Winston Salem Fitness

building muscles and losing weight does not come fast and without hard work. Most people get frustrated and stop after a week or so because they aren’t seeing results. You have to give yourself at least a month to see if a certain routine is showing results. Building the body you always wanted is not as difficult and as daunting of a task as you might think. You just need to follow a few basic rules.

Rule #1: Set your goals and work accordingly: This is the golden rule in building any type of structured workout routine. Do not aim too high at the start or be in any sort of hurry. This could lead to you becoming disappointed and out of morale really fast. Remember the key here is patience. Set your goals monthly or quarterly and strive hard to achieve it. It is alright if you fall short of your goals; the key is not to get frustrated and know you WILL reach your goal.

Rule #2: Track your results: The mirror and comments from your friends and family are great ways to track your results but it is important to keep a record of your progress. This will help keep you going after you have been doing it for a long period of time. It is great to see where you have come from and will help you set more accurate goals. This does not mean weigh yourself everyday because that will lead to bad things. Make sure you weight at least a week before you weigh yourself.

Rule #3: Develop a plan: Make sure you sit down and design a plan pertaining to your goals and body. Remember one workout routine or fitness plan will not work the same for everyone. So imitation of a person with your vision of a perfect body in the gym is not the correct way of developing your body. Start out slow and simple and see what works for you and work/grow from there.

Rule #4: Be confident: It’s sad to know that people in gym under estimate themselves. This is one major reason in their under achievement, do not compare yourself to the biggest person in there. You should have confidence in yourself that you will able to build up your desired figure, it WILL happen.

Rule #5: More is not always better: A lot of people who are new to weight lifting or a fitness routine try to jump head first into there new program. Do not kill yourself the first couple of weeks because it will take its toll on you down the road. Ease into it and slowly increase the activity.

By following these 5 simple rules you can achieve the physical fitness you always wanted. As always nutrition is the backbone to a fitness routine so make sure your diet in check to get the results you want.

Maybe you have already come to the conclusion that while it’s great to gather all the complimentary info on the net, the depth and quality of the info is nothing compared to what is found in most books. The old saying “You get what you pay for” definitely applies here. This holds true for just about every topic out there, and muscle building workout programs are no different.

But even after you have decided to purchase the highest quality info, it is hard to know how to select the best muscle building workout program. I will give you some guidelines in a minute, but first I want to discuss how NOT to find the best program.

Most people begin their search with cost. Now I understand that nearly everyone has to work within a certain budget. But it still amazes me when I see people choose inferior workout programs just because they cost less.

This alone is not that strange, but what is strange is that these same people then go and spend hundreds of dollars on worthless supplements or pieces of exercise equipment. Or worse yet, they waste money on something not even related to their goals. Why not spend your hard-earned cash on something with guaranteed results?

My thought-process when purchasing anything is to look for the highest-quality product and then work backwards from there if the price is too much. In this way I make sure that I only purchase one high-quality product that will give me results, not several inferior products that won’t give me what I want.

It’s no different than buying a car. If you purchase a high-quality car from the outset, then you’ll pay less over the long-run since you won’t need as many repairs and your car will last longer.

With that in mind, here are the big three criteria that should be kept in mind when evaluating workout programs:

1. Science
Your body functions under the laws of science, so it would be wise to have a program that completely explains these laws on easy to understand language. Since these laws hold true for everyone, it makes sense that a program designed with science in mind will work to at least some extent for everyone.

2. Results
The whole reason you buy a workout program is for the results. There are a couple of things you should look for that indicate the quality of the results.
The first is a money-back guarantee. No matter how excellent you think the program is you always want the option of getting your money back.
The second is the experience of the author. Is it someone who has actually trained other people? Or is it simply a self-proclaimed expert?

3. Usability
The most common reason that people stop working out is that it becomes too difficult to get the results they want. So naturally, you want a training program that is easy to get results with. To insure this it is important that there is a good support system set-up. Before purchasing, test out the customer service. Is it quick? Is someone qualified answering your questions or are your technical questions outsourced to a clueless customer service rep?

Use these criteria and don’t get caught-up in the marketing hype of muscle building workout programs. The hype won’t give you results, a good program will.

Also, keep in mind that simply looking over these programs won’t give you results. You actually have to try a program for a few weeks or so to evaluate it. Don’t suffer from “paralysis by analysis” whereby you make no decision at all because you are too caught up in comparing programs. Take action today if you are serious about achieving your goals.

Let’s face it, back work is tough! In most gyms it is the most abused and neglected part of the body that absolutely everyone hates. After all you can’t see the back in the mirror, so what good is it? For most bodybuilders it formulates the core of a “complete” posterior, which legends like Yates and Coleman took to another level. For Olympic weightlifters the back serves as the primary part of the musculature for pulling and overhead support. For powerlifters it was summed up by the great Jon Kuc that, “the back IS the powerlifts!” For everyday guys a complete looking back let’s everyone else know that you’re strong.

Whatever the reason may be, everyone’s work out program should include at least one of the following three exercises.

1) Shrug “Downs”: These should really be named “Scapular Depressions,” but who knows what that means? Anyways, assume a slightly outside the shoulder grip on a chin-up bar, as if you were going to perform a pull-up. From here let your body hang as long as it can from the bar. (Like you did when you were kid trying to make yourself taller). As soon as you feel your deltoids in your ears PULL the shoulders (more specifically the head of the humerus) down into the socket without bending the elbows. Basically shrug your shoulders DOWNward. This drill is great for teaching one to properly engage the lats during vertical pulling movements (pull-ups, lat pull downs. Etc.) and was a staple in Ernie Frantz’s bench training.

2) Real Chest Supported Rows: Not done on the goofy machine that retails for $2000, this is performed while lying prone on an elevated bench. (Preferably with one end propped up on a 4-6 inch block or using an adjustable incline bench). Grab a pair of dumbbells (or a loaded MacDonald bench bar with the camber facing up) from the floor in front of you. From here tighten your spine so it is flat and to take out arm slack. Initiate the movement by squeezing the shoulder blades together and continuing to pull until the apparatus hits or is at the level of the bench. For all you “belly” benchers make sure your elbows are angled toward your ribs to strengthen your lats in that same groove. Perform anywhere from 5-12 reps and put an isometric hold at the top every now and then to kill yourself.

3) Inverted Dumbbell Cleans: Also performed lying prone on an incline bench this movement takes advantage of the coordination of the isometric contractions of the retractors and rotational movements propagated by the deltoids and rotator cuff. Hang dumbbells in front of your face with hands completely pronated. Initiate the exercise with complete shoulder extension and simultaneous retraction/depression of shoulder blades. (AKA- sucking the shoulder blades down and back). The second part of the drill requires that the lifter reverse direction into shoulder flexion while bending the elbows to 90 degrees until complete flexion in realized. Here the elevators, retractors, and external rotators are getting ample work.

While most of the training world is obsessed with how they look in the mirror and how they “appear” to be strong, there are a select few that dare to put function over form. Needless to say if you choose to do your talking on the field (or court) then it is inevitable that your training consist of developing some of the special strengths necessary for developing POWER (and more importantly FORCE). The following article is a small guide into training your lower extremities for ultimate function. But please do not mistake function for so called “functional training.” We will not be learning how to do a back flip off a Swiss ball, landing on a bosu ball in a single leg squat position. After all it would be very uncool if we had 1000lb legs and a ten cent squat!

To begin, force is defined as mass times by acceleration. Where mass is roughly the weight you are using and acceleration (also related is deceleration) is in reference to increasing the speed at which we progress through the range of motion. In order to become more forceful we can:

1) Become stronger by increasing the loads we move (absolute strength), and
2) Increase the speeds at which we move the loads (sub maximally and maximally).

A live example would be if two athletes (given same height and weight) can squat 500lbs with the difference being that player A completes his lift in 1.5 seconds while it takes player B 3.5 seconds. In this case player A is more forceful because his lift is completed with the same mass but in 2 seconds less time due to poor acceleration. Player A also holds the potential to move sub maximal loads at a faster rate and possibly has left many pounds on the table given he did not have to strain for long. So a true test of player A’s absolute strength may not have been validated.

What also needs examination is the comparison between each player’s ability to absorb force. This is also known as DECELERATION. This is important to note because if one does not possess the proper abilities to store energy then the delivery or release of energy will be hindered to a related degree.

In laymen’s terms we must train 3 main aspects of force in order to develop explosiveness. This does not necessarily mean that we demonstrate explosiveness all of the time, but our intentions are to execute special strength training with maximal efforts. A rough plan would include:

1. Increasing absolute strength through executing maximal attempts with 85%+ loads.

2. Maximally accelerating every sub-maximal load and releasing the load if the weight is between 30-50%.

3. Maximally decelerating loads through the use of lowering overloads very slowly, abruptly stopping sub maximal loads at given points, and landing from depths concentrating on stopping quickly.

With these aspects in mind one can develop a proper explosive leg training protocol. The protocol options are limitless and only bound by the limits of your imagination. The exact programming will vary from person to person depending on their specific goals, but if you use the basics as a cornerstone and expand upon their use from there then you will have legs that not only look good, but perform as well.