Sometimes simple is better when it comes to exercise selection. And few exercises are as simple and equally effective as the standing dumbbell overhead press. You heave a couple of dumbbells to your ... Continue Reading
10 Essential Muscle-Building Tips for Lifters Over 40
It’s every lifter's goal to pack on muscle and get stronger, right? If not, why go to the gym so darn much? You probably started in your teens and toyed around to figure out what worked and what didn’t. ... Continue Reading
This Is Your Space: How to Bring Passion Back to Your Training
I'm going to tell you right now why you started CrossFit, or whatever your fitness endeavor of choice is. A bold prediction, I know. And here it is: No one actually wants to get fit. And no one ... Continue Reading
Building Muscle as You Age
It’s common knowledge that we lose muscle mass and strength as we age. This is known as sarcopenia. As someone approaching their 40th birthday, I’m interested to know what the research shows about this ... Continue Reading
Train Less to Gain More? High Intensity Interval Training Explained
Photo by Bev Childress In our current fast-paced society, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by subpar time management: too many tasks to accomplish and not enough time to do them. When it comes to ... Continue Reading
A Geek’s Quest for Fitness: 8 Tools to Get from Nerd to Jock
When you think of geek, you think of the woman or man who is hooked onto their Xbox like a newborn onto a teat. The geek is out of shape living on a diet of chips and Mountain Dew. The only locker room ... Continue Reading
How to Train When You’re Bored
You’ve been plugging away at the same routine for months. While results came fast at first, things are getting stale. You’re not getting the same pump you used to, your gains have plateaued, and going to ... Continue Reading
Programming for Humans
To figure out how I should strength train, I turn to social media. It tells me everything I need to know. Okay, that's not true, but imagine if it was. It would be ludicrous, right? Not least ... Continue Reading
Avoid the Puke Fairy: How to Curb Nausea in Training
Anyone who has pushed themselves through tough training sessions has undoubtedly experienced nausea at some point or another. It’s to be expected with intense workouts, especially when you have a high ... Continue Reading
The 5 Best Strength Training Finishers
You’ve charged through your training session, or at least what was on paper for today. And truth be told, you’re feeling good. You even have ten minutes left before you need to head back to your daily ... Continue Reading
Are You a 7 Or a 2? How to Spot the Best Trainer for You
In Dan John’s latest book, Can You Go, he includes a very cool Venn diagram that depicts where potential clients are in a visual format. Most men, he argues, are in need of a hybrid of mobility work and ... Continue Reading
6 Steps to Becoming a Better Athlete (and Person)
You are an athlete. And you spend more time on your sport than you admit to your friends and family. It’s more than a hobby. It’s a part of you. When you have a great session, it leaves you feeling ... Continue Reading
Pursuing Your Athletic Passion: Are the Trade-offs Worth It?
I’ve read that we only regret the things we don’t do. Of course, we can’t do everything, but I like to think I am living each day as if it is my last, because, as Breaker Morant observed, one day I’ll be ... Continue Reading
The Components of a Successful Winter Training Plan for Cycling
Winter means it’s time in the Northern Hemisphere to knuckle down and get some decent training through the cold months. So today, I will be reviewing all the components you need to put a successful winter ... Continue Reading
3 Important Questions to Help Recalibrate Your Training Focus
When I was a kid, my father owned a Volkswagen van. It made a distinctive putt-putt noise as it rolled through our neighborhood, and it was like having our own Mystery Machine, which was totally ... Continue Reading
How to Create Perfect Training Sessions and the Perfect Program
You know the scenario. You come away from a lifting session and it’s been far from perfect. You’re not sure whether you have progressed at all and feel like you may even have gone backwards. You have no ... Continue Reading
Training Athletes 30 Years Ago – Has Anything Really Changed?
Trainers and coaches under the age of thirty have been exposed to a different world. Although you have access to conventional paper books, scholarly periodicals, and profit-driven magazines from years ... Continue Reading
How Much Training Do You Need?
Grapplers are some of the hardest working athletes around. Some train multiple times a day, work full time, or are in school. Few grapplers are professionals - they don’t get paid to compete and ... Continue Reading
A Flow Chart for Determining the Value of Your Training
Wondering if what you're doing is worth your time, effort, and money? The following flow chart should assist you in determining the value of any training activity. It is based on my five-part series on ... Continue Reading
5 Training Lessons Learned From My Obnoxious Big Brother
I had to learn how to do a lot of things by myself when I was growing up. My mother is blind and my father drank a lot of Ten Penny. So I did my homework by myself, walked to school by myself, and learned ... Continue Reading
The Athlete’s Manifesto
When you walk into your gym, whether for the first time or the thousandth time, you expect certain things of your gym and of your coaches. You expect the place to be clean. You expect the equipment to be ... Continue Reading
3 Realities to Ponder if You’re Beginning a Training Program
You're starting a training program to achieve a particular goal. It might be to lift competitively. Maybe it's to better your sport performance. Or it could be to just get fit, lose some fat, and garner ... Continue Reading
The Sixth Minute: Why Minimum Effective Dose Doesn’t Work
If, like many people, you’ve read The 4-Hour Body, I have some bad news for you. If you’re after performance MED (Minimum Effective Dose) doesn’t work. I’ve seen it firsthand more times than I can ... Continue Reading
Reality Check: 7 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself About Your Training
You all have goals, but are you optimally achieving them? Is what you do leading to what you want? Are you attempting to get stronger, lose fat, improve your endurance, compete in a particular sport, or ... Continue Reading
