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About
I wrote this book in order to simplify the complexity of training and
help people train to the best of their abilities to reach their goals.
When I started training, I would get my information from friends at
the gym which were not reliable sources nor were the fitness models
on the internet they may have well developed physiques because of
their genetics, but their knowledge of training is basic and can only
help so much. Thankfully I studied kinesiology at a university which
showed me how much of the information out there was wrong.

The only thing with the information I learned was it was too complex,
and no one taught you how to apply it. That’s why I decided to begin
to do my own research and focus on the application to training,
because at the end of the day that’s what matters not an in-depth
description of a metabolic pathway in a book or the biomechanics of
an exercise.

Another thing that influenced me to write this book was as I began

training I was not genetically gifted, I had a lot of imbalances and a
hard time activating the right muscles during exercises. It was hard
for me to develop a physique I wanted the broad shoulders and
small waist. But through research and experimentation I found out
what actually affects the look of a physique and how to bring out the
best a personal structure allows. This reason isn’t really scholarly but
it is one of my drivers, however I’ve grown passed that but still see
the importance in it as many still strive for it.

Now through my previous knowledge from school and training

experience I began thinking differently about exercises and training. I
bang to look at the biomechanics of them the muscles working the
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forces applied and combined it with the research out there that
looked at muscle activation. This allowed me to categorize and find
exercises that worked the best and how modifications of them
changed their benefits.

Here is where this book comes in; incorporating both science

research and application into a simplified educational book about
training that is solely focused on helping you understand what
training fully entails.

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Contents
t .........................................................................................................................1
About .............................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................... 1
STARTING RESISTANCE TRAINING ..................................................................... 1
Training Splits........................................................................................................2
What it takes to grow ...........................................................................................4
Training variables ..................................................................................................4
Importance of stability..........................................................................................6
Choosing your exercises .......................................................................................6
Exercise order ...................................................................................................9
Why your muscles may not be growing? ..............................................................9
Weight.................................................................................................................10
Reps.....................................................................................................................11
Set .......................................................................................................................12
Rest time .............................................................................................................13
Super sets............................................................................................................13
Compound sets ...................................................................................................14
Pyramid sets........................................................................................................14
Pre-exhaustion set ..............................................................................................14
Time-Under-Tension ...........................................................................................15
Eccentric..............................................................................................................15
Concentric ...........................................................................................................16
Isometric .............................................................................................................16
Supplements .......................................................................................................17
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 Mind muscle connection ....................................................................................18
Time off the gym .................................................................................................19
Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................... 20
Core training .................................................................................................. 20
Core anatomy .....................................................................................................21
Importance of core training ................................................................................22
Activating your core ............................................................................................23
Core exercises .....................................................................................................25
Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................... 26
Leg Training ................................................................................................... 26
Leg anatomy........................................................................................................27
Learning to hip hinge ..........................................................................................27
Ankle mobility .....................................................................................................28
Squatting .............................................................................................................29
Dead lifting ..........................................................................................................32
RDL ......................................................................................................................33
Leg press .............................................................................................................34
Smith Machine ....................................................................................................35
Glute development .............................................................................................36
Quad development .............................................................................................37
Calf development................................................................................................38
Hamstring development .....................................................................................39
Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................... 41
Back Training ................................................................................................. 41
Back anatomy .....................................................................................................42
Muscle actions ....................................................................................................42
Middle vs. outer back .........................................................................................43
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 Common Back Exercises .....................................................................................43
Lat pulldown’s .....................................................................................................45
Rowing exercises.................................................................................................45
Traps ...................................................................................................................46
Chapter 5 ....................................................................................................... 48
Shoulder Training ........................................................................................... 48
Shoulder Anatomy ..............................................................................................49
Shoulder biomechanics .......................................................................................49
Shoulder press variations ...................................................................................49
Rear delt rows .....................................................................................................51
Face pulls ............................................................................................................51
Raises and flys .....................................................................................................51
Cable exercises....................................................................................................52
Warm-ups ...........................................................................................................52
Chapter 6 ....................................................................................................... 53
Chest Training ................................................................................................ 53
Pec Anatomy .......................................................................................................54
Chest training biomechanics ...............................................................................54
Chest training mistakes.......................................................................................55
Chest exercises....................................................................................................56
Pull over’s............................................................................................................58
Chapter 7 ....................................................................................................... 59
Arm Training .................................................................................................. 59
Arm Anatomy ......................................................................................................60
Brachialis .............................................................................................................60
Biceps ..................................................................................................................60
Brachioradialis ....................................................................................................61
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 Triceps .................................................................................................................62
Chapter 8 ....................................................................................................... 65
V Taper .......................................................................................................... 65
What affects your V-taper ..................................................................................66
Shoulders ............................................................................................................67
Lower pectorals ..................................................................................................68
Core musculature................................................................................................69
V-taper Muscles ..................................................................................................70
Chapter 9 ....................................................................................................... 72
Scapular Stability ........................................................................................... 72
Serratus ..............................................................................................................72

Middle/Low Traps .............................................................................................72

Stretching for stability......................................................................................72
Stability musculature ..........................................................................................73
Strengthening the muscles .................................................................................73
Serratus ...............................................................................................................73
Middle/Low Traps ...............................................................................................74
Stretching for stability ........................................................................................75
Chapter 10 ..................................................................................................... 77
Mobility ......................................................................................................... 77
Why increase your mobility? ...........................................................................77
Full range exercises ..........................................................................................77
Stretching to prevent injuries?........................................................................77
Self-releases ......................................................................................................77
Why increase your mobility? ..............................................................................78
Stretching ............................................................................................................78
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 Full range exercises .............................................................................................79
Stretching to prevent injuries? ...........................................................................80
Self-release .........................................................................................................80
Chapter 11 ..................................................................................................... 82
Nutrition ........................................................................................................ 82
Macros ...............................................................................................................82
Functional eating ..............................................................................................82

Cooking..............................................................................................................82
Macro Sources ..................................................................................................82
Macro Nutrients..................................................................................................83
Bulking ................................................................................................................88
Functional eating ................................................................................................89
Cooking Tips ........................................................................................................90
Macro sources (Protein) .....................................................................................95

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 Chapter 1
STARTING RESISTANCE TRAINING

Training splits

Muscle action

Choosing your exercises

Weight Torque

Reps

Sets

Rest

Super sets

Compound sets

Time-Under-Tension

Eccentric

Concentric

Isometric

Supplements

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Training Splits
A training split is how you separate your training throughout the
week. Your training routine is based on 3 factors; the time you have
available to exercise, your exercise experience and your goal. Time is
the primary variable when it comes to designing your training split as
it dictates your training frequency and how you’ll divide your muscle
groups. There are a variety of splits you can do, starting with full
body workouts, upper and lower body, agonist antagonist, prime
mover agonist, push pull, posterior anterior chain and single muscle
group split. Each of these splits has its own benefit and practical
application based on your needs. It is hard to say whether one is
superior to another as they can be used in different scenarios of
training.

If you are a beginner you may benefit more from a push pull split,
agonist antagonist split, or prime mover agonist split any of the two
muscle group combination splits. The agonist antagonist split is
centered on training muscle groups that do opposite movements of
each other, for example biceps performing a curling motion and the
triceps a pushing. This is because the antagonist muscle is activated
as well during the exercise. These workouts can be paired as such,
chest & back, biceps & triceps, quads & glutes/hamstrings. The next
split is prime mover & agonists, these muscles that work together
when doing an exercise. For example, chest and triceps, back and
biceps, shoulders can be included with legs, or on their own day.
These splits allow you to achieve a greater volume because by only
having 3 distinct training days a week you can have time for more
sessions during the week. Training more frequently as a beginner can
help improve your muscle size/strength gain.
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The next training routine is the single body part a day, this means
training legs, arms, chest, back on their own specific day during the
week. This style of training is for more advanced lifters as it requires a
greater muscular endurance to sustain a larger volume and intensity
during a given session. This training style may allow for greater
training volume per muscle group and greater metabolite stimulus
for hypertrophy. Training a single muscle group allows you to put all
your energy and focus on it and make sure it’s getting the maximum
effect and recovery post exercise. This style of training also may
decrease mental fatigue when it comes to training, as there is a
larger gap between sessions of the same exercise type.

Your routine should be designed so there is minimal interference

from previous training sessions on the performance of your current
session. This is important because certain muscles are agonist to
bigger muscle groups and can be worked during exercises focused
on the prime mover. For example, training chest also activates the
triceps and going heavy on a chest day will certainly fatigue the
triceps as well. So it is best to organize your routine for minimal
interference between the sessions. The best route to go with is
training back, chest, legs, arms, shoulders; you can incorporate your
rest days at any period between these sessions. It is also important to
note that your training routine does not have to be a set schedule,
while structure in training can help us as humans are quiet variable in
our performance. If you don’t feel like doing legs one day, or you
really feel like you want to do back instead of something else do it.
Having an enjoyable workout is much better than sticking to a cut
throat routine. Gauge how you feel before beginning a workout, are
your arms still sore, do your legs feel fatigue because you’ve been
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negatively, being conscious of them can help you have a better
workout session.

What it takes to grow

Understanding what causes muscle growth is key to making sure you
incorporate the needed components into your exercise routine in
order to get the most out of your workouts.

Muscles grows through a few paths but the most known are
mechanical tension and metabolic stress. The main variable that
seems to stimulate both these as far as muscle growth comes is
volume; being (reps multiplied by sets by weight). This is done
through a progressive overload leads to muscle growth. Progressive
overload is done by incrementally adding a challenge to the muscle
through a variety of training variables which we will see in the next
section. Also there is proper nutrition, most important is protein
consumption. Of course this will vary from person to person so
adjust accordingly based on recommendations for you. It is also
important to replenish glycogen stores and have healthy fats for
hormone production. And lastly there is proper recovery, for optimal
results try to get in between 7-8 hours of sleep and at least 2-3 days
of recovery when training a body part again.

Training variables
There are many factors that you can modify to impose new demands
on your muscles, here are some of the more important ones, we will
cover them more in-depth in the chapter.

The first and easiest thing to modify is the weight you’re lifting; this is
the main variable when training for hypertrophy, strength or power.
If you’re not putting enough stress on the muscle you can impose
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new demands by increasing the load. The next variable that goes
hand and hand with weight is the amount of reps you’re doing. The
general rule of thumb is 8-12 for hypertrophy, 4-6 for strength; once
you can do 2+ reps than your range you can increase the weight.
However, don’t feel you must get stuck in these ranges of reps to
gain muscle.

The next variable you can adjust is how many sets you do per
exercise; this allows you to increase your volume without sacrificing
intensity. During each set you can adjust the velocity of your reps
and time under tension, whether it’s having a fast-concentric motion,
or a slow eccentric motion. Another key variable is decreasing or
increasing your rest periods. Decreasing rest periods will make your
muscles adapt to become more fatigue resistant due to less recovery
time. On the other hand, increasing rest time, for compound lifts
preferably will allow for greater intensity to be achieved.

A great way of changing up a routine is adding exercises to it,

generally you want to hit the major actions of muscles but adding
variations to target all possible angles will benefit you more. Next
you can change how frequently you train in total or a specific body
part. If a body part is lagging, you can increase the frequency which
you train it to catch up to the rest. And lastly you can change up the
actual exercises, which is only if you’re bored of them or you feel
they’re not targeting your muscles efficiently.

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Importance of stability
Having a stable base of support (a stable place for muscle to contract
from) is crucial for muscle growth because of one simple rule. For
every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, meaning
whenever you train, and your muscle produces work to lift a weight it
pulls on the muscles origin with the same magnitude. If that origin
isn’t stable the muscle cannot contract to its fullest and most efficient
ability.

Think of sitting on two types of chairs trying to pull a rope attached

to a weight, the first chair is a chair that is nailed to the ground
(strong base of support) you pull on the rope and the weight moves.
Now the second chair has wheels on it (unstable base of support)
when you pull on the chair you move and so does the chair
(inefficient contraction). This goes for your muscles too; weak core
or joint stabilizing muscles won’t allow for a strong contraction which
leads to decreased growth and diminished return on your work.
Focus on strengthening the stabilizer muscles as much as you do on
the big muscles in order to get the best from your routine.

Choosing your exercises

Choosing the right exercises is crucial for getting the most from your
work out. The exercises that you perform should target the muscle
group/groups from all possible angles. This means covering all the
actions of a muscle group and sections of each muscle that may
perform a different action. The exercises should also focus on all 3
planes of movement. We often get stuck in the sagittal plan of
motion (flexion & extension). Being stuck in this plane of motion can
lead to muscle imbalances and improper muscle development and
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activation. Next important factor when it comes to choosing the right
exercises is making sure to incorporate compound exercises and
isolation exercises. Compound exercises allow you to use a heavier
load and target multiple muscle groups at ones. This makes
overloading the muscles much easier in order to induce
overreaching.

Exercises order matters to a certain extent, usually we’ve learned

compound exercises first then isolation, which is still the best option.
However the only difference in order is the first exercise performed
will have the greatest adaptation response and will allow you to hit a
higher volume and intensity. So if you really want to be good at
squats, do them first or if you wish to target a specific area of your
body more than another it would be to your advantage to perform
exercises that utilize that muscle the most in the beginning.

Choosing the equipment for an exercise can be important as well.

The best effect from training comes from free weights; they elicit a
greater muscular activation in the targeted muscle as well as core
stabilizers. Assisted “free weights” like the smith machine can elicit a
similar activation but not as well as free weights. Dumbbells are a
great way of adding extra stability challenges to a routine; they
require greater joint stability when used unilaterally. This makes them
good for increasing joint stability which can be a factor in how much
you can lift. However, they can also limit you to how much weight
you are able to lift compared to a barbell. Machines typically allow
for a great isolation of muscle groups by taking away the
stabilization factor which allows greater focus to be transferred to
the contracting muscles. Some machines also contain cams, which
allow for a consistent torque at a joint throughout the whole ROM.
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They are great ending exercises for advanced lifters or starter
exercises for beginners in order to develop the movement patterns
required from the exercise.

Next big part of choosing your exercises for your program is making
sure your workouts are balanced, meaning no one group of muscles
is targeted more than the other. This can lead to imbalances and
potentially lead to injury or dysfunction. Now if you’re training for
hypertrophy and a specific look emphasizing certain body parts
won’t be the end of the world. However, when training agonist and
antagonist be sure to have a balance, like your hamstrings and quads
a difference in strength between these can potentially predispose
you to a greater risk of injury.

Be sure to incorporate accessory exercises that target joint stabilizing

muscles. These exercises will help you have a better posture and
allow for more efficient muscle activation by keeping your joints
where they should be. Keeping joints stable also may help with force
production by muscles that act on that joint or from it. Having a
weak base of support decreases the ability of the muscle to produce
its max force. You can think of it this way, if you sit on a stability ball
and try to pull on an object your force production will be decreased.
On the other hand, if you’re on a stable surface like the floor and you
pull on an object you can generate much greater forces. This is
because for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction
(physics 101), so the muscle you’re using is pulling with the same
force on its origin as it is on its insertion.

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Exercise order
We’ve all heard the saying compound movement’s first then single
joint exercises. And to an extent it’s true, but now how we think it
does. When we change exercises order the only effect is that the first
exercise performed had the greatest adaptation, and performance
decreased after due to fatigue. .

What does that mean? It means that the first exercises you do are the
ones that will get the most benefit. If you’re doing squats first then
leg extensions, your squat will improve more. So this may be
beneficial to you if you’re trying to get stronger at one particular
exercise or target a specific body part. Large muscle groups and
heavy exercise may be preferred to be done first, since they can
handle to most weight and lead to greater adaptation. .

This should be taken into consideration when training multiple

muscle groups at a time, for example back and chest or
biceps/triceps. If you lack in any particular group, it’s important to
train that group first. Also, important to note that rehab/prehab
exercise that target stabilizer or weaker muscles should be done post
workout as to minimize fatigue level for the duration of the work out
session. This does not mean to exclude warmups for joints.

Why your muscles may not be growing?

Training can be frustrating sometimes when we don’t get the results
we want and there can be a variety of reasons why. Here are 3
common reasons why your muscle development might be slowed
down.

You’re not getting enough protein. Protein is one of the fundamental

parts of muscle growth; not getting enough protein can be halting
your gains. It is not just about getting in protein by grams from all
food, when it comes to protein it is crucial to get your EAA essential
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amino acids. Not all foods are complete protein so pay attention to
what you eat.

Next you are not working out at the right intensity. If you’re just
going through the motions in the gym and not paying attention you
may not be overloading your muscles enough. The rule of thumb for
most people is doing a weight within the rep range you are using. If
you need to hit 10 reps use a weight that you cannot do more than
that. Also make sure you are paying attention to the contraction
focusing on eccentric and increased time under tension.

Lastly you may just not have the genetics for it. It is possible not to
be able to hypertrophy for some people or be limited. This people
are known as non responders and it’s due to a smaller number of
satellite cells. These cells provide genetic material for your muscles to
sustain and grow.

The first 2 factors when it comes to muscle growth are modifiable

and can be easily changed once identified in your routine. The last
may have set a ceiling for you; however genetic potential can be
compensated for with motivation and dedication.

Weight
How much weight you should lift can be a hard thing to figure out
sometimes, first thing to note is that weight and reps go hand and
hand, how many reps you can do will be directly proportional to the
weight. The usual way of figuring out what weigh to do is by
performing 1 rep max tests for certain exercises, then taking a certain
percentage of that weight to do for more reps. However, unless
you’re training as an athletic performance or for power lifting, this
isn’t necessary (I will cover how to do one later). The easiest way is by
gauging the weight you can do for a given number of reps. the way
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to gauge this is if the weight is to light and you can do 15+ reps, go
heavier, or if you can do only 4 reps, go lighter. This is better than
using a 1RM test in my opinion; since you’re energy/fatigue state
varies day by day, one day you may be able to lift 200lb but the next
perhaps you didn’t eat enough and can only do 180. Numbers you
recorded days or weeks ago don’t represent your current state
remember that.

Reps

Reps are the number of times you repeat the motions of a given
exercise. The typical range for hypertrophy is between 6-12 reps.
however you’re not limited to this number by any means, there is a
variety of ways muscle is stimulated to hypertrophy and not all of
them come from tensile loading. A factor that contributes muscle
hypertrophy is metabolite accumulation, these are byproducts of the
muscles metabolism and they accumulate more as a muscle
struggles to produce enough energy when fatigued. We can use this
to our advantage by not allowing the blood to clear these
metabolites. This is done by performing higher reps while maintain
the muscle in a slight isometric contraction (keeping tension on it) to
stop the blood from clearing these byproducts, this can be a great
way to end a workout.

However reps do represent something more than just the number of

times you lift a weight, when you’re doing an exercise and it says 10
reps, there is a meaning behind those numbers. The rep numbers
usually represent a percent intensity of your 1 rep max. Meaning, the
10 reps for an exercise should be with what weight you can do only
10 reps. not following this rule can limit you from the full benefit of
exercise.

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The thought is that 1-5 reps is for strength, 6-12 is for hypertrophy
and 15+ for endurance, but not just the reps, but the percent
intensity of those reps. So, doing 15 reps with a weight you can do
20 times isn’t your 15RM. One thing, that has changed is that the rep
scheme representing hypertrophy has changed with research.

With new research coming out, we can see that building muscle is
possible with lower Intensities when volume is matched to higher
intensities. This means you can change up your workout from using
heavier weights to lower and back and forth. For example, you
usually do 15 reps of a bicep curl with 20 pounds for 3 sets. The
volume of that workout is 900lb. Now if you changed that to 37.5
pounds you will get the same volume for doing 3 sets of 8 reps. ⠀
Two good rules to abide by when training is, your last rep should be
difficult and should not be able to complete a full rep after it.
Second, use the 2-rep rule, if you’re able to do 2 more reps with a
weight for 2 consecutive training days, it means you should increase
your weight. This is all relative depending on what you need; there
are also different training styles that can change how reps are used.
However, these are some general guidelines to focus on.

One thing to keep in mind with these rules is that it is not needed to
train to failure to induce muscle hypertrophy so if you do 10 reps
with your 12 rep max keeping 2 reps in reserve it won’t make a big
difference but when you cut down your weight by a lot more it can
potentially impact overall training volume.

Set

Sets are the number of times your repeat an exercise, the typical
recommendation for sets is around 3-4 set per exercise. Performing
more sets can be potentially beneficial in increasing your adaptation
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to that specific exercise, gauge your energy and fatigue level when
deciding to include additional sets to an exercise. There are few ways
to perform sets, standard training where each consecutive set is the
same load and reps, a pyramid set where the load increases while the
reps decrease and drop sets where reps start low with a higher load
and load is decrease with each set. There aren’t any clear benefits to
performing either one of these methods in contrast to standard
training set (for hypertrophy).

Rest time

Rest is a key factor of training, too little or too much can both
impede your training. Too little rest will not allow you to lift with the
same intensity; too much rest can land you in the strength training
category. The general rule of thumb is between 30 sec and 2 min, the
lower end rest periods should be designated to your isolation
exercises where the fatigue is localized. While longer rest periods
should be used when performing heavy compound movements. Now
it is important to note these numbers are not set in stone. The only
gauge that will tell you when to begin your next set is you, listen to
your body. But also don’t be lazy not starting a set for 6 minute
because you’re on your phone does not count.

Super sets
A super set is when you group exercises that target antagonistic
muscles or opposite muscle groups. For example; combining back
day with chest, while there is no real advantage to this type of
organization in an exercise when it comes to muscle growth, it is a
greater way of increasing volume and increasing caloric expenditure
due to increased activity and decreased rest time.

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Compound sets
A compound set on the other hand is combining two exercises of
similar actions or targeting the same or agonist muscle groups. For
example, doing a compound set of rack pulls with bent over rows.
Both these exercises target the posterior chain muscles. Compound
sets again can be greater for time management, perhaps increased
caloric expenditure as well. A possible disadvantage of this type of
this is decreased performance and intensity due to increased fatigue.
There isn’t really a wrong answer when it comes to how you set up
your workout as long as it is structured around your needs.

Pyramid sets
Pyramid sets are sets that either increase in weight or decrease in
reps or vise versa. The general thought behind this kind of training is
that you can fatigue the fast twitch muscles with the heavier weight
and begin to target slower twitch with the higher reps and lower
weight. While in theory that may sound right as of now it has not
been shown to have any added benefit. Staying at a single intensity
will give the same results.

Pre-exhaustion set
Pre-exhaustion sets are when you pre-fatigue a muscle group that
you want to target more specifically during your routine by doing
isolation exercises for it. For example, doing chest flies before doing
bench press or doing biceps before training back. This has not been
shown to increase activation in the pre-exhausted muscles but
actually the opposite it decreases activation, perhaps pre-fatiguing
agonist muscles in compound movements may be more beneficial.

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Time-Under-Tension
Time under tension is the duration which a muscle is held under
tension from an exercise. Generally, it was thought the greater time a
muscle spends under tension the greater the stimulus for
hypertrophy will be. However, it’s not exactly true, spending too
much time during the rep can negatively affect muscle growth. It is
usually better to perform reps with a slower eccentric (lowering)
portion and a faster concentric contraction.

Eccentric
Eccentric motion is when a muscle is contracted but is being actively
lengthened. This is the strongest way a muscle can produce force
and it can potentially produce greater strength/hypertrophy gains
when compared to concentric movement. This motion also causes
the greatest damage to the muscle and can cause soreness post
exercise. Eccentric training is a great way for overcoming plateaus by
overloading the muscle with a bigger stimulus than it can handle.

Eccentric overload training is performed by placing a heavier load on

the muscle than it can lift, this causes the muscle to contract and
lengthen at the same time. This effect leads to many different
adaptations in the muscles and tendons.

We are much stronger at the eccentric portion of a lift, because

during we can use passive elements as well as active to resist the
load placed onto the muscle. In contrast to concentric training where
only active elements of the muscle are used to produce a force. This
allows us to handle a weight of about 1.25-1.5X what we would be
able to in a concentric contraction. Not only are we able to lift
heavier weight but are able to do it for a longer volume which can be

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beneficial to adding a stronger stimulus for hypertrophy and
strength gains.

Eccentric loading has been shown to increase muscle fiber length

when performed to a fast tempo, while a slower tempo seems to lead
to increased muscle fiber diameter. This is a great thing as increased
muscle fiber length can lead to increased flexibility at a joint. Also, it
can potentially lead to a greater increase in muscle contraction
velocity leading to greater speed. Another benefit that goes along
with the increased speed is increased eccentric strength of the
muscle. This is important as many injuries occur during eccentric
lengthening of muscles

Concentric
Concentric movement is when the muscle is actively shortening in
order to overcome a resistance. This is our weakest way of force
production; however, it can lead to strength/hypertrophy gains as
well while minimizing soreness. ⠀

Isometric
An isometric contraction is when a muscle produces a force that is
equal to the force that is acting against it. This produces no
movement at the joint where the muscle is acting on. This type of
contraction is great for overcoming sticking points in power lifting
but we won’t be covering that. A great use for such contraction is
bringing back muscles to their optimal length when they’re
weakened and lengthened. We’ll learn more on that in chapter X.

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Supplements
This book is meant to cover training aspects and by no means is it a
nutritional book or to be taken as such. However, it is important to
touch on the subject of supplements taken for muscle growth and
which work and if you need to take them. This section is for
informational purposes only and should be taken as such, draw your
own conclusion based on your personal health status and consult a
doctor if you have any questions or concerns with taking
supplements.

Let’s start by looking at what a supplement is, by definition is it

something to complete or enhance something we lack. So
supplements come in handy when someone is malnourished or
depleted from exercising. Ergogenic supplements are ones that help
improve performance. The thing is though; most supplements on the
market don’t have any effect on increasing or enhancing what they’re
meant to. Sometimes we may get effects from supplements just
through a placebo effect because we believe they will help us.

The truth is, we don’t need any supplements to help us with gaining
muscle or losing weight; simple food is enough. Sometimes we may
choose to supplement real food or nutrients only for the sake of
convenience. For example, eating 100 grams of chicken may not be
as easy as taking a 30g protein shake.

The two supplements out of the hundreds if not thousands would

contribute to any improvement in performance/ convenience are
whey protein and creatine. These supplements have arguably been
two of the most studied to date.

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Mind muscle connection
Mind-muscle connection refers to actively focusing on the use
(contraction) of a certain muscle during an exercise in order to
increase its activation. This can be done to focus on one muscle
through internal cues or on the group of muscles used through
external cues. Here is what you need to know about mind muscle
connection and how to use it to your benefit.

When performing exercises between 60-80% of your 1RM, most

people should be able to increase the activation of the muscles
through actively focusing on the contraction. Focusing on
contracting a muscle specific muscle during an exercise not only
increases its activation but the activation of agonist muscles as well.
Focusing on external cues as well helps increase the activation of the
target muscles and performance of the exercise. Focusing on external
cues is more beneficial for performance such as running speed, or
max deadlift.

Why is this important? Being able to actively increase the activation

of a specific muscle can help improve your exercise quality and
target specific muscle groups more. This can help people who have a
hard time feeling an exercise or a certain muscle group. Also, when it
comes to rehab if you are able to specifically target a muscle that is
weak through internal focus you can speed up recovery time.
How to use internal/external cues? Internal cueing is when you focus
on the contraction of the muscle, for example when performing a
bicep curl focusing on contracting the bicep muscle during the
curling motion. External cues are focusing on the environment or
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Time off the gym
Taking time of the gym may be beneficial to you if you’ve been
working out nonstop for a prolonged period of time. Continues
exercises can be mentally draining and decrease how much we enjoy
exercising and its effectiveness potentially. Contrary to what some
may believe we don’t lose our gains if we skip the gym, even though
it’s easier to lose them than gain it’s not that quick

It usually takes about 2 weeks to notice any significant difference in

performance in resistance training, while in aerobic exercises about
2-4 weeks. The loss of force production in muscle is largely due to
decreased neural adaptations that are caused by inactivity, so you’re
not losing muscle the first 2 weeks even. When it comes to aerobic
training some studies have shown that decreasing frequency to 1/3-
2/3 of your usually training can help retain adaptations for longer
periods around 2 months.

Strength loss doesn’t seem to be proportional as well, after 48 weeks

of detaining 1rm for bench press had a bigger decrease than 1RM for
knee extension. This shows that legs retain strength more than other
body parts perhaps because they’re used considerably every day.
Another important thing to remember that even if you’re out of the
gym for a longer period of time your progress coming back will be
much higher due to retained satellite cell nuclei. So don’t be afraid
to miss a day or week from the gym it may do more good than harm
in the long run.

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 Chapter 2

Core training
Core anatomy

Importance of core training

Activating your core

Core exercises

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Core anatomy
Contrary to popular belief the core isn’t just one or two muscles,
there’s more to it than just the “abs”. There is a few abdominal core
muscles which are very important both for injury prevention but as
well as performance. The core muscles that you should know are the
diaphragm, pelvic floor, the multifidus, transverse abdominis, internal
oblique’s, external obliques and the rectus abdominis. Far off from
the six packs we picture when we say core.

The diaphragm is used in inspiration (process of inhaling) and

increasing intra-abdominal pressure. Increasing intra-abdominal
pressure is important when performing heavy compound exercises
because it helps the spine resist high shear forces which otherwise
can be damaging. This is often a great weakness for people as many
breathe through the chest using the intercostals muscles and scalene
muscles to breathe. Having a dysfunctional diaphragm can
potentially have negative effects on other core muscles that it works
in with like the pelvic floor or the transverse abdominis. This can be a
big problem when trying to strengthen the core properly. Next is the
pelvic floor which is a group of muscles that are located on the
bottom of the trunk. These muscles can actively raises the internal
organs and assist in raising intra-abdominal pressure like the
diaphragm. These muscles also work in conjunction with the
transverse abdominis & multifidus.

The transverse abdominis is the deepest of the ab muscles; it is

responsible for compressing the abdominal organs while increasing
intra-abdominal pressure to stabilize the trunk. The TA is important
for decreasing shear forces that can act on the spine during
exercises. internal oblique’s are superficial (closer to the surface) to
the TA and arePrepared
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pressure, trunk flexion, ipsilateral side flexion and rotation this means
they act on the same side that they’re on. The external oblique’s also
work to increase abdominal pressure as well as contra-lateral flexion
and rotation of the trunk meaning rotation on the opposite side of
the muscle. The most superficial core muscle is the rectus abdominis
this is what we often think of when we hear abs. The action of the
rectus abdominis is to flex the trunk and increase intra-abdominal
pressure.

Importance of core training

Core training can often be neglected and that can have a big impact
on how you perform and your risk of injury. Doing crunches and sit
ups is not training your core also. A strong core is important for a
few reasons, here are the main two; a strong stiff core allows our
body to decrease shear forces (bad forces) that act on the spine
when we move or lift weights. A weak core can allow for micro-
movements to occur in the spine which can lead to pain and/or
injury. This is often due to the lack of activation of the deep core
muscles like the transverse abdominis which acts like a lifting belt to
increase intra-abdominal pressure.

The second reason for wanting a strong core is for improved

performance and efficiency. The deep core muscles keep the trunk
from moving when muscles that attach to it contract. These muscles
need a stable surface to act of in order to produce a force, if they
lack that stability they cannot produce a strong force and can
actually cause issues to the spine. This is because like most of us
learned in physics for every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction. Meaning the muscle produces the same force on its origin
that it does on its insertion. For example think of a biceps curl, your
biceps muscles pull on your shoulder blade with the same force as
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they do on your forearm to lift the weight. Another way to think of
this is, imagine you on a chair with wheels holding to a rope attached
to a weight. Now think how hard it would be to pull that weight
towards you, this is how your muscles feel when your core is
unstable. Imagine on the other hand you are sitting on a locked in
place chair, how much easier would it be.

Activating your core

Activating your core starts at your deep muscles, in order to train
your core you must be able to activate it. Doing a plank and using
your superficial abs won’t help you. To activate the core we first
must learnt to breathe correctly, if you’re a chest breather keep
following if not you can skip to the next part. A lot of us don’t
breathe properly, this causes our diaphragm to not function normally
as it should because it is under used. We must train ourselves to
breath efficiently like we used to when we were babies, because sadly
we lose these natural reflexes because of sedentary lifestyles. If
you’ve ever seen a baby sleeping you probably noticed their belly
rise and descent as they breathe. This is the natural way to breathe,
the baby is using its diaphragm to draw in the lungs and create
negative pressure to bring air into the lungs. On the other hand
chest breathing uses secondary muscles to lift the ribcage
performing a similar function but much less efficient.

To begin training yourself to breathe through the diaphragm you’ll

need a ball or you hand starting off. Place either your hand or the
ball on your stomach, and begin to inhale deeply through your nose,
focusing on inflating your stomach the ball/hand should begin to
raise. You should feel your stomach inflate. Once that is done exhale
forcefully through your mouth contracting the core muscles. While
doing this focus on keeping your chest as still as possible. Do this for
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a few min but be careful as you might get dizzy so gauge how this
makes you feel. You can practice this on a daily bases, and start to
become conscious of your breathing during the day focusing on
creating the same breathing pattern.

The next exercise will help you gain control of your deep core
muscles. To do that we’ll use the vacuum exercise; performing the
vacuum or draw in method is done by sucking in the stomach back
as you’re trying to move it towards your spine and holding it as
much as possible. This exercise helps activate the deep muscles that
are used to increase intra-abdominal pressure. In combination with
the vacuum exercises you can incorporate kegel squeezes (guys too).
Kegeling is done by squeezing the pelvic floor muscles as you are
trying to hold in your pee. These exercises help strengthen the pelvic
floor and get it to work with the other core muscles. It is important to
keep your pelvis neutral when doing this to get the best benefit of
the exercise.

To begin loading the core muscles you can move on to the dead bug
exercise which is a great progression exercise to planks and other
core challenging exercises. The dead bug is performed as follows;
begin by laying on the floor with your back flat no curve at the low
back. Flex your arms to 90 degrees in an extended position. Now flex
your hip to 90 degrees while having the knees bent at 90 as well. To
begin the exercises, draw in a deep breath, and bring one arm as far
back as you can in a straight line keeping it parallel to the body, at
the same time do the same motion with the leg on the opposite side.
Exhale through your mouth as you do this pushing the air out with
your lower core muscles.

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Core exercises
For full core development we want to focus on all muscles even the
deep ones, this will help us develop a strong and aesthetic core. To
do this we must incorporate isometric, concentric and rotational
exercises. Your isometric exercises are your planks, hollow body
holds leg lifts etc, while concentric are your flexion exercises which
focus on spinal flexion to work the musculature and rotational work
through the transverse plane to target the deep core with exercise
like pallof press, Russian twist, wood chops and medicine ball throws.

Starting of your core routine with vacuum holds is a great way to

warm up the core and have the deep muscles warm up. Doing this
on an almost daily bases will give you great core motor control and
activation. It is good to start with exercises that go form deep to
superficial muscles, so focusing on your transverse abdominis first
followed oblique’s then the rectus abdomins.

One important thing to end this section with is that side bands are
not a good oblique exercise for a few reasons. One is they can
potentially over train your QL muscle which can cause some
dysfunctions. Two, they create a blocky looking waist, since they
focus on lateral flexion, they target the most lateral fibers and will
hypertrophy them more so than the rest which increases the width of
the waist. While rotational exercises focus on all the muscle creating
a deep cut stable core. A good variation is farmer carries with
bilateral weights or unilateral.

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 Chapter 3

Leg Training
Leg anatomy

Leg muscle action

Learning to hip hinge

Ankle mobility

Squatting

Dead lifting/RDL

Leg press

Smith Machine

Glute development

Quad development

Calf development

Hamstring development

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Leg anatomy
To simplify this for training reasons we’ll split the leg muscles into
categories by their actions. We have the hip extensors (glutes,
hamstrings adductor magnus) the hip flexors Rectus femoris, psoas,
hip abductors glute max, glute med, the hip adductors (adductor
complex. Next we have the knee extensors the quads, the knee
flexors hamstrings. For the lower leg we have the foot plantar flexors
gastroc and soleus and dorsi flexors the anterior tibialis. These are
not all the muscles of the lower legs nor all the functions each
muscle does, however they’re the main ones we usually focus on
when training.

Learning to hip hinge

Learning to hip hinge is vital to training legs successfully and safely,
this technique allows for the best activation of the hip extensors
(glute max, hamstrings & adductor magnus) while keeping the spine
safe. Hip hinge is when a hinge like motion occurs at the hip joint
where the pelvis rotates forward on top of the head of the femur.
Often people will perform similar motion but due to lack of hip ROM
will begin to flex the spine forward to reach the desired depth. Spinal
movement under heavy load introduces shear forces which can be
detrimental to spine health. Decreased hip flexion also takes away
from the amount of work the hip extensors will do and how much
they lengthen. This technique is vital for exercises like Squats,
deadlifts, RDL, good mornings and any other exercises that has a hip
flexion component.

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The best way to learn how to hip hinge is using a ridged pole or
dowel which will be placed on the back to keep the spine neutral.
The first thing you’ll need to do is get the pole or dowel, a long
broom handle will be sufficient. You’re going to place the top of the
dowel on the back of your head while holding it where it crosses the
neck. The bottom of the dowel will go on your hips while you hold
the dowel at your low back with the palms facing outward.

Once you’ve placed yourself in the position above, you can begin to
bend forward at the hip while keeping the dowel stationary. Bend
your knees slightly to release the tension from your hamstrings.
Bend as far forward as possible while bringing your hips back. Pay
attention to the position of your back, when you feel it start to lose
form stop, and hinge back to starting. This teaching exercise will
help re teach your body how to hinge, because most of the time
we’re used to bending at the spine when we hinge forward to pick
something up and this gets imprinted onto how we train. You can do
this exercises everyday 3-4 sets of 14-16 really focusing on your form
and keeping the back in neutral. Doing this in front of a mirror the
first few times may be helpful to understand how your body moves.

One limiting factor that can affect your hip hinge is hamstring
tightness, you may notice this when doing this exercises that you feel
a pulling sensation in the back of your knees.

Ankle mobility
Your feet are the first place where energy gets transferred from the
ground up your kinetic chain. Energy will be transferred and
responded to differently in response to how your feet can move and
provide a stable or mobile base of support for the rest of your body.
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The lack of mid foot mobility greatly affects how your joints deal with
a load and how much muscles can activate. The 1st way the foot
affects your muscle activation and joint mechanics is during a squat,
the lack of foot mobility specifically closed chain supination. This is
when the mid foot rotates outward, this motion causes the arch of
the foot to tighten and allows the tibia and femur to externally rotate
together. During a squat this keeps the knees from collapsing and
allows the glutes to be engaged fully keeping the knee stable. A
tight mid foot or an over-pronated foot will cause the tibia to lock up
and won’t allow for external hip rotation. This can cause the knees to
collapse inwards causing shearing force on the knee ligaments which
is not a good thing. This is a big problem when it transfers over to
running or jumping mechanics because the loads can be much
greater. A tight mid foot can be caused by many things, but most
commonly lack of intrinsic foot muscle strength stiffening the joints,
and tight external rotators.

Squatting
Squatting is a great leg exercise that can help you build your glutes
and quads. There are a few variations of squats, like the back squat,
front squat, low bar squat and goblet squat. Each squat variation
may be appropriate for an athlete based on their skill level. These
squat variations can be used to mitigate problem areas if one has an
injury or a physical limitation.
The back squat is the most common type of squat; there are a few
things that should be considered when performing the squat. The
first is your ankle mobility; a lack of ankle mobility often can cause
compensations up the kinetic chain causing excessive hip flexion
which can put unwanted stress on the low back. Ankle mobility
comes in the degree of dorsiflexion when it comes to the squat, if
one lacks dorsiflexion either the heels will begin to lift off the ground
or the butt will shoot back to compensate. In order to fix this we
need to improve our ankle mobility. To improve on this we’ll need to
stretch the calves specifically the soleus. This can be done against a
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wall or from a step, 3 sets of 30 seconds for each leg. This will acutely
increase your ability to dorsiflex, allowing the knees to travel more
forward and eliminate excessive hip flexion and the hips shooting
back. You can combine this with an anterior glide ankle distraction
for better results. This is done by looping a resistance band under the
ankle, putting tension on it, and moving the ankle in and out of
plantar flexion.

The next factor we want to focus on is mid foot mobility, this

contributes largely to the inability to get into a deep squat. The arch
must be able to rise, and feet supinate while the 3 points of contact
keep contact with the ground. With a stiff midfoot, the leg is not able
to rotate out locking the hips; this position is also not optimal for
glute activation. To mobilize your midfoot, you’ll want to step on the
midfoot with your opposite heel applying moderate pressure, then
rotate the leg you’re stepping on out keeping the foot down the
whole time. During this you should feel the arch of your foot rise and
may feel a crack in your foot. Do this for about 30 seconds. This
should help open up your midfoot, over time you will be able to
squat deeper as your leg is able to rotate out and allow for maximal
hip flexion.
The next issue many face is tight adductors and stiff hips; this not
only affects how deep you can go when squatting but also affects
your ankle mobility. The pinching hip occurs when you descend into
the squat, this happens because you’ve reached the max length of
your adductors under tension. During a squat we go into hip flexion
and external rotation these types of movements both cause the
adductors to become longer. Since the adductors are internal
rotators external rotation will cause them to lengthen, some of them
also become hip extensors past a certain degree of hip flexion, and
this makes them lengthen even further. At that point they cannot
lengthen any further under tension during a squat. The best way to
remedy this is to stretch the adductors to allow them to fully
elongate so you can reach a deeper squat 3 sets 30 seconds. This can
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be done with a lunging inner thigh stretch, or any of your favorite
inner thigh stretch. One of the best ways to strengthen them after
you’ve achieved the desired length that allows you to squat deeper,
is to sit in that deep squat strengthening the adductors in an end
range position.

Poor thoracic mobility and strength often lead to an excessive

forward lean to compensate while keeping the spine neutral.
Otherwise the low back may extent while the thoracic spine remains
with a kyphotic curve which will look like a mess. To fix this, we must
first open up our thoracic spine this can be done by performing
exercises like the Cat/camel and doing thoracic extensions on a foam
roller. These should be done in sets of 3, 20-30 reps each. With the
thoracic extensions I would recommend holding your neck and
locking your elbows together to ensure the cervical spine moves
together with the thoracic. Lastly an often-overlooked part of
improving thoracic mobility is improving the strength in the
extended position of the spine. The erectors in that area are weak
most of the time and cannot support the T-spine in extended
positions for a prolonged period of time. To strengthen these I
perform exercises I came up with to strengthen my overhead squat. It
is performed by getting into a squat with a band looped around your
back under your armpits. Next step back while in a squat to create
tension in the band that would be pulling you forward. Now lean
forward in your squat to avoid using your bodyweight to hold the
tension and extend your thoracic spine to hold the force of the band
and hold for 20-30 seconds. Upon completion you should feel more
upright as your back muscles are pulling you back. Also, another very
useful exercise for thoracic strength is superman’s as they
incorporate thoracic spine extensors and glutes together.

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Dead lifting
Deadlifting is a great way for developing the posterior chain, while it
may have a negative reputation to some it is an amazing exercise
when performed correctly. It can be potentially bad when not done
correctly or the purpose of it is misunderstood. We’ll cover what the
deadlift is, how to perform it correctly and what muscles are worked.

The deadlift is a hinging exercise not a squatting exercise; this means

there isn’t a large degree of knee flexion. You may have heard the
term squatting your deadlift that simply means one is going too
deep into knee flexion recruiting the quads more for the movement.
Next is back position, you want the back to be stiff in a neutral
position, this means activating the abdominals and the back
extensors. The back must act as a lever to transfer the movement
created by the hip extensors to the bar. It becomes problematic
when the back loses that stiffness and starts to curve forward or
back, this decreases the stability created by the muscles allowing for
sheer force to occur in the spine causing a potential injury.
To perform the deadlift correctly we start with the bar positioning,
one can go with two positions, the midfoot or against the shins. Try
both ways and see which feels more comfortable, usually with the
bar being closer to the shins will allow for less movement back
during the lift off. With the bar positioned, hinge forward slightly
bending the knees till you can grab the bar. The bar should be
positioned under the shoulder blades with a slightly wider than
shoulder width grip.

Once you position is set up, firmly grasp the bar and retract the
shoulder blades push up slightly with your legs and engage your lats.
Doing this will take the slack off your body and keep the bar
positioned correctly. Now with the slack of the bar begin to push of
the ground using your knee and hip extensors, your knees should
extend roughly the same time as the hips do, if your hips shoot up
there is a problem.
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If your hips are shooting up the most common factor causing that is
motor control; you haven’t developed that motor timing of firing the
knee extensors and hip extensors at the same time. You can fix that
with motor control training, using light weight and repeating the
motion over and over with correct timing for hip extension and quad
extension, use a form poll or just a bar.

The next factor is weak glutes, that right your glutes may be weak in
that bottom range of the deadlift so your hips shoot up faster
because the glutes can’t force hip extension during the initial lift off.
This is also backed up by the fact that once knee extension is
complete your hamstring can become hip extensors to aid the glutes.
During knee extension the hamstrings would have a hard time
working as antagonists to the quads and performing hip extension.
To fix this, you must work on your glute strength and bottom ranges.
The fact of the matter is that the glutes work the most at the top end
ranges in the concentric motion, and it may be hard for some of us
to get them to fire at the bottom ranges.

RDL
Romanian Deadlifts form and how they’re the best Glute/Hamstring
builders. RDL’s gets a bad reputation because of how commonly
people perform them incorrectly and get injured. They’re a hip
focused exercise isolating the hip extensors (glutes and hamstrings).

The RDL form relies on proper hinging at the hip in order to have the
best effect. We only have so much ROM in standing hip flexion, so it
is crucial to have the bar be lifted off the ground either with wider
plates or special “rogue wagon wheel plates”. This is one key
component that many people may get wrong and compensate with
spinal flexion in order to reach the full ROM which may lead to injury.

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Bar placement- I see many different theories where bar placement is
best, logically closest to the shins makes the most sense keeping the
weight closest to the heels decreases any moment arms to the
minimum which may cause strain in the spine. Since the total torque
is decreased that is going through the hips via the spine; as opposed
to the one on the right with a larger moment arm. This also keeps
the weight from moving back or forth when you lift it up as it is
under the shoulders.

The spine is meant to only handle very low weight from a perspective
of static support. It get handle such large loads due to the dynamic
support it gets from the deep muscles. The spine is strongest at its
neutral position; flexion of the spine disrupts the dynamic stability
and makes the spine prone to injury. This is why it’s key to keep a
neutral spine. The back is worked isometricly during RDL, no
movement should come from it.

The glutes and hamstrings are worked best in this exercise their
action is to extend the femur but when it becomes the stable base of
support they begin to posterity rotate the pelvis you can see on the
picture to the right their lines of pull. This is where people may get
confused as the posterior rotation may be confused for spinal
extension this comes from the spinal muscles like erector spinae
which does not attach to the femur. The RDL is a leg exercise not a
back workout the back muscles are worked only through the transfer
of energy.

Leg press
The leg press is a great accessory exercise to any leg day routine;
there are a few things that need to be cleared up when using the leg
press. The first misconception is that changing stance width will
affect whether the glutes or quads are worked more. That simply is
not true; however, we can manipulate which performs more works by
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having a higher foot position on the leg press the exercise will
emphasize more hip extension, while lower foot position will
emphasize more knee extension. Next thing is how strong you are on
the leg press; you might have noticed that you can press a
significantly heavier amount on a leg press vs. a squat why is that?
There are 3 factors behind this, 1 is simply the angle at which the
weight moves, and since it is not perpendicular to the ground some
of it is lost as a vector downward depending on the machine and
angle would be around 30% less. Next is the position of the weight in
regard to your joints, the weights center of mass might be closer to
you joints creating less of a moment arm making the weigh lighter.

Smith Machine
The smith machine can be a useful tool for those who are new to
exercising or more advanced lifters. The smith machine can offer a
source of reassurance for newer lifters who don’t have experience
using a free weight barbell to squat. Because of the fixed bar path
they are not ideal however they can allow for the increase in initial
strength to move up to a barbell. While the activation of the glute
muscles is not to the same extent as free weights it is similar and
enough to induce hypertrophy.

The smith machine may be useful for more advanced lifters because
of the well developed mind to muscle connection. The more
experience you have with lifting the better the control over your
muscles. For a more advanced lifter a smith machine may allow for a
better mind to muscle connection as it has decreased stability
demands. This allows the lifter to only focus on the target muscle
group even with a higher weight, hence allowing a better contraction
rather than a focus on just keeping the weight up.

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Regardless of your view of the smith machine it is a tool available in
most gyms and it may help you progress through incorporation in
your routine. This may be occasionally or often depending on your
personal preferences.

Glute development
The glutes can be trained in 3 ways, through hip extension, hip
abduction and hip external rotation. The primary difference in the 3
motions the glutes can be trained is how much you’ll be able to load
the glutes in those positions.
The first most important part to glute training is having a proper hip
hinge that is the hinge like action that happens between the femur
and the pelvis. This allows for proper activations of the glute muscles
during exercise. Practicing this can be done with a long rod places on
the middle of the back and held with both hands one at the bottom
one at the top as seen in the picture. This will allow for the motion to
happen at the hip rather than spine.

Second part to training Glutes is you want to make sure you have the
proper ROM (range of motion) in the hips, knees, and ankles. This
means stretching any tight muscles most commonly the rectus
femoris (quad) the calf muscles, and the hamstrings. Tight muscles
will limit your ROM and won’t allow for proper form and muscle
activation. You want your pelvis to be in neutral position. Calf
stretching is important for ankle mobility if you lack it, you’ll tend to
lean forward on your quads or lift your heels of the ground which
may cause joint problems.

Next you want to make sure you have good core strength that will
allow you to perform the exercise to their fullest potential. The leg
muscles you train, often will be able to hand more weight than your
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core muscles can support so it is crucial to keep your core trained
and engaged during the exercise.

Lastly what exercise should you do? It’s often thought that squat are
the best exercise for glutes, however that not entirely correct.
Romanian deadlifts are one of the best glute exercises as they isolate
the glutes through a proper hip hinge. They can be tricky to perform
so ensure proper form and safety. To target glutes, you want to
include (Squats, RDL, weighted hip thrusts, side abductions, side
lunges and good-mornings). These are a few of the most beneficial
and most common exercise. Note- when performing the squat, the
more your torso moves forward the more work the glutes have to do.
Last point glutes are activated more on the lift of the squat than
lowering so moving up slower should activated them better.

Hip extension will allow for the greatest load to be placed on the
glutes, the types of exercises in this category are hinge based
exercises. These are exercises like the Romanian deadlift, squats, and
deadlift and hip thrusts. There are many more exercises that will
target the glutes, but these are the main ones.

Quad development
Quad development may seem like an easy thing but there are a few
things to consider when creating a routine for legs. The first thing
you should think about is, am I training the hamstrings as much as
the quads. You want to have a similar volume of quad and hamstring
training. This will help with your knee stability as well as make sure
everything is symmetrical. The first thing to consider is that the
deadlift is not a greatest quad exercise relative to others, the amount
of torque on the knee and movement it goes through is not as ideal
as other exercises. Squats, weighted lunges, step ups all create
greater knee torque and activation; however hex bar deadlifts will
elicit a greater quad activation if you’re looking to supplement it.
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Quad development should typically start with your squat as being
your first exercise to train the glutes and quads. After that we start to
supplement additional movement and volume. The 3 best exercises
for quad development aside from the squat are the leg press,
walking lunge and the leg extension machine. The leg press allows
you to get a lot of volume through heavier weight training that you
would normal not be able to get from squats. The lunges create a
great function high knee torque exercise, and leg extension allow for
complete isolation of the quads. There is no need to fear the knee
extension machine if used properly and you do not have any prior
knee injuries.

Calf development
When it comes to calf development there are two muscles we need
to focus on, the soleus and the gastroc. The gastroc unlike the soleus
crosses the knee joint which can make it passively actively insufficient
when the knee is bent placing a greater demand on the soleus. This
is something we can take advantage of when training the calf
muscles.

When training the soleus, the deeper muscle of the calves we want to
perform exercises with a bent knee this will allow for better isolation
of it. Because the soleus is an endurance muscle, we want to focus on
training it with higher reps 14+. While the gastroc being more of a
power muscle we want to focus on heavier loads with more explosive
contractions staying within 8-10 rep range.

There are some variations in these exercises that can help increase
the activation of the inside or outside part of the calf muscle. Turning
the feet out appears to activate the inside calf muscle more
compared to the outside. While turning the feet in, tends to target
the outside calf more. This can be useful when trying to emphasize
one part of the muscles. However, it is important to keep the muscles
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strength balanced. It may be beneficial to perform calf raises both
turned in and out to get the maximum training benefit.

One important thing to note is when doing calf exercises is to stop at

the bottom to take away the elastic tension stored in the Achilles
tendon which helps the weight spring back up. This will make sure
that the calf is working the whole time to produce a force.

Hamstring development
Hamstring development can be hard to achieve sometimes, the best
thing to do is to learn the proper exercise to train them because they
are often neglected in training volume. Two things to note, the squat
and the leg press are not great hamstring exercises. Because the
hamstring crosses both the hip and the knee it is hard for it to
perform hip extension while the knee undergoes extension. The
same thing goes for the leg press, during the push phase the pelvis is
locked, and the hamstrings can perform hip extension however
during this the knee is going into extension, so it would be
counterproductive to engage the hamstrings to flex the knee while it
is undergoing extension. So, if you have been relying on these
exercises for your hamstring training volume you may have been
under training them.

The next thing to note is that the hamstrings are activated differently
during knee flexion exercises and hip extension. This means you
should have a variety of exercises including both hip extension and
knee flexion. Here are a few great exercises for the hamstrings. The
first one and my personal favorite is the stiff legged deadlift with
dumbbells. The reason this specific deadlift is done with dumbbells is
because it allows for a greater range of motion into hip flexion
allowing the hamstrings to work at a deep range and not be
overpowered by the glutes. When performing these, keep the weight
in your heels this will help isolate the hamstrings. These should be
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done at a higher rep range 10-12 with a higher speed than regular
deadlifts focusing on controlled velocity.

The next exercise is the prone dumbbell hamstring curl. This exercise
is done by laying down on your stomach and taking a dumbbell and
placing it between the feet. Once that is done we begin by lowering
the dumbbell down towards the floor maintain control over the
weight till we touch the floor. From the bottom begin to pull and lift
the weight with your hamstrings until you get to 90 degrees then
repeat. This exercise is great for activating the hamstrings as well as
the adductors. You can perform a variation of it with a resistance
band perform higher velocity contractions.

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 Chapter 4

Back Training
Back training

Back Anatomy

Back muscle actions

The Lats

Middle vs. outer back

Back exercises

Traps

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Back anatomy
The back has a lot of muscles and for simplicity sakes of training
them we’ll categorize them into 3 groups the lats and teres group,
mid back group and the perispinal group. The lats cover a wide
portion of your back and are responsible for giving your back the
width in combination with the teres. The mid back is made of the
rhomboids deep to the trap muscle which has 3 parts; lower, middle
and upper. Lastly, we have the deep perispinal muscles; these
muscles are responsible for stabilizing your back when doing
exercises.

Muscle actions
In order to train these muscles properly we have to consider the
actions they perform. Since Our main focus here is training for
strength or hypertrophy we’ll focus on the actions that can be loaded
the most. The lats perform 3 actions; they extend and adduct the
shoulder, and medially rotate it. We’re going to focus on the
extension and adduction part of its action. Extension part of lat
training is anything from rows, to lat pushdowns. While the
adduction part of training is anything like lat pulldown’s or pull-ups.
The middle back is trained by performing scapular retraction
exercises, such as rowing movements which incorporate the scapula
coming forward and being actively retracted. The deep spinal
muscles are trained mostly during heavy compound movements like
deadlifts which train them isometrically or through back extension
exercises.

The lats

The lats can be trained with a variety of exercises, the best way to
train the lats in regard to thickness and width are the bent over rows
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with a palm up grip. The next best exercises for lats will be the lat
pushdown with a straight bar and lastly the lat pulldown/pull up.
These exercises can be performed in many different ways at the gym
whether it is cable rows, v bar rows low row machine and many more.
The most important factor for the rows is to focus on the shoulder
extension keeping the arms close to the body.

Middle vs. outer back

When training for middle back as stated earlier, we want to focus on
the retraction portion of exercises. While there isn’t a lot of range of
motion during retraction it is still enough to target the traps. This can
be done either during rowing exercises or incorporate specific
exercises that are focused on the retraction part.

Common Back Exercises

These are the best back exercises to form a complete back, you
always want to start with heavy compound exercises, now for back
that’s going to be the rack pull. This is an abbreviation of the deadlift.
Since we want to only focus on the back muscles and not the glutes
the rack pull will be a better option than the deadlift which will work
all of them. The rack pull can also help you solidify you back muscles
for Deadlifting by adding extra volume and developing strong back
stabilizers. For this first exercise we want to focus on heavier weight
lower rep range. Between 6-8 reps. Remember reps are determined
from a percent max, if you’re doing 6-8 reps those last reps should
be hard.

The next exercise for back day will be the lat builder, the bent over
row with a supine grip. This grip will help us focus on extension of
the humerus targeting the lats. For this exercise elbows should be
close to the side, and one should be bent over around 80-90
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degrees. You want to be almost parallel to the floor, because of this
angle you want your core and glutes strongly engaged to avoid over
fatiguing the back and possibly injuring yourself. When it comes to
performing lat exercise the biggest and most common mistake that
happens is overuse of the biceps. This happens because one
overcompensates with them to help move the weight. You’ll notice
this happen when the fore arm is no longer perpendicular to the
floor, once that is changed there is a moment added to the elbow
causing the biceps to work. When performing bent over rows, you
want to think about simply pulling through the elbows to lift the
weight. A good cue I like to use is, think about elbowing someone
when doing these. When performing barbell bent over rows, we’re
going to aim for about 8-10 reps focusing on squeezing the lats as
hard as we can at the top.

After these we’re going to switch gears to training the middle back,
we’re going to do this by performing a prone grip barbell row. This
may seem redundant to the previous exercise however you’ll notice
the difference when performing it. This exercise will emphasize
scapular retraction instead of shoulder extension. There are a few
key things we must change to make this a great mid back exercise.
The first thing, we’re going to go prone grip which means the palm
will be facing down. The set up is the same, torso 80-90 degrees
forward; however the grip will be a little wider, slightly wider than
shoulder width. Next instead of having the arms tucked close to the
side we’re going to have them at about 30-40 degrees out. This will
allow for us to emphasize the scapula retraction. When performing
these we’re going to allow the scapula to protract forward as much
as possible than as exclusively
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it with the shoulder blades, trying to squeeze them together at the
top. For reps, we’re going to maintain the 8-10 rep schemes for this
exercise as well.

The next exercise we’re going to focus on is again for lats, it is the
straight arm lat pushdown. This exercise is performed on a cable
machine with a straight bar, it is a great lat and teres builder. When
performing it you want to make sure the arms are straight, 45 degree
lean forward and you’re focusing on pushing through your elbows to
avoid using triceps or other accessory muscles.

Lat pulldown’s
Lat pulldowns are a great exercise to develop the lats through
abduction, they offer similar activation as pull ups but are more
adjustable as far as intensity. If you have trouble with pull up lat
pulldown’s will be beneficial to work your way up to pull-ups. They
can also be used as an accessory to pull-ups after a level of fatigue is
reached.

Different grips during the lat pulldown will offer different levels of lat
activation, during a wider grip we will have less biceps working and
more lat. This will be at the sacrifice of the amount of weight that can
be lifted. Incorporating both wider and narrow grips may be
beneficial to fully overload the lat muscles during adduction
exercises.

Rowing exercises
Rowing exercises are probably the most beneficial for your overall
back development. There are many variations but most focus on the
same principle of shoulder extension and scapular retraction. The
rowing exercise can be done two ways, with a retracted scapula
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and retracting). With the scapula stabilized we’ll be focusing more on
the lats and isometrically strengthening the scapular stabilizers.
While with active scapular retraction we add focus to the traps and
rhomboids.

The rowing exercises can vary from dumbbell rows which allow for a
greater emphasis on the retraction part, barbell rows which allow for
good lat emphasis. V bar rows on the cable machine which can be
done both with retracted scapula or actively using it. During cable
rows with a straight bar to emphasize the lats we can use an under-
hand grip elbows tucked. To emphasize the traps overhand grip
elbows about 30-40 degrees and focusing on letting the shoulder
blades slide forward and actively retracting them.

Traps
The traps are an important component of a complete back; however,
there are some mixed ideas on how exactly to train the upper traps.
Thus far we covered how to train the mid back, which is made of the
lower and middle traps, now we’ll look at the upper trap
development.

The upper trap is thought to mostly do scapular elevation however it

is shown to perform scapular retraction as well based on the
orientations of the fibers. So, it is important to train both movements
of the muscle. Besides from the regular barbell shrugs it is important
to add scapular retraction movements like with triceps rope or with a
bar in the form of prone grip rows.

Prone grip rows for the upper trap vary slightly as we focus more on
retracting the shoulder blades back and up to fully engage the upper
traps. So, it becomes more of a bent over shrug at 45 degrees with a
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scapular retraction. As far as the rope retraction those are best done
with the rope attached to a cable machine that’s slightly higher than
the waist to allow for an upwards pull to retract and shrug the
shoulder blades.

It is also important to know that the upper traps should be trained

roughly to the same extent as the lower traps as that balance is
important for scapular-humeral rhythm in order to maintain strong
and healthy shoulders.

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 Chapter 5

Shoulder Training

Shoulder anatomy 35

Shoulder biomechanics 37

Shoulder exercises

Shoulder press variations

Rear delt rows

Face pulls

Raises

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Shoulder Anatomy
The shoulder is made up by 3 parts of the deltoid, the anterior,
middle and posterior deltoid. Each section performs a different
action; the front delt is used in flexion, the side in abduction and the
posterior in extension. It is important to train each with the same
focus as the rest. Often some parts of the delt are overlooked leaving
them underdeveloped. It is common to think the front delt gets over
trained because it gets activated during bench press but since it does
get much extra use it needs more volume to be able to maintain
strength during shoulder training and chest training.

Shoulder biomechanics
The shoulder has a very long lever arm when it comes to some
exercises, so it is important to choose the right weight. Doing too
heavy of a weight for exercises like raises and fly’s will diminish the
return of your workout due to compensations. The best way to know
if a weight is okay to use is if you hold it in front of you with an
outstretched arm, if you cannot hold it for a few seconds it is too
heavy.

Like with most upper body training scapular stability is crucial, the
lack of scapular stability can one potentially lead to an injury and two
lead to decreased return of your workouts due to compensation.

Shoulder press variations

The shoulder press is a great exercise for developing the whole
deltoid, however there are many variations of the exercise and it can
be hard to choose which the best one for you is. We’re going to
compare 4 variations of the shoulder press, dumbbell press (seated
& standing) and barbell
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When comparing standing vs. seated shoulder press the standing
seemed to either be higher in activation or trend towards it. While
dumbbell had greater activation for the most part, it seems with that
activation there is a drastic decrease in 1rm relative to the other
variations. The seated position seems to allow for more weight to be
lifted, as well as the barbell due to the increased stability.

So, even if the dumbbell press seems to have higher activation it may
be due to the decreased stability. However, this would make it a
great exercise for innervation or increase motor control of the delts
for novice lifters or when coming back into training after some time
off.

The Barbell press also tended to place a greater demand on the

biceps when compared to the dumbbell press and the triceps in the
standing barbell press. This can be placed under consideration when
incorporating this exercise between training arms or chest when
those muscles may be fatigued.

The standing barbell press is a great exercise for overall strength and
size gain but adding different variations of the shoulder press can be
beneficial in different situations.

One thing that may be affecting your overhead press is you may be
overusing your traps and triceps during overhead movements.
During pressing movements for front deltoid, you need to be
thinking about bringing your elbows towards the midline, now
pushing up the weight. This helps focus the tension on the deltoid
not the triceps, also when you perform presses, watch your shoulders
they should not be elevating excessively during.
⠀

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Rear delt rows
The rear delts may often be overlooked regarding training volume,
most of the time only rear delt flys and face pulls are incorporated in
the training routine to target them. That simply is not enough, the
rear delts require more volume to be fully developed and the rear
delt row is a great rowing variation to incorporate into your routine.
This exercise can be done with either dumbbell or a barbell. It is just
like a bent over row with over hand grip, but the elbows are brought
to about 30 degrees downs from the shoulder and the shoulder
blades are locked. At that angle the lats line of pull is not able to
perform extension at the shoulder and we isolate the rear delt (some
teres).

Face pulls
Face pulls are another great rear delt exercise; they’re a great
secondary exercise to incorporate after your heavier compound
rowing movements. There are two variations of face pulls, one that
incorporates external rotation at the end this is where the rope
comes higher than the shoulder, this is better for full delt activation
and rotator cuff. The next which is for full isolation of the rear delt is
when the rope comes in at the level of the shoulder. Both are great
variations depending on what your goal is.

Raises and flys

Raises and flys are great ways to add a lot of tension in to your
shoulders. These exercises are dependent on the biomechanics of the
shoulder and it is important to do them properly and with the right
weight. Because of the big leverage working against the shoulder we
must choose a lighter weight than usual for these exercises; this is
where the rule from earlier comes in hand (holding the dumbbell
with an outstretched hand). When doing the front raise exercise, we
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want to focus on bringing the arm through the line of pull of the
front delt. This means coming slightly across the body as we lift the
weigh up. Slight bend in the elbow will help take pressure of the
elbow joint. When doing performing front raises; focus on keeping
the shoulder blades squeezed down and back and have a soft bend
in the knees.

Cable exercises
Cable exercises are a great way to modify exercise because they
change the force vector. Free weights always pull straight down and
will produce the most tension at 90 degrees while with cables
because we can change the line of pull, we can decide when the
torque is the greatest. Since muscles have their own length tension
relationship which is roughly proportional to that of our
biomechanical design for living on a planet with gravity we can add a
further challenge by having the torque be higher at muscle lengths
we’re not accustomed to.

Warm-ups
When training shoulders it is important to warm up a few things: 1
the shoulder joint itself through some light activation exercises like
external rotations 90/90 rotations with press or the common routine
of Y, T, W’s. This will ensure the shoulder joint and supporting
musculature is primed to work. The next thing is the scapula and its
supporting musculature specifically the serratus and mid/low traps.
This can be done with some scapular retractions or the Y, T, W drills a
for the serratus some quick pushup plus exercises. We will learn more
on this in chapter 9.

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 Chapter 6

Chest Training

Chest anatomy

Chest training biomechanics

Chest training mistakes

Chest exercises

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Pec Anatomy
The pectoral muscles are made up for 3 sections the clavicular
section, the sterna section and the costal section. These sections
represent the upper, middle and lower pec. Each can perform its own
function separately while as a whole they perform one. It is
important to train them as a whole as well as with isolation exercises
for each head in order to achieve full development. The upper pec
(clavicular section) is responsible for creating the fullness in the chest
as it blends with the deltoids, while the lower pec creates the
transition into the V taper as we will learn in a later chapter.

Chest training biomechanics

Chest training biomechanics is influenced by a few factors that can
limit your muscle growth if not changed. When training chest the
humerus must move at the glenohumeral joint which is between the
scapula and the humerus. This means the mechanics of chest training
can be influenced by two things, the glenohumeral joint and the
scapula. The scapula provides the base of support from which the
arm can produce force. This means scapular stability is crucial for
back training. The lack of scapular stability will decrease the ability of
the anterior muscles to produce force and perform work leading to
less growth.

Next thing that influences chest training mechanics is the

glenohumeral joint, instability and change in joint mechanics will
affect how muscles work due to their length tension relationship.
Internally rotated and anteriorly translated shoulders will affect the
activation of the lower pec fibers leading to decreased development.

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Strengthening the scapular stabilizers and improving shoulder
mobility and strength is key to chest development. If you struggle
with improving your chest musculature it will be beneficial to work
on those two things. This will be covered in the chapters ahead.

Chest training mistakes

Number one is your pec muscles are tight. When your pec minor and
pec major are tight, they pull your shoulders forward, this puts the
pec major in an unfavorable position to be activated and your
shoulder can take over. For this same reason we can have a
difference in the pec muscles, this is because certain fibers are tighter
and aren’t getting activated like the rest leaving a lagging part in the
chest. This can be fixed by stretching; stretching 3-4 times a week for
3 sets for 30 sec should improve your muscle length. While
stretching pay attention if one side is tighter than the other, you may
notice that side is also smaller.

Second coming back to scapular stability you may be protracting

your scapula during the bench and not having your shoulder in the
right position. Not only will this decrease activation of the pecs but
can put your shoulder in a position where it is not the most stable.
This can be fixed by strengthening the rhomboids and middle traps
with retracting exercises and actively focusing on retracting the
scapula and depressing it during bench press.

Third is you’re focusing on pushing the weight rather than

performing adduction of the arm. When we internally focus on
pushing the weight it can cause greater use of the triceps and other
arm muscles rather than the pecs. Cuing yourself to focus on
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bringing your elbows towards the middle of your body may help
improve their activation and development.

Chest exercises
There are many exercises for chest but at the end they’re broken
down into pressing movements and adduction movements. Pressing
being your bench exercises and adduction your fly type exercises.
The pressing exercises are great for overall size development while
the adduction exercises are better for developing the shape of the
pecs and fiber length.

When it comes to pressing exercises, we have our free weight

exercises and machine. Free weights should be your first exercises
then your machines. Machines add a level of isolation that free
weights do not have when you’re experienced and have a good mind
to muscle connection.

Bench press can be done a variety of ways from barbell, dumbbell to

smith machine. Barbell allows for the most weight to be done and
incorporates more triceps in it, while dumbbell requires more
stability and incorporates more biceps. The smith machine is roughly
the same as barbell but with less weight capability. With some
athletes the smith machine may allow for a greater focus on
contracting the pec due to the lower stability requirement.

Choosing which exercise is right for you depends on your needs, if

you plan on adding triceps to your chest workout a barbell bench will
allow for more volume, or you’ve just trained biceps recently. On the
other hand if you want some more volume for your biceps dumbbell
may be more beneficial.

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With bench press you can modify a few variables such as bench
angle and grip width. Bench angle will dictate how hard the exercise
will be and how much pec vs. triceps activation you will get. Wider
grip increase pec activation but decreases weight capacity and
triceps activation. Narrow grip allows for more triceps activation
compared to a wider grip. Because the bench press relies on triceps a
lot for max weight close grip may help improve your one rep max if
that is your goal. Switching bench seat angles will change the
amount of activation of the different sections of the pec. A incline of
about 45 degrees is the optimal angle to target the clavicular head
(upper pec) while a decline of about 30 degrees will allow for the
best activation of the lower pec.

Machine exercises are a great way to add more volume and isolation
to your chest day. If you have a lagging part of your pec whether it is
upper or lower using machines will help even that part out. It is
important to really focus on the contraction during these exercises to
get the full benefit. The two machines for pressing movements that
would be best are the incline and decline presses. When using these
machines it is crucial to tuck your shoulder blades down and back
and stabilize them during the movements. With machines it more
about the movement than the weight, so use a moderate load that
allows for about 10-12 reps. This will help your focus on the
contraction of the part of the muscle you’re trying to isolate.

Next, we have the adduction exercises, these include fly’s whether

they’re cable or dumbbell and the pec deck. The dumbbell fly’s are
great for opening up the pec muscles and improving their shape,
since the pecs often get tight they can lose their broad look with
rolled and internally rotated shoulders. When doing dumbbell flys
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together in a retracted and depressed position. Bend the elbows
slightly and focus on bringing the elbows down in an arch. Do this
with a low load but use long eccentric time under tension. Try to go
down in counts of 4-5 seconds it will burn. When coming back up
think about moving in an arch focusing on brining the dumbbells
towards the middle of your body.

The cable machines allow for good isolation of the lower and upper
fibers. To hit the upper fibers, you will bring the cable pulleys down
low and wide, while to hit the lower fiber bring them up and wide.
When training for upper chest (low cables fly) we want to focus on
brining the hands from a wide position to a narrow while brining the
hands up to shoulder level. For lower chest (high cables fly) we’ll be
focusing on trying to squeeze the arms into the lower part of the
chest.

Pull over’s
The pull over exercise is sometime overlooked in a training routine;
however, it is a great exercise for the chest. The reason why it is a
good exercise to incorporate into your routine is because it trains the
chest from a different angle targeting different fibers in different
ways. It also helps open the pecs by stretching them into flexion
creating a more aesthetic looking muscle.

When performing this exercise, it’s important to keep your core tight
to stabilize the rib cage to allow the pecs to have a stable base of
support. Range of motion should be till a stretch is felt given no pain
or discomfort is felt.

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 Chapter 7

Arm Training

Arm anatomy

Arm training biomechanics

Arm training mistakes

Arm exercises

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Arm Anatomy
The arm musculature is made up of many muscles that are all very
important to full development. The most common ones we think of
are the Biceps and the triceps, however there are more. Under the
biceps we have the brachialis which is also an elbow flexor and helps
improve the leverage of the biceps and how they look. We also have
the brachioradialis muscle which is responsible for creating the
transition between the upper arm and the forearm. This muscle is
very underrated but is crucial for complete arm development. Lastly
we have the forearm flexors, extensor s and supinators/pronators.

Brachialis
The Brachialis lies under the biceps and can influence its leverage
and its size appearance. Training the Brachialis is done by putting the
biceps in passive insufficiency with a pronated grip or a neutral grip.
This helps activate the other elbow flexors. It is important to add 2-3
exercises in those positions to avoid overdevelopment of the biceps
and underdevelopment of the rest of the arm muscles.

Biceps
The biceps is arguably one of the most trained muscles, but its often
trained wrong. The most common mistake with biceps training is
swinging the weight and using too much shoulder to move it. The
biceps exercise is a full body workout in a way. Because you change
the center of gravity of the body by displacing the weight further
away through a fulcrum (your elbow) you cause instability in the
whole chain. This intern requires your core, shoulder and shoulder
blade muscles to contract to stabilize you. However, with the use of
momentum you disrupt that and use the stabilizing muscles to add
force into lifting the weight taking tension of the biceps.
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The common argument is that since the biceps performs shoulder
flexion it must be trained in shoulder flexion and elbow flexion at the
same time. This is false, if you think about anther muscle the
hamstring which performs two actions knee flexion and hip
extension, we don’t train both at the same time. It is even shown to
decrease activation when both happen at the same time.

The best exercise to perform for biceps that will negate this effect is
the concentration curl whether it is done of a bench or your knee.
This allows for full activation of the biceps as an elbow flexor. The
next exercise is the alternating dumbbell curls starting in neutral and
going into supination.

A great exercise to help with tight biceps is the incline bench biceps
curl. Because it puts the biceps into an elongated position through
shoulder extension it creates a greater stretch on it. It is not a great
exercise as far as activation however for overall biceps health and
look it is very useful.

Brachioradialis
The bicep gap is the space between the end of the muscle belly and
the forearm muscles. This is mostly due to genetics because of
shorter muscle belies which causes for a larger gap. However this can
be attenuated by training the brachioradialis which is closest to the
bicep brachii belly from the forearm muscles.

In order to efficiently target the brachioradialis you must perform

pronated elbow flexion; this is shown by the study below that the
change in muscle insertion location puts the brachioradialis in more
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advantageous position to be activated than the biceps. We can also
see that a neutral grip curl (hammer curl) does not really affect the
muscle activation patter between the biceps and the

Triceps
The triceps makes up about 2/3 of your arm and is made up of 3
heads, the long head which originates on the scapula and the lateral
and medial which originate at the humerus. They all attach at the
olecranon process of the ulna (elbow). Since the long head cross 2
joints the shoulder and the elbow it acts on both joints, extension at
the elbow and extension/abduction at the shoulder. Crossing two
joints leaves it susceptible to passive/active insufficiency.

When is activation of the long head diminished, when the shoulder is

flexed, like in over head extension, skull crushers, the length of the
long head is increased this causes passive insufficiency this limits its
activation by limiting ROM of it and cross bridge formation. While
having the arm extended like it kick backs put the long head in active
insufficiency since its acting as an extensor of the shoulder, this
means the muscle length is limited and how cross bridges are able to
form between actin and myosin.

This means that performing over head extensions exercise will

emphasize the medial and lateral head of the triceps more. While a
neutral shoulder should equally emphasize all heads, putting the
arms into internal rotation diminishes its ability to adduct and extend
the shoulder joint. When performing push downs to target the long
head, keeping the arms adducted to the side can help emphasize it.
Lastly when training triceps it’s important to know the position of
your hand does not affect activation, since they attach at the ulna,
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using a reveres grip does not do anything to the insertion position to
alter activation. Doing this just puts you in an unfavorable position
causing your wrist extensors to fatigue.

To develop the triceps, we must incorporate a range of exercises in

addition to some compound movements. Contrary to popular belief
the bench-press is not all you need to develop your triceps, while it is
an exercise that uses the triceps quiet a lot it is not the best for full
development.

The kick backs and the dips lead a high activation of the triceps;
however, I would place these exercises towards the end of the
workout due to the inability to modify the weight being done. The
kick back exercise is a great exercise but due to the position of the
extended shoulder it is hard to overload the triceps since the delts
needs to be working to stabilize the shoulder. The dips are also a
great exercise, but it is not as easy to modify the load as well as you
must be careful how you load the shoulder because with dips the
shoulder wants to translate anteriorly which may be problematic.

The next exercises have overall similar activation with the overhead
ext, rope pushdowns and bar pushdowns being close and trending to
a higher activation of the long head of the triceps. It can be
postulated that with external rotation during the overhead ext we
may see more long head activation since it crosses two joints it will
potentially be in a more favorable position.

⠀The close grip bench was close to the lowest relative activation with
skull crushers, it may not be a great exercise to incorporate during
your arm day however adding it to your chest day may 1. Add more
volume to your triceps outside of your normal routine 2. Help with
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improving bench-press as it heavily relies on the triceps when doing
max resistance.

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 Chapter 8

V Taper

What affects your V-taper

Shoulders

Lower pectorals

Core musculature

V-taper Muscles

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What affects your V-taper
Your V-taper is affected by a few things and combined they all affect
how your waist to shoulder ratio. The first thing to note is that your
V-taper depends on your personal anatomical structure. We’re not all
born with broad shoulder and small waist, but we can do our best to
create the illusion of it.

The first thing to note is that your waist isn’t the thing that creates
the v taper; your waist is between the ribs and the hips. What creates
your V- taper is the width of the hips and the width of the shoulders.
These are both things you cannot change because there are
structural, however we can change the musculature around them
which can affect how these structures stand.

Let’s look at the shoulders first, if your arms hang by your side and
the outside of your shoulders is wider than your hips you can create
a V-taper. If your hips are just anatomically wider than your shoulder
you can still work on these things to improve your taper angle. Your
shoulder width is limited by a few things, the first is, how upright
your posture is if you’re hunched over your shoulder are going to
droop forward and decrease the width they cover from one end to
the other decreasing the taper angle. The next thing is, your
shoulders are rolled forward and internally rotated. This again brings
the shoulders in, and decreases the angle of the V-Taper. The next
thing is your shoulder itself is protracted forward because of a
muscular issue or tight capsule.

Next is the transition between the shoulders and the torso, your
lower pectoral musculature. If this part of the muscle is under
developed, which it often is if you have the issues above it will

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decrease the gradient taper of the shoulders into the torso and the
waist.

After we have the torso musculature, mostly the deep core muscles
(Transverse abdominis and oblique’s) these muscles again create the
gradient taper between the shoulder and pectorals into the waist. If
they’re underdeveloped and uncontrolled, you’ll lose the shape of
the taper. Lastly, we have the muscular variables, the muscles that are
going to affect your V-taper will be the deltoids (All 3 heads) the lats
and the pectorals. Focusing on these will help bring out the V-taper
in you.

Find out next how we’re going to address all these issues to bring
out the best taper your structure allows.

Disclaimer: perform these exercises and stretches at your own risk, if

you have any previous health conditions injuries or suspect you may
have one speak to a health professional.

Shoulders
If your shoulders are affecting your V-taper here is what you need to
do to improve it. If you’re back is slumped, you need to work on your
thoracic mobility. To improve this you’ll need to perform thoracic
extension exercises and back strengthening exercises. First exercise
that will help you is the Cat-Cow exercises, this exercise helps open
the thoracic spine and allows you to stay more upright and widens
the shoulders. Perform these 3x a week 3 sets for reps of 20, there
will be a full routine at the end of the guide. Once these are done,
you will need a foam roller to perform thoracic extensions, to do this
begin by lying on the foam roller perpendicular to you on the floor
lay flat on top of it with bent knees feet flat. The foam roller should
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lay about 2-3 inches below your shoulder blades, grab onto your
neck with your palms and lock your elbows together, begin to lower
yourself to a comfortable position and come back up repeat 3 sets
for 20 reps 3x a week.

Next we’re going to work on bring the shoulders for a wider taper.
To do this first look if your shoulder is internally rotated, stand in
neutral and look down if your thumbs are pointed in towards your
midline they are. To fix this we first need to stretch the pecs and lats.
We will perform 3 sets of each holding of 30 secs each 3 x a week,
this will help bring the shoulder back out to their natural position. In
combination with these you can add the cross body stretch to open
up the shoulder, again should be done 3x30 sec. With that in mind,
we need to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles and the mid traps. To
do this we’re going to perform external rotation exercises which can
be done with a resistance band, cables, or weights. When performing
with weights you need to make sure you’re laying on your side.
These exercises can be done 2-3x a week soreness permitting.
Perform 3 sets of 14-16 reps with a resistance that is comfortable.
Next we’re going to work on the mid traps which help the shoulders
stay back making them look wider. This will be done with scapular
retraction exercises which can be done with cables or resistance
bands; these should be done 2-3x a week as well 3 sets of 14-16
reps.

Lower pectorals
To fix the way the lower pectorals sit we’re going to need to target
them specifically in the gym, you can add more than one day to
specifically train them in combination with your regular exercises. To
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strengthen and develop the lower pec you’ll need to perform a lot of
decline exercises. You will need to incorporate decline press either on
a bench or machine (preferably machine as it allows for more
isolation). When performing these focus more on high reps and the
contraction of the lower pec squeezing at the end. Next you want to
add fly’s for the lower fiber this is where the cables are raised above
the shoulder and are pressing down towards the floor. Lastly add
dips to your routine focusing on the squeeze of the lower pecs.

Core musculature
Next we’re going to focus on the core musculature; this is the
important transition from the upper body to the hips that create the
final gradient of width. And underdeveloped core will affect how the
taper looks; if your obliques are not properly developed it will create
an hourglass look instead of a taper where the waist is thinner than
the hips. To fix this we’re going to add a few core exercises to our
routine that specifically focus on developing the deeper core
muscles. To start with you will need to add the vacuum exercise
which will help you tighten your waist and develop the oblique’s. This
is done by sucking your stomach back towards your spine and up
into your rib cage, holding as long as you can, (make sure you
breathe). You can perform this daily as long as you’re not sore,
doing at least 3 sets.

Next we’re going to add exercises to develop the oblique’s creating

the ab V and the taper. The first exercise you need to add is the side
plank, performing it at least 2-3x a week holding to fatigue then
increasing gradually. This exercise will help develop motor control
and tone to the obliques; to compliment it we’re going to add the
paloff press rotation exercise. This is done by attaching a resistance
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band to a fixed object or using a cable machine. It can be done either
kneeling or stand. Once the band is attached or you have the cable
you will hold the band or cable with outstretched hand in front of
your chest. Then begin to twist away from the band keeping your
hips facing forward. Do this for 3x 10 two times a week.

V-taper Muscles
Lastly to develop the best v-taper possible for our personal anatomy
we’re going to focus on a few muscle groups that help create the
illusion of broad shoulders and small hips. The three muscles we’re
going to focus on in order to exaggerate our v taper are the
shoulders, pecs and lats.

For shoulders you want to focus on all 3 heads the front, side and
back, not just the side delt like is commonly recommended they all
contribute to the overall width and look of the shoulder complex.
You want to add one regular day and two supplementary days where
you perform only 3 exercises; the front raises, lateral and rear delt
fly’s. You will find what the other exercise should be in the workout
routine at the end of the guide.

To develop the pecs we’re going to focus more on shape than size,
because the shape will dictate how the taper will look. This means
we’re going to incorporate a lot of dumbbell fly’s in our routine with
slow eccentric contractions to stretch the fibers and give us a define
look, add a lower chest day 2 times a week aside from your regular
training days.

Lastly, we’re going to focus on building the lats these muscles

connect the shoulder to the lower torso creating the tapered look.
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The main thing with lat training is to add a lot of extension work, do
not solely rely on lat pulldown’s and pull ups. You will need to add a
lot of rowing exercises to your routine to develop the thickness that
is needed for creating the illusion the tapered look.

It will take some time for your taper to come in completely but you
should see noticeable differences within 2 weeks of performing these
training exercises.

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 Chapter 9

Scapular Stability

Stability musculature

Strengthening the muscles

Serratus

Middle/Low Traps

Stretching for stability

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Stability musculature
The scapula has 17 muscles that attach to it and all of those muscles
require it to be stable for them to work efficiently. The main muscles
that stabilize the scapula are the serratus anterior, the traps and
rhomboids. Often these muscles are weaker than their antagonist
which causes instability of the scapula. The muscles that are typically
overused or tighter are the triceps long head, biceps, pec minor
levator scapula and the upper trap. These muscles often need to be
lengthened through stretching to allow the rest to function better.

Having a strong and stable scapula allows the rest of the muscles to
develop properly. Since the scapula is the attachment point for so
many muscles whether directly or indirectly through the shoulder
joint it is important for them to have a stable base of support. This
allows the muscles to pull from their origin without any movements
allowing for efficient force production and decrease the possibility of
compensations.

Strengthening the muscles

Serratus
In order to increase stability of the scapula we need to begin
strengthening the musculature around it. The first muscle we want to
focus on strengthening is the serratus which helps depress the
scapula against the rib cage and rotate it upward during arm
movement overhead and protracting the shoulder blade. To
strengthen the serratus, we can perform a few exercises, we will start
with the push up plus. This exercise is great for targeting the serratus
it is done by performing a regular push up, but at the end you add a
scapular protraction (pushing the shoulder blades forward). This
exercise can be further modified into just the plus portion where you
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only perform the protraction part of the exercise. We can also make
it more advanced by looping a band around our back to add further
resistance.

The next exercise for the serratus is the dynamic hug, which is
performed with a resistance band looped around the back and held
in both arms. Once the position is set up you begin to protract your
shoulder blades forward using the serratus to stretch the band. Again
this exercise should be performed with higher reps focusing on
pushing the shoulder blades forward; the shoulder should not
perform much movement.

The last exercises for the serratus is the serratus foam roller slide, this
is done by placing a foam roller parallel to the ground at shoulder
height against a wall. Once that is done bent your elbows to 90
degrees and place them on the foam roller shoulder width. Tuck the
elbows in so you form a v shape with your forearms. Now begin to
slide the foam roller up by protracting the shoulder blades.

Middle/Low Traps
The mid and low traps are important for controlling upward rotation
of the scapula and contribute to its overall stability. We train these
muscles through two motions; scapular retraction and downward
rotation. When training these muscles for stability rather than size we
want to focus on slow controlled contractions in order to gain fine
motor control and endurance. This is why it’s usually best to train for
these exercises with cables or resistance bands which have different
torque curves than weights.

For lower and mid trap exercises we want to start with scapular
retractions with a band or cable; these can be done a few ways with
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either straight arms focusing on protracting and retracting the
scapula or with arms the side at about 20 degrees from the hip.
Another way to do these is with Trx bands or a low bar, performing a
supine style role but only focusing on retraction of the shoulder
blades, these are more advanced.

To focus specifically on the lower trap we want to put the shoulder

blade in an elevated and upwardly rotated position. This can be done
a few ways, with a pull up bar, a lat pulldown bar or a cable machine.
For the pull up bar we want to hang from it with arms straight and
raise ourselves up only using our shoulder blades focusing on
squeezing them back and down. For the lat pull down bar it is very
similar, positioning yourself like you would perform a lat pulldown
then allowing the weight to lift your arms up straight and pulling the
weight down with only your shoulder blades. Focus on keep the
elbows nice and straight. Same thing goes for the cable machine,
allow the shoulder blades to elevate keep the arms straight and focus
on the retraction of them during the movement.

Stretching for stability

While strengthening is important of scapular stability so is stretching
tight muscles or muscles with an increased tonicity can cause
reciprocal inhibition of important scapular stabilizer muscles. This
means because the opposing muscle of a joint is creating tension the
antagonist begins to relax. This is usually caused by muscles that can
be overworked, have stayed in a shortened position for too long or
are weak.

The muscles that tend to get tight are the pecs major and minor,
biceps and triceps. You can see how this affects you as an individual
when you try the stretches. The pec stretch will help the most if you
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have anteriorly drawn shoulders and shoulder blades. Stretching
those muscles while strengthening the posterior stabilizing muscles
will help increase the stability of the shoulder blades.

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 Chapter 10

Mobility
Why increase your mobility?
Stretching

Full range exercises

Stretching to prevent injuries?

Self-releases

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Why increase your mobility?
Mobility is important for performing exercises correctly and keeping
your joints safe when performing exercises through full range of
motion. The main areas you want to have mobility are in your
thoracic spine, shoulder, hip and ankle. These joints need relatively
high range of motion compared to others to perform exercises
correctly. While the other areas of movement the cervical spine, low
back, knee require a lot of stability. Sometimes there is a reversal of
these roles and it can affect performance and likelihood of injury.

With increase in mobility in the right areas you also want stability
through the range of motion. If you’re able to go through a lot of
range of motion in the shoulder, it’s great but if you’re unstable in
the ranges it won’t do you any good.

There is a few ways to increase your mobility; stretching, muscle

releases and mobilizations. The best way to increase range of motion
long term is through stretching. There are a variety of types of
stretches and each has its own benefits.

Stretching
The first type is active stretching, this is where you provide the force
to create the stretch this can be a broader category as other
stretches fall into it. The second type is, passive stretching; this is
where a partner or an outside stimulus produces the force needed
for a stretch. The third type of stretch is Static which can fall under
the active or passive category; this is the most common stretch
where stretch is held for duration of time. Next we have Ballistic
stretching which is produced by quick bouncing in and out of the
stretch. Second to last we have PNF, which is usually done with a
partner preferably someone experienced in this type of stretching;
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this stretching contains a stretching and contracting phase to
increase ROM through reflexive relaxation. Lastly we have eccentric
training which is both a strengthening and stretching exercise. ⠀

Did you know there was this many type of stretches? There are two
things stretching can affect, muscle extensibility or tendon stiffness.
We usually want a combination of both. First thing to note is that
passive stretching (someone doing it for you) produces better results
than active stretching.

Static stretching has good effects on muscular extensibility, but the

research has not shown a great effect on tendon stiffness. This is not
good for someone who may be an athlete and is at risk of tendon
ruptures or strains. However, ballistic stretching has been shown to
improve tendon stiffness within 6 weeks. PNF stretching has shown
good acute increases in ROM up to an 18% increase. A variation of
the static stretching which included a contraction during the stretch
showed a benefit to increasing tendon stiffness. Eccentric loading has
been shown to alter collagen synthesis (protein needed for more
flexible tendons) only when the load was adjusted to the appropriate
capacity.

Full range exercises

If stretching isn’t your favorite thing to do or you just don’t have time
to incorporate it into your routine you have another option. Simply
performing exercises through its full range of motion will actually
lead to an increase in range of motion just like stretching. However
one limitation of that is sometimes with heavier weight we cannot go
through the full range of motion and it can limit us. But perhaps
incorporating a few sets of an exercise with lighter weight can help
improve the flexibility of the muscle.
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Stretching to prevent injuries?
It is important to note that stretching before exercising does not
prevent injuries; it may do more harm than good as there is an acute
decrease muscular strength with stretching. However, a proper warm
up before exercising will have a greater benefit, as for stretching it
will be better to incorporate it after your workout routine when the
muscle is warmed up.

Self-release
SMR (self-myofascial release) is popular among athletes and rehab
specialists to improve ROM, performance and decrease recovery time
by attenuating the symptoms of DOMS. However, it all its made out
to be and is it worth doing.

Does foam rolling help increase ROM? - Yes (short term): it has an
acute effect on increasing range of motion however the added range
returns to original ROM within a week. It is also worth mentioning
that foam rolling in combination with static stretching had greater
increases in ROM than stretching alone. It may be useful to you to
include foam rolling in your stretching regime if your goal is to
increase your ROM.

Does it decrease soreness post workout? Maybe (leaning towards

yes); it is shown to lead to improvements in pain reduction and
performance post foam rolling. Based on that, it may be beneficial to
foam roll post to reduce muscle soreness after a heavier training
session. Also, worth mentioning is that pre-exercise foam rolling
does not improve performance and like stretching will be more
beneficial post exercise.
⠀
How long should you foam roll for? It is suggested that foam rolling
for 2-5 sets for between 30 sec to 1 min is beneficial for increasing
your ROM this may vary between individuals of course.
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⠀
It is important to note that Foam rolling most likely works through a
neurological path decrease the myofascial tone temporary through
some sort of inhibitory process. It does not break up fascial
adhesions or muscles knots.

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 Chapter 11

Nutrition
Macros
Protein

Carbohydrates

Fats

Calculating macros
Bulking
Functional eating
Cooking Tips
General Tips
Macro Sources

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Macro Nutrients

There are 3 macro nutrients, proteins, carbohydrates and fats.

All 3 are used for energy, however fats and carbohydrates are used
the most, protein and carbohydrates both have 4 Cal per gram, while
fats have 9 calories per gram. That makes fats more energy dense
compares to the rest, meaning it’s a lot easier to eat more calories
from fats than the other. On the other hand, carbohydrates can be
easier to overeat than the two, so it’s important to pay attention to
those two factors. For weight loss the general idea is that you need
to burn more calories than you take in. As you get closer to your
desired goal it may become harder and that’s where other factors
can come into play, but we don’t need to worry about those as
they’re to be considered case by case.

Protein- is the most important macro nutrients for putting on muscle,

it is the essential building block for muscles. Getting in enough
protein should be your primary goal.

All protein sources are not created equal, there are both complete
and incomplete proteins. This means they have all essential amino
acids, while incomplete may not have some or enough of them.
Proteins also have different digestibility, protein utilization and
efficiency ratios. making some better for muscle protein synthesis
than others There are 21 amino acids that are used to make up our
protein, out of those 21, 12 nonessential can be made by our body
and we do not need to get them from an external source, 9 on the
other hand are essential cannot be synthesized and must be taken
from an external source.

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Protein is also great at promoting satiety or the feeling of fullness
when taken in solid forms much less when in liquid like milk or from
protein shakes. This can be a good and a bad thing, good if you’re
trying to lose weight because you’ll feel fuller by eating more
protein. It can be bad if you’re trying to gain mass because you may
need to eat larger amounts of protein which can be hard to take
down.

The great thing about protein is that it has a high thermic effect,
meaning that you burn calories while digesting it. The ratio is roughly
10:3, so for every 10 calories of protein you consume your body
burns 3 in order to digest it. This may vary based on the type of
protein as some may be harder to digest than others. The source of
protein also plays a role in how complete the protein is.

Some complete proteins are better than others as well because

contain a higher concentration of certain amino leucine, isoleucine,
and valine. All animal source proteins are complete, while proteins
from plant sources may not be for that reason, we combine certain
foods that fill in the gaps of amino acids of others like rice and
beans. Because not all proteins are equal it is important to pay
attention to where we’re getting it from, when you read 9g of protein
in some candy bar, that’s not going to give you the same benefit as
9g from chicken or soy. Below is a list of complete proteins, and
some combinations.

All meats and dairy products, Eggs, soy, whey protein, Quinoa,
Buckwheat, Hemp and chia seed, Spirulina. Some combinations are
Rice and beans, Spinach and almonds, hummus and pita, peanut
butter sandwich, lentils and almonds. And there are many more, a
simple Google search can help you find the right combination.
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The end goal with protein is to allow for a net protein synthesis in
the muscle. This means that more protein is created than broken
down, that can only be achieved if there is enough substrate
(building blocks) available. Therefore, your protein intake is the
number one priority when it comes to building muscle.

A good spot to figure out your rough protein intake is between .8-
1gram per pound of body weight. That’s a general number and isn’t
a direct recommendation, you personally experiment with that
number and find out what is optimal for you as everyone is different
and responds differently. What I personally did when starting off was
take a 50g protein shake in the morning because that’s the daily
recommended intake, so I figured anything else after that my body
would use to build muscle.

Carbohydrates- Are the essential macro nutrient for weight training,

they provide energy quickly to the muscles allowing for explosive
anaerobic training. Carbs are often looked down upon as a macro as
there is a misconception that they make you gain fat. The truth is
they play as much a role as fats. One thing about carbs is that they’re
usually easier to overeat on than fats or protein. It is much easier to
eat 10 donuts than 10 chicken breast or 10 avocados. The important
thing to focus on with carbs is moderation because of how easy it is
to overeat. Carbs come in a few forms, simple carbs (sugars),
complex (starches) and fiber. Sugars are easily absorbed and don’t
provide a satisfactory feeling of fullness for a long period of time. On
the other hand, starches tend to take longer to digest and absorb so
they provide energy slower but for a longer period. Fiber is also a
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carbohydrate, which we cannot digest though. This makes it a great
source for adding a filling effect and clearing out the digestive
system.

Some forms of starches that are more processed can be digested

much faster than others. So, it’s important to pay attention to how
full you are feeling for how long. If you’re not getting full you may
want to try some less processed forms of carbs like brown rice that
take longer to digest. This is known as the glycemic index it is how
carbs are ranked according to how quickly we can digest and absorb
them. There will be a list at the end of the chapter showing common
foods and their nutritional info.

Take away is to eat higher glycemic index foods before your workout
and lower in the morning to provide steady energy.

Fats- Fats are essential energy, hormone production and cell

maintenance. They’re always in the background producing energy for
your body, at rest fats contribute roughly ~50% percent of energy,
with exercises that ratio becomes lower and metabolism starts to
favor carbohydrates more. That doesn’t mean fats aren’t burned
however usually post exercises the ratio will change leading to more
fats being burned to restore energy reserves. This is why fasted
cardio does not lead to more fat utilization.

Calculating Macros

Calculating your macros, in my opinion is a very misunderstood and

over simplified process, just like calculating your daily caloric intake.
Your metabolism is not set in stone, it is fluid and variable depending
on many factors. For that reason, to simplify it based on some
equation is likely to be filled with errors. Anyone who tells you to eat
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a certain amount of carbs per day is just guessing. Unless you have
your metabolic rate measured and track your daily activity for a while
you cannot accurately know how much calories you should be taking
or what macros you should be eating.

Even most elite athletes do not break down their meals to such level
of complexity. The main goal is to get enough protein and maintain a
rough caloric intake where it supports either muscle gain or fat loss.
The way to do that is trial and error and here is why that important.
Using trial and error helps you understand how your body responds
to changes in food intake, this will let you learn about your bodies
metabolism and allow you to autoregulate your eating instead of
sticking to a strict pattern which most people fall out off. That is why
there are always new fad diets and people yo-yo in their weight so
much.

The way to start understanding your body is to track how your food
intake is affecting you. Let’s say you’ve been eating a certain way for
a while and your weight hasn’t changed nor have you seen a change
in your muscle mass. There are 3 factors that we need to adjust here,
one is your protein intake you should increase it, two your workout
intensity needs to change and three if your goal is to lose weight
decrease your portion size. That is not to say that you cannot be
very specific and measure out your portions by weight and calculate
the calories per meal and keep track of it that way. It is a personal
choice, personally I think food should not be a chore hence why just
figuring out the right portion by estimating is the best way of
maintaining a sustainable diet.

Figuring out your food intake is made easier by consuming simpler

meals, meaning they’re not elaborate dishes made with a lot of
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ingredient. This is because its easier to see what you’re consuming,
being able to separate your fats carbs and proteins gives you a
relative proportion of what you’re taking in. For example, eating out
a meal that would normally be 600 calories can end up being 800
because of the extra fat and sugar added into it to make it taste
better. In the coming section we’ll cover what I call functional eating.

Bulking

Bulking is an outdate and obsolete concept because of modern

research and understanding of muscle growth. It is obsolete because
we’ve seen in research that an energy surplus is not needed to gain
muscle if there is an adequate protein intake achieved. It is possible
to gain muscle mass and lose fat at the same time with high intensity
resistance training and higher protein intake that is.

It is true that during caloric deficient muscle protein synthesis

decreases, however when protein needs are met in conjunction with
resistance training that turnover rate increases to a net synthesis.
That is where understanding proper training, nutrition and
consistency comes in to play.

The other issue with bulking is when you’re done with it, you have to
lose the fat that you’ve gained. That presents two problems, 1 during
that weightless period you’re not focusing on putting more muscle
on. 2 during that period you lose muscle that you worked hard to put
on because of the heavier caloric restriction you put yourself on.

Here some key takes away from the nutrition information. 1) protein
is king, for muscle building not just any protein but complete protein.
2) You probably need to eat more protein than you are if you’re not
gaining muscle. 3) Time your carb intake before working out for a
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better more intense workout. 4) Understand how your body
responds to your food intake and modify it as needed. 5) be
consistent with your training and nutrition, missing a meal or eating
out 1-2 times a week is not the end of the world.

Functional eating

What is functional eating, functional eating is; eating for the

nutritional and performance purpose of food rather than as an
enjoyment or source of energy. Now that doesn’t mean functional
eating has to suck, it just means its simpler and more focused
towards quantity, speed, nutrition and convivence. Because let’s be
real here, most people won’t cook 3,4 or 5 gourmet meals a day.
Save the gourmet meals for when you have more time, on weekends
or if you’re going out to a restaurant.

Functional eating starts with an easy to cook protein, whether it is

chicken, beef, turkey, pork, whatever you enjoy or is most accessible
to you. You want to be able to cook 2-3 days’ worth of this protein at
once, so you don’t have to worry about it every day. Cooking in bulk
2-3 times a week is a great time saver. Next you choose your carb
source, whether its rice, potato, sweet potato, pasta or quinoa. I
recommend you find one that is easy to cook and doesn’t take
longer than 30 min. Personally rice is my go-to as it is fast to cook
and cheap. For the carbohydrate I suggest cooking it daily, your
protein is ready you should have enough time. This is because carbs
tend to lose their taste when they sit out for a while. Functional
eating is also about sustainability, you don’t want to hate the food
you’re eating and give up a month into it. For fats you can add
avocado, nuts, eggs, salads with olive oil as a side to your meal.

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The next important part of functional eating is your source of fiber, if
you’re going to be consuming more protein which you should when
trying to build muscle you need more fiber to help “clear” out your
digestive system and make processing foods easier on your body. So,
you’re going to need to add some source of high fiber to your diet, it
can come from salads, veggies, oatmeal, anything you can add that
will help you increase your intake of fiber.

A crucial aspect of functional eating is functional cooking, you need

to be able to cook the food to a point which is enjoyable for you to
eat. Something key to that is using seasoning, if you don’t use it now,
you’re going to have to take a trip to the grocery store. Using
seasoning makes food a lot more palatable and easier to take in. Use
seasoning with color in them as that plays a big role in how food
tastes like. A good combination of seasoning to start with is- Black
pepper, red pepper, cayenne pepper, thyme, basil and garlic powder.
Buy these in bulk so they last you a while and are cheaper that way.
Explore the witch and the amount of seasoning you like on your
food. Another helpful thing to consider is buying sauces to add post
cooking, like hot sauce, green, tabasco, any sauce you enjoy, again
just to make food more palatable. All of this isn’t necessary for
gaining muscle, but it does make it a lot faster and more efficient.

Cooking Tips

Here is where a lot of people struggle the most, cooking isn’t

something a lot of people are good at and most of us can’t afford a
meal planning service. So, I’m going to give you some tips that will
help you be a better and more efficient cook for functional eating.
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Tip1. The number one tip I can give you is to get a rice cooker; rice
cookers are super-efficient and a great time saver. Like I said earlier
you want your carb source relatively fresh and not stale. Cooking rice
for the day in the morning can take 5 min max of prep and 30 min of
cook time (unmonitored cooking) while you’re getting ready for work
or whatever you must do. Second tip about rice is season it well, you
can eat white rice only so much. Now the season is up to you,
however I suggest first washing the rice with 2-3 rinses to get the
starch out first, when you run water through the rice it shouldn’t be
cloudy. Once you’ve done that, add a little bit of water, then add
your seasoning mix it well and top off the rest of the water per
instructions of your cooker then finally add some oil to it.

Tip 2. Cooking your protein can be a pain especially when it’s a lot.
The most efficient way I’ve found to do it is one grill it (however a lot
of us don’t have access to one) so the next best thing is to broil it.
The broiler in your oven is a great tool that saves you time. One thing
you’ll need is a flat tray/cookie sheet that has low edges. These come
in two types usually, a nonstick and a stainless steel one, I
recommend the stainless as Teflon may not be that great for you.
However, either works because when you use them, you’ll cover the
bottom with aluminum foil to avoid sticking and cleaning. When
cooking with the broiler you want to make sure your meat isn’t too
thick 1-2 inches is good. I usually, slice thicker chicken breasts into
halves to make them easier to cook. I would recommend reading a
little bit about broiling to familiarize yourself with the process and
exercises all needed precautions when using it. Usually should spend
about 5 min on each side of the meat depending how strong your
oven is, so watch the meat carefully the first few times till you figure

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out the right time. The convenience here is that you can cook 4-6
pieces of meat at a time in only 10-15 min.

Tip 3. Since your goal is most likely to build muscle, you’ll be eating a
decent amount of protein, because of that you’ll want to eat a decent
amount of fiber to clear your digestive system out. So, you need to
find an easy to make salad that you can make to accompany your
meals. I usually do some tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach maybe
peppers and top of with salt and olive oil. It your preference as to
what you add to your salad.

Tip 4. The oils you use, this is important for cooking. When cooking
meats, you want to use oil with a high smoke point, meaning your oil
doesn’t burn while you’re still cooking your meat. High smoke point
oils are – avocado oil, sunflower seed oil, and grape seed oil these
are great for cooking your protein with. For salads, lighter oils like
olive oil are better but there is no specific need for them.

Tip 5. Always have pre-cooked meat at home like a grilled chicken

breast or steak you can find them frozen at big grocery stores for not
a lot of money. This is for the time when you forgot to take your
protein out of the freezer, had a busy day at work or are just feeling
lazy. Now instead of ordering food you can heat the protein up and
make a quick meal out of it.

Tip 6. Make protein smoothies as meal replacements, I always

thought that they were useless until it tried them. Use a milk base
whether plant based or regular, I like to use oat milk add your
protein of choice, oatmeal as your carbs and a banana portion as
needed for calories. You can add peanut butter for more calories if
you want. Now with that in mind, adding greens helps get your
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micronutrients which you may not be eating enough of. I usually add
kale and spinach and kale. You can find recipes to taste online.

General Tips
The number one tip about changing your eating habits is don’t over
complicate thing or over think them, it sets you up for failure.
Keeping things simple allows you to keep track of everything and
maintain it without exhausting yourself. If you like writing down all
the macros and calories you’ve taken and It keeps you on track do it,
but don’t force yourself if it’s a chore use the more practical
approach.

Don’t focus on the little things, don’t obsess with how much water
you’re taking in or how much sodium you’re taking in. These factors
are negligible for most of our goals meet your protein intake and
don’t worry too much about the rest. If you want to compete
professionally that’s a different story.

Your weight fluctuates daily by a couple of pounds based on many

factors, so don’t weight yourself daily. Try doing it once a week in the
morning and keep it consistent. Weighing yourself is a good tool to
make sure your headed in the right direction based on your goal.
Don’t limit yourself to the number on the scale, learn what you look
like and pay attention to the changes in your body they come slowly
but you’ll be able to notice the differences if you aren’t CHANGE
SOMETHING.

Biggest tip I can give you is if you’re not seeing progress don’t
continue to do the same thing!!! You should always see some sort of
progress if you aren’t change one of the big 3 factors. 1) your protein
intake, 2) caloric intake and 3) exercise intensity/volume. Those 3
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factors play the biggest role in you gaining muscle and are the
easiest to modify.

Lastly be self-aware of what you’re doing and how its affecting you,
this is the number one tool that will help you figure out how your
body is responding to what you’re giving it. You have one body for
the rest of your life, learning as much as you can about it will pay of
in the long run, don’t pay attention to what others are doing learn
how your body responds. It may take a couple of months but once
you figure out what exercises and nutrition works for you its smooth
sailing after that.

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Macro sources (Protein)
Food Serving size Protein (g) Calories
Chicken 3 oz (85g) 28 141
Steak 3 oz (85g) 26 158
Lamb 3 oz (85g) 23 172
Turkey 3 oz (85g) 25 135
Pork 3 oz (85g) 22 122
Eggs 1 6 71
Whey 1 oz (30g) ~24 120
Salmon 3 oz (85g) 22 155
Tuna 3 oz (85g) 22 99
Shrimp 3 oz (85g) 20 101
Lobster 3 oz (85g) 16 76
Scallops 3 oz (85g) 14 75
Greek Yogurt 6 oz (170g) 18 100
Cottage Cheese 4 oz (114g) 14 81
Yogurt 7 oz (201g) 11 100
Milk 7 oz (240ml) 7.7 149
Soy protein 1 oz (28g) 23 95
Black beans 3 oz (85g) 7.62 114
Broccoli 3 oz (85g) 2.5 31
Glycemic index

Food Glycemic Index

White bread 75
Whole bread 74
Corn Tortilla 53
White rice 73
Brown rice 68
Sweet corn 52
Spaghetti white 49
Spaghetti whole 48
Rice noodles 53
Couscous 65
Apples 36
Oranges 43
Banana 51
Pineapple 76
Mango 51
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Watermelon 76
Dates 42
Peaches 43
Orange juice 50
Potatoes boiled 78
Fries 63
Sweet potatoes boiled 63
Chickpeas 28
Kidney beans 24
lentils 32
Pinto beans 55
Soybeans 16
Chocolate 40
Soda 59
Popcorn 65

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