Tag Archives: life style
2020 vs 2019
Filed under Fitness, Nutrition & Health
You probably won’t like this
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Beware the Company You Keep
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An old forgotten post from the drafts – New Year Pitfalls
Morning Guys,
Weight Gain – LBM in Lbs x 17-19 = Calories for weight (muscle gain).
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Struggle Struggle Struggle
Motivation.
It’s quite an interesting word really.
We will often hear people talk about how to stay motivated when things get tough, or how to reignite a lost motivation and anything that is of a similar disposition, and while the intentions are good it is a sad truth that it rarely helps, if at all.
Talking a good game to achieve that instantaneous boots in moral is easy.
People can get a similar dopamine hit from merely talking about what they re going to do, in fact if you take the time to dig in to the science surrounding it you’ll find that the brain scans etc are almost indistinguishable in terms of response, meaning from a glance (without knowing exactly what to look for), you’d not see any really difference.
Same goes for the biochemical responses, to a degree.
That’s a rather fascinating little thing to know, however don’t take my word for it, please delve down that rabbit hole.
Anyway, back to motivation.
Aiming to sustain it, reignite it, or draw on some special reserve is largely a fruitless endeavour because it isn’t motivation that keeps us going, it’s resilience.
It is easy to see how people think it’s that people are highly motivated, however this not really how it works because you will find that the aforementioned is more akin to gasoline and added to the fire for that initial oomph in to action and after that you’re going to need something more substantial to keep that furnace going.
Unfortunately I can’t tell you what that ‘thing’ is to you because I’m not you.
For me it’s a simple case of enjoying the struggle and having go fight my way through a tough challenge because once I come out the other end of it all I will know a lot more about myself.
This is what sustains me through the resistances I meet when pursuing a goal.
It’s a conscience choice to keep moving forwards, that’s all.
If you can make yourself doing the thing you need to do, then in the end you’ll find what once seemed like an insurmountable task wasn’t really that bad, even if the struggle is real it’s better to embrace it every step of the way and just do what needs to be done, than it is to rely on bursts of motivation.
Of course this is only one perspective.
Having lofty goals can be a good thing, you’d be surprised that if you are to ask for the Moon how often once all was said and done it would be given to you.
Aim high, fight on, enjoy your motivation while it’s there just don’t rely on it and prepare for the struggle.
Once you come out the other end, it’ll all be worth it.
Enjoy,
Ross
Filed under Fitness, Nutrition & Health
Something for the Bored
6 movements, 6 varied rep schemes, 6 months of training.
Behold, the 6-6-6 you’ve been waiting for.
Well, I have no idea if you were waiting to be fair, there was just a passing thought that is sounded cool, however now after reading it that might not be the case.
Never mind, we must press on.
Morning All,
This came to mind in the early afternoon yesterday while in the midst of loaded carries.
The overall aim of the above is to give people the following:
– 6 months of training to follow
– A test in mental toughness and consistency
– Results because the first lot of lifts are done by few
You will also find it’s quite fun as well.
First up, the movements.
Push – Incline Press
Pull – Pull Up (weighted or unweighted, grip may vary)
Squat – Uhh, well, yea… Squats 🙂 (high bar)
Hinge – Deficit Deadlift (1-3inch block or whats available)
Loaded Carry – Farmers Walk*
Full Body Lift – Clean & Jerk
Now the rep schemes.
These will be progressed in a simple linear fashion (added weight where you can) once you are hitting each set comfortably.
Medium – 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1
Medium – 2,3,5,2,3,5,2,3,5
Heavy – 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3
Light – 3,5,7,3,5,7,3,5,7
Light – 2,4,6,2,4,6,2,4,6
Heavy – 1,1,1,1,1,1
^^^ with all you will rest as needed.
*Loaded carry schemes
– 30second on, 30second off = one round, 10-30 rounds
– 10min time limit to cover as much distance as possible
– 3min on, 1min off, 3min on
– Tabata x1-3 (20 on, 10 off x8rounds)
– 20m carry EMOM (ever min on the min)
– +10m EMOM, so 1st min = 10m, 2nd = 20m, 3rd = 30m until you can’t keep up the pace/distance
The above will work on a H-L-M rotation, essentially you have the ability to let the weight dictated the reps, however once you pick a rep scheme from the day you stick with it.
Time to put these together in a logical training schedule, I will give you several options, pick the one that best suits your training availability.
Option 1 –
Day 1 – Squat, Pull
Day 2 – Hinge, Push
Day 3 – Full Body Lift, Loaded Carry
Day 4 – Rest
Day 5 – Repeat
Option 2 –
Day 1 – Squat, Pull
Day 2 – Hinge, Push
Day 3 – Off
Day 4 – Hinge, Push, Loaded Carry
Day 5 – Off
Day 6 – Repeat
Option 3 –
Day 1 – Squat
Day 2 – Push
Day 3 – Hinge
Day 4 – Pull
Day 5 – Full Body Lift
Day 6 – Loaded Carry
Day 7 – Off
Day 8 – Repeat
Option 4 –
Day 1 – Squat, Pull, Loaded Carry
Day 2 – Off
Day 3 – Off
Day 4 – Hinge, Press, Loaded Carry
Day 5 – Off
Day 6 – Off
Day 7 – Full Body Lift, Loaded Carry
Day 8 – Off
Day 9 – Off
Day 10 – Repeat
Option 5 –
Day 1 – Squat, Push, Loaded Carry
Day 2 – Off
Day 3 – Off
Day 4 – Off
Day 5 – Full Body Lift, Hinge, Pull
Day 6 – Off
Day 7 – Off
Day 8 – Repeat
Option 6 –
Day 1 – Squat, Pull, Loaded Carry
Day 2 – Hinge, Push, Loaded Carry
Day 3 – Off
Day 4 – Hinge, Push, Loaded Carry
Day 5 – Off
Day 6 – Repeat
You have a lot of choice, optimally you want to train each movement every 3-5days.
This overall protocol gives you some autonomy to pick and choose your training for the day to either be heavy, light or medium, the main aim is that after sticking with the same movements for the entire 6months you will have added some decent weight to each lift.
Push hard when you feel strong and back off when you don’t.
My advise would be as follows: in every 6 workouts 1 is heavy, 1 is light and 4 are medium.
The above plays in to the realms of ‘inch wide, mile deep’ & ‘Easy Strength’. While you may leave sessions feeling strong and that you could do more you’d be wise not to be tempted too.
That being said, if you wish to add in one ‘pet lift’ such as bicep curls, tricep extensions, calve raises, reverse flies etc for either aesthetics or postural reasons then feel free, the volume can be up to you, I’d recommend 50-100 total reps with the isolation lift IF you choose to put one in at the end of a session.
The same goes for core work, some added planks are welcome, as are 1-2 solid sets of 5 in the Ab Roll Out. You may also add some movements such as the windmill, TGU etc in your warm up too.
A session itself may look like this all in all:
W/U:
– TGU to Windmill: 3-5x-3-5 (each arm)
– 2×3-5 on the lift you’re about to do x 50% & 75% work load
Main:
A1 – Deficit DL 1-2-3-4-5 (all at 160kg) -4-3-2-1+5kg per set.
A2 – Incline Press 2-3-5-2-3-5-2-3-5 all at 80kg
Conditioner/ *Optional Isolation:
B1 – Farmers Walk Tabata x3 @ 50%BW in each hand
*C1 – Curls 5×10
*C2 – Ab Roll Out 2×5, 2x Side Planks, 1x L-Sit
W/D:
– Foam Rolling/Static Stretching: Full Body
One thing to remember is that the above is just a set of guidelines, it’s not set in stone. You may also find adding in 1-2 session a week of gentle CV work to your liking, however you need to remember that more isn’t always better and that you can only progress as much as you can recover.
Chase performance, not fatigue, always.
Enjoy,
Ross
Filed under Fitness, Nutrition & Health
2 Reasons the average gym goer doesn’t need to isolate the front deltoid
It’s common place to see people doing front raises in the gym, even though for them it’s essentially a pointless exercise.
I’m not saying it’s a bad exercise, far from it, some top lifters need it as an assistance movement for what ever specific reason, however the average gym goer who has a program heavily biased towards pressing and anterior chain movements DOES NOT need to be doing front raises.
Before we go on let us have a look at some of the exercises that recruit the front deltoid.
- Presses (pretty much all of them)
- Bear crawls
- Planks
- Sled pushing
The main function of the anterior deltoid is shoulder flexion — lifting your arm up and to the front of your body. So any movement that involves this hits it, make a note.
That’s the first reason you don’t need to isolate this muscle.
The second is because daily life is heavily anterior chain dominant, here is a short list of daily living movements that cause a short/tight/over worked front delt and also high pecs too.
- Sitting at a desk
- Eating
- Driving
- Playing computer games
- Putting things on shelves
You get the idea. Life is heavily biased towards overworking what are known as ‘tonic muscles’ of the body and rarely have you stimulating the phasic ones (posterior chain).
For the average person Id recommend having some form of reverse fly in every session and perhaps a lateral raise movement in each pressing session, I can’t remember the exact studies, I apologise, however on average the lateral delt has 2/3 the development of the front and the rear was barely scraping 1/3 of the front delts growth.
You’d also do well to chuck in face pulls, bat wings (isometric holds) and resistance band pull apart drills in your daily life (say 50 pull-aparts per hour and 60 seconds bat wing).
This simple information will help you balance the entire shoulder, it will also help improve your posture and look 100% better, no one likes a round shouldered look, its weak and prone to injury.
Enjoy,
Ross
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2 Gems of Wisdom
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More Energy in 2 Easy Tips
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