High Intensity in Your Workouts

This video isn't meant to talk down towards people who go to the gym and don't push themselves so don't get me wrong, at least those kinds of people are getting off their buts and doing something to better their health and fitness, even if they are not really training to get all that much stronger.

The problem is, I see a lot of people at the gym doing the same workout every time, never really getting stronger and kind of just going through the motions, not pushing themselves, not taking it to the next level. Sure they are getting blood to their muscles, raising their heart rate and burning calories at the same time. But to be honest, many of these people doing what they are considering to be weight training is really just a more divers form of cardio.

If you are lifting 50% of you max for 20+ reps every time you workout and not going to failure, then you are basically telling your muscles that there is no need to get any stronger so guess what, they don't get any stronger. You need to tell your muscles they are weaklings by overloading them to the point where there is no choice but for your muscles to get stronger in order to accomplish this new workload you are exposing them to.

And guess what, you don't even need to workout longer or more often to do this, you can even workout less often and for shorter period of time if you use a high intensity workout approach. At the end of the day, your objective is to get to your hardest working set as quickly and safely as you can and exhaust the muscles to the point of total failure, even if you have to cheat the last few reps or even not get full range of motion on the last couple reps.

Here is one example of what I am talking about and I am not bashing people that do CrossFit since I am one of them, but in all fairness I do my CrossFit in moderation and pick workout days that compliment my weight training days. People often make fun of CrossFiters because they work so hard but seem to never really get all that jacked. Often the goal of the CrossFit athlete is to have amazing conditioning with useable strength and there is no doubt that a CrossFit workout will get you in amazing usable condition. The downside is that the high workload done at many CrossFit gyms can be counter productive to getting "strong" in other word it can eat your gains and in some cases lead to strain and injury! That said there are top CrossFit athletes that have proven conditioning and strength can both be obtainable but these athletes do dedicated strength training with very heavy weights on a regular basis.

OK, so here it is in a but shell, train hard not long, make your last working set as intense as you can to the point of complete, muscles exhaustion and failure. Keep challenging yourself each workout, a plateau happens when your brain has decided you can not go any further so change the way you think and train like the person you want to be, not who you think you are.

How to Position Heavy Dumbbells when Doing Bench Press

I had one of my Online Personal Training Clients mention that they where starting to get up in weight in their dumbbell bench press and where concerned about getting the extra weight load into position since they have issues with their back and did not want to potentially potentially strain or injure their back.

As with everything everything there are easy ways and hard ways to go about doing things, if you use technique rather than muscle to maneuver yourself into position when doing a heavy dumbbell bench press, then the amount of weight you use should not be a problem or put any unnecessary strain on your back.

In this YouTube video I show you how I use my legs and upper body to work with each other as counterbalances and get pretty much as much weight as you can handle when doing dumbbell bench press.

Get Fit Over 40 January 2015 Update Video

A few quick updates for the new year...

I'm planning to attend another Men's Physique Fitness Contest this year around the end of May so it gives me about 4 months to prepare for it. I figure two months of working hard trying to add a bit of muscle and then a couple of months of trimming down a bit. Maybe I'll step on stage with a little more muscle this time.

My Online Personal Training has been going really well, I have a nice comfortable client base I have been working with and it has been very rewarding to be a part of their progress. I am still taking more new clients at this time so send me an email nd me an email if you are interested!

A while back I made a Chromebook review video and spent most of the video raving about the Chromebook concept, even though I have been an Apple fan boy since before using a Mac was cool. Watch my video to see why I think a Chromebook is a great option even if you are already an established Mac or PC user. Anyways, I got perhaps a bit too adventurous and thought I would try one of those hybrid Tablet/Laptop Windows 8.1 Convertibles and I really wanted it too workout but at the end of the day, it ended up slowing me down in my workflow rather than speeding up my workflow like I found the Chromebooks did for me.

So I am back to using a Chromebook again, this time I picked up an Acer C720P Chromebook with an 11 inch touchscreen display. If you are interested in another Chromebook review, let me know and perhaps I will do a quick review for it.

That's about it for now, I'll just keep doing what I do and keep making more videos for you all.

Deadlift PR at 190 Pounds Body Weight - 405 Pounds x 12 reps

I guess you could say I am trying to work back up to where I was prior to my Mens Physique Competition, which was followed by some well needed rest, and then a family vacation and of course the Holiday season where workouts get a back seat to other things. So what I'm tryign to say is the last 2 months have not been as productive for me as I would like them to have been, at least in terms of buidling muscle and getting stronger...

I have been working hard this past week or so in the gym but have felt really up and down, and recovery is slow since my body is not used to the workloads anymore! Today was Deadlift day and my legs where still a bit soar from Mondays killer Squat day. Today I had no idea how my body would react to the Deadlifts but on the positive side I was at my CrossFit Gym with my bro's and we all like to push each other so I knew I was not geting off easy.

We started off with a 12 rep set at 225 pounds to get the blood flowing. The weight felt really good and I snapped them out in a hurry, we added 50 pounds for the next set and again the 12 reps at 275 pounds felt pretty easy and I got through them fast. Now it was getting serious as we added another 50 pounds to the bar for a total of 325 pounds. But again I went through the 12 reps really quickly and yes it was hard but I knew there was more left in me.

As a 4 man group, we decided to up the anti and put an additional 80 pounds on the bar (405 pounds) for the last set, and just do as many reps as possible with the goal of 12 reps hanging out there, and to be honest, I was hoping to get 6-8 reps...

I'm not going to lie, at 405 pounds, things slowed down a lot but the bar kept coming off the floor and my back kept straightening out at the top, so I just toughed it out till I hit 10 reps. After I hit the magic 10th rep I thought, why not just make it 12 and put some pressure on the other boys? You know, I may of even had a 13th rep in me but my lungs where done at that point and I think I proved to myself that I was back in the game...