TRAINING ARTICLES
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How Improving Grip Strength Can Help You Increase Overall Muscle Mass
Read more →“My experience has shown me that taking the time and energy to directly stimulate the forearm musculature leads to increased ability to handle heavy weights in many exercises.” – Dr Ken Leistner, The Steel Tip1 Some lifters focus on grip training with grip strength as the end main goal. For example, some focus almost exclusively on closing the different versions of the Captains of Crush Grippers or on setting a new personal best using the Rolling Thunder. (For more information on Captains of Crush Grippers or Rolling Thunders see, for example, www.ironmind.com). Athletes, if they desire grip strength at all,...
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How to Strategically Use Different Squat Variations to Maximize Muscle Activation and Reduce Overtraining and Injury
Read more →Some lifters and coaches scoff at focusing on developing good technique. They see a contradiction between technique and strength. However, although good technique affects the way a movement looks, it’s not the foremost definition of technique. Good technique is a way of moving that permits the athlete to use his or her physical abilities to the fullest without injury.1 In the context of lifting weights, good technique allows you to lift the heaviest weight possible with the least energy expenditure and with minimal risk of injury or placing maximal/optimal tension on selected structures of the body. In powerlifting, the focus...
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Lift FAST to grow FAST – Contrast Training for Bodybuilding
Read more →“Lower the weight slowly.” “Feel the burn.” “Don’t use momentum.” The above three are some of the lifting cues often associated with bodybuilding. They are good cues because they help to ensure tension on the target muscle, prevent injury caused by faulty lifting technique and also help ensure a certain level of muscle-building, metabolic stress on the muscle. However, there is one problem with the above cues: They tend to limit the amount of load that you can lift and they, to some extent, negate activation of the fast-twitch muscle fibres. It is the fast-twitch fibres that have the greatest...
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Kettlebell + Rope Training for Bodybuilding: Is it possible to build muscle with “cardio?”
Read more →Success in bodybuilding is a combination of muscle size, muscle definition and symmetry. A traditional (but not exclusive) approach to bodybuilding involves using resistance training to build muscle size and then using cardio to burn fat. This strategy is often tied into a bulking phase associated with resistance training, caloric excess and increase in muscle as well as fat mass. The bulking phase is followed by a cutting phase associated with more cardio, caloric deficit and a decrease in both muscle mass and fat mass. To some extent, this process has a “two-steps-forward-one-step-back” aspect to it. Long-term progress requires that...
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HOW TO GAIN STRENGTH INSTANTLY WITH “INVISIBLE” SQUAT AND DEADLIFT TECHNIQUES
Read more →What was your 1RM squat or 1RM deadlift the first time you maxed out? What is your 1RM squat or 1RM deadlift now? If you’ve lifted consistently for maybe a year or even several years, hopefully your current 1RMs are much higher than when you started out. There is no way to short-cut this long-term process. That’s not what the title of “instant strength” hints at. Gaining “instant” strength refers to the amount of load you’re lifting now, in a typical training session, and the amount of load that you could be lifting now if you were using your body...
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SHAPING A MUSCLE: MYTH OR FACT?
Read more →“You can’t target one part of a muscle. All over the web you’ll find bodybuilding articles about shaping your muscles. In these articles, authors claim that you can modify the shape of your muscles by training them in various, unconventional ways. A case in point is the all-too-common apocryphal advice about “peaking your biceps.” The writers of articles such as those will have you performing all sorts of bicep peak exercises that are purported to change the shape of the muscle. The truth is: you can’t change a muscle’s shape, only its overall size. The muscle origin and insertion is fixed, you...
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