In my last post, I talked about my friend and client Josh, and his amazing success story. Josh had the worst possible “body type” (skinny, fat and weak) imaginable for achieving the goals of gaining lean muscle, increasing strength and losing body fat.
Yet, against the odds, he achieved all three simultaneously. How did he pull it off? Well, first of all, Josh refused to give up on himself. He was disciplined, motivated and passionate about overcoming the physical limitations that his DNA had so graciously “blessed” him with.
However, all the discipline and motivation in the world won’t do a single thing for you if you don’t have the right nutritional protocol and training program to back you up. That’s where I came in!
So in this post, I’d like to go a little more in depth on what I did to help Josh pull off the impossible. Let’s start with his training protocol:
Training volume- In most cases, alternating phases of high and… …continue reading.
It is a widely accepted fact that your genetics dictate a huge portion of your life. Some genetic traits (eye color, height, sex, etc.) are basically set in stone (barring some Frankensteinish surgery) and should be accepted.
But there are many other genetic predispositions that, with the right plan and some determination, can be completely and dramatically altered. For instance, someone may be predisposed to being weak and skinny. Without a doubt, this person will have a more difficult time achieving and maintaining a strong and muscular physique than someone who is genetically blessed.
Notice that I said, “more difficult” and NOT impossible. With the right plan and some hard work, one can absolutely defy his or her physique’s “genetic pull”. In fact, I have worked with countless “genetically cursed” people over the years who were able to achieve amazing physiques and impressive levels of strength.
To better illustrate this point, I will use my client and friend, Josh, as an example. When I met Josh, he… …continue reading.
This past weekend, I spent some time with my old friend and former training partner, Mike. He was one of the best training partners I ever had. He showed up early, he was strong and he was always ready to bring it. I loved training with him. His passion, dedication, consistency (and borderline lunacy) was exactly what I needed in my early twenties.
Eventually our schedules conflicted and we were forced to train on our own. Sharing a relentless pursuit of strength and muscular size/definition, we mercilessly continued to pound the iron four days per week. Then the day came when I felt myself slip from the state of indestructible youth. Let me explain.
For years, I had benched between 365-425 lbs each and every week, depending on the rep range being utilized. Then one particular Monday, while I was grinding out a heavy rep, I felt something tear in my shoulder. I took an immediate trip to the orthopedist, and the MRI he gave… …continue reading.
Pull ups can be found in just about every routine that is geared towards increasing upper body strength. The spectrum of trainees who use this movement is very broad. Kids in gym class, weekend warriors, and even Olympic gymnasts perform pull ups on a regular basis. Because of its exceptional popularity and reputation, one would assume that people make great progress from doing them.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Not even close. In fact, I can tell you that most people get nowhere from doing pull ups. However, trainees stubbornly continue to do them because they think that’s what they are “supposed” to do. I was certainly guilty of this for years.
You see, when I first started training some 25 years ago, I could easily crank out sets of 15 pull ups. I was even the pull up and flexed arm hang champion in junior high school.
Can you imagine how much better I thought I would get from years of structured and… …continue reading.
How many times have you heard the statement, “You can’t be too healthy”? Although I can appreciate the intention behind this assertion, I happen to disagree with it wholeheartedly. In fact, I believe that trying to be too healthy can actually be unhealthy. Sound counterintuitive? Let me explain…
For over 20 years now, I have read, discussed and experimented with just about every nutritional protocol out there. When I say “every”, I mean everything from the popular, mainstream nutritional plans to the most obscure and underground dietary theories.
While my clients often become my very brave test subjects, I always begin every experiment on yours truly. I have literally studied, dissected and applied all of the “best of the best” nutritional protocols to myself. Given my obsession with uncovering every possible way to be “healthy”, you would think that I would be superman by now.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Trying to be “too healthy” actually landed me in the emergency room recently. Even worse, my dreadful visit to… …continue reading.
In my last post, you learned about the oh-so-popular cardio exercise you should totally avoid. Now (because Johnny Al never leaves you hanging!), I will share with you some cardio options that you should NOT avoid. These exercises are some of my favorites; they are great for both fat loss and conditioning.
The truth is that the cardio exercise that is best for one individual may not be the most effective for another trainee. That’s because the ideal exercise choice depends on many factors. Some of these factors are your specific goal, injury history, bodyweight, and equipment access, to name a few.
Instead of boring you with an explanation and recommendation for each and every possible scenario, I will simply hook you up with my five favorite cardio options for dramatically improving your conditioning levels while burning fat as fast as possible. These options are for those with no current injures, no coordination issues, and no fear of hard work.
Alright, if you’re still reading,… …continue reading.
Those of you who know me know that I’m not a huge fan of machines. Thus, it’s logical to assume that this post will consist of me bashing the elliptical, stationary bike, stair stepper and treadmill.
But contrary to this seemingly obvious presumption, the cardio workout that I want you to avoid has nothing to do with a machine. Instead, I’m going to condemn what is perhaps the most popular bodyweight exercise of all time for fat loss and conditioning.
The sacred exercise that I’m referring to is…jogging! On paper, jogging seems to be quite good. It burns calories, raises heart rate and requires no equipment or skill. But there is a dark side to jogging.
In my 19 years in the biz, I have yet to come across a cardio activity that leads to more soft tissue injuries and degenerative changes in the joints of the lower body than jogging. Injuries to the feet, knees and hips are all too common amongst distance runners.
Here’s why:
1) The jogging stride is actually more like a shuffling of the feet. There is a very… …continue reading.
I have recently been asked by two of my coaching clients, “what tempo should I use on each exercise”?
For those of you who are not familiar with the word “tempo” in weight training, it refers to the speed at which you perform a repetition of a particular exercise.
Strength coaches and authors use tempo prescriptions in order to help ensure that each set lasts an optimal “time under tension” for the trainees’ specific goal.
Time under tension is basically the length of time that a muscle experiences tension from the beginning of a given set to the end.
Sports scientists have stated that for optimal hypertrophy, sets should last between 40-70 seconds. Because of this recommendation, many experts have advocated using a slower rep speed to ensure that a set will last for the optimal time under tension.
However, I happen to know many strong and jacked dudes who have never performed a set lasting anywhere near 40-70 seconds. The question is, would these jacked… …continue reading.
It is no secret that in order to achieve any training related goal (size, strength, structural balance, performance, etc.), you should be training the hip extension movement pattern.
There are many different hip extension exercises to choose from but the king of the jungle has been and always will be the bent knee deadlift.
There are only two basic styles of a bent knee deadlift: conventional style and Sumo style.
Which one is better? This question has practically been argued to death. That’s why I decided to write this post and give you my opinion, based on my 20 years of coaching these lifts.
At first glance, the two lifts appear to be very similar. They both involve lifting a barbell off of the floor until you’re body is in a vertical position.
There are, however, two major differences between these two styles: the width of stance and the width of grip.
In the conventional style (Fig. 1), I recommend setting your feet close together… …continue reading.
Doing the greatest exercises should produce the greatest results, right? Well, in theory, the answer is yes. But in practice this is not always the case. You see, some exercises are so effective at recruiting a maximal amount of motor units and for allowing maximal loading that they are difficult to recover from.
Do them too frequently, too intensely or with too much volume and you are sure to overtrain, get nowhere or worse yet, get injured. In other words, the most effective exercises, done incorrectly, will lead to the worst results.
The worst offender of this counterintuitive law is the bent knee deadlift. Although, I usually prefer to keep things simple, giving you the ultra basic advice of deadlifting hard, heavy and weekly will certainly not produce sustainable results.
So what should we do? Do we cut deadlifts out of our routine?
Definitely not! Deadlifts done with the proper parameters can contribute to muscle hypertrophy, pulling strength and performance better than any other exercise… …continue reading.
