This week, Breaking Muscle celebrates publishing our very first ebook for sale, The Max Effort Black Box System by Michael “Coach Rut” Rutherford. You can’t get it anywhere else but Breaking Muscle. If you’re a fan of being strong and having great conditioning at the same time, check it out.
We’ve got plenty of informative and interesting articles for you this week, too, from one-arm push up progressions to GPP to nutrition to Omega-3 fatty acids and plenty in between.
Featured Article of the Week:
Cardio Doesn’t Kill Gains (and You Should Be Doing It) – Steady state cardio has been sold to the lifting community as a surefire way to destroy all your hard-earned gains, get fat, and get hurt. But here is the truth: steady-state cardio offer some serious advantages for lifters.
Reader Favorites:
4 Safe and Effective Ways to Work Out With a Cranky Knee – The first in a series of video articles on working around everyday aches and pains to keep your workouts fun and productive.
How to Achieve Your First One-Arm Push Up – The one-arm push up is a great expression of strength, tension, and balance. Many strong athletes are not able to do it. This article shares tips that can help you join the one-arm push-up club.
Training to Failure: Smart Strength With Charles Staley – Note: Charles is here on a weekly basis to help you cut through the B.S. and get to the bottom of the biggest questions in health and training.
GPP in the Modern World: How to Become an All-Around Athlete – The modern exercise world tends to use language more like a cudgel than the scalpel it can be. Take, for example, intensity. What do you think of when you hear that word? What does it actually mean?
Flax Seed Oil or Fish Oil? The Best Source of Omega 3s – Omega 3 fatty acids are the primary reason you would take a flax or fish supplement. Marc Halpern explains the important differences.
Coach, How Do I Know if My Program Is Effective? – It’s important to have a regular schedule to test your program results against an objective standard. Here are a number of options for doing that testing.
Build Functional Strength With the Shovel Lift – While “virtual shoveling” might have been a great way to jump the shark, the shovel lift is a strength-focused movement that turns the barbell from a help to a hindrance.
Blood Lactate Tests: Do You Really Need One? – Blood lactate tests have been around for a while and can be a useful indicator of what is happening in some parts of your energy systems as you exercise – if you know what to look for and how to apply it.
Qigong: The New (Ancient) Way of Improving Health and Performance – “We are a Division I athletics program competing in 21 varsity sports and on paper we operate and function like every school in the country. What separates us from the rest is something that happens every morning around 11:00am.”
Coaches Only
You may have noticed that we have a subscription area exclusively for coahes now. If you’re a coach who wants to improve both your training and business skills (and results), Coaches Only is for you. This article from Bob Takano was featured this week.
3 Factors Affecting Bar Placement in the Snatch – Weightlifting coach extraordinaire Bob Takano discusses where various age groups of athletes go wrong with bar path and placement and why the differences among the age groups might occur.
Workout Programs:
3 Fat Loss Workouts for When You’re in a Time Crunch – Like the title says, here are three fun ways to expend some energy in a hurry!
We hope you enjoy these selections – see you next weekend with another installment.
The Breaking Muscle Team
