We as a human race are gullible. Even with modern technology, satellite photos, history books, the internet, etc., there exists a contingent of human beings (click here) who are convinced that Earth is flat. While I don’t possess the expertise to get into an astronomy debate with anyone with even a rudimentary education of the solar system, I can look at a globe and see it’s round.
Recently, I have been getting a fair amount of questions about in-home workouts. I have been reluctant to answer because my honest response is usually “join a gym”. Depending on where you live, there is a gym in what seems like every square mile or so. Gyms are good, even crappy ones are still pretty good because they have weights. The science says weights make you sexy and strong. My advice is usually go to where they keep weights and work-out there.
99% of the time, I’m an easy-going kind of guy. I try not to let much rattle me and have adopted a “never too high on my highs or too low on my lows” type of outlook. Every so often however, something unhinges me a bit, and most often it’s fitness or nutrition related.
The basics of fat loss are simple. There is nothing “quick and easy” about maintaining a caloric deficit for any length of time to drop unwanted fat, but that’s what is necessary to get it done. Any blog post or infomercial claiming the next great fast fat loss system is usually trying to sell you something. Or they don’t know shit, probably both.
If you've found this website deep in the nether regions of the internet, it's either because you know me personally and I sent you the link or you stumbled upon an article I have written in the past and wanted to see what's up. As you can tell, I'm not a website designer. This modest site took me almost 8 months to put together. In my own defense, during those 8 months I have been trying to maintain a quickly growing client load at my gym and raising a 3-year-old and an infant. While WordPress is certainly user friendly, it's not something I recommend trying to learn in between cleaning up a diaper blowout from your daughter and playing trains with your son. To say it's been a humbling experience would be an understatement.
What I’m referring to regarding negativity for the purposes of this post is the eccentric or lowering portion of a lift. Too often in the gym, lifters will completely ignore the negative portion of the lift and just drop the weight before flinging it back up with zero control or muscle activation. This practice isn’t effective, safe, or generally worth your time.
Now that you know continuing to lift in the presence of joint discomfort is a no-go, we can move along to actionable steps you can take to continue to train hard while avoiding pissing off an inflamed joint. First, let me state that when it comes to healing joint pain or any actual “fixing” of injuries, I’m not your guy. I like to stay in my lane and defer to an orthopedist or physical therapist when my clients/readers approach me about injuries. If you have something that isn’t getting better, go see one of these professionals.
What I’ve had success with over the years is guiding trainees in choosing exercises that allow them to lift around nagging joint issues so they can allow those issues to properly heal.
If you don’t lift, stop reading this post and start.
Like, yesterday.
If you do, and have been lifting with any regularity for even a year or so, then you probably know as awesome as lifting is, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.* Everyone gets flare ups, muscle pulls, dings, dents, scratches, and a bunch of stuff that ends with “itis”. If you lift with the type of intensity necessary to reap benefits, it’s inevitable, especially as you age.
After high school and before I made the decision to major in Exercise Science in college, I started to seek more information about the most effective strategies of building muscle. The most logical sources at the time were muscle magazines and whoever the most jacked guy at the gym was. The more I read the mags or tried to copy routines from other muscular guys, the more it seemed like the holy grail of strength programming was the traditional bro split.
Everybody wants a 6-pack. When searching the most commonly Googled fitness related terms, “abs workout” was tops on the list with “Kim K booty exercise” trailing just a few clicks behind. This post is my way of giving the public what they want. I could take a guess at how that famous pair of glutes looks as flawless as it does for the Gram, but I’ll leave that alone and focus on unlocking the great mystery of 6-pack abs.
Bench press, the perceived holy grail of upper body strength. Starting from the first time you wrapped your hands around the cool steel of a barbell, the ultimate conquest has been to increase how much weight you can load on the bar and press. First, it was to claim a spot on the sacred high school weight room chart. Then, it was to build a better set of pecs worthy of flexing for the girls at spring break in college. Now, it’s to continue chasing the physique you had back then by doing the same stuff that worked when you were 20.
The purpose of this post is to ensure you are choosing the right training stimulus specific to your goal. Not the most riveting literary topic you’ll find but if you’ve ever wondered why despite killing yourself in the gym, you look the same and aren’t getting stronger, it may be time to focus on a key concept of training that I see butchered on a regular basis.
Regardless of your training goals, whether it’s to build strength, jump higher, run faster, or look better, one movement pattern that must be trained is the squat. Any decent strength coach would agree that perfecting and building strength in this motor pattern will provide trainees a lengthy list of benefits
When it comes to training, most people are looking for absolute clear-cut answers when they ask a question. Whether it’s regarding how much cardio is necessary, how many sets/reps they should do, or if they should just bail on training all together and seek the help of a plastic surgeon, there is never an easy answer.
Unless the question falls into the waist trainer, juice cleanse, or elevation mask category of moronic, 99.9% of the time the answer is going to be “it depends”
When I started blogging, as a rule, I wanted to make it about you, the reader. If I didn’t focus on writing content that would help my readers improve then why would they read it? When I dig around online, it's crazy how many fitness bloggers and insatagramers ramble on about themselves like anyone cares. Pictures of their abs, half-assed written motivational quotes, pretty much everything across the board except quality info targeted to make their audience better.
Flat bench, incline bench, dumbbell bench, decline bench, flyes. If I just described your chest workout, don’t sweat it, you aren’t alone. If I just described your entire lifting program however, then get help, like now. The typical bro chest session has been around forever and is based on what is commonly thought of as the holy grail of chest development, the barbell bench press.
Squats: the unquestioned king of leg day. The Jay Z of strength training. Both squats and Jay Z are timeless contributors with the accolades and street cred to go along with it. Both have been genuine, authentic, fantastically talented pillars of the industry throughout their life span, earning the respect they garner for good reason. Jay Z and squats are in rare company in that they pass the “if you only had one for the rest of your life, what would you choose?” test for their respective arenas.
We as a human race are gullible. Even with modern technology, satellite photos, history books, the internet, etc., there exists a contingent of human beings (click here) who are convinced that Earth is flat. While I don’t possess the expertise to get into an astronomy debate with anyone with even a rudimentary education of the solar system, I can look at a globe and see it’s round.
For the first 8 years of my career in fitness, I had the pleasure of working in a cardiac rehab program. Of all my work in the field, this was probably the most rewarding. While helping someone etch out a six pack is kind of cool, it doesn’t really compare to helping a victim of a major heart event get back on their feet.
It’s been a long week. Between training clients, helping some readers with calorie tracking after reading last week's post (click here), and writing an article submission for another site, I haven’t had much time for timmyhendren.com content. So, I did what every self-respecting d-bag does when time is limited in the gym, bicep curls. While you’ll frequently hear experts downplay direct arm work in favor of hitting the major muscle groups with compound movements, I’ve yet to meet anyone who wouldn’t be happy with a chiseled set of biceps and triceps during tank top season.
Somewhere along the way, how we consume food has become a polarizing topic. We are surrounded by experts. If person X lost 15lbs on a new fad diet, it must be the secret that is holding person Y back from strolling to the pool looking like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Also, according to person X, if person Y decides they like a different fad diet, not only will they fail, but something they read online said they will die from a flesh-eating virus due to lack of bacteria in the small intestine, or something like that.
It’s that time of year again, January 1st, a time of year where the masses resolve to improve their lives in several different areas. When it comes to resolutions, a high percentage are going to involve exercise and nutrition. As you peek into any fitness facility, you can be sure that poor form, worse exercise selection, horrific etiquette, and a general sense of cluelessness are commonplace. No other time of year is it ordinary to find someone wearing a plastic suit, doing half-assed burpees with a weighted vest in the squat rack while the google results to “how to lose 30lbs in 30 minutes” are still loading on his iPhone.
It’s funny, when I think of some of the concepts I use in my training and spend long portions of the day teaching to clients, it makes me laugh. My 21-year old self would mock the hell out of my present-day self instructing a client to “feel the lats squeeze when you drive your elbows back!” or “squeeze your butt as hard as you can at the top of the movement!”
If you're already killing time on social media, you may as well lose body fat and increase lean muscle mass while doing it.
TimmyHendren Fitness
