Tips of the week Love the process
You don't have to be a competitive bodybuilder to get lean and build muscle. However, there is a lot that the average exerciser can learn from competitive athletes. Here's one of them:
There are no scales on the competition stage or on the road
Your weight is the amount of gravitational force your body has on the earth. No one sees this number or cares about it. You shouldn't either. People see your body, which can look leaner and more toned by building muscle. Experienced competitive athletes know this.
They celebrate tiny improvements in their performance, appearance and habitual behavior. They enjoy the torture of the results they gradually see in the mirror and they trust that the right behavior will give them the body they are striving for. The number on the scales will therefore never derail their efforts - nor should it. There are no scales on the competition stage - and if there were, they wouldn't matter.
Aesthetically pleasing bodies often have a surprisingly high weight on the scales. These bodies are covered in muscle. Experienced competitive athletes know this and do not use the scales as a barometer for their success. The number on the scales depends not only on fat mass, but also on a variety of other things going on in the body. For example, muscle cells can shrink and expand as glycogen stores are depleted or replenished and the body can store extra water or the bowels can be filled with stool. Constipation will make you heavier. This is why competitive athletes don't get discouraged or upset when the scale doesn't tell them what they would like to see.
Stop chasing a certain weight
Most people lack the ability to see things beyond the scale. They are so fixated on the results of exercise and diet that they don't make exercising and eating well the real goal - which is a big mistake. And this fixation usually boils down to weighing less at all costs...even if it's only temporary. However, if regular exercise and a sensible diet became a habit, then progress could easily be maintained, the weight on the scale would stabilize and people would stop yo-yo dieting.
Striving solely for a number on the scale blinds people to the progress they are making. It blinds them from enjoying the progress and it often discourages them so much that they don't continue.
Many regular exercisers would happily lose 10 pounds of "weight" and see the weight on the scale drop. However, a competitive athlete in the figure class would not be so easily fooled. He or she would want to know what that weight is made up of: glycogen, water, fat? And a loss of muscle mass would not be acceptable.
A better attitude
Building muscle through constant good nutrition and training with weights is the best thing you can do for your body. But this will never be satisfying if the only reason to do it is to achieve a lower weight. If you are intent on building muscle, then you are sacrificing rapid weight loss for a faster metabolism and the look you can only achieve with muscle.
People who fixate on weight loss will often lose weight, but without maintaining their existing muscle mass or building new muscle mass, they will lower their metabolic rate, then gradually rebuild the lost weight and eventually end up with a higher number on the scale, less muscle tissue than when they started and a flabby, weak body.
Recognize that your weight depends on a variety of other things going on in your body. Don't freak out and don't get discouraged if the scale doesn't say exactly what you want it to say.
Tip: Pull before you push and pull more often
You need more than a 1:1 ratio of pushing exercises to pulling exercises. Here's why, and some smart strategies for maintaining a sensible balance.
By Lee Boyce
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-pull-before-you-push-and-pull-more-often
You need to maintain a balance between pulling exercises (rows, pull-ups, etc.) and pushing exercises (bench presses, etc.). If you don't pay attention to this balance, you risk poor posture, muscle tension and even joint pain.
Train your back more
People usually remember to match the volume of their back training to the chest or shoulder training they used to do during the week. But it doesn't end there - not even close. Because of our lifestyles, a 1:1 ratio is not enough when it comes to creating, promoting - and in many cases restoring - muscle balance. It means training the back more often, with more volume and at higher repetition ranges than we generally do with our front muscles.
Pull before you push
There's more. If you're doing an upper body workout that involves both muscles on the front and back of the body, do the pulling exercises first before you do the pushing exercises. Why? Shoulder blade stability.
Performing your pull-ups before your overhead press or your rows before your bench press will create a more stable shoulder environment for the second of the two exercises. The muscles of your rotator cuff attach to the shoulder blade and increasing blood flow and preload in this area will go a long way in providing enough support to the shoulder joint to prevent unwanted injury or general instability. In addition to this, this means pain-free pressing.
Even if you are doing a pure press exercise session, you should prepare your shoulders to bear the weight by stabilizing them with a few sets of a variation of rowing with high reps and resistance such as dumbbells, a cable pulley or even bands. The goal here is to go just to the point where you feel a mild pump and activation in the muscles of the upper back.
Pull days before push days
Plan your training so that you complete a pull day before a push day in your weekly training cycle. If you train your back (or other pulling exercises) several times a week, then you should ensure that at least one of these pull training sessions precedes your primary push training session.
Hard training sessions can cause muscle soreness, which can reduce the range of motion or flexibility of the muscles. Use this restriction to your advantage by achieving a slight muscle soreness in the muscles of the upper back before you train your chest muscles. This will not affect your chest training session, but the restriction of the range of motion can have a positive effect on shoulder stability, especially when pushing hard.
Tip: Use contrast training for faster results
Contrast promotes recovery. Here's a way to arrange your workouts so that you can use this to your advantage for gains in mass and strength
By Charles Staley
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-use-contrast-training-for-faster-results
The negative effects of fatigue are specific to the activities that caused the fatigue. This means that successive training sessions should ideally be as different as possible. In this way, the fatigue caused by the training session on Monday will have the least possible negative impact on the training session on Wednesday.
Example: Leg training specialization
Imagine that you have decided to build up more muscle mass in your legs and that you have decided to train your legs three times a week. The "contrast promotes recovery" principle dictates that these training sessions should be as varied as possible to promote maximum recovery from training session to training session.
There are a few different ways to achieve this and the primary ones include varied exercise selection and load parameters. Here is an example of what this might look like in practice:
Monday
|
|
Exercise |
Sets |
|
|
A |
Classic squats |
4 |
10 |
|
B |
Deadlift |
6 |
2 |
|
C |
Step-Ups |
3 |
12 |
Wednesday
|
|
Exercise |
Sets |
|
|
A |
Lunges |
3 |
10 |
|
B |
Front squats |
4 |
6 |
|
C |
Leg curls |
2 |
15 |
Friday
|
|
Exercise |
Sets |
|
|
A |
Leg extension |
4 |
10 |
|
B |
Romanian deadlift |
4 |
6 |
|
C |
Hip Thrusts |
4 |
10 |
In this example, both exercises and training weights are significantly changed from training session to training session. Another approach could be to alternate between knee/quadriceps-focused exercises in one workout and hip/ posterior chain-focused exercises in the next workout.
Tip: Perform pull-ups using the 25 repetition method
Perform heavy pull-ups and you will build massive amounts of strength and muscle. Check out this workout plan.
By Chris Shugart
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-do-chin-ups-with-the-25-Wiederholungen-method
If you've never felt soreness in your abs after training pull-ups with an underhand grip, then you haven't trained hard enough. Unfortunately, pull-ups are seen by many people as an exercise where many repetitions should be performed. Their goal is to do a lot of reps and the number of reps is the only marker of progression for them. This also means that skinny guys are best at pull-ups.
These guys - and anyone who can do at least 10 strict pull-ups - need to shift their focus to heavy training. Heavy pull-ups with lower reps can stroke the ego just as much as sets of 25 reps with your own bodyweight, and your upper body strength and mass will skyrocket. Your back, biceps and even your abs will be stimulated in a whole new way.
The 25 reps method
Step 1:
Determine your 6 RM weight (the maximum weight you can perform 6 clean reps with) for pull-ups with added weight. Add weight by using a dip belt, weight vest, chains or a dumbbell or weight plate held between your legs or feet. Perform the repetitions strictly. If you need momentum from your body on the last repetition, then this is not your 6 RM weight, but your 5 RM weight. Reduce the weight a little and perform 6 clean but hard repetitions.
Step 2:
You will perform 25 reps of pull-ups per workout using multiple sets with the 6 RM weight you determined earlier. It doesn't matter how many sets you need and it's perfectly fine if you only end up doing two reps per set or single reps.
Your 25 total reps could look like this:
- Set 1: 6 repetitions
- Set 2: 6 repetitions
- Set 3: 5 repetitions
- Set 4: 4 repetitions
- Set 5: 2 repetitions
- Set 6: 2 repetitions
- Total repetitions: 25
This is just an example. Everyone will be slightly different here. Simply perform 25 total reps with your 6 RM weight and do as many sets as you need. Rest as long as you need between sets - this is not a conditioning workout. If you can do more than 6 reps on the first set without any problems, then increase the weight.
Step 3:
Perform pull-ups with added weight three times a week on non-consecutive days such as Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If three times a week is too hard for your elbows, then do two of these workouts per week for 6 weeks.
Note: If you have sensitive elbows, you can also vary your grip width and grip style. The neutral grip is the gentlest on the elbows. This means that you will need to adjust the weight to meet the parameters of the plan.
This is a specialization program. No matter what you want to train that day, you should start your workout with pull-ups. It's quite easy to adapt the rest of your workout around your pull-up training. You should still do some horizontal pulling like rowing, but you probably won't need any additional bicep training if you choose close-grip pull-ups in this plan.
Tip: Perform flying movements on the cable from bottom to top
Build your upper chest with this unique exercise
By Clay Hyght, DC
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-try-low-to-high-cable-flyes
The most natural function of the upper chest is flexion and horizontal adduction-something that's not possible with bench presses alone. Flying movements performed from the bottom up perfectly mimic the line of pull of the clavicular pectoralis. This is one of the best exercises when it comes to filling the gap in the pectoral muscles near the collarbone.
Flying movements on the cable from bottom to top
- Start with the cable handles in the bottom position and your palms facing forward. Your upper arms should form a 30 degree angle with your body at the side.
- Using your upper chest muscles, pull your arms up and in, moving your hands up and together so that they touch at shoulder level or slightly above. The paths of the cables will form an upside-down V.
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/tip-love-the-process-screw-the-scale
By Dani Shugart