More muscle mass equals more strength? Physical strength is the ability to exert a sufficient amount of force against resistance through dynamic or static muscular contractions in order to move or stabilize an object in a voluntary manner. Therefore, bigger muscles cannot possibly interfere with that task unless the range of motion is affected negatively […]
Paralysis by analysis a.k.a. overthinking is very common in the iron community. My lifting background says that the less experienced you are, the more you think about issues that do not really make a big difference. Back in the day, I used to suffer from wrist and elbow pain. I had an overuse injury known as tendonitis. This made […]
Conventional bodybuilding wisdom a.k.a. the special kind of stupidity found in muscle magazines says that 60-90 seconds rest periods are optimal for “hypertrophy training”. As always, the ghost writers “forget” to tell you that steroids are the actual driving engine behind modern growth. Honestly, the rest periods between sets make no difference whatsoever. Besides, resting only 1-2 minutes […]
The first step to writing a good lifting routine is setting concrete objectives. The more specific the goal, the higher your chances to achieve it. A good example would be a triple bodyweight deadlift or a one arm pull-up. Those are very specific missions that provide you with an opportunity to have a narrow focus – […]
At the time of this story, I was a naive skinny boy serving a sentence in a dirty basement gym. My training facility was a trash bin, but it gave me the chance to witness some rather grotesque events that shaped my lifting ideology. This was the place where I saw an obvious steroid user for the first […]
Broscience and bodybuilding love each other. One of the reasons for this strong union is the fact that many muscle warriors rely on anabolic steroids to build their muscles. Once the mass is acquired, they start to make up theories which the noobs buy without blinking. In other words, the drugs catalyze broscience. Today, I […]
My first rendezvous with a kettlebell took place a decade ago in a dirty store for sporting goods. The place was a metal shack one blow away from total destruction. I bought a dumbbell handle and two 1.25kg plates that I use to this very day. The total was something like 5 kilograms. “Heavy.” I […]
When I first started reading about lifting weights and muscle construction, I made a classic rookie mistake – I fell into the trap of the fitness gurus. I thought that they were really trying to help me and didn’t see their actual goal – to make me subscribe to their ideology and profit from me. […]
Surprisingly, or not, the deadlift works the whole back from top to bottom. “But, what about the lats? Do they work during deadlifts,” asked the muscle nerds. Yes, brahs. The latissimus dorsi works incredibly hard when you deadlift. The lats are the biggest muscle in the upper body. When you deadlift, they have the following […]
The biceps and triceps stabilize the elbow joint during deadlifts, but you don’t need monster guns to pull heavy weights because the arms aren’t the primary movers. Below I analyze the functions of the biceps and triceps in a deadlift. THE TRICEPS When you deadlift heavy weights, the bar has to be kept as close as […]
Isolation exercises attract massive hate from the “functional” crowd, but in most cases, single joint movements are simply misunderstood. What are the benefits of isolation exercises? The value of isolation exercises is contained in the term – “isolation“. The main goal of single joint movements is to work on a specific muscle directly. This is […]
Do you need a ton of calories to build bigger arms? Every hypertrophy expert says that being in a “caloric surplus” is fundamental to muscle growth. This has been one of the main reasons for the rise of the natty fatsos – a group of people who underestimate their body fat percentage and think that their […]