Train SMART…

Stop wasting your time with sub-optimal training.

I’m sick of walking into the gym and seeing someone doing a single arm, cable, tricep kick-back as their first exercise of the training regimen.

Don’t get me wrong there’s a time and a place to train the smaller muscle groups but if you want progress stop being a pussy and use the most ‘bang for your buck exercises’.

You’re not going to build lean muscle sitting on a machine doing isolation movements. You have to progressivly overload your body with big, strong exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses, high pulls and rows. Body weight muscle building exercises like chins, dips, single leg squats, push ups should also be added to your routine.

A combination of big lifts and bodyweight exercises will produce an athletic, muscular physique and progress you further then your single arm cable kick-backs. The best athletes with the best bodies train using the above techniques, let’s not try to re-invent the wheel here by standing on a BOSU ball doing single leg deadlift and stating that’s a “functional” exercise.

According to Vladimir Zatsiorsky, Ph.D., a world-renowned expert in the biomechanics of human motion, the closer you train to the limit of what you can lift, the more motor units you recruit. Each motor unit is responsible for activating multiple fibers. So heavy training as often as you can tolerate it will increase your ability to progressively recruit more and more motor units, which leads to greater fiber activation.

Using the exercises I mentioned above will lead to more fiber activation, the more fibers you activate the more muscle you will build and the better your physique will look.

Now, is cruising through your 3 sets of 10 reps whilst barely breaking a sweat going to cut it? Doubt it. The whole idea behind resistance training is to build lean muscle. That won’t happen unless you push yourself…hard! Keep a training journal, record the weights you lift, next time you perform that workout push yourself. Add more weight, add more reps…progress.

I often have clients who will say to me I want to lose this “tricep wobble” or I want to lose that “belly fat” ok that’s great but there is no such thing as spot reduction. I repeat there is no such thing as spot reduction. Start with your nutrition, lift weights properly, do some high intensity cardio and then if all that hasn’t worked we can look at some exercises to target the bingo wings but until you have tried all of the above consistently, steer clear of sub-optimal time wasting training.

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think?

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