Bench Pressing Variations
After my article on Benching with the Pecs, I got a follow-up question on a forum about pec activation, someone had mentioned looking for tips before and come across the old Vince Gironda bench press to the neck. This type of bench is often used by bodybuilders to ‘isolate’ the pecs. It’s also a great way to ruin your shoulders forever.
Goal vs. Process Oriented Training: Part 2
As a coach, I vastly prefer to work with process oriented athletes. This is probably why, typically, I’ve ended up training women. Males are invariably a huge pain in the ass. Even if they recognize you as their coach, they still think they know more than you and hate doing things like ‘working on technique’ or ‘putting the ego aside’.
Goal vs. Process Oriented Training: Part 1
Simplistically, goal oriented athletes see their results in competition as the be-all, end-all of their training endeavors. This is also true of training. If they don’t win, or set a PR, or perform exceptionally all the time, they will see themselves as a failure. So on competition day, they have to win, or set a personal best, or set a record, or all of those. In the gym, if they aren’t beating their previous bests every damn time they train, they feel like a total failure.
Benching with the Pecs
There are a lot of problems people have in the gym but one of the more common is the complaint of “I can’t feel my pecs when I bench”. In the majority of cases, this is simply because the person was never taught to bench press and use the pecs.
A Quick Look at Some Popular Hypertrophy Programs
Although I tend to get shoe-horned into ‘nutritionist’ (or worse-yet, ‘the keto guy’), I actually started life with a passion for exercise physiology. Still have it and looking at the physiology of muscle growth, along with real-world programs that ‘work’ has long-been an interest in mine.
Getting Strong While Getting Lean – Q&A
I need your help. I am 37 year-old female about 128 lbs. with my last bodyfat at 18.7%. I lift 3 days a week, two with a trainer (who refers to me as a hard gainer). He continues my workouts @ 15 reps per set for all body parts with a decent amt of weight. I have not been able to budge my lean body mass/bodyfat for months.
Anti-histamines and Fat Loss/Muscle Gain – Q&A
Q: I have three of your books and find them very informative. I have a question you do not address in your books.
Does taking Benedryl (dyphenhydramine) negatively affect either muscle building or fat loss?
Extremely Limited Synthesis of Long Chain Polyunsaturates in Adults: Implications for their Dietary Essentiality and use as Supplements
Due to methodological issues that I won’t detail, determining what fatty acids were actually essential was actually a fairly difficult problem in the early part of the 20th century. In early research, it was thought that there were three EFAs, alpha-linoleic acid (ALA, not to be confused with alpha-lipoic acid, an insulin sensitizer), linolenic acid (LA), and arachidonic acid (AA). When it was found that rats could make AA out of LA, it was dropped, leaving two EFAs. I’d note that, at one point, it was thought that LA was the only EFA but, as we now know, both ALA and LA are essential fatty acids.
