Category: Weight Lifting

Taking time to recover is often one of the more neglected portions when it comes to training. Training can be a bit obsessive at times and it can lead to having the tendency to want to train and pushing yourself further and further. That passion and fire are awesome, however, the actin and of itself can be detrimental to getting the results you want. Let’s go over why recovery is important and the signs you’re not recovering fully.

Why is Recovery Important?

Like I mentioned earlier, spending more time recovering is often easily neglected. However, recovery is the main time when you’re growing. Muscle grows during this time and your body goes through its natural healing process when it’s resting.

Training in tears you down and recovery builds you back up and more.

The only way you continue to get stronger and continue to make progress is to get adequate amounts of recovery. 

How Do I Know if I’m Not Recovering Enough?

Even though recovery is important, some people use it as an excuse of just normal DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness aka being sore) and don’t train due to them being sore. That’s not overtraining and not recovering enough though. Due to this argument and some of the misconceptions of what’s considered not recovering enough, I’m going to go over some signs that may indicate you’re not recovering enough / overtraining.

Always Fatigued

One of the signs you’re starting to overtrain and not recovery enough is if you’re always fatigued. Fatigue from training is normal, but on a constant basis that it’s affecting your day-to-day for prolonged periods of time can be a clear sign that you need to possibly take more time to recover. 

Not Making Progress

In addition to fatigue, let’s say your training program is properly designed in a way that you should be continuously making progress. Over 2 weeks if you’ve been plateauing or only gotten weaker, this can be a sign you need to start spending more time on recovering instead. For me, this is usually the first sign that kicks in me. I normally would take a deload week and that would start to fix my issues. 

Injuries

One of the more severe ways of finding out you’re not recovering enough is constant injuries. Now, injuries unfortunately are a pretty normal part of training. They’re bound to happen. Most people deal with minor injuries all the time within their training. However, coupled with the other points I mentioned above, if you’re piling on injury after injury in a short time frame, you may not be spending too much time recovering then.

Injuries piling up can also be from other things as well, like one injury leading to another and so on. If you’re getting constantly injured or have any nagging injury, you should go see a doctor/physical therapist.  

What Can I Do to Recover More?

There are plenty of ways you can go about recovering. Let’s go over some of the more important ways you go about setting time for recovery.

Sleep More

If there is one thing we probably don’t get enough of, it’s sleep. Sleep is the main time your body is trying to recover and heal. Depending on your life schedule, you may only be sleeping 6 hours a day. For some, they can still get through the day, but more sleep in the 8-10 hour range can make a huge difference in your recovery process. Personally, I don’t sleep enough if I also don’t output enough during the day, which is why I like to wake up early in the morning to get my workouts in. 

Lower Your Intensity/Volume

If you’re having trouble recovering you may need to lower your intensity and volume for at least a week in your workout program. This is usually known more as a deload week. You can get more information about a deload week here.

Add in Extra Rest Day

If you’re training 5-6 days a week and you’re having ‘active recovery days’ you may need to just add in a day of legit rest. A day you don’t do too much and if you’re doing active recovery, it would exercise like static stretching or yoga. Any type of resistance training should be avoided on these days. 

Final Thoughts

Not taking enough time to recover can be detrimental to your progress and can prolong your goals. In the worse cases, you may even get injured more often and that can derail you even further.

If you’re following a good training program deload weeks and rest days would already be incorporated. However, that may not be enough. If your sleep schedule isn’t great, you may still succumb to lack of recovery and some of the issues we mentioned above. Take time to recover and I promise you’ll see better results. 

Photos:

• Photo by Александар Цветановић from Pexels

Resistance training is a very important factor when it comes to physical fitness. Since most people get into fitness because they wish to lose weight, they believe all they need to do is cardio. Whereas cardio is still important, neglecting resistance training all together could cause its own issues. First, let’s define what resistance training is. Resistance training is any exercise that makes muscles contract against a form of resistance. The resistance would normally be a form of weight.  This can be free weights, barbell, medicine ball, etc. Some exercise examples would be the following:

• Barbell/Dumbell Squats
• Deadlift
• Bicep Curls
• Tricep Extensions
• Dumbbell Lunges
• Leg Press
• Kettlebell Swings

  Now that we have an idea of what resistance training is, let’s go over some of why you should be including more resistance training in your training and debunk some myths on the hesitancy of resistance training. 

You Won’t Be too Bulky

One of the main reasons I hear for not wanting to do resistance training is because it will make you ‘too bulky’. If that’s not your aesthetic goal, that’s fine. However, to think lifting weights will have you looking bulky is false. People you’ve seen that look bulky with plenty of muscle mass usually have gone through years of resistance training, with proper nutritional and resistance training programming with the purpose to continuously build muscle. You will also meet others who’ve done resistance training for years but still look rather lean and not bulky at all. That’s mainly due to the way they’re training. Their workout regimen isn’t programmed for that. 

As well, muscle is lean mass. Muscle takes up far less space in your body than fat does. Let’s take a look at this picture to see the difference:

As you can see, that’s a huge 5lb difference.  

 To put it simply, you’ll get bulky from resistance training if you want to get bulky. Resistance training by default won’t make you bulky as building muscle is already a difficult process that takes proper programming and nutritional requirements.  

More Muscle = More Calories Burned

Resistance training is meant to help build muscle overall. The more muscle you build, the more calories you burn. The more calories you burn, the more fat you’re bound to lose. 

It’s easy to think that to lose fat or burn calories you need to do cardio and only cardio. Cardio is great and can help expedite burning calories in a short period of time, it doesn’t truly persist in burning more calories throughout your day. Remember, you’re only probably exercising for about an hour. You still have 23 hours throughout the day. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you’ll be burning within that 23 hours’ worth of time. 

Why is that?

Muscle mass is part of your basal metabolic rate and for your body to maintain muscle mass it needs more energy to do so and in return needs to burn more calories. 

If you’re looking to lose fat and sustain that fat loss, building muscle is an important factor. 

Muscle is GOOD for Your Joints

Contrary to popular belief,  having muscle mass is actually good for your joints. In fact, less muscle mass is actually bad for your joints. There is a notion especially with squats that doing these exercises are bad for your joints. This is only true if you’re doing the exercise in improper form. This is why I always advocate for learning proper form when before you do any exercise you’re unfamiliar with. 

One of the reasons why muscle mass is good for your joints is because muscle mass makes the surrounding ligaments around the joints strong. This allows your joints to not take up most of the workload. 

If you’re looking for other ways to improve your joints, I would recommend seeing if you should be including more fish in your diet. 

There is Confidence in Strength

Being stronger overall will most likely make you more confident overall. Anytime I’ve gotten people into training and after a prolonged period of time, they’re always surprised how certain day-to-day tasks overall have become easier for them to handle. It’s also nice to not have to rely on others to pick things up anymore. The only problem is, people may start coming to you now for lifting hefty objects!

In all seriousness, though a level of confidence and self-worth is grown when you realize you’ve become stronger than you were previously. It’s a form of accomplishment and makes you feel like you can take on more than you thought. This will carry into your day-to-day life as well and help with other goals and tasks you may have.

Final Thoughts

Resistance training and the process of building muscle has so much more benefits than I can even list here. The list can go on and on, but let’s look at the main takeaways from this piece.

Muscle mass will help you lose and keep fat off, it will help your joints and build confidence. This isn’t even going into all the other health benefits it has on your overall well-being, but please know they are there. 

If you’re wondering how you can start doing training, check out my workout generator that gives you difficulties to choose from and form videos with each exercise as well. 

Photos

• Photo by Victor Freitas from Pexels
• https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/1zwf7t/this_is_what_really_got_to_me_5lbs_of_fat/

Training vs exercising is an important distinction that needs to be made especially if you’re trying to progress and move heavier weights or to meet body composition goals. 

A training program consists of exercises and workouts formulated and designed to meet your goals. For some, it’s fairly common to just go and want to exercise or to go and workout without any real structured program to follow. This is fine in some cases honestly. Maybe you’re just trying to get a little bit of extra work done or you’re looking to just burn some extra calories overall. There could be cases where you’re experimenting with exercises to follow a better training program. All of that is fine. However, exercising is just a means to burn calories, whereas training is to meet specific goals. 

No matter your goals, you should have a tailored training program to meet those goals. Let’s go over why you will make better progression with training than just exercising.

Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is one of the most important portions of a training program. Every good training program should have progressive overload included in it. It will allow you to progressively continue to get stronger throughout the program at a steady rate. This is very important considering the main purpose of training and working out is to get stronger or at a minimum maintain strength in general. You’re not training to get weaker.  Most people correlate strength to large muscle mass when this isn’t the case. There are plenty of freakishly strong people that don’t have the muscle tone or definition you might see on a bodybuilder.

If you’re just exercising or just working out, most likely you won’t be following the foundations of progressive overload which are critical to building strength. 

Implemented Deload Weeks

Resting and recovery are probably some of the more underrated portions when it comes to progressing and meeting your goals. Without adequate rest and recovery, you can easily burn yourself out, start to lose strength, and even risk injury as well.

This can cause issues for obvious reasons. A good training program has planned deload weeks implemented into it.  A deload week is meant to give your body time to recover during an active recovery week. You’ll still be training, but not to the same intensity that you normally would be. 

With this implemented portion into your training, you can easily continue to meet your goals but also take a scheduled ‘break’ to help ensure recovery and get you ready for the next block of training. 

Designed and Planned for Your Needs

What I love about training programs is that they’re tailored to meet your goals. You won’t be doing useless exercises and workouts that may not benefit you and what you’re trying to achieve. A training program can easily work on your weaknesses and also improve your strengths. It’s a blueprint to meet your goals. I’ve designed dozens of training programs for many clients. If you ever want one created, feel free to message me at contact@blobfitness.com

Final Thoughts

Training programs are an ideal way to meet your goals. If your goal was on building a home, you would follow a blueprint on how to do so. This is the same thing when it comes to meeting your physical goals. You have goals that need a proper plan to execute and for you to achieve those goals. If you’re just working out or exercising for the sake of doing so, it’s very easy to fall off or miss those goals considering there is no plan in place.

Again, I don’t believe just working out or exercising is a bad thing considering it’s for the right reasons. You can even find a workout generator that can be extremely beneficial in specific use cases. 

If you ever want a program created for you, feel free to message me at contact@blobfitness.com

As well, be on the lookout for a new product that will be giving you new weekly workouts that will be following the principles of a training program. Enter your email address below to keep up to date on when it’s released!

Photos:

• Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels

The Workout Generator is finally live! If you’ve been following me for some time, you will know I’ve been now teasing this for a bit. I’m happy to say it’s finally complete!  

Since it’s finally released, I wanted to give a quick guide on who it’s for, how to use it, and make the best of it. As well as potential new features.

You can find the Workout Generator under Tools->Workout Generator

Who’s this For?

The Workout Generator can be used by anyone. Whether you’re a beginner or at a more advanced fitness level, you can still utilize the generated workout. This is a great tool if you’re looking for:

• A new workout to follow
• Discovering new exercises
• Looking for a change of current workouts
• On the go workout based on your available equipment

How to Use It?

The Workout Generator is fairly easy to use. Let’s go through a step by step process.

Choose Your Equipment

Your first portion is to choose your equipment. Here, you can select all the available equipment you may have. If you choose the ‘Gym/All Equipment’ selection, it will remove all other selections and give you a workout based on all equipment.

Besides that, you can choose any piece of equipment you may have.  

Choose Your Categories

Here, you can choose which body parts you want to workout. You can choose multiple categories easily, but it’s preferred to choose 2-3 categories. Reason for this is that the algorithm will try creating to split your categories up into exercises, and with too many categories you won’t get too much variety in each category. 

Choose Difficulty

Last but not least, you can choose your difficulty. The higher the difficulty, the more reps, sets, and exercises you get. As well, you’ll also get different exercises depending on your level. For example, you won’t get muscle-ups at the beginner level. You’ll get something like that at the more advanced level. 

If you choose the “End Me” option, we would love to see the time and completion of the exercise! Feel free to tag us on Instagram (@blob.fitness) with #blobwod and we’ll share it!

Submit and Enjoy Your Workout!

Once you’ve submitted, you will get your new generated workout! Now what’s awesome about this is that each workout has its own YouTube link on how to do the exercise. I’ve only used sources I personally use for form information.

If you enjoy the workout or want to save it, you can easily enter your email address below and you can get the workout emailed to you with all the videos linked to it as well! 

Final Thoughts

This is just the beginning of more functionality set to come in the future. If you have any feedback or issues using the tool, please email me at contact@blobfitness.com and I’ll make sure to get to it.

If you like your workout and enjoyed your workout, post it on social media and use #blobwod! I’ll share any posts/stories with that hashtag. I hope you enjoy your workout and be on the lookout for new features coming soon!

Photos:

• Photo by Victor Freitas from Pexels

Have you ever gone to the gym and seen that one person exercising with extra clothing like with a hoodie and sweats on and completely drenched? Yeah, if you haven’t seen that before you will one day, I promise you. Even though many people do this, is it necessary and does it actually provide any real benefit to you and help with fat loss?  As well, can there be any other hidden benefits to it that we may not originally guess? 

Does Exercising with Extra Clothing Burn More Fat?

The first thing you’ll probably assume when thinking of exercising with extra clothing is that you sweat more. That’s absolutely true! (1) 

When your body is sweating, the purpose of it is to cool down your body.  This makes sense especially if you’re exercising with extra clothing. However, it’s imperial to note that sweat ≠ fat loss. Although it is usually a sign that you’re working (or your body is working) a bit harder in general, the process of sweating doesn’t burn a crazy amount of calories. 

Now, there isn’t as much research on this topic as I would hope. However, exercising with extra clothing is bound to increase your heart rate even for the sole reason as it provides another form of resistance to your training. Due to the extra resistance, your body will need to work a bit harder and your heart rate should be higher, so you’ll probably be burning more calories than usual. Now, will it be a significant amount? Probably not. 

So to clear clarify and some up this portion, will it burn more fat? Not necessarily. You’ll exert more, but not enough for it to make a significant difference.  

Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

Okay, so we know that exercising with extra clothing doesn’t burn more fat, so why should you do it? For this simple reason.

Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable.

Exercising with extra clothing is usually no easy task. It’s uncomfortable and hot and you’re dying to just get cool. The longer you keep your composure though and hold your disciple to not take the easy way out, the more comfortable you’re getting being uncomfortable. 

You will notice, the more you keep doing uncomfortable things, you’ll have a tougher mindset and not so easily willing to quit tasks.

This is something that will translate into your day to day life and I can’t recommend it enough. 

When to Exercise with Extra Clothing

Anytime I exercise with extra clothing, it’s usually during cardio. Why is that? There is a couple of reasons:

• Burn a bit more calories
• More difficult

I usually don’t wear extra clothing when I do weight lifting like squats, bench and deadlift. Mainly squats for me because it’s an exercise I don’t want to be dripping sweat and have the potential to slip, as well I’m trying to lift heavy weight. With extra clothing, I’ll probably burn out a bit quicker and not be able to hit my reps and sets. 

Obviously, it’s up to you when you want to wear extra clothing, but that’s my personal preference. 

Dangers

If you do plan on exercising with extra clothing, I highly recommend bringing some extra water with you. The more you sweat, the more your body is is excreting water/fluid and electrolytes. I would even go as far as say drink something with electrolytes in it.

Final Thoughts

Exercising with extra clothing may not make you burn as many extra calories as you were hoping for, however it can be a great asset for you to sweat more and build a better mindset during your training. You will get comfortable being uncomfortable and such lessons will carry into your everyday life.

I personally like to exercise with extra clothing mainly during cardio, but you can choose to do it when ever you want! If you do plan on doing it, I would recommend brining some extra water or even a drink with electrolytes in it. 

References:

1. Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Military Nutrition Research; Marriott BM, editor. Nutritional Needs in Hot Environments: Applications for Military Personnel in Field Operations. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1993. 3, Physiological Responses to Exercise in the Heat.

Photos:

1. Photo by Burst from Pexels

Can collagen help with weight training? If you don’t know much about collagen, you may just think it’s some product that helps with your beauty. (Even if this is true, then why aren’t you taking it? I kid.) Before going into that, we need to go over what is collagen and what it does for the body.

What is Collagen?

Collagen happens to be one of the richest proteins in our body. It alone makes up 10% of the muscle tissue in your body (1).  It is mainly found in connective tissues. This includes tissues like your bones, tendons, cartilage, skin, and ligaments.  It can also be found in internal organs as well.  You can think of collagen as the protein that holds these items together in your body. There are actually multiple different types of collagen too, but the main focus is getting types I, II, and III. 

Collagen Type I

Type I is mainly found in your skin, tendons, bones, hair, organs, ligaments, teeth, and more. You can say type I has more of the ‘beauty’ portion of it since it accounts for a lot of your outside features. 

Collagen Type II

Type II is one of the main factors in the cartilage that exists in your body.  This can help with your joints specifically.

Collagen Type III

Type III is found in your connective tissues and helps with the structure of organs and muscles. Type III helps with the elastic portions of these tissues. 

Knowing the main 3 types of collagen, you can easily see how it plays an important role in your body. 

Can Collagen Help With Weight Training?

Ah, the question we’ve been wondering. Can collagen help with weight training? I mean it supports so much like your cartilage and joints. Things that can take a beating with long periods of heavy lifting. So before we simply answer this question, we need to understand how would collagen be processed in our body to help with your joints and other connective tissue. 

Your body goes through something called Collagen Synthesis to help maintain and strengthen connective tissues. When you’re lifting heavy weights your body needs to go through an increase of collagen synthesis to help maintain the strength in your connective tissues. 

So with that being said, the logistical thinking would be that taking a collagen supplement (Which should increase collagen synthesis) before or even after a workout may help with the maintenance and strength of your connective tissue? 

Well here is what’s interesting. In a study published in 2019, they did an experiment giving hydrolyzed collagen or gelatin to people an hour before working out. (Group of people was broken up with some getting a placebo and others getting the supplementation) Blood work was done before giving the collagen/gelatin supplement and blood work was done 4 hours afterward. After the experiment was done, there was an increase but it wasn’t anything significant.   This mainly may be due though to a Vitamin C issue they had, something that’s an important role in collagen synthesis. (4) 

However, another experiment was done in that study giving collagen/gelatin supplement immediately after the blood work was done and checking again an hour later (no exercise this time) to find that it did increase collagen synthesis. 

Another study though showed that after a 24 week period supplementing 10g of hydrolyzed collagen, it found to help with athletes who’ve been experiencing joint pain. (3)

Should I Be Taking Collagen to Help With Weight Training?

There isn’t too much data on this subject, to be frank. The data that is out there says it can help. The other study I mentioned previously had its own issues involved which is why they may have not seen a significant difference. (Mainly due to a Vitamin C issue that is critical for collagen and it’s amino acids to function properly. This is something I’ve mentioned before why supplementing may not always be the best choice.) If you’re having joint pain from weight lifting, it won’t hurt to try taking a collagen supplement. Having that joint pain may be limiting your capability to continue training so improving those areas can help with your weight training. 

Natural Sources of Collagen

If you’re looking for some natural sources of collagen, you have many options to choose from. Here is a quick list of items you can try:

• Bone Broth – packed with plenty of other minerals and vitamins. High in protein
• Chicken – high in protein. Lean meat
• Fish – High in Protein and Omega-3s. Can also help with joint pain
• Fruits – packed with vitamins (Vitamin C is essential for collagen synthesis)
• Eggs – high in protein and other minerals and vitamins

Collagen Supplements for Weight Training

I’m an advocate for eating whole foods all the time, but sometimes you may need to supplement to get the things you need, and that’s okay. As long as you’re pairing items correctly.

One of my favorite collagen supplements is Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides Powder.

What makes the supplement so great is that it’s also packed with Vitamin C which is essential for collagen synthesis. I personally use the unflavored version but all their collage products are great and I highly recommend them. It’s also packed with protein! 

Note: The above link is an affiliated link from Amazon.

Final Thoughts

If your weight training journey is being halted by joint pain or consistent reoccurring injuries, you may be best of intaking more collagen. Even though there isn’t a great amount of data on the subject, it’s something that can help assist in your weight training by preventing or helping with joint pain/injuries you may currently have. It does have many benefits and it’s something plenty of people kind of disregard in terms of their diet. Besides joint pain related injuries, I’ve noticed differences in my skin mainly. I do highly recommend it and suggest trying it!

Photos

Photo by Leon Martinez from Pexels

References

1. Gillies AR, Lieber RL. Structure and function of the skeletal muscle extracellular matrix. Muscle Nerve. 2011;44(3):318-331. doi:10.1002/mus.22094
2. Lis DM, Baar K. Effects of Different Vitamin C-Enriched Collagen Derivatives on Collagen Synthesis. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2019 Sep 1;29(5):526-531. doi: 10.1123/ijsnem.2018-0385. PMID: 30859848.
3. Clark KL, Sebastianelli W, Flechsenhar KR, Aukermann DF, Meza F, Millard RL, Deitch JR, Sherbondy PS, Albert A. 24-Week study on the use of collagen hydrolysate as a dietary supplement in athletes with activity-related joint pain. Curr Med Res Opin. 2008 May;24(5):1485-96. doi: 10.1185/030079908×291967. Epub 2008 Apr 15. PMID: 18416885.
4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/collagen-synthesis#:~:text=Vitamin%20C%20is%20absolutely%20essential,structural%20strength%20cross%2Dlinking).

If you’ve been into weight training a bit, you may have heard the term progressive overload. It’s a term that gets used a lot when talking about training specifically for strength and hypertrophy. If you’ve never heard of the term before, that’s fine! We’re going to go through what the terms mean, break it down on why it’s important, and how you can incorporate it into your training to start seeing benefits. 

What is Progressive Overload?

If you wanted to get stronger and gain muscle, do you think would continuously just lift the same weight for the same reps and sets forever? Probably not. You would have to gradually increase the resistance or reps over time. This is what progressive overloading is.  Progressive Overload is continuously adding more demands (whether it be weight/resistance, reps, volume, frequency, etc.) to exercises over a period of time. The ability to do this within a training program will help to build muscle mass and strength. 

A great example to demonstrate progressive overload, and one of the most used stories to discuss progressive overload and is to discuss the story of Milo. 

The Story of Milo

To go through the story fairly quickly, Milo began lifting a young calf every day. The calf would grow every day and this would result in Milo getting stronger as well. Eventually, Milo would be able to carry until it was fully grown. To break down that story, that means Milo’s resistance (the calf) would grow every day and he would continue to grow to make him stronger. That’s a progressive overload in a nutshell.

Is It That Simple?

To be fair, progressive overload the concept is fairly simple to understand. However, the problem with this is that gaining strength isn’t linear. You’re bound to hit plateaus in your training career. That doesn’t mean though that progressive overload doesn’t work though. It just means it’s not as straightforward as just keep adding weight and you’ll grow. That’s why you have different training regimens like periodization training. (Something that I will discuss more on in the future). 

Note: If you’re hitting plateaus in your training, you may want to look into taking a deload week.

Why is Progressive Overload Important?

So even though I mentioned progressive overload isn’t as simple as adding weight and gaining strength, it’s still the sole concept of most training programs over an extended period of time. 

Regardless, most training programs, overtime will have you go up in either weight/resistance, volume, or reps. Which are all forms of progressive overload.  A good tailored program will usually have you take deload weeks in between and/or have correctly structure cycles into your program that overtime you will make significant gains. 

Progressive overload though is more simple when you’re a beginner vs when you’re an intermediate/advanced trainer. If you’re a beginner you may be able to apply some form of progressive overload workout to workout. However, for any more advanced it becomes more difficult and maybe week to week or month to month even. Sometimes even longer. 

Simply, if you want to gain strength or muscle mass, you need to apply a form of progressive overload into your training. 

How Can I Incorporate Progressive Overload in my Training Program?

Incorporating progressive overload isn’t that difficult when you’re a beginner. To be frank it’s fairly easy. However, the more you progress the more complicated it becomes to properly incorporate and you will need a proper training program tailored for you. If you do want a training program or coaching, feel free to contact me.

If you don’t have a training program or have never done one, I would say you’re most likely still at the beginner stage. If so you can do the following.

Assuming you’re doing compound movements like Squats, Bench, and Deadlift, you can easily do a Starting Strength Novice program that I highly recommend for anyone just beginning.

To incorporate it though, (at a novice level) you can easily add 5lbs to each lift per workout. For example, if Monday you lifted 3 x 5 for squats at 135lbs, the next squat session you can attempt doing 3 x 5 at 140lbs. The squat session after that would be 3 x 5 145lb etc. You will keep doing this until you can’t make significant progress. You will eventually need to do 2.5lb increments and from there you may need to get on an intermediate program. I will write more in the future about intermediate and advanced programs and how to program them for yourself.  

Final Thoughts

Progressive overload should be the main factor in your training over an extended period of time. Even though, the concept may be simple it’s not as easy to incorporate unless you’re a beginner. If you haven’t done a training program before, you most likely are at a novice level and should follow a novice program like the Starting Strength Novice program. You will notice gains in strength and hypertrophy when following a good program with structured progressive overload. If you’re looking for a training program, feel free to contact me. 

Photos:

• Photo by Kat Jayne from Pexels
• Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

BFR Training can have a long-range of benefits to it. Most people tend to back off of the training due to its name (Blood Flow Restriction) or Occlusion Training. Fair enough, it sounds dangerous and many people think they would get injured with it, but this isn’t the case. (1) could be if you do it incorrectly which is why you should check out my article on how to utilize BFR training.

However, when done correctly, it can provide a wide range of benefits that can have an exceptional impact on your training and how you tailor your routine. I include it into my routine all the time and I always highly recommend others to use. If you wish to find out exactly what is BFR training, click here.

So let’s not waste too much time and get right into it!

BFR Training Benefits You if You’re Overcoming and Injury

Injury is almost unavoidable if you’re an advent lifter.  I’ve had many injuries over my years of weight lifting and I’ve seen others get injured plenty of times.

Not only is the physical aspect of it daunting, but the mental aspect as well especially when you’re trying to regain your strength. You’re bound to lose strength with an injury and to regain strength can take time and patience.

It would be great if you preserve your strength as much as possible, right? Yup! That’s one of the best benefits of BFR training. Now obviously, if you tore a muscle of some sort, you probably won’t be jumping back to lifting anytime soon. However, for other injuries like joint injuries, BFR can be great.

Why is it Better for Injury?

If you’re coming back from injury, you’re usually doing low-load training in general, meaning 20-30% 1RM. One of the benefits of BFR Training though is that low-load BFR training in comparison to normal low-load training is that BFR Training is better for strength. The thing is, if you’re doing BFR training, you’re going to fatigue your muscles a lot faster than you would without it, and you’ll have less muscular damage(1). With an injury, you don’t want to keep performing more and more reps that lead to more stress on the joints.

BFR Training Can Help You Gain Muscle

BFR Training can be a great tool to use if you’re trying to gain muscle as well. It’s something I’ve personally incorporated into my training regimen and have seen great results with it. The reason why it’s so much better (As mentioned above) you can reach a higher muscular fatigue level with the same amount of reps you would normally do. You can incorporate BFR training consistently within your training days for a specific exercise. You can also take a specific week to do BFR Training as well. This specific study showed that were was growth in slow-twitch muscles in a group of powerlifters when 1 group performed BFR Training and the other didn’t(2). 

Better Recovery

Like mentioned before, BFR training can cause muscle fatigue fairly fast. What’s great about BFR training is that even though you’re fatiguing your muscle quicker than you would with non-BFR Training, you won’t experience the same amount of muscular damage(3). That means your recovery would be better and if anything might even help with preventing injuries in the future. 

Can be used During Deload Week

If you want to know if deload weeks are necessary, you should check out this article. If you do take deload weeks, using BFR Training can be something that will have a great impact on you. With the ability to have the ability to fatigue your muscles and not do muscular damage and perform this with low-load training, this makes this a game-changer for deload weeks! If you want to really up your deload weeks, incorporating can help you reap plenty of benefits. 

The Best Pump of Your Life

Okay granted this is more of a bro-tip, but BFR Training will give you a great pump. If you’re doing a bodybuilding competition or maybe about to go out for the night, BFR training might be great for you considering how great your pump will be. Granted, you can build muscle without always getting a pump, but getting a pump always feels great and will probably up your confidence a bit more too, so it doesn’t hurt.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been incorporating BFR Training in my regimen for years now. The training might put some people off due to the name, but don’t be afraid of it. Check out my guide on how to use BFR Training and you will learn how to utilize BFR Training and not get injured. If you’ve been contemplating doing BFR Training, I hope these benefits put you in the direction of using them. I haven’t seen any negative effects of it and I’ve got plenty of clients on it before with great benefits. These are the BFR Bands I currently use.

Note: The link above is an affiliated link.

References:

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19826283/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30188363/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23446173/

Photos:

• Photo by Scott Webb from Pexels

Kettlebells have been all the rage for the past couple of years. You’ll see athletes swinging them 100lb kettlebells and working up a crazy sweat. Honestly, it also usually looks pretty badass too.

What’s makes kettlebells so great though is that they can easily be used for resistance training but also incorporated into circuits. Due to its shape, it’s easier and safer to perform certain moves with a kettlebell than a dumbbell. Like the kettlebell swing. 

We have so many different ways of training though. We can do barbell training, dumbbell training, kettlebell training, etc. So let’s go over why kettlebell training is unique and special in its own way and why you should start incorporating it into your workout routine. 

1. Kettlebells Give you More Exercise Selection

 I think one of the main benefits of kettlebell exercises is that you have a broad selection of exercises to choose from. Even though kettlebells mainly distribute all the weight at the bottom of it, most exercises you even do with dumbbells can be done with kettlebells. Even if you have to slightly modify it a bit more. You can easily do the following exercises with kettlebells that you would normally do with dumbbells:

•  Curls
• Tricep Kickbacks
• Shoulder Press
• Bench Press
• Lateral Raise
• Squat
• Row

and many more. If you plan on using kettlebells instead of dumbbells, I would suggest looking up form for the specific exercise. Like I mentioned above, since the kettlebell’s weight is mainly distributed at the bottom, there may be more effective ways of doing each exercise with the kettlebell than the form you would use for a dumbbell.  

Some of the more highlighted kettlebell exercises to choose from are:

• Kettlebell Swing
• Kettlebell Thrusters
• Turkish GetUp
• Kettlebell Clean and Press
• Farmers Walk
• Floor Press

2. Kettlebells are a Free Form Weight which is Easier to Use and Better for Your Body

Kettlebells are free from weights. So it makes it easier to move around and it’s a non-restrictive exercise. Your body will use more stabilizer muscles to maneuver the weight than something like a machine would. 

As well, since it’s non-restrictive you can move in the way you need to move.  Now, this doesn’t mean you should be swinging with bad form by any means. However, depending on your anthropology, you may need to move weights around a bit differently. Something like machines at the gym doesn’t really let you do that. 

3. Full body workout and ‘Easy’ Cardio and Conditioning 

I say ‘easy’ cardio cause cardio is never easy, but it’s always a huge benefit when you can incorporate cardio and resistance training together. Hence why kettlebells can be very effective. If you look at the kettlebell exercises I pointed out above, you’ll notice plenty of those exercises are full-body exercises. You can easily combine some of those exercises into circuit training and easily get a full-body workout and some cardio in about 30 minutes’ worth of time.  Personally, I find it better to do some type of HIIT resistance training than normal cardio, and kettlebells can easily achieve that. 

4. Kettlebells can Train Muscles you Don’t Normally Train

If you ever wrote a training program for yourself and tried in to get in even the smallest of muscle groups, you’ll notice the list of your exercises grow long and the workout can take hours sometimes. 

What I like about kettlebells, is that due to its expansive exercise selection you can easily choose exercises that help with train muscles you don’t normally train.

An example of this would be the Turkish GetUp as I mentioned above. When I was training a couple of years back, my rotator cuff was fairly weak cause I never properly trained it. I started incorporating exercises of it in my normal workout and it would just be daunting at some point and it would take too long. 

I then incorporated the Turkish GetUp. Since it’s an exercise that helps with rotator cuff stabilization and is a full-body workout, I could easily remove some of the exercises I was doing and just incorporate this. After a couple of weeks of consistently doing it, I started to gain more strength and stabilization in my rotator cuff. However, the best thing was that there were no imbalances either. The Turkish GetUp is easily one of my favorite KettleBell Exercises. 

5. Low Equipment Management and Mobility

At the time of writing this, we’re living in the COVID era. Gyms are actually open but plenty of people aren’t going back due to the high risk. Plenty of people are working out at home. What’s great about kettlebells is they don’t take up a lot of space and you don’t need many of them. You can easily have 2 – 3 kettlebells and be set. Since they don’t take up much space, you can always travel with them too if needed. This gives you an advantage that you can train when needed even when traveling without an issue. (Unless the Kettlebell weighs 200lbs?). 

How to Incorporate into Your Workout

So we know that kettlebells can be extremely beneficial. Not only for its ease of use but it can provide a good full-body workout and you can do some traditional exercises with them too. So how do we incorporate them into your workout? Well, this primarily depends on your goals. However, let’s go over some normal goals and exercises you can incorporate and replace. 

Gaining Muscle

Depending on if you’re already following a hypertrophy program and you’re trying to gain mass, you can easily throw in some kettlebell movements in there as well or use kettlebell movements to replace some exercises. 

Here are some exercises you can replace with kettlebells to help with gaining muscle:

• Dumbbell Shoulder Press -> Kettlebell Shoulder Press 
  • Better muscle recruitment and easier to perform
• Goblet Squat -> Kettlebell Goblet Squat
  • Easier to manage, better weight management
• Standard Lunge -> Kettlebell Overhead Lunge
  • Using more muscles and stability

Cardio

If you’re trying to get more cardio in, then kettlebells can easily be used to do a quick HIIT workout that works up a sweat. 

A quick circuit could be something like the following (All exercises with kettlebells):

• Swings x 20
• Squats x 20
• Lunges x 20
• Shoulder Press x 20
• Burpees for 30 seconds

Do 3 times and rest 30 seconds in between exercises and sets.

Here is an image version of it if you want to save it:

Even something as simple as that would work up a crazy sweat and provide some good strength gains. 

If you’re curious if cardio can be detrimental to your gains, check out this article. 

Power and/or Strength Training

Kettlebells can provide benefits to maximal and explosive strength(1).  There are plenty of exercises that can help with this but the main one is the kettlebell swing. When done correctly, it can truly have a huge benefit in your training. I would recommend incorporating it into your program. Maybe on a lighter day though or a day, you normally do cardio. 

Final Thoughts

I believe Kettlebells can be a real benefit to your workout regimen. Whether it be to gain muscle, add additional cardio, or to assist with your power and/or strength training. What makes kettlebells great though is that they’re fairly easy to get and don’t take up too much space. You will be surprised about the benefits you can see once you start incorporating them. Personally, for me, I like to incorporate kettlebells to help with stability and other exercises I don’t tend to do often. I’ve seen improvements in many areas and I have no doubt that if you incorporate them into your routine, you will too.

If you want a kettlebell workout, feel free to send me an email and we can work one out. 

If you want a good kettlebell exercise resource check out Pavel Tsatsouline.

If you’re looking for kettlebells to buy, check out Rogue or Onnit. 

Note: I’m not affiliated or sponsored by any of these companies. 

If you’re looking for other articles on weight lifting click here.

References:

1. Lake, Jason P.; Lauder, Mike A. Kettlebell Swing Training Improves Maximal and Explosive Strength, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: August 2012 – Volume 26 – Issue 8 – p 2228-2233 doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31825c2c9b
2. Vancini RL, Andrade MS, Rufo-Tavares W, Zimerer C, Nikolaidis PT, de Lira CAB. Kettlebell Exercise as an Alternative to Improve Aerobic Power and Muscle Strength. J Hum Kinet. 2019;66:5-6. Published 2019 Mar 27. doi:10.2478/hukin-2018-0062

Photos:

• Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
• https://experiencelife.com/article/break-it-down-the-kettlebell-swing/
• https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/92/f2/3792f2554804db1d688e2f44e8210fc9.png

Training to failure gets talked about a lot when in the gym and I’m sure plenty of people practice or try it to some degree throughout their training career. The problem is, plenty of people do it and assume it works because they have a pump and they’re fatigued. 

However, does it really belong in your training regimen and can it provide any true benefits to you?

What is Training to Failure?

Training to failure, in principle is to perform a set/exercise to absolute failure. Meaning you can’t muster another repetition. In this post, we’ll be talking about training to failure in regards to training each set of an exercise to failure. For example, if the exercise was Squats and we were doing 3 sets, all 3 sets would be to failure.

Does Training to Failure have any Benefits?

Like I mentioned earlier, this method of training may seem effective as it’s something that provides usually a fairly good pump and you’re fairly fatigued after the exercise is completed. 

Interestingly enough, training to failure (Especially in compound movements) doesn’t really provide much of a benefit in many regards.  Let’s go on to why this is the case though

Training to Failure Leads to Intense Fatigue

When training to failure, you’re bound to fatigue yourself fairly fast especially during compound movements. The problem with intense fatigue caused by training to failure is that it will start to carry over much further into training sessions. More fatigue that gets carried into other training sessions, the more likely you won’t be able to perform as well, and the chances you won’t be making the progress you desire(1).

Even though fatigue usually seems good in terms of working out, that’s not always necessarily the case. Fatigue that gets carried over from workout to workout and you’re not recovering in time can be detrimental and cause regression of progress in your training.

With this regression, it can either lead to overtraining or possibly even injury. Now just to clarify, fatigue from working out is necessary and normal. The problem is that training to failure will cause intense fatigue and you may not recover in time for another training session.

So, does this mean you shouldn’t workout hard? Definitely not. But you shouldn’t be burning yourself out either every workout. If you do feel like you’re overtraining and not recovering in time, you may need to take a deload week. 

Volume Doesn’t Seem to Increase When Training to Failure

If the volume is something you take into consideration with your training program, then you would be inclined to know that training to failure doesn’t really impact volume(2). In some cases, it can even lead to less volume in the whole workout. This again is due to the high fatigue level you can endure from training to failure sessions.

You would usually be better off trying to lift a bit heavier and back off 2-3 reps shy of failure. You would have more effort to exert in more sets and would equate to possibly more volume. 

Just to note: overtraining, fatigue, and regression in volume through a training program will not give you the results you want. 

Is There a Good Time to Train to Failure?

Okay, I know from the above you would probably want to steer clear of training to failure. However, there could be some places where it’s useful. 

Here are a couple of scenarios where it could be useful:

Low Load / Low Weight Training

A study has shown that a group that trained with lower loads to failure had greater hypertrophy (gains) and in strength endurance than a group of low load training to almost failure. However, according to the study, it wasn’t really that significant(3).

Failure on the Last Set

Failing on the last set is probably going to be your best option if you do try to train to failure.  The positive outcome of this is that not all of your sets are going to fail and you should be able to maintain volume without an issue.

If I had to recommend though, I would stick to doing it though on isometric exercises. I do feel that if you’re training to failure on compound movements, there is always a possibility of increased danger of injuring yourself.  

Final Thoughts

I don’t think training to failure has much room inside your regimen and isn’t worth the time and effort. From what most research has shown, it only seems to cause negative effects in a training program. Leading to excess fatigue that will lead to lower volume overall is never a good thing.

However, there are times you can implement it into your training like failing on the last set and low load training. If you’re doing lower load training, I would recommend just doing BFR Training then.  So if you’ve been doing this method of training, consider tossing it or setting it aside for just your last set. Set more time for recovery or use more weight for sets that you would train to failure. 

References

1. Morán-Navarro R, Pérez CE, Mora-Rodríguez R, de la Cruz-Sánchez E, González-Badillo JJ, Sánchez-Medina L, Pallarés JG. Time course of recovery following resistance training leading or not to failure. European journal of applied physiology. 2017 Dec 1;117(12):2387-99.
2. Santos WD, Vieira CA, Bottaro M, Nunes VA, Ramirez-Campillo R, Steele J, Fisher JP, Gentil P. Resistance Training Performed to Failure or Not to Failure Results in Similar Total Volume, but With Different Fatigue and Discomfort Levels. Journal of strength and conditioning research. 2019 Jan.
3. Terada K; Kikuchi N; Burt D; Voisin S; Nakazato K. Low-Load Resistance Training to Volitional Failure Induces Muscle Hypertrophy Similar to Volume-Matched, Velocity Fatigue. J Strength Cond Res. 2020. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000003690

Photos:

• Photo by Li Sun from Pexels