Tag: Competition
These Are The 10 Best Physiques In The World
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article do not represent the opinions of Generation Iron.
Best Physiques In The World
A well-crafted physique can be aesthetically appealing and a symbol of godly strength. This is one the reasons people don’t mind sweating in the gym. Building a shredded physique takes a lot of hard work, patience, and persistence, and only a few people have what it takes.
Following athletes living the fit life can push you to take your first step towards working out. If you’ve already been working out, these athletes can help you in staying on track and motivating you so you never give up. These are the 10 best physiques in the world –
1. Steve Cook
You just can’t hate this guy. Steve is one of the most humble people in the fitness industry. He treats his fans as family and shares everything with them. Follow him on his social handles to stay motivated.
2. Flex Lewis
Flex Lewis is a former 7x 212 Mr. Olympia and has undoubtedly one of the best physiques in the world. Only a few other people can beat Flex when it comes to muscle symmetry. He’s now taking his physique to the Men’s Open division (though unfortunately no longer competing in 2020). We can’t wait to see this fantastic physique maxed out without a weight limit.
3. Michelle Lewin
Michelle is one of the most famous fitness celebrity. She has graced numerous magazine covers and shows no signs of stopping. Her persistence and hard work in the gym can push you to work on crafting your physique.
4. Phil Heath
Phil Heath is a 7x Mr. Olympia for a reason. He is considered to be one of the best bodybuilders in the world. For years, when he stepped on stage it is was an instant game over for his competition. After being dethroned in 2018, he is making a comeback at this year’s Mr. Olympia to reclaim his thrown and join Ronnie Coleman and Lee Haney as a world record Sandow trophy holder.
5. Courtney King
Courtney is the reigning Ms. Bikini Olympia. She is also one of the bubbliest characters you can follow on social media. Don’t fall prey to her pretty face, her workouts are some of the most grueling ones. No wonder she has such a shredded physique.
6. Rob Riches
Rob Riches might arguably be the most shredded guy on this list. He maintains his peeled look throughout the year. If you’re looking for training tips and hacks, Rob is your guy. He also has some of the best collab videos with other fitness athletes.
7. Calum Von Moger
Calum is the modern-age Arnold. We won’t blame you if you confuse him with the Governator. His monstrous muscle mass and vascularity will leave you in awe. If you’re a fan of the classic physiques, Calum Von Moger won’t disappoint you.
8. Paige Hathaway
Paige is challenging the idea that women should not have big muscles. Not only is she ripped, but can take your breath away in any outfit. Follow her on Instagram and she will keep you hooked and wanting for more.
9. Ulisses Jr.
Ulisses Jr. is a muscle monstrous. His Cobra back and shredded abs will give you some serious goals. While he is shredded to the bone, Ulisses is one strong individual. Try out some of his exercises the next time you’re in the gym and you’ll be sore for weeks.
10. Alice Matos
Alice Matos is a fitness athlete and an entrepreneur. This Brazilian beauty has her own line of apparel called Labellamafia. Alice is a must follow if you dig girls who speak a foreign language.
Who else do you think should be on the list? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
*Header image courtesy of Instagram
How To Get Rid Of Muscle Soreness
DOMS Happen Due To New Workouts
Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) can be one of the most irritating things, especially for people with physically demanding jobs. Muscle soreness can occur on the next day of a workout or the day after. These are a few facts about muscle soreness.
It doesn’t matter if you’re in good shape or not, muscle soreness can happen when you start a new workout program or perform new exercises. New exercises shock your muscles and break them down.
High Chances of Muscle Soreness When You Workout After Long Layoffs
If you’ve been out of the gym for a long time, you can expect to face muscle soreness after your first hard workout. You can minimize the muscle soreness by gradually increasing the intensity of your workouts.
You Can’t Avoid Muscle Soreness
You can’t control DOMS. There are chances you might not experience DOMS after a hard workout and have them after a relatively light workout. Your level of fitness doesn’t affect if your muscles will be sore after a workout or not.
This is How To Get Rid of Muscle Soreness
1. Nutrition
Muscle soreness happens when your muscles are broken down after a strenuous workout. Right after your workouts is also the perfect time to feed your muscles. Your muscles will absorb the most amount of nutrients at this time.
After a workout, have a protein shake or a protein rich diet. Protein is the main building block of your muscles and will help in the quick recovery from muscle soreness. Apart from the protein, follow a balanced diet to meet your macro and micronutrient requirements.
2. Massage
Getting a massage is another effective way of releasing the tension in your muscles. Massage the affected muscle for up to 30 minutes to reduce the soreness. Deep tissue massage or ART (Active Release Technique) is effective at recuperating from sore muscles.
If you don’t want to go for a professional massage therapy, you can ask your spouse or a friend to massage the tense muscles. You can also massage the sore muscles yourself with the help of an electric massager or a foam roller.
3. Rest
Rest is one of the most important aspects of recovery after a workout. No matter how hard you workout, you won’t grow while you’re inside the gym. Your muscles repair themselves and grow while you’re sleeping.
You need at least six hours of sleep every night to recover from your workouts. If your muscles are sore for most of the week, this could be a sign of overtraining. You should take an additional day off from training to recover from your workouts.
4. Active Recovery
On your days off, you don’t have to sit on the couch all day long. You will not be working out and doing the same things which got you sore. Staying active by doing cardio helps in regulating blood throughout your muscles.
Blood carries nutrients to your muscles which help with recovery. Make sure you don’t over-exert your muscles. You can also perform exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and squats to get a pump without exerting your muscles.
5. Cold and Hot Treatments
Cold and hot treatments can help you with recovery from muscle soreness. Taking a cold shower after a workout is known to help with recovery. You can also apply ice and hot water bags to your sore muscles to speed up the recovery process.
Alternating between applying ice and hot water bags is also an incredibly effective way to get rid of muscle soreness. Using the alternating technique helps you get the best of both worlds. Just make sure you start with the ice treatment and make the hot water bag treatment last twice as long as the ice treatment.
What do you do to get rid of muscle soreness? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
How Many Days A Week Should You Train?
This Is How Often You Should Be Hitting The Gym
Most people who join a gym are curious to know how many days a week should they train to build muscle mass or lose fat. Your workout program should be designed in a way that you’re not overtraining. You should also make sure you’re not leaving any stoned unturned to ignite muscle growth.
There are a lot of factors which go into designing a training split. We’ll take you through some of the factors to determine how often you should be hitting the iron paradise. By the end of this article, you’ll have all your questions answered.
Beginner – 5 Days
In this article, we’ll break down the number of days you should be working out based on your current stage and goals. You need to keep in mind the frequency of your workouts will often change depending on your expertise level.
When you’re a rookie, you shouldn’t rush into lifting weights. Your primary goal should be to learn about the basic exercises and the correct form of performing them. As you start going to the gym, you should train five days a week for at least the first month.
Even when you’re training five or lesser number of days a week, you shouldn’t take two days off in a row. Plan your program so the first rest day is mid-week and the second is on the weekend.
Intermediate – 6 Days
Once you’ve learned all the basic exercises and feel comfortable training with weights, you should switch to training six days a week. In the intermediate phase, your goal should be to build a solid foundation. You should be training one muscle group a day in the intermediate phase.
Make compound movements a big part of your training and focus on improving your strength, stamina, and agility. Of all the stages, the intermediate phase can feel the least exciting. But rest assured, you’ll soon be reaping rewards for the hard work you put in in this stage.
Another thing you need to remember is that there are no ideal rest days in the fit lifestyle. On your rest days, you’ll be going out for a jog or working on the cardio equipment for 30-45 minutes depending on your goals.
Advanced – 5 Days
After you’ve been training for 1-1.5 years and are well versed with the advanced training principles, and systems, you step onto the advanced stage. In the advanced stage, you should be performing double-muscle workouts. In the advanced stage, you should train your weak muscles twice a week to fix muscle imbalances.
Some people forget you don’t build muscles in the gym. You break down your muscle tissues while you’re training. Muscles re-grow bigger and stronger while you’re resting outside the gym. As you progress, you’ll be spending lesser amounts of time in the gym.
Prepping For Competition – 4-5 Days
If you’re planning to compete in a bodybuilding show, the number of days you’ll be training will greatly depend on your current conditioning. As you get closer to your competition and especially in the last month, most of the adjustments will be made in the diet. You reduce the number of training sessions from your program as you inch closer to the D-day to reduce the chances of an injury.
In the best-case scenario, you should be going from an advanced stage to the contest prep stage. You could jump from intermediate to prepping but it would mean the odds of winning the show would not be in your favor.
How many days a week do you train? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Header image courtesy of Envato Elements
Get Popeye Forearms With These Simple Forearm Exercises
Get Popeye Forearms
Muscle symmetry is what separates the men from the boys. Bodybuilding is a game of illusions and having proportional muscle groups accentuates the size of your muscles. If competing is your goal, you need to train for symmetry and muscle balances.
Forearms are one of the most overlooked muscle groups. People usually train them as accessory muscles at the end of their arm workouts. It is no surprise these people have bulging biceps and skinny forearms.
If your goal is to have gigantic biceps and triceps, you can’t afford to skip training your forearms. While skinny forearms can make your arms look smaller, ripped forearms can add to the size of your bis and tris. Do these simple exercise to get Popeye forearms.
1. Farmer’s Walk
Farmer’s Walk is one of the most effective exercises to build muscle mass and strength in your forearms. Performing this exercise will make you stronger at other exercises where you need your grip strength. Farmer’s walk is a staple exercise in strongman training.
If you don’t have farmer’s walk black bars at your gym, you can use dumbbells for this exercise. Hold on to some heavy dumbbells and walk for as long as you can without dropping them. Challenge yourself to do more every other time you perform this exercise.
2. Barbell Finger Rolls
This is one of the most underutilized exercises for forearm development. Chances are, you would have never seen someone do this exercise, but you will be certain of its effectiveness once you do it yourself.
Hold a barbell with an overhand grip. Slowly roll down the barbell to the tip of your fingers. Return to the starting position, curl your wrist and squeeze at the top of the movement. You can also do a behind the back version of this exercise to isolate your forearms.
3. Cable Reverse Curls
Using a cable as opposed to free weights helps keep the tension on your target muscle group throughout the movement. While using dumbbells you have tension on your muscle on the concentric part of the motion but there is no tension on the eccentric part.
Cable reverse curls can help with building the top of the forearms and the outer biceps. Since this exercise can recruit your biceps, you need to make sure you’re performing it with complete control. Keep the reps slow and deliberate to exhaust your forearms.
4. Wrist Curls
Wrist curls are probably the most common forearms exercise performed in gyms around the world. If you have lagging forearms you should perform these exercises at the beginning of your workouts. This will help in recruiting your forearms in every exercise you do later in the workout.
Sit and the side of a bench and place your forearms on the bench with only your wrist hanging off. Hold a barbell or dumbells with an overhand grip with your thumbs over the barbell. You can also perform the underhand variation to target the inner forearms.
5. Cable Overhand Inward Wrist Curls
Cables can be incredibly useful at annihilating your forearms. Cable overhand inward wrist curls will isolate your forearms and will fill them with lactic acid by the end of the exercise. For this exercise, sit on a flat bench with your forearms parallel to each other placed on your thighs.
Attach a straight bar handle to the pulley and sit at a distance where the weights don’t rack at the bottom of the movement. Curl your wrists inwards towards your knees and squeeze at the top of the movement.
Which is your favorite forearm building exercise? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
The 5 Best Machines For Getting Shredded
The 5 Best Machines For Getting Shredded
With the evolution of bodybuilding, researchers have come up with ways to speed up the process of gaining muscle mass with the help of better nutrition and advanced training techniques. Over the years machines used in the gyms have gotten better.
Using machines can help you achieve your desired results while preventing injuries. Many bodybuilders use machines while preparing for competitions to avoid injuries. Machines are great for beginners as they limit the range of motion and avoids recruiting muscle stabilizers.
These are the 5 Best Machines
1. Cable Crossover Machine
Cable crossover station is one of the most important equipment in a gym. You can do a variety of exercises targeting different muscle groups on this machine. If your gym doesn’t have a cable crossover machine, you should start looking for a new gym.
Using cables has a different effect on your muscles as compared to using free weights. You have constant tension on your muscles during the eccentric and concentric movement while using the cables.
2. Smith Machine
Smith machine is another gym essential. It is a great equipment for people who can’t perform exercises like the bench press or squats due to problems like joint pains. The smith machine avoids recruiting secondary muscle groups as your path of motion is fixed.
The smith machine is great at developing your lagging muscles as it limits your movement. Let us say you have a overdeveloped glutes and weak quads. You can eliminate your glute recruitment and focus entirely on your quads by placing your feet in front of you.
3. Pec Fly Machine
The pec deck machine is nearly as effective as the bench press in activating the pectoralis major. Using the pec fly machine will help you in maintaining constant tension on your inner chest. This machine is a must for people who want striations and separation in their chest.
You can also work your rear delts on the pec fly machine. Sit with your chest against the pad to target your rear deltoids. Rear delts are a weak muscle group for most people. They make it even worse by not training them often.
4. Leg Press
You will hardly see a gym without a leg press machine. The leg press machine can help you in building muscle mass and strength in your lower body. The leg press also happens to be one of the most abused machines in a gym.
Many people load the machine with more weight than they can handle. You will see the best results while using the leg press machine by following a full range of motion. Excessive weight puts stress on your lower back and can result in an injury if you fail a rep.
5. Hammer Strength
Hammer strength is one the best equipment for training your chest. The hammer strength is incredibly effective for people who can’t bench press for some reason. Pros use this machine while preparing for a contest or during muscle rehab.
You target the same muscles while using the hammer strength as you do during the bench press. As you are in a leveraged position, you can use heavier weights on the hammer strength as compared to the flat bench press.
Which is your favorite machine?
Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
Gym Crush: Paige Hathaway
Gym Crush: Paige Hathaway
Every gym has a few girls which work harder than the guys. Most of the guys try avoiding these girls so they can save themselves from embarrassment. Paige Hathaway is one such girl and she is our gym crush of the week.
Paige is on a personal mission to break the stereotype that muscular girls look manly. It didn’t take a lot of convincing for us to believe her. Paige Hathaway has a jaw-dropping physique which you can’t stop looking at.
You can also check out Paige Hathaway stop by the Generation Iron Fitness Network for our digital series The Breakdown where she talks about sexual harassment in the bodybuilding industry.
Muscles Make Women Sexy
We totally agree with Paige. Miss Hathaway can rock any outfit effortlessly. We are digging this ‘sun’s out guns out’ picture. If staring at her pictures can be considered a job, we don’t have the day off.
Paige The Beach Bum
Easing our minds is one thing we cannot do. We didn’t know mermaids existed before we saw this picture. B&W or colored, Paige is flawless no matter what. Hathaway has some of the most exotic photos on Instagram.
Squats are the Key
Squats are the secret to booty gains. Let this photo be the reminder to this fact. Paige has one of the best rears in the fitness world and she shares all her training and diet secrets on Instagram.
Behind The Scenes
Building a physique like Paige’s is pure hard work. It takes years of training, dieting and persistence. This is a sneak peek into one of Paige’s leg and glutes workout. Follow this routine for your next leg workout.
The Entrepreneur
Paige Hathaway isn’t your average meathead. She is focused on building a personal brand. This meeting with the social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk is the proof. You can expect to see the entrepreneurial side of Paige soon.
When She Rocked Hollywood
Paige Hathaway graced the Grammy’s this year. While Paige thanks her team, let us take this moment to thank Instagram for giving us this beauty. We wish to see more of her in Hollywood in the coming years.
Elegance At Its Best
Hathaway is a beauty with brains. Most of her posts accompany a moving message. Her posts can make you enter a reflective mode. One can turn reading Paige’s captions into a hobby.
Shredded To The Bone
When was the last time you saw a girl with such a ripped physique? A lot is said about this picture of Paige. While most people think a girl shouldn’t be muscular, we believe they say so because of their own insecurities.
The Stunner
This is exactly how we wait every day for Paige’s new photo to drop. There are thousands of people waiting to double tap her pictures the moment they see them. We bet the pizza delivery boy loves to deliver pizzas to her house.
Picture Perfect
Even we need some shade from all the heat. Paige Hathaway has one of the most loyal following in the fitness industry which is growing every single day. We hope Paige achieves bigger milestones in her career.
Who is your gym crush? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
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