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Blog Entries 1-5 Of 26
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Justin Woltering ICON MEN Trainer Blog: November 2011
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Keyword: Intensity Techniques
Are you looking to take your training to the next level? Want to squeeze every last bit of muscle stimulation and growth out of your workouts? Do you have a serious pain tolerance and a desire to get bigger? If so, read on to learn a few intensity techniques that will take your gains to a whole new level!
The Problem with Strength Gains
Overall, gaining strength is the best plan for long-term muscle gains. This is because strength gains are a surefire form of PROGRESSION, the thing that really 'matters' to your muscles. You can progress by adding sets and reps, as well, but that can only last so long! You can always keep adding weight to the bar…
However, your body needs a break from constantly heavier weights. You might have a couple of months where you add five pounds to the bar every time you squat or bench, but if that lasted for a year, you'd make some (literally) impossible strength gains! In order to consistently get stronger AND bigger, you should try alternating your focus between strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth). This is where intensity techniques come in.
Intensity techniques are training methods which allow you to make your sets longer and more difficult, ultimately allowing you to do more work in the same time. This is why they are so great for building muscle! When you go from squatting 315 for 5 reps to 405 for 5 reps, you're doing more work in the same time. When you then start doing 405 for 5, followed immediately by a set of 20 on the leg press, you're also doing more work in the same time!
Dropsets
Dropsets are one of the simplest and most effective intensity techniques. To perform a dropset, just go to failure or near-failure with one weight, take some weight away, and go to failure again. Take the bench press for example. Maybe your best set so far is 315 for 5 reps. For a dropset, do your 5 reps with 315, reduce the weight to 225, and immediately get as many reps as you can with that weight! You might even want to take the weight down to 135 after that for a triple dropset.
The nice thing about dropsets is that it's easy to see when you're making progress. Let's say the guy in the previous example got 5 reps with 225 after hitting 315 for 5. The next workout, he gets 6 reps with 225, and the next workout, he gets 8. Even though he got 315 for 5 every time, the total amount of work done in that set is clearly higher. That means more muscle!
Supersets
People often perform what they call 'supersets' for opposing muscle groups. They'll combine a biceps exercise and a triceps exercise, or they'll do chest and back movements back-to-back with little rest. These methods are effective, but a real superset involves two or more exercises done in succession for the SAME muscle group!
If you choose your movements correctly, supersets can be awesome for getting the absolute most out of each set you do. Say you want to do close-grip bench presses for your triceps. Normally, when you hit failure on that movement, your chest and shoulders are fatigued, as well, but your triceps might still have some work left in them! To get every last bit of effort out of your tris, you go straight over to the cable station for some press-downs, hitting 10-15 reps until your arms are spent. Now THAT'S a set!
Overall, you probably want to pair an isolation movement with a compound movement to get the most out of a superset, and you want to do the compound movement first. For chest, you might hit a set of bench presses and immediately follow it with flies or cable crossovers. For legs, you might superset leg presses with leg extensions to torch your quads. Whatever you do, just make sure you're using heavy weights AND getting everything you've got out of that muscle by the end of the set!
Pre-Exhaustion
Similar to supersets, pre-exhaustion involves working a muscle with an isolation movement BEFORE hitting it hard and heavy with a compound exercise. This can be done in superset fashion, one movement right after the other, but you can also complete all sets of one exercise before moving onto the other. Overall, it's a great method for feeling a good mind-muscle connection and bringing up lagging body parts. Here's an example:
Some guys have a lot of trouble building their chests, even though they can bench a lot of weight. Their problem is that their shoulders and triceps take over in the movement, limiting the work their pecs can do. To solve this problem, try doing a few hard sets of 15-20 on the cable crossover. THEN, go and bench press, making sure to focus the effort on your already-fatigued pecs - you'll be able to feel the mind-muscle connection way better! You can't use as much weight, but you will build your chest better than if you just heaved heavy poundage around.
The Right Workout for Intensity Techniques
If you're going to switch focus from strength to pure muscle-building and use techniques like these, you might to change your workout schedule, as well. Upper-lower body splits and a focus on basic movements is great for building maximal strength, but you'll have to start thinking about muscles and body parts for a while. Don't think 'bench day' or 'squat day,' think 'chest day' and 'leg day.' Of course you're still doing those hard, heavy exercises, but your focus is on making the individual muscles grow!
Yours In Strength,
Justin Woltering
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Justin Woltering is a distinguished fitness expert and author. With five certifications and a life long commitment to fitness, Justin is guaranteed to stay on the cutting edge of the fitness industry. You can E-Mail Justin your feedback on his blog, or any other fitness or nutrition questions you may have.
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Justin Woltering | Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 @ 12:00 AM | Permalink
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Justin Woltering ICON MEN Trainer Blog: October 2011
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Keyword: Rest-Pause Training
If you're like most gym rats and weight lifters, you're always on the lookout for new ways to get stronger and build muscle faster. One of the hands-down best ways I have ever found to do this is called rest-pause training. It's not nearly as well-known or religiously used as other training methods, and that's a shame, because it is brutally effective. If you've got some serious pain tolerance and have decent recovery abilities, read on to find out more about weight training with the rest-pause method.
It's All About Strength
Almost every lifter who makes some serious progress will, at some point, lose sight of what's really important when it comes to getting bigger - getting stronger! Sure, doing some fancy exercise with light weights and high reps can help you bring up tiny little imperfections in your physique. A little more mass on your rear delts, a bigger 'teardrop' on your quads - things like that don't necessarily require big strength gains. However, if you're still looking to make your whole body more muscular, you've got to focus on moving heavier iron! This is where rest-pause training comes in.
How Many Reps?
So, you know you need to gain some strength, but that doesn't come close to answering all your training questions. How heavy should you go? What rep range should you work in? How many exercises, sets, and reps do you need to do? Are free weights the only good training tool, or are machines okay, too? Thankfully, rest-pause training simplifies the answer to the most important of these questions.
As far as the weight goes, consider this scenario. Two lifters start out at the same level. One focuses on increasing his one-rep max on the bench press, whereas the other focuses on increasing his strength for 10 reps. After a year of training, the first lifter can bench 315 for one rep but can only bench 275 for three. The other lifter can't quite put up 315, but he can consistently get 275 for six reps. Which one is going to have a more muscular upper body? Most likely the second lifter!
Now of course there are exceptions, but in general, most people will build muscle by focusing on strength in moderate rep ranges of 5-10. Lower reps and heavier weight tend to produce more neurological adaptations, increasing your body's ability to use the muscle mass it already has. Higher reps and lighter weights will tend to build muscular endurance more than size. Again, these rules don't apply to everyone in all situations, but they're good to start with.
What Exactly IS Rest-Pause Training?
Lifting weights with the rest-pause method simply involves going to failure, resting, and going to failure again with the same weight. You can complete as many cycles of this torture as you like, but most people's best number for balancing strength gains, size gains, and recovery is three. Confused? Here's an example of a rest-pause set as part of an upper body workout.
Incline Bench Press - Last time you did this exercise you did 225 for 8 reps. This time, you put 235 on the bar and get 8 reps again, just barely completing the last one. You could not have gotten another rep if you tried! You rack the bar, take deep breaths for 30 seconds, and begin another set. This time you get 3 reps, and again, you could not do another if you tried. You rack the bar, rest again, and finish by doing one last rep. You try for another, but you stall halfway up, and your training partner racks the bar for you. Overall, you did 8+3+1 = 12 reps.
Pretty simple, right? With the first part of that set, you shoot for a number of reps that is within a predetermined range, let's say 6-8. Then, you just keep going to failure after those little 30-second breaks. Doing more reps with this heavy weight does WAY more for strength gains than dropsets, where you just lower the weight and keep pumping out lighter reps. It's also very taxing on your recovery and strength - you probably won't need to do any more chest exercises in that workout!
Adding Rest-Pause to Your Workouts
If you're going to use rest-pause training, you're probably going to have to use a split that focuses on several muscles per day. Want to do a full workout for chest or back with rest-pause? Forget it! You're going to be spent after one, MAYBE two movements. It would be better to pick a few related muscle groups (chest, shoulders, and triceps, for example) and do one exercise in the rest-pause fashion for each one. The time you allow yourself between workouts will depend on your recovery ability. The more often you can train a muscle, the faster it will grow, but if you're not making STRENGTH GAINS, you'll have to put more rest days in there.
Also, drop any prejudices you've got against machines! Free weights are still king, but you can't always use rest-pause. Squatting or deadlifting that way is a great way to injure yourself, and various barbell pressing movements are going to be impossible without a spotter. That doesn't mean you should stop doing them, but it does mean that you'll have to pick another method for them. Save the rest-pause stuff for machines and dumbbells, as well as some barbells whenever the exercise is safe and you've got a reliable spot.
Yours In Strength,
Justin Woltering
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Justin Woltering is a distinguished fitness expert and author. With five certifications and a life long commitment to fitness, Justin is guaranteed to stay on the cutting edge of the fitness industry. You can E-Mail Justin your feedback on his blog, or any other fitness or nutrition questions you may have.
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Justin Woltering | Saturday, October 1st, 2011 @ 12:00 AM | Permalink
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Justin Woltering ICON MEN Trainer Blog: September 2011
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Keyword: Cheat Meals
If you're dedicated to being big, strong, and LEAN, it doesn't matter whether you're gaining weight or losing it - you're probably damn strict with your diet! For the most part, that's a good thing, as bodybuilding results are made in the kitchen. However, there are several good reasons why you should occasionally let loose, as well as a few good rules to follow when you do. Here are the dos and don'ts of deviating from your diet.
How Long Has It Been?
If you ate pizza on Tuesday and had burgers and fries on Thursday, then forget it, you're not even that strict about your diet! However, if it's been weeks since you've had anything that even tastes decent, if you're going half-mad from the monotony, and if you find yourself envying your friends who eat 'normally,' it's probably time to let loose for a meal or two. Plus, if you're that strict with your diet, you're probably already fairly lean anyway!
Gaining or Losing?
This may be a no-brainer, but if you're trying to lose fat, you can't afford to eat cheat meals as much as if you're in a gaining phase. Part of the reason is simply that all those extra calories are much more likely to derail your progress on a fat loss diet than on a lean muscle-gain diet. Also, if you're dieting and frequently hungry, you may very well end up gorging yourself and really doing some damage when you do have a cheat meal.
How Lean Are You?
A good rule to follow is that the leaner you are, the more crap you can afford to eat. The leaner you get, the better your hormonal profile becomes, and the better your body gets at actually using nutrients, even 'bad' ones, for muscle mass repair and energy instead of fat gain. If you're still 15-20% body fat and really dedicated to getting lean, you can afford a good-sized, satisfying cheat meal maybe once a month. If you're leaner, say around 10% body fat, once a week is probably not going to do you any harm, and it may even help your workout performance.
Feeling Flat?
A common side-effect of dieting or just low-carb eating is that your muscles feel depleted and flat. Your strength might be holding well in the gym, but you can't get a pump, and you just feel 'small,' even though you haven't lost any muscle. This feeling is fine for a little while, but when it's constant for days on end, you need to recharge!
One way to fill your glycogen stores back up and put some fight back in your workouts is to just have one or two meals on one day of the week where you load up on 'clean' carbs like oats and potatoes. However, if you're already pretty lean and are about to go insane from eating such boring food all the time, let loose! The extra fat, carbs and sodium from a genuine cheat meal will help your mind AND body feel satisfied.
Can You Handle It?
If dietary discipline comes easy to you, then you shouldn't worry about one cheat meal! You probably won't even make it a big one anyway - maybe a burger instead of a chicken breast, or a plate of barbeque instead of steak and rice. You still need to pay attention to how far over your calories and carbohydrate limits you're going, but everything will be fine in moderation.
However, if you're the kind of person who can just go hog-wild with physique-damaging food, you'll have to be a little more careful. First of all, it's going to be a cheat MEAL, not a cheat DAY. Remember that! If you have to, make a rule that once your ass leaves the table, you are done with the meal. Also, put that meal as close to the end of the day as possible to avoid dragging it out. A burger and fries can quickly become three burgers, two helpings of fries, some cake for dessert, a giant spoonful of peanut butter from the pantry, a donut because you 'deserve' it…you get the idea.
Yours In Strength,
Justin Woltering
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Justin Woltering is a distinguished fitness expert and author. With five certifications and a life long commitment to fitness, Justin is guaranteed to stay on the cutting edge of the fitness industry. You can E-Mail Justin your feedback on his blog, or any other fitness or nutrition questions you may have.
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Justin Woltering | Thursday, September 1st, 2011 @ 12:00 AM | Permalink
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Justin Woltering ICON MEN Trainer Blog: August 2011
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Looking to get ripped for summer? Most of us are, but unfortunately, even some of the most seasoned lifters don't really know what to do when it comes to cardio! How much, what kind, how often? Should it be done on an empty stomach, or should you eat first? Doesn't cardio destroy all your muscle mass? Read on for the answers to all these questions and more…
Diet Comes First
You have probably heard this before, but it bears repeating: NOTHING is going to replace a proper diet for fat loss (or muscle gain, for that matter). Except for those with the most elite genetics, it is just not possible to out-train a bad diet, period. Don't let your efforts in the weight room, on the treadmill and on the track go to waste by failing to follow a good cutting diet.
Now, there are tons of different ways to diet for fat loss, but there are a few principles which are sure to keep you on the right track. First, protein is key - get at least 1 gram per pound of bodyweight, not counting incidental amounts from grains and nuts, and make sure every meal has lean protein as the main component. After that, add some healthy fats, vegetables and one or two pieces of fruit per day. If you're really trying to cut the fat and get ripped, limit intake of starches, even the 'healthy' ones like oatmeal, to right around weight training times.
Slow, Boring Cardio?
It seems almost every successful bodybuilder uses the treadmill, bike, elliptical, or stair-stepper for fat-burning. Does that really work for the average gym rat? The truth is, yes, it certainly can. By doing slow, slightly sweaty cardio on an empty stomach in the morning, you force your body to tap into its own fat stores for energy - you're directly burning fat! However, there are several downsides to this type of cardio.
First of all, it's long and boring. Many, if not most of us, do not have the time or patience to spend thirty minutes to an hour each morning toiling away like a hamster on a wheel. Also, this type of cardio essentially stops working the moment you step off the treadmill. You've burned your calories, you've blasted some body fat, but that's it. Such low intensity work has very little effect on your metabolism over the course of the day, so as you get leaner, you'll have to use longer and longer sessions to keep making progress.
Sprint to Get Ripped!
Thankfully, there is an alternative to slow, steady-state cardio for those who want to get ripped without spending hours on the treadmill. There is a trade-off, though - it's actually hard! One of the best ways to force your body into 'lean-mode' and strip the fat off is by doing interval sprints. These consist of ten to fifteen seconds of all-out effort, followed by thirty to sixty seconds of active recovery (jogging or walking). The best way to do interval sprints is to find a track and actually SPRINT, but you can also use the elliptical or stationary bike. Don't use the treadmill - you'll almost certainly fall on your face as you frantically change the speed!
The nice thing about sprint sessions is that the intensity of the work jacks up your metabolism throughout the day, forcing your body to burn more body fat than it normally would. While difficult, they also take far less time than slow cardio. Two or three spring sessions throughout the week is plenty to get your fat loss moving at a rapid rate, and each one only takes twenty to thirty minutes.
There is one major caveat, though. Sprinting can definitely cut into your recovery from intense weight training. Remember, you're trying to strip the fat, not the muscle. If your weight sessions start to suffer, and if you are getting noticeably weaker, you probably need to cut down on the sprinting and do more slow treadmill work. Allowing your weight training to suffer is unacceptable if you want a lean AND muscular body!
Complexes for Ultimate Fat Loss
Despite the benefits of both of these types of 'footwork' cardio, there is still another that remains my personal favorite: barbell complexes. These simply involve using one barbell loaded with a relative light weight (95 pounds or less for most people) and performing several exercises in a row without rest. For instance, you might do consecutive sets of ten reps on the military press, deadlift, row, squat, clean, front squat and upright row, all without letting go of the bar.
Sound easy? Then you haven't tried it! This type of exercise taxes all the muscles in your body and creates a HUGE oxygen demand, leaving you practically breathless at the end of each round. That may not sound too fun, but it is the best thing you can possibly do for losing fat. Like sprinting, barbell complexes will jack up your metabolism to the max, causing you to burn more body fat all day long. Create a circuit of six to eight movements, load the bar with a weight you can manage for all of them, and complete four to five rounds of ten reps on each exercise. It's a killer!
The Overall Plan
So, when you put together your cardio, diet and training plan for getting ripped, you have a few things to consider. First comes your diet - make sure that's in order, or everything else you do will be for waste! Remember: lean proteins, vegetables and some fruit, healthy fats, and a little bit of starch around your weight training sessions. Keep the calories as high as possible while STILL losing fat - starving yourself will only shut down your metabolism, make you weak and destroy your progress.
As far as weight training goes, keep doing what you did to build the muscle. Keep trying to get stronger, keep breaking PR's, and keep lifting heavy weights. If you buy into that 'high reps to get ripped' nonsense, you will almost certainly lose muscle, and your physique will lose its dense, full appearance.
Now, for your cardio, you have several things to consider. How much time do you have? How much intense work can you do before hindering your weight training recovery? Are you even in good enough shape to get in a good sprint workout? In general, you should start slow and build up. Perhaps begin with one or two slow sessions per week and one high intensity sprint or complex session. See how your fat loss progress and go from there. In general, it's better to add activity than to subtract calories when your fat loss stalls, so expect that you will need to do more cardio as your diet progress and you get leaner.
Yours In Strength,
Justin Woltering
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Justin Woltering is a distinguished fitness expert and author. With five certifications and a life long commitment to fitness, Justin is guaranteed to stay on the cutting edge of the fitness industry. You can E-Mail Justin your feedback on his blog, or any other fitness or nutrition questions you may have.
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Justin Woltering | Monday, August 1st, 2011 @ 12:00 AM | Permalink
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Justin Woltering ICON MEN Trainer Blog: July 2011
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Are you looking to take your training to the next level? Want to squeeze every last bit of muscle stimulation and growth out of your workouts? Do you have a serious pain tolerance and a desire to get bigger? If so, read on to learn a few intensity techniques that will take your gains to a whole new level!
The Problem with Strength Gains
Overall, gaining strength is the best plan for long-term muscle gains. This is because strength gains are a surefire form of PROGRESSION, the thing that really 'matters' to your muscles. You can progress by adding sets and reps as well, but that can only last so long! You can always keep adding weight to the bar.
However, your body needs a break from constantly heavier weights. You might have a couple months where you add five pounds to the bar every time you squat or bench, but if that lasted for a year, you'd make some (literally) impossible strength gains! In order to consistently get stronger AND bigger, you should try alternating your focus between strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth). This is where intensity techniques come in.
Intensity techniques are training methods which allow you to make your sets longer and more difficult, ultimately allowing you to do more work in the same time. This is why they are so great for building muscle! When you go from squatting 315 for 5 reps to 405 for 5 reps, you're doing more work in the same time. When you then start doing 405 for 5, followed immediately by a set of 20 on the leg press, you're also doing more work in the same time!
Drop Sets
Drop sets are one of the simplest and most effective intensity techniques. To perform a drop set, just go to failure or near-failure with one weight, take some weight away, and go to failure again. Take the bench press for example. Maybe your best set so far is 315 for five reps. For a drop set, do your five reps with 315, reduce the weight to 225, and immediately get as many reps as you can with that weight! You might even want to take the weight down to 135 after that for a triple drop set.
The nice thing about drop sets is that it's easy to see when you're making progress. Let's say the guy in the previous example got five reps with 225 after hitting 315 for five. The next workout, he gets six reps with 225, and the next workout, he gets eight. Even though he got 315 for five every time, the total amount of work done in that set is clearly higher. That means more muscle!
Supersets
 People often perform what they call 'supersets' for opposing muscle groups. They'll combine a biceps exercise and a triceps exercise, or they'll do chest and back movements back-to-back with little rest. These methods are effective, but a real superset involves two or more exercises done in succession for the SAME muscle group!
If you choose your movements correctly, supersets can be awesome for getting the absolute most out of each set you do. Say you want to do close-grip bench presses for your triceps. Normally, when you hit failure on that movement, your chest and shoulders are fatigued as well, but your triceps might still have some work left in them! To get every last bit of effort out of your triceps, you go straight over to the cable station for some press-downs, hitting 10-15 reps until your arms are spent. Now THAT'S a set!
Overall, you probably want to pair an isolation movement with a compound movement to get the most out of a superset, and you want to do the compound movement first. For chest, you might hit a set of bench presses and immediately follow it with flies or cable crossovers. For legs, you might superset leg presses with leg extensions to torch your quads. Whatever you do, just make sure you're using heavy weights AND getting everything you've got out of that muscle by the end of the set!
Pre-Exhaustion
Similar to supersets, pre-exhaustion involves working a muscle with an isolation movement BEFORE hitting it hard and heavy with a compound exercise. This can be done in superset fashion, one movement right after the other, but you can also complete all sets of one exercise before moving onto the other. Overall, it's a great method for feeling a good mind-muscle connection and bringing up lagging body parts. Here's an example:
Some guys have a lot of trouble building their chests, even though they can bench a lot of weight. Their problem is that their shoulders and triceps take over in the movement, limiting the work their pecs can do. To solve this problem, try doing a few hard sets of 15-20 on the cable crossover. THEN, go and bench press, making sure to focus the effort on your already-fatigued pecs - you'll be able to feel the mind-muscle connection way better! You can't use as much weight, but you will build your chest better than if you just heaved heavy poundage around.
The Right Workout for Intensity Techniques
If you're going to switch focus from strength to pure muscle-building and use techniques like these, you might to change your workout schedule as well. Upper-lower body splits and a focus on basic movements is great for building maximal strength, but you'll have to start thinking about muscles and body parts for a while. Don't think 'bench day' or 'squat day,' think 'chest day' and 'leg day.' Of course you're still doing those hard, heavy exercises, but your focus is on making the individual muscles grow!
Yours In Strength,
Justin Woltering
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Justin Woltering is a distinguished fitness expert and author. With five certifications and a life long commitment to fitness, Justin is guaranteed to stay on the cutting edge of the fitness industry. You can E-Mail Justin your feedback on his blog, or any other fitness or nutrition questions you may have.
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Justin Woltering | Friday, July 1st, 2011 @ 12:00 AM | Permalink
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Blog Entries 1-5 Of 26
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