Tag: fitness

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3D Shoulders

♠️How To Build 3D Shoulders(And What To Avoid)♠️

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🔹 There are a few common errors that occur when trying to build aesthetic shoulders.⠀⁠

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1️⃣ Increasing the weight but neglecting to perform the exercises with proper forms, this can lead to injury which will stall your progress. The main objective should be to focus on perfecting form before increasing weight.⠀⁠

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2️⃣ For the shoulders to grow, you need to eat between 0.8 to 1g protein per pound of bodyweight.⠀⁠

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3️⃣ While performing all sets with the amount of reps that you set out to accomplish with correct form, you can progressively overload. A lot of the time progressive overload is used by increasing the weights, but you can also add more sets, reps or less rest between sets, etc.⠀⁠

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4️⃣ Your muscles need time to recover in order for them to grow properly. As your deltoids can be activated in several other exercises when you target other muscle groups, such as bench press, incline bench press, or rows. Make sure that your shoulders get enough time to recover before training them again.⠀⁠

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5️⃣ Often, the Anterior Deltoid is mostly targeted and if we aren’t careful, we can forget to train the lateral and posterior deltoids. This can lead to muscle imbalances and rotator cuff injuries, bad posture, and poor lifting techniques. We must avoid this as much as possible so don’t forget to implement exercises that targets all three heads.⠀⁠

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Do you want bigger or stronger shoulders?

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How To Show Your Veins

How To Show Your Veins

  • Caloric Deficit

🔹Science proves that if you want to burn fat, diet manipulations are more effective than doing extra cardio.

🔹Push towards getting under 15 percent body fat for some of you. To be sure though, aim for under 12 percent body fat.

🔹 You can never go wrong with leafy greens when it comes to gaining vascularity.

🔹 Most importants keep your calories at least 200 under your BMR

  • Increase Nitic Oxide Intake

🔹 Nitric oxide is the compound that is responsible for your veins to dilate; AKA get bigger. There are alot of foods out there that help increase the amount of nitric oxide in the blood to make your veins show.

🔹 Foods that that will convert into nitrates in the body will most definitely do the trick to up your level of nitric oxide. Eat foods such as:

.Beetroot
.Lettuce
.Celery
.Broccoli
.Arugula
.Spinach

  • Keep sodium intake low

🔹 Salt will hold onto water which is what you don’t want. In other words, the more salt that you have in your diet, the more water your body will retain, which means the less your biceps vein will show.

  • Keep water intake consistent

🔹 If you’re chronically dehydrated and not getting the amount of water your body needs, your body will start to crave water and will retain as much as possible whenever it has the chance.

🔹 Avoid dehydration so that your body will hoard less water and be willing to excrete any extra water.

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Intermittent Fasting

♠️Intermittent Fasting♠️

🔹 There is a new study by Templeman et al. that was recently published and it doesn’t look too good for those who likes to fast…

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🔹 The analyst compared weight loss diets with 25% daily energy restriction vs. fasting diets  with 0% energy intake during the 24-hour fasts and 150% energy intake in between. The study was practiced on healthy adults.⁣

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🔹 Both groups had the same weekly energy intake and macros but either with long fasting or without.⁣

🔹 As a result, the fasting group lost less body fat. This is because they experienced a significant reduction in energy expenditure from physical activity, especially later on into their  fasting. ⁣

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🔹 Many other studies have directed towards the reductions in physical activity levels during fasting, which is the reason why I don’t recommend intermittent fasting during periods of high physical activity, and not fasting too long in general.⁣

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🔹 The fasting group also lost a substantial amount of lean body mass, although this was not significantly different from the other group.⁣

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🔹 Furthermore, the fasting did not conclude to a significant cardiometabolic health improvements, including insulin sensitivity and blood blood sugar levels after eating.⁣

🔹 And here’s the kicker: the fasting group  did not result in any beneficial changes in gene expression of inflammation and autophagy. ⁣

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🔹 My recommendations: ⁣

– Don’t fast during long periods of high physical training. ⁣

– Don’t fast longer than ~20 hours, ideally no more than ~16.⁣

– If you want to include short, aggressive deficits in your diet, do protein sparing modified fast (PSMF) periods. This will  maintain a high protein intake during the ‘fast’ to keep your metabolism up and stop muscle loss.

Resources: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29394908/

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Overhead Press

♠️Overhead Press♠️

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🔹 A common error I see (and that I have made myself) is to execute the overhead press with a “Curved” bar path.⠀⁠

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🔹 This extends the bar path and puts your shoulders in a fragile position that forces you to press less weight. This will hinder your progress because to build strength and muscle, you need more resistance/weight.

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🔹For a proper form, we want the bar to travel STRAIGHT up in a vertical line.⠀⁠

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– “But my head is in the way” you might say to yourself, and I don’t want you to press the bar through your head and hurt myself… so what should you do?⠀⁠

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🔹 So to tackle this, at the bottom of the motion, you can pull your head and chin back while simultaneously pushing your chest forward (while keeping your lower back neutral).⠀⁠

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🔹 Then, as you get to the peak, you stand with the bar right above your body, in a straight line.⠀⁠

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🔹 When lowering the bar, move your chin and head back and your chest forward as it was previously to get the bar past your head in a straight line.⠀⁠

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Quality of Food

♠️Quality of Food♠️

🔹 A frequent debate in the fitness industry that I constantly run across centers on whether or not the quality of your food matters. Some people embrace the calories in – calories out (CICO) method a little too strongly and often claim that you can eat whatever you want as long as it fits within your macros.

🔹 Unfortunately, this suggestion is just a bit one dimensional. Studies convey that processed foods (snack items, restaurant foods, etc.) actually decrease the thermogenic response. This would throw off the calories in calories out equation because you would not be able to account for the change in your diet-induced energy expenditure.

🔹  For the most part, I prefer the 80/20 approach to eating which is when you stay on your diet 80% of the time. Being too strict usually gives people a negative relationship with food, so I like to allow a little bit of cheating in a diet. However, I do suggest that most of your food comes from natural sources. Essentially, you should plan on cooking most of your food to ensure your calories in calories out equations are a little more accurate.

Resources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897733/

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How To Take A Diet Break

♠️Diet Breaks♠️

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🔹The concept of taking ‘Diet Breaks’ was first initiated  and publicized by Lyle McDonald in his innovative book called  “A Guide to Flexible Dieting”, and in the last few years more research has been accumulated on that matter. ⁣

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🔹Have you ever started a diet break with the purpose of dieting “better” later ? Sounds counter intuitive, but it’s exactly how diet breaks work. ⁣

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🔹And for the record, I’m not talking about cheat days or days where you simply stop dieting because you “don’t feel like it”. I’m talking about diet breaks, which actually serve a purpose to your progress and your fitness journey.⁣

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🔹Diet Breaks are essentially short periods of time, between 10 to 14 days, spent at an estimated maintenance, where calories are elevated by increasing carb intake to reduce hunger. This can potentially speed up your metabolism, increase energy expenditure, and regain some lost strength e while simultaneously  losing some water weight. 

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🔹Studies show  that periods of caloric restriction followed by small “breaks” at caloric maintenance, will result not only in better fat loss, and an increase in muscle mass, but weight is actually easier to keep off in the long term. ⁣

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🔹And this happens for two reasons: both physiological and psychological ones. ⁣

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🔹I’m not saying that dieting all at once doesn’t work, because obviously it does (a caloric deficit will always work). Also if you’re dieting for a close competition, you won’t have enough time to implement diet breaks in your prep. 

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🔹However, if you are not dieting for a competition and you would like to get lean, the implementation of diet breaks is certainly going to work better for long term maintenance. ⁣

Resources: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247292

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Building Strong Abs

♠️Building Strong Abs♠️

🔹 A strong core can benefit you in various ways, such as preventing injuries, reducing back pain, and stimulating proper posture.

🔹 While working out on the core, people often target the rectus abdominis (the six pack) yet leave out the internal and external obliques ( side abs), and the transverse abdominis (underneath the side ab).

🔹 Building a strong core requires more exercises than just crunches.Not to mention, the abdominals have limited and specific movements that consist of different muscles that run through the entire length of the torso. Here are a few core workouts to add to your regimen.

🔹 Planks are one of the best exercises for working the core and burning calories. Doing a plank hold will engage multiple muscles at once, while benefiting the core strength of your body.

🔹 Decline crunches are great for eliminating the tendency to use momentum to complete the movement. Increase the decline angle over time in order to progressively overload.

🔹 The Russian Side Twist targets your obliques. Try adding a dumbbell or medicine ball increases to make this workout more challenging.

🔹 Hanging knee raises with a twist can help build muscular stability in the upper back and shoulders. This workout can increase both muscular size and strength.

🔹 Cable Crunches enables you to increase resistance, allowing you to train to failure using heavier weights.

🔹 Cable Side Bend targets the obliques and improves stability in the lower back.

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Supersets & Metabolism

♠️Supers Sets & Metabolism♠️

🔹I’ve heard countless times, practitioners and trainers state that using supersets is optimal for burning more calories. In short, this turns out to be true; However, there’s more to this statement than meets the eye.

🔹It’s a known fact that a huge benefit of using supersets is that it can reduce your time in the gym. If your workout time in the gym is reduced, you’ll reduce calories burned in the gym. In essence, that’s what this case study discovered. Performing supersets was a great way for burning more calories per minute, but since supersets decreased the workout time, total calorie burning was similar between both groups.

🔹From my experience, you still get an extra boost from using supersets from an EPOC (Excess Post Exercise Oxygen) standpoint, but I’m not convinced that it’ll burn a ton of extra calories throughout the day. If anything, supersets can be beneficial for challenging your conditioning and work capacity which helps for long-term gains.

Resources: https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2010/04000/The_Metabolic_Costs_of_Reciprocal_Supersets_vs_.23.aspx#

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Build Bigger Traps

♠️Build Bigger Traps♠️

🔹 Want to be a trap king or trap queen? You have to know this about growing bigger traps…

🔹 The trapezius are often recognized by the part that you see in the mirror, which are the upper portion of the traps. But the traps actually stretch down the back.

🔹 Training the traps requires more than performing shrugs. If you want to target the mid and lower part of your trapezius, try these workouts and watch the gains appear right before your eyes.

Prone- Y’s
Prone Reverse Flys
Bent Over Rows
Reverse Peck Deck
Scapular Pull Ups

🔹 And to target the upper part of the trapezius, try these out for size…

Barbell Shrugs
Cable Lateral Raises
Above The Knee Rack Pulls
Standing Military Press
Upright Rows

🔹 What’s your favorite trap workout?