Training is exercise designed to deliver a specific adaptive stimulus to achieve the desired result.
Don’t just guess at it. Learn how to customize and adapt a program to minimize injury risk, and keep yourself progressing.
What RPE is and why you should care about it Hi, it’s Eric Helms here. Andy helped me create The Muscle and Strength Pyramid books and I’m happy to have this opportunity to talk about something I studied for my PhD and is close to my heart – Rating Perceived…
If you can’t get to the gym, you don’t need a new training program, you just need to know how to adapt your current program to train at home. This guide will show you how.
The first thing to understand is that there are no “training plans for over the 40s / 50s / 60s” (or diet plans for that matter). You might see things advertised as such, but this is just marketing BS — advertisers preying on fears people have that they are doing…
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…
In bodybuilding, middle deltoid development is important to make you appear wider and tapered. Due to this, I often see emphasis placed on lateral raise variations and hear the concern that without their inclusion, delt development will lack. While I don’t dispute the importance of lateral raises (you will even…
We all find ourselves struggling at a specific point of lift, at some time or another. Addressing sticking points might be a more efficient way to attack the weakest link in the chain of a movement, and therefore a faster way to increase strength. If you have stalled with traditional…
Everyone starts their journey by taking a pre-built training program and trying it out. I made my first program choice after a three-minute perusal of my local supermarket’s magazine rack. That month’s copy of Men’s Health advertised a program promising 10 pounds of gains in 6 weeks, which was exactly…
This is possibly one of the most important articles I have ever published. It addresses how to break through a training plateau, which is probably one of the most commonly asked questions on the internet, along with, “How do I break through a bench press plateau?” — The principles, whether…
A caloric deficit doesn’t have to come entirely from the diet, and you probably guessed that adding some cardiovascular work to expend more energy rather than restricting your energy intake alone, could also be useful. A simple way to estimate energy expenditure during cardio requires you to determine a rating…
Some people really overcomplicate their warm-ups. Do ALL the people I see on the stretch mats have issues that require a 30-minute complex of body pretzeling before hitting the weights? I think not. The majority are just mimicking others, avoiding getting the real work done…
