▪️People often avoid the deadlift because they think that it’s dangerous, but in actuality; it’s a very safe exercise to do (if you are performing proper form). ⠀ ▪️When you deadlift, you don’t need anyone to give you spot, and if the weight is too heavy, you can just simply drop the weights on the ground, while other exercises like the Bench Press where you’d drop the weight on yourself if you just let it go. ⠀ ▪️It’s important to focus on proper form before trying to increase weights on the deadlift, and you’ll be fine. ⠀ ▪️There are more benefits to deadlifting such as huge improvement in Grip Strength, increases fat burning, and it decreases injury by strengthening the muscles around critical tendons and ligaments.
Progressive Overload ⠀ ▪️ What does progressive overload mean? ⠀ ▪️ Progressive overload is when you continuously increase the demands placed on your body through exercise. ⠀ ▪️For the most part, the goal is improve muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth) or strength. ⠀ ▪️Most of the time people plateau when doing this because they only try to increase the weights, but that can limit you if this is your only strategy. ⠀ ▪️So Yes, you can add more weights, but unless you’re ok with only having a hammer in your toolbox, it’s best to put a variety of tools in your toolbox. ⠀ ▪️Doing this can get you a diversify your progressive overload strategy, and ultimately, increase your hypertrophy and strength gains. ⠀ ▪️ You can also change the tempo of your lifts, decrease the rest intervals between sets, increase the amount of reps or sets, as well as incorporating different training methods such as the rest-pause or drop sets. ⠀ ▪️So there are definitely numerous ways to progressively overload than just increasing weights.
▪️Effort is a key factor for hypertrophy, and if you try to get away with no-effort based workouts, well… then you’re hindering the efficacy of your training program.
▪️But don’t get me wrong, there are cases in which exerting high levels of effort is unnecessary. For example, beginners who are just starting out with resistance training and learning the movement can get away with putting less effort into their workouts as they gain substantial strength through improvements in coordination.
▪️But past this phase, you need to push yourself progressively, if you want to get results. The reason why effort exertion is essential for muscle growth, is because the perceived level of effort establishes the level of motor unit recruitment to be assessed.
▪️The more of the effort perceived, the higher the level of motor units recruited to perform the task, which creates a greater force to be produced.
▪️When the goal is muscle growth, we need to optimize the level of motor unit recruitment. This way we are able to get access to the fibers controlled by the high-threshold motor units. These are the largest fibers and the ones which grow by lifting weights.
▪️Having slow bar speeds (close or to failure) with high-effort reps will increase the amount of hypertrophy we can create during each set. So if your goal is to build muscle, start putting some more effort into your sets so you can get the best results possible.
▪️We often hear people state that you only need a single exercise to develop a given muscle group. With the basic comprehension of anatomy and biomechanics, this could make sense. However, nothing within the range of anatomy or biomechanics is that simple.
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▪️As it shows in the chart, in order to maximize tricep development, both compound and isolation exercises are required. Since all three heads of the triceps have unique mechanical advantages at specific shoulder/elbow angles, a variety of exercises is necessary to optimize development.
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▪️ Essentially every muscle group will follow this structure, so it’s important to use a variety of exercises when you’re attempting to build and grow muscle.
▪️If you wan’t to grow bigger and stronger shoulders, the Overhead Press is a great compound exercise to take you there! ⠀ ▪️It’s one of the best exercises for progressively overload your deltoids to improve size and strength in your shoulders. ⠀ ▪️You can do the exercise with either dumbbells or barbell, seated or standing. ⠀ ▪️When you perform it standing, you’re recruiting your Pectoralis (chest), Deltoids (shoulders), Triceps (arms), and Trapezius (upper back). But to stay balanced and upright, your Lower Back, Obliques, Serratus Anterior, Transverse Abdominal and Spinal Stabilizers are engaged. ⠀ ▪️Also, keep your Glutes and Abs engaged to press the weight up with stability. ⠀ ▪️Make sure you have enough shoulder mobility to perform this exercise correctly, otherwise you might compensate by overarching and hurt your back and shoulders. ⠀ ▪️A good solution is to add Wall Angels to your routine and foam roll your lats before Overhead Pressing.
▪️Have you ever done a weightlifting session after a long period of cardio? It’s more exhausting than anything that you can think of. When I step up to the weight rack after 90 minutes of basketball, my energy and strength stores are depleted. Every time I play ball before lifting, I have the worst workout sessions.
▪️On the flip side, if I play ball after my workout sessions, I feel fresh and energized. I’ve learned that lifting before cardio is much better for fat loss and workout energy efficiency. It takes tons of energy to move heavy weights; don’t zap it all by running on the treadmill beforehand.
▪️To attain “shreddedness,” your body has to use your stored fat as fuel for exercise. In order to accomplish this, you have to burn off your glycogen stores first. When you workout, you typically use glycogen as fuel. By doing weight-training first, you can burn most of your glycogen stores. Knocking out your cardio after you demolish the weights will burn more fat!
▪️After a training session, your body continues to burn additional calories up to 48 hours. This is callef excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. EPOC occurs because your body needs energy to rebuild your muscles after you’ve taxed them. It occurs at an extreme rate after intense weight-training than after low-intensity, steady-state cardiovascular training; that’s why it’s important to put as much energy into your workout sessions. If you do steady-state cardio before you workout, you won’t have the endurance to work as hard as you can. A less productive lifting session can impact EPOC. Less calorie burn for you.
▪️A University of Tokyo Study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that doing cardio after lifting burned more fat during the first 15 minutes of the cardio session than doing cardio before working out . Don’t just take my word for it. Try it for yourself. Spend one day hitting weights before your cardio and another running before you hit the weights.
▪️You’ll be able to tell which strategy works the best.
▪️Patience is overvalued; especially within the weight room and particularly when it involves those focused on a specific outcome:
▪️Sure it takes time to build muscles, but if you’re trying to build muscle and aren’t seeing obvious size increases from month to month, it’s a sign that your approach is off.
▪️And a workout may be a terrible thing to waste. Plus, if you’re seeing progress, there’s no reason you can’t see more.
▪️How do you rev up your results? Here are 5 ways.
1. Increase Your Training Volume
▪️Training volume—your number of reps multiplied by your number of sets—is a primary determiner of hypertrophy (aka the way to grow muscle). And to extend volume, you’ll really need to lower the weight than you would expect.
2. Focus On The Eccentric Phase
▪️When weight training, you’ve got a concentric (hard) and eccentric (easy) phase. For example , as you lower into a squat, you’re performing an eccentric movement. Once you return to standing, that’s concentric. And, according to research published within the ecu Journal of Applied Physiology, eccentric work is much better at activating muscle growth.
3. Decrease Rest Intervals
▪️When lifting for hypertrophy, rest periods of 30 to 90 seconds encourage a fast release in muscle-building hormones (including testosterone and human growth hormone) while also ensuring that you truly fatigue your muscles.
4. To Grow Your Muscle, Eat More Protein
▪️Weight training breaks down your muscles. Protein rebuilds them. The more intense your workouts, the more important it is to consume protein to solidify recovery.
5. Focus On Being In A Calorie Surplus
▪️This can be hard to get used to , especially for those who are used to counting calories within the hopes to burn fat. But to most efficiently build muscle mass quickly (that means weight gained, not lost), you have to consume more calories than you burn every day.
▪️That’s because, when your body senses that you are in a calorie deficit which means that you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning each day—it lowers your body’s ability to create new muscle. After all, if your body thinks food is on low supply, getting swole isn’t going to be its main priority.
▪️Consume roughly between 250 to 500 extra calories per day to make sure that any weight gained is from muscle. A 2014 Pennington Biomedical research facility concluded from a study of people that ate a high-calorie diet rich in protein stored about 45 percent of these calories as muscle, while people following a low-protein diet with an equivalent number of calories stored 95 percent of these calories as fat.
▪️In order for fat to burn, the adrenal hormones (also known as adrenaline and noradrenaline) will attach themselves to the fat cell receptors which causes them to open so that the fat can be used for energy.
▪️There are two types of receptors inside the fat cells. One is called alpha and the other is called beta.
▪️It’s the beta receptors that are more active and they are the ones that respond to the adrenal hormones.
▪️In order for your body to lose fat, the adrenal hormones need to turn on and attach themselves to the beta receptors inside the fat cells so the body can use the fat as energy.
▪️It’s known in the fitness industry that regular and consistent exercise can help mitigate the negative effects of everyday stress.
▪️Going to the gym regularly can make the brain more resilient to stress and reduce some of the risk factors between stress and cardiovascular disease, according to scientific research.
▪️However, stress can overwhelm your system and also take a toll on your workouts. If you’ve ever tried to do a light workout during a particularly stressful week at work or school and felt weak, sick, or just flat-out terrible, then it’s not that you’ve suddenly lost all your strength.
▪️Everyday stress can limit your perceived strength at the gym, and limit how well your muscles recover after a workout
musclehacking.org 