Not Your Average Fitness Tips

Have you ever looked in the mirror, stood up really straight and flexed your abs?  Compare that to slouching over and sticking out your stomach.  Which one looks better?  It’s pretty obvious that your abs look their best when properly flexed.  Want a neat trick to help your abs look like this all the time?  Then start doing breathing exercises to get your abs to look like Bruce Lee abs.  The stomach vacuum exercise and Farmer Burns stomach flattener are two unique exercises to help you tighten your stomach.

Before I describe these exercises in detail, let’s get something out of the way.  These breathing exercises will not help you get six pack abs.  Sorry, you’re going to have to lose body fat through diet and exercise before that happens.  A good six pack abs routine that includes core exercises like planks and renegade rows will help tighten abs, but for abs to be really sharp, the only cure is high intensity exercising combined with a fat loss diet. Continue Reading…

When you think of a calisthenics workout, what comes to mind?  Sadly, for many people, it’s probably something like high school gym class or an aerobics routine.  However, a true bodyweight calisthenics routine can help a person gain immense functional strength.  A key feature of a calisthenics workout is that it should be a progressive training routine.  In this manner, a person continually gets stronger rather than focusing on endurance.

What’s interesting about calisthenics exercises is that they’ve really been around forever.  A calisthenics workout was the predominant form of training prior to modern advances.  Warriors and strong men of old would use their own bodyweight and through progressive training gain considerable strength and power.  The standard bench press pales in comparison to the ability to pull oneself up a mountain or push stationary objects. Continue Reading…

I recently did a guest post at Trying Fitness about my eating philosophy.  It’s similar to articles I’ve written here discussing why the combination of Eat Stop Eat and Cheat Your Way Thin has been great for fat loss.  Below is the opening paragraph:

Conventional wisdom says that you should eat 5-6 small meals per day. Conventional wisdom also says that you can’t cheat on your diet. Well call me unconventional then because I’ve managed to lose a significant amount of weight and get to my lowest body fat level ever by skipping breakfast and lunch twice a week and eating whatever I want once per week. Even better, I’m not an outlier when it comes to the successfulness of these approaches. In fact, scientific research actually supports intermittent fasting and cheat days. If you’ve struggled with calorie restrictive diets, maybe it’s time to take a more unconventional approach…the only thing you have to lose is weight!

Read the reasons that I support intermittent fasting and cheat days at Trying Fitness.

I’ve posted a detailed Convict Conditioning Review.  Please check it out under Best Workout Routines.

“How to Bust Free of All Weakness—Using the Lost Secrets of Supreme Survival Strength”

How Do YOU Stack up Against the 6 Ultimate Measures of a TRUE Man?

According to the tenets of Convict Conditioning a TRUE man can achieve:

1. AT LEAST one set of 5 one-arm pushups each side—with the ELITE goal of 100 sets each side

2. AT LEAST one set of 5 one-leg squats each side—with the ELITE goal of 2 sets of 50 each side

3. AT LEAST one set of 1 one-arm pullups each side—with the ELITE goal of 2 sets of 6 each side

4. AT LEAST one set of 5 hanging straight leg raises—with the ELITE goal of 2 sets of 30

5. AT LEAST one set of 1 stand-to-stand bridges—with the ELITE goal of 2 sets of 30

6. AT LEAST one set of 1 one-arm handstand pushups—with the ELITE goal of 1 set of 5

Well, how DO you stack up?

If you’re a regular reader of my site, it’s no secret that I’m a fan of high intensity interval training workouts.  I generally advocate performing extremely intense short interval HIIT followed by steady state cardio followed by long interval HIIT for the best results.  While I think this is an effective fat loss strategy, I’d like to discuss an alternative advanced HIIT training program that Rusty Moore (author of Visual Impact) wrote about on Fitness Black Book.

Not too long ago, I wrote about a USA today article that showed people who were “fit” actually burned more fat than people who weren’t “fit” after a workout.  While the result itself is interesting, there are practical implications for advanced HIIT training.  The study defined a fit person based on VO2 max, the amount of oxygen you use in one minute of exercise.  Fit people have higher VO2 max levels than out of shape people.  Therefore if you can increase your VO2 max level, you can theoretically increase the amount of fat burned after a workout. Continue Reading…

Whether you’re new to exercise or have been working out for years, there’s always the chance that you will have sore muscles after workout.  It happens all the time with me when I change my workout routines.  A lot of questions surround this phenomenon with one of the most common being what to do for sore muscles.  Additionally, people wonder whether sore muscles after exercise are a sign of a good workout?

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

Before we can answer the above questions, let’s talk about DOMS.  DOMS is the reason your muscles are sore after exercising.  Immediately after a workout, your muscles might feel fine.  However, over the next 8-24 hours, you could feel increasing discomfort that could last as long as a week.  Because of the physical stress you place on your muscles, they get small microscopic tears.  Along with inflammation, these muscle fiber tears cause minor pain known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).  The good news is that these tears aren’t serious.  They are a sign that your muscles are trying to adapt to a new or more challenging workout routine.  The process of rebuilding these muscle fibers leads to increased growth. Continue Reading…

Skinny guys often wonder about how to grow muscles.  There are a lot of programs that offer weight gaining tips for skinny guys as well.  However, as a skinny guy, you may be reluctant to try these plans.  Perhaps you’re concerned about gaining too much fat while doing these muscle building workouts.  Maybe you just don’t possibly think you could eat as much as some routines recommend.  You could even be wondering if these weight gaining tips are effective.  As a relatively skinny guy myself, I’d like to offer an alternative skinny guy workout plan.

First off, congratulations on being skinny.  Generally speaking, there are a lot less health problems associated with being skinny than there are with being overweight, aside from eating disorders.  I won’t go as far to say it’s easier to gain muscle than it is to lose fat as either takes hard work and time.  I’d like to discuss a popular skinny guy workout plan designed to add significant mass and then discuss another program that I think offers a better solution on how to grow muscles. Continue Reading…

I’ve posted a detailed How Much Protein Review.  Please check it out under Best Fat Loss Diets.

“Finally, Someone is Willing to Give You the Honest Answer to the Question ‘How Much Protein do I Need to Build Muscle?’

Find Out if You Are Getting RIPPED OFF On A Monthly Basis On The Hopes And Dreams That Protein Will Make You Bigger And Stronger

A Behind-The-Scenes Look At One Of The Fitness Industries Most Well-Kept Secrets From An Ex-Protein Supplement Developer And Research Scientist who agreed to ‘reveal it all’.”

I’ve used my fair share of supplements over the years and I’m convinced that creatine is the best muscle building supplement.  That being said, my personal experience pales in comparison to the vast number of studies that have been done touting myriad creatine benefits.  In fact, Brad Pilon analyzed many such studies in How Much Protein and concluded creatine resulted in more muscle gains than post workout nutrition.  By supplementing with creatine, you can increase strength, increase higher intensity exercise performance, and increase muscle volume and growth.

Creatine is a natural component found primarily in the body’s skeletal muscle.  The most prevalent sources of ingested creatine are meat and fish.  After ingestion, creatine is transported to muscles to increase their energy levels by increasing the availability of ATP.  The increased ATP provides an extra kick during repeated bouts of intense exercise which helps the body build more muscle. Continue Reading…

If you’ve been doing thousands of crunches day after day, month after month, then it’s finally time to drop them from your six pack abs routine.  How to get washboard abs then?  Let me introduce you to plank exercises.  Performing planks for abs is a great way to develop a six pack.  It may not be the sexiest exercise for you “manly men” since planks are a yoga movement, but plank exercises are certainly one of the most effective abdominal exercises around. Continue Reading…