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Training Guides

  You don’t need to spend your life in the gym to achieve a great physique. But you need to train in a manner that will give you the right adaptive stimulus if you’re going to get the desired result. Don’t guess at this. These guides will teach you how to select a program, customize it to minimize injury risk, and keep yourself progressing.

Stop Chasing Novelty

I want to share a fundamental truth of training. One that’s as true of the athletes I coached at the Under Armor Performance Center ten years ago, as it is for the recreational trainees I coach now. Chasing novelty is the fastest way to sabotage your progress and spin your

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Should I Train My Abs?

Should I Train My Abs?

Do Ab Workouts Burn Belly Fat? You can do ab-specific exercises at any body-fat level. But should you? I’d argue that most people should not. Only two things will get you ripped abs.  👉 First, you must be lean enough to see them. 👉 Second, you need abs developed enough

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Can I Gain Strength While Cutting?

It is absolutely possible to gain strength while cutting. However, in this article, I argue that focusing on strength alone can lead to poor training decisions, I explain why true progress becomes increasingly difficult the leaner we get, and I give guidelines on what to expect. Dieting, cutting, shredding the

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The Intermediate Powerlifting Program from The Muscle and Strength Pyramid books

The Intermediate Powerlifting Program

This is a sample powerlifting program from our Muscle and Strength Pyramid training book. The explanation section there is fairly detailed, so I have cut it down to give just the overview, relevant notation, and exercise selection explanations. This, along with the Intermediate Bodybuilding Sample Program and Detailed Guide to Training Progression…

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How To Progress Training Loads — Rules for Novice and Intermediate Trainees

Linear Progression and Linear Periodization
Rules For Novice and Intermediate Trainees

What follows are the exact initial guidelines on training progression that I give to clients. They are an abbreviated version of the guidelines in The Muscle and Strength Training Pyramid book that I co-authored with Eric Helms and Andrea Valdez. They are exceptionally logical and structured, the antithesis to the approach of…

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Dreambulkeritis

noun Disease where an individual (usually male) suffers deluded notions that the enormous amounts of  weight gained due to purposeful overeating combined with weight training in the winter months is actually mostly muscle, that they can remove the ‘few pounds’ of fat gained with a quick cut in the spring, and…

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Why Barbells?

If I had a dollar for every time a client or athlete has asked me why they have to do heavy squats and can’t they just do lunges instead, or the same question phrased slightly differently and with a different alternative exercise, I’d probably have enough money to equip the…

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