Month: June 2010

Pushup Fitness Tests… Or How I Schooled The Competition and You Can Too

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Pushup fitness tests and competitions are a great way to measure your upper body relative strength, not to mention that they are plain fun! A few years ago at our gym we had an athletic competition with all kinds of disciplines – pull-ups for reps, weighted pull-ups, sprints, long jumps and so on. The push-up fitness test was one of the disciplines.

People from all over Bulgaria were invited to join the competition. Many enthusiasts came – some were professional athletes, others were just fitness buffs or amateur bodybuilders. The competitors from our gym won most of the disciplines as well as the overall title.

I was the winner of the pushup contest, even though I wasn’t the strongest or most athletic one.  In this article I will share my secrets to pushup greatness. Here is a video we shot showing the first two push-up positions that you can use in your training. You can also see the elbows out push-up. Again – avoid this one.

Here is Why the Push-up is a Great Exercise

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Using the Lat Pull Down Machine to Get Strong for Your First Pull-up

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The lat pull down machine is a great way for beginners and intermediate people to learn how to use their back muscles properly so that once sufficient strength is acquired, pull-ups and chin-ups can be performed with proper form. In my experience using the lat pull down machine is the fastest way to teach proper technique transition to make pull-ups quickly.

Here is a video we shot of the lat pull down in use. The cool thing about this particular machine is that the weight that you lift corresponds to the real force you exert. Sometimes machines use complicated pulley systems that actually halve the weight being lifted. This is not the case here.

Why the Lat Pull Down Machine?

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Wrist Roller – The Best Exercise For Increasing Forearm Strength

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bruce-lee-forearms

Wrist roller article with a picture of Bruce Lee? It’s not a coincidence. Besides being an overall health and fitness and martial arts fanatic, he put priority in training his abs and his forearms. The reason for this was that in martial arts power originates in the core or stomach muscles, but is transmitted through the hands.

Bruce Lee was not a “fitness freak” just for the sake of it. He had a definite major purpose –an idea he got from Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich. His supreme physical shape is a manifestation of his pursuit of excellence in order to achieve the life he wanted for himself and his family. He actually achieved his dream goal of being the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

The Wrist Roller – Fantastic for Forearm Strength

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How to Increase Biceps Strength without Biceps Curls

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Biceps strength can be greatly increased with any pull-up & chin-up workout when you are a beginner. Problem is, the better you get at pull-ups, the more you learn to engage your back – pull with the lats or armpit muscles. This is great because you will develop a great looking v-shaped body. However your biceps strength will reach a plateau because your arms will get less and less stimulation.

One solution is to start heavily relying on direct arm training with barbell and dumbbell curls. Although this is a great approach, there is yet another way to train with a compound exercise for greater biceps strength. Compound moves allow for a more natural loading of the muscles.

Here is a video we shot in the backyard of a nearby school of the mix grip chin-up. Notice how I am leaning towards the under grip arm and trying to pull with this side of my back. Don’t just pull yourself up. Instead use the muscles of the under grip side of the body.

Enter The Mix Grip Chin Up

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Lower Ab Workouts – A Waste of Time?

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Ab Muscle diagram

Lower ab workouts are often the subject of infomercials trying to sell you fat burning gizmos such as the Self Electrocution Belt ™ and the Low Back Killer Swing™. On a more serious note, what we often see on TV in those commercial breaks is a successful attempt to give people what they want.

We want to burn the fat around our bellies. We want it easy and we want it fast. So the marketing geniuses brainstorm and come up with an idea that *seems* to work the lower ab region. Then they get sweaty and fit fitness models to demonstrate the gadget and flex their six pack abs – and this is where the scam happens.

The Lower Six Pack Abs Myth

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