Training, In over three decades, I’ve worked with athletes who want to perform better, MILFs re-investing in their assets, and more fat-loss clients than I can even remember. However, I’ve recently found myself designing more and more programs for guys who want to bring up lagging body parts. It may be because I take an approach to training that’s based primarily on improving aesthetics and symmetry, or maybe it’s because I’ve always been outspoken in my opinion that goals are intensely personal. Whatever the case, I’ve always been an ardent proponent of specialization programs, and have encouraged people to use them in their training. Since full-body muscle growth slows dramatically for advanced trainees, I firmly believe that specialization programs are superior to programs aimed at increasing overall size many times. In intermediate and advanced trainees, significant growth happens in bursts. Whatever theory of training you subscribe to and whatever program is your “go-to” for mass gain, if you’ve been training for a few years chances are you’ve gotten to where you don’t add a pound of muscle at a time. Instead you grow in spurts. This is true for the vast majority of my clients and it has certainly been true for me as well. At higher levels of development, full-body growth becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. The bigger you are, the harder it is to gain further. Although in a broad sense this is because you’re getting closer to your genetic ceiling, one of the more specific reasons is that your body simply cannot continue to grow under the same conditions. Avanced trainees are (supposedly) stronger. Lifting heavier weight for a comparable number of reps is more taxing on the nervous system and the general metabolic processes involved in recovery. In almost all cases, as you progress your ability to train for full-body growth will be far greater than your ability to recover from such training. Very unfair. On an already well developed body, training your ass off for ten weeks to gain two pounds of muscle–which probably makes a minimal visible difference–is lame. When you put on some muscle in a given time period it’s generally distributed over your entire frame. Now gaining a few pounds of lean body mass is always nice, and I would never say it isn’t a goal worthy of effort or achievement. It just sucks when you achieve it and you can’t see it. And when you’re already pretty well developed, that’s often what happens, sadly. Everybody notices when you put an inch on your arms, or add significant chest size. Training with the goal of increasing the size of a single muscle or muscle group has a lot of benefits, but the main one is visibility. People notice. More than that, YOU NOTICE. Nothing is as satisfying as actually seeing the results in the mirror or in your clothes, instead of having to account for infinitesimal changes on a measuring tape. Then if you can only have the occasional growth spurt, why not dedicate a spurt to something that will be visibly noticeable, intensely satisfying, and realistically achievable over a relatively short time? I believe in short, single-minded bursts of training for four to six weeks, and no more. I prefer to spend those weeks getting as much out of a training program as possible, putting on some noticeable size and keeping fat gain to a minimum,if any at all. To develop a specialization program, the first things to consider are volume and frequency. It should go without saying that when prioritizing a muscle, you need to train it more. Not only with more sets and reps, but a much greater frequency, too. For a specialization program to be optimally effective, it must meet the following criteria: –HIGH FREQUENCY In a perfect scenario, I’d have people training once every 36 hours. When that isn’t possible, every other day is the next best option. At the minimum, you should be able to figure out how to squeeze in three workouts per week. That’d still be ok. –HIGH TOTAL WEEKLY VOLUME, MODERATE WORKOUT VOLUME Your weekly volume is going to be pretty high. Between three and four training sessions per week, you’re getting a lot of total work for the selected muscle group. I recommend that you generally aim for 30 to 35 sets per week, broken into as many sessions as possible. This recommendation alone doesn’t account for reps or load, so here are some more specifics. 35 SETS PER WEEK: 10 Sets of High Reps: 12-15 10 Sets of Moderate Reps: 8-12 10 Sets of Low Reps: 4-6  5 Sets of Very High Reps: 20-25 Reps One of the best things about specializing a body part is you get to shy away from the basics and really get into some fun exercises. While it’d be impossible to list all the combinations of all the exercises, I’d say that each workout would need to consist of the following: -COMPOUND EXERCISES I hope I don’t need to define this for you. Just know that big movements are always at the core of any program. Each workout should have at least two compound exercises. -EXPLOSIVE MOVEMENTS Exercises requiring explosiveness are great because they increase strength, power, coordination, and recruit muscle fibers that other exercises leave behind.  I recommend including one explosive movement per workout. -ISOLATION EXERCISES You don’t fool anyone, so stop pretending you don’t like biceps curls. Sure, you can probably get big arms without them, but how sweet is that pump? Other examples include lateral raises, leg extensions, leg curls, cable flys, triceps extensions and calf raises. For the aim of specialization, I recommend adding two isolation movements per workout. Some Due Notes on Maintenance One of the things I notice about most specialization programs is that almost no one mentions how to train the rest of the body. You’d think increasing the size of a single muscle was as simple as adding in a few extra sets and whatever they decide

Training, For a few gifted individuals, building a round, wide full chest is as simple as doing a couple sets of barbell flat bench press. For those who have the genetics of an average mortal, it takes a bit more of a scientific, methodical approach to build a chest that resembles slabs of thick striated beef from top to bottom. It’s safe to assume that you’re probably not one of the aforementioned genetic freaks (better known as dirty lucky bastards), so this article is for you (cheer up, it could be worse…). Today you’re going to learn some principles, tips and tricks that, along with your hard work (but that’s a given anyway, right?), will serve as your genetic equalizer, so no more excuses for your pitiful undereveloped flabby pecs! So let’s get this party started.. At the end of the day, I enjoy science but I’m a meathead just like you. So from one meathead to another let’s go over the chest muscles themselves and what they do. Then you’ll be able to make intelligent choices when it comes to exercise selection and execution. I’ll keep the nerd talk to a minimum but please, read carefully. This may actually make all the difference in the world for your chest development and putting all these info in an easy to comprehend format took me a freaking ass long time (for our International readers: an amount of time so great that it is no longer measurable by units of time and is instead measured by units of assness). What we refer to as “chest” is actually comprised of three separate muscles: the pectoralis minor (which is of little concern to us for now), the clavicular head of the pectoralis major, and the sternal head of the pectoralis major. Read, repeat, read again. Because of its position up near the clavicle (collarbone), the clavicular head of the pec. major is routinely simply referred to by most as the “upper chest.” Many anatomists refer to the sternal portion of the pectoralis major as the “lower chest” but for advanced physique-enhancement purposes we need to further divide this into two regions: the middle and lower chest. When the pectoralis major as a whole works together, it produces a movement called horizontal adduction. In other words, it brings your arm across the front of your body, as occurs when doing a flyer movement e.g. A lesser-discussed function of the pecs is to internally (or medially) rotate the humerus. Hold your arms out straight with your palms up, then rotate your arms such that your palms are facing down. That’s one example of internal rotation of the humerus (you know, the long bone in the arm that runs from the shoulder to the elbow. Yeah you got a pair too somewhere, look better). So let’s look at the peculiar actions of the upper, middle, and lower pectorals when they work in (relative) isolation as this is where things can get tricky. Besides horizontal adduction and internal rotation, the clavicular pectoralis flexes the shoulder joint. In different terms, it (in tandem with the anterior deltoid) raises your arm to the front. If you consider the origin and insertion of the clavicular pectoralis, this makes perfect sense indeed. The lower part of the sternal pectoralis is situated such that it help extending the shoulder joint – the opposite action of shoulder flexion. Now that we’ve covered the upper and lower chest, let’s take a look at the portion that we’ll call the “middle chest”. As the muscle fibers of the middle chest run horizontally, they don’t contribute significantly to shoulder flexion or extension. Instead, they simply horizontally adduct the humerus. Summary: Upper Chest, actions:  horizontal adduction, flexion, internal rotation Middle Chest, actions: horizontal adduction, internal rotation Lower Chest, actions:  horizontal adduction, extension, internal rotation You most likely have already heard of the “all or none” principle of muscle contraction. Basically, this is what it states: when stimulated, a muscle fiber will either contract, or it will not. People have blindly adapted the all-or-nothing principle to mean that an entire muscle will either contract or it won’t. These stubborn individuals will go on telling you that exercise variations are pointless when training the chest since the entire pectoralis major will simply either contract in full or it just won’t. Unfortunately this is a seriously misguided and deceptive logic to put it gently. First, although still considered a portion of the pectoralis major, the clavicular pectoralis is actually a separate muscle with a SEPARATE innervation and the angle of the muscle fibers varies enormously from top to bottom. For that reason, the line of pull is different throughout different areas of the muscle. Luckily, your body (or brain rather) recruits or call upon the portion of the muscle that’s best suited to perform the movement in question. So if you were to do a movement in which the lower fibers of the pectoralis major are in the best mechanical advantage to execute the movement, then those will be the primary fibers recruited to do the work. The body is smarter than those people, thank goodness, or we’d be in serious troubles! So yes, you can emphasize different sections of the chest from top to bottom. But please duly notice I said EMPHASIZE, not “isolate”. Now, before you can start building a bad-ass chest, you have to know the visual strengths and weaknesses of your pecs. In all honesty. For the sake of simplicity let’s say there are four basic variations of chest shape/development: A)Even chest development B)Poor upper and lower chest + good middle chest C)Poor upper and middle chest + good lower chest D)Poor upper chest + good middle and lower chest Generally speaking, variation “D” appears to be definitely the most common.  I should also mention that many people mistake fat in the low chest region as being good lower pec development. So, if you really want to assess your development accurately, get decently lean first, then

Nutrition, Until a few years back, cheat days were all the rage. Initially, the idea of “stepping out” on your diet was met with skepticism, but as research emerged supporting the idea that taking a day off could actually speed the rate of fat loss, people increasingly jumped on board. Cheating isn’t a new idea by any stretch, nor is it really going anywhere. However, recently cheat meals/days have come under fire. A number of respected coaches have spoken out against cheat days, despite their apparent popularity. It should go without saying that what’s popular isn’t always right, but to dismiss cheat days completely out of hand seems a bit rash. This is especially true when some of the arguments against cheat days are basically founded in illogical reasoning and sensationalistic statements, which is what’s been going on. The purpose of this article is to defend cheat days. We’ll explore the most common argument against cheat days, and ascertain whether it even holds water. First, let’s cover the theory behind cheat meals/days and why they’ve been included in nutrition plans to begin with. The theoretical benefits of cheat days are: Enhanced thyroid hormone output. When in a caloric deficit, underfed individuals produce less T3 and T4–both important thyroid hormones that play roles in the regulation of metabolic rate. A cheat day or strategic overfeed is used in part to increase these hormones. Increased 24-hour energy expenditure. A caloric surplus from a cheat day causes the body to upregulate basal metabolic rate (BMR). Some studies have shown an increase of around 10% above baseline, and it’s hypothesised that more is possible. Increased serum leptin levels. The big one that most harp on. Leptin levels drop while in a caloric deficit (lasting as little as 72 hours), and a periodic bump in leptin coming from a cheat day has several benefits including increased energy expenditure and BMR, and overall augmented thermogenesis. Those are the physiological and hormonal benefits of cheating. Of course, there’s the psychological benefit of being able to take a day off from your diet; eat whatever you like, and be comfortable in the knowledge that you’ll still get lean. It’s hard to quantify how much that helps, but the majority of folks who opt to use cheating protocols cite this as one of the most significant mental benefits. Following strict diet plans is not a piece of cake. It demands courage, strength, and clear determination. Knowing that you have a specific day to eat all your favorite meals boosts your willpower and you strictly follow your diet plan during all other days of the week.  Another significant benefit of cheat days is a decline in mental stress due to social enjoyment. It allows you to actively participate in shared meal activities and outing plans with your friends and family which ultimately improves your physical and mental health.  The issue that arises in any discussion about cheat days is that from a purely scientific or research-based standpoint, the studies are conflicting and the conclusions that are most solid aren’t always applicable. Essentially, the idea of using cheat days is to get leptin-depleted individuals to increase leptin levels, which will result in all the benefits listed above. That would be great, but the problem is that often those using cheat days simply aren’t leptin-depleted; at least, not insofar as their metabolic rate is slowing to a significant degree. Now, two points to consider: Any drop in metabolic rate is unacceptable. A 6% decrease can slow things down to a very remarkable degree. This is especially true at higher levels of development, and even more so when a contest or deadline is approaching. Those who aren’t depleted in the technical sense are usually keeping calories too high on non-cheat days. This means that while they’re still getting some benefit from cheating, they’re not optimizing progress. This can be (and actually is) true of any diet, and so for the purposes of deciding whether cheating protocols work, it must be discarded as user error. Problems with the user are not the fault of the method. Cheat Days DO WORK. They just work. Even if there is evidence to suggest that cheat days or periodic overfeeding doesn’t enhance the rate of fat loss, at this point there’s too much anecdotal evidence to say that they slow fat loss. people, and while I’m not testing leptin levels, I know that cheat days DO NOT slow progress. And so, if they don’t hurt and probably help, what’s the problem? The second problem. The illogical argument.   There’s a growing trend to argue against cheat days based NOT on any physiological basis but rather a psychological one, comparing cheating to addiction. I’m not even kidding. I wish I was. The illogical argument is as follows: “Telling a dieter to have a cheat day is like telling an alcoholic that it’s okay to binge drink one day per week.” Actually, no it’s not. That argument ONLY holds water if a few things are assumed as fact: (Cheat) foods are addictive. People who eat cheat foods are addicted to them. Eating cheat foods one day per week perpetuates the addiction. Now, it’s true that for some, food can be addictive, and as such it can be used and/or abused for comfort and the like. I’ve no real issue with the first assumption, in theory. The problems start to arise when we get to the second assumption, that people who eat cheat foods are (all) addicted to them. That’s simply ludicrous. The fact is, basing an argument on such an assumption is to commit a logical fallacy known as “affirming the consequent.” The assumptive argument would be, that people who are addicted to junk food eat junk food; therefore anyone who eats junk food is addicted to it. Pretty damn clearly, this isn’t accurate in any way. To go back to the example of alcohol, the representation of this utter nonsense would be, that alcoholics drink alcohol; therefore everyone who

Nutrition, Is gluten the evil incarnate as some experts say? Or is it nothing to worry about unless you have celiac disease? Let’s cut through the crap and find the real story.  MUSCLE VS. BLOAT Your goal is solid, serious size. You want to look like a beast, so you train accordingly and eat everything in sight. Yet you’re not really getting bigger, you’re just getting bloated. And when you leave the bathroom at the gym, the janitor has to call in the Ghostbusters team. What’s going on here? Chances are, your GI tract is screwed up, and you need to get it fixed. What’s the point of chowing down on the foods you need if you aren’t absorbing the calories? There isn’t one. But there is something you can do about it. When a client comes to me with GI issues, the first thing I look for is a gluten intolerance. An estimated 3 million Americans have celiac disease – an allergy to the protein gluten – and up to 97% of those people are undiagnosed! But that’s just celiac disease. These stats don’t include those with wheat allergies or gluten intolerance. Could that be you? Let’s find out. Gluten is a protein found in wheat. It’s a binding agent, which means it makes ingredients stick together. If flour didn’t contain gluten, breads would turn out like pancakes. In slightly different forms (that produce the same effects) it’s also found in grains like barley rye spelt kamut couscous WHAT ABOUT OATMEAL? Oats don’t contain gluten, but they do contain avenin, which is kind of similar. Some studies show that people with celiac disease can eat oats without problems, but I know some who have an even lower tolerance for avenin than gluten. The impact of oats varies dramatically between individuals. Try a bowl of oatmeal tomorrow morning to see if you remain free of gastrointestinal consequences. If you notice the bloat, it could be the avenin. WHEN YOUR BODY HATES GLUTEN There are 300 different symptoms of celiac disease. Here’s a list of the most common symptoms: Recurring abdominal bloating and pain Chronic diarrhea or constipation Liver disorders Pale, foul-smelling stool Iron-deficiency anemia that doesn’t respond to iron therapy Fatigue Pain in the joints Tingling numbness in the legs Pale sores inside the mouth A skin rash called dermatitis herpetiformis (DH) Osteopenia (mild) or osteoporosis (more serious bone density problem) Peripheral neuropathy Psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression Abdominal discomfort and foul-smelling stool are the most obvious symptoms. Keep in mind, 65% of people with celiac disease don’t have chronic diarrhea. DISEASE VS. INTOLERANCE For decades, scientists thought you were either allergic to gluten or you weren’t. If you were allergic to gluten, you were given the diagnosis of celiac disease. But now we know that celiac disease isn’t the only issue. You could be gluten intolerant. The main difference between gluten intolerance and celiac disease is that with gluten intolerance your body’s immune system doesn’t nuke your intestines. Instead, your body just can’t digest gluten (so you still end up with bloating and other issues). But in the long term, serious harm can still happen (leaky gut, whole body inflammation, impaired immune system). Either way, you should be opting for a gluten-free diet. The gold standard diagnosis for celiac disease requires a biopsy. Antibody and genetic testing are the first step. For many, a positive antibody test is enough confirmation to cut the gluten. In the past I’ve had clients use a lab test which examines your DNA to see if you carry celiac disease or gluten-sensitivity genes. Just because you have the genes, it doesn’t mean that they’re active; it does mean that you should consider yourself warned. Lab tests will cast a broader diagnostic net so you’ll be less likely to hear you don’t have an issue with gluten when you actually do. Aside from just feeling better, proper identification of a gluten issue is important. WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Aside from digestive discomfort, having an immune system that constantly attacks your intestines has serious repercussions. Those with celiac disease are at increased risk of arthritis and potentially colon cancer. It can definitely also put the brakes on muscle building. Let’s take a quick look at GI physiology. Your GI tract is designed to absorb every vitamin, mineral, and nutrient you eat. Humans haven’t always had the luxury of eating every two to three hours, so this was an important anatomical feature. There are folds upon folds containing cells that can absorb what you eat. If you have celiac disease, your immune system has carpet-bombed your GI tract: no folds, no more cells upon cells waiting to suck up every nutrient you eat. It’s a wreck. Now, how much more food would you need to eat if you were absorbing less than 80% of the nutrients in your diet? And that’s just the complications you’ll find in the GI tract. As a reader of this blog, you probably already know that in order to maximize hypertrophy, you need to optimize other areas of your body through diet, rest, stress management, and other regeneration practices. So imagine how the rest of your body will respond to the inflammatory and oxidative balance of your screwed up GI system. In addition to the unrest in your GI tract, gluten allergies also impact your heart, skin, central nervous system, reproductive system, and bones. This is why people with celiac disease commonly suffer from other inflammatory diseases (i.e. arthritis). Your body’s revolt against gluten has serious oxidative and inflammatory consequences that extend far beyond digestion. And yes. Can shorten your life besides making it worse. WHAT YOU CAN DO Get tested to see if you have an issue with gluten via antibody or genetic testing. You might not have celiac disease since only 1 in 133 people in America have it, but you could easily be gluten intolerant. Some of us can eat gluten with no obvious problem, but if

Training, Narrowminded, old-school approach to build bigger legs: Heavy squats. Steak. Sleep. The end. Alright, that’s how they used to do it and it worked. Up to a certain point.  It worked for hardgainers in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s and I’m sure it would work for hardgainers today. Again…to some extent.  But just because it’s one intense and effective way to pack on slabs of thigh muscle doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it. As a matter of fact, an intriguing study already published almost two decades ago suggests that a combination of low- and high-rep training is better than one or the other method for making size and strength gains. Let’s now see why higher reps can work for hypertrophy, and then a new program to help you make major gains and turn you into the baddest m0th&rfÜkk&r in the gym. Silly Blind Beliefs Everybody knows the lame arguments against doing high-rep training for size, no matter what muscle groups we’re talking about. Without a significant load (generally defined as at least 60 or 65% of your 1RM) you’re training your muscles for “endurance” rather than size or strength.  If you take a look at athletes who do a lot of reps of anything, you rarely see a lot of size in the muscles that do the high-rep work, unless it’s size that was built in the weight room with relatively heavy loads. (Please don’t mention cyclists as an exception; well-trained pro cyclists lift shitloads of iron, and even then their thighs are often big only when compared to their relatively underdeveloped upper bodies!) Even the old-school breathing squats employed a 10RM weight, which is usually about 75% of 1RM, enough to build size, if not necessarily strength in advanced lifters. The most popular size-building plans since the 1950s have advocated lower reps for size, including Bill Starr’s famous 5 x 5 training based on the “big three” lifts (bench press, squat, deadlift). The rationale behind using heavy weights with low reps is simple enough: If you target the high-threshold motor units, you don’t just hit the type II muscle fibers, which have the most potential to grow. You also hit the type I fibers, which offer limited size potential but have to come along for the ride, thanks to a well-known physiological phenomenon called the “size principle”. Said size principle says that motor units always fire in a predetermined order, from the smallest to the biggest. So by the time the biggest motor units come into play, the smallest ones are already deployed. Thus, you don’t need to do anything that targets the smallest motor units since they already have skin in the game. On paper makes perfectly sense indeed. YET, a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research makes a compelling argument for a mix-and-match kind of approach. The researchers had a group of 16 male lifters do conventional hypertrophy training for six weeks, then divided them into two groups. Some did straight strength work (five sets of each exercise, using 90% of their 1RM. That would translate to about three per set.) The other group did the same thing, plus a final set of 25 to 35 reps using 40 to 50% of their 1RM. The second group made slightly better gains in size over the following four weeks (which, frankly, were unimpressive across the board and that’s not surprising considering there was no nutritional intervention in the study), but the big surprise is that they made larger increases in strength. Even though this blog average reader would shiver at the thought of training 10 weeks with only negligible muscle gains to show for it, the study suggests one compelling take-away message: Those light-weight, high-rep sets following heavy-weight, low-rep sets do SOMETHING. Whether they do it because they flush the muscles with nutrient-rich blood, or switch on some kind of still unknown metabolic pathway, or simply add volume for its own sake is pretty much a mystery, wild speculations aside. But as long as there’s some actual benefit, who really cares about the cause? You can go heavy and target the fast-twitch fibers one day and go lighter to hit the slow-twitch fibers another day, or combine them both into one workout. Plenty of big guys have used both approaches with equal success. Squats Alone Hardly Suffices For Hams Squat, for good reason, are the classic choice for using high reps to build huge muscles. That’s why you never heard the old-school guys talk about “breathing leg extensions” Even if you stick with squats, there’s no rule that says you have to use back squats. Front squats would make it more challenging, and maybe offer more of a core-strengthening benefit. (I’d suggest holding the bar with the crossed-arm bodybuilder grip, rather than using the Olympic clean grip. That’s a lot of time to spend with your wrists in the rack position, not the best idea ever) I would avoid overhead squats (too much shoulder and arm fatigue, and too much stress on the lower back) or Zercher squats (unless you have the pain tolerance of John Rambo on crack and Cheque Drops). Deadlifts are another animal entirely. They can work, with some precautions. Similar to high-rep heavy squats, high-rep heavy deadlift training is beneficial, but I think a trap bar is the way to go. There’s definitely an increased risk for injury, so a high-rep program isn’t for beginners. You need to have solid deadlift form and not compromise technique to get a rep. Rather than just banging out 20 reps nonstop, park the weight after each rep, stand up and take a few deep breaths, then reset for the next rep. I also caution against using an over-under grip, because that places the biceps under a lot of stress for a lot of time. I suggest using the overhand grip with both hands, and possibly using straps too. STAY 110% FOCUSED. Some Due Warnings If you think you’re

Training, Nobody ever wants to experience a serious lifting injury, but many will anyway. The longer you stay in this game and the stronger you become, the greater the odds that at some point you’ll be faced with a serious injury. Due to my strength level and approach to training, I’ve suffered more muscle and tendon tears than just about any competitor I happen to know. Some of the injuries resulted in me being wheeled into an operating room for surgical repair and many others required extensive rehab.  Most would say I’m lucky to still be fully functional, let alone still lifting very heavy. However, even with all of these injuries I continue to progress, and every year I’m bigger and stronger. This article is about how I managed to overcome these setbacks and how you can do the same, should the lifting demons strike you down with no mercy. There are two major issues after a serious injury. The first is obviously the injury itself. The second and often more challenging is the psychological aspect of returning to training and competition after a serious injury. A due disclaimer. I’m going to share with you what I’ve done and what’s worked well for me. I’m NOT advising you to go against your doctor’s advice. The Physical Aspect Of a Bad Injury For any soft tissue injury, the sooner you get up and moving (within reason of course) the better. If you’re fresh out of surgery and your injured extremity is in a cast or splint, obviously you need to wait until your doctor removes it. Unfortunately, the majority of surgeons aren’t used to dealing with athletes. The typical patient is often an elderly or sedentary couch potato and usually in very poor health. While the histology of the cells doesn’t differ between an athlete and a sedentary person, the rehab process for a highly conditioned and highly motivated athlete is going to be markedly different. By a long shot. The key is to carefully listen to your body. If your body tells you no, then listen. Failure to do so will simply result in re-injury and having to repeat the whole process. The very last thing you may desire. NUMBER ONE – GET MOVING The sooner you can begin moving the injured area the better. This will increase blood flow and begin to strengthen areas that have atrophied due to lack of use. The increased blood flow will also bring new nutrients into the injured area to assist with repair and carry waste products away. In the early stage, your movement is going to be slow, controlled, and often through a limited range of motion. It’s important to progress slowly but steadily and once a full range of motion has been reestablished, resistance can (and should) be added incrementally. When I tore my right quad I initially had a great deal of difficulty even walking; I couldn’t bend my leg more than a few degrees or support any weight. My first goal was to be able to bend my leg through a full range of motion. I didn’t enter any type of organized rehab program so I was tasked with figuring things out on my own. What I came up with was positioning myself in the corner of two countertops. I’d face into the corner and support my body weight with my arms and then slowly lower myself as far as I could tolerate. Initially, I only moved a few inches, but every day I increased the range of motion until I reached the point where I could lower myself into a full squatting position. Now I was ready to start adding resistance. At first, this was only my partial body weight; I’d assist myself with my arms by pushing or pulling on the countertops. I did this daily until I could do them without assistance. Then I focused on increasing the number of reps I could do per set, progressing into multiple sets and reps until I felt it was time to get back under the bar. This initial process took me only a few weeks, but your results will vary based on the severity of the injury, individual pain tolerance,  rehab experience, and motivation. NUMBER TWO – ADD RESISTANCE When adding resistance, the key is to do so in a slow, controlled, but progressive fashion while always listening to your body. To minimize the risk of re-injury, it’s crucial to recognize the signals your body is sending and know how to properly interpret them. After training sessions, you need to be able to differentiate between the pain of normal muscular soreness from that of doing too much too soon and risking re-injury. A strong mind/body connection is a necessity here. Resistance should be increased in small weekly increments until the point of being able to return to normal training is reached. For example, about a month after my quad tear in January of 2008, I was able to start squatting again with just an empty bar. This was followed by 135 lbs. for a few reps the next week, then 225 lbs. the week after, then 315 lbs. Etc. After a few months, I was able to return to and then surpass my former training weights. The entire time I was listening very carefully to my body, and had it told me that I needed to back off or slow my progress, I would’ve done so.  NUMBER THREE – Maintain A Healthy Lifestyle  Maintaining a healthy lifestyle such as consuming nutritious food, staying hydrated, and taking proper rest along with adapting and modifying activities such as the use of sensitive devices can also play a vital role in the physical healing of injuries. It boosts the overall immunity of the body.  You can achieve a healthy lifestyle without giving up on your bodybuilding journey by adding anabolic steroids to your bodybuilding cycle. When buying from a reliable store like UGFreak, these synthetic drugs enhance bone density and

Training, When you aren’t gaining muscle or losing fat as fast as you should be, you know you need to look for holes in your training or your diet. Pretty obvious stuff, right? But there’s something else that can dramatically – and I mean dramatically – affect your muscle-building and fat-burning progress: STRESS. Take a guy who’s hitting it hard in the gym, getting his peri-workout feedings, and making good gains. Now toss in a soul-sucking girlfriend/wife, a dickwad of a boss, and a daily traffic jam. The same dude’s gains will most likely damn near screech to a halt. Here are a few strategies to beat stress before it can catabolize an ounce of your precious iron-earned lean body mass. I guess you want to be leaner, right? How about getting more muscular? Well, I can help. Here’s the thing: What you need most likely has nothing to do with set/rep schemes, or the fact that your glutes aren’t activated enough. What you really need to do is… relax! There’s probably no bigger cause of decreased muscle gain and fat loss than stress physiology. Whether somewhere in the HPA axis, or further up in the hippocampus, stress physiology can damage virtually everything: the immune system, endocrine system, neurological system, and gastrointestinal system. Stress has been extensively shown to: Suppress pituitary function (LH, TSH) Decrease the conversion of T4 to T3 Increase liver burden (and thus metabolism of hormones) Decrease binding of thyroid hormone to receptors Decrease your body’s ability to use leptin Decrease secretory IgA (your immune system’s first line of defense) Influence inflammatory messengers (cytokines) Walking around all day stressed out is wreaking havoc on your system. If you could de-stress a little bit, then it would be a whole lot easier to drop 10 pounds of lard or add 10 pounds of muscle. Easier said than done? Actually, it’s not. Here are some surefire ways to help you reduce stress so you can more easily build muscle and drop body fat. Drink Green Tea Green tea is often touted for its potential weight loss and anticancer properties due to its powerful antioxidants. However, antioxidants aside, green tea is also a key component of your anti-stress toolbox. Several studies show that drinking green tea is associated with lower depressive symptoms. Another larger study found that drinking five cups of green tea per day made men 20% less likely to suffer signs of psychological distress compared to people who drank 0-1 cups per day.  What’s the secret sauce in green tea if it isn’t the antioxidants? Theanine. Theanine is an amino acid found in relatively high concentrations in green tea (and also black and oolong teas). Theanine can readily cross the blood-brain barrier and has been shown to stimulate dopamine, serotonin, and GABA while decreasing norepinephrine levels.  One researcher best described the effects of theanine as “toning down” the CNS. In addition to green tea’s effects on stress reduction, you’ll also find great benefits from taking a break, unplugging, and drinking decaffeinated tea several times per day. This compound makes you relaxed WITHOUT feeling sleepy or tired. If drinking green tea several times a day in no way can fit your schedule, at least get some Theanine capsules. Limit Alcohol and Caffeine  The use of alcohol in drinks and caffeine in different forms is a norm but their excessive usage can badly damage your physical and mental health such as causing stress.  Alcohol causes stress by multiple means.  It can disturb neurotransmitters in the brain. This disturbance can lead to mood swings such as anxiety and depression. It results in an imbalance of crucial chemicals that regulate stress.  Alcohol also causes dehydration through excessive urine production. It stimulates fatigue and irritability which greatly add to the stress.  Many people think alcohol causes sleep while it disrupts sleep. Poor quality sleep adds to stress.  Just like Alcohol, Caffeine also contributes to stress and mood swings in different ways that are listed below;  It greatly stimulates the body’s fight or flight hormones, Adrenaline, and Cortisol which trigger restlessness or stress with increasing heartbeat rate.  Overuse of Caffeine always causes anxiety, nervousness, and panic attacks, the alternative form of stress.  Physical discomforts like stomach aches and gastrointestinal issues due to massive and prolonged caffeine consumption also cause stress.  Therefore, limiting the use of both caffeine and alcohol, taking a nutritious diet, consuming more water, and using steroids like Anadrol to reduce Cortisol production is essential to avoid any stress.  Sleep Better, if you can’t sleep more IME it’s very rare to have a client that consistently sacks out for eight to ten hours a night. Lack of sleep and poor sleep quality greatly affect your health and your body’s ability to deal with stress. It’s a huge form of stress itself. While eight hours is commonly touted as the recommended amount of sleep we should be getting, it may be the quality of your sleep that’s more important than the quantity. So, if you can’t always get eight hours make sure what you do get is very restful.  It’s been shown that hard-training athletes (not unlike those who are doing extra cardio with their usual lifting) have sleep disturbances in part related to higher nighttime epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine concentrations. As mentioned above, drinking green tea may help combat increased norepinephrine levels. So a cup of decaffeinated green tea (or at least a tablet of Theanine) before bed is recommended if you’re one of the sixty million Americans who have some sort of sleeping problem. In addition to the aftereffects of poor sleep, getting quality deep sleep is also important for what happens hormonally during the course of the night. While engaged in periods of deep sleep, your body’s cortisol secretions are decreased while growth hormone levels rise, allowing your body to heal and recover. A simple way to optimize sleep for muscle growth? Just get to bed a bit earlier. Turn off the TV, shut down your computer, make sure