strength

If you have been watching the Olympic games and marvelled at some of the athletes on show in sports such as sprint cycling and track sprinters in athletics, it certainly looks as though weight training must play a significant role in the training of these athletes based on the muscle mass that...

Adding instability to your weight training in the form of unstable surfaces or reducing points of contact was all the rage a while ago. But mixed with social media and the fight for eyeballs, some may have taken creativity a bit too far. It was (and still can) more circus trick than strength...

Nowadays you don’t have to visit a CrossFit gym to see battle rope exercises in use. What used to be reserved for specific fitness niches and professional athletes is now utilized in home gyms, outdoor workouts, and boot camps. The simplicity of battle rope exercises are what makes them a...

Most of us who’ve tried the regular hard-style single kettlebell swing is a great, low-impact, high-intensity exercise that improves grip strength and power and helps make your glutes pop. But to double the fun and the difficulty level of the movement, the double kettlebell swing provide a...

Raise Your Heart Rate, Build Your Body Cardio for Gains? Can conditioning or aerobic work support your muscle-building goals? Yes. Better aerobic fitness means you’ll be able to bring more oxygen and nutrients to muscles. Aerobic work actually helps us develop more capillaries, which is like...

The foam roller is still a fantastic tool to help release tension and soreness from muscles you never knew were tight or sore. It is a must pre and post-workout recovery tool. It comes in all shapes and sizes to improve mobility and movement and reduce muscle soreness, particularly if you are an...

Have you heard the term out of sight, out of mind? This can be applied in many gym settings where some beginner and intermediate lifters train the mirror muscles—you know, abs, pecs and biceps—and forget those all-important posterior muscles. That’s where the inverted row comes in. One muscle...

Body levers can play a pretty heavy role into what we naturally excel at. People with long arms, for instance, will likely be especially good at throwing, rowing, martial arts, and racquet sports. Taller folks will generally have a size advantage in basketball and volleyball. Large, heavy people...

The bench press. It’s one of the original rite of passage exercises that many lifters spend countless—oftentimes too many—hours toward perfecting. When you’re a beginner, you most likely performed two main exercises—biceps curl and bench press. Then, the love affair begins. The bench press is...

Your body doesn’t know what type of exercise you’re doing you’re performing a dumbbell exercises , a resistance band exercises, or even a dumbbell resistance band exercises. All it knows is that it feels resistance, and it has to overcome it. To add muscle and strength, progressive overload is...

There are specific exercises where you will have muscular tension from the get-go, like deadlifting from the floor, squatting out of the hole, and the hollow hold exercise. The hollow what? The hollow hold. If you have difficulty feeling the tension in the abs, the hollow hold is for you...

There’s no question that the basics of strength training work despite what you may see from time to time on the Internet. The barbell is the ultimate tool for strength and muscle and will continue to work for all who take it seriously. Incorporating the Big 3exercises—the barbell squat, bench...

The core—abs, six-pack or midsection, or whatever you call it—is your body’s center of power. Some downplay its relevance, some hype its importance, and others neglect to isolate and strengthen the core. No matter where you stand, paying attention to your core is essential and the ab wheel...

Strong muscles are paramount for working out as they give you the strength to handle heavy lifts. The wrists play a crucial role in supporting your body during workouts. Hand grippers are imperative for strengthening your arms and wrists. Through the use of hand grippers, you improve your hand...

Top Ten Stealth Strategies for Maximizing Your Strength Training Results 1) Never sacrifice quality for quantity. This is the first commandment for athletic success. Violate it and prepare to fail. 2) Target the weakest link. If you’re naturally strong, train for speed and/or endurance. If...

Maximal strength (MxS) is defined as the maximum amount of force one can produce irrespective of time or bodyweight. The qualifiers “time” and “bodyweight” distinguish MxS from power and relative strength, respectively. MxS is perhaps the core quality that all individuals should be concerned...

Charles Staley, Strength Training, Training Programs, 2 As the old saying goes, “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” And I’m guilty of this too. Since my training and experience is in athletic preparation, I tend to think of everyone as athletes. No matter what you do, no matter...

Whenever you perform a workout, you’re exposing your body to a challenge- a form of stress. In order to describe and quantify the character and extent of that stress, we use the phrase “loading parameters.” Generally these parameters refer to the load used, the number of sets and reps performed...

Will Brink, November 2, Strength Training, Training Programs, 23 Study Shows “Best” Strength Training Program!? Good SnC coaches – of which there are many – have known for decades that linear non- periodized strength training programs are a terrible way to make progress in strength and or...

Periodized weight training and training variety – a necessary strategy for continued progress I will save an in-depth discussion on periodized weight training for a separate article. The take home from studies on periodized weight training is that training periodization, or variation, is key...