Tag: Workout

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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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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?

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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/

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Carbs After Workout

♠️Carbs After Workouts♠️

🔹 It’s often said that carbs are important for post-workout recovery. At times people even claim that carbs are more important than protein. Is this actually the case?

🔹 When we perform any type of strength training, we inevitably break down some muscle tissue. If we train in a fasted state, it’s very likely that by the end of the workout we will be in a negative protein balance. This is because we’re breaking down more muscle than we’re building. If I made the assumption that carbs were more important than protein and only consumed carbs after my workout, I would be in a negative protein balance. If I’m in a negative protein balance, my muscles wouldn’t grow.

🔹So how can we fix this situation? If your goal is to grow muscle, make sure that you are getting enough protein after your workouts;especially if you are training while fasted. The goal should be to spend as much time as possible in a positive protein balance and getting protein ASAP after working out is a great way to ensure this happens.

Resources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5794245/

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Boosting Metabolism

♠️Key To Boosting Metabolism♠️

🔹 If you are in a fat burning phase, you definitely want to focus on speeding up your metabolism through a phenomenon called the EPOC effect, which stands for, “Excessive Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption.” The EPOC effect will produce more oxygen consumption to the body   in the post-workout period. This is beneficial because  when we consume more oxygen, we burn more calories. 

🔹 How and why does this happen?

🔹 Exercise will increase stress to the body. This interrupts our regular homeostasis. After our workouts, our bodies start to recover from this stress. Things such as tissue repair and nutrient replenishment require more energy, this is why we see increased calorie burning after we exercise. There are studies that show that this effect can last for as long as 38-hours. 

🔹 So let’s get to the question, “do all forms of exercise have the same effect”?

🔹 That’s precisely what this experiment investigated. Subjects performed workouts that burned the same amount of calories from resistance training, steady state cardio, and interval training. After that, they tracked their calorie burning throughout the post-workout period to see if there were any differences?

🔹 What were the results?

🔹 The steady state cardio group  didn’t boost metabolism one bit. Remember, the primary reason for an increase in metabolism  following a workout is due to things like tissue repair or nutrient replenishment. Steady state cardio typically isn’t stressful enough of a stimulus for most people so we don’t have as much muscle damage to repair or fuel stores to fill up.

🔹 On the other hand, both resistance training and interval training did increase metabolism. Both forms of exercise cause muscle damage and interval training will also deplete energy stores a little more than resistance training. Combine these two workouts and you’ll get a solid EPOC effect.

Resources:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Beau-Greer/publication/272187749_EPOC_Comparison_Between_Isocaloric_Bouts_of_Steady-State_Aerobic_Intermittent_Aerobic_and_Resistance_Training/links/56d264a608ae4d8d64a5f597/EPOC-Comparison-Between-Isocaloric-Bouts-of-Steady-State-Aerobic-Intermittent-Aerobic-and-Resistance-Training.pdf

https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/48951/Oschuenkemark2001.pdf

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Stubborn Body Fat

♠️Stubborn Body Fat♠️

🔹There are three main factors that control how fast you lose fat from different parts of your body:⁣⁣

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1. How fat cells react  to catecholamines.⁣⁣

2. How fat cells react to insulin.⁣⁣

3. How much blood flow the area of fat cells receive.⁣⁣

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🔹There are two types of catecholamine receptors in the fat cell: alpha-2 and beta-2. Each receptor responds differently when it gets a signal from a catecholamine. Beta-2 receptors will  prompt the cells to release more fat. But alpha-2 receptors tell the cells to stop releasing fat.⁣⁣

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🔹If a fat cell has more alpha-2 receptors than beta-2 receptors, it will release fat slower than other cells. When your brain senses that it has enough energy from other cells, it will  signal to the  fat cells to stop releasing their energy. Once this happens, the stubborn fat will not be released. 

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🔹These stubborn fat cells tend to gather in the same areas within your body. Let’s take the fat cells from the stomach for example; these fat cells are on average 10-20 times more responsive to catecholamines than the fat cells that are in the glutes. 

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🔹Fat cells can also have a different response to the effects of the hormone insulin, which is  another kind of signaling molecule. In general, insulin is considered a “storage hormone,” which means it helps nutrients such as fat enter cells. When insulin levels incline, fat burning will drop to zero, and vice versa. 

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🔹Certain kinds of fat, such as visceral fat, are more insulin resistant than others. They continue to release fat despite insulin being present. However, stubborn fat will stop releasing triglycerides as a response to insulin.⁣⁣

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🔹The amount of blood that  circulates throughout the different parts of your body also determines how much fat you lose. The areas in your body that receive more blood flow generally lose fat easier.

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Full Body Home Workout

♠️HOME WORKOUT♠️

Here’s a little workout for you to do that requires absolutely no equipment (other than a table and chair) 

✅ Do the workout as one big circuit of 6 exercises

✅ Aim for 3-4 rounds of the circuit

✅ Take a 1 minute break after each round