When To Increase The Weight

Most people increase the weight for their workouts every week or every other week because of the logic that they are getting stronger so the weight needs to increase. We have all been there before. You are bigger and stronger, so increase the weight, right? That's how you are going to get more gains, right?

This is usually fine at the beginning because you're really just getting your muscles used to being worked hard. But increasing the weight every time needs to stop after a little while. We all know it's form over weight, but we start to lose form anyway over time and keep increasing the weight. Having good form and full range of motion makes sure you never get injured and you break down the maximum amount of muscle and stay flexible. So, how can someone make gains without increasing weight? I'm about to tell you.

Making gains means that you make it harder. Making it harder demands your muscles to become stronger to meet the new conditions you have forced on them, which is what "gains" are. Weight is only one factor that makes it "harder" on your muscles. Here are some other factors that can make lifting "harder":

- Range of motion.

- Isolating and targeting the inner, outer, top and bottom of the muscle (wide/close grips).

- Explosive positives and slow negatives.

- Pausing for a moment before the lift.

- Drop set the weight.

- More reps.

- More sets.

- Combine the exercise with two more for a Super set.

Make sure you do all of these things before you increase the weight. Before any weight is added to your exercises, make sure you are lowering the weight for a count of three, holding the weight for a count of three, bursting through the lift, and increasing the repetition count from last week as well as going into another exercise with no rest (Super set it). I have stayed with the same weight for almost a month and a half and still made all the necessary gains from my workout because I made it harder before increasing the weight.

I will share with you a video from the Hodgetwins on youtube. They have a strange sense of humor, but the information they share in this video is extremely valuable and reiterates everything I've already mentioned using their own experiences.

Can I Still Make Gains Without Increasing The Weight...

Fig 1. Can I Still Make Gains Without Increasing The Weight, "twinmuscleworkout" on www.youtube.com

The main point:

Make sure you are making the workout as hard as possible before you increase the weight. If you can't do six sets of twelve reps with slow negatives, pausing before the lift, bursting through the lift, and follow up with two other exercises after with no rest (Super set), then it's not time to increase the weight yet. It's about making the burn as intense as you can, not straining your joints with heavy weight.

Stay safe my friends, and keep on working. Don't use weight so light that you can do 50 reps of it, but make sure the weight is not hurting you. A good balance will give you the best workout.

Blog Question:

How do you make your workout harder without increasing the weight? Comment below!

Workout Philosophy: What is Happening?

I am going to share with you today a new philosophical perspective of what working out really is.

On the outside, working out is going to the gym and working till you sweat a lot to look "better". First of all, what is better? Better is different for everyone, but the general principle is that you are attractive which means you have physical traits that represent strength, good health, and good genes. In an animalistic sense, we are attracted to those who are most fit to survive and create/raise babies with. We get the images of who we want to be physically by imagining ourselves fit to survive and healthy to reproduce.

Now, what happens behind the scenes in the gym? Working out happens like this; you apply a restraint on your physically body, a barrier, or a restriction and then overcome the force that is holding you down. This is creating a physically demanding challenge for yourself. When you overcome the physical demand, your body will evolve and adapt to the physical demand making it easier for you to do next time. To put this as simple as possible; everything you do at the gym will be easier next time because your body evolves to do that thing better.

Some people think that you can get big strong arms and chest by pounding out a thousand push-ups every day. The truth is that if you do a thousand push-ups every day, you're going to only get good at doing a thousand push-ups every day. In an aesthetic perspective, all that is happening is you are making your chest and arms smaller, denser, and more defined because they need to be light and have high endurance for the volume of push-ups you are performing. Big arms and chest only come from forcing your body to lift the heaviest weight they can bare. It is there that the mass is being recruited for the restraining demand of the heavy weight. If you run, your body will make muscle denser so it is lighter and drop body weight because running demands your body to be light and able to keep going for long periods of time.

The main point:

You can't just do anything at the gym and look "better". You have to create an image in your head which you want to become and then find out what exercises will demand your body to look like that. From that point on, evolution, the cause and effect of time and life itself, will make your body into the image you have set as your goal.

Keep in mind, there are some other restraints on you such as genes, body type, and any physical/health handicaps. This does not mean you can't look like your imagined goal, but it will make the process a bit longer.

Best of luck to everyone!

Blog Question:
Do you prefer cardio, toning, strength training, or body building?

Extra reading:

Determine Your Body Type

Body Shapes for Men

Body Shapes for Women

Red Muscle vs White Muscle

Aerobic Exercise vs Anaerobic Exercise

Body Building vs Strength Training with Elliot Hulse (video)

The Importance of Range of Motion

This week I have learned a very valuable lesson in the gym that I would like to share with all of you. The importance of Range Of Motion (ROM).

I've been in my bulk phase for about a month and a half now and always made sure my weight has been going up. Although I am getting stronger and the weight is going up, I can tell I have been pushing it too much because my range of motion during the exercises has drastically decreased. I've been trying to add more weight each time than I should, resulting in shorter reps, which in turn, works less muscle. Now I will share with you what range of motion is and all the benefits of it that I learned and experienced this week!

What is ROM?:

Range of motion is the distance a lever travels while attached to a fixed point. In physiology, range of motion is the distance your limbs move in the joints. Full range of motion during a workout exercise means you are fully contracting the muscles and fully detracting or stretching the muscles. A good example of full range of motion on flat bench press means that you start with the arms straight, but not locked, lowering the bar down until it almost touches or does touch your chest, and then pushing it up until your arms are straight again.

Shoulder Range of Motion

Fig. 1 Range of Motion in Your Joints. Robin Severy-Pfauntz, 2012 at www.aspenclub.com.

Why you should use full range of motion:

Using full range of motions has many benefits to take advantage of.

The first advantage is you are more efficient with building muscle! You're using precious time at the gym, so why only work half of the muscle when you can work the entire muscle? Full range of motion brings the muscle from fully stretched to completely contracted which breaks down the entire length of the muscle. Using half your range of motion will only break down half of the muscle. What a waste!

Another benefit is you are actively stretching your muscle while working them. You are putting a lot of time into building your muscles, so why make yourself stiff and inflexible when you can use full range of motion and stay flexible? Extending the muscles through full range of motion is keeping them stretched and the new muscle is evenly distributed instead of lumped up in spots creating masses of tight muscle.

When even those benefits aren't enough, there's more! Only working with half range of motion not only builds small lumps of tight muscles that are inflexible and uneven, but it also looks bad! Stretching out the muscles through full range of motions builds every part of the muscle giving you a more natural and lean strong look instead of awkward looking lumpy biceps.

The last benefit I will talk about (there's still many more) is that you will be stronger! Even if you don't care about building muscle or your looks and you just want to be strong, range of motion does make you stronger! Most of the strength exercises like dead lifts and squats require full range of motion for you to get the bar where you want it. If you only workout with half the range of motion, you will be stronger in certain points in the repetition of the strength exercise instead of equal, making you forced to use lower weight because of the weak points you could have worked before with full range of motion.

My challenge to YOU!:

Drop some plates. Take some weight off. A lot of weight. Even build your way up to max from absolutely zero weight. Make sure you are using full range of motion. You will notice a huge difference. In the end, you will end up with less weight than you could lift before, but you will be getting one hell of a better workout. You will feel the difficulty increase instantly. Just remember this is a good thing!

When doing flat bench press, touch the bar to your chest. If you're doing leg press, kiss your knees. During squats, butt below the knees. Bicep curls, arm fully extended, stretching the bicep, and then make the weights touch your shoulders.

Best of luck to everyone! I know I will be taking a huge advantage of these benefits by dropping some of my weight and getting a better workout with full range of motion.

Blog question:

Was there a time when you found a way to make your workout harder, in turn making it more beneficial? If so, what was the change you made?

Energy

I have observed over the past few days that "energy" is very abstract to people. Some think it is a spiritual presence and others think it's when you get enough sleep. I will tell you what energy really is, although the previous statement is still true because energy is in many different forms.

I call this "Attention Energy" (chi)

Fig. 1 Energy Field. Article on www.psychicbutsane.com (2009).

The first side to energy is your attention to it. This energy is found when you put attention on parts of your body. When someone is getting angry or scared, their energy goes straight to their head. You can hear their voice rise in pitch and their upper body moves more and their expressions are strong and constantly changing. This is not healthy because it is hysteric or frantic and not grounded or sturdy. To properly react to situations and events, we have to be grounded. To ground yourself, you have to open your throat and breathe as deep as possible and focus your attention on your feet. Think about how your feet feel when they touch the ground. Visualize your weight pressing your feet into the ground. Picture your breath going into your bellybutton. As Elliott Hulse would say, "breathe into your balls". This takes all the energy in your body and pushes it down into your body and you will be grounded. You can think and act appropriately. You will become smarter and stronger. Your energy will spread out from head to feet instead of concentrated in your head.

Calorie Energy to do Work

Fig. 2 Essential Human Requirements. Article in Teacher Resources at www.tomatoesphere.org.

The next side to energy is the method of consuming food (calories) and burning those calories to do "work". "Burning" the calories means you are transferring the energy from the food you ate into heat which escapes into the atmosphere. There are all kinds of scientific measurements to describe energy and work, none of which I will explain because they can all be found in any physics text book. I'm here to talk about the concept of calories. There is no such thing as "empty calories". Calories are calories and that is it. The only thing that separates good foods from bad foods is the act of converting it into energy. 400 calories of brown rice is better for you than 400 calories of skittles because brown rice has complex sugars (carbohydrates), proteins, and nutrients. This means your body can repair tissue with some of the energy and also convert it into energy slowly over time.Skittles are all sugar and will convert to energy instantly so the energy is used up right away. Nothing else comes out of skittles.

My personal experience:

This past weekend was a big experience for me regarding calorie energy. Before I went away for vacation this weekend, I was lifting at the gym and on my diet of 3,500 rich dense complex calories. I was setting personal records for my heaviest lifts. Over the course of the weekend, I went to a very exhausting all-day metal concert without much food to eat. After that, I was only eating two small meals a day. I felt weak. When I got back in the gym, I was lifting significantly lighter weights and struggling to keep them up. I had poor muscle endurance and I was burn out after the first five sets. At this point I could physically feel the lack of energy from my lack of eating. To fix this issue, I ate as much food today as I could stuff in me. To my surprise, I ate more food than I could any day before my vacation which proved to me that I was bone dry on calories. I feel so much better and ready to get back in the gym.

Mental Energy or Effort

Fig. 3 Mental Perks of School and Work. Article from www.sheknows.com by Michele Borboa.

The last type of energy is in your brain waves. This is also associated with time and effort. Mental energy is the amount of effort you can put into a tasks under the stress of time. We do not have enough mental energy to be the best at everything we do, therefor we have to prioritize our lives so that we can put the most mental energy into the things we want to go the farthest in. The biggest focus points for many people with their mental energy is usually family and work.Add in a hobby and a craft which you love more than anything into the mix. Any more than that and you won't have the mental energy to do your best at everything and your performance will suffer. It is important that we focus on the more important things.

I hope this was a quick simple breakdown of the different kinds of energies to focus on and some good tips about them. I did not cover everything by any means or else this blog would be a series of books. There is a lot to energy and I hope you will all look deeper into them because it will help benefit your lives like it has mine!

Blog question:

What is one commitment you will make to improve the efficiency of your energy to become a stronger better YOU?

Other links:

What is chi?

Wiki Calorie

Physics Energy

Lack of sleep and the Brain

Increasing Mental Energy

Corrective Gym Time Training

If you are a sport athlete, you will notice that many coaches and personal trainers will work you during practice to get better at your sport, but then you'll go to the gym and repeat the same exercises (pattern overload). The logic behind this is that if you train yourself through repetitive motions and then lift with those same repetitive motions with heavy weight, you will become really good at it. This may be true, but at the same time everything else suffers. You are creating further imbalance in your muscle structure which, in the long run, is ruining your posture and moving your bones out of place in your joints from imbalanced tension on them.

How I have been effected by this:

I have been dealing with this situation regarding my ankles and Achilles tendon. The repetitive pushing off of my toes and flexing my Achilles tendon over six years of running has caused it to become very tight. I have been to see a doctor to specializes in the feet and legs of athletes. He grabbed hold of my foot for one moment and tried stretching the tendons in my lower calf muscles and right away said "this is way too tight". I have been stretching the muscles, but not nearly to the degree in which I was working them. To fix the problem and get rid of my ankle pain, I have to stretch and roll it 3-5 times a day for several months. This is quite the process, but in the long run, I will feel much better and the pain will be gone so I can continue my long runs.

I have three videos for you guys from my favorite workout YouTuber, Elliott Hulse, where he talks about pattern overload, fixing it in the gym, and stretches to improve posture. 

Pattern overload and how to fix it at the gym:

Fig. 1 How to Fix Soulder Pain for Athletes by strengthcamp (Elliot Hulse) on www.youtube.com.

Improve your posture:

Fig. 2 Stretches to Improve Posture by strengthcamp ( Elliot Hulse) on www.youtube.com.

So, the basics of fixing pattern overload is by strengthening the muscles on the opposite plane as the ones that are strong from the overload. As a runner, my hip-flexors are very tight which causes my butt to be pulled in when standing up. This is causing an unbalance when I am trying to stand up straight and giving me some lower back pain. To fix this, I am stretching my hip-flexors and strengthening my abductors to pull my butt out more until my spine is straight. So far I have noticed a tremendous improvement.

The main point:

If you are doing a sport that requires repeating motions over and over, when you are at the gym, only strengthen the opposite muscles you don't use in those repeating motions. You will feel better and you will perform better too! Do extra stretching every day on those muscles that you use the most. Stretching them 3-5 times a day is good (unless you're having some severe pain or they are injured. In this case, don't stretch and see a doctor first).

Blog Question:

Are you involved in sports? If so, which sport and what are the repetitive motions you face every day?

Before Chest, Check Your Shoulders

Today I realized that I have been hurting my shoulders while lifting without even knowing it. I will share with you what I have been doing wrong and how properly hold your shoulders when pressing or squeezing your chest.

The chest muscles (especially on men) are one of the most over-trained muscles along with biceps and abs. This is because they are the most aesthetically pleasing to see so we build it a lot. On a lot of people I have worked with, they couldn't push themselves hard with some chest exercises (cable flys, bench press, and overhead press) because they were experiencing shoulder pain. Most of the time they said the shoulder pain was initially caused from something else, but why was the exercises hurting the joint when it's just a muscular contraction in the chest? My answer is improper form with the placement of the shoulders.

Fig. 1 Secret for a Huge Chest - Shoulder Packing by Scooby1961 on www.youtube.com.

I've been watching Scooby's videos on YouTube for a very long time and he explains a lot of things that people don't usually go into great detail about. In this video he explains why it is important when doing chest exercises to have your shoulders down and back. Also, I can't help but believe a man with that kind of chest development!

The wrong way:

It is very common for people to shrug their shoulders up when bench pressing. I used to do this too because I thought it targeted my upper pectoral, but instead it was just putting massive amounts of stress onto my shoulder joints.When your shoulders are shrugged and up by your ears, the pressure on your arm is pushing the ball of the joint out of the socket and straining all the tendons in the shoulders. And to top it all off, it doesn't even target the upper pectorals!

The right way:

The proper way to lock your shoulders when doing any chest exercise is down and back. Not only does this give you better leverage and increase your strength (as explained in Scooby's video with a model figure), but when your shoulders are down, the weight is not pushing your arm out of the socket, it is instead transferring the weight into your lats and and upper back, capable of handling much more weight than your shoulder joints. This also decreases the amount of movement that happens in the socket. It may feel a little weird at first, but pretty soon it will become second nature to keep your shoulders down and back while working the chest.

I hope this has saved some people from making the same mistake as I have. I've noticed that I am able to push my chest a lot further and feel a lot less tension in my shoulder during and after my isolated chest workouts. Just remember, down and back! Not only does it feel safer, more secure, and more isolated on the chest, but it also looks better!

Blog Question:

With many things, there is no "wrong" and "right", but when it comes to form, there is definitely "not good" and "best". When is a time you learned that you have been doing an exercise with different form than the exercise intended?

To Win You Must Fail

Today's motivation is about how we fail and get knocked down in attempt to meet our goals, but through patients and hard work we eventually reach those goals and exceed further.

There are going to be days when you get huge gains towards your goal and then there are going to be days when you don't move or even move back. We will all get "on and off the train" to our success, but it is the people that continue to get back on that reach their long term goals and keep them.

Just the other day I was doing dead lifts as part of my workout and I have seen videos of people my size or slightly heavier lifting 550 pounds! I automatically set my goal really high and to my surprise I could barely get in six repetitions of 160 pounds. It hurt my back and I got frustrated and quit. Later, I went back on to look at those videos again and I learned a lot. I learned how important dead lifts are and how to maintain proper form so you don't strain your back. A few days later I tried the dead lift again and maxed at 200 pounds. Still not even half of 550, but I won't let that get to my head! Once a week I am maxing it now in hopes to maybe, just maybe, lift 550 pounds one day.

So it has been pretty clear in some of my lasts posts, I get a lot of my inspiration from Elliott Hulse. Here's a video he just put out talking about failing to win.

Fig. 1 Fail First by strengthcamp on www.youtube.com (Elliott Hulse)

Of course this is not how you should train every day. Most people will find their limits once every two weeks and see their progress. The type of failure you should hit every workout is "I can't do another rep" instead of "I can't even lift this once". But Elliott Hulse has a lot to say about about overcoming the fear to fail. You must be courageous! Make yourself fail so that you know what goal is next and then reach that goal no matter what by training!

Fig. 2 Rocky Balboa's Inspirational Speech, uploaded by Vimal Kumar on www.youtube.com

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky made a great inspirational speech in one of his movies about life hitting you harder than anything else and that it doesn't matter how hard you hit back, it matters how hard you get him and keep moving. He said:

"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit, it's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not be pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!" - Rocky Balboa (2006)

So keep getting back up. You can fall down, but don't let yourself stay there. Every failure is a new goal for you to work towards achieving.

Blog Question:
When have you set a goal way too high for yourself, but still achieved it over time through hard work? How long did it take? How impossible did it seem when you first tried it?