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You’re Not Doing Slow Negatives On These Moves. You Should Be!

Muscle Building Tips

Julian Smith stands up for some of the things that many lifters either love to hate, or just plain overlook. A few of his favorites: Smith machines, sissy squats, and drawing out the negative—and I mean really drawing it out.

This former multi-sport athlete had multiple collegiate offers to play football, but he realized the downside of such a punishing sport after sustaining multiple concussions his senior year. Faced with the closing of one athletic avenue, he turned to bodybuilding. Since then, he’s built a pair of legs that earned him the nickname “The Quad Guy,” as well as a cult-like following online for his open-minded approach to training and his ability to craft innovative updates of gym classics. read more

Blast Your Back In 10 Minutes

Muscle Building Tips

How many times have you decided to just skip the gym because 10 minutes just isn’t enough time to get a decent workout in? After all, 10 minutes isn’t a lot of time—only 600 seconds!

While you shouldn’t depend on short workouts to meet your long-term goals, quick sessions do have their place in your training routine for a couple of reasons. First, if 10 minutes is all you have, 10 still beats 0 every time. Second, you can use short workouts as a second session to bring up a weak body part, and for many lifters the back could always use some extra attention. read more

3 Tips To Beat That Hunchback

Muscle Building Tips

It’s the fundamental posture of our times—and that’s not a good thing. Sitting in our cars, at our desks at work, on our couch, and especially staring at a phone, all drag us down into an exaggerated position where the thoracic spine is slumped or flexed. And sooner or later, it becomes our default position—known as “kyphosis.” read more

4 Lower-Back Exercises For Desk Jockeys

Muscle Building Tips

It’s a weird contradiction: What do you want to do when you’re tired? You just want to sit down and relax. But when you sit down for hours at a time, your body—especially your lower back—can pay a heavy price.

How can sitting be both good and bad for you?

It’s a matter of how long you sit, of course. When you sit for hours on end, your muscles grow accustomed to being “folded up.” As you sit there nearly motionless, staring at the screen, your hips are completely flexed, which causes your hip flexors to shorten and your glutes to weaken. Your shoulders roll forward, your core deactivates, and your posterior chain effectively goes to sleep. read more

Improving Body Composition: Optimizing Fat Loss & Muscle Building

Muscle Building Tips

Preamble on improving body composition

The goal of most any individual in the gym is to improve their body composition. The conundrum is that improving body composition is a give and take process. For years people have argued over the idea that you cannot simultaneously lose fat and build muscle since that would essentially require mutually exclusive energy intakes (i.e. you can’t ingest a surplus of calories and be in an energetic deficit and vice versa). read more

8 Back Blasting Workout Tips To Improve Size & Strength

Muscle Building Tips

The back is an often neglected and underworked muscle group. The average lifter either works it with a half-effort, using only lat pull downs and uninspired rowing reps, or just doesn’t care about making the back as brutally strong as possible.

If you are not one of these guys, and want as much back size and strength as possible, read on. I will be sharing some of my favorite back building tips. This article will help you improve your back workouts, and as a result, build a thicker, stronger and more impressive back. You will learn everything from how to structure a basic back workout to how to increase your rowing power and speed. read more

20 Must-Read Tips For Building Muscle & Burning Fat

Muscle Building Tips

It’s unfortunate but most people never reach their body goals. They purchase gym memberships, home fitness gadgets, diet plans and DVDs, yet remain unable to build muscle and/or get lean.

This isn’t always due to a lack of discipline either. Gyms are packed with men and woman performing resistance training routines, and grinding out miles upon miles on treadmills. Most of these folks are very health conscious, and eat reasonably well, all things considered. read more

Barbell Curl vs. Preacher Curl: Which Builds Bigger Biceps?

Muscle Building Tips

Brad Borland is a strength & conditioning specialist, cancer survivor and the founder of WorkoutLab.

As the ultimate “show-me” muscle, the biceps has taken on numerous names such as guns and pythons among many others. Nicely, well developed biceps make any physique look instantly bigger no matter how in or out of shape someone is. Of course, big guns are forged through many hours toiling away at rows, pull-ups and pulldowns, however, the curl is still the sometimes lonely road to larger, more muscular arms. read more