Bands and chains, do they help

If you are using or thinking of adding bands or chains to your workout I suggest you read this post by my buddy Jason Ferruggia.

Bands and Chains for mass Building

www.jasoncscs.info/blog/bands-and-chains-muscle-building

Old School Chest Building Secret! to Build Muscular Chest

Jump back in time by leafing through old pictures and muscle magazines and you will see guys with great full muscular chests.

Want to know an exercise that helped these bodybuilders fill out their chests?

Back in the 60′s at Venice Beach or golds gym, you’d be sure to see them using this long-forgotten advanced chest training technique.

Check it out and add it to your next chest workout and see why it was such a favorite!

http://www.mensfitnessandmore.com/2010/old-school-chest-building-secret/05/12/

5 Core Training Myths and Misconceptions

Core training is essential to sports performance training. But there are so many misconceptions making it difficult to know how to train most effectively.

Discover what may the most common misconceptions with respect to abdominal training

such as

• What is the function of the core
• Will lots of crunches give me 6 pack abs

plus many other myths you need to know with respect to the core, just click the link below

Core Training Myths and Misconceptions

Improve Sports Performance Through Weight Training

Just a quick note to let you know I'm putting together a new website dedicated to sports performance training. You can check it out here, just click on the link below.

Sports Performance Training

This will be a strength and conditioning website tailoring to athletes. There'll be lots of information on weight training, strength training, speed training, and how to get bigger and stronger in the gym.

I will also have a few reports that he can download for free. Right now I have a vertical jump report that may interest you.

So if you're  an athlete looking to get better faster stronger go to my website where you will be sure to find something to improve your sport performance.

Strength Training for Sport Performance

new sports performance blog on the way

 just want to let you know that in the process of putting together a new blog.

 Even though it's under construction you can still take a look at, and provide some feedback. Here's the link.

Weight Training for Sports Performance

Are You An Exerciser Or An Athlete

This is part 1 of 2

By Charles Staley, B.Sc, MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems

Probably 90 percent of all American adults are sedentary, fat, and/or just generally soft and out of shape. The fact that you're reading this probably means you're in the remaining 10 percent, which is to your credit.

When I look at the active minority however, it's clear that 90 percent of them are what I call "exercisers." Allow me to explain and define:

Exercisers want to look better, and despite years of neglect and bad habits, they want it yesterday. They try to achieve this end through manipulating the law of thermodynamics. Eat fewer calories, burn more calories. In other words, create a caloric deficit and (hopefully) lose weight and be somebody.

Athletes want to perform better, and despite years of hard training, they still see new PR's in their future. They achieve this end through consistent and progressive training, directed toward a competitive goal

Most exercisers assume that the more an exercise hurts, the more calories it must burn, and therefore, the better it is for you. Similarly, exercisers assume the worse a food tastes, the better it is for you, and if you buy into the law of thermodynamics, it's not hard to see the kernel of truth in this assumption.

Ultimately, being an exerciser is a hard way to go. The exerciser lifestyle is about denial, self-loathing, and guilt.

You've got to make sure you put in enough punishment on the treadmill, and you've also gotta make sure you never eat anything that tastes good. No wonder people hate exercise as much as they hate dieting. I happen to hate both practices myself.

There is a better way however, and that better way is to adopt the mindset and lifestyle of an athlete. Athletes, don't exercise, they train. They don't diet; they refuel. They don't avoid, they seek. If you go into any Olympic weightlifting club, you'll notice that they don't do exercises, they do "the lifts." (meaning, the snatch and clean & jerk). In fact, most weightlifters refer to their workouts as "practices" as in "I'm going to practice."

Exercisers are perpetually trying to "lose weight." When a wrestler or MMA competitor needs to drop weight for a competition, they call it "cutting." Notice how the former sounds negative and reactive, while the latter sounds positive and proactive?

The biggest problem associated with having an "exerciser" mindset is that it compels people to make exercise choices that are contradictory to speed, strength, power, and generally, Type IIB physiology. Here's an example:

You read an article about "time under tension," and since the author is a world-famous strength coach, you decide to give it a shot. On your next workout you decide to squat using a "4-1-2" tempo, meaning a 4-second descent followed by a 1-second pause, and finally, a 2-second ascent. You quickly learn that "TUT" is a very painful experience, and since you associate pain with gain, you're hooked.

It's not until 3-4 weeks later however, that you begin to realize that your agonizingly painful squat routine hasn't put any beef on your quads or hams, and as far as strength goes, you actually feel weaker!

Any motor-learning professor could tell you why...your 7-second reps dramatically reduce the tension on your working muscles, which in turn reduce Type IIB (fast twitch) fiber recruitment in favor of more slow twitch motor units. This sucks, because now you're weaker and slower.

You might assume that the athletic lifestyle is beyond your reach. But being an athlete isn't the exclusive domain of elite performers. In fact, quite the contrary: by strict definition, most athletes are not elite! Instead, being an athlete is a lifestyle and a perspective. It's the way you go about business in the gym. It's a professional attitude, as opposed to an amateur one.

The exerciser does it because he has to; the athlete does it because he wants to.

Making the transition from exerciser to athlete is simple, but not necessarily easy. In the next part of this series, I'll present 5 Critical Practices that'll help you make the switch.

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About The Author

Charles Staley...world-class strength/performance coach...his colleagues call him an iconoclast, a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients call him “The Secret Weapon” for his ability to see what other coaches miss. Charles calls himself a “geek” who struggled in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles’ methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious results.

Click here to visit Charles' site and grab your 5 FREE videos that will show you how to literally FORCE your body to build muscle, lose fat and gain strength with "Escalating Density Training," Charles' revolutionary, time-saving approach to lifting that focuses on performance NOT pain.

Want to Burn More Belly Fat During Exercise

Atlanta,
there has been lots of research done with respect to body fat and spot reduction. You know how many people now are looking to lose belly fat but want to keep the shape of their butt they're so proud of.

Experts and personal trainers have claimed that there's no way to spot reduce. They, me included have said that there is no way that you are able to pick and choose where you can take of the fat.

Recent studies are showing that it may in fact be possible. Scientists have studied exactly WHERE fat is burned from in order to fuel certain activities and it looks as though there may be a unique connection between the muscles being exercised and the fat cells used to provide the bulk of the long term fuel for your training.

NOTE: This is NOT definitive yet, but it holds promise.

It also supports my theory (and again, this is ONLY my theory!) that your MIND-MUSCLE CONNECTION plays a STRONG role in how much, and WHERE you can burn fat.

In this article, I reveal a unique tip that I use to increase the "mind-muscle" connection to (again, in theory) burn more belly fat from your training by implementing a crazy "cardio fat blaster"...

How To Burn More Belly Fat During Exercise

1. First, if you have the muscle Nerd's best-selling book "Combat The Fat" program, you know that he is a HUGE supporter of LOW intensity cardio as a fat-burner.

2. Start this exercise session with a low effort warmup of about 5 minutes on a treadmill, bike, or other exercise equipment.

3.follow up with one set of WEIGHTED CRUNCHES until failure. keep it to just one set

4. do a 10 minute LOW INTENSITY cardio activity. It can be any carido exercise that you like, some examples are; Rowing, jumping rope, jogging, bike...

5. follow that with one set of HANGING LEG RAISES, again to failure. This is to be followed by your second 10-minute bout of low intensity cardio doing a different type of exercise than you had with your last activity.

6. next do a single set to failure of HANGING ROTATIONAL KNEE RAISES...then on to your 3rd round of cardio. Again doing a different activity from the last, though you can repeat wht you did the first round.

And so it goes on, switching back and forth between an abs exercise and low intensity cardio.

For your follow up abs exercises, I suggest (in order)...

=> Hanging Knee Raises

=> Either crunches or V-ups

As you can see, we slowly decrease the intensity of the abs exercise choices with each set as you get closer to the end of your workout.

But in essence, by training your abs throughout your cardio session, you send a "message" to your body WHERE you want all that fat-burning cardio to do most of it's work.

You may think this crazy, but give it a try and see if it doesn't make a difference in where your measurements start reflecting results!

Atlanta Personal Trainer