Category: blog

Here are FIVE exercises that will help you to create a back of STEEL.⁠
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1️⃣ Deadlifts – This is an incredible exercise that trains the posterior chain of your body and activates a huge amount of muscles which allows you to lift incredibly heavy weights. An important note is to practice and perfect form & technique before loading heavyweights.⁠
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2️⃣ Barbell Rows – This is also a compound exercise that targets mainly your lats but also your upper back, as well as your arms.⁠
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3️⃣ Pull-Ups – This is another amazing back builder, which you don’t need much equipment (or even a gym) for, but when you get stronger, you can start adding dumbbells between your feet or use a weight belt to add more resistance.⁠
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4️⃣ Lat Pulldowns – If you’re not able to do Pull-Ups yet, this is a great exercise that can help you get there. It’s a similar exercise and you can start with lighter weights but the movement is very similar and can help you get the strength you need to get to your first pull-ups.⁠
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5️⃣ Dumbbell Rows – A great exercise that you can perform with either two or one dumbbells at a time while leaning over on a bench to tackle any muscle imbalances you might have.⁠

Controversial thought: Thin crust is better than stuffed crust?
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Personally I love a thin crust pizza and have always been disappointed by stuffed crust.
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Pizza is a blessing from the heavens (or Italy or something like that) and you should enjoy it.
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As much as we complain about how the food industry has made it very easy for us to overeat…
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…it also gives us the option to change the foods we eat to suit our needs.

With just two simple changes you can almost half the calories of this pizza without much difference to flavor.
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You can decorate a pizza out with thick crusts and extra cheese and the calories will add up…
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OR… You could make some simple changes when you order (with this company the options appear automatically)
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A Pizza doesn’t have to contain an entire days worth of calories (but it can if you want it to)
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Make you life easy.
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Whatever way you like your pizza, enjoy it.

Do you let the number on the scale dictate whether you have a good day or not?

If so, you’re definitely not alone.

Your body is about 70% water – so almost all short term changes are water related.

Could be you had a hard workout yesterday and have some inflammation while your body is recovering.

Could be that you ate a bit more salt yesterday.

Could be that you didn’t drink ENOUGH water and have some retention.

Could be that you had more refined sugars yesterday and are a bit more bloated.

Whatever the reason is it’s important to realize that the increase is VERY short term.

To see the real changes in fat and muscle you’ve got to look at the overall weekly trend.

And honestly, the best way to see your progress is to find a pair of pants that are a bit too tight and try them on every week.

You may be pleasantly surprised that even if the scale hasn’t budged, the pants fit a bit better.

Oh and if you’re going to say that you can eat 15,000 calories in a day then I REALLY doubt you keep it all down.

Here’s a very basic but solid program if you’re planning on working out 2-3 days a week

You don’t need to make training overly complicated.

Just stick to these basic movements and try to get stronger and stronger with each of them.

I have put 2 exercises back to back to make 3 simple super sets.

This will save you time and get you in and out of the gym quicker without sacrificing strength or training volume.

Aim to do each super set for 4 sets of 8-12 reps – slowly and with great form

Take a good 1.5 – 2 minute rest between sets in order to ensure that you’re recovered enough to lift heavy

Try to gradually increase your weights each week. If you’re consistent with it, you’ll be able to switch up the workout after 4-6 weeks

•Benefits of Brown Rice•

YouTube: Muscle Hacking Society

▪️Brown Rice has been a primary source of carbs for bodybuilders and athletes for centuries. Brown rice is known as a muscle building food because it is a complex carbohydrate that is the “unrefined” version of white rice, which provides a sustained release of energy to your muscles as they grow.

▪️Both, white rice and brown rice, are excellent sources of carbs, but white rice causes more of an insulin spike because of its very low fiber and fat content. Brown rice also increases insulin release, however the fiber and fats help reduce this. Therefore, at times of the day when you aren’t training, the carbs from brown rice are much less likely to go to body-fat storage than those from white rice.

▪️Personally I like brown rice because it’s high in magnesium and fiber, both of which help control blood sugar levels.

▪️Research suggests that regularly eating whole grains, like brown rice, will help lower blood sugar levels while decreasing the risk of type 2 diabetes. Even just replacing white rice with brown has been shown to lower blood sugar levels and decrease type 2 diabetes risk.

▪️On the other hand, eating lots of white rice has been linked to an increased risk of diabetes.

▪️This is due to its high glycemic index (GI). The GI measures how fast food increases your blood sugar.

▪️Studies suggest that eating brown rice helps reduce several risk factors for heart disease as well.

▪️45 different analyses showed that people who ate the most whole grains, including brown rice, had a 16–21% decrease in the risk of heart disease than people who ate the fewest whole grains.

▪️Eating brown rice instead of white can also significantly reduce weight, body mass index (BMI), and circumference of the waist and hips.

▪️There was a study that included 29,683 adults and 15,280 children. The analyst found that the more whole grains people ate, the lower their body weight.

▪️Additionally, a randomized controlled trial in 40 women that were overweight found that brown rice reduced body weight and waist size, compared with white rice.

-Time Under Tension and Muscle Growth⁣⁣
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▪️There’s a lot of misconception among Time Under Tension (TUT) and its relationship with muscle growth. ⁣⁣

▪️I’ve noticed many articles say that slowing reps down and increasing the duration of the muscular contraction can create greater hypertrophy. And while there’s some truth to this statement, there’s still more to it.
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▪️Why ? Because time under tension (TUT) matters, but mostly for the volume that counts as effective for hypertrophy.

▪️TUT can help maximize two specific components of training that are related to muscle growth with the first being volume. Studies show that training volume has been shown to have a dose-response relationship with muscle growth, so increasing training volume should increase gains.

▪️The second component is tension. When a muscle contracts to lift a weight, the muscle fibers experience mechanical tension while they shorten to move the joint. Mechanical tension is probably the main determinant of muscle hypertrophy, so the more tension you can create, the more gains you’ll get.

Resource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3861774/#sec1-1title
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197

-The Foundational Movements of Training
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▪️Whether you’re training for Strength, Building Muscle, or for a specific sport, you want to implement the foundational exercises of fitness, which are called Compound Movements.⠀⁠
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▪️Compound Movements are exercises that use multiple joints to move your body, which in turn trains multiple muscle groups at the same time, making it possible for you to overload/increase the resistance (weight) used compared to an isolation exercise (one joint exercise).⠀⁠
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▪️By overloading the resistance, you’re able to increase your strength and muscle growth, as well as train more efficiently.⠀⁠
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▪️Compound exercises should be used early in the workout, e.g. if you’re training chest, you want to perform bench presses (for example) before doing chest fly (one joint movement).⠀⁠
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▪️The majority of gym goers have used supersets in their workouts in one way, shape, or form. But the question is, is there a best way to perform supersets?

▪️Personally, my favorite technique of doing supersets is the classic agonist-antagonist method, aka push-pull method for short. Essentially, you pair a “pushing” exercise, like bench press, with a “pulling” exercise, like rows or pulldowns. Since these exercises work antagonist muscles, they don’t “compete” with one another, meaning your pushing muscles can rest and recover while your pulling muscles work. In addition, this type of superset usually leads to a great pump!

▪️Another method I like is kind of like a reverse version of the pre-exhaustion method – post exhaustion (creative title, right?). Essentially, you start with a compound exercise, then move to an isolation movement to truly target a given muscle. I especially like using these to pair a bench press variation with some sort of chest flye – that way I know my pecs are getting trained hard!

What is the best fat burner to take according to science?

New data was taken to analyze the overall effect of fat burners on our body composition.⁣
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To make a long story short, anything you can legally obtain doesn’t work, except possibly ephedrine which is still illegal in most countries. ⁣
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Numerous studies concluded that there is no effect of fat burners at all and in the data taken.
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The terminology “fat burner” is a marketing strategy to begin with. Fat burners don’t directly increase fat loss. They actually increase your energy expenditure which results in fat loss if you subsequently create a greater energy deficit as a result of that. Taking a fat burner while on a bulk, for example, won’t result in fat loss. ⁣
Not to mention, the increase in total daily energy expenditure of even the strongest thermogenics like ephedrine, only results in 5% which isn’t even noticeable.
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And for the majority of “fat burners’ this effect decreases over the course of weeks as you start to gain a tolerance to the supplement.
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If you want to improve your physique and get lean, you must optimize your diet, put in the work in the gym and refrain from relying on crutches. You don’t need any supplements to get the physique of your dreams.⁣

All of the information regarding the macro & micronutrient composition of the two potatoes in this post is from a study conducted by King & Slavin (2013) who analysed the role of potatoes on human health. Analysis showed:
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• Calories = 94kcal vs 90kcal
• Protein = 2g vs 2g
• Fat = 0.15g vs 0.15g
• Carbs = 21g vs 21g
• Fibre = 2g vs 3.3g
• Potassium = 544mg vs 475mg
• Magnesium = 27mg vs 27mg
• Phosphorous = 75mg vs 54mg
• Iron = 64mg vs 69mg
• Vitamin C = 12.6mg vs 19.6mg
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(values based on 100g baked white vs sweet potato).
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Practical implications: Overall there are no real noticeable differences between the two other than the fibre content and Vitamin C being slightly higher in the sweet potato vs white which I guess makes senses considering most foods rich in vitamin C are those brightly colored i.e. red & yellow (Lykkesfeldt 2014 Chambial et al 2013).