate the proper muscles if you ever hope to fix the imbalances at a later date.

So what does all this lead to? Usually it leads to highly predictable non contact injuries that to you may seem completely out of the blue. Things like ACL tears in the knees due to tight hips.

So how do you fix all this?

The good news is, it’s actually quite simple.

Before a workout, stretch the muscles that are ANTAGONISTIC to the ones you're going to work with static (classic 30 second hold) stretching. If they are really tight first use a foam roller and then move to static stretching. So if you're working your quads, stretch your hamstrings.

Once you do that, then use foam roller on the agonist muscles for your workout and follow it up with some dynamic (full range of motion movements) stretching. Take a few minutes to do this before each workout and you will see huge improvements in your body's movement efficiency, posture, strength, and arthrokinematics (joint motion).

If you've been training with tight muscles for any period of time, there is a chance that you will need to retrain certain muscles to fire properly. This is a whole other topic to itself and one that I will hopefully be able to get to at a time in the near future. For now just make sure you are fully aware of what should be firing and make sure you can that muscle working throughout the entire range of motion. If you can't, have someone place their hand on that area for awareness and concentrate on squeezing it throughout the movement.

 

Here’s to your good health,

Kris

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Advancing the 12 minute workout

Yesterday I told you about how I lowered my 12 minute workout time down to 8 minutes and 23 seconds in under a week by doing a modified version for a few days and then going back to it. Today I want to show you the simple modifications I made in order to accomplish that.

If you aren’t familiar with the simple 12 minute workout and don’t feel like checking it out, here are the cliff notes.

The workout is very simple and only consists of four exercises.

It starts off with 20 bodyweight squats followed immediately by 20 lunges. There are five sets of this, with a 15 second rest in between sets. After 5 sets, take a one minute rest before doing 50 pushups, then immediately follow that with a 30-second plank. That’s it. So in about 12 minutes you get in 100 squats, 100 lunges, 50 pushups, and a 30-second plank.

After working that down to 11 minutes I became determined to knock it down even further, so I decided to modify the workout for a few days into a harder version. When I was used to that, I came back to the original workout so I could easily kill my old records. Below is the modified workout I did, with almost everything the same but more pushups added throughout.

20 squats

25 pushups

20 lunges

15 second break

Do that 5 times just like before. At the end I did one more set of 25 pushups, then a 45-second plank.

I designed it this way because even though it was more work, it gave my legs a longer rest period. I never had to go from one leg exercise directly into the other with no rest like I did in the original workout, which made it easier to transition to the harder workout. I added those 25 pushups before I got my 15 second rests in though, so it was a lot more work that I had to recover from.

This had great carry over into the 12 minute workout, because I didn’t feel as though I needed much rest until I got toward the end of it. Plus because my chest was fresh at the end and I’d done so much less work, I only took about 10 seconds to rest at the end instead of the full minute. All of this allowed me to cut an amazing 3.5 minutes off my time over just a few days.

I implore you to try it out for yourself. If you can’t do the numbers above or you feel it’s not quite enough for you, adjust them to something more comfortable for you. If you have to do modified pushups against a wall or on your knees, that’s fine too.

The important thing is that you see for yourself exactly how this works to make quick improvements in your time, so that you can take this and apply it to other parts of your life.

 

Until next time,

Kris

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The single best fat burning exercise there is

What is the single, best fat burning exercise there is?

I recently had lunch with a friend of mine, fellow fitness enthusiast John Romaniello. For those of you that don’t know him, John is the author of a very successful advanced fat loss program called Final Phase Fat Loss. John was a chubby teen, but turned himself into a highly successful fitness model as well as a personal trainer for many very successful NYC models. I don’t get to talk to John often, so when I do I always pick his brain a bit.

 
John being John

 

Because John’s expertise is in fat loss (particularly stubborn fat loss), I was curious what he felt is the single best exercise for fat loss. I honestly didn’t expect much of an answer as it’s kind of a loaded question, but I was surprised when he emphatically answered and then backed it up with reasoning. The truth is, his actual answer was something I’d known from my own experiences but I’d never really put the whole picture together before. Today, I’d like to put it all together for you.

Dynamic Training

There’s something called dynamic training that is used by many of the most successful fat loss coaches in the world. Usually if some Hollywood star needs to lose weight and tone up for a role in a hurry, it’s some form of dynamic training that’s prescribed. The reason? Dynamic training works. So why haven’t you seen it recommended everywhere? The reason is simply that it’s not an easy sell. Dynamic training works better than almost anything you can do, but it’s hard work. People don’t buy programs that promise hard work. People buy books and programs that promise 8-minute abs even if you spend the other 23 hours and 52 minutes of the day sitting on your butt eating delicious cake. 

John is a master of dynamic training (or what he calls dynamism), which is one of the reasons why his program has been so successful. It’s the principles behind dynamic training that also have a lot to do with why this single exercise is so effective at burning fat. Before I get to that though, I want to tell you a little bit about dynamic training; then we can talk about this exercise and why it is so important in your arsenal against stubborn fat.

Dynamic training is all about fast-paced, compound movements that build balance, athleticism, power, and speed. They are big, energy expensive movements that involve as many muscles as possible, and your workouts are often set up in circuits that alternate exercises based on body part. For instance, you may do a leg exercise, immediately follow it with a shoulder exercise, and then finish up by going straight into an exercise for your back.  As you can see, dynamism calls for very little rest between movements.

The idea in these circuits is to rotate through your fresh muscle while keeping your major energy systems working non-stop. This not only burns more calories, but it does amazing things for your body’s efficiency—which means everything works better while weight loss and exercise become easier. In other words, your conditioning goes way up.

To sum up: the idea behind dynamic training is to utilize fast-paced, full-body, controlled movements. These moves require balance, momentum, awareness, and strength, and are highly taxing to all major systems.

Which brings us back to John’s answer to when I asked what single exercise identifies with all these principles and more?

The lunge.

The lunge is one of the most complex movements the body can do, yet is very simple for most people.

It’s heavy.  It’s dynamic. It’s expansive. A front lunge requires your entire body to move forward, catch your weight balanced, stop your own momentum, and then use your largest muscle groups to drive you back to starting position. All lunges (and especially reverse lunges) require balance and complete awareness of your body.

A lot of people love squats and dead lifts, and these moves are great. They are very important, especially if you’re trying to really pack on the muscle.  With squats and dead lifts however, your feet stay locked in place—you never even lift them off the ground. Your entire body stays locked in place except your hips and knees. With a lunge, everything has to move: you take your entire body off balance before pushing off to get back in position. You stretch yourself out and decentralize your force. You can add weights or twists or presses, making it a very cardio intensive move. You can do front lunges, side lunges, reverse lunges, walking lunges, rotating lunges, weighted lunges, etc. The variety is basically endless.

Plus it’s not just a great fat-burning exercise. It is also a top muscle-building exercise, which makes it one exercise that no one should leave out of their arsenal. I would try to include some variation of this exercise in each and every fat loss workout I do.

A few pointers about the lunge:

1.    If you don’t do a lunge correctly with proper form, they can damage your knees which can lead to serious injury. Make sure your knees are strong enough to handle this. See your doctor.

2.    Lunges put all the emphasis on movement and balance. Go as fast as you can with good form, but go as slow as you need to in order to maintain that good form.

3.    If you’re not holding weights, try bringing your hands up in front of you as if you were in fighting stance, with elbows in and arms totally vertical and parallel to one another. It helps you find your balance.

4.    Keep your core and glutes tight for better balance and a straighter spine

5.    When you lunge forward, you want “mid-foot balance.” This means you don’t land on your toes or heels, but your mid-foot. Another way to look at it would be your whole foot coming down at once without forward momentum. Imagine your foot coming down on ice so that it has to drop straight down and not be moving forward, or it will slip out from under you.

6.    If you’re doing reverse lunges, at least 70% of your body weight should remain on your front leg. Your back leg should have feather weight on it.

7.    With reverse lunges it is also vitally important that you keep your body straight. If you need to turn to look at your positioning, make sure your body is stabilized first.

8.    When pushing up, push through your heel to activate your glutes. Your glutes should be doing more work than your quads, and way more than your calves.

9.    As with squats, your toes shouldn’t go past your front knee on the lunge. This includes your front leg when doing reverse lunges.

10.   Check with your doctor before performing this or any other exercise or routine.

If you’re trying to lose weight or build muscle and you’re not using this exercise, you’re likely not getting the results you could be.  The lunge is the one powerhouse movement that can bring real change to your routine.

Until next time,

Kris

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12 minutes of simple but intense bodyweight workout.

One thing I like to do is put together quick at home body weight workouts. I like them because they require no equipment, I don't have to go anywhere, they only take a few minutes, and when you get finished with one you feel like you just finished an hour long hardcore gym workout. In other words, don't do these in your living-room if you're worried about dripping sweat all over everything.

Today, I really didn't feel like doing anything too crazy and I missed my leg workout this week so I decided to put together a really simple workout that would really get my blood moving and get my legs good and pumped up. I'll tell you, it wasn't my hardest workout ever but it definitely did the job so I figured I'd share it with you.

It went like this.

20 deep bodyweight squats

(no rest)

20 alternating front lunges (ten per leg)

15 seconds max rest

Repeat this simple circuit 5 times (100 reps each movements 

1 minute rest

1 set of 50 pushups (if 50 isn't possible, as many as possible)

Drop straight down to plank position. Hold at least 30 seconds.

Go shower cause you're sweating all over everything  and probably look like this...

   I DID IT!!

 

 

Minus the shower, this whole workout only took 12 minutes. Although it was quick, it was still very successful at getting my heart pounding, my legs shredded, and my body crying for mercy!

 

If you decide to give this a shot (after talking to your doctor of course), I would love to hear what you thought of it in the comments. I have lists of these workouts I do but I'm always interested in learning new body weight workouts from others. If you have one you really love, please post it in the comments. If I fall in love with it too, I might just post it here for everyone to try!

 

Until next time,

Kris

 

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Here's a free thank you gift to my readers.

Hey guys and gals!

I just wanted to take a second to thank all of you that have been reading my blog and spreading the word to others. Although the reading base is still low, it seems to grow a little everyday as you guys continue to pass the important information on to your friends and loved ones. For that and for being pretty much the coolest people ever, I thank you.

So, instead of a post today, I wanted to give you something a little better. I just picked up an ebook written by Mike Geary who is a fitness and nutrition author that I greatly respect. Mike, like me, is a big advocate of using better health to have a better body. He's used that formula to write what is now the best selling six-pack abs book on the internet called "Truth About Abs". You can pick up a copy here Fatlossessentials.com if you're interested. It really is everything it says it is.

A few minutes ago though I got my hands on another book of his called Training & Nutrition Insider Secrets for a Lean-Body. It's normally about $18 but Mike has decided to let a few of us give it away to our readers and I was lucky enough to get on board for you guys. It's pretty substantial too. Its about 65 pages and touches on a bunch of helpful topics. To grab a free copy just click the link below and it will open in your browser in PDF form. I recommend you save it to your hard drive cause you'll want to have a copy to look over later.

Download free ebook here!

If you know someone else that might be interested you can send them here or you can simply email them the book. I hope you enjoy it and get something great out of it! I'll be back with some new stuff in a couple days.

 

Until next time,

Kris

 

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Will crunches work to get rid of my belly fat?

This question is one for the ages. Yesterday, in my Illusion of Health article, I talked about all the crazy infomercial ab gadgets out there that promise you a firm chiseled stomach in just minutes per day and the reasons why they don’t work. Today I want to tackle an even bigger misconception regarding crunches and something called ‘spot reducing’.

The idea behind spot reducing is simply that one can burn fat from a certain area of their body by working that area or part specifically. Examples of this would be doing crunches to lose belly fat or tricep extensions to slim down arms. While the validity of spot reducing is a hot and oft contested topic, common sense should tell us this doesn’t work. Think about it, how many overweight people do you see that are sporting trim waists for all the crunch-a-thons that go on? My guess is none.

That's crunch-tastic!

 

I’m not alone in my assessment of spot reducing either. Ask virtually any fitness expert or personal trainer out there and they will tell you the same thing. Spot reducing doesn’t work.

This raises the question then whether you should do crunches and sit-ups at all while you’re focusing on fat loss. I would say the answer in most cases is no. Crunches and sit ups just aren’t very effective fat burners because they burn so few calories. They also do very little to rev up your hormones or your metabolism for greater fat loss. Honestly, they have no great benefit at all for weight loss.

So what exercises should you do if your goal is weight loss? Well there are libraries full of books on this very topic. The breadth of possible answers is amazingly vast and different things do work better for different people. However, the one thing I know to never fail if mixed with a proper diet is a good old-fashioned mix of resistance training and cardio. More specifically, compound movement resistance training and cardio. What I mean by compound movements are exercises that work large portions of the body all at once such as a squat or bench press. These movements work large muscles groups and require a huge amount of energy to properly complete.

As an added benefit, compound movements are great at releasing fat burning and muscle building hormones such as testosterone into the body. Don’t worry ladies, you won’t grow a beard or turn into a she hulk but it will help you reach your goals of a trim and toned body. Some other good compound exercises are lunges, dead lifts, rows, pull ups, pushups, military presses, and cleans.

Likewise, if your goal is weight loss, you should avoid wasting much time on isolated exercises such as curls, tricep extensions, front and lateral raises, crunches, shrugs, leg curls and extensions, etc. Anything that works just one muscle or small muscle group should basically be avoided during this phase.

If you set up your workouts around exercises like this, throw in a few days of cardio, and maintain a healthy diet, not only will the fat begin to melt away but the body that begins to shine through will be stronger and more beautiful than ever.

Train hard and expect success,

Kris

 

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Why Bench Press IS Important

Why Bench Press IS Important

Years ago if someone wanted to ask you how strong you are, they would ask the question, “How much can you bench?” It got to the point that the question became kind of a joke because it was what every non-gym goer would ask without fail. This actually lead to many amateurs to spend all their time bench pressing so they could increase their “stats” and it ended up tipping the boat so far in one direction that a backlash happened.

Many fitness gurus started coming out saying that bench press was highly overrated. That is was just one exercise and way too much emphasis is placed on it. The truth is that they were right. There was WAY TOO MUCH emphasis being placed on bench press. You had a bunch of guys that couldn’t touch their toes, had spindle legs, a gut, and couldn’t do more than 5 minutes of cardio without having a heart attack that spent two hours at a time working on their bench press.

What this revelation lead to though was almost just as bad. Instead of people getting the point that you needed much more than JUST bench press, people stopped doing it all together. Now I hear people actually say that bench pressing isn’t important at all and it’s just something people do to show off.

The truth is, anyone trying to build a strong body with a good shape and lots of muscle, cannot afford to ignore this vital exercise. It is one of the most important exercises that you can perform because it incorporates so many muscles. A proper bench press strengthens you chest, shoulders, triceps, forearms, core, lats, and even your legs if you’re pressing your feet into the floor as you’re supposed to be. In order to get under a bar and try to press 1-3 of your own body’s worth of weight, you need to incorporate muscle fibers across the body that never get touched.

There isn’t a major body builder out there that won’t tell you that a flat barbell bench press is the most important exercise known to them to build a massive, wide, thick, impressive chest. It’s a mass builder and a strength building that is second to none.

One of the most important reasons to do the bench press though is because it’s a compound movement. This means it incorporated many different muscle groups. When you incorporate all of these muscle fibers, it causes your body to naturally release a large amount of the steroid hormone, testosterone. This doesn’t happen in isolated movements such as bicep curls. Since testosterone is vital in muscle growth, fat loss, healing, and recovery; it’s vital that you do everything you can to create it naturally within the body.

Typically the more weight you can properly press in comparison to your body weight, the more testosterone your body will create. So while you shouldn’t care so much about your bench press weight for bragging rights, you do want to make sure that you are pushing as much weight as possible with correct form. Just don’t forget the rest of your body.

If you’re interested in learning how to increase your bench press to release a maximum amount of natural testosterone and really set your muscle building and fat loss goals on fire, you should check out the Critical Bench program. It’s one of the oldest and most celebrated programs online for increasing your bench press with the average person adding about 50lbs to their press every 10 weeks or so.

Until next time,

Kris

How to make high volume training work

High Volume training

In recent years, high volume training has gotten kind of a bad rap. When I tell someone I’m doing 32 sets per body part, their normal reaction is to tell me I’m “overtraining” and inviting the scary cortisol monster!

What people don’t realize though is that when you’re doing that kind of volume, you have to totally shift your time format. You can’t go in and do a 3 hour kill session on your biceps.

Serious trainers are caught on the idea that you have to always be pushing the heaviest weight you can for as many reps as possible. While I agree, there is definitely a place for this in your training regimen; it’s not the only way to train.

I’m going to take a minute to give you the rules of high volume training and then give some oversight on each.

1.    Keep your time in the gym to a minimum

2.    Keep the time under tension to a maximum

3.    Control your time in the gym by cutting rest periods

4.    Change up the types of exercises you do…stretch, mid range, and contraction

5.    Lower your weights

When doing volume training, the first thing you have to remember is that you need to get this done quickly. You’re going to put your muscles under a lot of stress and there is a window before your body turns against you. Now, most people say its 45 minutes to an hour but I assure you, the body of a well trained individual can take more than that before the negative starts to occur. With that said, it is a good idea to be out of the gym in under an hour but when I’m doing heavy volume, I’ll give myself up to 90 minutes.

When doing volume training, try to keep the time under tension high. Time under tension is the amount of time you are in the set with more emphasis of course put on the time you are actually moving the weight and not the rest time. Your goal for building muscle is typically a time under tension between 40 and 70 seconds. With a lot of volume, keep it to 40 or you’ll be there all day. So in a set of 8 reps you might do a 3-0-2 tempo. So if you were curling that means 3 seconds to bring the weight up, no rest at the top, two seconds on the way down. That’s 5 sec x 8 reps which is 40 seconds under tension.

In a high volume scenario, you might be doing two body parts per day. This means if you’re going 32 sets per body part, that’s 64 sets. In order to make this happen without spending 3 hours in the gym, you need to cut your rest periods down to 30 seconds. This is very serious. Bring a stop watch. Time them. At 25 seconds, start getting in position for your next set. This is critical if you want to keep from over training.

Normally I will do high volume in four exercises. Each one will be something like 8 sets of 8 reps. What you want to make sure of is that you are not only hitting the muscle from different angles but also that you are attacking the muscle with a mixture of stretching, mid range and contraction exercises. An example of each of the three for biceps would be inclined curls for stretch, barbell curls for mid range, and concentration curls for contraction.

Some of you may be looking at the above and thinking I’m nuts. 8 sets of 8 with only 30 second rest periods. Hey, I understand. I thought it was pretty crazy too until I got results from it. Let me tell you that when you get through one exercise and your so swollen you can’t bend and you realize you have to do it three more times, its pretty scary. This is where you just push through though. I’m not nuts though, I do realize that there is only so much your body can take before you hit a wall and that’s why I have my last point.

Leave your ego at the door and cut the weight. The weight should be no more than about 60% of your one rep max. The first sets will be easy. That’s normal. Don’t get greedy and start upping the weight. If by the end of the forth set you realize that you’ll be able to breeze through the rest, up it a bit but not much. If by the forth set, you can’t hit 8 full quality reps; drop the weight. You should be doing just enough weight that you can get through the workout with high quality movements but those last two sets are killers.

A few extra notes.

This workout is great for your cardiovascular system. You will breathing heavy… this is especially true on leg day.

I like to split this up in four days across the whole body. So two body parts per day. After the four days, take one or two days off depending on your needs.

Keep your nutrition up; especially on leg day. Believe me, leg day is no joke and you will need to be spot on. You also won’t walk right for a few days after your first time out. It may take 5 or 6 days to heal. This is normal in the beginning.

This workout is not meant to be permanent. I wouldn’t do this kind of training for more than 4 or 5 weeks without cycling back to something else. This is really just another way to shock your body into something else. When you’re done with this, take a few days to a week off and then try something new. If you go back to traditional 3x10 for heavy weights, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with your strength gains.

Last point, if you keep up with your nutrition and rest, be prepared to see some serious gains. A month of this program will usually put on about 10 lbs of muscle if you’re eating right. You may grow out of some of your clothes.

That’s about it guys. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. Just remember, before you shun something because of something some magazine or someone on a forum said its bad, give it an honest try. You never really know until you try something for yourself.

Until next time,

Kris

How to really shock your muscles into growth

How to really shock your muscles into growth

So I’m two workouts into phase 3 of Vince Delmonte’s Maximize Your Muscle program and I can tell you that once again, my muscles are fried. It doesn’t seem to matter that I’ve been working out for years and it doesn’t seem to matter that I’ve already hit every muscle in my body from every angle imaginable. The bottom line is that regardless of all of that, each muscle group I’ve worked in the new program is screaming sore right now. They are almost as sore as my first day working out. The thing is, they were this sore when I started phase 1 and 2 also.

There is a reason I’m telling you this. I often hear people talking about including different exercises in their routine so they can “shock” the muscles into growth. They want to hit the muscle from all angles to make sure they don’t stop getting results. The truth is, while there is some truth to this way of thinking, most people are missing the point. When was the last time you went home as sore as the first time you walked in the gym because you changed up an exercise? Sure you may find that a small section of your body that you normally miss is sore but when was the last time the whole muscle group was screaming for mercy the next day?

The thing is, shocking the muscles is about a lot more than changing an exercise. In fact, if you really want to shock your muscles, you’ve got to change a lot more than just the exercise and this is what most people miss. The reality is that most people train the same way every time they walk into the gym.

Many people only have a small arsenal of exercises and they never really change them up at all.

There are other’s that jump on the bandwagon of people that believe in always expanding their movement arsenal so they never get stale. You can always find these people asking for new exercises to hit this or that part. They all think that there is some Holy Grail movement that will give them the body they’ve always wanted. They are better than the first but not by much.

What most of these people forget is that your body isn’t just made of muscles. Your body is a system of systems that all have to work together to build those muscles. Changing a movement isn’t going to have much effect on your nervous system, your hormone levels, or really anything but the movement of that muscle. If it hits some new part of the muscle it might do something but not much. Probably better for definition than mass. So what’s the answer?

Quite simply, the answer is you have to change everything. For instance, if you’re bench pressing for 3x10 @70% of your max weight with 90 second rests, change it to 5x8 @60% max with strict 30 second rest periods.  Change between explosive and slow and controlled, change the count, change the order of the exercises, etc. If you’re used to doing 3 days per week body part training, try high intensity full body workouts 5 days per week. You know when you’re really shocking your body because the fatigue is different. It feels different. Maybe your muscle just hits a wall and can’t lift anymore, another time your muscle may feel fine and then suddenly your body just gives out, another time your pump may be so ridiculous that you just can’t move the muscle anymore.

What many people don’t realize is that you can take the guy that only knows a few exercises and does the same thing every time he comes in the gym and completely revamp his workout without adding a single new movement to his repertoire. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t add more for optimal results but I’m just saying its possible. The problem is that most people simply don’t know how. Even if they can change a few things up, most people don’t know what they are really accomplishing by doing so.

It’s for this reason that I keep with the Maximize Your Muscle program. Sure, I know my way around the gym. I know my way around better than half the trainers I see. That doesn’t matter though. The reason I’m doing this program, is because every month I receive a new set of workouts that changes everything and I didn’t have to think about it at all. I don’t have to wait until things stop working to start looking for a new way; like clockwork, it just shows up. Furthermore I already know that this stuff has been tested and approved by someone that has been where I am. I know its been put together through trial and error of someone that is probably even more passionate about this stuff than I am. I know this stuff isn’t random and that its put together in such a way that each month builds on the last.

The great thing is that all this comes to me for less than the price of one personal training session each month. Now if you are new to all this, I don’t really recommend you go with this program. Vince actually has a better one for you called No Nonsense Muscle Building which will take you through your first year of training with amazing results if followed. However, if you’ve been at this for a few years and are sick of mediocre results, find yourself a program like this ASAP. As of now the Maximize Your Muscle program is closed but if it opens back up… get in quickly.

Til Next Time,

Kris

One Month results from using Vince Delmonte's Maximize Your Muscle Program!

Hey guys,

Kris here. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything specifically about my progress in the gym and with Vince Delmonte’s Maximize Your Muscle program. So…

First, I just completed month one of the training. I got month two in the mail yesterday and let me tell you, it is a monster program filled with 25 insane workouts over the next 30 days. Difficult is an understatement. But as a quote I heard the other day goes, “The hard we’ll do today, the impossible may take a little longer”. I love that. One thing’s for sure though, while the next 30 days are going to be very hard, they are not impossible and I intend to put myself through every strenuous second to achieve the goals I have set out for myself.

So my progress for month one you ask?

In a word, astounding! I gained 10 pounds of muscle. My arms are not only bigger but incredibly dense and hard, my chest is expanding, my shoulders are becoming monstrous for my frame, my legs are shaping up, my back is growing, and my jeans are starting to fit a lot better in the backside.

Not just that though, my strength has really rocketed. Some lifts I didn’t raise the weight so much as I did just make the lift more solid, others lifts have really shot up. A few highlights…

Bench press-I started out on bench press very strong for my size already. I was pushing my limits every workout but I was starting to get stuck. At my body weight of 150lbs, I was squeezing out 2 or 3 half reps at 255lbs for the most part. I ended with 7 solid reps of 275lbs and just for kicks one time I decreased down to 185lbs and pushed out 31 solid reps straight! I like endurance if you can’t tell.

Squat-I’ve always been a little weak in my legs. I was very guilty of neglecting them for quite some time and I’m not paying for it. Add to that the fact that the one time I really started building my legs and got to 335 in my squats I stepped back wrong and the weight took out my shoulder and put me out of action for 10 months and you have a bad recipe for not doing enough leg work. So I started out with 225lbs but honestly, these reps sucked and I knew it. Because I wasn’t going all the way down, I wasn’t really progressing so on my third to last leg workout I actually lowered the weight to 185lbs. It was an ego hit but by using the training methods in MYM and utilizing what I knew was proper technique, I did move it back up to 225lbs of actual solid squats in those three weeks. I really wish I’d just swallowed my pride a little sooner but hey, we all have lessons to learn.

Leg press-sometimes when I couldn’t get to the squat rack I decided to swap out for leg press. Normally I stay around the 400lbs area for good form, but I was able to increase that to 590lbs with good form.

Lateral raises-this one I always did 15lbs in. I raised this to 20 pounds about 2 weeks before I started this program. On my last workout, it felt pretty good to be using 30 pound dumbbells. Man I was sore though!

Shoulder presses-because of the aforementioned shoulder injury, I’ve always been careful with these. I have long arms so getting them fulling in position has always been a problem. I started the program with 60lb dumbbells and move up to 70s though. My last workout I didn’t have access to a bench though so I used a machine and maxed the machine out at 155lbs per side. Its amazing what you can do when you don’t have to stabilize. Remember, that’s basically me lifting two of me straight over my head, one in each hand, for reps.

Tricep overhead extensions-mind you this is 8 sets of 8. I moved from a 65 to an 85lbs dumbbell.

Weighted dips-I’ve mentioned this but I’d never really done weighted dips before. The first time I used a 45lb plate. By my last workout, I was doing my weight plus a belt with 115lbs strapped to it. Those my friends, are killers. The way I see it, that’s like putting an average weight girl on your back and repping dips! How cool would that be J

Curls-40lbs to 55lbs dumbbells. Finally crossed over that 100lb mark!

Leg extensions-This was done as one set of 20 reps after a grueling leg workout. So this isn’t my max but more just conditioning. I started out doing 120lbs and I got up to 165lbs by the end. I’m quite happy with that.

Hanging leg lifts-I have to admit, I had gotten really lazy about working my core. When I got the workout, the core workout was so much that I couldn’t do it. Started out with 25 hanging leg lifts and then went on straight into even more craziness. The first time I did 15 straight leg and the other 10 bent leg. Then I went to do the next exercise and my abs cramped up so bad I couldn’t stand up. I know, its bad. But, by the end I was doing 35 straight leg and 10 more bent leg for a set and then going on to other stuff so I’m happy with that. I won’t let that slide like that again.

Seated close grip rows-I actually substituted this one in for another one that gave me a lot of trouble. The machine doesn’t tell you the weight. Its one of those that just labels each weight with a consecutive number. I went from 20 (whatever that is) to 30 which is 5 plates down. The stacks stop at 36 so I almost maxed it out for 8 sets of 8. Oh and I normally push the last two sets to 10 reps because I’m never happy.

There’re more but I think this gives you a pretty good idea of my gains in month one of the Maximize Your Muscle program. Like I said, month two is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Its going to be a battle field in that gym J

So, guys and gals, what do you think? Is that good progress for a month or am I slacking? Post your comments down below and we’ll talk again soon.

Until next time,

Kris

 

Three vital tips for maximizing your workouts when circumstances are less than perfect!

How to improvise your workout

Ah, January. For anyone reading this that has been working out at a gym for a number of years, you know the pain of January. It’s the time of year when you walk into to do your routine but every station you want is taken by someone that has no idea what they are doing and is having more fun socializing than actually getting a workout. When I was a little younger I remember just praying February would come so I could get back to my workouts as planned. I guess my age is catching up with me now though because I find myself giving these people pointers on their form and encouraging them to keep at it.

For some reason though, this January was somewhat amiss. Really, all month I’ve been able to go in and get in my workouts. Things haven’t actually been that crowded and I am incredibly thankful. However, over this last few days, it has felt like the first week of January any other year. Every time I walk In the door, there are new faces all over my weights. Normally I would just ask to jump in but because I have timed rest periods, its not something that is really all that feasible. So I’ve had to make some compromises and that is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.

Yesterday was my leg day and it seemed every leg station I wanted was taken. Now I have very specific exercises I’m supposed to follow for the Maximize Your Muscle program so what should I do? Well, in a situation like that, you only really have three choices. You can ask to work in and inevitably sacrifice things like rest times which are vitally important, you can choose to pack it up and go home because there is just no way you’re going to get in your workout or you can do what I did and start improvising.

If you’re on a specific program though, you can’t just start throwing in new exercises off the top of your head or you’re not really following the program. So what to do? I’ve decided to put together a few tips for you below that I believe will really help you stay on your program even when parts of your program aren’t available.

1.    You have to have a program:

This may seem like a duh concept but you’d be surprised how many people fail to create or follow a program for themselves. Without a program, measurable progress becomes virtually impossible. A good program should have goals, proper warm up and stretches for the exact workout your doing, specific exercises to reach your goals, and a way to keep time on your rests. For instance, if you’re trying to gain weight like me, you have to have a lot of compound movements such as bench press, squats, deadlifts, cleans, lunges, pull ups, etc. You should have a set and rep scheme worked out and know your rest periods for each. You should know how long your time under tension should be and you should have a count for your reps and you should have a journal to ensure proper tracking of your workouts so you know what you’re trying to beat. And we can’t forget nutrition. All of these things are critical to achieving success. Leave any of them out and you might just be spinning your wheels.

2.    Understand what your program is about:

The first good step in making a program is to understand what you are trying to do. If you don’t know exactly what you are trying to do and how the things you are doing will take you to your goal, you will never reach your potential. I don’t care if you workout daily with maximum intensity. If you don’t have some understanding of what you are doing or have someone close by that does, you will never reach your potential. You will just be flailing around bouncing from one worthless thing to the next and your body will never figure out what its supposed to be doing. So the first step in being able to improvise, is to know what you’re improvising for. If you have a program designed that calls for a stretch exercise for you triceps but you don’t realize it, you may decide that dips or a close grip bench press will work in place of it but being mid range tricep exercises, you won’t be accomplishing what your program has set out for you and you won’t reach you full potential in the program.

3.Planning:

You know what they say; failing to plan is planning to fail. Once you have everything else worked out, once you know your goals and have a program worked out. You then have to have contingencies set up for when something takes you off your set track. This could be a number of things, maybe one exercise is giving you physical trouble. Maybe you’re back or wrists are bothering you with a certain exercise, maybe someone has taken your machine, maybe the station you use normally is out of order. There are a number of reasons why you may need to make a quick switch to another exercise. The trick is that you have to have an alternate exercise in the can and waiting for execution. For instance, if someone is on the squat rack, be ready to move to the leg press, if the pull down area is out of order, do some pull ups. If you can’t access the easy bar for curls, use dumbbells. There is always another way to get done what you’re looking to accomplish but in the middle of a good workout, you can’t hum and ha around trying to figure it out. If you’re trying to keep the intensity going, you have to know where to go and do it now. Get a list of alternate exercises and  keep it handy. Write it in your journal ahead of time so you don’t waste precious time in the gym. Plan ahead, and you will never be knocked off your path to success and the body you want.

There you have it. Three tips that you should keep in mind at all times if you want success in fitness. I know to some of you, the thought of putting together a plan like that can be daunting. If this is the case for you, do yourself a favor and get a trainer to get you going in the right direction. If that’s too expensive, there are many great programs online. I’ve used several but a really good one is one I talk about all the time. Vince Delmonte’s No Nonsense Muscle Building. In that program, Vince goes over everything you need to know and actually builds several programs for you. He even includes nutrition plans for whatever your goals are based on wherever you are right now on your path. Do yourself a favor and check it out here. Or if your goal is to lose a few pounds or finally get those coveted six-pack abs, Check out Your Six Pack Quest here. Both of these programs are great places to begin!

Expect Success!

Kris

 

Six tips you should know for running uphill

As my runs get longer and longer, I keep finding more challenges the road throws at me.  For the first time I came across some hills, and I was determined to show them I was their boss.  I didn't want to sacrifice my pace, but we usually slow down a bit when going uphill, especially if certain muscles aren't strong enough yet.  If you find yourself facing a hill, try this: 

• Slow down by just a bit, and keep your stride short with small steps.  You don't want to over-stride, as that will just exhaust your legs, and you still have the rest of your run (and maybe even more hills) to go! 
• Keep your chin level, though it may be tempting to keep your head down; simply cast your eyes down and scan the ground as you're running to make sure there's nothing in your way. 
• It's a very common tendency to lean forward when running uphill; try instead to keep your back straight to conserve energy.

When you crest the hill, first congratulate yourself on your amazing hill ownage (at least, that's what I did), then try this:

• Lengthen your stride and let gravity do its work to speed up by just a bit.  This way, your speed will average out to your normal pace, which you can return to once the hill is behind you. 
• Be careful again not to over-stride; you are simply looking to make up for the smaller strides you had to take up the hill.    Be sure not to run madly downhill, as if you go too fast there can be some real injury done to the knees or quadriceps.
• Just as we want to lean forward into a hill, there can be a tendency to lean back while running down; try instead to lean forward a bit or to keep your back straight to avoid injury.

By using the general rule of thumb to slightly decrease your pace when running uphill, then slightly increasing it when running downhill, you shouldn't lose too much time overall--and think how awesome it'll feel to know you conquered those hills! 

How mental blocks can give way to city blocks

Hey Fellow Runners,

For those of you keeping track, I had to push my long run back a day or two due to downpour.  The day finally came, however, that my long run was staring me in the face and I had to take up the challenge.  I tied on my running shoes and headed out the door, ignoring the cold wind that slapped me in the face.  My goal for the evening was to continue where I'd left off with my regular run the night before:  to continuously run 5 or 6 blocks (a quarter mile) for most of my running intervals, and maybe even reach the vague dream to run 10 straight blocks (a half mile) for one of the intervals.  I'd been sticking with running and walking intervals all this time, but now it was really time to kick it up a notch, as my overall goal is to run the entire half-marathon in March.

After my warm-up, I started my normal running pace, watching the blocks go by.  I reached 5 blocks in the first interval, and felt good.  I decided to shoot for 10 in the first go, and with a true feeling of triumph, reached the half-mile mark.  The true amazement came, however, when I realized I still felt good...and so I kept going...until I reached a full mile!  I took a walk break for about two blocks, then started again...and ran another mile!!  This may not seem like much, but it was revelatory to realize I was capable of this, and that I would make it through the entire seven miles.  And that's what I did, taking only a couple walk breaks the entire time, and running nearly the whole length.  I clearly had been the only thing holding myself back; I'd been hiding from the fear of trying to run consistently and not being able to make it.  Once that fog was lifted, however, I knew I could keep pushing and keep improving.  Towards the end of the run, I thought Just run another 10 blocks then you can walk for one, and laughed out loud at myself:  all this time I'd been afraid of running 5 blocks, and now I was thinking to "just" run 10!  As I look at the progress I've already made, and think of the hurdles I'll continue to face, I think it truly is our own mental blocks that create the biggest challenges, and we are the ones that put them there. 

As you lengthen your course, and face bigger and bigger challenges, don't forget that you have gotten yourself this far, and can take yourself even farther.  Don't let the mental block of one more mile or one more loop stop you; don't let those blocks intimidate you.  It all comes down to finding the ability to push through them, and showing yourself exactly what you're made of.

Getting back into the "Maximize Your Muscle" workout

So as I said earlier, I took a 3 day break from the gym to rest my body after the first three rounds of this hellacious cycle of workouts known as Vince Delmonte's Maximize Your Muscle. This first month has been a killer but just like his other stuff, the results when followed are amazing. I'm up 8 pounds of muscle so far in a little less than 3 weeks! The last time I grew this fast was actually using his No Nonsense Mucle Building routines, but let me stand down before he thinks I'm trying to date him!  Seriously though, go check out his stuff if you're looking to move past your current level of fitness. I'll throw in a link to the NNMB course below.

Anyway, today was chest, back, and abs and it was a killer. I had to take it a little easy on chest because I still think I have a small tear in my right pec. Sooooo, I hit 265 instead of 275lbs on the bench press :) Felt good though. Sometimes when I'm going that heavy I don't bring the weight all the way down and today my form was almost perfect. I'm definitely getting stronger. I did go easy on my dips though. I have been using the weight belt to attach about ninety extra pounds on my body but it didn't feel right, so I decided to drop it in half and only use one 45 pound plate. For my last chest exercise, I used the chest fly machine. I actually not only increased my weight but also my reps. At the end I felt pretty strong, so just for kicks I tried to take on the whole stack. This was the end of my chest workout so I was quite happy with the four reps I pulled off.

Next was back. I modified it some and threw in some pull ups in place of my pull down warm up. I haven't done those in a while and they were a little easier than I remember, so something is working! Next I went with narrow grip rows. Once again, I upped my weight and my reps from last weeks workout. I was really thinking about adding even more weight but my goal was just to do a little better than last week, and I was already doing quite a bit better. Remember, I have to build o ntop of what I did this workout on my next one, so we don't want to rush too fast! 

After a little more back it was on to the abs! Abs I've actually taken in my own direction, because I seem to have an issue with my abs. When I work them too hard, they cramp on me. The muscles contract and sometimes they don't like to let go. I take that as a sign that I just need to work them more than I am, so that's what I'm doing and it seems to be working like a charm. I hope next month to be ready for whatever sadistic ab torure he's got to throw at me. We'll see though, he certainly wasn't playing around this month.

After a workout like that, I think I'm going to sleep quite well tonight!

Oh yeah, that link--and I highly recommend you check it out because I'm telling you, this is the way lean, super muscular bodies are built. When you're in the gym going through it, there is no question in your mind that you're going to see rapid massive muscle building and crazy fat burning results and so far, those results have not disappointed. If you're slightly masochistic but a freak for real, fast, and measureable results, check this out now!

How to increase your bench press fast without changing your entire workout!

  

It seems there are so many programs out there to follow for everything you want to do these days. Each one more eager than the last to tell you that you don’t know anything about fitness and in fact you should forget everything you think you know. From what I’ve found however, all programs work as long as you stick to them. It seems that most true experts out there would eagerly agree with me. So what happens when you want to do something simple like increasing your bench press without having to jump all over the board and abandon your old program? Well, you may just be out of luck if you follow most advice on the internet. So my goal here is to help you out a little by giving you some tips you can follow to increase your bench press without having to abandon your program.

I won’t go into all the normal stuff like being properly warmed up and sleeping and eating correctly. I’m assuming that you already know that these will be death blows to your progress if you don’t do them correctly but I will say a couple quick things on them.

First, if you’re looking to do something specific like increase your bench press, do stretches and warm ups that will help you accomplish just that. One thing that I’ve used that I’m always surprised no one does is that just before I do my warm up sets on the bench, I will use the bar to stretch with. This is so simple you’ll want to smack yourself if you’re not already doing it. When you get in position, unrack the bar (with no weights on it) and lower it down to your chest. Bring it all the way down and let it rest for 10 to 15 seconds. Press the bar a couple times normally and then do it again. Repeat this 3 to 4 times for optimal stretch. The closer to your neck you bring the bar the greater the stretch will be. I do this because this is the exact plane of motion I’m about to use so it gets your body stretched in the exact areas that are going to be used. Makes sense right? As an added bonus, even on your off days, if your chest is sore and tight, use this to help you loosen up a little. It feels great and it does wonders for your tight muscles.

Next, don’t train your chest too often. Three days a week is more than enough and many people only need two. For the longest time I was so hooked to the bench press that every time I was in the gym I had to hit the bench. After no gains for several months of this I finally decided to bring it down to two days and almost immediately I saw gains in my strength. Your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and for that matter your nervous system needs to recover if its ever going to get stronger. More on the nervous system in another post.

So now that we have that out of the way, a couple quick changes you can make to the workouts you’re already doing to increase your bench press.

1.    Burnout sets

What I really mean here is not just burnout sets but high reps. I know some of you think I’m nuts for suggesting high reps when you want more power but hear me out. If your bench press is stuck in a rut of 3 sets of 10 at 185lbs and you condition your body to be able to press 135lbs 50 times in one set, don’t you think you’ll have a little easier time breaking out of that 185lb range? I know, 135lbs 50 times sounds ridiculous and in a way it is but I’m crazy and I like to do crazy things sometimes and I can tell you from experience, it helped me. Don’t think you can do it? Try this, get through your bench press routine, then immediately lower the weight to 95lbs and shoot for 25 reps. If you can do more then do more but don’t exceed 50 reps. If you’re anything like I was, you’ll hate yourself and everything in the gym by rep 25. Oh and these aren’t concentrated reps. These are fast paced with no rest. Your goal is to get it done in about 1 minute or less but keep proper form or you may hurt yourself. Next workout, do everything the same but this time bring the weight up to 115lbs and try the 25 reps again. If you can do that, your next workout will have you lower the weight back down to 95lbs and shoot for 30-35 reps. Play with these patterns and it won’t be long before you’re hitting 50 reps. Then just up the weight and do it again til you get 50 reps of 135lbs. After doing this myself, I decided that if I could do that, there was no reason I couldn’t do the same with 185lbs. So I started working up to it. I got up to 30 reps with 185lbs but then my program took an entirely different turn (using kettlebells) so I stopped. I’m still thinking about trying it again though. Also, when I got up to 30 reps at 185lbs my max bench press started climbing quickly.

2.    If bench press is your primary goal, make it the first thing you do!

There are so many schools of thought out there that tell you that you should work your shoulders and triceps before you bench press. The theory being that your supporting muscles will be fatigued and your chest will have to do more work. While this has its place, if you’re goal is to increase your bench press, you don’t want your supporting muscles to be fatigued when you go for new records!

3.    Don’t be afraid of the heavy weights!

This should go without saying but if you want to lift those heavy weights and have an impressive bench press, then lift the heavy weights! Sometimes, your body just feels like its refusing to get stronger. Funny thing is, usually its at those landmark numbers. Ever wonder why people are stuck on 135, 185, and 225? Because these are the psychological landmarks in your training. Its nowhere near as exciting to bench 215 as it is to get to 225 and its just because the first time you put those two plates on each side of the bar, you feel like a monster! Getting to 215 just means you added a couple of 5 pound weights to the ends… Big deal right? Well when we glorify those two big plates for so long and it seems so impossible to get there, that ceiling maintains its ceiling status to us even after we reach it instead of becoming the new floor it should be. So if you find that you’re stuck and that 225 or 185, or whatever it is for you is just not becoming any easier, just grab a spotter and try something bigger. If you’re at 225 and have been there for a month with no progress, grab yourself a spotter and throw another 20 pounds on the bar. Don’t play with the five pound weights at this point. Put on those tens admire that bar for a second, throw your favorite “pump you up” song on your ipod and go for it. If you can’t do it, then try the 5’s but try for something. Even if you only get a few half reps, just the feeling of doing it will help you break through that old 225 ceiling.

4.    And last…If nothing works, try something else

Sometimes, our bodies really have just reached a temporary limit. And if your sleep, nutrition, and training are dead on and you still can’t move up, move on to something else for a while. Go over and do dumbbell chest presses for a while. Maybe try some inclined bench presses and build those up for a month or so. Then, when you start to plateau there, come on back home to mama bench press and try it again. Don’t worry if you have to start a little under where you were before, you should be able to get it back and surpass it very quickly through the strengthening of your other workouts and the memory of what you’ve already built up.

 

Overall, just remember that while the bench press is a magical thing that will effectively melt the clothes right off the opposite sex if you can do it well, it’s just one of many exercises you should be concentrating on. Also, no matter what you do, if you just give it your all and stick to a routine, results will come.

I hope some of these tips help you out. I know some of them are a little “out there” and they may not be in the fitness journals but they have worked for me and several of my friends that have tried them. If they work for you, let me know! Throw in a comment; I’d love to know my ideas have helped you out. Likewise, if you think I’ve left out something that could be helpful or you just think I’m off my rocker, let me know that as well.

 

Yours in success,

Kris

The hazard of Vince Delmonte’s Maximize Your Muscle program

I have to tell you, I love the Maximize Your Muscle program! The results are amazing but there’s a warning it should have come with…get used to buying new clothing! Thanks to Vince Delmonte, I’ve grown out of almost every button down shirt I own in just three rounds of workouts (nine total workouts) and even my baggier clothing like sweaters are getting a little tight! I don’t know whether I should write him a thank you note or demand an apology J. Furthermore, I don’t know if I should start buying more clothing now or just wait because I know I’m going to grow out of those too! Now I know what my mother felt like when I was a kid and seemed to grow out of my clothing weekly. Now I don’t know if this is a common problem. My shoulders expand pretty easily but after only three rounds of workouts!! I have a "shirt busting chest" haha! This is unbelievable!

 

Anyway, as I said, I just finished round three of my workouts and I have to say, I’m loving it! It’s rare to be this challenged in the gym. When you’re on your own routines it’s sometimes hard to really challenge yourself but when it’s all put right in front of you like it is here and you know that you’re only goal is to execute the plan, you will practically kill yourself to get everything done, and that’s precisely what I’ve done. There are a couple of exercises that are kind of new to me and some that I just haven’t done consistently in a very long time. For one, weighted dips… I’m pretty much a dip machine but they are so easy (I’m light) that I decided that in order to make a set of 8 of them challenging, I was going to have to add some weight. The first time I did it, put on the weight belt and strapped on one plate for 45 extra pounds. This was nice but still not pushing me to my limit so the next time I decided to add a second plate. This felt great but the stress on my chest was great when added to my bench press. I started noticing a little bit of pain in my chest and it appears (I’m self diagnosing) that I may have a slight tear where my right pectoral muscle meets the sternum. So, based on that, I’m going to take three days off and see if it gets better.

Other than that, almost all of my weights have increased slightly and most things are getting easier by the day even though I’ve increased the weight.

A few highlights

Bench press up 10 lbs to 275 for heavy sets

Squats remain the same 225lb but they are getting easier with better technique so I will increase this to 245 on my next workout

Machine flys (set of 20 at end of workout) 150lbs up from 120lbs!

Dumbbell curls (easy bar wasn’t available today) used 50’s for my heavy low rep sets up from 40 before this workout. Easy bar up from 60lbs plus bar to 70lbs plus bar

Inclined curls (after heavy regular curls) 22.5lbs up from 17.5lbs

Leaning one arm lateral lifts up to 20lbs from 15 and really was pretty easy at 20. Gonna have to increase again!

Dumbbell overhead shoulder press 65lbs up from 60. Was going to increase to 70 today but decided form was more important so I added a rep too each set instead.

Bulgarian split squats stayed the same at two 25 pound plates but its getting easier so I’ll try 30s next.

There are some other improvements but that’s enough for now. Also, my weight had ballooned up to my all time max of 157lbs but I lost about a pound and a half yesterday (did a little drinking I shouldn’t have done, lesson learned…again). My immediate goal is to hit 165 as fast as possible through massive (healthy) food consumption and killer workouts but I’m sure once I hit that I’ll quickly raise the goal to 175lbs. I’m on my way baby!

In case you’re reading this and wanting to give Vince’s program a shot, the one I’m on is currently closed to new members but I can personally vouch for his No Nonsense Muscle Building program that is still open to the public. I bought that over a year ago and had great results while I was using it!

Grab a copy here or just look around for some awesome tips for your routine!

 

Expect results!

Kris

Beat that horse til it means something again!

Kris here.

Now that there are actually some posts going up here. I realize its going to be a little cluttered with two people writing intermittently about different topics. We’re working on a solution to this now. Still trying to work the bugs out of this whole thing really.

Now, as far as the title goes, I made it that to make a point. We are bombarded by thousands of messages everyday. BEcause you can't possibly process all the information that's thrown at you day in and day out, your amazing brain tends to filter out most of it. This is good by most accounts as the majority of the messages out there arguably are better off not in your head but an unfortunate side effect is that it also filters out the stuff you should keep. Its gotten to the point in most of our lives that even the healthier messages like you need to workout, sleep better, eat right, manage your stress, seem to have just become more noise. We know we need to listen to it but we hear it so much that even the idea of these things has lost its power. Its beating a dead horse to tell almost anyone anything anymore.

At the end of this post I make one point. Its not new, its not revolutionary. Its something you already know but I don't want you to skim over it. Read it. Beat it into your brain. Beat that dead horse until it means something again!

Got in an awesome arm workout today. I walked into the locker room looking more jacked than I think I ever have. I’m telling you, I’m stunned by the progress I’ve made in the last two weeks. I’m by no means a big guy but I can tell you my shoulders are getting broader and thicker, my chest is getting meatier, I’m starting to see my abs come out, and jeans are being held up just fine without a belt!

They say the first month is where you see the most progress and I have always agreed. I remember the progress I made the first time around. However, I’m not a beginner. This isn’t my first time around the block. What I am new at again though is just giving it my all. And if I were to be completely honest with myself, I’m probably giving it about 90%. What’s amazing is that the progress I’m making with just renewed effort is that of a total beginner picking up his first dumbbell!

I wanted to kind of hit that last point home because its important! Even if you train all the time, if you are getting complacent and half-assing it, not only are you not benefitting as much as you could be, but you probably have an entire new body underneath it all that’s just waiting to show you what it can do if you would just push a little harder. Just get in those last 2 reps, eat that one extra meal, make those rest periods just a little more honest. Just do it and see what I mean. It’s truly incredible the things we can accomplish when we give it our all!

Train hard,

Kris

Workout 5 and some other stuff

Hey its Kris,

A quick update... After five extremely tough workouts and what feels like 100 meals, I’ve gained five pounds. New total=155lbs. I’m just two pounds short now of the heaviest I’ve ever been!  I had a doctor’s appointment today in which I had to get a shot in the arm (never got my hep vaccines as a kid) so I decided to skip my arm workout today and opt to do it tomorrow instead as it felt a little bruised. This throws off my schedule by a day but no big deal. My schedule is solid so I have no worries about missing a day. I kept my nutrition on par although I probably didn’t get quite as much water in as I would have liked to.

As I said before, I’m following Vince Delmonte’s new monthly personal coaching program, Maximize Your Muscle. The first month is broken into three workouts. The first is chest, back, and abs. The second is quads, hams, and calves. The third is shoulders, bi’s and tri’s. It’s a three day on, one day off, and then start over routine. So I’ve gone through the first three workouts and then done the first two workouts for a second time with tomorrow being the final. The first time around, each workout was a complete killer. Although I’ve been working out for years now, I was definitely sore in a few new places and its amazing to see that there’s already some difference in those areas. The second time around was actually much easier for the first two workouts even with increased weight. However, I’m going to hold the weight where it is throughout the next go around to work on technique with these heavier weights. I don’t want to stick with these weights too long though as the point in the workouts is to gain strength. When hitting each major muscle with 100 reps at different points of flexion its easy to gain that strength and I don’t want to squander the opportunity.

Now when I say the workouts were easier, I don’t mean they were easy by any means. They had me dying. They were just easier in terms of I wasn’t a pile of mush lying on the ground after each set. Also, after the first leg workout in which I could only finish the first group I hit which was quads, I was going to start the second one with hams but I decided to stay the course even if it meant overlooking my hamstrings for a week. The reason being that I wanted to see if I would improve enough to be able to do quads and then hit hams this week. I was half successful. I did quads, almost died, but still had enough left over to atleast get in some leg curls and a little body weight calves. Not the way the workout is designed but I’m happy with it. Besides, my quads need it and the workout really helps to boost testosterone.

The best news of the week. My last two sets of the bench press, I hit my goal of 275lbs!! Now I have to admit, they were more like half reps but doing 275 half reps has finally gotten me to the point of 225lb full reps. I rarely work with a spotter so I’m cautious when working with new weights about trying to bring it all the way down close to my chest. I have long arms so outside of warm up sets I never bring it down ALL the way.  

In other news, although my camera seems to be on the fritz right now, I am going to start taking and posting weekly pictures for progress purposes. I’ll try to get my first one up sometime tomorrow if I can get Laura to bring over her camera.

Last thing I wanted to say, Laura wrote up an intro post (about me type of thing) today. If you’re into running or your goal is weight loss, check her out. Not only has she lost over 50 pounds in a year but her new found love of running is going really well. She’s set up a system that’s taken her from the “couch” to already running a six mile race in just a few months and she’ll be doing a half marathon in about a month and a half from now. I’m sure she’ll talk more about how she’s done it, but if you have any questions about her (or my) training program, just ask. That’s what we’re here for.

Train Hard,

Kris

Vince Delmonte's Maximize Your Muscle Week one review

UPDATE!! Vince Opened it back up to new users at a discounted price. You have to get in on this before September 3rd. Read my experience from my first week below and then click here to get involved. I'm telling you, It's awesome!

Week one in review

A week ago I began Vince Delmonte’s new training program, Maximize Your Muscle. Now this program is billed as an advanced program that a beginner shouldn’t attempt. In the marketing he even said that if you’re just someone who can’t get their act together, don’t order this program. Inside the program he also makes several references to the fact that you are advanced and should know how to do certain things. I was happy to see that the marketing was not a ploy but very real. However, I quickly realized that being someone who has had such a hard time getting my act together over the last six months, he was talking about me too. No matter, I’m a damn idiot when it comes to the gym. If I can move, I won’t quit so I went for it. Here’s what I’ve been experiencing so far with the Maximize Your Muscle program.

Now because the program we’re talking about is subscription based, I can’t go into exact details of the program but I will say certain things about it.

1.    As we stated, this program is not for beginners or those that can’t get their acts together.

2.    This is a 12 month subscription based program. Each month you start on a new phase but you have no idea what that phase is until you get it in the mail. This is actually really good because you’re not tempted to look ahead and skip things. And like Vince says, this way all you have is one goal each month, Execute.

3.    The first month of the Maximize Your Muscle program is called the Hundred Rep Muscle. It will make you die. It will also make you more sore than you’ve ever been and build muscle you didn't know you could build. I’ve had three work outs so far so I’ve hit my whole body. Its fair to say that EVERYTHING is extremely sore.

4.    Its not just doing 100 reps per muscle. There is a specific set, rep, and rest scheme that is designed to make you cry for mercy but build a ton of new muscle. On top of that, he takes meticulous care in adding exercises in very specific orders to allow maximum muscle growth.

5.    When I first saw the workout, I was actually thinking that I was going to bypass it. It wasn’t until I listened to the two hour CD interview between Vince and Joel Marion that I decided I have to do this. I’m so glad I did because it is incredible!

6.    He must have been joking about the leg workout, i.e., you’re a monster if you can do it in the first week. After hitting my hundred reps for quads, I could barely walk. There was no way I was going to then work my hamstrings and calves. Since the workouts are twice per week though, I’ll start my next leg workout with Hams and see how that goes. (update, it took two workouts but I'm now able to finish it and I've even increased the weights)

7.    Each month you get a 20 page newsletter, a DVD of Vince walking you through the workout, a journal that you just have to fill out during or after your workouts, and I believe another CD interview with all sorts of information on life and fitness. I was actually really impressed by the CD in this first month.

At this point I’ve done three workouts and I am about to start the cycle again. The idea is to do the three workouts, take on day off and repeat. I was supposed to start back yesterday but I had to take a second day off due to the immense soreness I experienced in my arms and glutes. Even today, I’m a little scared about going back in as I’m still very sore. All things being equal though, I’m actually excited about todays workout. In the last few days, I have already seen a difference. Several people have already mentioned it. There is mass in a certain area of my tricep I haven’t felt in a long time if not ever, my traps have thickened, my shoulders are showing signs of broadening, and where the traps and shoulders meet is starting to look really nice. Now keep in mind, I haven’t had a solid workout routine in several months and I do have a good amount of muscle memory. Plus I’ve been eating like a cow (a health conscience cow) lately and started taking creatine last week so I’m probably seeing a pound or two from that. Even with all that though, I’ve been through this a couple of times and based on what I’m seeing so far, I am very excited! Even though my tri’s still feel ungodly sore, I’m still betting I will increase my bench from last week. Shooting for 275lbs this week, which is my lifetime max. I’ll tell you how it goes!!

Train Hard!

Kris

PS: While the Maximize Your Muscle program is currently closed to new subscribers until further notice (which I will definitely post if and when he decides to reopen it) he does have two other programs online. I can personally vouch for his No Nonsense Muscle Building Course as that was the catalyst for my getting into his new program but for those of you looking more to lose weight and obtain those coveted six pack abs Vince sports, there is the Your Six Pack Quest program that I guarantee you if followed will finally give you those abs you deserve. You can check them out below. They are great places to start a new fitness quest or to put new life in a stale routine. Check them out here if you're really interested in taking your game to the next level.

No Nonsense Muscle Building

Your Six Pack Quest