The question seems almost non-sensical, like asking if you know how to blink. But, the way you breathe while sitting at your desk is much different than how you should breathe while on a run, or when you squat with 300 pounds on your back. And, we’re not just talking about breathing heavier as you get tired.

Your breath is far more powerful than you think because breathing is so deeply tied to many essential structures of your body, including your spine and ribcage. It might seem impossible, but the way you breathe can do everything from preventing back pain to make you significantly stronger on squats, deadlifts, presses, and almost every exercise imaginable.

Before you complete another workout, it’s time to find out if you’ve been breathing the wrong way, and what you can do to make a small change that leads to incredible results.

The Power of Your Breath

Most fitness tips do not provide instant gratification. It takes a lot of reps and sets, sometimes across a span of years, to change your body.

And while no workout will instantly slash fat or make you more muscular, there are a few techniques that, like magic, can have an immediate impact on how well you train and feel. The Valsalva maneuver, which is a way of breathing, is one of those techniques.

Part of the reason it has such a dramatic impact is that for the majority of people, how to breathe when you exercise is completely overlooked.

When you learn about training, almost everything focuses on the usual suspects:

• How much weight you’ll use
• The reps and sets
• The exercise selection
• What equipment to use

All of these are important parts of training and exercise. But, all of these cover what you do. They tend to avoid how to do it.

While there’s no shortage of exercise explanations you can find online, it’s rare that tips on correct form provide a detailed explanation of how you should breathe.

But, the way you breathe on different exercises can make all the difference between staying pain-free and seeing more progress. Enter the Valsalva maneuver.

To understand how and why this technique is the key to no back pain and lots of strength gain, it’s time for a quick test.

The Soda Can Test: How to Know Your Spine is Safe

To understand why learning how to breathe properly is important, all you need to do is think about a soda can. When it’s pressurized and sealed, it’s very strong. You can stack several bricks on top of it and it won’t budge. But, if you open the can and let that pressure escape, the weight would crumple the can underneath.

Think about breathing in the same way: do it right and you’re unstoppable, do it wrong and you get crushed.

Correct breathing can make every exercise a safe and effective movement. Think about it: No one argues whether exercise is “good” for you, but plenty of people debate whether certain exercises should be avoided because of the risk of injury.

For example, you might know the squat as one of the best exercises for developing strength and building muscle. Or, you might think of it as an exercise that causes back pain. That alone means that plenty of you avoid squats (or avoid doing them with added weight) when, in reality, it’s not the exercise that’s the problem; it’s how you’ve been taught to do the movement.

“Everybody tells you to inhale on the way down, and exhale on the way up,” says Mark Rippetoe, owner of the Wichita Falls Athletic Club and author of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training. “That is complete and utter BS. If you do that, you will hurt yourself.”

Now, Rippetoe isn’t suggesting you shouldn’t breathe. What he’s saying is that the typical breathing cue is incomplete and leaves out many vital details. And that if you’re just breathing — and not practicing the Valsalva maneuver — then you’re at risk.

“When you Valsalva, you’re protecting your spine,” says Dr. Belisa Vranich, clinical psychologist and author of Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve your Mental and Physical Health. “Most people don’t understand that you have to take a big breath in to be able to protect your spine [when you lift].”

When you inhale deeply, you create what’s called intra-abdominal pressure. The term describes forces within your abdominal cavity or the area surrounded by the muscles on the side of your abs (your obliques), your pelvic floor (on the bottom), diaphragm (on top), rectus abdominus (the area known as the six-pack), and several back muscles.

When you have a heavy load on your back, this pressure is your friend. It’s no different than the soda can.

WIthin your abdomen, the pressure you create with a deep inhalation helps keep your spine rigid and stable.

“Air is support to the back,” Rippetoe says. So the way you should lift when you squat is to inhale deeply and brace your torso, hold that breath (and bracing) on the way down, then either continue to hold it on the way up or exhale through pursed lips when you hit the most challenging part of the lift.

Before you try the Valsalva maneuver, there’s something you should know: in order for it to work for you, you first have to master an even more fundamental skill.

Are You Breathing Well? (Here’s How to Find Out)

Consider this Breathing 101. Because you know how to breathe, it will be quick. But, if you want the Valsalva maneuver to work, then you need to make sure you’re breathing correctly.

To understand how you breathe, it’s important to visualize your diaphragm as two separate parts.

Your diaphragm divides your insides into an upper (thoracic) cavity and a lower (abdominal) cavity. Think of it as the muscle that powers breathing. When you inhale, your diaphragm pushes downward against your abs, drawing air into your lungs and creating more space for them within your body.

“The lungs will fill like a vacuum once the diaphragm drops downwards,” explains Dr. Kathy Dooley, a chiropractor and anatomy instructor based in New York City.

However, a number of things, such as bad posture, can prevent your diaphragm from doing its job effectively.

“When your abs are gripping your diaphragm, it will not let you take a big inhale,” Vranich says. “If you go to take a big inhale, you’ll have to take it with your shoulders because your diaphragm is being squeezed.”

So what should it look like? If your belly moves outward when you breathe in, it’s a sign that your diaphragm is working correctly. It might make you feel self-conscious because it will look like you’re creating a gut, but you’ll feel and perform a lot better.

On the flipside, consider what happens when you don’t breathe correctly. The result looks something like:

This is known as “vertical breathing.” And it achieves the biologically necessary goal of getting you oxygen (because, ya know, you still need to breathe and your body won’t let that not happen). But, it creates a host of other problems.

The Risks of Poor Breathing

If you’re a vertical breathing, it can be a literal pain in the neck. That’s because this type of breathing tightens the muscles in your neck and shoulders. If you have your massage therapist on speed dial, vertical breathing may be why.

This style of breathing doesn’t deliver oxygen as well as a diaphragmatic breath, so you’ll have to inhale more frequently, which can elevate your blood pressure, pulse, and level of anxiety.

Even crazier? Your diaphragm attaches to your spleen, liver, and small intestine, and doing it wrong can cause a domino effect of health problems.

“If you’re breathing up with the chest, you may not be creating the ‘massage’ for your lower organs to encourage your smooth muscle (tissues in the gut) to act like it should,” Dooley says. “You’d be surprised by how much breathing affects your gastric emptying, and how much breathing affects things like IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).”

And then, of course, there’s how bad breathing affects your ability to use the Valsalva maneuver.

If you’re breathing “up,” using your chest, shoulders, and other muscles to pull air into your body, you can’t create the type of intra-abdominal pressure that will protect your spine when you lift—even if you took in the biggest breath you possibly could.

“If you’re building good intra-abdominal pressure, you don’t necessarily need to raise your chest upwards [when you inhale],” Dooley says, who adds that the reverse is also true: If you’re raising your chest upwards, you’re not building good intra-abdominal pressure.

Here’s a simple way to tell whether you’re using your diaphragm well. Look in the mirror and watch yourself breathe. If your chest and shoulders are moving up and down in a way that looks like the illustration above, you have some work to do.

How to Breathe Better (And Lift Weights Better Than Ever)

Here are 3 exercises that can help you breathe better and keep your shoulders down.

Breathing Exercise #1: Diaphragm Extensions
While Vranich teaches several techniques, perhaps the simplest method is an exercise that requires you to lie on your back and just breathe. (Yup, it’s really that simple.)

To perform the move, lie flat on your back and place any light object—it could be a book, a pillow or whatever you have handy—on top of your belly button. Rest your hands at your sides and cast your gaze slightly downward, so you can see the book somewhere in your field of vision.

Inhale deeply into your belly, raising the book as high as you can. When you exhale, watch the book lower. Keep breathing in this manner for a few minutes.

Vranich recommends you don’t worry about your pace of breath at first, just notice how breathing into your lower body feels. You may find that performing the technique slowly brings a sense of calm.

That’s because slow, controlled breathing initiates a “rest and digest” response from your body called the parasympathetic nervous system. For this reason, you may want to try breathing in this manner before bedtime, or even at the end of your workouts (when it can help bring your heart rate and signal to the rest of your body that it’s time to chill).

To start, try using it for a minute or so at the front of a training session to teach (or remind) you of how diaphragmatic breathing feels.

Breathing Exercise #2: The 90-90
As the name suggests, the “90-90” indicates that you’ll have a 90-degree bend in your hips, and a 90-degree bend in your knees. And you’ll need a Swiss ball.

Lie on the floor, place your heels atop the ball, and adjust your feet so that you have those right angles at your hip and knee. Dooley shows you how to set up for the exercise in this video:

The object is to inhale into your lower abdomen. Rather than just trying to press upward with the belly, think about filling the whole abdomen in every direction. When you inhale, your abs, your obliques, and the muscles in your lower back all should press outward.

“What we’re looking for is for the abdomen to fill in 360 [degrees] on the inhale,” Dooley says. “These muscles all around you are muscles of exhalation, therefore they need to expand when you inhale to build proper intra-abdominal pressure.”

Stay in the 90-90 until you feel like you’re getting the hang of breathing with all of those muscles, or for as long as your workout will allow. If you typically don’t have a whole lot of time to train, don’t worry about it. Even a minute will be helpful.

Breathing Exercise #3: The Dead Bug (AKA Dying Bug)
This exercise takes the good intra-abdominal pressure you’ve learned and applies it to moving your arms and legs.

To set up for the move, you’ll lie on your back with your hips and knees bent 90-degrees. (No Swiss ball for your heels this time.)

You can hold your arms straight overhead, or press them against your abdomen to feel the pressure you’re creating. Inhale, then exhale slowly as you lower the heel of your left leg to the floor, lift it back to your starting position, then lowering and raising the heel of your right leg.

You’ll do all of this (moving both legs down and back up) on a single exhale, maintaining stiffness in your core as you move. Once you’ve completed the movement with both legs, inhale and repeat. Perform 5 to 10 reps, where moving your left and right leg is one rep.

“This is a fantastic drill for learning how to build intra-abdominal pressure and build core stiffness but ambulate the limbs,” Dooley says. “It has a lot of carryover into things like squatting and deadlifting because you’re trying to maintain core stiffness and abdominal stability while you’re trying to ambulate the limbs.”

How to Valsalva Maneuver Like a Pro

If you know how to breathe deeply into your lower abdomen, then the first cue of the Valsalva is pretty simple.

“Big breath in,” Rippetoe says. “Before every rep, take a big breath.”

Just as you did when you performed the Supine 90-90, the breath should fill your lower abdomen in every direction. That’s half of the battle.

The other half is bracing properly. Here’s where the work you did in the Dying Bug comes into play. You want to engage your abs, your obliques, and the muscles in your back, holding them all stiff as you start your descent downward. Exhale when you reach the top. Then inhale and repeat.

As with anything, the little details matter. The Valsalva maneuver is not something you want to hold throughout a set. Exhale after every rep. Then, inhale and reset before your next rep.

One of the knocks on the Valsalva is that it elevates your blood pressure, which most of us tend to think is a bad thing. And it is, but only if your high blood pressure is chronic. In other words, if you walk around every day with a systolic/diastolic combo that’s well above 120 over 80, then you’ll want to consult with your doctor.

But, the blood pressure lift from the Valsalva is temporary—when you perform it, the pressure goes up. When you stop, it returns to baseline.

However, if you have a known risk factor like an intracranial lesion, then yes, you should speak with your doctor before trying the Valsalva maneuver. Same if you have hypertension that you haven’t addressed. As with anything, exercise common sense and communicate with your doctor if you have any concerns.

READ MORE: 

How Low Should You Squat, Really?

The Truth About the 7-Minute Workout

The Tension Weightlifting Technique: How to Make Every Exercise More Effective

The post Valsalva Maneuver: This Technique Will Fix Your Back Pain appeared first on Born Fitness.

But, it doesn’t take long to realize that the squatting commandments you’ve been hearing for years are very flawed. Case in point: ever been told that your “knees shouldn’t go over your toes” during the squat? Somehow, this idea has lived for decades despite the fact that it’s not true.

Automatically assuming that your knees shouldn’t go over your toes is a great way to ensure that you put a lot of stress on other structures, such as your lower back (as a result of hips), hamstrings, or even your calves. If you’ve tried this approach, you might find that squatting suddenly feels very uncomfortable (note: uncomfortable is different from difficult). And, that’s never a good thing and likely a sign that the movement you’re forcing isn’t going to make your body feel good.

Research supports why allowing your knees to go over your toes isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In one study, participants were restricted from moving their knees in front of their toes. The results? It led to a slight reduction in knee torque (22%) but at the cost of a massive increase in hip torque (1070%).

This suggests that if you apply a movement standard for everyone, it’s likely to cause stress in unintended ways, and this massive increase in stress is likely to lead to injuries, aches, and pains.

It’s perfectly fine for your knees to go over your toes as long as your heels are planted on the ground and your weight is balanced over your natural center of gravity.

The only squat stance that is “right” is the one that is suited for your body. That means it’s time to unlearn what you’ve been taught and start figuring out a better way to squat for your body. Once you do, everything feels better, hurts less, and you’ll become stronger.

Is Squatting Good For You?

“Is it good to squat?” is a fair question, but one with an easy answer. Yes. Sitting down and standing up is one of the most basic movements in life.

Whether squatting is good is not a debate, but form and depth are topics of intense disagreement. The biggest thing you need to remember is that everyone is going to squat a little differently. Your squat form might not look like the ones you see in the pictures or those little “squat form demonstration” illustrations. 

Your knee attaches to 3 main muscle groups: your hamstrings and calves in the back the quadriceps in front. These muscles also play a key role in your hip movement. Translation: When your muscles contract, they work together to balance out force and keep your knees (and other structures) healthy.

Remember the study we mentioned above and how it increased hip torque by more than 1,000 percent? Trying to follow those how-tos might be why your squat form doesn’t feel quite right—or perhaps why squats feel painful. Following a movement built for someone else’s body type isn’t a good idea.

This, of course, is the reason why squats hurt so many people, get a bad reputation, and why you are often tempted to skip this move in your workout, even though you should do it.

No one is going to give you an extra million dollars for squatting deeper.

Making matters worse, the more that you read about squat form, the more likely you are to find conflicting information. On one side you have the purists. They’ll tell you that you must squat “ass-to-grass.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, are the overly cautious types who worry that squatting too low will damage your knees (it won’t, by the way). And there are plenty of others who will advocate for stopping at seemingly every other point in between—thighs parallel to the ground, or just below it, or well above it (known as quarter squats), and on and on.

No one is “right” but everyone is wrong unless they are showing you how to figure out the right squat depth and stance for your body.

“There’s no one right way to squat—and there’s no one wrong way, either,” says Dean Somerset, C.S.C.S., an exercise physiologist in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. “It’s all about finding what works for your body.”

What’s right for you depends on your goals, strength, and level of mobility, which are things you can influence. But, not everything that determines how well you squat is within your control.

Your body’s bone structure will affect how you move too. Because of all that, many of the standard squat cues you hear about where your feet should be or what direction they should point may not actually work for you. (But don’t worry, we’ll show you what will.)  

The bottom line: Forget the politics. Forget all the “one-size-fits-all” opinions. There are a lot of ways you can go about fixing squats when they hurt. We’re going to break down the different types of squat depth and share a test that can help you start to personalize your approach. 

By the time you’re done reading, you’ll know the right range of motion for your body, so you can get the most out of the squat.

The Deep Squat

Being able to execute a full deep squat is a good thing, but it might not be your thing. Doing the move requires a full range of motion at all four of the body’s major load-bearing joints (the ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders) and proper mobility throughout the spine. Those joints, your muscles, and your brain all have to work together to achieve this position:

That demonstration comes from Georges Dagher, C.S.C.S, a chiropractor and strength coach based in Toronto. He likens the deep squat to brushing your teeth. “From my perspective, the deep squat movement is a toothbrush for our joints, ensuring they are all moving without any sticky or restricted areas,” Dagher writes in the Journal of Evolution and Health.

Just as you brush your teeth every day, Dagher suggests performing at least one bodyweight squat per day, as deep as you can.

If you look at the photo above and think “no way,” don’t stress. Lots of people have strength or mobility issues that can make achieving a deep squat challenging—at least at first.

The good news? By simply working on your deep bodyweight squat form, going as deep as you can with control, and holding as long as you feel reasonably comfortable, you’ll help address and improve those issues.  

“The positions we place our bodies in will have an effect on various elements such as muscles, which can improve our comfort in the squat,” Dagher says.

You can also get more comfortable by adjusting your stance. Somerset explains that the standard squatting position— “stand with your feet shoulder-width apart…” —doesn’t apply to everyone. It’s more of a general recommendation or an average, he says, not a hard-and-fast rule.

To help his clients reach a deeper, pain-free squat, Somerset has them experiment with different stances until they find one that feels right.

“Think of it like going to the optometrist, when they put the lens in front of your eyes and ask which one is better,” Somerset says. “There’s no one standard prescription. It’s about finding the right one for you.”

Here are the two main elements Somerset asks clients to adjust when they dial in their stances for ideal squat form:

• The direction of your toes: Try them pointing straight ahead first. Let’s call that 12 o’clock. Squat as deep as you can. Now turn your feet outward slightly – think left foot pointing at 11 o’clock, right foot pointing at 1. Try the deep squat again. Now angle them even farther outward, to 10 and 2. Squat again. Notice which position feels the most natural and allows you to sink the deepest.  

• The width of your feet: Start with them set shoulder-width apart. Then, gradually try wider distances, giving each the bodyweight squat test and noticing which feels the most natural. One thing to note: The wider your stance is, the more the exercise will emphasize your glutes (the muscles in your butt), and the less work it’ll put on the quads (muscles of your upper leg around the knee).

Here’s more good news: Even if your range of motion is limited, you probably squat more throughout the day than you think. “Most of us can squat to at least a 90-degree angle,” says Dagher. “We do that every day, every time we climb into our car or get up from a chair.”

Each of those moments is an opportunity to practice lowering yourself into a 90-degree squat with control. Think of them as box squats you do throughout the day; don’t just plop onto the cushion, says Dagher. Doing this throughout the day can shore up your stability and make you a better squatter in the future.

Why You Can’t Squat Deep

Bodyweight squats are one thing, says Dagher, who says that, with the right adjustments, pretty much everyone can go into a deep squat. But, Somerset points out that weighted squats are a different story.

“For some people, their squats fall apart under a certain amount of loading,” he says.

You see, even if you’ve maxed out your mobility in your joints, when it comes to doing weighted squats, you may not be as comfortable—or as powerful—at the deeper end of the squat as you’d like, says Dagher.

Why? It comes down to simple genetics. Some people are built with better squatting hips than others.

Quick anatomy lesson: The place where the femur (the big bone in your thigh) meets your hip, called the hip socket, looks something like a spoon going into a bowl. The top of the femur (called the femoral head) neatly fits into the pelvic socket (acetabulum) and is held in place by ligaments.

Everyone’s hip sockets are different. Some of them are deeper than others. The deeper your socket, the harder it will be for you to squat, since the femur bone will hit the pelvic bone. To go back to our “spoon in bowl” analogy, the stem of the spoon (your femur) runs into the rim of the bowl (your pelvis).

People of Scottish and French heritage typically have deeper hips, according to world-renowned spine expert Stuart McGill. Meanwhile, people from the Ukraine, Poland, and Bulgaria tend to have shallower sockets that allow them to painlessly sink into the deep part of the squat.

McGill says it’s no coincidence that Eastern Europe is home to some of the best Olympic lifters in the world.

A deep hip socket has different advantages. It’s helpful for walking and standing and great at producing rotational power (the type of force you need to hit a baseball or swing a golf club). And having deeper hip sockets doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t squat deep. But, it does mean you’ll have to work harder on the move—and may feel pain when you perform it.

The Squat Form Test

There’s a simple way to gauge the depth of your hip sockets. Simply get onto your hands and knees in an all-fours position, engage your core, and slowly rock your hips back toward your heels. You can see Dr. McGill explain how to do the move at the 2:50 mark of this video (although the entire clip is worth a watch if you have the time).

While it’d be great if you too could do the move under the guidance of the world’s leading researcher on spinal health and performance, you can do this assessment on your own. Simply set up your smartphone to your side, hit record, and do the move.

As your hips lower, you may reach a point where your lower back starts to round. The technical term for that is “spinal flexion.” When it happens while you’re squatting with a barbell on your back, the position is known by the delightful name “buttwink.”

Fun as that word may be to say out loud, buttwink while squatting under load can be bad news. “That’s when your hips stop moving and your start compensating with your back instead,” says Dagher. Disc injuries or even fractures of the spine can result.

How Deep Should You Squat?

The buttwink is why you should not view the weighted deep squat as something you must perform.

As McGill says, a lot of great ATG squatters “chose their parents wisely.”

“The extreme amount that I see people deep squatting is just unprecedented,” McGill says. “The risk is greater than is justified by the reward. No one is going to give you an extra million dollars for squatting deeper. If you need to do that for competition, then that’s one thing. But if your objective is health, then it’s pretty hard to justify.”

The same isn’t true for deep bodyweight squats, however. “Buttwink here is not an issue,” Dagher says. Go ahead and wink away when you’re working the deep squat without weight with the goal of improving your mobility and comfort in the squat.

But, where your back begins to go into flexion when you’re doing the all-fours test, that’s where you’d want your descent to stop if you were performing weighted back squat. If that means you can only squat as low as a box, no problem. 

If the box isn’t high enough, you can take a cue from Jim Smith, C.P.P.S, and stack mats on top of the box until you reach the right height. As your mobility and ability to squat lower improve over time, you can pull mats off the pile. No matter what height you reach, Somerset says your main objective should be one thing: control.  

A deep range of motion isn’t meant for everyone, so don’t overthink your squat form. In fact, for many people, trying to reach more depth can be counterproductive–or even dangerous. And for no reason.

Less depth doesn’t mean less strength or muscle. But, it also doesn’t mean creating such a short range of motion (like moving 2 inches, so it looks like you’re bouncing up and down) that you’re not creating tension in the muscles, challenging your body, or doing the exercise in a controlled manner. That’s just called cheating.

“Keeping the squat controlled is more important than the depth or the amount of weight being used,” says Somerset.

Hit the height that’s right for you, with the stance that’s right for you, using a weight that you can manage. And then work the deep bodyweight squat. You’ll soon find that you’ll improve your squat form, will move better, and you will become a lot stronger, too.

READ MORE: 

Why Do Squats Hurt? (And How to Fix the Problems)

6 Exercise Upgrades for Better Results

The Tension Weightlifting Technique: How to Make Every Exercise More Effective

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post The Mystery of Squat Form: How Low Should You Go, Really?   appeared first on Born Fitness.

Your arms and back have to do an enormous amount of work to lift your entire body, which is why being able to perform many reps is an effective way to improve not just the obvious muscles — your back, arms and forearms — but can also help you build incredible core strength.

In fact, as an exercise physiologist and strength coach, I’d go so far as to say that the pull-up is the world’s most under-appreciated way to develop your abs—and every other muscle in your midsection, for that matter.

All of that is great, but there’s one problem: It’s an exercise that gives a lot of people a lot of trouble, regardless of whether you’ve been training for years or just started.

If you are struggling to perform a pull-up — or you wish you could do many more — I’ll share a few simple-to-learn techniques that aren’t taught enough and will change everything about your pull-up performance.

By the time you’re done, you’ll not only be surprised by how quickly you can improve, but also by how many of the methods used to increase your upper body strength aren’t actually pull-ups.

Can’t Do a Pull-up? Start Here

If you can’t do any pull-ups, odds are you’ll blame it on your lack of back strength. To become stronger, you might start doing countless 1-arm rows and other dumbbell or barbell exercises.

While those exercise will make you stronger (and are a part of the solution), they won’t guarantee that you’ll be able to do more pull-ups. That’s because pull-ups aren’t just about your back.

Even if you have a really strong back, you can struggle with pull-ups if you have a weak core.

Core stiffness, or being able to create tension throughout your torso, is a key part of successfully doing a pull-up.

Your shoulder blades are connected to your torso. A stiff, stable core gives your arms something strong to pull on. And that can have a massive impact on your ability to lift your body.

So if you are struggling with your pull-ups—or can’t do a pull-up at all—train your core with these moves.

(If you prefer to watch all tips, here’s a video breaking down a lot of the progressions we’ll discuss today. In it, you’ll see my friend and fellow coach Tony Gentilcore demonstrating a lot of the moves discussed here.)

Hollow Body Holds

Start by lying on the floor. Lift your arms overhead (biceps in line with your ears), keeping your elbows straight.

Cross your hands and your ankles. Then press your hands and ankles into each other to create tension, and lift up into the hollow body position.

Let’s talk about that term “hollow” for a second. You might hear it and think: “belly button to spine.” DON’T DO THAT.

In a good hollow position, your abs are securely braced, as if they were about to take a punch. Take a breath in and squeeze. If anything, your abs will move slightly outward.

Start by holding a hollow body position while pressing your hands into each other and pressing your ankles into each other. This builds some of the body tension related to the position of hanging from a bar.

Hold this position for 5 seconds or 2-3 breaths per rep, maintaining as much head-to-toe tension as you can (more on how to create tension). Take a 5-second break, then repeat for 5-6 reps per set. Over time, you can increase the duration of your holds. If you can maintain tension for a full minute, that’s really good.

Hollow Body Horizontal Pull-ups

Next, you’re going to use a dowel or broomstick. Hold it in both hands as if it were the pull-up bar.

Start with your arms straight and elbows locked out, as if you were hanging from a pull-up bar. Then, while you hold the hollow position, bend your elbows to pull the bar across your face and toward your chest line, mimicking the pull-up movement.

The goal here is to maintain the core strength requirement while including an arm movement that replicates the pull-up—all while trying to breathe.

Hold the hollow body and try to complete 8-10 reps, breathing out as the bar comes to your collarbone.

Hollow Body Leg Raises

Are you a boss at the hollow body work? Great! Then it’s time to take it up another notch.

You can create some additional arm stimulus, and increase the challenge to your core, by doing a leg raise. Keep both knees locked out and cross one foot over the other. Pull down on the stick and lift your toes toward it. You may even be able to touch your toes to the bar, depending on your level of strength and control.

The big thing to remember here is to maintain tension throughout your lats to help pull your torso up. Squeeze the bar as hard as you can in your hands and think about pulling down on the bar as much as you are pulling up with your legs. This tension in your arms, back and core will help you lift your legs more easily.

Perform a set of 5-8 reps.

Stability Ball Rollouts

Another exercise that develops core stiffness is a stability ball rollout. There are two ways you can perform the movement, and both are helpful to your pull-up quest.

Option #1: Try to keep your abs tensed and press your hips forward, allowing your arms to extend out as you move. Then pull back with your hips.  This version will place more emphasis on your abs and lower back, while taking some of the work off of your shoulders

Option #2: Do the same thing as you did in option #1, but use your lats to try and pull the ball back with your elbows to return to the starting position. In this version the shoulder angle is changing, which means the muscles that control the shoulders will be under greater load.

Complete 5-10 reps of either option, or both if you’re a little crazy.

How to Build Strength on the Pull-up Bar

Before you start pulling, it’s helpful to build your skill hanging from the bar.

Bar Hang

You might struggle at maintaining a dead hang from the bar due to grip strength. Hanging for 10-30 seconds can be a simple and very effective way to build the grip strength needed to perform pull-ups.

Hanging Shoulder Shrugs

When you can conquer that challenge with ease, your next goal is pulling your shoulders down and tight to your ribs while holding the same hollow body position you used on the ground.

Hold that position for 5 seconds per rep, breathing out forcefully with each contraction.

Hanging Leg Raises

Have the hollow body hang down cold? Good. You can add in some leg raises to really take it up a notch.

Start with a bent knee leg raise. The key is to not sway.

If that’s no problem, try a straight leg raise. Again, you want to avoid rocking back and forth. The movement should be slow and controlled.

In all likelihood, you will find at least one of these moves challenging. Because your goal with these is quality, not quantity, you can use “micro sets” to accumulate volume. Try to hit 10 amazingly good reps total. To do that, you might need to perform 5 sets of 2, or 4 sets of 2-to-3, or 3 sets of 3, and so on.

If you wanted to get a little crazy, you could try to bring your toes to the bar. Use your arms to help pull-up on your torso to get a more horizontal angle on the movement.

Pull-up Training: Mastering the Movement

Now let’s “grease the groove” of the movement in a way that will help you develop strength if you’re a beginner, and provide value if you’re more advanced.

Flexed Arm Hang

The flexed arm hang is a simple, yet underutilized move that will have all the muscles in your back and arms firing hard.  

To perform the move, just grab the bar and jump up. Keeping your chest as close to the bar as possible, hang there as long as you can tolerate. When you start to feel yourself coming down, fight the lowering for 3-5 seconds so you can get some eccentric strength development out of the move.

Try to maintain 10 to 30 seconds per hold, accumulating up to 30 seconds in a workout.  For eccentric reps, try to keep it to a max of 5 reps of 3-5 second eccentric lowering unless you want to look like a T-Rex for a few days after your workout because you’re too sore to extend your elbows.

Band Assisted Pull-ups

Once you are able to do flexed arm hangs (and the 3-5 second lowering) with skill and control, you should be ready to try the pull-up.

If you want to ease yourself into the movement, start by using a band for assistance.

The thicker the band, the more assistance it provides. Similarly, placing two feet in the band versus just one gives you more help when you perform the move.

Start with the thickest band you need in order to execute the move, then work down to smaller, thinner bands over time.

(More ways to use resistance bands in your workouts here.)

The “Pernicious Pull-up Power” Workout Routine

So how do you put all of this together into a realistic pull-up training plan you could use on a regular basis? Glad you asked.

You want to “train for the movement” frequently. Three to four times a week is ideal.

Notice I said “train for the movement” and not “train the movement itself.” That’s because not all of your sessions need to include pull-ups. In fact, you’ll only perform actual pull-ups one day per week on this plan.

Here’s a sample calendar of what this pull-up training plan looks like:

DAY 1

Hollow Body Holds – 4 sets x 5 reps/set x 5 second hold per rep

Bar Hangs – 4 x sets x 6 reps/set x 5 second hold per rep

Flexed Arm Hang – accumulate 30 seconds

DAY 2

Hanging Shoulder Shrugs – 4 sets x 5 reps/set x 5 second hold per rep

Hollow Body Horizontal pull-ups – 4 sets x 8-10 reps/set

Hanging Leg Raises – 10 total reps

DAY 3

Hollow Body Leg Raises – 4 sets x 5-8 reps of smooth controlled tension

Eccentric pull-ups – 4 x sets of 4-5 reps working on 3-5 second eccentrics

DAY 4 (Pull-up day!) 

**If you can’t do a pull-up, perform…

Band Assisted Pull-ups – aim for a max of 3 reps per set

** If you can do pull-ups, then….

Pull-ups – start with a single max set, then perform 3 sets of 50% of this number. For instance, if you do 6 on the first set, do 3 sets of 3.

Following this pattern will help you develop pull-up specific strength in your back and arms and the core stiffness needed to accomplish the movement. Since there are a max of three moves per session, you can combine this simple calendar with your current training program.

Pull-ups may never be easy. But by training for them specifically, you’ll soon be able to do a lot more than you think.

READ MORE: 

The Fastest Way to Do More Pushups

The Tension Weightlifting Technique: How to Make Every Exercise More Effective

Do Carbs Actually Make You Fat?

Dean Somerset is a kinesiologist, strength coach, author and public speaker who specializes in injury and medical dysfunction management through exercise program design. The seriously in-depth “The Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint,” which Somerset and Tony Gentilcore teamed up to create, is available now. Born Fitness is not an affiliate and has no financial stake or interest in the product, but we do genuinely think Dean and Tony are rad, and are way better at pull-ups thanks to their knowledge.      

The post How Anyone Can Master the Pull-up appeared first on Born Fitness.

Many exercise programs place you — and your body — in positions that leave you vulnerable.

That’s not to say you should never squat with a barbell on your back, perform deadlifts, or do a variety of other exercises.

But, it does mean that recognizing when you are at risk — and how to avoid putting yourself in a position to get hurt — are the first steps of assessing whether a program is right for you. After all, if you can stay healthy and exercise consistently, you will see results.

Before you start another workout, let these tips be your guide to staying healthy, picking the right moves for you, and progressing to the more intimidating when they no longer feel like a challenge.

The Revolving Door of Pain

There are really only two ways you could hurt yourself in the gym. Call them “Whoops!” and “Wearing Down.”

“Whoops!” refers to times when you do something like drop a dumbbell on your foot and break your toes (not that it would ever happen to you). If you dive into the data, you’ll see these events are breathtakingly rare.

Research published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine found that just of 0.2 percent of lifters were admitted to emergency departments—over the span of 18 years. Four times more people wind up in emergency rooms due to bathroom-related injuries every year. Seriously.

You’re far more likely to wind up in AN EMERGENCY ROOM due to a “bathroom-related injury” than you are from lifting. Weightlifting is a tremendously safe activity.

Bottom line: Weightlifting is surprisingly safe, so you don’t need to spend much time worrying about “whoops!” events.

The real danger — the revolving door of injury — is by “wearing down” — and it can oftentimes be prevented.

Wearing Down refers to those times when a move just feels…not quite right. Like when you perform an overhead press and your shoulder says, “stop!” Or when your elbows hurt when you bench. Or when you finish a set of squats or deadlifts and it feels like your lower back got more of a workout than your legs.

These pains can start out subtle and may seem like no big deal, but they can grow into something serious (think: strains, sprains or tendinitis) over time. So it’s important to tune in to these cues. Then you can address them before they become full-blown issues.

“The vast majority of strength-training related injuries are due to overuse or poor technique, and can build up over time into more serious problems,” explains California-based exercise physiologist Pete McCall, M.S., C.S.C.S., C.P.T.

The good news? “Wearing Down” injuries are entirely preventable. Rather than muscling through those times when your body sends you a warning shot, you can identify what they are trying to tell you. Then you can correct the problem.

Or, in some cases, knowing that there are different variations of an exercise can help you avoid pain in the first place. You wouldn’t do algebra before you could add, so why are you doing complex lifts before you master the basics?

Here, McCall and other top strength coaches share the most common causes of weight-room pain for each of the four major movement patterns—squats (or “knee-dominant” moves), hinges (“hip dominant” moves like deadlifts), push exercises, and pull exercises—and explain what’s happening. Follow their advice and you’ll ensure that the lifts you perform do what they’re meant to do: Build you up and make you stronger.

Knee-Dominant Exercises: Squats, Step-ups and Lunges

What you feel: Knee pain (especially around the kneecap), low back pain

What’s causing the problem: “Most knee injuries for knee-dominant moves stem from improper tracking of the knee joint,” explains Mathew Kite, C.S.C.S., an exercise scientist and general manager of D1 Sports Training in Dallas, Texas. Basically, your knee should go in one direction, but winds up going in another instead.

In the case of the squat, your knees collapse inward, a position called valgus. Valgus knees place damaging side-to-side stress on your joint, particularly on your patellar tendon.

Worst of all? “Going valgus” isn’t your knees’ fault. The real culprit is a set of weak glutes.

When your glutes aren’t as strong as they need to be to handle the load on your back, your knees automatically fall inward in order to help you lift the weight. This is okay if it were to happen only occasionally, like on the last rep of your last set while setting a new max. (You’ll see some powerlifters’ knees go inward onsets when they’re really going for broke.) But other than that, you don’t want this to happen.

Making matters worse, having weak glutes can cause you to lean too far forward when you squat. While a little bit of a forward lean is OK, having too much of one can put excess pressure on your lower back.

There’s one more thing that can cause you to lean forward excessively when you squat: poor ankle mobility. You’ll know this is your problem if you feel that it’s difficult to keep your heels on the floor as you lower your butt to the floor, McCall says.

WANT TO AVOID KNEE PAIN? DEVELOP A STRONGER BUTT.

What you can do: Your first goal is simple: “Develop a stronger butt to save your knees,” says Kite. Building up your glutes will help your knees track correctly (think of them angling toward the pinky toes when you squat or lunge). To strengthen them, try adding frog pumps, glute bridges and hip thrusts to your workouts.

If you have a bar on your back, focus on pulling it down into your traps. That will help stabilize the upper part of your torso and prevent it from tipping forward, Callaway says.

If you’re having a hard time keeping your heels on the floor, McCall recommends foam rolling, stretching, and doing mobility drills for your calves prior to squats. Try taking them through their full range of motion with toes-elevated bodyweight calf raises.

Lastly, you don’t need to squat with a barbell on your back. Goblet squats — which are typically done with a dumbbell or kettlebell — are variation that is knee and back friendly, and it makes it easier to squat without your knees collapsing or body leaning forward.

Hip-Dominant Exercises: Deadlifts, Hip Thrusts, and Glute Bridges

What you feel: Pain in your lower back (a.k.a. the lumbar spine) or neck (cervical spine).

What’s causing the problem: “An incorrect set-up,” says Meghan Callaway, CPT. “Many deadlifters set their hips too low and end up ‘squatting the deadlift’—or they set their hips too high [and wind up rounding their back in order to reach the bar]. Both can place the body at a greater risk of injury.” Having a rounded back or overly arched back stresses your spine in its weakest positions.

What you can do about it: Your goal here is to maintain what’s called a neutral spine, which has a natural (but not excessive) curve inward at the lower back, then slightly outward at the shoulder blades, and back inward at the neck.

“Maintaining a neutral spine is what’s going to keep that back healthy and ready for the next workout,” Kite says.

To achieve this when you perform a hinge-style movement like the deadlift, you want to think about getting as much movement as possible from your hips with as little movement as possible from your knees. Drive each rep with your hips, pushing your butt as far backwards as you can.

A good way to learn this pattern is to set a foam roller (or anything that’s straight, like a PVC pipe) against your back so that it has three points of contact with you, touching the back of your head, your shoulders, and your tailbone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TfzOviOVes

Another way to make sure that you are running the show with your hips rather than lower back is to make sure the weight remains as close to your body as possible during deadlifts, Callaway says. When you lower the weight, image the bar almost scratching against your shins, which will help keep the bar closer to your body throughout the movement.

If deadlifts are difficult, there’s no need to pull the weight from the floor. You can place a barbell or dumbbell on boxes or platforms. What this does is limit the range of motion to help you be in a position of power.

That way, you can perfect the movement without getting into a position where you are overly rounded. As you can stronger and better, you can lower the boxes — or, you might find that you never need to pull the weight from the floor. Unless you’re an Olympic lifter, there’s no reason to hold to this belief unnecessarily.

Or, you can do a staggered stance deadlift. The joy of this variation is that it provides the benefits of a single-leg deadlift (where less weight is needed), without the advanced difficulty of balance. The back leg works like a kickstand to make it easier to move in a way that doesn’t make your body vulnerable to injury.

“Push” Exercises: Bench Press Variations, Push-ups, Shoulder Presses, Triceps Extensions

What you feel: Shoulder pain, elbow strain, wrist discomfort.

What’s causing the problem: Not keeping the wrist, elbow, and shoulder stacked during bench and shoulder presses can also introduce instability in the shoulder joint, Kite says. Bending your wrists can also introduce pain.

What you can do about it:  Think tight, tight, tight—all of the way from your wrists to your core.

To get your wrists in order, you need to start by gripping the bar correctly. Here’s an instance where what “feels” natural—and what most people do—is actually wrong.

Watch Starting Strength author Mark Rippetoe explain how to properly grip the bar for a press starting at 1:57 in this video. Note that the process depends you placing your palms on the bar first, rather than wrapping with your knuckles first. Properly placing the bar across your palms will stack the weight on the bones of your forearm, making for a more powerful (and far less injury-prone) press.

From there, you’ll want to keep your core muscles engaged, obliques braced, and rib cage down (no flaring!). “This will help prevent the spine from hyperextending,” says Callaway. She adds that if you can’t press a weight while keeping a natural curve in your spine, you need to decrease weight. It also wouldn’t hurt to build your core strength with the help of exercises like the dead bug and Pallof press.

Still concerned about pressing? For one, barbells are not necessary. You can challenge your muscle just fine with dumbbell variations or even bands or cables. If your shoulders are vulnerable with the bench press, try a floor press, instead, which will limit the range of motion. Worried about overhead pressing? If you have a landmine (or you can just place a barbell in the corner of a room), try this press variation, which is easier on your shoulders and elbows.

“Pull” Exercises: Rows, Pull-ups, Face-pulls, Biceps curls

What you feel: Shoulder pain, wrist discomfort, tennis elbow

What’s causing the problem: “Not controlling the lowering (eccentric) part of the lift,” Callaway says.

Many people put their body at risk by not controlling the lowering phase of the pull-up. If you are allowing your body to free-fall from the top position, that could be part of your problem. Doing so exerts additional force on the joints from your shoulder blades, shoulder, elbows, and wrists. The effect can hold true when you’re doing biceps curls, rows, and any other “pulling” exercise.

What you can do about it: Start by using lighter weights. If you can’t control a weight both up and down, you’re just asking for injury. In general, if you can’t control the weight for 2-3 seconds on the descent, the weight is probably too heavy.

Next, if you know that lowering the weight can lead to injury, it only makes sense to emphasize that type of training. Turn a weakness into a strength and you won’t get hurt. Here’s how it works: “Take three to five seconds to lower your body [from the pull-up bar] or the weight,” Callaway says. You can do this with almost any exercise. And the benefit isn’t just injury prevent; research shows that focusing on the eccentric can cause more of the good “microtears” that helps your muscles become bigger.

With each rep, pretend that you are pinching and slowly releasing an orange from between your shoulder blades. Then, keep your entire body tight and braced to keep your body in a more stable position and prevent swinging (ak.ka. don’t kip). Engaging your core properly will be especially helpful on “hanging” moves like pull-ups. Tony Gentilcore, C.S.C.S., explains the proper way to set up for these moves in this short video:

While pullups are an effective exercise, they’re not necessary. For bodyweight pulling, you can do inverted or bodyweight rows. The closer your body is to parallel to the floor, the harder the movement becomes.

Also, if you’ve experienced elbow pain (or something like tennis elbow) in the past, McCall recommends try performing some or all of your pulling exercises with a palms-up (supinated) grip or with your palms facing each other (neutral grip). The rotation of your palm changes the stress you put on your shoulders, and, therefore, makes the movement more kind to your elbows.

READ MORE:

The End of Shoulder Pain

Why Do Squats Hurt? (And How to Fix the Problems)

The Complete Deadlift Guide

K. Aleisha Fetters, M.S., C.S.C.S., is a Chicago-based personal and online trainer. She has a graduate degree in health and science reporting from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and regularly contributes to Men’s Health, Women’s Health, SELF, U.S. News & World Report, TIME, and SHAPE. When she’s not lifting something heavy, she’s usually guzzling coffee and writing about the health benefits of doing so.

The post How to Prevent Knee, Back, and Shoulder Injuries appeared first on Born Fitness.

A)  What you’re putting on the bar, or 

B)   What’s going on between your ears.

All too often, it’s the not so science-y option (B) that stands in the way. To help remove those limitations and simplify the approach, I asked Dave Dellanave to share why so many people seem to struggle to lift more weight. His approach is refreshingly simple, but also incredibly effective. After all, this is the same guy who can deadlift 315 pounds…with one hand.

Here’s how you can remove some of the common strength barriers and build massive strength. 

4 Reasons You’re Not Getting Stronger

Several years ago I was at a strength training seminar consisting of a handful of training professionals and strength aficionados. Among them was a strong-as-an-ox railroad worker from south Boston. This is the kind of guy who looks at strength feats other people consider impressive levels of achievement and goes “let me try that,” achieving them himself on the very first try.

During the seminar, the instructor starts talking about various borderline-silly strategies people in the fitness space use to “improve movement” or to “prime the nervous system.” Over and over the guy from Beantown would pipe up, “How’s that gonna make me stron-gah?”

It may sound like he was a little crazy, and I assure you was. He also had exactly the right idea.

The bottom line is that there are a few things that will make you stronger – namely, big lifts done with big weight — and a lot of distractions that don’t materially contribute to building strength.

If you can’t look back on the past couple months of training and brag about the new strength feats you’ve accomplished, you’re probably making of one of these key mistakes.

1) You’re trying to fix things that aren’t broken.

In recent years it has become popular to pursue goals such as perfect physical symmetry and movement that passes someone’s arbitrary standard rather than the time-tested standard of lifting more weight on the bar.

The reality is that in the absence of an actual problem — specifically, pain — that prevents you from completing a movement, spending a lot of time on prehab and correctives comes with an extremely high price tag: you’re not spending that time doing things that actually make you stronger.

How can you tell you’ve been swept up in the corrective exercise craze? Your numbers on your favorite lifts haven’t gone up in months but you’re intimately familiar with your foam roller and a one-pound PVC pipe.

Let’s me be very clear: if you have persistent pain, it’s worth seeing a doctor to rule out any issues and to see if you can get them resolved. But, if you’re chasing prehab and corrective exercises because you think there’s going to be a payoff in the long term, my experience tells me that you’d be better off looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

2) You’re making it harder, not heavier

On the road to strength, many have wandered off the path…and found themselves balancing atop a BOSU ball.

Men have known for at least a hundred years how to build strength. The incredible Arthur Saxon published The Development of Physical Power in 1905, writing that “it seems reasonable to expect that if your main idea is eventually to succeed in weight-lifting, that as you have to lift iron weights it will be better to practice with iron weights, and the heavier the weights the better.”

You know what’s not described in Saxon’s 19th century book? Using wobble boards, suspension trainers, rubber bands, single-leg training, or other distractions from the singular goal of getting strong.

Yet this was a man who still holds a hundred-plus year bent press record of 370 pounds, was able to snatch 200 pounds with one arm, military press 250 pounds with a single arm, and clean and jerk 342 pounds.

He was able to do this not by finding ways to make his training harder but by progressively lifting heavier and heavier weights in the most basic and fundamental way: with movements such as deadlifts, cleans, presses, and jerks.

There is nothing in strength training that will pay higher dividends than simply lifting a heavier weight, or lifting the heaviest weights you can for more repetitions. And then making sure each week you try to add to this amount. There’s a place for speed/high rep days. There’s also a day for grip days. (Yes, grip can be a big barrier.) But if you don’t have a day (or an exercise) dedicated to simply adding more weight to the bar, you won’t become stronger.

3) Your mindset is holding you back

Before you get too concerned that I’m going to get all new-agey on you and just tell you to let Jesus take the wheel, just trust me on this one for a minute.

There are two ways that people approach training that ends up being to their detriment. The first is the balls-out, fitspo-driven, pre-workout-fueled attack the weights and get one more rep or die trying approach. This high-effort approach uses a program like a minimum baseline guideline — if the program says 10 reps, you are damn sure going to get 11.

What is the result? Poor recovery and a training cycle that flames out midway through.

The flip side of that same coin is an ultra-conservative mindset where you only do exactly what you already know you can do.

Now, I want to be exceedingly clear: I am a big advocate of working within your limits. I don’t think you have to push or force anything to get stronger. But no one ever deadlifts 500 pounds by only deadlifting 200 pounds. At some point you have to test to see where you are.

“Can I do that?” It’s a simple question, but drives a powerful outcome. Asking yourself if you can do something before you attempt it gives you a lot of bang for your buck. First, it lets you mentally assess whether or not something is achievable right now. You are making a prediction: either yes or no. When you either succeed or fail in doing it, you become better at predicting every single time you do it. Second, asking if you can do it implies that you are doing something you’re not assured of success with — a pretty good barometer of being at the edges of your limits.

4) You’re not owning your process

If you read books by the greatest strength athletes of all time or talk to current phenomenal athletes, you will get a different answer from all of them about what works, what they like and dislike, and the various intricacies of their own training. Sometimes they will completely contradict each other – for one guy the only thing that works is doing heavy singles and for the other high volumes of sub-maximal weights are the ticket.

What do they all have in common despite the enormous and myriad differences?

They all individually take responsibility and ownership of their training. Ask an elite powerlifter what his maxes are and not only will he tell you what his best competition lifts are but he will also tell you his best training maxes, his best 2-rep, 3-rep, and 5-rep maxes, as well as a dozen accessory or modified lift best lifts. Ask an elite Olympic lifter what her best lifts are and she’ll tell you her best hang clean, power jerk, block jerk, pause snatch, overhead squat, and so on. They can also tell you where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and how they approach their training in light of that.

In other words, you won’t find too many lifters with impressive strength who say “I don’t know” or “I just follow my program.”

To Get Stronger, Get Stronger

Dan John, the affable strength coach and author known for his many aphorisms (or, Dan John-isms, rather), has a popular saying that “The goal is to keep the goal the goal.” It may seem too trite to be useful, but the reality is, many people get distracted along the way, losing sight of their original goal. Along the same vein, “To get stronger, get stronger” is as simple and effective as it gets.

For some exercises, the answer is painfully obvious that they are not going to make you stronger. Is thirty minutes of walking on the dreadmill going to make you stronger? Obviously not. If you keep the focus on doing things that represent getting stronger — like consistently putting more weight on the bar — you will be steadily rewarded with exactly what you want: more strength.

Your Guide to Strength

What could you accomplish if you were matched with some of the best fitness coaches in the world? Now you can learn how to design a strength program that overcomes barriers and keeps you pushing past plateaus. CLICK HERE to learn more.

READ MORE:

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Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post 4 Reasons You’re Not Getting Stronger appeared first on Born Fitness.

Creatine has been studied extensively for 35 years (and counting), and it’s safe to say that it’s much safer than Tylenol. (You won’t find any documented cases of accidental overdose causing death.)

Research on everyone from infants to the elderly should help you feel good about the supplement. Here’s a big roundup of a lot of the research that’s been done on the benefits, if you’re curious and want to look for yourself.

So why the controversy? Because in a supplement market clouded by lots of hype and little noticeable results (“pump” supplements, anyone?), creatine actually works. Really well, actually, and in more ways than you probably imagined.

To calm your uncertainty, we found the people who know best: researchers, scientists, and Ph.D’s, to provide you with the real story — and why creatine is better (and safer) than you might think.

Creatine is all-natural. (Seriously)

You can find creatine in everything from steak to beef, chicken, rabbit, and milk. The problem: the dose is so small you’d have to eat 2-3 pounds of meat per day to experience the same impact of as about 1 teaspoon of the powder form, says Kamal Patel, Director at Examine.com, an independent website devoted to demystifying the science and nutrition of supplementation.

It works kind of like a shot of adrenaline.

Your main source of energy is ATP—that’s short for adenosine triphosphate. It’s a mouthful, but here’s what you need to you know. You burn up ATP the same way you chug a beer: fast and reckless. Creatine is like having a buddy with extra beers always waiting.

When you exercise that tri-phosphate becomes a di-phosphate and you hit your wall. Enter creatine, which provides that third phosphate molecule so you can keep pushing harder. It’s extra energy when you need it most, without any uncomfortable caffeine-like crash.

It can, in fact, help your muscles grow bigger.

Creatine can increase muscle fiber size by increasing water content in your muscle cells, which triggers genes involved in increasing size.

It can also help you get stronger.

In a review of 22 studies, people who use the supplement show nearly a 10 percent increase in strength compared to those that don’t. More of a high reps person? It also boosts non-max exercise reps by almost 15 percent.

Super-loading does not cause quicker results. (Only an emptier wallet)

If you lift weights, aim for 5 grams per day. If you don’t, just 2 grams will do the trick. Taking anything more will only mean more trips to the supplement store, not more size or strength.

Creatine might help make you faster, too, at least for shorter distances.

It’s not just for the meatheads. If you’re running sprints, you’ll not only see your speed increase, you’ll also be able to recover faster to keep running at a higher intensity. Just don’t expect the benefit to translate to long-distance running.

Have to take a break from the gym? Creatine can help.

While creatine won’t preserve your body as if you’re cryogenically frozen, it will speed up the process of how quickly you can get back in shape.

Worried about dehydration? Don’t.

Research on NCAA football players found that athletes using creatine had less cramping, heat exhaustion, and muscle strains than non-users.

The biggest downside? Your sensitive stomach.

While creatine is safe from any dangerous or serious health concerns, side effects include nausea and diarrhea. Want to limit potential bathroom shenanigans? Take smaller doses (less than 5 grams), drink enough water, or consume it with food, says Alan Aragon, M.S., a nutritionist, and founder of Alan Aragon’s Research Review.

Creatine Might Strengthen Your Brain, Too

Some of the most interesting research is with those suffering from traumatic brain injury. Creatine also shows potential for limiting frequency of headaches, fatigue, and dizziness.

It may be especially helpful to people who follow vegan and vegetarian diets.

Eating all the kale in the world is very healthy, but it still doesn’t provide your brain with some necessary nutrients. Creatine helps feed your neurons the same way it feeds you muscles, and helps protect against breakdown.

The buyer’s guide: Stick with monohydrate.

Creatine monohydrate is not only the cheapest version, it’s also the best, says Aragon. Need proof? Research shows that other forms like creatine ethyl ester are about as effective as a placebo.

Convenience is not better with creatine.

If you’re going to supplement with creatine, buy the powder version, not the pre-mixed liquid. Pre-mixed liquid creatine (created for manufacturing and longer shelf life) reduces the effectiveness and absorption compared to powder or capsules. And no, this does not apply to mixing at home into a solution.

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Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

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