Why You Need To Workout Like A Gymnast

If I ever want to aspire to be like any Olympian, then it would have to be a gymnast. Both male and female (Both are a delight to watch). Not only do these gals and guys look great, they also wield superior strength.

But guess what?

What Shaun?

These guys and gals only use bodyweight exercises to build strength… and mass!

Nah… I don’t believe you, why don’t I look like they do then?

Well, let me explain

They Add Resistance

Adding resistance is the only way that you can increase your strength when you workout. Your muscles will naturally contract against resistance, but with time they will get used to it and become stronger. At this point, you will need to increase the level of resistance. That is one reason why most people who train for muscle mass give bodyweight exercises the cold shoulder, because we are not robots, or super human and there is no way to increase resistance with our own body weight.

However, gymnasts use creativity to increase resistance when performing bodyweight exercises and being creative with bodyweight exercises is something that I have been doing for years.

One example of a creative resistance would be when they perform the leg lift exercise.

Instead of performing the exercise with your legs tucked in, perform the exercise with your legs ‘dead straight’. This will double the difficulty of performing a leg lift with just your bodyweight. All you had to do was use some leverage.

However, an optimum workout routine will utilize weightlifting exercises and creative bodyweight exercises. (Sometimes with assisted weights)

One key point about performing advanced bodyweight exercises is that performing these harder exercises will give you better results. This is because you will be aiming for maximum contraction rather than exercising until failure, and for most of the advanced exercises, it will be all the muscles of your whole body that will contract. As long as you keep maxing out the contractions, you will build superior strength, and size too.

You still haven’t told me why I don’t look like a gymnast?

Well… have you looked at a gymnast recently? Of course you have. They look great and possess raw strength. They have learned how to perfect ways to keep on increasing their strength using advanced exercises. And on Friday, you’ll get a full taster of some these in the ebook. These unique exercises are designed to challenge you beyond the conventional pull up or dip exercise, which will allow you to push your strength to the max.

Some Advanced Exercises To Look Forward To

1. Mixed Grip Chin Up
2. Straddle Planche

It’s not very likely that you will build a body like a gymnast just using creative bodyweight exercises with assisted weights (although possible). As gymnasts dedicate their whole time to their career, using many other techniques then just bodyweight exercises to build their bodies and are required to tick all of these boxes as a requirement.

• Passive flexibility
• Active flexibility
• Joint preparation
• Static strength
• Dynamic strength

And others.

This is why you will probably never look like a gymnast!

But the aim of this post is to show you that by incorporated the mindset and strength training progression of a gymnast, you too can take your strength training to the next level and show all of the overly bulky muscle heads in the gym what true strength is all about.

Remember, this is all about higher-level strength progression and building defined muscle mass.

In addition to all of this you will also improve your level of balance, coordination and agility and you may even turn into a mini version of these guys.

Tony Jaa

Jackie chan (Maybe older now, but I bet he still out performs those who are the same age as he was when he was in his prime)

If you really want to show off and look good while performing some of these exercises then take up some dance classes (read this post for some ideas).

Getting good at these dances will provide you with grace and flair, which will make you, stand out from the crowd when you move.

Grow Like A Plant

In order to even get to a level where you can perform the above exercises effectively, you will need to grow like a plant.

You will need to allow your body to go through the phase of steady growth, and once matured, go for the advanced bodyweight exercises. Once you do finally adopt superior strength and athletic ability, start to practice your one rep max on certain exercises. You will find that the level in which you have now increased your strength may have far surpassed the level of strength gains you was achieving in your weightlifting workouts. If that is the case, then lifting weights will now become a novelty for you. But both are just as important as the other, because you still probably won’t achieve the strength gains and mass of a gymnast, because you aren’t a gymnast. Incorporate both weightlifting and body-weight exercises into your routine, adopt the patience of a tortoise, the speed of a hare and like the plant in the video…. GROW!

For more detail on how to build up to the level to which you can perform these exercises, make sure you grab the e-book on Friday 12th March 2010

Here >>>

Or simply sign up now to automatically receive it via email.

See you in the comments.

Bodybuilding Ammunition For ‘UBER’ Productive Workouts (Part 2)

Welcome to part 2 buggers!

As you know from yesterdays post, it really is about being productive in your workouts, otherwise everything from working out consistently and intensely to sticking to the right meal plan will just go to waste. So again, the devil is in the detail.

One question that I always seem to silently ask myself, which is constantly on my mind is,

‘ Am I actually getting fit. Am I actually improving my health’

In the early days it was all about ‘not trying to grow to much muscle mass, otherwise it may turn into fat’. A statement which in itself makes absoultely no sense at all, as both muscle and fat are both completly different. But hey, I was younger and dumber. With time, I realised that what I really wanted to avoid was growing to a size which would place me in the unfit club.

The only way to avoid this is by doing more cardio based exercises in your workouts. But as this article explains, it’s all about finding a balance. And the balance that you (the stayfitbug reader) will want is to do the right amount of cardio without jeopardizing your muscle gaining efforts. One way that you can gauge this is by using a…

Heart Rate Monitor

This is the perfect tool for this scenario for quite a few reasons

1. It will allow you to monitor the level of intensity you are putting out
2. It will show you how ‘fit’ or ‘unfit’ you really are
3. It will allow you to pace yourself towards your set goal and within the time frame that you have set. This prevents you from doing too much, or from doing too little.
4. In terms of actual health and your heart (which I have always been concerned with), it will let you know how hard you are pushing and will tell you when to increase, stay put or decrease your level of output. So not only will you be maintaining a healthy heart, you will be doing just the right amount of cardio for your weightlifting workout.

Write Down What You Do In Your Workout

Again? Didn’t you tell us to do that in this post?

Yes I did. But now you are going to take it one step further. Now that you have got into the habit of writing things down, you will now use this data to workout what it is that you have to do next to progress effectively. Kind of like a prequel to being a visualizing bodybuilder. You will use this to construct your game plan. ‘This’ is the game plan that you will visualize!

But to do this effectively you will do two things.

1. Have your game plan written down, visualize doing it and then perform it.

2. Write down what you did that day and compare the two.

You will need to do this because you won’t perform your game plan to perfection every single time. Perfection simply does not exist. But there is no harm in aiming for ‘near’ perfection… it will just take time. And this is one effective way of doing that. You will be able to see in plain site where you are going wrong and how you can go about correcting it. But best of all, you will be able to workout how you can be more productive.

The key things to monitor will be your rest periods between sets. I can bet that if your workouts are currently an hour long on average, you probably aren’t working out with the level of intensity that you have seen me describe here.

Workout Like A Barbarian

And if that is the case, then you aren’t being productive in your workouts. If you do manage to trim that time down to 30 minutes, then I know you will be doing something right… becasue you won’t have the energy to leave a comment at the end of this post. But if you are a real barbarian, then I’ll see you in the comments!

Shock Body Exercise Variations (Part 2)

What! Shaun has even more shock body tips to get ripped?

Correct. The more varied exercises that you have at your disposal, the less likey you and your muscles will become victims of boredom.

But just a quick reminder to why you would be performing these type of exercises.

• To build muscle (real muscle)
• To maintain your ‘real muscles’
• To take your ‘real muscles’ to the next level
• To ease back into training after injury

All in combination to your current weightlifting routine.

And we continue…

100 Rep Sets

This involves performing 100 reps straight with a very light weight.

Light weights don’t give bulk. What’s the catch?

Well, you’ve probably been lifting heavy weights and increasing the weight even furthur while performing less reps per set. Which is great and is what I preach to many that want to bulk up effectively. But what the 100 rep set does is give your muscles a change of pace and help build up your endurance.

You perform 100 reps for each exercise that you do!

When you go back to performing heavy weights, you will now find that your muscles are a lot more responsive. You will be able to lift more and in turn, will give you faster gains.

MAGIC! You are now a certified magician.

Flex Hard, Hold Hard

Building the true ripped look

After you perform a set of whatever exercise you do, immediatly flex those same muscles, hold that position and count to 10. You basically treat this as ‘posing’ as an exercise.

By doing this, you will be making more muscular contractions, reach the areas that normal training may have missed and give your body the ‘icing on the cake’ rips.

Alternative

Do the reverse

• Flex your muscles first before doing the exercise.
• Tire them out (Pre-fatigue).
• Example: Flex your chest and triceps, then perform the push ups exercise.

This makes for a more challenging exercise. But if you manage to pull it off while performing the same amount of push ups that you would usually do, you will produce much better muscle building results.

Reduce Rest Time Between Sets

This is a pretty common thing to do, yet not many people have the balls to action this during their workouts. You basically cut down your rest periods over time, like so…

60, 45, 30, 15 to 0 seconds

At this point you will be performing your workouts at the level of the workout routine that has it all.

NOW THAT’S INTENSE!

But here are 2 styles of ‘resting between sets’ that you can do, which will without a doubt give you some real gains.

Style no.1

Exercise for examples sake – chin ups

• Perform one set of chin ups to failure
• Wait a few seconds and perform another set

The first time you do this you will probably pull off 4-5 reps for your second set. But get real good at this and the gains will come.

Style no.2

Increase the number of reps on the first set and decrease the rest time for the second set. This is for all of you ‘hard nuts’ reading this. But if you feel you are man enough, then please.. go ahead. I’d love to hear about your run in with deaths door.

That’s enough of shock body for today, but stay tuned for tomorrows post. I might even give you a special part 3.

See you in the comments.

How To Spark Growth In Your Chest Muscles

A few months back, I was over in a forum discussing what everyone’s pain points were. I have my own pain points too (Building leg muscles, Maintaining muscle mass in my arms), but there were a few people that I got talking too that just couldn’t manage to increase the size of there chest muscles. Every solution i threw at them they seemed to have tried, and i couldn’t figure out what to recommend without getting to know there past a little better (Or meeting them in person).

I always have been known for one to try and find new ways of doing things, and that’s probably one reason I’m always enthusiastic to share the new things I learn with YOU. The Stayfitbuggers – Innovative and new ways to build muscle.

Anyhow, since then I have played around with a few chest exercises which I know everyone who builds muscles with weights will be performing.  All this testing, playing around and analyzing has lead me to find ways that can help you spark muscle growth in your chest muscles.

How do I know these work?

Because they have been working for me!

But Shaun, you said to never follow the leader…

Correct! What you need to do is try these small tweaks to these already popular exercises and if what i have instructed doesn’t work for you, just give them a further tweak.

It could be anything from,

• The number of reps you perform
• Adding more resistance to a dipping belt
• More explosive exercise technique

Or other things.

All of us have to find our own ‘map’ and way of doing things when it comes to building muscle, busting through plateaus and living a happy bodybuilding life. But hopefully guidance from individuals like myself will help give you a good kick start and great get-up-and-go motivation in those times of need.

Enough of my blabber. Check the tweaks.

The Dumbbell Bench Press

The Tweak

Start with your palms facing each other in the bottom position and your elbows tucked to your sides.
As you push the weights up, rotate your wrists so that your palms face forward in the top position.

The Result

The twisting motion activates the fibers in all of the areas of your chest.

Dip’s

The Tweak

Move your hands out wider so you get a deeper stretch in your pecs when you lower your body.
Look for V shaped Dip bars rather than parallel ones. Doing so will give you much better results

The Result

A wider grip position makes for a more challenging exercise and helps you recruit even more muscle fibers in your chest.

The Dumbbell Fly

The Tweak

1. Try doing these by placing a towel on the floor.
2. Fold the towel in half and place one palm on each end of it and get into pushup position with your knees on the floor.
3. Move your arms apart as in a normal fly and lower your chest toward the floor.

The Result

A much more challenging exercise that will  work your pecs, back, and core.

Give these a try. If you see no substantial changes to your chest after a few weeks then take out your own map and start tweaking. If that is what you end up doing and manage to find success further to what I’ve instructed here, then feel free to post in the comments below.

See you there.

The Olympian Workout to Build Strength

Gymnasts to be specific.

Every time I watch the Olympic games every four years, I am always truly inspired by the level of strength that the gymnast men (and women) have once they mount the Olympic rings and do the business. Perhaps that could be a reason why I have become such a fan of body weight exercises, as I know that is what those gymnasts concentrate on more than anything else. For some gymnasts, they don’t include resistance training at all when developing there muscles.

Although we may be  inspired by them, we must not forget that what we see them do at the Olympic games is the end result of blood sweat and tears (and years) of training specific muscle groups to get into the position they are in.

Now none of us are going to become gymnasts anytime soon, but the workout routine than I’m going to share with you will allow you to train like one and yield results just like they do.

- A Combination of body-weight exercises (with some resistance)

- This workout is sweet on the time factor to, running at 40-45 minutes max.

The Plan

• 4 weeks
• 3 workout routines
• Alternated each session
• A day rest between each session

Note: That when the reps decrease, increase the weight.

Workout  no.1

Step 1

• Chinups
• Dips

Week     Sets     Reps     Rest
1            4          8           120 Seconds
2            4          6           120 Seconds
3            4          4           120 Seconds
4            4          8           120 Seconds

Step 2

• T Pushup and Inverted Rows

Sets     Reps             Rest
4          Till failure    120 seconds

Workout no.2

Rest 60 seconds after each set
3 sets of 10 reps for each

Step 1

• Bulgarian Split Squat
• Step-ups

Step 2

• Hanging Leg Raise or Incline Reverse Crunch

Step 3

• Swiss-ball plank

Workout no.3

Alternate the exercises
But this time you can keep the rest periods as long as you wish

• Weeks 1 and 3: Do as many sets of 5 repetitions of each exercise as you can in 20 minutes.
• Week 2: Do 30 reps of each exercise in as few sets as possible.
• Week 4: Do 45 reps of each exercise in as few sets as possible.

Step 1

• Chin-ups
• Dips

Step 2

• Push-ups
• Inverted Rows

And that’s your Olympian/ Gymnast workout

And just to remind you all. The Unique Body-weight Exercises ebook that I said I would share with you is soon on it’s way to completion. In the mean time give this workout routine a try.

See you in the comments.

6 Non-crunch Bodybuilding Six Pack Exercises

Guess what everyone? I’ve got a 6 Pac and I love it.

But you already knew that from Effective 6pac building techniques. You would also know that since building a 6 Pac, I have not had to perform any sit-ups, crunches or leg lifts to maintain it. So what am I doing to keep my stomach in shape? After all, it has been 10-12 years since I originally carved my stomach into 6 firm defined parts.

Well I didn’t tell you then, but I will tell you now.

The Myth

‘You have to perform an endless amount crunches and sit ups to build a 6 Pac’

Reality

The above statement is completely untrue!

Yes, you will have work hard and pull out all stops to build your 6 Pac. But you don’t necessarily need to keep that up in order to maintain your newly chiseled torso.

The Solution

The reason why I have been able to maintain my 6 Pac without even doing a single sit up again, is because I have incorporated exercises into my workout routine, which recruit all of the muscle fibers of the body that hit deep within the muscle tissue.

Here are the exercises.

The Renegade Row

Just a few posts ago in 5 Essential Bodybuilding Tips You’ve Missed, the last tip I gave you was to contract your stomach muscles as if you were about to be sucker punched in the gut. That is exactly what you will have to do when performing this exercise. If you don’t do that, you will probably end up falling over.

How to do it

• Position yourself so your legs are straight out behind you while balancing your upper body with your hands (Push up position)
• Place a dumbbell by each hand, shoulder-width apart on the floor under the shoulders.
• Once in this position, transfer your weight to one side and proceed to lift the arm up to perform a one-arm row.
• Then you can either perform the second rep on the same side or switch over to the other side and alternate between reps.

I understand that not all of you reading this will have great stability skills, so to make things a little easier for yourself, buy yourself a pair of Power-blocks (Which are being used in the video). I wrote a post about these a couple of months back and they are currently in my top 3 pieces of gym equipment that I own. Remember, that if you do decide to use power blocks, you must treat them as part of the furniture as they are durable, space efficient, a best friend for home winter workouts and lifesavers for working out on the move.

Side Leg Raises

I don’t perform this exercise to often, as I prefer to stick to more challenging exercises. But it is effective nonetheless.

How to do it

• Position your body on the floor so that you are in a side-ways position (Crap at balancing? Well you’re just going to have to get good at it)
• Once you’ve found your balance, lift the leg that is closest to the ceiling up and down.
• Those are side leg lifts.
• To increase the challenge, bring the leg forward and back as well. If you do this, just be sure to keep your back straight otherwise you could injure yourself.

The One Legged Squat

This proved to be a favorite amongst many of you when I covered this back in unique body-weight exercises. But what I didn’t mention at the time is that this is also a great exercise for building your abs

• Stand so that you’re balancing on one leg with the other leg raised out directly in front of you.
• Next, begin to squat down on the standing leg, maintaining balance the entire time.
• Go down as low as you can possibly go, and then rise back up to the starting position.

Cable woodchoppers

These are great for your abs and shoulders. This exercise is also great for building functional strength.

How to do it

• Stand sideways next to a cable machine with a low-cable pulley attachment by your feet.
• Bend over using a slight bend in the knees and reach for the handle.
• Then straighten your body back up while twisting in the opposite direction until you are holding the handle across your body and above your head in the opposite direction.
• Pause for a few seconds and then lower back down to the starting position to complete the rep.
• 1 set of 10 reps for each side.

If things start to become easy, just add resistance.

Stability ball jack-knife

We all know how much I love to share high intensity training and workouts/exercises and this is another to add to that list. If you don’t include some high intensity, how else are you going to push yourself to the max?

How to do it

• Place your elbows on a bench while your legs are behind you on top of an exercise ball, with your stomach facing the floor.
• From there, lift one leg off the exercise ball and raise it out to the side of your body
• Then curl the ball into your chest with the leg still on top of it. Once the ball is as far as it can go, extend it straight out behind you again.
• That’s one rep. Perform 3 sets of 10. increase with strength.

Lunge with ball pass-off

For this exercise you will need to find yourself a gym partner and grab yourself a medicine ball.

How to do it

• Perform a standard lunge while holding a medicine ball.
• As you lower down to the ground, twist to the side so you are able to hand the ball off to your gym partner (who will be behind you)
• From there, twist back to the front and continue with the lunging motion until you get to the bottom portion of the second lunge. Have your partner pass you the ball on your other side.
• 10 reps on each side.
• 30 to 60 second rest in-between.

I don’t perform all of these exercises all of the time. But I do have my favorites such as the cable woodchopper and one legged squat. Both of those exercises I perform on a regular basis. Either way, all of the exercises above will work the core part of your body that each is designed to do, while at the same time working your abs. If your goal is to maintain your abs or to improve different sections of them, then be sure to slip these exercises into your weightlifting routine and you will achieve just that.

See you in the comments.

The Workout Routine That Has It All!

Well… It nearly has it all. The only thing this workout routine won’t give you is big bulging muscles. However, it will give you super functional strength along with speed, agility and endurance. That surely is more beneficial to you than muscles that just look nice for the ladies to see and feel…. right?

Well… I’ll leave that question for you to answer. Nevertheless, this workout routine nearly has it all.

*Words of Warning*

This workout is not for the faint hearted

If you remember my guest post on Dieselcrew.com Balancing Cardio Exercises for Weight Training you will remember the part where I talked about high intensity training, running up hills once or twice per week and the level of fitness you need to be at to perform that.

This workout routine stands side by side with high intensity training and here’s what you will need in place before you even think about doing it.

What You Need

• No injuries, especially in your lower body.
• Doctors approval – I’m not going to be responsible for any untimely deaths. Take precautions and get your doctors opinion noting your current state of fitness and health.
• New gym shoes – your current gym shoes may have lost their support through wear and tear, so buy some new ones to ensure you have full 100% foot support.
• A jump rope.
• A large bottle of water.

*Another Warning*

This is a non stop routine, your body will be moving at every moment during this routine. So there will be no time to stop off over at the water fountain.

• An empty gym – You’ll see why in a moment.

What You Need To Do

Design your routine

That is,

• Choose 4 upper body exercises.
• Choose 4 lower body exercises.

To make things simple for you, I’ll start you off.

Upper body – Bench press, lat pulldown, dumbbell biceps curl and row

Lower body – Squats, hamstring curl, the adductor and abductor machines

Structure a good order to do them in (Based on the layout of your gym) and then do a practice walk through.

The Workout Routine that has it all

• You lift light weights as fast as you can while maintaining perfect form, doing between 10-15 reps.
• Once you complete one set, grab the jump rope and jump for 15 seconds (Increase the time as you get better).
• Put the two jump rope handles in one hand, drink some water, put the bottle in the other hand, and walk quickly to your next exercise.

If the equipment you need is in use, just move on to the next exercise and then go back to it once it is free (This is why you need an empty gym).

• Remember – No stopping! If you been to fatigue, just limit the number of reps you do and decrease your jump rope time. But don’t stop
• Each group of exercises alternated with the jump rope is one set.
• Perform 4 sets of each (10-15 reps)
• At the end of each set, walk slowly around the gym for one minute and thirty seconds and breathe deeply

That’s it. The reading part is easy. Now go and do the damn thing.

I already know that you may initially struggle with the above, and when you, it won’t be the end of the world. All you have to do is cut everything back.

1. Resistance – Can’t handle 10kg dumbbells? Decrease the weight to 5kg.
2. Jump rope – Can’t last for 15 seconds? Just do 10 jumps each time.

This routine maybe off putting for most of you muscle heads reading this, as the focus is to build muscle mass. But guess what? It will help you build superior functional strength which will help you lift heavier free weights and max out your reps during your unique bodyweight exercises.

I’ll be really interesting to see your feedback on this routine, and once you do put it into action, feel free to drop your response in the comments.

See you there.

The Secret Lunge Exercise

This is an exercise that I found way back in the 90’s when I used to train on the track. Back then I learned many secret exercises to help park muscle growth, but as time has gone by, they seem to have faded slightly in my mind. But recently, I had a trip down memory lane and began to reminisce of how obsessed I was when executing all of those exercises to help keep my performance up. As my thoughts ran wild, I remembered how I used to lunge down the track for 30metres a set. ‘PAIN’!

And then another exercise came to mind.

The Side Lunge

Many of you are probably used to performing lunges which involves stepping forward and then stepping back. That is a great exercise yes, but to stimulate your muscles you will need to innovate and show them something new. Open them up to the world as such.

Side lunges work the muscles of your hips and thighs from an all-new angle. This, of course, can spark muscle growth, as well as improve the stability of your knees–lowering your risk of injury.

Now, this exercise doesn’t look to difficult to perform, and doesn’t necessarily require the use of weights either. But don’t be fooled. Just like my favorite beverage Long Island Ice Tea, it will break you down before you can even begin to notice. But that’s a good thing, as you will always be faced with a challenge.

Enough talk from me. Here’s how you do it

The Dumbbell Side Lunge

• Grab a pair of dumbbells and hold them at arm’s length next to your sides, your palms facing each together.
• Stand tall with your feet hip-width apart and pointed straight ahead.
• Lift your right foot and take a big step to your right as you push your hips backward and lower your body by dropping your hips and bending your knees. Push yourself back up to the starting position as quickly as you can.
• Your lower right leg should remain nearly perpendicular to the floor.
• Your left foot should remain flat on the floor.
• Try to lower your body until your right thigh is parallel to the floor.
• Do all your reps with your right leg, then perform the movement by lunging with your left leg.

• 3 sets
• 8-10 reps

Tip

Make sure you push your hips back as you lower your body and be sure to keep your lower back naturally arched as you perform the exercise.

And for those of you who are interesting in growing the size of your butt… this will help with that too.

See you in the comments.

Unique Bodyweight Exercises (Part 4)

This maybe de ja vu for many of you, as I posted parts 1-3 some months back. But as time goes on, we will always find new and effective ways to build muscle. Bodyweight exercises will always be a favorite of mine, because doing them is a key way to build real strength, which I’m sure many of you already know. And that is why I am sharing a few more bodyweight exercises, each of which have there key purposes for wanting to perform them.

Lateral Roll -- The core buster

Why Core Buster?

Well… if you have followed and tried the ab exercises that I have introduced to you so far, then good! But you are not fully proven until you have mastered this exercise.

This will work your entire core, from your shoulders all the way down to your hips.

Instruction

• Lie on your back on an exercise ball so that your upper back is firmly on the ball.
• Raise your hips so that your body forms a straight line from your knees to your shoulders.
• Hold your arms straight out from your sides.

(To make the exercise a little easier to perform, hold a pole or broomstick across your body.)

• Without allowing your hips or arms to sag, roll across the ball to the left as far as you can.
• Reverse directions and roll as far as you can to the right.

Do this back and fourth for 30 seconds.

Mixed Grip Chin Up

Have you ever struggled to control your body and prevent it from rotating while you perform chin ups? I’m guessing the answer is yes, as I know I have struggled to do so. But I have a solution!

You guessed it….

The mixed grip chin up

When performing ordinary chin ups, your back, shoulder, and core muscles will have to work much harder compared with the mixed grip chin up. So now you can have full control of your body without all of that swinging around.

Instruction

• Grab a chinup bar with your hands shoulder-width apart on a chinup bar.
• Use an underhand-grip with one hand, and an overhand-grip with the other.
• Hang at arm’s length, and cross your ankles behind you.
• Pull your chest to the bar by bending your elbows and squeezing your shoulder blades down and back
• Once the top of your chest touches the bar, pause, then slowly lower your body back to the start.

The Push up +

You all know how to do a push up.. right?. But what I will tell you is how you can hit your serratus anterior while performing the push up. The  serratus anterior is a small but important muscle that helps move your shoulder blades. Strengthening your serratus, will help you improve your posture and reduce your risk of shoulder injuries

Instruction

• Get into a pushup position
• Put your arms out straight and place your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
• Your body should form a straight line from your ankles to your head.
• Lower your body until your chest nearly touches the floor.
• Pause, and then push back up.
• As you straighten your arms, push your upper back toward the ceiling.
• Pause for a one count, then repeat.

There will be more to come, so watch this space.

See you in the comments.

Elite Exercise Execution (Part 1)

Tricep Cable Pull downs

This is one of my favorite exercises for building up my triceps, as it seems to give me the best results every time. However, to get the best results for your efforts, you will need to perform the exercise the correct way. Which is something you might not currently be doing.

Common mistakes

1) Using your whole body to push the weight back down at the top of the motion.
2) Elbows raise up to high.

This is a double negative because you are putting extra strain on your body (which can sometimes lead to injury) and performing the exercise incorrectly. Which in turn means you are getting the least results for your efforts.

The correction

1) Instead of using your whole body, just use your arms. That is where you want to build muscle, so that is the only part of your body that needs to move with this exercise.

2) This could be happening for one of 2 reasons

• Using your whole body to control the motion of the exercise, which results in an uncoordinated body movement. Hence why your arms are all over the place.

• The weight you’re currently using is too heavy. I’ve previously mentioned the disadvantages of using a weight that’s too heavy for your current self and if that is the case, make sure you lower the weight and increase it over time, as you grow stronger.

Raising your elbows too high will kill the concentration of the movement to your tricep muscles. However, you can allow them to travel a few inches upward as you reach the top level of the movement. Just make sure that you stay close to the cable at this point, as doing so will provide more resistance.

Dumbbell Lateral Raises

This again is another favourite exercise and is the reason why most people can tell I workout, just by looking at my shoulders… when fully dressed. However, this is another exercise that I see being performed incorrectly far to often.

Common mistakes

• ‘Good’ Posture (Yes, it’s actually bad)
• Arms not bent enough
• Shoulders raised to high

I see many variations of the wrong. But here is a single variation to get it right.

The first thing you will want to do is stretch before the exercise and then relax your muscles a little when you begin the stance. Then,

• Hold both dumbbells together vertically in front of your thighs
• Bend over slightly with your knees and hips bent too

Raising your arms

This is all about correct technique. What you will need to do is raise your arms with a bend in your elbows (10-30 degree angle) and keep them that way throughout the whole movement.

Raise your arms until your elbows are shoulder height and keep them above your wrists.  At this point your elbows should be directly lateral to your shoulders, as your elbows will be slightly bent forward.

Improve your grip strength

If there were one thing that I wish I had done back when I first performed this exercise, it would be to focus on my grip strength. Not doing so meant that I couldn’t perform the exercise to it’s full potential.

Why?

If you have weak grip strength, then you may notice your hands slipping from the dumbbells during the later sets or later reps of early sets. This will happen for sure as you increase the weight too.

Tip: Don’t increase the weight too much with this exercise, that won’t be needed. This exercise is all about execution and focusing on that is what will get you those killer shoulders.

There are many exercises that I have performed and watched others perform ‘incorrectly’ which deserve to make their way to Elite Exercise Execution. I will cover more of these and feel free to let me know which exercises you have struggled with or watched others struggle with, which you think would be worthy to be mention in Elite Exercise Execution.

See you in the comments.

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