Welcome to our brand new weekend roundup, Three of the Best! Every Sunday, we’ll post up Breaking Muscle’s top three articles of the week. These pieces have caught your attention throughout the last seven days. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.
#1 – Want a Great Butt? Train Like an Athlete
After years and years of building athletes for competition, I’ve come to one distinct conclusion: sports coaches know how to build strong, muscular butts. From shredded midsections, to legs of granite, to the ever-so-sought-after bubble butt, if you want to look amazing at the beach, then you should seriously consider training like an athlete.
#2 – Are You Training Too Heavy? How to Make 5×5 Work For You
Trainees are generally told to do 5×5 with a weight that they can just handle. They will invariably read somewhere that their best for 5 reps should be about 90% of their best single. So they will plan to do their 5×5 routine with 90%, straight across. Sounds logical, right?
Well, no. If you program your training this way, you may soon find that things don’t work out so neatly. This approach forgets to take into account the fatigue factor. To fully understand this factor, let’s look at what is happening at the muscle fiber level as you move through your sets.
#3 – Rev Up Your Horsepower: An Interval Weight Training Plan
If you ever want to be anything other than a show pony, you’re going to have to develop your work capacity. In the real world, work capacity has little to do with running a marathon and more to do with having the type of grit and stamina that would allow you to carry a loved one to safety over a mountain.
There’s a saying in sports performance: “If it fires together, it wires together.” That means if you want real-world conditioning, you need a combination of heavy lifting and tier-one conditioning.
Did You See These?
- Your Movement Needs an Upgrade: How to Reboot Your System
- How to Anchor Your Feet for a Monumental Squat
- From Thin, to Fat, to Fit: Coaches Are People, Too
- New on Breaking Muscle Today
Photo courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.
