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

Training Split Continued

I found this great forum discussion about training splits that list many different examples and different styles. There are some real good ones listed

Choosing Your Training Split

I recently changed up my training split so I thought I would through in a few tips when deciding for your self which body parts to work on which days. To make this decision you have to take a few things into consideration like "How many days a week am I going to train?" as well as "Which body parts need the most emphasis?".

Things to remember when choosing a training split -
1. Make sure you have proper rest days scheduled. I tend to always take a day before legs because it is such a demanding workout and I want as much workout energy as I can get. You just have to see what works best for you and your routine.

2. Give more attention to lagging body parts. If you feel like your legs are lagging behind the rest of your body dedicate a day soley to them.

3. Try to spread out days where you will be doing exercises using the same muscle groups. Meaning, you don't want to workout shoulders the day after you have hit your chest because the shoulders are utilized during many of your chest exercises. Another example would be back on day and biceps the next. You will work your biceps during your back routine so they need a days rest before you target them specifically.

4. Do not forget the details. You need to leave room in your routine for calves and forearms. You don't want thick muscular thighs on top of little sticks for calves.

5. If you can only workout 3 days a week, pair up similar body parts. Work Chest and Shoulders together on the same day or back and biceps.

6. Change the routine from time to time. I usually change my training split around about every 6 weeks. This will help alleviate boredom and will force your body to make physical changes to adapt.

Currently my split consists of the following.
Monday - Shoulders and calves
Tuesday - Back and abs
Weds - Chest and calves
Thursday - Off
Friday - Legs (hamstrings and quads only)
Saturday - Arms and abs

Good luck!
Sunday - Off

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.

Pre- Exhaust Techniques

A few posts back I talked about pre-exhaust as a way to raise workout intensity, especially when you don't have a spotter to help you with forced reps. Be sure to look at this link that gives several specific examples of ways to pre-exhaust each body part.

Burning Fat - You can't see a HardBody unless you are lean

The past few weeks I have talked about several ways to increase intensity during your workout in order to build hard, dense muscle. Now that you are in the gym pounding the iron and pushing yourself to maximize muscle gains you need to be burning body fat at the same time. Several posts back I gave you a link to ENERFIT's Burn Rate calculator so that you could put a fat burning plan in place. Now that you know how many calories you need to burn, check out this link from http://www.bodybuilding.com/ which discusses some of the best aerobic exercises for burning fat.

Intensity Part IV: Good ol' Drop Sets

Drop Sets.... Some gym goers cringe at the term. They can be down right brutal. I actually enjoy them and incorporate them into my training regularly. A drop set is done by doing an exercise until failure and as soon as failure is reached, you drop the weight and continue until you reach failure again. You can really improvise with drop sets. You can drop once, twice, or as many times as you feel necessary. You can also vary the amount of weight that you drop each time. Of course the more weight dropped the more additional reps you will be able to accomplish and vice-versa.

I tend to drop twice and drop 30% each time. For instance lets say I bench 225 lbs 10 times and couldn't do an 11th rep. I would immediately drop the weight by 65 lbs and crank out as many reps as I could (That would be 160 lbs or 225-65). After reaching failure a second time I drop the weight again. This time by 45 lbs so I am now lifting 115 (160-45), and I continue until I fail again. After two drop sets 115 lbs feels like 500! As you can see it is very important to use a spotter when trying drop sets with bench press, squat, etc. It can be very dangerous otherwise.

Drop sets are one of the best ways I know to reach a maximum pump. Drop Sets flood the muscle with blood. Your veins pop out and your muscle is so tight that you fear your skin might rip at any second. To most people, that would sound scary, but to a regular weight trainer it is what we go to the gym for! Check out this blog post from "An Omnipotent Blog" for tips on incorporating these drop set techniques into a routine. Good luck with drops setting. Check