strength

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...

Will Brink, January 3, 2019, Articles, Brinkisms And Other Stuff, Strength Training, Training Programs, 17 If there’s one group of strength athletes that seems to be stuck in the late 60s -70s when it comes to their training approach, it’s bodybuilders. Some might argue bodybuilders are...

Will Brink, July 11, 2021, Articles, Bodybuilding, Strength Training, 0 Editors Note: Concurrent training (explained below) has always been a controversial topic. Brooke covers the current science on the topic. I have discussed concurrent programing a number of times on this page over the...

This Guide Teaches You: How to build muscle regardless of your age. About age-specific workout challenges, and how to overcome them. The steps required to improve your post-40 physique. How to modify the major muscle building exercises to reduce wear and tear on the body. Table of Contents...

Nutrition and Supplementation The importance of food and a solid eating plan or approach can’t be understated. Hard training much be backed by quality nutrition and proper intake. Without the proper nutrients or calories, you will limit your body’s ability to repair and strength muscle and...