Tag: hypertrophy

Posted on

Overhead Press

♠️Overhead Press♠️

⠀⁠

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

⠀⁠

🔹 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.

⠀⁠

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

⠀⁠

– “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?⠀⁠

⠀⁠

🔹 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).⠀⁠

⠀⁠

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

⠀⁠

🔹 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.⠀⁠

⠀⁠⠀⁠

⠀⁠

Posted on

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#

Posted on

Post Workout Recovery

♠️Recovery♠️

🔹 I can remember my first few months of strength training. I wanted a huge bench press, so what did I do? I benched 4-5x/week to the point that I over trained. Even worse; I killed my gains and my strength came to a hault. 

🔹 Studies show  that muscles takes around  3-days to recover from a hard workout. Recovery isn’t just feeling better or less sore, but a state in which your muscles are able to reach nearly full activation again. This is essential because a muscle has to be active in an exercise in order to grow from the stimulus. If soreness and fatigue are hindering muscle activation, your workout won’t cause your muscles to grow.

🔹 A prime rule of thumb to remember is  that you grow muscles outside of the gym. It’s important that you focus on recovery just as much as training. If you skip this critical step, you’ll find it difficult to reach your goals. Make sure that you give your muscles at least 48-72 hours of rest to optimize your recovery. This is very beneficial for the long run. 

Resources: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12741861/

Posted on

How to Build Stubborn Muscle

🔹 If you recently started training for less than a year, you don’t have any  lagging muscle-groups yet, your entire body is  adapting to the stimulus of working out and building muscle. With that said, if you’ve been training for some time time and you are now starting to notice that a certain muscle is lagging behind, you will need to implement some specialized techniques. Here are 4 things I’d recommend if your goal is to bring up a lagging muscle.

_

_ 

Tip Number 1: Increase Training Frequency

_ 

🔹 If you’re currently training a muscle-group once per week, I’d recommend that you  increase your training to twice per week. This is a way to maximize training-induced protein synthesis and also increases your  total volume.

_ 

Tip Number 2: Prioritize

_ 

🔹 If you’re trying to build bigger biceps, then avoid from leaving them for the end of your workout when you’re already taxed.  Start prioritizing that muscle-group by putting it first. 

_ 

Tip Number 3: Progressive Overload

_ 

🔹 Progressive overload is the main pathway of building muscle. And unless we’re gradually increasing the amount of work we do, no matter how hard we train, we’ll never grow. Get back to the basics – if you want to build your chest, you’ve got to bench press more weight or do more reps. 

_ 

Tip Number 4: Eat Enough to Grow

_ 

No matter how solid your training is… if you’re not providing your body with  the necessary nutrients to grow, you’ll never build any  muscle mass. It’s synonymous to building a house without enough bricks – it doesn’t matter how many workers are present if they don’t have the necessary tools for the job that house will not be constructed. 

_