Relative Strength Advantage

Chin-ups and pull-ups for me are the most intense upper body exercises. Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by them and had always wanted to master them. This wouldn’t happen until my early twenties and here I will share my approach with you. But first let me tell you what happened today.

[No picture of a dude struggling on the pull up bar? Lets have a totally random gorgeous woman instead! By the way, most guys are totally clueless when it comes to what women like about a man's physique. Here is the deal: hot girls dig the V-shape of the torso (the waist to shoulders ratio). Gunz or bi's or however you call 'em serve mainly to intimidate other guys.]

I Was Chilling After A Nice Walk In The Saturday Sun

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Ever since I was a kid I remember being very winded when I had to climb up to the top of my building. And since lately I’ve been strapped for time, I decided to start running stairs when get home. I’d just run up to the last floor and take the elevator down to my apartment. There are very few people that run stairs and also very few people that don’t get winded when they climb a 8-9 storey building.

[Working the stairs makes girls trim and sexy and the dudes lean and mean. This is why bodybuilders, soccer players, Shaolin monks and even Victoria's secrets models keep their conditioning up with this drill.]

But many athletes such as basketball and soccer players, track athletes and martial artist include this drill in their conditioning. And for good reason. Running stairs kicks ass! It melts fat and conditions you to be efficient at short distance sprinting such as running to catch the bus, scrimmaging on the basketball field, or rushing to get to class on time.

Running Stairs Technique

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A reader of this site, Andy, asked me in Part I of the renegade rows series what to do once renegade rows become way too easy. He says he doesn’t feel his abs sore after workout. I will answer this in two parts. First, I wanna make something clear regarding muscle soreness. It is a sign of only one thing – that your body was not ready or adapted for the stress that caused the soreness. Nothing else. So you may continue to workout, especially when training for strength as opposed to muscle size (these are two different goals!), without needing to blast your body so that it’s sore every time.

[She wanted to know if getting that tat was a mistake. Hm, let me think, girl... Tell you what - I like the ink, but all this other extra stuff covering your body needs to go LOL!]

The second issue is whether you do the renegade rows with proper form to ensure that your core gets maximum stimulation. So in this article I will address the issue of proper form in more detail.

Here Is A Video With A Good Explanation Of The Proper Form For Renegade Rows

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The renegade row, developed and named by coach John Davies, is one of the hardest and most effective abdominal exercises. The reason for this is that renegade rows force you to use the primary function of the stomach muscles – stabilization. In other words the exercise teaches you how to keep your body as rigid as possible. You have no other choice but to contract your abs a hard as possible. Otherwise you won’t be able to maintain a rigid body.

1. Technique

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What if it were possible to achieve the core and abdominal strength of a world class gymnast while training at home, only for a few minutes per day with no equipment or gadgets? Well guess what – it is possible to do it if you master the L-Sit.

[You are a stud if you can hold this position for 90-120 seconds.]

1. Variations

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Lots of programs and approaches exist when it comes to gaining muscle. Do this, do that, count tempo, lift fast, train with high volume and no failure, train with low volume to failure, etc. But do you know what the real secret to gaining muscle is? It’s all about consistency and intensity.

[Will Smith transformed his body from the skinny teenager in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" to a muscular athlete for his powerful impersonation of the greatest boxer who has ever lived in Ali.]

The Worst Workout Program In The World Will Give Results If You Stick To It

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A few years ago I was reading this book called Ultimate Diet Secrets from Dr. Gregory Ellis, a nutritional expert. The book itself is a very detailed explanation of the process of losing fat.

[Smart and cute girls hate it when guys get fat and bulky LOL. No seriously, they hate it.]

Ellis details energy metabolism at a cellular level and offers a practical way to lose weight with a low carbohydrate diet (under 100g of carbohydrates per day), as well as some energy shortage from eating less and exercising a bit more. The author had interwoven his personal fitness story in between the dry biochemical background. So anyway, what reminded me of this book was the author’s physical culture journey. There are two types of people who develop a keen interest in the workings of the human body.

The First Kind Are Folks Who Are Natural Athletes
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“The greatest art is to attain a balance, a balance between all opposites, a balance between all polarities. Imbalance is the disease and balance is health. Imbalance is neurosis, and balance is well-being.”
–Osho

The Case For Functional Training

There has been a trend in the recent years towards the so-called functional training. It emphasizes training the body so that it performs better in sport activities and life in general. As with many trends sometimes the pendulum swings too far in one direction. What I mean is that after fitness training for decades meant working purely for size and aesthetics with a split training routine, now the completely opposite thing is in style.

The Olden Ways Of Bodybuilding
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People usually look their best in high school. Young women and men are almost always thinner and more athletic than older folks. It’s kind of ironic really, because this is also the period full of the most insecurities and body image issues. Girls don’t feel thin enough or pretty enough while boys feel they don’t have enough muscle.

[I'm a Cougar from Cougar town and only a Cougar can knock me down. If you don't like my apples, don't shake my tree 'cause I'm a Cougar. Don't mess with me! I like them apples, girl LOL]

A Few Years Later These Same People Realize How Good They Actually Looked In High School

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I like to learn and discover stuff. One of the tricks I have stumbled upon for really getting the true nature of things is to borrow from lots of sources and track where their opinions coincide.

Almost all fitness authors talk about the importance of establishing a solid foundation of strength for folks that are new to training. One of the best explanation I’ve read was by Arthur Jones – a talented pioneer of bodybuilding. He revolutionized the way training is perceived by the general public by introducing the Nautilus machine.

This post is inspired by his writings where he advises new trainees to progress as quickly as possible in a simple but solid full body routine. With brief workouts and hard work, within a short few months significant progress is achieved.
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People just sort of hang out and try to get themselves a bigger alcohol buzz. The reality is that at some point the party has got to stop. In this way you can be a trooper the next day.

Nothing Really Interesting Happens After 2 AM Anyway

[No, really, the party has to stop. OK, not right now lol.]

I once read this book that was talking about socialites and how some people manage to have it all. They work hard and productive and go out to all the parties and have fun.

This was their secret – a power socialite would show up for an event but would soon go to another party and after a few such stops head home early. This was what differentiated pros and wannabes. The amateurs would stay up all night and party. The next day however they would be completely burnt out from exhaustion.

Don’t Disturb Your Natural Ultradian Rhythm
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Basketball is a sport with very high rate of injury. Because the game itself allows limited contact between players, injuries often occur from being elbowed or shoved. But, the most incidents come from ankle spraining due to either switching directions or landing on someone else’ foot after a jump thus twisting the ankle.

[My favorite sport. I have torn ligaments in both my ankles playing ball but I still love the game.]

The ankle is made for mobility so restricting that with a high top shoe is going to bring trouble somewhere else. It’s better to injure the ankle than to tear something in your knee. So, the solution is not taping and bracing the ankle, but strengthening the foot’s tissues – muscles, tendons, ligaments in order to prevent spraining.

This Video Shows A Few Different Ways To Strengthen The Tissues Of The Foot
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[Never hurts to have a pretty girl demonstrate exercises for you.]

The Glutes Are the Primary Movers of the Hip Joint

First – lets define “glutes.” These are the muscles in your butt. Glutes comes from the Latin name gluteus maximus. To me it sounds like the name of Russel Crowe’s character in the movie Gladiator.

So anyway, the primary role of the glutes is to make your upper leg go in alignment with the spine. In other words if the spine and trunk are vertical – the leg must too. So the thigh is pulled down and back. This extension at the hip is primarily propelled by the muscles you are currently sitting on.

Every Movement Involves the Butt Because it Is in the Center of the Body
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[LL Cool J works his ass off and consequently looks more than decent.]

1. Progressive Overload

This is probably the most important thing to do in order to build muscle over time – you have to gradually increase the difficulty of your training. You see, if you don’t change things up, if you don’t make things harder, your body won’t have a reason to adapt. Muscle growth is just an adaptation reaction to the external stress caused by the workout.

2. Don’t Miss Workouts

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I think I became obsessed with basketball during the freshman year of high school. One thing I noticed was that all the older basketball players had great calf development. Well, they probably had good development of their whole bodies, but that was what I noticed cause we were wearing basketball shorts.

[Basketball players have good calf development because of their sport. Or is it that they develop their calves for their sport? Which came first lol?]

So anyway, I became a calf training fanatic. I remember I had a classmate who was into bodybuilding and I was asking him all the time about ways to develop my calves for basketball.

Here Is What I Learned
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