1. Use intervals for accelerated fat loss, cardiovascular health & athletic performance. I’m not renouncing traditional cardio like many of you may think (again). I’m just saying that in my 11 years of practice, I’ve seen too much REAL WORLD evidence to say otherwise. Intervals take less time. They’re more intense. They’re less boring. And they work. Period.
2. Stretch ONLY tight muscles. This one seems obvious, but I see this all the time. Listen, I think it’s great that you can put your head between your legs while your knees are completely straight. This will pay off someday when you’re at a boring party and want to liven things up. But from an exercise standpoint, I’d say your hammies are loose enough. Instead, focus on the areas of your body that NEED the work. More often than not for us men, that’s our upper backs, hip flexors, chest and neck. Stretch those areas. Save the circus tricks for the office Holiday Party.
3. Squats and Deadlifts are the Kings of ALL exercises. They work everything. Learn how to do them properly. Do them often. Get stronger. Lose fat.
4. Always do some type of single leg training to create balance. OK, this may seem contradictory to the “hack” above, but the truth of the matter is that we are all imbalanced in some way. We all have a dominant and non-dominant side. We all favor one arm/leg/brain hemisphere more than the other. Single leg training (in the form of pistols, lunges, split squats , step-ups, etc) forces each leg to do the same amount of work thus creating BALANCE.
5. When in doubt, lift heavier. Forget 5×5, drop sets, back-off sets, clusters and finishers. When in doubt, add weight to the bar and lift heavier. Just do MORE WORK than you did the previous workout and you will see results.
6. Lift fast. If you’re reading this and you have no idea what “TUT” means, then believe me, you’re better for it. Why? Because you can just focus on lifting things fast and with acceleration. We want to create FAST muscles that work in the REAL WORLD, not big showy “slow” muscles that do nothing except look good in a mirror. Even those power lifters who squat 800lbs are lifting fast (do you honestly think that they want to keep the weight of a Mini Cooper on their backs longer than they have to?). Even though it doesn’t look that way, they are lifting that weight as fast as they possibly can. Lift FAST, create FAST muscles. Save “TUT” for the Ancient Egyptians.
7. Ab work should be “anti-rotational”. Your abs are meant to resist rotational forces NOT bring your chest to your hips like in a crunch or sit-up (if that were the case, your abs would look like a hamstring muscle). Train your abs through stability exercises like planks, side planks & bridges. Challenge your abs by doing these exercises and removing a “pillar” (an arm or leg). For rotational work (and I’m talking to all the Golfer Dads out there, especially)…
8. Use your hips. I learned this from Mike Boyle (the premier strength coach in the world) & Dr. Stuart McGill (the premier low back specialist in the world). Take a look at all the major joints from your ankles to your wrists. They all alternate from joints of mobility to joints of stability. Ankles - mobile. Knees - stable. Hips - mobile. LOWER BACK - STABLE. Upper back - mobile. Scapula/Shoulder blades - stable. Etc. Your lower back is meant to hold a certain amount of stability, NOT to allow you to coil even further than humanly possible. Work on mobilizing & rotating through your hips and upper back (t-spine). Your body will thank you for it later on in life.
9. There is rarely an exercise that requires you to ever FLEX YOUR SPINE. If you’re lifting something off the ground, use as much of your legs (hips, glutes, hamstrings) as possible. Your spine is in a stronger position when it’s stable so try your darnest to keep it straight at all times NEVER hunching forward to pick something up.
10. He who has the better butt and abs, 9 times out of 10, will prevail. Want to run fast? Strengthen your abs & glutes. Want to jump high? Strengthen your abs and glutes. Want to knock people to the ground while you’re holding a pig skin? Strengthen your abs & glutes. Want to repeatedly throw your kid in the air without the fear of being in a hospital bed or on pain killers for a week? You get the point.
11. Do more upper-back work. We’re a gym society obsessed with the mirror and as a result have ended up with horribly bad posture, tight hips and low back problems. Focusing on strengthening our upper backs will help us activate those tiny, oft neglected, postural muscles that pull our shoulders back, open up our chests and make us look strong.
12. Do the bench press LESS. Think back a long time ago. Before you and I were born. Heck, even before training or going to the gym was even conceived. Do you think our ancestors tried to attach 2 boulders to a broken tree branch, laid down on their backs and tried to lift it over their chest several times to get jacked? No way. They lifted themselves up to climb trees. They lifted things over their heads, while standing, to build houses. They climbed, threw and lifted things off the ground to become strong men. There was no bench press.
13. Make training fun. I hate the gym in the summer. If it’s raining outside, that’s another story. But if the sun is out and it’s hot then there’s no better time to take out the “unconventional” equipment and train outdoors. Use sandbags, kettlebells, heavy rocks, a tractor tire, a sledge hammer, monkey bars, a picnic table, your car…anything that will present you with a fun challenge. For example, a few weeks ago I did a session with a friend where we did a bunch of sandbag & kettlebell stuff and then for our “interval” component, we took turns pushing my VW around the parking lot of an arena. That was fun.
14. Do LESS with MORE QUALITY. If your workout consisted of squats, deadlifts, push-ups, dips, rows, chin-ups and hill sprints, then you’ve got yourself as perfect a workout as any exercise scientist could have written. Stick to the basics. Work hard. Break records. Get Results.
15. Focus on staying active everyday. “The Gym” shouldn’t be your primary source of activity. It should be a means of SUPPORTING AN ACTIVE LIFESTYLE. Play sports, play with your kids, play with your dog. Do fun stuff. Enjoy the outdoors and nature. Being in a gym 5, 6, 7 days a week is depressing.
16. Taper. It is almost impossible, especially for advanced exercisers, to push themselves EACH AND EVERY SINGLE TIME they hit the weights. Taking a strategic “download” week or tapering week allows us to minimize physical and mental burn out and gives us an opportunity to hit the reset button. Doing this allows us to regain focus and tackle our goals with even more intensity and purpose.
17. Write and record everything. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people I see show up to the gym and then ask their training buddy “So whu d’ya wanna do today? Chest?”. Fail to plan and you plan to fail…even more so so if all you’re doing is “chest”.
A great way to achieve single leg balance is to perform dumbbell squats. It's virtually impossible to get a barbell perfectly on your back. There's a tendency to shift it slightly to the stronger side However, using heavy dumbbells forces each side to move the same mass. Going deep, it's a true pain-in-the-ass.
ReplyDeleteAs most men hit 50, they develop shoulder or more specifically, rotator cuff problems. That comes from doing too many bench presses and not enough back exercises. If the upper back doesn't stay as strong or stronger than the chest, the shoulder's eventually round forward, which places uneven stress on the shoulder's ball-and-socket joint, leading to pain.
However, I disagree with your take on lifting heavier and lifting fast. Lifting more slowly forces you muscles to spend more time under load (TUL) and also eliminates the use of momentum and muscle elasticty to move the weight instead of muscle performing the work. I see guys in the gym doing "ego-lifting" with heavy weights. Odd, they never seem to progress though. However, lifting more slowly requires proper instruction. However, I personally don't lift this way because of any virtue I possess. I've found at 53 I heal a lot slower than I used to. I'm in the gym to work my muscles, not my joints.