Muscles don't push...They pull.

When I am working out and doing certain exercises, I am asked many times "What's that exercise do?" meaning "What muscles are you working there?". Or I might get approached by someone who is dissatisfied with a certain body part of theirs and want to know what exercises they can do to work it into shape. I tell rookie gym goers and weight trainers the same thing..."Muscles don't push, they can only pull". You will sometimes get a perplexed look when you tell someone that, especially if they just finished doing a few reps of bench "press".

What I am trying to accomplish by using the statement "Muscles don't push, they can only pull", is to get the individual thinking about how a muscle actually works. Without getting to scientific, when you are performing any exercise, even a bench press, your muscles contract and pull the bones they are connected two together or apart during the movement. During a bench press, your chest contracts and pulls your arms together (aided by other muscles such as the triceps and deltoids) enabling you to raise the weight in a pushing motion. If you are doing a tricep extension, your tricep contracts and pulls on your forearm in enabling you to extend your arm with the weight.

So the next time you are in the gym and are performing an exercise, try and mentally solve the puzzle of what muscles need to be activated to accomplish the movement. Once you have a good grasp of how your body works it is much easier to perform exercises with greater intensity and focus resulting in more toned, hard, dense muscle.

Photo courtesy of www.muscleandstrength.com

Mixing Low and Hi Reps in the Same Workout

Most gym goers working toward building muscle have heard the verbiage, "more weight, low reps for mass" and "less weight, hi reps for definition". This is basically true, however you can certainly add mass using low weights and high reps just as you can obtain definition using low reps and heavy weight. Most of your results will depend on workout intensity and form along with the right diet.

For the average weight trainer looking to build lean muscle, combining both philosophies in the same session can be a great way to change up your routine for better results. Studies show that the body will burn more calories after a workout using heavy weights for low reps and the body burns more calories during exercise using light weight for higher reps.

Get the best of both worlds by training heavy early in your sets and light at the end. For example, let's say you are going to do 4 sets of bench press. The first two sets focus on using heavier weight for a rep range of 6-8 reps. The final two sets drop the weight so that you can do 12-15 reps.