Category: fitness

Luobuo is turnip in Chinese BTW, so Chinese call big calves “turnip legs.” It isn’t a sign of approval BTW. 🙂
Calves are the kind of thing you can’t hide in summer and the summers here are long and hot. A lot of guys look like they don’t work out at all because they have tiny little calves. So in the interest of helping guys out, here’s a little workout that you can add to what you’re doing to help your calves grow.

Stand on the stairs with your heels both hanging off the step. Push your heels down as far as you can and stretch the calves as much as possible. Then come up on your toes and squeeze your calves as hard as you can at the top. Repeat for 100 times in as few sets as possible. Make sure you get 100. As you get better, do fewer sets. Do NOT bounce through these – squeeze and stretch the calves as much as possible. Calves respond to high volume so do this up to 3x a week.

The number one reason guys have small calves is the lack of serious, heavy leg training like barbell squats and deadlifts. You won’t get big calves just isolating the calves but by adding this short routine to already serious leg work, you can bring up this often lagging body part. Let us know if you try this out.

Who’s the fittest? Find out at the Tactical Strength Challenge (TSC)!

Training up for this will help you lose fat and get strong!

The challenge has two parts: 1. you agree to make the deadlift, pullup, and kettlebell snatch a part of your workout from now until the first weekend of May 2014, and 2. if you feel so inclined, you come compete at the TSC competition on 03 May 2014 at Formosa Fitness.

Here’s what the competition part of the challenge looks like:

The idea behind this is to use the competition to drive your workouts. Here are the benefits to the challenge:
1. The date of the competition gives you an end date, forcing you to focus on getting the workouts done rather than procrastinating.
2. You’ll be going through this at the same time as other people, providing a sense of community to drive you further.
3. You’re forced to focus on broadly useful exercises instead of less useful ones, getting strong and losing fat in the process.
4. Plus on competition day you’ll get to come meet a bunch of people just like yourself. Trust me, it’s a relief to meet other people that enjoy this stuff here since no one else in your gym may be into this.
All are welcome!!

On the morning of May 03, we have weighins at 10am and the competition starts at 10:30am. Everyone gets three chances to pull a deadlift max. When everyone has pulled, everyone (guys and gals) does a set of max pullups. You’re done when your feet hit the floor. After that, you do a set of max kettlebell snatches in 5:00 with the 12kg (women) or 16kg (men’s beginner), or 24kg (men’s open division). The winner is the one who gets the most points in the three events.

If you’re interested in joining, please signup here: https://www.facebook.com/events/189569594584665/

Need a program to get you started? Do these workouts below to prepare:
Tactical Strength Challenge Beginner Program
Workout A
hip ext 3×10
body squats 40
pullups 5×5 (do 25 total)
deadlift 5, 5, 5+
DB OH press 5×8
pullups 5×5 (do 25 total)
DB or KB swings 5x10L/R (minimal rest between sets)

Workout B
hip ext 3×10
body squats 40
pullups 5×5 (do 25 total)
Barbell squat 4×10
DB rows 3x10L/R
Pushups 3×25
DB or KB snatch 5x10L/R (minimal rest between sets)

Alternate these workouts ABA for a total of 3x a week. Do these every week between now and May 3 and you’ll be ready to compete!

Hope to see you there!

World famous strength coach Charles Poliquin went to see the Conan movie that came out a couple of years ago. He disliked it so much that he mentioned it on Facebook. What caused him to dislike it so much? The physique of the actor that played Conan. He made the comment,”This guy looks like he has a TRX.” Arnold played the original Conan back in the early 1980’s and he lifted real weights and looked like it, too. The new guy, well, not so much.

So when I wrote about suspension trainers being a fad for weak people yesterday, maybe it upset a few people. Let me explain.

Everyone has to start somewhere and most of us are starting at the bootom. No problem with that at all. When I taught my kids to ride a bike, we started with training wheels on the bike like most parent’s do. But here’s the catch: eventually the training wheels have to come off.

Ask yourself really hard: are most people that do suspension training moving on to harder training? Really?

A proper progression on a suspension trainer should look something like this:
back row (high angle)–> back row (low angle) –> horizontal row –>static vertical holds –> pullup negatives –>real pullups.

This was why I designed our old STX with separate handles straps instead of having them together like other suspension trainers. I wanted people to progress to real pullups. So how many people doing suspension training progress to those higher levels? Not many, correct?

Maybe people aren’t ready to do full pullups, right? So how about the 40/40 challenge? The 40/40 challenge is 40 straight low rows followed by 40 straight atomic puhsups. The atomic pushup is a logical progression from chest presses. It looks something like this:
chest press (high angle) –> chest press (low angle)–> suspended pushups –> feet in strap pushups –> atomic pushups

How many people doing suspension training are going through that process to the harder levels? Why are they not completing the 40/40 challenge? If suspension training is so fantastic, why don’t I see more videos of clients being trained to that level? Or even trainers themselves?

We use suspension trainers to get people started and primarily for rehab (they’re great for that). But in the gym, once they’ve reached a level of competence on the STX, we get them doing real pullups and pushups and move them to barbell training. If it’s at-home training, we encourage people to move past the easy movements to higher level/harder moves that will get them stronger. We also encourage at-home trainers to buy heavier kettlebells so they can get the benefit of heavier resistance training.

The fact is you have to move beyond the easy stuff if you really want to get strong, and strength should be the major fitness goal since it’s the one missing the most often. Far too often, suspension trainers are used as a crutch instead of a temporary tool. But eventually you have to leave the crutches behind and learn how to walk on your own.

Are you tired of kettlebells yet? According to some people, you should be. When we brought kettlebells into Taiwan, a lot of people expected us to promote them like the lastest fad. That was how these people treated every other new fitness product that had come along, why should kettlebells be any different? Afterall, a new fad comes through the fitness community every six months, right? So they were perplexed when we refused to deeply discount our kettlebells and sell them to wholesalers who didn’t know how to use them and didn’t care. We believe that kettlebells should be sold by people who actually use them. They were perplexed when we told people they should work up to using HEAVY kettlebells since the entire industry tells people what they want to hear – that tiny little weights lifted thousands of times is the way to get fit. And they were shocked again when we told people that perhaps they weren’t getting enough protein. Isn’t the latest fad to go vegan?!?

So if you’re still here then you’re not one of the fad people that is likely now talking about bikini bridges or thigh gaps or mermaid lines or whatever else people are wasting their time with.

The system of training behind kettlebells is deeper than most people know and certainly out of place in the mainstream fitness industry, which is why many of them have moved on. And that’s a good thing because the people that are left are the serious ones that won’t get distracted by the latest shiny toy to come along.

Here’s something not many people will tell you: the latest fitness fad is based on the mindset of failure. They’ll tell you that you aren’t really capable of getting strong so here’s the latest suspension trainer, instead. You aren’t capable of learning how to barbell squat properly so here’s a piece of plastic for the bar to sit on on your back. Hey, barbell squatting is scary, isn’t it? You have to protect yourself! You aren’t capable of lifting heavy kettlebells correctly. Better stay with light ones and better get the vinyl covered ones. You know – just in case you drop it because you’re clumsy.

You don’t NEED many of the latest fitness fads. You don’t need the cheap pieces of plastic. You CAN learn how to barbell squat properly. You don’t NEED vinyl on your kettlebell nor do you need your mother to cut your meat for you. You ARE capable of getting strong and fit. So when the next thing that prays on that mindset of failure comes along, ignore it and stick with what builds you up and makes you strong. Because you’re better than that.

When you think of efficiency, what do you think of first? If you’re like most people, you think of time or money. And while those are certainly important, what about your joint health? How much of that are you willing to spend (or perhaps waste) learning how to do something like exercising? How much are you willing to lose out on because you wouldn’t make an investment when you were relatively rich?

Think about it this way: if you want to learn how to barbell squat or deadlift, you’re moving your bones and joints as well as your joints. Are you doing the moves correctly or are you grinding your gears? If you continuously do exercises incorrectly, won’t you pay a price with your joints?

One of my favorite TV commercials shows a line of men hiking up a hill with backpacks on their backs and all of them are holding their knees as they climb the stairs going up because their knees hurt. Naturally the commercial is for a supplement that might or might not help, but I often wonder if people that hurt their knees when hiking ever consider why they hurt? Wouldn’t learning how to use their glute and hamstrings to push off of each step instead of leaning forward on to the toes and only using their quad muscles be useful? That’s how most people climb stairs and over-using the quads and under-using the hamstrings is a great way to give yourself knee pain. The knee is in-between your quads and hamstrings. Overuse one side without ever learning to use the other side and the part in the middle is going to hurt.

You could spend a little joint health learning how to exercise correctly, which would be a wise investment, or you could waste your joints’ health every time you exercise. Either way, you’re choosing where and how to spend your joint health.