The phrase “tap out” has slid into the mainstream over the last 25 years or so, but its original meaning has been forgotten, or at least misinterpreted. When you’re training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, one of the most important things you can do is tap. It’s a fundamental part of the learning experience. In class, you’ll tap over and over again as you figure out what not to do. Tapping out isn’t seen as quitting and it’s not a sign of admitting defeat. It’s a way of saying, “Yep, you got me. Let’s go again and see what happens.” Tapping is also an ego-check. Think you’re “too hardcore” to tap when you end up in a bad position? It’s amazing how much humble pie you’re able to eat when someone’s radius is crushing your carotid artery. Okay, buddy, enjoy your nap. When you wake up, go research “Judo Gene LeBell and Steven Seagal”, see what kind of company you’re in, and then come back to class with a better attitude (and maybe a new pair of pants). Show me an elite fighter who’s never tapped. They simply don’t exist. The most dangerous bad-asses on the planet tap out regularly in training because they know that’s how you get better. If you’re practicing and never need to tap, it doesn’t mean you’re an indomitable beast. It means you’re surrounded by less-skilled weaklings who don’t challenge you and you’ll end up a paper tiger. This ties back to mental toughness. People with real grit understand that true success only comes from repeatedly recognizing when you’ve made a wrong turn, owning up to the situation, and then doggedly getting back to work again and again and again. The (unacceptable) alternative is to be the type of person who hits one obstacle, sees it as insurmountable, and decides reaching the goal isn’t worth a little bit of uncomfortable
Origin: Tip: Tap Out to Win
Tip: Sit a Lot? Do These 4 Exercises
Slouchers, Do the T-W-A-Y Circuit Many lifters experience shoulder pain. This is often due to faulty biomechanics or weakness/inactivity of the scapular stabilizers (serratus anterior, rhomboids, levator scapulae and trapezius). Most commonly, anterior shoulder pain (in the front of the shoulder) will be due to difficulty fully retracting the scapulae. Much like the glute amnesia caused by prolonged sitting, scapular retractors can be hard to properly recruit after we sit slouched for hours. Because our shoulder blades tend to move into protraction (up and forward) when posture is less than ideal, you need to retrain your retractors to pull your shoulder blades down and back. The challenge is finding scapular retraction exercises in which the bigger, stronger muscles of the shoulder girdle won’t overpower their smaller counterparts. These exercises will help to combat the problem. Not only will they help lifters with shoulder stability for pain-free benching and overhead pressing, they’re also of great benefit for injury prevention in overhead movement athletes. All four exercises will be performed in a prone lying position. Take a breath to expand and stabilize the rib cage, lifting the sternum and head to achieve proper cervical and thoracic alignment. The range of motion will be minimal, which allows you to better target the scapular retractors. Maintain constant tension on the target muscles throughout the movement and between reps for maximum time under tension – don’t put your arms back down until all the reps are done. These movements are much more challenging than appear, so you’ll perform them with absolutely no load at first. Focus on movement control, squeezing the shoulder blades for a good strong peak contraction. The T Start with your arms straight out beside you in external rotation, thumbs up, forming a T-shape. Your upper arms should form a perfect 90 degree angle with your torso. Keeping your arms straight, lift your arms straight up while squeezing your shoulder blades together as hard as you can. Hold for a 3-second peak contraction. Repeat for 8-12 reps. The W Begin by extending your arms (palms down) up to 10 and 2 o’clock. Bend your elbows down and back as if you were trying to put your elbows in your back pockets (W-shape), focusing on a maximal contraction of the scapulae. Hold for a 3-second peak contraction. Repeat for 8-12 reps. The A Put your arms down alongside your torso (palms up) at about 5 and 7 o’clock (A-shape). Leading with the shoulder blades, lift your straight arms up and back as if you were trying to push off from a wall. Squeeze your scapulae hard and hold for 3 seconds. Repeat for 8-12 reps. The Y Extend your arms up (palms down) to about 10 and 2 o’clock (Y-shape). Leading with the hands, lift your straight arms up, while squeezing the shoulder blades back and down. Hold for 3 seconds and repeat 8-12 times. Programming Notes Perform all four exercises as a circuit at least two or three times per week. You can do them as a warm-up, at the end of an upper body workout, or even at home on the living room floor. In week 1, one set of each exercise will suffice. You’ll be surprised how tough they are. If the exercises seem too easy, you’re not trying. Focus on the squeeze. Add a second circuit in week 2 or 3 and then a third in week 3 or 4. Rest only 30 seconds or so between circuits. Resist the temptation to add load initially. You need to focus on maximally contracting the target muscles that drive full scapular retraction. You could easily cheat the movement up under load, but you won’t develop the proper mind-muscle connection you need to get the retractors firing. Once you’ve mastered recruiting the proper musculature, you can add a small load. Start with a 2.5 pound plate in each hand. If you go too heavy, other muscles will take over the movement and then you’re wasting your time. For the W, gravity is pulling in the wrong direction. Instead of using weights, anchor a low-resistance band to something stable a little way from your head, grab both ends and perform the movement as described above.
Origin: Tip: Sit a Lot? Do These 4 Exercises
Natural Gains: The Proven Training Strategies
Lead Photo Credit: Brad Neathery What’s the Best Training Program? Is it the workout plan used by the biggest and leanest pro bodybuilder? The strongest lifter with the most powerlifting records? Probably not. Their programs work for their (often drugged) bodies, not necessarily your (probably natural) body. Instead of getting lost searching for the perfect program, you need to adopt a set of strategies and methods that have been proven to work for everyone. You can then take this template of strategies and customize it by choosing the best exercises for your body and your goals. First, let’s review the strategies: Strategy 1 – Train Frequently Natural lifters often make two common mistakes. First, they try to specialize in building muscle too early. They never really build a base of strength to support more advanced, bodybuilding-style training. Second, they change exercises too often. This can even lead to program hopping: jumping from one plan to the next before they’ve even given the first plan a chance to work. This is a monkey-mind mentality. Increasing your workout or movement frequency – lifting 4-5 days a week – is a foundational strategy for building both strength and mass. Here’s what it’ll do for you: Increase your motor learning Motor learning is basically familiarizing yourself with a particular exercise until that movement becomes natural. It’s simple really. The more often you perform a movement, the more familiar your muscle memory becomes in performing that movement. Better motor learning will yield better long-term progress because you’ll be able to move more weight, improve muscle fiber recruitment, and create more mechanical tension directly in your muscles. Increase your protein synthesis The more often you train a muscle the more protein synthesis you’ll trigger. Protein synthesis is the fundamental biological process by which cells build their specific proteins – and your muscles grow through this process. High movement frequency is the key that unlocks the protein synthesis process for days on end. Studies have shown that protein synthesis responds to resistance training and lasts about 24-48 hours afterward. That’s one of the main reasons why training a muscle group frequently (verses once a week or so on “chest day”) is a crucial aspect of making strength and size gains – because it keeps protein synthesis at its peak. The more often you train the muscle the more consistent protein synthesis will be. Also, protein synthesis keeps you in an anabolic (muscle building) state and keeps your testosterone levels elevated. As a result, you can expect to make consistent gains in size and strength. Strategy 2 – Use Micro-Adjustments The smallest changes to your technique can be the key to busting through training plateaus. Here’s why: Micro-adjustments reduce injuries You can’t make regular gains if you’re always tweaking your shoulder or pulling a muscle. And that’s where the smallest adjustments can make the biggest difference – keeping you away from the injuries. By making small changes in bar position, foot placement, or grip, you can create enough variation to prevent overuse injuries (and boredom), without completely altering your workout. This works with just about every exercise. Here’s an example of a micro-adjustment: Your lower back is acting up when you squat. Instead of hurting yourself or tossing the squat out of your workout, make a small adjustment to where you position the bar on your back. Go from high-bar to low-bar squats to take some stress off your lower back and even decrease the range of motion in the movement. Micro-adjustments drive progress Sustainable systems are the key to gains. So when you hit a small bump in the road with your training, whether it’s an injury or simply feeling less motivated, don’t upend the entire system. A pothole on Gains Street doesn’t require ripping up the entire program. Just repair the pothole. Stay consistent. Push yourself and make small adjustments when necessary. Strategy 3 – Use Lower Volume, Heavy Strength Work Your goal when you walk into the gym is simple: get stronger. If getting stronger isn’t your goal, you’ll miss out on muscle gains as well as the obvious strength gains. Every muscle building and fat-burning technique is limited if you don’t start with a great strength base. Think of it like this: The person who trains to “build muscle” will do okay for himself and make modest gains for a while. But the person who trains to “get stronger first, then build muscle second” will make better gains and KEEP making them. Once you build your base of strength then other conditions, like improving your mind-muscle connection, become increasingly important. But with all other factors being equal, the stronger guy is going to be bigger. So increase the weight on the bar, even if it means lowering the amount of reps you do. Now, if you’re going to build the most strength and size, you need to put an emphasis on the
Origin: Natural Gains: The Proven Training Strategies
Tip: Apple Cider Vinegar, Omega-3s, and C3G
One of the most effective things you can do to optimize body composition is improve insulin sensitivity. If you’re more insulin sensitive, it’ll be easier to build muscle and lose fat. Insulin is a storage/anabolic hormone. Anabolic means “to add.” It’s released mostly in response to an increase in blood sugar. We could say that insulin is triggered by the need to lower blood glucose back down to normal levels, and it does so by favoring the entry of glucose (and other nutrients) into the “storage facilities” like muscle cells, fat cells, the liver, and brain. As such, if you’re more insulin sensitive, you won’t need to produce as much insulin in response to an increase in blood sugar levels, and if you’re resistant any increase in blood glucose can really jack up insulin release. This is important because the more of a hormone you produce or release, the longer it’ll take for that hormone to go back down to baseline levels. Insulin being a storage hormone directly increases storage of nutrients into the various reserves, including fat cells. So if insulin is high and there’s a lot of fat present at the same time, you’ll increase fat storage. The other part of the equation is that elevated insulin reduces fat mobilization. As long as insulin stays elevated, you’ll be inefficient at losing fat. If you’re more sensitive to insulin, you don’t need to produce as much to get the job done, which means it doesn’t stay high for as long and you can spend more time being in a fat loss state. One simple thing to do to optimize insulin sensitivity is to take apple cider vinegar and omega-3 fatty acids about 15-20 minutes before your meals. You don’t need much. A tablespoon of vinegar and half a dose of Flameout® prior to any meal containing carbs is all you need. If you want your body to do an even better job at improving insulin sensitivity, take Indigo-3G® in the morning. This supplement significantly and rapidly increases insulin sensitivity. And even more interesting, it improves insulin sensitivity selectively in muscle cells, meaning that your body will more easily store nutrients in the muscles rather than fat
Origin: Tip: Apple Cider Vinegar, Omega-3s, and C3G
Tip: A New Exercise for Big Shoulders
The delts are one of the most difficult muscle groups to develop. They’re also the most vulnerable to injury. The glenohumeral joint is the primary joint in almost all upper body functions. If you’re looking to press and pull heavy weight, you better have shoulders that are up for the challenge. There are two factors that need to be taken into consideration: You have to use movements that protect the health of the shoulder joint. You have to maximize the muscle recruitment to get them to grow This is often a difficult combination, except in this case. The Neutral-Grip Shoulder Press You’ve used the neutral-grip lat bar for pulldowns. Now try it for shoulder presses. Note that the cable is attached at the bottom of the handle, so you’ll be pushing up, not pulling down. The pulley should be set at about the belly or lower chest level. It’s a great pressing grip: elbows roughly 45 degrees from the body and hands in neutral grip (facing one another). The position of the arm alleviates unnecessary joint pressure to extend shoulder integrity. Begin with 25% of your normal barbell military press for 4 sets of 10. The video shows Musclemania Heavyweight Pro, Fred Shaka, who normally presses 225 pounds for reps, but trains this exercise at 60
Origin: Tip: A New Exercise for Big Shoulders
Tip: Do the Kettlebell Curl
Use An “Open” Grip Fat-bar training increases grip and overall strength. You can buy training tools to create a fatter/open grip or you can just use kettlebells, just not in the traditional manner. Instead of using the handles, grasp the cannonball part of the kettlebell and curl away. You can only perform palms-up curls with this method, but what a burn! Try them standing, seated, in an incline position, or on a preacher bench. A Word of Caution Always implement thick-grip work slowly and gradually. Guys often buy fat-grip attachments and then rush to the gym to try them out on anything they can get their hands on. And what happens only days later? Tendonitis, and it takes a while to heal. Don’t be overzealous. Be a tortoise with these things and you’ll win the race over
Origin: Tip: Do the Kettlebell Curl
Lifters Need to Lift More Often
Here’s what you need to know… Experts used to think that once-a-week, high-volume training for individual body parts was best. Science now shows that a higher frequency of training works better. In newbies, post-workout muscle protein synthesis (MPS) continues for upwards of 48 hours. But in experienced lifters, MPS only continues for about 16 hours, proving that training frequency needs to be increased. When you work a body part once a week, you spend almost 5 or 6 days not growing. Increasing training frequency to two times a week essentially doubles the amount of time you spend growing. When you increase frequency, you reduce the amount of work you do in a workout. In return, you get better recovery and an opportunity to use more exercise variety. Manipulate Frequency and Volume for Growth Strength How often you train and the total amount of work you do in the gym, otherwise known as frequency and volume, are two of the most important variables you can manipulate for improving muscle growth, strength, and performance. In the past, most experts thought that having once-per week, high-volume training workouts for a particular body part was optimal for growth. Now, science is beginning to reveal that spreading that volume over multiple workouts may be more advantageous for building muscle and improving strength. In fact, new research shows that increased training frequency is almost an imperative for anyone who’s not a rank newbie. Why? It starts with protein synthesis. Protein Synthesis and Muscle Growth In order to fully understand how training frequency influences muscle growth, you need to understand what drives muscle growth and how it changes over time. Currently, the leading theory behind how muscle actually grows is because of something called muscle protein synthesis. (1) When you work out and stress your muscles sufficiently, you up-regulate the process of protein synthesis, which allows the body to combine amino acids into new proteins, i.e., new muscle tissue. However, it’s important to recognize that the process is a rate that diminishes when you become experienced. As a beginner, the amount of time that protein synthesis is elevated in response to exercise is quite long, with some studies showing upwards of 48 hours. That means that as a beginner, your ability to grow new muscle from a single workout can last a few days. (2) New research, however, tells us that as you become more experienced and more resilient to stress, the amount of time the body spends growing muscle from a single workout decreases significantly. In fact, some research shows that for experienced lifters, this rate of muscle building can actually return to baseline within 16 measly hours. (3) This is one of the biggest reasons why it becomes increasingly more difficult to grow as you become more experienced, and all the more reason experienced lifters need to start training more frequently. Bottom Line: The body responds to exercise by increasing protein synthesis. As a beginner, this response is intense and lasts a long time. As you become more experienced, though, this growth response diminishes, making once-a-week single-body part workouts less and less effective. Start Increasing Training Frequency Increasing how often you train certain muscle groups means you’ll have less volume per workout, but you’ll also have the opportunity to incorporate greater volume overall. For example, let’s say you’re a newbie and you train legs once per week and do 8 sets of squats. That’s a lot of sets and chances are you’re exhausted and will remain sore for days afterwards. But if you’re experienced, the actual growth response to that session might be over with by the next day. This means that despite the difficulty of your workout, an experienced lifter might only be growing for a day or so in response. That leaves the rest of the week when those muscles aren’t growing. But let’s say you split the amount of work you did during that single workout over two training sessions. Now you’re doing 4 sets of squats, twice per week. When you make this change, a few things happen. First, you’re reducing the amount of work you’re doing per workout, but what you get in return is a better ability to recover and the opportunity to use more exercises. Consider that in the example you completed 8 sets of squats. By working legs twice a week, you have the opportunity to do 4 sets of squats and maybe 4 sets of leg press, for example. Second, you’re increasing the amount of time you spend growing. If you’re experienced and you hit a certain muscle group only once per week, it’s likely that you’re spending almost 5-6 days without growth. When you increase the frequency that you train certain muscle groups, you’re now essentially doubling the amount of time you spend growing. All together, the benefits of increased frequency means that you can do more work over time, while also spending significantly more time each week growing. Bottom Line:
Origin: Lifters Need to Lift More Often
Tip: Trigger Biceps Growth With Spider Curls
When it comes to training the biceps, simply doing more sets and reps won’t cut it. The problem? Most lifters are hitting the SAME parts of the biceps over and over again while completely leaving out – or at least under-stimulating – other parts. You need to hit both the long and short head of the biceps brachii (as well as the brachialis). Here’s an exercise for the often neglected short head: Spider Curl with Slow Negatives and Iso Holds Spider curls – where you lean over an incline bench and let the arms hang straight down – target the short head of the biceps. The big advantage of spider curls over preacher curls is the constant tension, especially at the top portion of the movement. The slower negatives allow more time under tension during the eccentric or lowering phase, where we can handle more load. This allows you to work at a higher intensity, and higher intensity means greater stress which means greater adaptation. Here’s an additional twist: use a fat grip. One of the benefits of thick-bar training is that thicker handles stimulate much more muscle activation in the hands, forearms, upper arms, and even the whole upper body. More muscle activation means much bigger muscle and strength
Origin: Tip: Trigger Biceps Growth With Spider Curls
Tip: Exercise Variety is Overrated
“You Must Have Variety, Bro!” Oh Really? Some say that you won’t make progress if you do the same workout twice in a row. Others say that you won’t make progress if you keep the same exercise in your program for more than a few weeks. The truth? It’s those who don’t stick to any one program for more than a few weeks that never seem to make any significant progress. They’re the ones quoting old-school Dave Tate articles, yet don’t even look like they could squat their bodyweight. The worst culprits are those who like to toss in exercises for the novelty alone. “Look Ma, BOSU ball squats while juggling oranges! You know, to keep the body guessing!” The Greatest Training Gap Look, I’m not bashing exercise variety. Variety has a time and place. However, the greatest gap in most people’s training isn’t lack of novelty, but rather lack of mastery. Most people never experience their “true” fitness or strength because they never allow themselves enough time to get comfortable with a particular lift or movement. Who wants to perform plain ol’ vanilla deadlifts when you can add chains or perform them in a mine field? Master the Simple Stuff To add variety you don’t need to be excessive. Just changing your grip, foot stance, bar height, or adding pauses can be enough of a change to make the deadlift more effective (given a specific technique flaw or weakness). So rather than adding exercises haphazardly for the sake of “doing something cool and different,” use less variety and learn to get really good at doing the simple stuff
Origin: Tip: Exercise Variety is Overrated
Tip: A New Way To Use a Trap Bar
The Trap Bar Pullover Trap bar pullovers provide a unique stimulus to the upper back, shoulders, chest, triceps, and abs, and they force you to do pullovers correctly. Here’s why you need to start doing it: One of the most common mistakes with pullovers is to overstretch at the bottom of the movement. The unique and semi-awkward leverage used for trap bar pullovers forces you to terminate the range of motion at the ideal stopping point. If you overstretch, you’ll lose control of the weight due to the disadvantageous leverage. Pullovers with the trap bar allow you to use a wide, neutral grip, placing enormous tension on the lats, particularly in the stretched position. It’s also shoulder friendly. Because of the hanging nature of the weight and the challenging leverage that’s pulling away and against you, it takes twice as long to do each rep. Essentially, the trap bar exaggerates the arcing motion of the movement. The time it takes to move into and out of the stretched position is greater due to the size, awkward nature, and overall positioning of the load. Because you’re forced to slow down the movement – particularly in the stretched position – it takes additional stress off the shoulder joint while providing incredible stress to the surrounding musculature. The level of grip and forearm strength required during trap bar pullovers is unusually high. In order to control the trap bar and ensure it doesn’t twist in the hands, you’ll have to use near max-effort crushing grip-strength. The stimulus to the core and abs is higher than almost any other pullover variation. The trap bar also provides a less stable version of pullovers in general. As a result, it improves motor control by forcing you to hone in on mechanics. Trap bar pullovers can be done using the standard grip or using the outside frame for handles. Although they’re somewhat similar, the latter method is more challenging and less stable due to the length of the bar and decreased
Origin: Tip: A New Way To Use a Trap Bar
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