• 1 cup gluten-free rolled oats
• 1 tbsp. chia seeds
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. Stevia or raw unfiltered honey
• ½ scoop protein powder**
• ¼ tsp. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup egg whites
• 2 whole eggs, pasture-raised
• ¼ cup unsweetened non-dairy milk
• 2 tbsp. maple syrup, grade B
• 4 slices turkey bacon, uncured & nitrate-free  
• 5 pitted dates, chopped  
• 1 tbsp. grass-fed butter

**We used Athletic Greens grass-fed whey isolate, vanilla

Directions

1. In a small saute pan on medium-high heat, cook bacon until crispy. Removed bacon from pan, crumble into small bits and set aside.
2. Add the dry ingredients—oats, chia, baking powder, Stevia, protein powder and cinnamon—in a blender or food processor. Pulse until smooth. Set aside
3. Whisk the eggs, egg whites & milk in a medium mixing bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.
4. Take a paper towel to wipe the pan clean, then add 1 tsp. butter to grease. On medium-heat heat, add ¼ pancake batter. Add ¼ chopped dates and crumbled bacon on top. When batter begins to bubble, it’s ready to flip.
5. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve with maple syrup and grass-fed butter. To cut down on the sugar, mix the maple syrup with equal parts water and 1 tbsp. butter. Heat in microwave for 15 seconds, stir and pour over pancakes. Enjoy immediately.

Nutritional Information & Macros

Dietary Information: Gluten Free

Macronutrients

• 387 calories
• 8.75g fat
• 40g carbs
• 37.2g protein

READ MORE: 

Banana Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Powder Pancakes

What is the Best Protein Powder? 

Good Protein Bars, Decoded

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 Best Protein Pancake Recipe EVER: Bacon & Date Protein Pancakes 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.

If you’ve ever thought about adding resistance band exercises to your routine — or are limited to working out at home and don’t have much equipment — you might be surprised by how much you can accomplish without any iron.

How Can You Use Resistance Bands in Your Workout?

Resistance bands can be used for at least four different types of exercises:

• Stretching and mobility
• Warm ups and muscle activation
• Resistance training and “getting a pump”
• Developing the “mind-muscle” connection (learning to better “feel” your muscles working)

Each of these goals require you to use the bands slightly differently, but with each example, you can accomplish quite a bit with just a few bands.

Resistance Band Stretches and Mobility Work

Resistance band stretches can help you overcome the hardest part of stretching — feeling like you are limited by the range of motion in your muscles. You know this as “feeling tight.” (A.K.A. “I’m not flexible!”). Funny as it might sound, the limitation might really be in your head, or in another part of your body.

Think about a simple hamstring stretch, where you lie on your back with one leg on the floor and raise the other leg to the sky. Most of the time you use your hands to provide resistance. Simply looping a resistance band around your ankle can create a different movement pattern (because the pressure of pulling comes at a different angle — from your ankle instead of behind your knee), which might allow you to generate more range of motion.

It’s not magic, but most people will find they can get a better stretch with the resistance band variation. That’s because a resistance band can help you go deeper into a stretch, provide support, or help reduce the load of your bodyweight when you perform a move. That’s why many trainers consider bands to be a “must” for maximizing your mobility.

There are limitless ways you can use resistance bands to assist you when you stretch. Here are two examples—one for your upper body, one for your lower body.

Banded Lat Stretch

https://youtu.be/gjRMe2Bcbu4

Loop a band around something at least 6 inches over your head, such as a pull up bar. Grab the band with one arm and step back, so that you band forms a 45- to -60 degree angle to the floor. Get into a staggered stance and put one knee on the floor. Your arm should be in a straight line and aligned with the band.

Lean forward slightly so that your torso is perfectly aligned with your arm. (It will look like the band is an extension of your arm. You could draw a straight line from your hips all the way up to the top of the band where it’s attached to the pull up bar). Hold this position so you feel a stretch in your back.

Do 5 deep breaths, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, and then switch sides.

Band Supported Leg Lowering 

https://youtu.be/TY6RmPbKqe0

Lie flat on your back and then bring both of your legs up towards the ceiling. Your legs and body should form the shape of a “L.”

Wrap a band around the arch of one of your feet and hold it stable. Keep both of your knees locked out by squeezing your quadriceps muscles and pointing your toes towards your shins.

Lower your leg that does not have the band around it until either A) you feel tightness in your hamstring, or B) you feel pain in your back (this is bad) or don’t feel stable in your core. When either of those things happen, stop, then reverse the movement and lift the leg back up.

Ideally, you’ll take 2 seconds to lower your leg, then take 2 seconds to lift your leg back up using your core muscles. Perform 1-2 sets of 5 repetitions per leg as a part of your warmup, or pair with a lower body movement such as stiff-legged deadlifts.

Resistance Band Exercises for Muscle Activation

Resistance band exercises can be used to strengthen or activate hard-to-hit muscles. For example, your shoulders are two areas that most people have troubling “feeling.” Because of continuous tension, bands are an effective way to help activation and work those muscles without supporting muscles taking over.

Band pull-aparts are a fantastic way to warm up your shoulders. Remember how bands help create more tension throughout the movement? Tension means more blood flow. More blood flow means you’re muscles will feel warm. It’s like adding oil to a squeaky break.

When performing the movement, make sure you don’t have too much slack in the band, because if you do that takes the tension off of your shoulders. The band pull-apart is also effective because it works your shoulders in a pattern that is often overlooked.

Think about how much time you spend at your desk with your shoulders slouched. The band pull-apart works the opposite range of motion, meaning it helps pull your shoulders back into their correct alignment, improving your posture.

Better posture means less pain. And because you’re pulling the band apart, that means you have maximum tension with minimum weight. This is something that isn’t always easy with weights like dumbbells.

Band Pull-aparts 

https://youtu.be/vBhetF3Cyew

Here’s how to do it: Grip the opposite ends of a long (about 40 inches is typical) resistance band. You can mix up your hand position, from prone (thumbs facing one another) to neutral (thumbs facing the ceiling) to supinated (thumbs pointed away from one another).

Position your hands about shoulder width apart, or at a distance where you feel a little tension in the band. From there, pull your hands outward as wide as you can.

Pause and squeeze the muscles in your upper back and shoulders, then reverse directions and bring your hands back toward one another (back to the starting position), and repeat. Focus on keeping your shoulders down and back throughout the entire movement.

Perform 3 sets of 15-30 repetitions.

Mini-Band Lateral Walks

Remember how pull aparts were great for your shoulders? These lateral band walks can do the same for your glutes and help them wake up.

Place the band above your knees. Spread your legs wide enough that you feel tension across the band. (Consider this an athletic position, like a baseball player about to field a ground ball.) Take one leg and step out to the side. Then, follow with your other leg, making sure you maintain tension on the band throughout the movement.

Walk for 10-15 steps in one direction (i.e. from left to right) then switch and go for the same distance in the opposite direction (from right to left).

Goblet Squats

Place the mini-band around your legs just above the knees. Hold a dumbbell vertically against your chest with both of your hands supporting the weight underneath. Press your elbows inward against your rib cage, which activates the muscles in your upper back.

Squat down by pushing your hips back and pressing your knees outward against the mini-band. Doing so activates your glutes and helps you steer clear of knee pain. Lower yourself down until your elbows touch the insides of your knees, then press through your feet to stand back up.

Resistance Band Exercises for Building Muscle

No matter what some people might insist, weights are not the only way to build muscle. Weights are effective because they add resistance. Bands also provide resistance, meaning they also can help you build muscle.

In particular, bands might be most effective when doing higher rep training, such as performing 20 to 30 reps (or more) per set (this is known as “metabolite training”).

Research has repeatedly shown that building muscle is somewhat dependent on volume — or the number of reps x sets x weight. Because you have 3 variables you can manipulate, bands provide a way to increase volume (through more reps) without needing more weight.

This approach works for any muscle in your body — from arms and shoulders, to your chest, back and even your butt. Just ask anyone who’s ever tried Bret Contreras’s glute burnout. Here is another example of how you can use bands to achieve some metabolic glute work:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYPHRU-B8w3/?taken-by=l2fitnessyeg

Resistance Band Exercises and the Mind-Muscle Connection

The mind-muscle connection is something that not everyone is familiar with but it can make a huge difference in your training. Basically, it’s about using your brain to drive more effort from your muscles. If that sounds a little crazy, rest assured it’s a real thing. (Here’s proof.) And with the help of resistance bands, you can develop it.

Resistance bands are useful way to build that connection because the farther you pull the band and the more it lengthens, the harder your muscles have to work.

The increased tension provides a strong peak contraction at the top of every rep. You’ll really feel those muscles working. Want to take it up another notch? Add in a pause at the top. (Ooh, it burns!)

What are the Limits of Resistance Bands?

Like anything, there are always some limitations. For instance, resistance bands don’t necessarily challenge your muscles through a full range of motion.

Lifting weights consists of a raising portion (the concentric) and a lowering portion (the eccentric). The eccentric phase of a lift is the part where you are lowering the weight back down, and it’s beneficial for both muscle growth and improving muscle control.

They feel lighter on your muscles as the bands themselves get shorter. As we discussed above, that may be great from an injury prevention standpoint. But since eccentric muscle actions are where we elicit the most muscle damage in training, using bands alone might limit the amount muscle you can build.

Bands can also make measuring your resistance a little tricky. Part of adding muscle is creating a challenge for your muscles. That’s why bands work — they add resistance. At some point, however, your body will adapt to resistance. This is why you might stop seeing results. Your body adapts, and you need to keep creating a new challenge in order to fight off plateau.

There are many ways to do steer clear of plateaus, however. You can make an exercise more challenging (if you are doing band rows with both arms, you can switch to a 1-arm version with the same band, which will make it more difficult), or you can add weight. This is where dumbbells and barbells have an obvious advantage, as you can just use bigger weights.

But don’t stress too much. Your hand placement, the distance between you and where the band is anchored, and how far the band is stretched can all be used to increase or decrease the resistance. You can also user thicker bands (which has more resistance) or even add multiple bands.

At some point — yes — you might need to add more weight to create a bigger challenge. But as long as you continue to find ways to challenge your muscles (which can also occur by doing more reps and/or sets of an exercise), your resistance band workout will keep delivering results.

The Resistance Band Workout for Building Muscle

Want to give resistance band exercises a try? Here’s a sample upper and lower body workout designed for building muscle.

Upper Body Resistance Band Workout
1) Band pull-aparts: 4 x 15-20 reps x 60s rest
2A) Band pushups: 3 x 10-20 x 45s
2B) Band 2-arm rows: 3 x 15-20 x 45s
3A) 1-arm band row: 3 x 8-15/arm x 45s
3B) 1-arm band chest press: 3 x 8-12/arm x 45s
4A) Band overhead triceps extension – 3 x 12-20 x 45s
4B) Band biceps curls – 3 x 12-15 x 45s

Lower body Resistance Band Workout
1) Mini-band lateral walks: 4 x 15-20/side x 60 seconds
2) Band leg curl: 3 x 15-20 x 60s
3) Rear foot elevated split squat (can add band for resistance): 4 x 12-15 x 60s
4A) Band good morning: 3 x 20-25 x 60s
4B) Walking lunges: 3 x 10-15/leg x 60s
5) Band iso hold Pallof press: 4 x 30s/side x 60s

READ MORE: 

How to Build the Perfect Bodyweight Workout

How to Master the Art of Old School Muscle Building

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

References

1. Pull, Ranson (2007) Eccentric muscle actions: Implications for injury prevention and rehabilitation.


2. Schoenfeld BJ (2010) The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training.


3. Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Ogborn D, Krieger JW (2017) Strength and Hypertrophy Adaptations Between Low- vs. High-Load Resistance Training: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.


Landon Poburan is the owner of L2 Fitness in Edmonton, Canada. The L2 Fitness Summit is a video series that includes 11+ hours of muscle building ideas from our friends Dr. Mike Israetel and Dean Somerset. If you’re a coach, or just super into getting swole (Israetel) while staying awesomely mobile and balanced (Somerset), then you may seriously enjoy this product, which is on sale for $50 off through December 10th at midnight. And coaches: You get CEUs! Full disclosure: We here at Born Fitness get absolutely nothing for telling you about this product — we are not affiliates and have no financial stake involved. 

Landon Poburan

Personal trainer, nutrition coach and owner of L2 Fitness located in Edmonton, AB Canada.

l2fitness.com/

The post How to Use Resistance Band Exercises in Your Workouts appeared first on Born Fitness.

And if you already perform and love the deadlift, you can spend the same 3 minutes reading and learning why the exercise is even better than you thought. Or you can skip on ahead to the deadlift form guide. Your call.

Ready? Let’s set a timer for 3 minutes…

Reason to Deadlift #1: You’re going to get way stronger—and therefore live longer.

The deadlift is a true total body exercise that builds full body strength (both your lower and upper body will benefit). And getting stronger is NEVER a bad thing.

In fact, getting stronger is far better for you than you may think. Researchers have found a correlation between grip strength and mortality, as in those with stronger grips tend to live longer. And one thing you will definitely get from deadlifting is a strong grip.

(Not to mention stronger quadriceps, hamstrings, forearms, traps, and glutes, just to name a few.)

Reason to Deadlift  #2: That strength will come in handy throughout your (now longer) life.

There are two types of people in the world: Those who struggle to move a couch, and those who deadlift.

But let’s say you never move couches. At some point or another, you’re going to need to pick something up off of the ground. When you do, you’ll be far better suited to do so because you deadlift.

The deadlift takes a basic human movement (picking something up) and makes you far more capable at it. That means you’ll be far less likely to get hurt.

In fact….

Reason to Deadlift #3: Deadlifts actually protect you from lower back pain.

How many people do you know who complain about back pain?

That’s right, seemingly everybody.

A review of 28 studies found that, from age 30 onward, the percentage of people within an age group who are dealing with chronic low back pain increases with each passing year.

So here you are, avoiding deadlifts to save your back, but yet you still have lower back pain.

Why? Probably because you’ve been avoiding deadlifts in the first place.

Don’t believe us? Consider that studies indicate that properly training the deadlift can outright fix low back pain.

How? By strengthening the spinal erectors, or the muscles that maintain the integrity of the spine. They travel the entire length of your spine, tucking under the lats and traps, and running all the way down to your lower back.

According to research, the deadlift trains this musculature better than anything. Two studies looked at spinal erector activation during the deadlift, and found that the exercise induced high amounts of upper spinal erector activity in a way not seen with other exercises.

The studies also showed strengthening in the lower back.

“But wait,” you say. “I’m not really ‘into’ weight training.”

That’s cool. And completely understandable. But before you say that weights aren’t for you, let’s just make sure you understand a few other things here…

Reason to Deadlift #4: Weight training helps you lose—and keep off—fat.

The stronger you are, the more lean body mass you carry.

The more lean body mass you carry, the higher your basal metabolic rate. That’s the number of calories your body burns on it’s own just to keep you alive—before factoring in things exercise and NEAT.

One study found that men who weight trained burned 350 more calories on average while just sitting around and watching television.

Some claim that it takes years of lifting weights to achieve this effect, but research shows otherwise. One study found that just 16 weeks of strength training produced a noticeable lift in the resting metabolic rate of a group of men aged 50-65.

And while people often think that cardio is king for keeping fat off (total myth, BTW), researchers who ran a cohort that encompassed more than 10,500 men across 12 years found that those who lifted weight gained less fat over the long haul.

Reason to Deadlift #5: Weight training improves other aspects of your health, too.

For example, one study found that muscle mass was inherently protective against diabetes.

Muscle also plays a crucial role if you ever have to recover from surgery or serious illness.

We could go on, but you get the point: Being strong is good. Having muscle is good. And deadlifts will help you build plenty of it.

That was a fun 3 minutes, right? We thought so too. Well, now that you know the value of deadlifts, let’s show you how to do them properly so you never fear them again…

Proper Deadlift Form: How to Fit the Move to Your Body Type

Maybe you’ve tried deadlifting in the past and thought the exercise just didn’t feel right. If so, you’re not alone.

The deadlift involves many muscles, all of your limbs, and every load-bearing joint (ankles, knees, hips and shoulders) in your body. There are a lot of variables at play. So having hard-and-fast rules about deadlift form is nearly impossible.

Your body is your body. That seems like an obvious fact, yet it’s one that’s often overlooked when it comes to form.

For example, two people who are the same height may have totally different torso and femur lengths.

Strength coach Bret Contreras does an excellent job of explaining that these different bone structures will result in totally different squat forms. The same is true for the deadlift.

A person who has a short torso and long femurs will have a more hip-dominant pull, meaning that their butt will be higher in the air and most of the force will come from their glutes and hamstrings.

Meanwhile, a person who has a long torso and short femurs would be able to get lower and involve their quads a bit more.

Reading this right now, you’re probably thinking, “How do I know whether I have a short or long torso?”

Glad you asked. There’s actually a relatively simple way to tell.

The technique can also tell you whether you’re better off using a sumo deadlift (very wide stance) rather than a traditional deadlift (where your feet are roughly hip-width apart) stance. (For more discussion about the pros and cons of each, see the section on “Stance” below.)

You’re going to need a measuring tape. Any standard one will do.

Measure the distance from the bony part of your hip to the floor. That’s your leg length.

Then measure from the same point on your hip to the top of your head. That’s your torso length.

Lastly, measure from the top of your shoulder to the tip of your middle finger. That’s your arm length.

Divide each of those numbers by your total height in inches. Then check the numbers against this table:

Your percentages will tell you whether you have a short, long or average-length torso. Same for your arms. (We can disregard your legs, since they are essentially the opposite of your torso — i.e. if the torso is long, your legs will be short.).

Those two pieces of information can tell you whether a conventional deadlift or sumo deadlift will likely feel better for you (note: no matter what the chart says, you can always go by “feel”):

Both of those tables are from Professor Michael Hales’ excellent paper “Improving The Deadlift: Understanding Constraints and Physiological Adaptations to Resistance Exercise.” And he’s the first to state that they are not the be-all, end-all. They are merely lifting recommendations based on your body’s structure.

Other factors like strength and flexibility will also come into play. But this should help you see which approach should feel better based on what your momma gave you.

Keep in mind, this does not mean you have to “only” do conventional-style or sumo-style deadlifts forever. In fact, Hales and nearly everyone else worth their salt will recommend that you switch between the two styles occasionally.

Conventional and sumo work your muscles slightly differently (conventional requires more hip drive, while sumo involves the upper legs a little more), so using both can develop a more well-rounded base of strength.

Deadlift Form: Follow these guidelines before you pull

#1. Your stance

Conventional Deadlift Foot Placement: You can start with your feet shoulder-width apart. If you’re not sure where this is, try this: Jump in the air 2-3 times. Where your feet land naturally is the proper stance for the conventional deadlift. Your toes should point forward or outward slightly.

Sumo Deadlift Foot Placement: You can try out two different starting positions.

• Option #1: Place your feet as wide as possible, meaning your toes are nearly flush against the weight plates. Many successful sumo deadlifters pull from this position. But one obvious drawback here is the risk of dropping the weight onto your toes. So be careful.
• Option #2: Widen your feet as far as you can while still being able to keep your shins vertical when you lower yourself to grip the bar. The wider your stance is, the more your feet should point outward

One last note about where to stand. Set up so that the bar is about an inch to an inch-and-a-half from your shins. When you look down at the bar, it should be positioned right about the middle of your foot, blocking the laces of your shoes from view.

#2. Your grip

Figuring out where to place your hands is quite simple. Just take a shoulder-width grip.

Choosing how to grip the bar is a little more complicated, and may change throughout your workout. There are three main options:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWeS2EhF-_y/?taken-by=wilfredofitness

• Option #1: The double-overhand grip. This is the “best” grip most of the time. As you increase the amount of weight you can deadlift, you’ll eventually reach a weight where your grip strength becomes an issue. That’s when mixed grip comes in…
• Option #2: The mixed grip. Also known as “one overhand, one underhand” grip, this style allows you to pull heavier weights more easily. “Anybody who has trained the deadlift for a few months has had the experience of pulling on a weight that seemed too heavy even to break off the ground when tried with a double-overhand grip, only to find that it goes up surprisingly easy when the grip is alternated,” writes Mark Rippetoe in Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training.There are some drawbacks to the mixed grip, however. Research shows that the bicep activity in the supinated (underhand grip) arm is much higher during this lift. Over time, that could create muscle imbalances, so it’s a good idea to switch which arm is overhand from set-to-set or workout-to-workout.
• Option #3: The hook grip. This grip is not very popular and for good reason—it hurts, but it’s not without benefits. The idea behind the hook grip is that you can use more weight than a double-overhand grip, since your thumbs act as hooks for the bar. But here’s the thing: Much of the weight ends up pulling on your thumbs. The stress this places on the tissue, bones, and joints of your thumbs does not feel good. One way people attempt to eliminate the grip problem altogether is to use straps.

Our suggestion would be to train without straps, with a double-overhand grip, for as many sets as possible. When you get heavy, use a mixed grip and vary which hand is over. If, after switching to a mixed grip, you still can’t hold the weight, then use straps to continue deadlifting heavy and train your grip with other exercises (farmer’s carries and suitcase deadlifts are two good options).

What to Do When You’re Ready to Lift the Weight

Ok, you’ve placed your feet and gripped the bar. It’s almost go time. Here are five things to check before you rip that sucker off the floor.

#1: Your Head

Where it goes wrong: You know that whole “look to the sky” cue? Don’t do that. Looking upward extends your neck, which is a great way to give yourself a neck strain.

How to get it right: Keep a level head position and a neutral gaze. Your chin should stay tucked. Think “tall through the back of your head.” Or, just think about creating a “double chin.” Maintain that position by looking straight ahead, rather than up, through the entire lift.

#2: Your Shoulders

Where it goes wrong: There are two potential problems here. First is the “Whoops, I rolled my shoulders forward in order to grab the bar” issue. This sets you up to pull like Quasimodo—and you don’t want to do anything in the gym looking like a hunchback. The other is the “I just wasn’t paying attention to my shoulders at all” issue. This one often winds up going Quasimodo-like as well, especially if you’re using heavy weight.

How to get it right: Pull your shoulders in and hold them tight to your sides. “Squeeze your armpits as if you had oranges in them and were trying to make juice,” is a cue we love from the always-clever Tony Gentilcore that achieves this. By pulling your shoulder blades down and in (think squeezing a pencil between your shoulder blades), you decrease the distance between your shoulders and hips, which will help you move more weight more efficiently. Plus, you’re getting your lats more involved, which will help prevent rounding.

#3: Your Legs

Where it goes wrong: Some people just bend over and grab the bar without putting any tension on the muscles they’re trying to work. While you can get away with this, it won’t put you in a position to pull the most weight, or pull it effectively. There is a better way.

How to get it right: Standing at the bar, hinge at the hips by pushing them backwards (imagine you have to open a door with your butt and you can’t use your hands). You should quickly feel tension running up the back of your legs and into your glutes. That’s a good thing. Once you feel that tension, maintain it while bending the knees just enough so that your hands can reach the bar.

#4: Your Core

Where it goes wrong: Pulling without breathing in first. What’s wrong with that?

Think of a soda can. When it’s full and sealed, it can support a ton of weight no problem. But once it’s opened and all of that pressure is released, the same weight will crumple it with ease.

A big breath in creates intra-abdominal pressure. That pressure will make you more stable, protect your spine, and help you lift far more weight.

How to get it right: Step up to the bar and get into position. Take a big breath in. As you inhale, push the air down and out to fill your abdomen. This is important: you’re not filling your chest with air (think about how you react when you’re out of breath); instead, you want to fill your belly.

Engage your core to hold your breath in that position, then lift. Keep that breath held throughout the rep, from the floor, up to lockout, and back down to the floor. Take a new breath in before every rep.

#5: Your Hands and Arms

Where it goes wrong: Gripping the bar loosely, or just pulling the bar without taking the slack out first.

How to get it right: First, when it comes to grip, grab ahold of that bar like you mean it. Regardless of which type of grip you chose, you should be gripping the bar as hard as you can.

Next, pull the slack out of the bar. What does that mean? When you grip, don’t just try to crush the bar into dust, also pull it apart.

Now, it’s go time.

Executing the Deadlift

You really only need to think about two things when you pull the bar:

1. Push off the floor
2. Keep everything tight (especially your core and lats)

During a conventional deadlift, if you are thinking about “pushing the floor away,” it will help you generate tension throughout your hips and knees.

If you’re doing a sumo deadlift, it may be helpful to think of this as “spreading the floor,” since that means pushing outwards on the sides of your feet.

In either case, the goal is the same: to generate tension through your knees and hips.

Keeping your core, arms, and lats engaged will help you avoid what you might call the Angry Cat Deadlift.

In an Angry Cat Deadlift, the lats aren’t activated enough, or the person’s core isn’t sufficiently braced, and the first thing that comes up is their lumbar spine.

If your lats are engaged and your core is firmly braced, then you probably won’t run into this problem. However, if you do feel your lower back rounding, it’s a sign that you’re using too much weight. Lower the load, work at a resistance that doesn’t cause you to go cat-like, and build up over time.

When you reach the top of the rep, known as lockout, pay attention.

Some people seem to think that “locking out” means “leaning back,” but nothing could be further from the truth. Doing that hyperextends your knees and spine, which can compress those all-important spinal discs between your vertebrae.

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The goal, really, is to just stand up. When you’re standing tall while holding the weight, you’ve completed the rep. You do not need to try and shrug with your traps. Simply stand up straight, thrust your hips, and focus on squeezing your glutes at the end of the lift.

Lastly, when you reach the top of the rep, you have two options:

1. Dropping the weight
2. Lowering the weight back to the floor

Option #1 is generally considered bad form for most fitness trainees (and definitely will get you some angry glances from your gym’s owner, especially if you aren’t using bounce plates), but there are some times when you may consider it.

Certain training modalities use this pull-and-drop technique—Pavel Tsatsouline employed it with Olympic sprinter Allyson Felix to famous results.

But even if you’re not training for a gold medal, removing the eccentric (lowering) phase may decrease the likelihood of hamstring or lower back injuries. So if those are concerns of yours, you may want to consider using the drop. (And if you do, definitely look for bounce plates.)

But if you’re just looking to build full-body strength, you’re better off lifting and lowering the weight.

That brings us to Option #2. Remember all of that tightness you generated in order to hoist the weight? Don’t let go of it once you reach the top.

Having several hundreds pounds of weight in your hands is typically a bad time to lose rigidity.

Instead, keep all of that tension in your arms, lats, core and legs, and lower the weight to the floor. Continue to keep your feet pressed firmly into the ground. Maintain that tight grip on the barbell as you set the weight back back where it started.

READ MORE: 

How Low Should You Squat, Really?

3 Rules for Building Bigger Arms

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

The post The Complete Deadlift Guide: Master The Full Body Exercise appeared first on Born Fitness.

The idea seems like something you’d see on TV at 3 am, with some cheesy, fit pitchman making too-good-to-be-true claims. As you process the reported benefits—more muscle, less fat—everything in your body screams “scam,” but the source isn’t QVC—it is The New York Times and the rage that is the 7-minute workout.

We’re not talking about a piece of equipment that looks like it was dreamt up by 13-year-old boys, it’s research published in the American College of Sports Medicine Health and Fitness Journal.

Next thing you know, Forbes is writing about the workout and the buzz has spread to Good Morning America. The 7-minute workout is real and it works…at least, that’s what the mainstream media would have you believe. And yet, doesn’t this feel a little played out? I mean, have we already forgotten about “8-Minute Abs?” It’s been nearly 20 years since it was released, and during that time obesity rates have nearly doubled.

Here’s a disclaimer: I don’t have a problem with the 7-minute workout. I take issue with setting unrealistic expectations that trick people into believing a “minimum effective dose” can lead to maximum results. This is the foundation of frustration.

New scientific discoveries are capable of uncovering new information that alters what we believe and thought was true; in fact, it happens all the time. The problem is we oftentimes trust what we want to believe rather than seek to prove if it’s true. That’s the issue with the recent release of the 7-minute workout. We’ve been misled by a catchy title that has some benefits but falls short on long-term promises.

There’s no denying that exercise—in any dose—is good for your body. In fact, when I travel, I’m constantly settling for 10-15 minute workouts instead of my normal 30- to 60-minute session. And you can have a great workout in less than 10 minutes.

But don’t confuse the part from the whole: it is very difficult (and unlikely) to build a healthy body by working out 7 minutes per day and only performing bodyweight exercises, which is the foundation of the 7-minute workout. And I’ll go on record that you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that has. After all, if it only took 7 minutes to get into great shape, the struggle to lose fat would be less of an issue.

Before you start cranking out the “perfect workout” at home and expecting dramatic results or buy into the inevitable 7-minute session coming soon to a gym near you, here’s what you can really take away from the research, and what you can realistically expect to achieve if you follow this routine.

Where the 7-Minute Workout Study Failed

Understand that research in the exercise field oftentimes falls within two categories: Studies that use prior research to validate prior concepts or designs that test something new while building on previous research. The 7-minute workout is more of the former; it looked at the perceived benefits of a 7-minute workout and deduced many benefits based on research that was already completed.

That doesn’t make the research bad or inaccurate, if not for one small problem: The studies used to “prove” the concepts don’t mirror the workout that is being lauded as the 7-minute fix for your body. That’s like saying that because there’s research showing low carb diets help with weight loss that a diet with no carbs will guarantee that you will drop fat. It doesn’t work like that. As always, the devil is in the details.

In the case of this circuit-training program, the claims outpace reality. That’s why I reached out to Brad Schoenfeld, author of The Max Muscle Plan. Schoenfeld is one of the leaders in muscle-building research, and a guy who literally wrote the book on packing on muscle. Here are some of his takeaways:

Not All Circuit Training is Equal

The general idea of the 7-minute workout is that you perform 12 bodyweight exercises as a circuit. This type of exercise is categorized as “high intensity circuit training.” No problem there, but once we moved beyond how to label the type of exercise that’s where the problems begin. “The authors make big leaps that are not substantiated,” says Schoenfeld.

Remember, the justification of this program is validated by prior research explaining why this type of workout will build muscle and burn fat. And yet, three of the four references cited are based on types of high intensity training—not interval training. “And the one circuit training study they do cite by Murphy et al. 1992 used a protocol that was nearly 3 times as long as the one proposed by the authors,” says Schoenfeld.

Even then, that study found a boost in EPOC (consider this your metabolism) that resulted in a whopping 25 additional calories burned. I don’t know about you, but I don’t consider 25 extra calories a fat-shredding workout.

Mistake #1: The type of training in the 7-minute workout is not as good for fat loss as claimed.

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Not All Exercises Are Equal

The other big flaw of this workout—besides the fact that the benefits are based on dissimilar types of training—is that the design of the program doesn’t lend itself to some of the big claims being made. No matter what anyone tells you, not all exercises are created equal. Some require more effort, activate more muscle fibers, and will generate more results. Does anyone really think that bodyweight squats are as hard as heavy barbell squats?

The authors correctly state, “When resistance training exercises using multiple large muscles are used with very little rest between sets, they can elicit aerobic and metabolic benefits.” That’s true. But if you look at the 7-minute solution, many of the exercises—crunch, plank, side plank—are not large muscle exercises, says Schoenfeld.

Another issue is that these exercises are all bodyweight moves. That’s not to say bodyweight exercise can’t be effective. I’ve seen enough crazy YouTube videos to know that bodyweight moves does a body good. And they are also extremely convenient for anyone without access to a gym. But the greatest benefit of high intensity training—not to mention the circuit training study mentioned–wasn’t performed with bodyweight exercises; they were done with added resistance, says Schoenfeld, where the weight could be manipulated to correspond to a given rep-max. (In other words, a percentage of your max strength.) The use of bodyweight does not afford this benefit, and for those who are fairly fit it would be difficult to achieve a consistent maximum level of intensity for 30 seconds that would compare to doing a similar length of time with added resistance. To use the squat example: Doing 80% of your 1-rep max on squats for a similar period of time would be much more difficult than doing 7-minutes of bodyweight squats.

The use of bodyweight does not afford this benefit, and for those who are fairly fit, it would be difficult to achieve a consistent maximum level of intensity for 30 seconds that would compare to doing a similar length of time with added resistance. To use the squat example: Doing 80% of your 1-rep max on squats for a similar period of time would be much more difficult than doing 7-minutes of bodyweight squats.

What’s more, from an aerobic endurance standpoint, it has been shown that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) can be an excellent alternative to traditional steady-state exercise. “However, the types of exercise performed here are not ideal for accomplishing the task,” says Schoenfeld. Exercises such as the crunch, plank and side plank will have minimal effects on energy expenditure and the amount of calories you can burn.

To further weaken their claims, the 30-second duration is not ideal for building muscular endurance. Generally, you’d want it to be about twice as long to really focus on local muscular endurance, adds Schoenfeld. Even in terms of muscle building, the research is being stretched to muscle-defying limits

Mistake #2: The exercises in the 7-minute workout as not as effective at achieving the reported benefits.

Strength (and Muscle Building) Requires Added Resistance

Just in case you were wondering, it’s also very unlikely that this routine would optimize strength. The low-intensity studies (bodyweight is low intensity) have consistently showed suboptimal strength gains when compared to heavy weight training, says Schoenfeld. “That’s because the big problem with bodyweight exercise is that you are limited to what you weigh—there is no means to overload the muscles within a given repetition range. Thus, this routine would be a poor choice for anyone looking to maximize their strength.”

Mistake #3: Based on the research quoted, in order to receive the optimal benefits suggested by the 7-minute workout you need to add resistance.

What Does The 7-Minute Workout Really Accomplish?

The 7-minute workout undeniably has some benefits. In fact, I gave it a test drive and it was difficult, raised my heart rate, and I’ve been training consistently for more than 15 years. To that end, there is nothing wrong with the workout, and it can be a great solution for anyone looking for a quick workout.

The problem is with the claims being made. The suggested benefits are very overstated for anyone who possesses even modest muscular fitness, says Schoenfeld. More importantly, it is not a well-designed routine for anyone who wants to maximize specific fitness goals such as burning fat, building muscle, or increasing strength. The funny part? The science used to “support” the claims is the same science that proves the claims are inaccurate.

While I wish the promises were true, changing your body will still require more than 7 minutes per day.

READ MORE:

How to Build the Perfect Bodyweight Workout

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

Are Planks Overrated?

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 Truth About the 7-Minute Workout 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:

The 4-Step Biceps Builder

Why Weight Machines Are Better Than You Think

6 Exercise Upgrades for Better Results

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.

Sure, you try to work your entire body. And you use a wide variety of movements. But there’s always a reason why–despite your best efforts–you still don’t look the way you want.

Whether, you want to really look strong and powerful, sexy and sleek, or just be better about injury prevention so you have fewer aches and pains, it’s oftentimes the muscles you don’t see in the mirror that are most important (and most often underworked).

Overtraining your backside muscles could be the smartest upgrade you ever make to your workouts.

Before you suggest that rows, pullups, and deadlifts have you covered (all great exercises, by the way), it’s important to know why overtraining your backside muscles could be the smartest upgrade you ever make to your workouts.

Consider this a step-by-step process to help you identify common flaws or gaps in your training, and what you can instantly do to shift one of the most common weaknesses into a strength.

Mistake #1: Ignoring Mobility

Poor postural habits such a slouching for extended periods of time result in a forward bent upper back posture called kyphosis. It’s a messy name with some equally ugly ramifications. (Just think severely rounded upper back, which leaves you slouched over.) Spend enough time in a kyphotic posture and your spine will adapt and stiffen in this alignment.

Not a fan of the hunchback look? Good, then keep reading.

This common problem not only causes upper back pain but also weakens the important muscles that move and stabilize your shoulder blades, which can cause shoulder problems.  Keeping your thoracic spine mobile (the section from your shoulders to your tailbone) not only keeps your shoulders healthy but also provides a more effective foundation for performing your pulling exercises so that you can see better results.

Your Exercise Rx: Bird dogs, side lying windmills, thoracic rotation, thoracic bridge + prone cobra

Mistake #2: Not Adjusting Your Push-Pull Ratio

Heavy, frequent use of pressing exercises like bench presses may result in the appearance of better-looking muscles, increased size, or strength, but they also increase stiffness in your chest and front shoulder muscles.  Without an equal balance of stiffness and muscular development across your shoulder joint and upper back, you’ll inevitably develop rounded shoulders that not only looks bad but also turns your back on a foundational principle of injury prevention.

Here’s why: pressing exercises typically call for a push and cause internal rotation of your shoulders. It’s the internal rotation (which is part of so many exercises) that eventually causes your shoulders to round inward.

While everyone is different, a good ratio to consider is 2 pulling movements for everyone 1 pushing movement (at a minimum) for upper body exercises. If you’re looking at your lower body, the same idea applies, as you’ll want to do 2 to 3 pulling/posterior chain movements (think deadlifts) for every 1 pushing/quad dominant movement (like squats).

Most importantly: making sure you include exercises with external rotation. That’s because even though pulling exercises can be done at a high frequency, many of them (like pulldowns or pullups) force a lot of internal rotation of your shoulders, which can still lead to unwanted rounding, altered posture, and even pain and injury.

Your Exercise Rx (for external rotation): Face pulls, Prone ITY

Mistake #3: Forgetting the Bottom Half (Of Your Traps)

It’s easy to think of your back as just one giant muscle, but that’s not quite how it works. One of the most well known is the trapezius (traps), which most people just think of as the muscle that bridges the gap between your neck and shoulders.

Your trapezius muscle actually has three parts. Most people (especially guys) only attend to upper trapezius by doing endless sets of shrugs in an effort to look “yoked.”

If you really want to look yoked, keep your shoulders healthy, and improve your pressing strength, you have to hit your lower traps at least as hard as your upper traps.

Problem is, you don’t recognize the importance of your lower traps (or how weak they are) for injury prevention.

Think of it this way: your lower traps exist to help strengthen, support, and provide stability to your shoulder blades (scapula). Remember, how you just learned about the important of doing more pulling exercises than pushing? Well, you can do that just right, but if you don’t have strong lower trap muscle to stabilize your shoulder blades, you’re not only more likely to lift less weight, you’re also more likely to ignore one of the most important muscles for injury prevention

Ever had a bench press injury or shoulder injury from overhead pressing? One of the first places to look is your lower traps.

Your Exercise Rx: Hanging scapular retraction, scap pushups, and all the exercises from mistake #2.

Mistake #4: Cheating on Your Chinups

It’s not uncommon for you to be better at the shrugging upward motion than shrugging downward. Unfortunately, this is a big problem for almost all back exercises.

The upward motion weakens your shoulder girdle (the structure that helps control movement), thus making a strong pull almost impossible.

Want to know why you can’t pull more weight and remain stuck at the same weight? Here’s what you can fix to change that.

You can overcome this imbalance by positioning yourself at the top of the chinup with your chest touching the bar and your shoulder blades pulled backward and downward.  Perform prolonged holds (isometrics) and even weighted holds in this position and in no time you’ll find that you can pull more weight.

Your Exercise Rx: Isometric chinups (palms facing toward you) and pullups (palms facing away from you)

Mistake #5: Oversimplifying Your Rowing Technique

This is what most rowing looks like: Your arm hangs down to create a stretch in your back. Without much thought, you pull your arm back, leading with your elbow, and try to bring the weight back as far as possible and work your muscles.

It looks right. And it sounds right. But the result is actually causing a forward shift of your shoulder joint and increasing stress on the front of your shoulder, as well as creating a weaker pull. By initiating pulling exercises with retraction, or a pulling back of your shoulder blade and then completing the pull, you’ll have your arm in safer, stronger position to move more weight and build more muscle. Now, this does not mean you have to keep your shoulder in a retracted (pulled back) position the entire time. Every person’s body is a little different, so it’s important to allow you to move within your own range of motion. That means you have a stretch at the bottom, pull your elbow and shoulder blade back, squeeze at the top, and then return back to the starting position.

Your Exercise Rx: Dumbbell Rows and Cable Rows with scapular retraction

Mistake #6: Your Never Practiced Deadlift Progressions

Do a quick video search for deadlift on YouTube and you’ll find a myriad of gym stars showing off their horrible, injury-in-the-making technique. I’m not talking about serious lifters going after max lifts that are superhuman. No one is picture perfect when lifting 600 pounds. This is about correct movement.

Rounding your lower back to pull a barbell from the floor actually turns off the supportive musculature of your spine and exposes the passive structures (like the ligaments and the spinal discs) to excessive loads that–given enough time–could possibly end your strength training career.

It also gives you a much weaker pull from the floor.Try this quick exercise to improve your spinal alignment and increase your pulling potential.

Set up an empty barbell in a squat rack at knee level. Assume a baseball short stop’s stance with hands on your knees. Keeping your shins vertical, arch your back and drive your hips upward to increase the stretch in your hamstrings. This is your proper pulling position.

Take the bar from the rack in this position and stand by driving the hips forward.  Practice this pulling technique and start adding load to the bar.  Once you’ve ingrained this technique, start pulling from a lower position until you can pull from the floor with perfect technique.

Your Exercise Rx: Rack pulls

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 Better Posture, Injury Prevention, and Building the V-Taper appeared first on Born Fitness.

The Workout

I call it the “soul crusher,” but it was originally penned, “The Full Body Death Circuit,” by Brian Krahn. I’m currently working on a special project with Brian (who is one heck of a coach too), and this is our metabolic day from hell.

The Overall Workout Plan

This is just one day in a 5-day training cycle. The split is upper, lower, upper-specialty focused, lower-specialty, and metabolic (the full body circuit).

Bonus Tip(s)

• Your grip is going to give out sometime around the step-ups and the split squats, so prepare to use lighter weights. Then it’s a battle of wits once you hit the lunges.
• When you rest try to make sure you’re as fully recovered as possible. Intensity is the most important variable in this workout, so don’t rush through your rest period.
• This workout is great for fat loss and body recomp, and can even be used as a conditioning day in a muscle building workout.

“The Full Body Death Circuit”

How to do it: Perform this workout as a circuit, doing one exercise after another with as little rest as possible. After you complete all 8 exercises, take a 2-4 minute break. Then repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 circuits.

1. Dumbbell press x 12-15
2. Two-arm dumbbell rows x 12-15
3. Dumbbell step ups x 10-12
4. DB split squats x 10-12
5. Walking lunge x 30 reps per leg (ugh)
6. Bodyweight squats x 30 (because your legs don’t want to move)
7. Pushups x AMAP (as many as possible)
8. Reverse crunches x 10-15

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 Born Fitness Workouts: The Full-Body Soul Crusher appeared first on Born Fitness.

How often do you suggest a rest or deload week if regularly lifting?

We grow when we lift. We grow when we recover. But when you’re not lifting, sometimes it feels like you’re not growing at all. This is the dilemma you face, and why so many people just can’t figure out when to back off. That’s why deloads exist: you don’t have to stop training completely, but the lighter week helps you reduce plateaus and injuries without freaking out over missing the gym.

The higher your training age (more advanced lifters) the more frequent you need to deload.

A deload can work in many ways. You can try adjusting any of the following variables:

Sets: Do fewer sets per exercise, so instead of 3 sets per exercise do 2.

Reps: Do less reps at the same weight; so instead of 10 reps do 6 per exercise at the same weight.

Weight: Use about 60% of the weight, but maintain same reps and sets.

Unlike what some might suggest, there’s no golden rule. Your needs can be broken down into three primary categories: recovery, your style of training, how many years you’ve been part of the iron game. Use this simple approach to schedule your training sessions and you’ll keep growing and improving year-round.

Designing Off Weeks From Training

The main question was about lifting heavy, but we don’t all crush huge weights, and this factor plays a big role in how much rest you need. When recovering from a recent hamstring tear, I set a goal of doing rack deadlifts with 500 pounds. That was my point of recovery and pulling from the floor. But that type of load meant I was doing a deload once every 3 to weeks. The results? Just 14 weeks post injury I hit 500 pounds.

My journey needed more rest because of the heavy weight and higher training frequency. Bodybuilding-style workouts (like splitting up into chest, back, and leg day) that have higher volume can require less of a need for deloads.

That’s because the lower frequency (per muscle group) and load (less overall weight) doesn’t result in as much stress on your joints, assuming that you’re doing the exercises correctly. The heavier you go and the harder you hit it, the more you need to quit it. (At least for the occasional week.)

If you’re using heavy weights (think 3-6 rep maxes) on a daily basis, here’s a sample deload.

Week 1: Don’t take any sets to failure. Push towards technical failure but leave a rep or 2 in the tank.

Week 2: Push to technical failure (form and tempo still perfect), but not muscular failure.

Week 3: Deload, backing off one of the variables listed above.

Week 4: Push towards a PR and failure on last set. Then repeat the process the following week. Weights should keep going up.

Assess your Recovery

You want to train your best every day. But sometimes, your body just won’t “peak” no matter how many preworkouts you pump into your body. Apps like BioForce HRV do a great job of telling you how hard you should be pushing during your workout, or you can do it the old school way.

Old School Recovery Assessment

Step 1: Take your resting heart rate every morning for a week and determine your average before starting a new program.

Step 2: Start testing your heart rate after your program begins. Measure for one week.

Step 3: If you’re resting heart rate is jumping up, typically by 10 beats per minute or more, you need more recovery (take off an additional 1 to 2 days) or schedule a deload using the plan above..

Pro Tip: Consider Your Training Age

If you’re a beginner stop worrying about overtraining. Because the total weight you can use in training is less, the likelihood of needing an entire week for a deload is reduced. Instead, simply focus on training 3 to 4 day per week, pushing yourself as hard as you can. Having 3 or 4 days of rest will be more than enough for recovery, even though your muscle will probably feel very sore.

The higher your training age (more advanced lifters) the more frequent you need to deload.

New lifters can sometimes go 12 weeks (or more) without needing a deload. But if you’ve been lifting for more than 5 years, it’s wise to schedule a deload every 4 to 8 weeks, depending on how you feel.

Want Help Creating Your Workouts (and Diet)?

Now you can work with a Born Fitness coach risk-free. When you apply for coaching you receive a complimentary coaching call and the entire first month is refundable if you’re unhappy. Click here to learn more about the program.

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 Art of the Deload appeared first on Born Fitness.