YourMuscleShop Training Tips

[PEP PATRIOT52]

5 Ways to Build a Bigger Bench Press
(Master Coach Craig)

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked “how much do you bench”, I’d be a very rich man.

As soon as you’ve built a little bit of muscle, this is the question you’re going to hear. Now, we both know that bench isn’t the end all be all of training and peak physical fitness, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something a little extra cool about a big bench. I’ve benched with the absolute best. From the guys at Westside Barbell, to training with Josh Bryant at the original Metroflex, to learning from Bill Kazmaier (the first man to bench 300 kg) when I lived with him in Alaska. After all my time learning from the best benchers in the world, I’ve gathered five tips that are fool proof for increasing your bench PR.

1. Don’t just grab the bar - crush it!

When it comes to gripping the bar, most lifters lay down, put their hands around it and just get to work. The best benchers though? They make sure to set the bar fairly low in their palm so it lines up over the bones in their wrist and forearms and then they SQUEEZE. The more intentionally, and forcefully, you can squeeze the bar while you’re benching the more activation you’ll achieve (especially through your triceps) and the more strength you’ll have access to.

Of all the tips on this list, this is the one that can add pounds to your bench within the same set.

2. Triceps, triceps, triceps

Usually the bench is seen as a chest exercise, and it definitely works your pecs, but if you want maximum power… triceps are what you need. The best benchers always have big triceps which not only add pounds to the bar but allows them to maintain proper form.

This means they can maintain the proper bar path (more on that next) and not overload the pecs and risk injury.

Some tricep exercises work mixing into your routine are:

Rolling DB Extensions

Dips

Williams Extensions

Band Push Down

3. Stay on the straight and narrow

The optimal bar path for bench press is a highly debated topic, but it shouldn’t be. Your bar path should be straight up and down. What this means is you’re not touching low on your chest only to press the bar back over your face, or any other option that isn’t straight up and down.

If this is a bit weaker for you at first, that’s ok - you just need more triceps.

Regardless, this is the most efficient way to press and will help to keep you safe from the pec and shoulder injuries that plague the barbell bench.

4. Bench with your whole body

This sounds a bit strange but stay with me here… If you want to get the most out of your bench press, you want your whole body involved. From the bottom up this means your feet are planted and stopping any side-to-side movement, especially as you take the bar out. Your legs are pushing into the floor to generate more force back into the bench to maximize the support you get from it. Your lats are flexed with your shoulder blades pulled down and together.

From there, it’s the normal bench press muscles you already think about - but get everything else in on the action and you’ll be surprised how much more you’re capable of.

5. Get aggressive

I’ve got a very simple rule when it comes to loading weights on the bar. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first day in the gym, or if you’re the third strongest man in the world, and I’ve used this with both of those groups and everything in between.

The rule? If you load a weight on the bar you should be willing to make the following bet with me:

If you hit the weight I’ll give you $10 but if you miss it, you have to give me $100. That’s how confident you should be in the weights you choose.

Once you pick a weight where you’d make that bet though, it’s time to get aggressive and confident.

When you lay down on a bench there shouldn’t be any thoughts in your mind outside of your form, making sure everything is tight (from the feet all the way up) and then absolutely dominating the set. Whatever you need to do, whether it’s music, visualization, whatever… do it. The bench is at least as much of a mental game as it is a physical one and you never want to take the bar out unless you’re ready to give it 100%.

Practice these five tips to get a bigger bench in a shorter amount of time.

 

[PEP PATRIOT52]

Why Is Building Muscle Beneficial?


BUILDING MUSCLE CAN do more for your body than just making you look different or adding strength. Yes, there’s a high that comes with hitting your squat max, but the benefit runs so much deeper than those feelings of accomplishment.


*Muscle Offers Joint Support*


Our muscles offer a huge support system to our joints. They can absorb a bit of the impact that radiates through our knees and hips when running, jumping, and even walking. The more muscle we have, the more force gets absorbed, saving our joints from long-term damage. Our muscles also ensure our joints move the directions they’re supposed to. When our muscles are too weak to push against an opposing force, our joints may not be able to handle the impact, causing breaks and tears. This kind of support allows us better balance, preventing those kinds of accidents before they happen.


*More Muscle Helps to Burn More Calories*


Though the difference is not as significant as many assume it to be, increasing your muscle mass also increases your metabolism, meaning you burn more calories at rest in a day. A pound of muscle burns around 13 calories a day, whereas a pound of fat tissue only burns about 4. If you're bulking, though, you may be needing food more than this discrepancy accounts for.


That being said if you're putting on muscle, you're definitely working out more often, and inherently burning more calories throughout your day.


*Muscle Helps Blood Levels*


Gaining strength can even help our blood composition. Our muscles use both glucose and fatty acids for fuel. This keeps our blood sugar levels down. Elevated blood sugar can cause long term effects, such as blood vessels damage and a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, and nerve problems.


*Muscle Makes Everything Else Easier*


Whether you enjoy hitting the basketball court for a game of pick up, tending to your garden, or backpacking through the wilderness, building muscle can “set you up for success in the things you enjoy doing outside the gym"


Increasing muscle mass can improve your everyday functionality.


Many aspects of life become easier as you get stronger—no more losing your breath going up a single flight of stairs, or dropping your heavy grocery bags.


*Yes, Muscle Makes You Look Good*


Yes, there are the obvious aesthetic benefits to adding muscle mass to your frame. Your clothes will fit better, some people might consider you more attractive, and you'll feel more confident. Those are all big reasons that drive guys to spend hours in the gym pumping iron in the pursuit of gains. There's no shame in making your aesthetic a reason to get in the gym - it still leads to all the other health benefits.


While there's so many reasons to focus on muscle building, there's more to it than just showing up to the gym, hefting some weights, and calling it a day. You'll need to be a bit more intentional for effective muscle growth. To build muscle, you must push your muscles to the limit, then let them recover and grow stronger as they do.


And to do this, you must create the proper recovery environment for them when you're not in the gym.


This means your quest to build muscle involves a host of variables over a 24-hour period. The things you do in the gym to push your muscles to the limit count. So does the "work" you put in during the other 20 or so hours when you're away from the gym, everything from rest to nutrition to active recovery. All of this can affect how you build muscle.


There is no better help on your quest to building an Awesome, Powerful Physique than the Incredible Products from YourMuscleShop!!


Don't forget to use my exclusive Discount Code PEP20 to save 20% off your total order at checkout.


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[PEP PATRIOT52]

**5 Strength-Training Myths You Can Completely Ignore**

Health and fitness are fields that are meant to be firmly rooted in science, but that doesn’t prevent many myths, misconceptions, and falsehoods from circulating in the industry — and interfering with your strength gains.

We’ve heard them all, and these are the myths we’re the most tired of hearing.

**5 Strength-Training Myths to Ignore**


**Sore Muscles Mean You’re Getting Stronger**

“If your workout doesn’t leave you cramped and painful, you didn’t work out hard enough.”

Sore muscles can mean a lot of things, but “you have had a productive workout” isn’t one of them. We don’t know *exactly* what causes muscle soreness, but it’s typically attributed to a buildup of lactic acid or microscopic muscle tears, both of which can signify that you’ve had an intense workout. However, that doesn’t mean the soreness is *necessary* if your goal is to build strength.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) usually accompanies new training stimulus, like a different exercise or increased intensity or volume, but whether or not you’ve been doing the same set-rep scheme for a few weeks or months, the lack of DOMS doesn’t mean you’re not still making progress.

Oh, and the same goes for that highly valued feeling of being completely and utterly gassed at the end of a workout, as you would after max-effort lifting or a non-stop WOD of thrusters and burpees. Intensity has its place, but remember that one of the reasons it can be so tiring is that it’s tremendously taxing on your central nervous system.

Make sure you’re using intelligent programming that provides plenty of medium-intensity workouts and enough rest after the tough ones.

Which brings us to…

**You Shouldn’t Exercise on Rest Days**


Don’t take “rest day” so literally. Even if your workout was super taxing — *especially* if your workout was super taxing — it’s important to move on your rest days.

A lot of people take that to mean a brisk walk and then back to the couch for more Netflix, and while that’s a million times better than nothing, you shouldn’t be afraid to engage in some resistance training that takes you through your full range of movement. Mobility work, yoga, bodyweight circuits, or a light kettlebell workout can help to reduce stiffness, improve range of motion, and perhaps most importantly, boost blood flow and deliver nutrients to your beat-up muscles.

The latter reason is why it’s actually a good idea to include movements that are similar to the workout you’re recovering from, like push-ups after chest day or light kettlebell swings after deadlifts.

All that means that while exercise requires recovery, exercise also *is* recovery, if it’s not too taxing.

**Cardio Will Eat Your Muscle and Strength**

We keep saying this, but it bears repeating: any kind of cardio, when programmed correctly, can improve your lifting performance. It increases blood flow, opens capillaries, and by improving your cardiorespiratory system, it can reduce recovery time between sets.

There are two schools of thought: don’t do cardio, or keep your cardio to high-intensity interval training. HIIT can be a great time saver and it shreds fat like nobody’s business, but even steady state cardio has it's benefits: it’s less taxing on the central nervous system and less likely to impede your recovery from strength workouts.

That means it’s not too difficult to drop it into a strength cycle, even if it’s not programmed.

Additionally, some steady-state cardio can help alleviate soreness, improve sleep and appetite, and warm your body for mobility.


**You’ll Only Get Stronger With Low Reps**

Conventional wisdom suggests that to build strength and power, you should stick to heavy sets of three to five reps per set. If you’d rather build muscle, you’re better off with eight to twelve reps, or maybe even twenty reps. That’ll produce a bigger pump and more hypertrophy.

As a guideline, low reps for strength and high reps for hypertrophy can certainly be useful, but it leads a lot of athletes to feel that unless you’re lifting as much weight as you possibly can with low reps, you won’t get stronger from that workout.

The fact is that training a variety of different rep ranges and intensities is an excellent way to become stronger, more capable, and more athletic. Not only is there some evidence that high reps can be just as effective at building strength so long as you lift to fatigue, but many athletes forget that increasing muscle mass and size is an excellent way to help you get stronger, especially if you’ve plateaued.

Why? Bigger muscles can increase fat oxidation, which is critical for high-intensity sports; they can produce more fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are excellent for strength and power; and they can improve work capacity. Plus, who doesn’t like the aesthetic component?


**The Post-Workout Window Is Essential for Building Muscle**

For some reason, this myth refuses to die. For many athletes, the ritual of the post-workout protein shake is sacrosanct.

While it’s true that some research has shown better muscle protein synthesis when protein is consumed straight after a workout than when it’s consumed a few hours later, these studies are a little flawed. Often, the subjects weren’t doing resistance training, they were untrained or elderly, the control group’s total protein intake for the day was lower, or the study didn’t look at the effect of protein timing over the course of a full training cycle.

The truth is that while the availability of amino acids after resistance training does have a better effect on muscle Protein synthesis— lifting helps you build muscle, in other words — that doesn’t mean you have to rush to a protein shake ASAP after your workout’s over. Even a meal consumed hours *before* a training session can help stimulate post-workout muscle protein synthesis

 

[PEP PATRIOT52]

**Your Best Body Ever: 5 Tips to Burn Fat and Build Muscle**

While opinions are mixed on whether or not you can build muscle and burn fat at the same time, I’m here to set the record straight: it’s possible.

Even more than that, outside of some of the world’s most elite athletes and professional bodybuilders, building muscle and burning fat at the same time is THE FASTEST way to transform your body.

If want to make this happen for yourself, here are the 5 rules you need to follow to rapidly transform your body and build lean mass while burning off pounds of body fat:

**1. Track (and Eat) Your Maintenance Calories**

To determine your maintenance calories, calculate the average calories you eat in a given week while maintaining your body weight, then start here with your weekly intake. This strategy is massively superior to any “calorie calculator” you can find online and will only require 4-7 days of tracking to establish a baseline.

The number of calories you calculate will be your target as you begin this transformation.

**2. Same Calories, Different Sources**

While your calories will stay the same as you begin this process, where they come from will change.
I’m sure you already know the benefits of protein—and this is something you’ll need to highlight in your diet.

If you’re starting at a fairly average body composition, or any leaner than that, you should ensure you’re getting between .8 and 1g of protein per pound of body weight.

If you have excess fat, you want to get a rough (or exact, if possible) measurement of your lean body mass and consume 1g of protein per pound of lean body weight.

Outside of protein, you want to focus on high-quality whole foods that are minimally processed and as close as possible to their natural state.

**3. Gut Health Matters**

A few years ago I would have scoffed at this advice, but after trying it personally and with hundreds of clients, I can tell you that gut health makes a huge difference. The trick is to slowly integrate prebiotic and probiotic foods in your diet.

Foods in these categories that suit your tastes are fairly easy to find with a quick Google search. I recommend starting with one serving of prebiotic and probiotic foods per day.

**4. Water**

Though this may be the most boring advice in the world of fitness, that’s for a reason. Water matters. Ensuring you’re properly hydrated can mean the difference between a trickle of progress and a waterfall of gains.

Hydration products are a great option, but you want to ensure you’re getting at least 3L of water per day if you weigh less than 200 pounds and 4L a day if you’re over 200.

Not a single process involved in building muscle or burning fat can happen optimally if you’re dehydrated, so sipping on some water might be the easiest way to see better results than you’ll ever find

**5. You Have to Work… HARD**

The biggest reason most people haven’t experienced building muscle and burning fat at the same time is because you have to work really, really hard.

This doesn’t mean you need to spend three hours per day in the gym, but it does mean that when you’re there you’re giving everything you have.

Each week you should be improving your performance in a measurable way. More weight, more reps, slower eccentrics, more density… making progress every week.

If this isn’t happening, you need to take an honest assessment and ask yourself: am I working as hard as I possibly can? My bet is that you can push yourself that much further to see the results you want.

All that said, if you follow these five rules, you’ll experience a transformation that will shock those around you. You’ll also be in an exclusive group of people who laugh when they hear that building muscle and burning fat at the same time isn’t possible.

Now, make it happen!