Weight lifting and calisthenics are not as different as some people may think. They both use progressive resistance to make your muscles bigger and stronger. The biggest difference between the two is in how you progress the resistance. With weight lifting, you maintain a fairly consistent technique while adjusting the weight you lift. Calisthenics does the opposite where you adjust …
Solving the Biggest Fitness Mysteries of Our Time
Modern society has presented us with some pretty big fitness mysteries. Why can’t we create a diet that helps anyone reliably lose weight? How can two people do the same workout program, yet experience different results? Why can’t well-educated experts ever agree on the best method for, well, anything? The answer lies in the vast and complicated nature of fitness …
Getting Strong With Al Kavadlo
Celebrated Coach, author, and teacher, Al Kavadlo, is back to share more of his calisthenics wisdom in this episode of the RDP Podcast. It’s been far too long since I’ve had the chance to sit down and chat with Al. Since our last meeting, he’s unleashed a couple of valuable resources upon the calisthenics world. The first is his latest book, Get …
The Source of An Effective Workout
What makes for an effective workout? Is the fitness tracker your wrist? How about the routine you follow? Or maybe it’s the equipment you use or the pre-workout you take beforehand. There are a lot of products and services out there promising to make your workouts more effective, but the truth is, many of these things are what truly make …
How to Begin Playground Workouts
Playground workouts are an excellent way to get outside and breath new life into your stale workouts. Nothing is better than getting out in the sunshine and fresh air while unleashing your creative nature with some workouts you may not practice in a commercial gym. While a playground workout may seem simple enough, I’ve learned a few things over the years regarding …
5 Tips To Lose Weight and Build Muscle Fast
This week’s topic is all about helping you lose weight or build muscle as fast as possible. Quickly changing your physical body is a unique challenge. As I mentioned in my book, Fitness Independence, you can get big results, easy results, and fast results. The catch is you just can’t have all three at once. That’s why I’m a big …
3 Big Muscle Building Advantages Of Getting Older
They say you can’t build muscle when you’re older. HA!!! That’s total Bullshivick! In fact, there are 3 massive muscle building advantages that can only come with age. These aren’t just any a few minor advantages either. I’m talking super-massive black hole size muscle building advantages that can make all the difference in the world! The best thing is, these …
Best Training & Diet Habits For Your Body Type
Your body type is a big influence on which training and diet habits are best for you. Sometimes, the advice to eat and train a certain way can be scientifically sound, but it doesn’t work for you because of your body type. It’s not that some advice is right or wrong, but more along the lines that it’s not a …
4 Myths About Workout Progression
Workout progression is the key to building muscle, strength and performance. All of the other stuff, like your routine, exercises and equipment you use are merely details. It’s the progression of your exercises and routine that gets you what you want. There are a number of myths surrounding workout progression that I wanted to address today. These myths can create …
Is Fitness Success More About Hard Work or Luck?
Fitness success comes in many forms, from champion athletes and cover models to someone successfully coming off of medication. Anyone can achieve at least some degree of success, but the question of the day is how much of success comes down to hard work or just blind luck? The case for hard work Hard work undoubtedly plays a very important …
How Many Sets Are Best for Building Muscle?
I get a lot of questions regarding how many sets are best for building muscle working on skills or losing weight. A lot of these questions come from reading a lot of conflicting recommendations from various experts. Some advocate doing no more than 1-2 sets. Other’s claim high volume is the key to build muscle and strength. With so many …
Using Calisthenics to Get Jacked with Adorian Moldovan
Adrian Moldovan is the man when it comes to building muscle, especially with calisthenics training. His practical down-to-earth strategies are effective as hell and a refreshing dose of muscle building reality in a world of fads, hype, and dogma. I recently had the honor of sitting down with Adorian over Skype so I could pick his brain over some of his …
How to Be Fit and 50 With Laurence Codd
Have I got a treat for you this week! I just finished sitting down with Mr. Fit and 50 himself, Laurence Codd. For those who don’t know, Laurence is the man when it comes to real-world practical information for staying in shape past your 20s, 30s and even 40s. In fact, Laurence got his start in fitness fairly late in life …
Are You Hurting Your Training Progress?
I receive a lot of questions about training progress, especially when it comes to calisthenics. People want to know if, and or ready they are ready for the next step and how they would know when they are ready. The truth is, your training progress is a creative process and like all disciplines of creation, there is never absolute certainty in where you’re …
Build More Muscle and Strength With a Multi-Faceted Approach
Last week, I discussed how you can lose weight faster, and keep it off by using a multi-faceted approach. This week, I’m going to show you how to share with you seven strategies you can use to build more muscle. Focusing on many things can make it a lot easier to build, and maintain your gains compared to if you …
Lose Weight Faster and Keep it Off With a Multi-Faceted Approach
I highly recommend using a multi-faceted approach to weight loss if you’re looking to shed some body fat. While it’s not the most common approach, it does offer several big advantages that make it easier to not only lose more weight but to keep it off as well. What is a multi-faceted approach? A multi-faceted approach is where you combine …
Which Muscle Group Helps You Look Your Best?
This week, I’m exploring which muscles help you look your best for the beach or the bedroom. In a world of functional and athletic training, working out for the sake of appearance is still important. Don’t let the nay-sayers say it’s vain or shallow to desire a good looking body. It’s perfectly understandable, and reasonable to want to look your …
6 Common Misconceptions About Convict Conditioning
I’ve been reading and applying the lessons in Convict Conditioning for over 7 years now and I couldn’t be happier with the results. That’s why I continue to recommend it to anyone who’s interested in building muscle and strength through bodyweight training. Over the years, I’ve noticed a few common misconceptions about Convict Conditioning that pop up within our fitness culture. …
Building Self Confidence for Fitness Success
Building self-confidence is a crucial ingredient for fitness success. Whether you want to lose weight, build muscle or improve performance, a healthy belief in your ability to accomplish your goals will help you more than any supplement or program. But what if you’re lacking in the self-confidence and self-esteem department? Facing that sort of situation is kind of a catch-22 because …
Overcoming Diet and Exercise Resistance
Diet and exercise resistance can make achieving your fitness goals very difficult, if not impossible. It’s just like riding a bike with the brakes rubbing. It makes you work much harder while gaining little benefit. This week’s episode fo the R.D.P Podcast is all about the 3 biggest sources of resistance that can hold your potential in check. The first …
The Link Between Your Muscle and Health
Muscle and health go together like peanut butter and chocolate. In many ways, it’s very hard to have much of one without the other. However, a recent comment on my YouTube channel got me thinking that the two may not always be linked. In some ways, the artificial pursuit of muscle could be even an unhealthy pursuit through the abusive use …
How Technical Erosion Effects Your Muscle Growth
Technical erosion is the process when the quality of your technique breaks down as you train. It could be a shift in body position, a decrease in range of motion or even how you apply tension in your muscles. In either case, the quality of your technique is slowly eroding like a sandcastle in the surf. In some cases, this …
Training for Your Body Type
Training and eating for your body type can make it easier for you to achieve the results you want. On the other hand, losing weight and building muscle can be very difficult if you use methods that don’t work for your type. If you’ve ever felt like a particular diet or workout wasn’t a good fit, there’s a good chance it …
Training For Stength vs Building Muscle
All forms of strength training are great for both building muscle and growing strength, Despite the similarities between the two goals, building muscle and improving strength (or any other aspect of performance) actually require different training methods. In this week’s podcast, I discuss some of the major differences between building muscle vs building strength as per Coach Paul Wades advice …
3 Things Every Effective Workout Must Have
An effective workout needs just 3 things to help you lose weight, build muscle and improve performance. Anyone can acquire all three with relative ease but very few ever do which is why most people fail to achieve the results they want from their workouts. In this week’s podcast I discuss each of these three things in detail. I also …
How to Gain Personal Trainer Benefits While Training Alone
Nothing beats working with a personal trainer or coach. They help keep you accountable, provide motivation and teach how to make your workouts more effective. What if you don’t have access to a trainer or coach? How can you gain some of the benefits without the expertise? Flying fully solo in your workouts is seldom the best way to go, …
Is Your Workout Effective or a Waste of Time?
I received a great question on the RDP YouTube channel the other day asking “how do you know if your workout is effective?” This is a very important question because it calls for brutal honesty in understanding if your workout is really effective. Chances are if you can’t say for sure that your workout is effective it probably isn’t. If it …
Does Muscle Fatigue Really Make You Grow?
The recent science seems to suggest that muscle fatigue is the primary stimulus for muscle growth. reputable sources like strongerbyscience.com and even Paul Wade’s C-Mass, point to muscle fatigue as the primary reason why a muscle grows. The evidence is compelling. It seems that as long as you bring a muscle to a high state of fatigue then it will grow …
Improve Your Physical Performance in Anything
Your physical performance is the foundation of your workout. Whether you want to burn fat, build muscle or Just move better, your physical performance is the key to making those things happen. That’s why it’ important to strive for better performance even if you’re not a competitive athlete. This week’s podcast is all about how to train for better …
This is Why You’re Struggling to Build Muscle
Many hard-working athletes are struggling to build muscle for a variety of reasons. Some may not be eating very well or sleeping enough. Stress is also a factor that can slow down muscle growth. Most of the time, the struggle to build muscle comes from inconsistent training. Changing up your routine or workout too often can send mixed signals to …
Do You Really Need a Workout Routine?
A workout routine is a staple in the diet and exercise world, but how important is it to the calisthenics athlete? Do you even need a strict routine at all? Some folks claim you must have a routine and that doing random exercises will only produce random, and inconsistent results. Other’s seem to have a bit more of a freestyle …
Switching from Weights to Calisthenics 4 Things You Need to Know
So for whatever reason, you may be thinking about making a switch from weights to calisthenics based workouts. Maybe you’re looking for something new, or perhaps life isn’t allowing you to get to the gym. Whatever the reason, the pull-up bar is calling your name and the barbell feels like it’s less appealing each week. Despite the allure of not needing …
How Stress Makes You Fat and What To Do About it
Stress and fat are best friends. Where you find one, you usually find the other. This is why many of the best weight loss strategies are just as much about controlling stress as they are about controlling fat. The link between stress and fat Both mental and physical stress can influence how your body functions which in turn can alter …
Understanding the Source of Fitness Stress
Dogmas are the biggest source of fitness stress. They restrict your ability to make the best diet and exercise choices for your body and lifestyle. In other words, they prevent you from doing what’s best for you while forcing you to adhere to rules that place stress on your body, mind, and lifestyle. Like with all things in life, overcoming …
The Myth of the Muscle Building Rep Range
The muscle building rep range is hallowed ground for anyone looking to get jacked. If you want to get bigger that coveted 8-12 reps is home base for your workouts. Heaven knows I’ve spent most of my time there, and the results have been great. Lately, I’ve been putting some pieces together and it’s making me question if the existence of …
Use Peak Set Training to Know How Many Sets You Should Do
There’s a lot of debate regarding how many sets you should do to build muscle. On one hand, you have examples like Mike Metzer and Dorian Yates who endorse using only one or two work sets. On the other, you have guys like Arnold who embrace volume training and grind out many sets. Science and empirical evidence have shown that both …
How Chronic Fitness Stress Kills Your Progress
Fitness stress is the #1 enemy in your quest to build muscle, burn fat and improve performance. It erodes emotional motivation while beating up your body. Almost every challenge you face in fitness is due to stressful diet and exercise habits. Wait, isn’t some fitness stress necessary for progress? Yes, some types of fitness stress are important. You won’t …
Should You Always Train To Your Limit?
Physical change requires hard work, but do you always need to train to your limit in each workout? I always believed the body only changed when you pushed it right to the edge of what it can do. Holding back, even a little bit, would fail to stimulate any change. This sentiment has been echoed in internet memes and social media …
Circuit Training for Muscle and Strength
Circuit training is very popular these days and for good reason. It’s very efficient which makes it easier to fit into a busy schedule plus it provides a variety of benefits including strength, endurance, and mental stamina. But what if you want to focus on building muscle and strength? While circuit training can build those qualities, it usually isn’t done in a …
How to Change Your Fitness Set Points
Fitness set points can seem pretty scary. The idea that your fitness destiny is predetermined by your genetics threatens the promise of making positive changes. What’s the point of even trying to lose weight or build muscle when your own body will default to the same set point? While there is some debate over whether such set points exist, it’s hard …
How to Achieve Infinite Calisthenics Progress
Calisthenics progress is often perceived as something that’s very limited. Even well-educated fitness experts will claim that, while calisthenics is a sound training method, it can only take you so far. This perception is one of the reasons why many people don’t want to devote their time and energy to calisthenics. Why invest yourself in a limited system? The reality …
The Cure for Long Workouts
Is your workout swollen and bloated? Is it growing painful to fit into your busy schedule? Well, I have the cure for your long workouts right here my friend. Like a long shower or meal with family, long workouts are great for an occasional luxury but stressful when they are a necessity. In our busy modern world, it’s difficult to …
Get Smart About Fitness Information
We live in the age of enlightenment. Fitness information is everywhere and more is being created every day. Even this post is a good example of that. Despite the value of learning, I’ve come to question if swimming in all of this fitness information is all that great. There are several problems that can come from overloading on it. The …
Is Your Healthy Lifestyle too Stressful?
The Red Delta Project was created from the belief that a healthy lifestyle should improve your quality of life rather than compromise it. Unfortunately, the common belief is that you must adopt stressful diet and exercise habits to get in shape. There are a lot of memes out there portraying the idea that you’re supposed to suffer for your results. it’s …
5 Fitness Beliefs Holding You back
Your fitness beliefs hold the key to your success as I explained in last week’s podcast. Some beliefs lurk in your subconscious sabotaging your fitness at every turn without you even knowing it. They can handicap your weight loss, muscle building, and performance regardless of how your diet or exercise plans. While you may be able to temporarily achieve some success, your deeply held beliefs …
The Unstoppable Power of Fitness Beliefs
Your fitness beliefs make or break your success in everything from weight loss to building muscle. Even though the Henry Ford Quote about “whether you think you can or can’t your right” is becoming a bit old hat, it’s absolutely true. Your success hinges more on what you believe than what you may know. In this information age, we’re told the key …
Maxick’s Muscle Building Wisdom
Maxick’s book, Muscle Control, is filled with muscle building wisdom. In it, he makes a strong case for improving muscle control to enhance the effectiveness of exercise. One of the biggest points he mentions is the importance of focusing on using your muscle as opposed to just getting the work done. Maxick spent time working in manual labor and he observed how many …
The Practice & Benefits of Micro-Workouts
I predict the next big thing in fitness will be the use of shorter, yet more frequent workouts. You might look back and think “I can’t believe we use to workout for over an hour 2-3 times a week!” There are many reasons why daily 15-20 minute workouts might work best for you. Easier to fit into a busy schedule. Not …
How to Find Reliable Fitness Information
Despite having more diet and exercise information than you’ll need in 10 lifetimes, it can be pretty hard to find reliable fitness information on the internet. Even simple questions like how much protein you should consume or the difference between split and full body routines can lead you down an endless rabbit hole of debate. How are you supposed to comb …
Do You Need Sore Muscles to Make Gains?
Nothing beats waking up and feeling a little stiff and sore from your workout. It lets you know that you really pushed yourself and maybe even stimulated some muscle growth. As satisfying as a little DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is, it can be quite elusive. You can crush a workout and not feel a thing the next day. Other …
How to Build Strength & Muscle in the Same Workout
Your strength and muscle size are closely correlated to one another, but you improve each through slightly different means. Strength is more about how many motor units, and thus muscle fibers, you’re contracting during a unit of time. Muscle size is caused more by how much of the chemical energy you use in the muscle fibers themselves. This causes you …
The Freedom of Exploratory Progression
Most calisthenics methods use a method of progression that’s like those old-school video games that progress from point A to point B. They work in levels with the idea that you ascend in a number of steps. It’s a good method, but it sometimes forces you to fit a square peg into a round hole. progression requires improving many skills …
Is There a Perfect Workout Routine?
I’ve never been a big follower of following a specific workout routine. You won’t find me staying up at night researching the latest science on what ingredients go into a great workout routine. I’ve always taken a much more liberal approach towards workout structure. Sometimes, I’ve been a little too carefree and my workouts have lacked the structure to produce …
The Trap of Over Qualifying Exercise
Over qualifying exercise is one of the biggest reasons why you may be struggling to get the results you want and it’s easy to fall into this trap. At first, you learn about the “best exercises” to reach your goals. Then a buddy tells you about the “optimal rep range for muscle growth.” Then the pro body builder in the …
How Much Muscle Can You Build?
Muscle building potential can vary greatly from one person to the next. Some people can build a lot of muscle fairly easily. Other’s are going to have a hard time putting on just a little bit. So the big question is, how much can you hope to gain? More importantly, how much can you also hope to maintain? Also, …
Advancing Bodyweight Training w/ Time
Time is a crucial element in the progression of your bodyweight training. You can use it to burn fat, improve performance and burn fat. Check out these simple ways you can change the time you train to influence the 3 key principles of exercise science. #1 Progressing S.A.I.D for better skill and performance Learning skills and being able to perform …
3 Push Up Progressions to Build Muscle
Book 1 of the Red Delta Project is now available so now I’m working on book 2! In this book, I’ll be detailing how you can build muscle, strength and burn fat through bodyweight training. The key to doing this is to use what I call the table of progressive elements. These elements work just like weight plates on a barbell …
Build Muscle With Your Mind
A lot of people who go looking to build muscle and strength never find the results they want. Much of the reason is that they are looking in the wrong places. We’re told that the key to getting bigger and stronger is in the latest routine or the best equipment. Maybe the key is in the diet or the …
The Source of Muscular Change
A lot of experts will tell you that the key to building muscle and strength is in having the right routine, doing more reps or adding more weight. While these things are certainly important, they are not the root cause that is in charge of your muscle training. Things like reps, and the equipment you use are influences towards the …
Why You Should Build a Custom Routine
Fail to plan and plan to fail. That’s what they say, and for good reason. You’re not going to get very far without a well thought out diet or exercise plan. Unfortunately, many good plans turn into a rigid dogmatic approach to how you should “eat right” and exercise. While any plan is better than no plan, super strict approaches …
Easy Fitness Part 4- Fat Loss
Easy is good. I know that’s not what you usually hear when it comes to weight loss, but it’s true. You don’t get results by working your tail off. You get results by how productive you are, and the best way to do that is to make things easier. Of course, anything worth having in life is going to take …
Easy Fitness Part 2 Exercise
In the last post, I talked about the virtues of seeking the path of least resistance when it comes to diet and exercise. The basic idea is the path of success is forged by finding ways to make the necessary work easier to accomplish. In this post, we discuss strategies on how you can apply this philosophy toward your workouts. …
Easy Fitness Part 1
Easy is not a word commonly associated with a successful diet and exercise program. If anything, many experts will decry the very mention of the word and insist there are no short cuts. I sure used to be such a person, but I’m learning my lesson. Not only is striving for the path of least resistance possible, but it’s also possibly …
Muscle Confidence for Muscle Mass
A lot of trainers talk about keeping your muscles guessing and “confused” in order to shock them into growing. While such tactics can work, I propose something that can work much better and produce results that last a lot longer. Rather than seeking muscle confusion, I propose you do exactly the opposite and seek muscle confidence. Muscle confidence is just …
Is it Important to Feel a Muscle Working?
Many experts claim that focusing on how an exercise feels is a waste of time. I used to believe this too. I fell into the idea that the numbers you put in your log and your program was the key to success. After many years of frustration and injury, I started training smarter rather than just harder. This meant the numbers …
Use Neutral Tension for More Gain With Less Pain
Muscle tension is the best thing and the worst thing for you. It can break your body and build it up. It can cause muscle growth as well as muscle strains and joint pain. It all depends on how you can manage it within your muscles. Lately, I’ve been using an approach I call Neutral Tension. Simply put, it using …
Advice for the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Athlete
I believe growth and improvement should be a constant companion in your training. Something should be improving for you every week, or at least every month. This week I sat down with Girya Girl, Adrienne Harvey, to discuss the process of growth and development in training along your whole lifespan. We get deep into the most important lessons to learn at the …
Fit After 40 w/ Tommy Rembiszewski
I’m not one of those “age is just a number” kind of guys. Believe me, age and all of it’s demons is a very real threat to your fitness and health. It’s a very serious threat that you’ll have to face sooner or later. That’s why I invited super bad-ass Tommy Rembiszewski bad for another interview so I could pick …
Break Free of Diet & Exercise Dogma for Good
Fitness dogma that dictates how you should eat and exercise is ever prevalent within our fitness culture. Most of the time these dogmas start out as simple ideas but grow into a mini-religion by the time they hit the masses. The issue I take with them is they both limit your freedom of lifestyle and results. It’s like locking both your …
How to Burn More Fat & Build More Muscle
While writing my second book (Check out my first book here) I stumbled upon the 3 key principles that govern your success towards any form of exercise. That was pretty powerful in itself, but I’ve learned something even more powerful about these 3 principals. It’s something that can help you unlock a lot of muscle building and fat burning potential. …
7 Keys to Building Muscle Without Weights
It’s been nearly 7 years since I’ve last done a weight lifting workout. Since then, I’ve considerably improved every aspect of my fitness including the size and shape of my body. Take a look at this image of when I was a 145# bike racer to the more recent one this spring: Over the years I’ve made a lot of …
Integrated Activity vs Working Out
A super successful businessman once told me; “I don’t want work/life balance. I want work/life integration.” How novel. Wouldn’t it be great it we could do the same with exercise? Instead of having an exercise/life balance we strive for exercise/life integration. I think it’s possible and I’ve been doing just this sort of integration for the past few months. Check …
Street Workout Wisdom w/ Danny Kavadlo
2 wonderful things have happened over the past week. 1) Al and Danny Kavadlo released their latest calisthenics masterpiece, Street Workout and 2) Danny Kavaldo was kind enough to share some of his best thoughts on training and life in the Red Delta Project Podcast. In this podcast Danny covers: 1:00 Danny’s training history. 2:46 The street workout “movement.” 5:00 …
Convict Conditioning w/ Tommy Rembiszewski
My guest today is calisthenics expert and Convict Conditioning disciple, Tommy Rembiszewski. Tommy has been emailing me samples of his workouts and training for almost a year now and he’s been crushing everything. While most people just go through the motions he strives to push everything up to level 11. His approach is both hard-core and smart at the same …
The Quick & Easy Fix to Your Fitness
We’re told there is no quick and easy fix in fitness. That the road is long and hard. That anywhere worth going is going to be one trial after another. Building muscle, losing weight and any fitness related goal is going to have it’s trials for sure, but is the “no easy fix’ idea sending us the wrong message? Can …
What Makes a Workout Routine Effective?
I get asked a lot if I think someone’s workout routine is going to be effective. I’m humbled by the fact that someone trusts me enough to open up to me and ask me what I think. That said, I usually don’t know if it’s going to be an effective routine or not. This is because success in fitness, building …
3 Mental Weight Loss Barriers w/ Catherine Taylor
“75% of Weight Loss is Mental” -Catherine Taylor Catherine Taylor is a master when it comes to the emotional and mental side of fitness and weight loss. Understanding the science behind weight loss is only a small piece of the puzzle, and few people understand this like Catherine. In today’s podcast, I sit down with her talk about 3 of the …
How to Break Free From Your Work Out
Have you ever considered just how artificial and confining a workout is? How about how it seems to require that you put your life on hold so you can go and exercise like it’s some sort of a chore? What if you could break free and never have to “work out” ever again? How would your life be different? It …
How to Make Fitness Simple and Easy
Many of the struggles to build muscle or lose fat come from the needless obstacles we place in front of ourselves. We are making this whole diet and exercise stuff far too complicated and difficult. It’s not supposed to be so difficult it requires a herculean degree of motivation and will power. You also don’t need to become an expert …
How to Balance Out Emotion and Logic Dominance
Most folks are either emotion or logic strong in their philosophy and approach to fitness. You can check out this post to learn about emotion and logic dominance but here are the cliff notes: Logic dominant individuals: Keep looking for the best and latest science and information. Over-rely on knowing the “right” way to do things or the right program …
Emotion vs Logic Dominant Fitness Habits
Are you working your tail off and sticking to your diet or exercise plan, but not getting the results you want? Is pushing yourself to your limits the extent of your workout plan? Maybe you’re always looking for that one diet or workout program that’s going to work for you. Are perhaps you feel you know what to do but you …
Tips For Calisthenics and Fitness Excellence
Excellence in calisthenics and fitness is something we all want, but there are a lot of hurdles in making that happen. Some of them are all in your own mind. Some of them are all around you. Make no mistake, you can achieve far greater results than you currently believe are possible. Just imagine what it would be like to …
4 Tips to Improve Your Muscle Tension Skills
Creating muscle tension is a skill and the better you become at generating and controlling the tension in your muscles the better your results will be. You’ll build more muscle, improve strength, accelerate performance and reduce the risk of injury. The only question is, how do you become good at turning on your own muscles? Check out this video for …
Should You Time Your Rest Periods?
There’s more to progressing your workouts and getting results beyond just weight and reps. There’s a lot more in fact. Take your rest period for example. If you want to improve endurance, build muscle or gain a mental edge altering the amount of rest between your workouts can be just the ticket. Just through adjusting the amount of time you …
Al Kavadlo’s Wisdom for Lifting and Life
I recently had the great privilege of interviewing PCC Team Leader and Author Al Kavadlo. As a world leader in progressive calisthenics and body weight training, he possesses a wealth of knowledge from years of experience which he shares in his books, videos, and even a smartphone app. In this interview, Al pulls back the curtain and talks about calisthenics, …
The 3 Most Important Exercise Rules Ever
I like to keep things simple when it comes to exercise, especially when it comes to building muscle and fat loss. It’s such a relief to take all of the fluffy information out there and distill it down into the basic principals. Not only does this greatly improve your chances of success, it also gives you the freedom and flexibility …
Why Time Under Tension Builds Muscle
Time under tension is the most effective way to train for building muscle that I know of. This is because it directly focuses on the root cause of hypertrophy. Many criticise the idea of training time under tension claiming it’s some sort of a fad or gimmick. In this week’s podcast I discuss the science behind training time under tension …
5 Ways to Reduce Workout Stress
While stress is an important component in exercise, too much of it will prevent you from building muscle or burning fat. I’m not just talking about physical stress either. Mental and phycological stress can also put a serious dent in your workout. The real shame is most of this stress is not at all productive nor is it necessary. It’s …
How to Break Your Bad Fitness Habits
Your habits will make or break your success. They can make it easy to shed fat and build muscle, or nearly impossible to make any progress at all. In this week’s podcast, I bring a refreshing, and slightly uncomfortable, perspective on what’s really holding you back from making the progression want. Hold onto your hats because this might get a …
6 Moves to Improve Your Muscle Tension
All muscle building and strength success comes down to muscle tension. Your ability to control your muscles can literally make or break your gains regardless of what your workout routine and diet looks like. That’s why I created the Chain Training Ebook which you can download here. It’s a muscle tension management system to ensure your workouts are of the …
Rules of Progression & Results
Progression is the bottom line in strength and fitness. If you have progression you get the results you want, it’s as simple as that. However, if you have the perfect routine, the perfect diet and the best equipment, but no progression, you’re stuck. So there’s a lot at stake here. With progression comes the results you want. Without it, nothing …
7.5 Facts About Fitness Progression
Progression. It’s the single Delta Principal that can make or break your success. Or to put it another way, no progression no results. If you get progression you get results. Simple eh? The trick is understanding a few key basic principals about progression which will make it a lot easier, let alone possible. Check em out:
The Calisthenics Advantage of Earned Strength
“It’s so much easier to build muscle and strength with Weightlifting, you just add weight.” I’ve heard the above argument for why weight lifting is better than body weight training for years and have always thought it was a valid point. After all, when it comes to calisthenics making your muscles work harder is a lot more complicated. You have …
Build More Muscle With Less Joint Pain
Tension is the bottom line in your quest to build muscle and strength. If you use it well you get everything you want. You grow muscle, improve performance and generally gain everything from your training you could ever want. On the other hand, if your tension is mismanaged it will break you down and bust you up. Almost every chronic …
New Research in Building Muscle vs Strength
Muscle and strength, the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Usually, the two should grow together. As you get stronger you should be getting bigger and vice versa but it doesn’t always happen that way. Some people do get stronger without getting much bigger. I’ve also known some people who are pretty big but they are not nearly …
Stronger & Safer Body Weight Training
I’ve been using this simple way of training my basic compound movements (push-ups, pull-ups, squats etc) and the effects have been nothing short of fantastic. My joints feel stronger and safer, my muscles are working harder, and I feel like I’m moving as my body was meant to move. This “trick” calls into question some of the classic ideas about …
Are Stabilizer Muscles Important?
Stabilizer muscles were a big buzz word back when I first started working out. They were a point made by free weight guys like me in the debate over free weights vs machines. When the functional movement craze hit a lot of focus was placed on working these muscles through things like balance boards and unstable positions like standing …
Do More Pull Ups & Push Ups in 7 Days
Adding more pull ups and push ups in a set is not always a matter of just working harder to push your limits. Most of the time, increasing your reps isn’t about doing reps you couldn’t do before but instead improving the reps you can already do. I cover a few ways you can do this to become stronger and …
Stimulate Don’t Annihilate Your Muscles
The advice to stimulate a muscle rather than annihilate it is fantastic to follow. It will save you from injury, speed up recovery and improve motivation to train. It might even save your training career! The only question is how do you that? What does it mean in application? I attempt to answer this and give you some solid ideas …
High vs Low Sets For Building Muscle
Some people build muscle using as little as a single hard work set. Others enjoy workouts involving set after set after set. It’s certainly possible to build muscle with either strategy. I’ve done it with both myself, but you might have an affinity towards one style over the other. That’s why I made this video, so you can compare the …