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Strength is NOT, Non-Essential

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  You may have noticed I didn’t say that gyms are not non-essential – because they aren’t. The vast majority of people are just exercising at the big box gym and without some measurable form of improvement, it’s just a very inefficient use of time. In fact, getting skinny and frail by running on the treadmill, doing endless aerobics or waving around 20lb dumbbells has proven (especially in this current climate) to be downright dangerous. Our health and fitness have never been more at the forefront and while an obese person may need to seriously lose some weight, dieting and sweating their way to frailty will not make them any healthier.  What it will do, is make them less likely to survive a health crisis. Those folks, along with everyone else, need to get strong and the only way to do that, is to Train … (not exercise). The methodology for training versus exercising is that training involves systematic and continuous improvements over time. Strength trainees do not enter the gym and d
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Basic Strength Training Model

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Getting strong isn’t complicated. You don’t need to learn 30 different lifts to properly exercise your body when you should be focusing on normal, natural, human movements like squatting, pulling, pressing things overhead, etc… That is the focus of this article. I break down the ability to get strong in to 4 basic lifts: Squats, Deadlifts, Press and Bench Press and I add a 5th for those who haven’t eclipsed the half century mark to help maintain power production The vast majority of this content is based on the  Starting Strength  model. This article is a brief introduction to that model. For any standard human being starting out on their journey towards strength, there really are only 5 lifts that need to be performed (possibly 4 if your a Master lifter). All of these lifts follow 3 basic guidelines. 1. Recruit the most amount of muscle 2. Over the longest effective range of motion 3. Using the most amount of weight I would add to this that we are not trying to train the bicep or the
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Strength Is The Only Resolution You Need

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It’s the New Year and everyone is full of hope and setting resolutions … many of which will fall on their face within the first few weeks of the year but it doesn’t have to be that way. Resolve to be strong and several of the most common resolution will take care of themselves. Let’s take a look at some:   1) LOSE WEIGHT First off, let’s get past the whole concept of weight loss. Any person at the same weight but stronger is healthier and if you get stronger, it’s likely you’re going to end up weighing pretty close to what you did when you considered yourself overweight … unless you were severely obese. Muscle weighs significantly more than fat as it is significantly denser, so let’s just discuss how to lose fat … Okay? There really is only one effective way to lose fat and keep it off without killing yourself and that’s to increase your bodies resting metabolism but everyone initially turns to dieting, so let’s discuss that for a bit. While dieting can be quite effective (especially w
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Diet Should Not Be A Dirty Word

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  THE PROBLEM How many times have we heard someone say: “I have to go on a diet” or some derivation of that expression with the word “Diet” coming out like it’s something you should get your mouth washed out with soap for saying? How many of you in fact use the word “Diet” instead of saying: “Ruin my life and be miserable”? I get asked a lot about how to lose weight. That might be due to the fact that I once used to wear size 48 pants and now fit quite nicely in to a size 34 but what surprises people most is when I tell them I still weigh within 25 pounds of the same weight when I had a size 48 inch waist. Yep, I used to weigh 275 pounds and I wouldn’t have been able to squat a kitten but I am now a healthy 250+ pounds, wear size 34 pants and I can squat 405 pounds. Everyone seems to want to attribute my weight loss to diet and in a way, they are correct but it’s not really that simple. The mis-used word diet actually refers to what you eat and is not a fad protocol your supposed to ge
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Why Am I Stuck

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Why Am I Stuck This seems to be a common question on many of the strength forums these days. Lifters constantly asking why their press or squat has stalled and how to get past the roadblock. The unfortunate truth is that there are lots of reasons one can get stuck to include: Stress (mental) Rest Diet Resistance to training Sensitivity to training Overtraining Repeated bout effect The list above is not comprehensive but represents several common problems. Lets take a look at a few. STRESS (MENTAL) It may not seem significant to the person standing next to you but even common situations can create stress that will ruin your recovery between workouts. Losing a job, fighting with a girlfriend/spouse, big test coming up, death of a pet, etc …. Every one of those is a valid cause of a stress that can kill your recovery. Stress burns a lot of calories and is interpreted by the body as danger, so you waste a lot of resources when you let stress affect you. REST Rest/Sleep is when your body go
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But I Don't Want to Get Big

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  But I don’t want to get big   …  Fear not ladies … You’ve got several things going for you that will literally make it impossible for you to “Get Big”. In fact, strong women end up looking just like really fit women and unless they have just finished a heavy set of deadlifts, don’t really show much muscle definition at all.  Just have a look at 5 time Cross fit Games competitor and Fittest Woman of the year 2014 Camille-Leblanc-Bazinet from the cover of Oxygen. There are quite a few factors here but lets discuss the main three … Hormones: While women and men are (or at least should be) equal under the law, the unfortunate truth is that we are unalike in many ways (many that I am quite appreciative of). Sorry boys and girls but you simply cannot hope your way past the simple fact that we are different. Guys produce Testosterone and girls do not, at least in any useful quantities. The hormonal milieu that we generate within our own bodies drives a lot of things in regards to our appear
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