Training Methods
What is a deload?
You may or may not have heard of the term deload in the fitness industry. Whether you have or not, by the end of this article you will know what one is, how to implement one, how to know if you actually need one and how often you need one.
So, what is a deload?
Try these underrated exercises
Unfortunately, in modern society it is now common to see exercises that you have never seen or heard of on some influencer’s social media page in an attempt for them to pull in more views or likes. Most of these exercises aren’t how these people have built the physique they have today. That is most likely done using the exercises you know (and science know) work the best. Exercises such as deadlifts, squats, presses and rows.
Does alcohol affect your training?
The short answer is yes, but this will largely depend on what you’re drinking, how often you are drinking it and the volume you consume.
We aren’t all professional athletes, I get it. Most of us enjoy going to the gym and having a training routine, but don’t want to shy away from the odd drink now and then. But how does having a drink affect our performance? Let’s look.
Building impressive glutes
I want to get this out the way right from the start. This article isn’t just for women.
Building bigger glutes will always be popular with women, that’s not going to change. What needs to change is most male’s opinions on training glutes. I’m not sure if it’s because all you seem to see now on social media is girls training glutes (therefore this somehow makes it less masculine) or if it’s never been a priority of the male lifting population. What I do know is, women do like men with good glutes and, if you want to improve your aesthetics and nearly every major lower body movement (squats and deadlifts anyone?) then you better be training your glutes.
Are you doing these 3 things correctly?
When it comes to training, I have always educated people on 3 specific areas they must focus their success on if they want to continue to see progress in the gym. These three areas are Progression, Nutrition and Recovery.
Want big arms? Do this
I’m not sure I have known a man that has ever said ‘I’m not bothered about having big arms‘. The fact of the matter is though, if I ever did meet one, he would most likely have small arms. It's not that he doesn’t want big arms, it’s that he doesn’t know how to achieve it. Just for the record, when I say big arms, I mean lean big arms, not biceps and triceps covered in a layer of fat so you can’t see a single vein running through them.
Ultimate chest training!
There is arguably no other body part as impressive as a thick, full looking chest. Really, it should be the first thing that enters the room when you walk through a door. A good chest looks powerful, aesthetic, and full. And if you didn’t know already, most women love this. The problem seems to be that most men don’t know how to grow a thick and full chest and most of the time, place too much emphasis on the flat bench because, ‘’what do you bench bro’’ has become the most common phrase used in the fitness industry.
Building a strong posterior chain
The posterior chain is a group of muscles a lot of gym bro’s will forget exists in the first few years of training. I get it, it’s much more exciting to train muscles that you can see working such as the chest, shoulders and arms. The problem is, you have a huge collection of muscles that you can’t see when your training, that actually look damn impressive if you add a few pounds of muscle onto them.
So, what are the muscles of the posterior chain?
All about the squat
The back squat is without a doubt the king of the lower body exercises. If you ask someone in the gym how to grow your legs and they don’t respond with ‘squat’ in their sentence, move on and find someone that does.
Squatting is hard. It requires a huge amount of physical power but is also mentally challenging. For this reason, I don’t think I am wrong is saying it is one of the most avoided exercises in the gym. You won't often find people telling you they are missing it for those reasons though, more that they have bad knees or lower back pain. This may be true, but I remain sceptical.
Myths about muscle
Unfortunately, the internet brought about a lot of opinions and myths that can be misleading to people genuinely wanting to educate themselves. I’m here to set this right and debunk some of the myths that I see on a weekly basis.