Blindly Following

Do you blindly follow?

Or are you one of the few who listen first.

There is a lot of good advice out there and equally as much that is less good.

Pus a minefield in-between.

Much has caused a society of people who will blindly follow without question, so long as it fits their currently held belief tat doesn’t require them to actively change that is.

My views are often not to the linking of many.

This is due to them being highly pragmatic and rational in nature which isn’t adored by those that have emotions that run high.

So given that we all have an internal bias there is one thing to keep in mind when looking for answers.

Especially to problems you have.

Ask yourself this – Am I looking for answers or affirmations?

We’ve become very quick to try to make people feel good and so that as long at what they ‘feel’ iSight then it is.

Umm, no.

When it comes to health & fitness there are very clear lines dividing black and white when all the context is known due to the vast amount of evidence in all people that have started in similar positions to yours and succeeded.

Agreeableness is rarely the way tome forwards.

So try to avoid looking for answers you want to find and blindly following your bias.

Enjoy,
Ross

Why I Don’t Do Much Bench Press And Neither Should You If You Want Great Pecs

Now that I have your attention.

There’s nothing wrong with bench press, it’s great movement for building great upper body strength and really developing your triceps, delts and hopefully pecs (provided you’ve got your angles right).

One thing worth keeping in mind is that as fantastic as this movement is, it gets over used.

Given the anatomy of the average persons chest musculature it’s not the greatest movement for growth.

Although it can have a decent hypertrophy effect, this will largely depend on your own individual muscle insertions and how much stretch you get at the bottom ROM.

The function of the pecs put simply is to pull your arm across the front of your body (down it too).

They’re not meant to extend the arm, that’s the job of the triceps.

You’ll also find the draw the shoulder forward/downward – opposite to the trapezius.

Knowing your anatomy and the overall function of muscles is useful not only in a pub quiz but also successful programming that delivers the desired outcome.

Say a pair of powerful pecs is what you want most.

Bench press might provide this provided your build allows for it.

One great alternative movements that are more favourable at producing a chest that has people turn their heads and slowly reach out to touch it are – Ring Push Ups.

This specific movement pattern allows not only a deep ROM for a full stretch through the desired muscles, they allow a full contraction at the very top as well.

It’s a feeling unlike any other and has help a lot of people develop their chests to an epic level.

Both ladies & gentlemen across the world have reaped multiple benefits from using rings.

Aside from the aesthetic development you’ll find a massive boost in strength as well.

Neurologically speaking your body will struggle at the start due to a lot of instability, however provided you build up over time you’ll find a deeper level of connection to the muscles and more overall recruitment.

Just don’t try to run before you can walk otherwise you’ll injure yourself.

I’m not talking a little injury either, this would be one with a very long road for recovery.

Form wise focus on pulling yourself down and really feel the stretch across the pecs and pause for a couple of seconds at the bottom.

As you drive up aim to supinate your hands at the top brining your little fingers together, once again pause at the top for a couple of seconds.

I’d suggest starting out using a very simple rep goal system for the ring push ups first.

Start off aiming for 30 total reps in 3 sets or less.

Once you can hit the above, so 3×10, 15-10-5 or however you do it add some reps

I’d suggest aiming for 45 reps in 3 sets or less.

When you hit this add some more volume taking it roughly to 60 reps with the same set constraint.

At this point you’re hitting 20 reps per set which is epic.

That means you’re ready for the last jump to 100 reps, so to do that in 3 sets or less would mean sets of 35,35,30 in the ring press ups to be done with good form.

Please note that you’ll still want to hit the suggested volume target each session.

The marker of progress is doing so on 3 sets or less.

Initially it might take you 4,5 or 9 sets to do, just stick with it and ensure good from.

You’ll find adding this to your training 3 days per week as your main horizontal pressing movement will work wonders for your development, don’t get cute by adding more as you’ll just rack up fatigue faster.

We’re looking for you to become better as a result of each session, not beaten up because of them.

I know it might seem like it won’t work however you’ve to to have some faith in the process.

Plus if you’ve been training for a while and still have a poverty chest then focusing on this won’t hurt.

It’s also worth noting that are many other fine chest developing movements.

I’m not covering these today deliberately as people will run them all at the same time and burn out as mentioned above.

More is rarely better for a lot of people.

Get good at press ups on the rings first and master your bodyweight, then look at other options.

It’d be great if you take up this challenge and grab some photos of your starting and end points.

I’m keen to see who’s brave enough to take on the above and consistent enough to finally make the progress they want from it.

Enjoy,
Ross

The One Dichotomy To Rule Them All

 I had a conversation this morning and this was the crux of it 

It’s about what you want now VS what you want most.

The majority of people are focused on what they want now.

Their training reflects this and in truth there’s nothing wrong with this because it can keep people consistently training.

One downside though is eventually it becomes revealed that all of this consistency amounts to very little, if anything at all because there was not focus or specificity 

Essentially people then feel like they’re wasted their time.

Ironically that’s what people are scared of doing, wasting time.

This why they struggle to do the things that will take them to what they want most because they feel they are wasting time as often what is required doesn’t fit their cognitive bias that is trying to fulfil an emotional need.

Again it’s not to say emotional needs aren’t important 

They are very important however they need to be assessed objectively because what happens is people let them take over their training trajectory.

To give an example.

Say the goal is to build top end maximal strength in a lift or lifts 

That is what they want most or so they say.

Yet what they want now is to leave each session hot and sweaty because in their mind (emotionally) that equates to work having been done and progress having been made.

So they do some kind of 30min circuit, HIIT blast or whatever.

Alternatively they throw in multiple long and unneeded cardio sessions each week 

This isn’t anything more than an emotional/cognitive bias.

Often born of the fear of going backwards or losing any progress they currently have made – if cardio (as the example) got them from their original point A to their current point B.

It’s a hard lesson for people to accept that what got them to point B won’t get them to point C or beyond.

Can people blend both what they want now and what they want most 

The answer is yes however it comes at a cost.

Those that choose this path don’t really get what they want most, they end up getting some lesser version of it 

If that is enough for the individual then great  time for cake 

The above isn’t coming from thin air by the way.

I’ve personally been stuck here many times.

It’s why I say you can combine both however you’ll always end up with a lesser version of the overall potential outcomes in the end.

That can be enough to sustain the status quo.

It won’t ever result in feeling fulfilled though 

So this is where I pose this question to a lot of people now.

“What do you want most and what’s stopping you achieving it?”

A lot of people don’t have faith in something new.

Not when the got a lot from something that’s now old that still ticks emotional boxes.

I’m curious to know what it is you want most from your own training?

Start off with yourself as the subject of the above.

A bit of a case study as it were to establish your own excuses, barriers and why you don’t perhaps do what you know you know is needed 

Like always please do leave any questions below.

Enjoy,
Ross

Your Pound Of Fitness Flesh

It takes time to cultivate anything worth having in this life and seconds to reduce it to ashes.

Today has been quite reflective regarding all my time spent in the fitness industry.

Putting a little thought towards all the free info that has been given and what’s come back from it has taken a seat in the front of my mind.

A lot of us are more than willing to give away time, effort and energy to help people.

In a selfish perspective on all I’ve given away this is a short list.

• Programming
• Habit Change Guidance
• Nutrition Info
• Coaching Itself
• Basic Business Advice

Plus various other things, and it was all given willingly because why wouldn’t we share such things?

This style of advice is often given to newer trainers, you know when they step foot on the gym floor they can start off giving free 20min sessions here, free nutrition advice there and generally be present while also being patient because in the end rewards of reciprocity will be given.

At least that’s the idea.

I can tell you from experience it’s rarely the case.

In this life people will take as much as they can from PT’s and give nothing back.

You can’t blame people after all, they take the attitude of – “You didn’t have to do it. Therefore you ought to expect nothing in return” .

If we’re honest there’s plenty of times we’ve taken and not given anything back.

Working in the world of fitness though this can be the death of not only your business.

It can also kill your love for it because there’s only some many times you can give a pound of flesh before there’s none left.

This is where I’ve said to a lot of newer PT’s coming into the industry to charge their worth.

To be wary of what they give for free and to ensure there is some mutual benefit in doing so (progress photos, case studies, service swaps, etc) because life is transactional after all.

You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

Although most take the angle of you scratch their back and you’ll then find they put a knife in yours.

Of course not everyone is like this, just most people.

One thing I will say though is that if you can weather the many storms and keep giving patiently, although with a sensible attitude of mutual benefit being at the forefront, you’ll come out the other side into clearer waters.

This is where you’ll find you reward.

Like in most stories if pirates searching for treasure.

It’s beyond the treacherous seas and jagged rocks that have sunk all those that came before you where you’ll find that which you seek.

As a PT this place is where the top 20% sit that have access to the bulk of the clientele – people seek them out essentially.

I’ll be honest in saying that not everyone makes it to this place.

So long as you’re willing to give your pound of flesh and maybe a little more, a little longer than you might want to and hold on as best you can then there’s a high chance you’ll be in that 20%.

Given where you might be reading this from and the platform it’s on.

I’ll let you guess from which side of the watery conglomerate I’m reciting this experience from.

Enjoy,
Ross

One Day & One Rep At A Time

This is a Pull Up specialisation program for anyone that can chain a few together (2-5) and is looking to increase greatly in their top end numbers (10+) without ever doing more than 5 reps in any one set.

All you need do is follow it until you’ve achieve all the reps necessary.

If you can keep up with the progression of whopping 1 rep per session.

You’ll start off as follows: 25×1

This means 25 single pull ups (or chin ups) is the main bulk of your session.

I’d suggest running an A-B set up that might look like this:

Session A
A1 – Pull/Chin Up – 25×1
A2 – Front Squat x2-3 reps (or any squat or deadlift variation)

Session B
A1 – Pull/Chin Up – 24×1, 1×2
A2 – Floor Press x3-5 reps (or any pressing variation – horizontal or overhead)

Circling back to the progression you may have noticed the 24×1 and the 1×2.

The goal is to work towards ending up doing 25 total sets that look like this on paper:

1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5 = 75 total working reps (50 session progression)

Regarding the rest periods I’d simply alternate between A1 & A2 with as little rest as possible.

You’ll need to make a note that the 25 sets of A2 are to include the warm up reps for that exercise as this will end up ramping the load to a top set and then allow for back off work.

So on strong days you’ll achieve more total workload done and on days with more fatigue it’ll be lower.

A solid bit of auto-regulation.

One additional element to note down is that this can be used for more than just a pull up specialisation.

It’ll work for presses, squats and various movements (I’d say the loading in a % would be 80-85% for core lifts).

Frighteningly simple and certainly going to send those that chase fatigue running.

If however you’re someone that wants to get better and is will to invest 50 sessions – this is about 16-18 weeks – of your time you’ll be awarded the results you’ve been longing for.

Additionally developing an impressive back will have heads turning as you walk past.

Improve your longevity and overall health (trust me on this).

Boost your confidence.

Leave you feeling truly fulfilled because everyone wants to be good at pull ups.

Fire across any questions to @rossfitpt10 on IG.

Enjoy,
Ross