Month: September 2011

Barbell Lunge 101: A Beginner’s Guide

by

The barbell lunge is probably one of the most effective and yet most problematic barbell exercises. The benefits of doing exercises for your legs one leg at a time are numerous. You will develop better coordination, get rid of muscle imbalance between your limbs and last but not least become athletic in a very functional manner.

In fact after a good barbell lunge workout, done correctly, you will feel the exercise right in the areas sued for sprinting, jumping and climbing stairs.

The reason for the article however is that I see many people do barbell lunges with severe motion in the knee. This both hinders proper muscular balance of the complete leg musculature and places you at a greater risk of a knee injury.

What is the Barbell Lunge

Read more

Cumulative Fatigue – the Real Secret of Fast Muscle Growth

by

Fast muscle growth – is it really possible? If you ask most people who try working out for a few months without actually achieving anything, fast muscle growth is just hype.

If you focus part of your workouts on this kind of training you will experience very fat muscle growth, especially if you haven’t been training in this way before. As strength coach Charles Poliquin likes to say, the best workout is the one you haven’t been doing.

What he means is that we adapt to a certain kind of training so changing something in the workout every few weeks or months ensures continued progress.

Fast Muscle Growth with Cumulative Fatigue?

Read more

The Kettlebell Swing – Kick Ass Exercise for a Kick Ass Body

by

The kettlebell swing is quite possibly the easiest and at the same time most effective tool when it comes to training the whole body for multiple fitness qualities at the same time. When done for high volume of reps it makes you sweat and huff and puff thus making you fitter and leaner at the same time. The high rep kettlebell swing burns tons of calories and trains your heart and lungs.

swing

Not only that, the swing is one of the most effective exercises to train your posterior chain – the back of the legs. At the same time, when done with a moderately heavy weight it trains your grip. Of course if you don’t have access to a kettlebell right now you could try using a dumbbell just to feel how taxing this exercise is.

Above is a short video I filmed a few years back showing the kettlebell swing from a few different directions. Note how the lower back is nice and tight, how the hips go back and then forward. Also observe the position of the bell. The bottom is pointing away from me. At the top of the swing I exhale and brace my abs more like Bruce Lee was about to punch me.

What is the Kettlebell Swing

Read more

Chris Evans’s Workout History – Fantastic Four, Captain America and Beyond

by

The Captain America workout. Chris Evans gained about between 20 lbs of muscle for his role in the movie while at the same time dropping his body fat percentage from 12.5 to 8 percent. Even though the actual physical training is by far the most important thing when it comes to getting more muscle, you really have to eat more in order to weigh more on the scale.

Chris did it by eating skinless chicken, turkey and fish in huge quantities and lots and lots of salad and all sorts of green vegetables.

Chris Evans’ Workout for Captain America

Read more